Famous Givers and Their Gifts. Bolton Sarah Knowles

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      "But as new uses were found for the oil, prices rose again; and to remove the difficulty of high freights, pipes were laid, first for short distances, and then to the seaboard, a distance of about three hundred miles. Through these pipes, of which six thousand two hundred miles have been laid, the oil is now pumped from two thousand one hundred wells. It costs only ten cents to pump a barrel of oil to the Atlantic. The value of petroleum and its products exported up to January, 1884, exceeds in value $625,000,000."

      Within ten years from the time when Mr. Carnegie and his friends bought the oil-farms, their investment had returned them four hundred and one per cent, and the young Scotchman could count himself a rich man. Before this, however, he had entered the iron and steel industry, in which his great wealth has been made. With a little money which he had saved, he borrowed $1,250 from a bank, and, with five other persons, established the Keystone Bridge Works of Pittsburg, with the small capital of $6,000. This was a success from the first, and in latter years has had a capital of $1,000,000. It has built bridges all over the country, and structural frames for many public buildings in New York, Chicago, and other cities. From this time forward Mr. Carnegie's career has been a most successful one. He has become chief owner in the Union Iron Works, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the Homestead Steel Works, formerly a rival company, the Duquesne Works of the Allegheny Bessemer Steel Company, and several other iron and coke companies. The capital of these companies is about $30,000,000, and about twenty-five thousand men are employed.

      "In 189 °Carnegie Bros. & Co., Limited," says the Engineering and Mining Journal for July 4, 1891, "had a capacity to produce 600,000 tons of steel rails per annum, or over twenty-five per cent of the total capacity of all the rolling-mills of the United States, while its products of steel girders, plates, nails, and other forms of manufactured iron and steel are greater than at any other works in this country, and exceed the amount turned out at the famous Krupp Works in Germany." The company has supplied the United States Government with a large amount of armor plates for our new ships, and also filled a large order for the Russian Government.

      The Edgar Thomson Steel Works have an annual capacity of 1,000,000 gross tons of ingots, 600,000 gross tons of rails and billets, and 50,000 gross tons of castings. The Duquesne Furnaces have a yearly capacity of 700,000 gross tons of pig-iron; the Lucy Furnaces, 200,000 gross tons yearly; the Duquesne Steel Works, an annual capacity of 450,000 gross tons of ingots. The Homestead Steel Works have an annual capacity of 375,000 gross tons of Bessemer steel and ingots, and 400,000 gross tons of open-hearth steel ingots. The Upper Union Mills have an annual output of 140,000 gross tons of steel bars and steel universal mill-plates, etc.; the Lower Union Mills, an annual capacity of 65,000 gross tons of mill-plates, bridge-work, car-forgings, etc.

      The industrious, ambitious boy was not satisfied merely to amass wealth. He had always been a great reader and thinker. In 1883 Charles Scribner's Sons published a book by this successful telegraph operator and iron manufacturer, "An American Four-in-Hand in Britain." The trip was suggested by Mr. Black's novel, "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," and extended from Brighton to Inverness, a distance of eight hundred and thirty-one miles.

      Mr. Carnegie and his party of chosen friends made the journey by coach in seven weeks, from July 17 to Aug. 3, 1881, and had a most enjoyable as well as instructive trip. The Critic gives Mr. Carnegie well-merited praise, saying that "he has produced a book of travel as fresh as though he had been exploring Thibet or navigating the River of Golden Sand." The book is dedicated to "My favorite heroine, my mother," who was the queen dowager of the volume, and whose happiness during the journey seemed to be the chief concern of her devoted son.

      This book had so cordial a reception that the following year, 1884, another volume was published, "Round the World," covering a trip made in 1878-1879; Mr. Carnegie having sailed from San Francisco to Japan, and thence through the lands of the East. As he starts, his mother puts in his hand Shakespeare in thirteen small volumes; and these are his company and delight in the long ocean voyage. Through China, India, and other countries, he observes closely, learns much, and tells it in a way that is always interesting. "Life at the East," he says, "lacks two of its most important elements, – the want of intelligent and refined women as the companion of man, and a Sunday. It has been a strange experience to me to be for several months without the society of some of this class of women, – sometimes many weeks without even speaking to one, and often a whole week without even seeing the face of an educated woman. And, bachelor as I am, let me confess what a miserable, dark, dreary, and insipid life this would be without their constant companionship."

      Ten years later, in 1886, Mr. Carnegie published a book that had a very wide reading, and at once placed the author prominently before the New World and the Old World as well, "Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years' March of the Republic."

      The book showed extensive research, a deep love for his adopted country, America, a warm heart, and an able mind. He wrote: "To the beloved Republic, under whose equal laws I am made the peer of any man, although denied political equality by my native land, I dedicate this book, with an intensity of gratitude and admiration which the native-born citizen can neither feel nor understand."

      No one can read this book without being amazed at the power and possibilities of the Republic, and without a deeper love for, and pride in the greatness and true worth of, his country. The style is bright and attractive, and the facts stated remarkable. Americans must always be debtors to the Scotchman who has shown them how to prize their native land.

      Mr. Carnegie wrote the book "as a labor of love," to show the people of the Old World the advantages of a republic over a monarchical form of government, and to Americans, "a juster estimate than prevails in some quarters of the political and social advantages which they so abundantly possess over the people of the older and less advanced lands, that they may be still prouder and even more devoted, if possible, to their institutions than they are."

      Mr. Carnegie shows by undisputed facts that America, so recently a colony of Great Britain, has now become "the wealthiest nation in the world," "the greatest agricultural nation," "the greatest manufacturing nation," "the greatest mining nation in the world." "In the ten years from 1870 to 1880," says Mr. Carnegie, "eleven and a half millions were added to the population of America. Yet these only added three persons to each square mile of territory; and should America continue to double her population every thirty years, instead of every twenty-five years as hitherto, seventy years must elapse before she will attain the density of Europe. The population will then reach two hundred and ninety millions."

      Mr. Carnegie has said in his "Imperial Federation," published in the Nineteenth Century, September, 1891, "Even if the United States increase is to be much less rapid than it has been hitherto, yet the child is born who will see more than 400,000,000 under her sway. No possible increase of the race can be looked for in all the world combined comparable to this. Green truly says that its 'future home is to be found along the banks of the Hudson and the Mississippi.'"

      It will surprise many to know that "the whole United Kingdom (England, Scotland, and Ireland) could be planted in Texas, and leave plenty of room around it."

      "The farms of America equal the entire territory of the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Portugal. The corn-fields equal the extent of England, Scotland, and Belgium; while the grain-fields generally would overlap Spain. The cotton-fields cover an area larger than Holland, and twice as large as Belgium."

      The growth of manufactures in America is amazing. In thirty years, from 1850 to 1880, Mr. Carnegie says there was an increase of nearly six hundred per cent, while the increase in British manufactures was little more than a hundred per cent. The total in America in 1880 was $5,560,000,000; in the United Kingdom, $4,055,000,000.

      "Probably the most rapid development of an industry that the world has ever seen," says Mr. Carnegie, "is that of Bessemer steel in America." In 1870 America made 40,000 tons of Bessemer; in 1885, fifteen years СКАЧАТЬ