Andrew Carnegie was born into a poor working class family living in the town of Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1835. His father operated a small hand looming business located in the family home. The Carnegies was literate, well read, and active in the politics of the day. It was a time of repression of the Scottish worker by the Government, the employers, and the culture. Rebellious in thought as well as actively participating in protests was part of the Carnegie family life style. He was exposed to all of Scotland’s dramatic portrayal of Scottish Heroes.
He learned the poetry and songs that were filled with the heroics of the underdog and their fight for equality. Andrew Carnegie’s mother was the strong parent in the family. She protected her two sons from associating with any corrupting values. Andrew said, “Yes, mother would have taken her two boys, one under each arm, and perished with them then they should mingle with low company in their extreme youth. There was not a prouder family in the land. Anything low, mean, deceitful, shifty, course, underhand, or gossipy was foreign to the heroic soul [mother]”.
Andrew idealized his mother, his country and its heritage, and the struggle for fair treatment of the worker. The Carnegie family left Scotland when Andrew was 13, and came to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the urging of his two aunts. His mother was the behind the move and she continued to be a motivator, supporter, and controller of Andrew and his personal interests for the rest of her life. Carnegie arrived in America in 1848, and found the state of official social equality he had been searching for. Although the worker had not gained equality in living and working conditions, at least the laws of this government promoted its attainment.
He had been filled with the idealism of a radical reformer in Scotland, but in America he quickly became involved with his own climb to success. His greatest characteristic was his ability to take advantage of any opportunity that was offered to him. His first opportunity to advance was his promotion from a factory bobbin boy to writing entries into his employer’s accounts. At 15, he grabbed at the chance to leave the factory for a job as a telegraph messenger. Andrew made it his concern to learn the name of every business owner in the city.
Recognizing these men on the street shortened his message delivery time and gave them the favorable impression he was seeking. During these early teen years, Carnegie attended night school and frequented the theater. He had been offered free tickets which enabled him to become acquainted with Shakespeare’s plays. While other young men lives were filled with work, pleasure, and home, Andrew’s life was filled with work, school, drama, and reading. He took advantage of the chance to study in a private library and then he encouraged other young men to join him. He said, “I knew nothing of the base and vile.
I had always been brought in contact with good people. This was the world in which I dwelt with my companions, all of them refined young men, striving to improve themselves and become respected citizens” (Carnegie 65). “I went to school at night and read history and classics on weekends. Every step of the wayfactory drudge, office boy, messenger, I pushed myself hard, mastered my duties, maximized opportunities, and waited with self-assurance the arrival of the next chance”. There are many theories on why this Scottish immigrant succeeded in the “land of opportunity”. It couldn’t be based solely on the fact he spoke English and was literate.
He was one of among thousands of other Scottish immigrants who came to this country searching for economic opportunity. Louis Hacker expounds on one theory on what drove him, Because of his father’s failure, because of his deep devotion to a mother . . . perhaps more because of the unequal society from which he had come and which had squandered talent so stupidly, Carnegie had a fierce desire to succeed. He had to sharpen his wits, he had to engage in self-improvement; he had to seize the main chance whenever it presented itself. How else was one like himself to emerge out of obscurity and poverty (Livesay 60).
The messenger boy soon became the telegrapher. Given the opportunity to learn this trade, rather than hand copying messages, he advanced himself by memorizing the Morse code. His reliability and capabilities were exhibited in the absence of his supervisor when he first managed a train wreck. Carnegie’s skills in organization and management set him apart from others. In 1856, at the young age of 21, Carnegie became a supervisor for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Livesay believes that this experience in this newly developing transportation industry gave Carnegie the experience needed to develop his own expertise in the manufacturing of steel.
On the railroad he assimilated the managerial skills, grasped the economic principles and cemented the personal relationships that enabled him to become successively manager, capitalist, and entrepreneur” (29). Carnegie’s ability to take advantage of every opportunity and to understand the potential for an investment was his formula for success. Carnegie advanced through various business fields of manufacturing to finally becoming the founder of the largest producing steel plant in the world. He had many different business theories but the most important was to cut costs above all else.
He understood that manufacturing in volume was one way to cut costs, and if he cut costs he could “cut the prices; scoop the market; run the mills full. . . and the profits would take care of themselves (Livesay 101). He always remained in complete control of his company; it was never put on the stock exchange where he would then be forced to listen to a board of directors. His policy was to reward upcoming young ambitious men with a partnership. In that way he pitted his employees against each other as they competed to make their particular division more productive.
The more efficient the production the higher the percentage of the profits went to these junior partners. Carnegie stated that above all else his firm produced quality materials. He even put quality above costs and from this tough adherence to high standards his company grew in reputation (Carnegie 122-3). Although Carnegie did not understand all the aspects of the technical means of manufacturing steel, he did understand men. He understood that if he recruited the best men for a particular job, made them partners in the company, then the company would thrive and be profitable (Carnegie 24).
Baker attributes the growth of the steel business to Carnegie’s ability to recruit . . . . ” a brilliant assemblage of personal talent’ . . . and to Carnegie himself who he says was, a master salesman and a skilled diplomat of business at its highest levels’. Carnegie was also a ruthless driver of his men. He pitted his associates and subordinates in competition with one another until a feverish atmosphere pervaded the whole organization”(80). Management and manufacturing were great challenges for Carnegie but Baker believes that Carnegie greatest motivation was the accumulation of wealth. (47).
Wealth meant power and prestige and through wealth he could erase all the bad memories of his past poverty. Wealth would allow him to mingle with the powerful and the intellectuals. Baker asserts that Carnegie’s dream was to be able to have a life based on intellectual pursuits. A life filled with conversations, studies, writing, and corresponding (47). Carnegie had come from a workingman’s family. Poverty, hunger, and alienation were not unknown to him. Baker asserts that throughout his life he always believed and claimed to be a friend of the workingman. He could relate to them, as he had been there too.
He believed he understood them and that they loved him in return. In his writings he proclaimed that workingmen should be able to form unions, and the employers should never bring in strike-breakers (88). Carnegie’s two most important papers concerning workingmen were completely out of focus with the thoughts of the other industrialists of his day. He wrote, “. . . . industries that were struck should not hire scab labor; they should simply shut down and await the result,’ scab labor not only caused trouble but did poor work. Neither the best men as men, nor the best men as workers, are thus to be obtained'” (Livesay 135).
Carnegie believed that “working men will always reciprocate kindly feelings “(Carnegie114) and that “it counts many times more to do a kindness to a poor working man than to a millionaire” (Carnegie 86). Later on he goes on to say, “It is not solely, often it is not chiefly, a matter of dollars with workman. Appreciation, kind treatment, a fair deal these are often the potent forces with the American workmen” (Carnegie 247). He stated that he believed that a happy, well-paid worker was a good investment and would yield big dividends (Carnegie 229).
Meltzer asserts that Carnegie’s steel mill located in Homestead, Pennsylvania was the scene of one of the most violent labor strikes in American history (100). Homestead steel workers labored 12-hour day shifts, seven days a week, with only one holiday per year, July 4. One year the accident and death rate for one mill averaged 25% (Meltzer 96). “Hazards to health and to life itself were common in heavy-metal industries” (Trachtenberg 91). The highest paid workers were the English and Irish skilled laborers. Their union rules limited all replacements to those who they recruited from their homelands.
The common laborers, from southeast Europe; were not in the union, and not allowed to join. Thus they were limited to starvation wages. In 1890, the average unskilled worker was earning less then it took to pay for his living expenses. Most of the time the whole family had to work. The women and children made much less than the men, but labored under the same conditions. To augment the family wages, many took in boarders: day and night shifts sharing the same bed. “The income from this source is no mean item. Of the 102 families [who kept boarders], three-quarters received from lodgers a sum at least the equivalent of the rent, . “(Family Budgets, Ohio State Education Project).
There was no time or energy for anything but work. Meltzer notes that the unskilled laborers “earned less than $12. 50 a week, at a time when a family needed $15 for bare subsistence (103). Meltzer also tells us, Carnegie was a ruthless manager of his workingmen; relentless concern for costs drove his men to produce more and more with out getting any reward in the form of higher pay.. . . .That drive for economy, said the labor historian David Brody, “finally defined the treatment of steel workers.
Long hours, low wages, bleak conditions, anti-unionism, flowed alike for the economizing drive that made the American steel industry the wonder of the manufacturing world (76). When Carnegie bought the Homestead Steel Mill in 1883, it had one of the highest paid unions in the industry. This union, Amalgamated Steel, Iron, and Tin, represented the skilled workers in the plant. The remaining 14,000 workers were non-union employees and their wages were pegged to the very few unionist laborers. The manufacture of steel was becoming more mechanized and when the union contract came up for renewal, management determined to not renew the contract.
Carnegie proposed that the workers work for a sliding pay scale: the more profit the company made, the more wages earned. There would be a minimum wage floor for the protection of the workers (Carnegie 250). Hacker wrote that ” . . . Amalgamated had deported itself like a medieval guild, insisting that its monopoly hold over its jobs at Homestead be respected . . . . its work rules in 1892 forbade the training of apprentices, limited the output of its members, . . . the unskilled, those largely . . . om the “new immigration,” were as much the victims of Amalgamated tyranny (they could not be trained for and moved into better jobs) as they were of Frick’s [Carnegie’s manager] hard labor policies.
The unskilled lived wretchedly . . . where houses had no running water and no sanitation facilities. The 12 hour day (and Frick’s speed-up) led to fatigue . . . . the newcomers did not like the older immigrants, but they liked Frick lessand they went out on strike when the Amalgamated Association did (Baker 115). Frick had been moved into Carnegie’s position of authority as he took over the running of the Steel Mill. “. . . 1892 steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and his company chairman Henry Clay Frick launched an all-out assault on the Amalgamated Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, a craft union affiliated with the AFL” (Jones 618).
Carnegie and Frick had agreed that the union must be broken and each worker must be hired as an individual. The sliding pay scale was meant to replace union wages. This offer was rejected and all the employees went out on strike. Carnegie had left for Scotland, and as some claim, to go into hiding, while he left Frick in charge of the mill. Frick was a hard manager with no claim to Carnegie’s philosophy regarding the workingman.
His bottom line was profit. With the closure of the steel mill, Frick called in Piinkerton guards to protect the plant. They were unable to disembark from their boats, as they came under striker’s rifle fire. The standoff ended with the Pinkerton agents being run out of town. “July 6-8According to the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette, nine Homestead workers and five Pinkertons were killed in the battle, or were fatally injured'” (Demarest 126). Now, the strikers guarded the mill, the town, and the access roads. This was the climate and the conditions at Homestead when the Governor of Pennsylvania called up the National Guard.
During their armed occupation of Homestead, Frick hired scab laborers, and the starving workers gave up their fight. Carnegie’s steel mill resumed operation with scab labor and the locked out workers were not rehired. Yellen states, “The company issued eviction notices to all locked-out men occupying company-owned houses, whether the rent was being paid or not”(92). “Carnegie justified breaking up of the union as “democratic” . . . as the vast majority of the employees are non-union [the unskilled workers] the minority must give place to the majority. “. . and with that Carnegie sailed off on a long vacation in Scotland'” (Meltzer 97).
On his arrival he sent Frick a note, “we will approve of anything you do . We are with you to the end” (Meltzer 98). When the strike was broken, Frick replied, “We had to teach our employees a lesson and we have taught them one they will never forget” (Meltzer 103). “The few that were able to get their jobs back found their pay cut as much as 60%. It was the lowest pay of any mill in the industry (Meltzer 104). The union was broken and Carnegie went on to make millions. The working conditions continued to deteriorate and Yellen states, “The earnings of the miners exceeded those of the steel laborers by two full days’ pay a week.
While the workmen in the steel industry sank into a state of slavery, the Carnegie Steel Company grew rapidly, accumulated more and more wealth, transformed itself into the United States Steel Corporation, and with its monopoly on steel productions, established itself at the very heart of American capitalism” (100). Meltzer contends that Carnegie’s ” essay on the rights of workers would indict Carnegie for hypocrisy in years to come.
To expect that one dependent upon his daily wage for the necessaries of life will stand peaceably and see a new man employed in his stead is to expect much . . There is an unwritten law among the best workmen: Thou shall not take thy neighbor’s job'”(83). Carnegie was reviled in newspapers and magazines. Meltzer quotes the “St. Louis Post-Dispatch Ten thousand Carnegie Public Libraries’ would not compensate the country for the direct and indirect evils resulting from the Homestead lockout.
Say what you will of Frick, he is a brave man. Say what you will of Carnegie, he is a coward, and gods and men hate cowards'” (105). Carnegie explained his position regarding the strike in his autobiography. Burton writes quoting Carnegie, “. . . ut as my appearance on the scene would have implied Mr. Frick’s virtual deposition and he had begged me not to do this, I remained abroad’. . . .this remained Carnegie’s position to the end.
His views on the only sensible way to treat striking workmen had been expressed in his forum article of 1886 and never changed . . . .’We would talk matters over and give and take, always keeping our old men, for manufacturers never need employ new ones'” (413). Carnegie describes in his autobiography some of the many good things he did for the workingmen. When the men complained of the cost of food, he helped them to set up a co-operative.
To enable them to get coal at a cheaper price, he arranged that coal be delivered to their houses at the same price the company paid (Carnegie 250). The company offered to set up a separate trust fund and pay each man 6% on his saving ( Carnegie 251). Later, after he retired from business and started his philanthropic giving he established a pension fund for those who needed help in their old age or had suffered injury in an accident (Carnegie 256). Joseph Wall states that Carnegie “set up the Carnegie Relief Fund, $4,000,000, to provide pensions and health programs for his former employees in the twelve plants he had owned”(Baker 125).
Carnegie ” had sympathy for the suffering worker, but when the decision had to be made between the striker and the steel man’s property, he was a capitalist first and a humanitarian afterward” (Swetman 93). Carnegie promoted education of the working man to understand their struggles with capitol, but as Swetman says, “. . . . . He never explained how a man working eighty-four hours a week at fourteen cents an hour could find spare hours’ or material for such study” (96). “The claim that he still thought as a working man was false” (Baker 89).
Carnegie amply rewarded his young partners but only after he had squeezed out every bit of their ability to produce. The skilled laborers, of English, Irish, and Scottish descent, were valued and rewarded, but he had no respect for the easily replaced immigrant laborers from Southeast Europe. “Despite his claims of noblesse oblige he was not a friend of the working poor” (Baker 89). Meltzer scathingly attacks Carnegie as being a hypocrite, “In his autobiography, written long after, [Homestead] Carnegie wrote: nothing I have ever had to meet in all my life, before or since, wounds me so deeply.
No pangs remain of any wounds received in my business career save that of Homestead. It was so unnecessary. ” [deaths and destruction]. Meltzer goes on to say that Carnegie continues “on to give a mostly inaccurate account of what happened at Homestead. It is full of distortions, falsehoods, and omissions” (104). Carnegie retired from business after the Homestead strike to his castle in Scotland. He sold all his holdings and instigated a process to bestow his money. He believed that children of the rich should not inherit large estates.
He believed that wealth should be disbursed during the lifetime of the possessor. His early life experiences convinced him that education was one of the most influential means to help mankind. Subsequently, he established libraries in America and Britain. Money was used to build cultural and research centers. The PBS Documentary: American Experience explained, Carnegie then turned his enormous energies to philanthropy and the pursuit of world peace, hoping perhaps that donating his wealth to charitable causes would mitigate the grimy details of its accumulation.
In the public memory, he may have been correct. Today he is most remembered for his generous gifts of music halls, educational grants, and nearly 3000 public libraries. By the time of his death in 1919, he had given away over $350 million (more than $3 billion in 1996 dollars)’ “(Meet Andrew Carnegie: The Two Andrews). Our school children have learned from many sources of the large amounts of money Carnegie donated for all his projects, and he has been held up to them as an example of the “rags to riches” dream.
Many believe that Carnegie does not deserve his reputation as a great man and have questioned his character. Swogger questions if we have the right to deify the rich and the famous. Shouldn’t we also be teaching our children about the many faults and failures of these public icons? Swogger, says, “This proclivity to virtually deify historical figures is natural but is very dangerous–such elevation also tends to forgive or even justify the sins of such individuals, regardless of how terrible those sins may have been” (1).
The dichotomy of Carnegie’s words and actions has brought a great deal of disparagement to the analysis of his character. How could this man from a poor working class background have forgotten his roots? Did the accumulation of riches blur his mind and conscience to the methods he used obtaining his wealth? What were his drives and motivations? Carnegie wrote in his memos a description of how he wanted his life to evolve. Already, in 1868, at a very early age of 33, his income had reached $50,000 per year. He outlined his goal of going to Oxford to get an education and to meet literary men.
He would buy a newspaper in London and work for the education and improvement of the working class. But the most telling of his remarks was “man must have an idolthe amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry. No idol is more debasing than the worship of money” (American Experience; The Wrong Career Path? ). Carnegie wrote books, essays, and articles for the news media of the day. This allowed him to express his opinions on many subjects including Capitol and Labor’, and his Philanthropic Philosophy. Swetnam believes that Carnegie’s writing ability equaled his ability to amass wealth.
He says, “Even on its merits alone, Carnegie’s writing is worthy of a wider attention and acceptance than is accorded today. His style is crisp and attractive . . . was far better than the average American writing of its period . . . . he helped to frame and promote the American dream” (Foreword). Baker has many thoughts on “what made Andy run? “. Carnegie was a small boy and later a short man who strived to compete to compensate for being an immigrant, for being the son of a father deemed a failure, and for being in competition for his mother’s love (24). . . . . e ultimate source of Carnegie’s consuming ambition remains elusive.
Ultimately human behavior results from the way in which an individual accommodates himself to the contradictions and ambiguities with in himself and his society.. . . . Andrew Carnegie had a personal set of paradoxes. The best his biographers can do is to designate the pressures and document the response . . . . In himself Carnegie knew kindness and cruelty, vanity and shame, generosity and greed, doubt and confidence (Baker 27). Carnegie cannot be understood even with reading all of his writings.
He came from a very poor childhood, worked in sweat factories, and yet in his later life, these memories were obliterated by his powerful drive for power and wealth. Swetnam believes that, “Carnegie developed a philosophy of his own. It was made up of his early religious and political training, rugged individualism, desire for mastery and achievement, greed, generosity, and a conviction that the world-and especially those close to him-needed his ideas and guidance. No small element was his struggle of conscience over having indulged in what in 1868 he had alluded to as the worship of the golden calf'” ( 67).