It was at the dinner given, in 1907, in his honor as "Father of the Corps," by the surviving members of the United States Military Telegraph Corps of the Civil War, that Mr. Carnegie spoke these words, and he continued as follows:
"Comrades, I was born in poverty, and would not exchange its sacred memories with the richest millionaire's son who ever breathed. What does he know about mother or father? They are mere names to him. Give me the life of the boy whose mother is nurse, seamstress, washerwoman, cook, teacher, angel and saint, all in one, and whose father is guide, exemplar, and friend. These are the boys who are born to the best fortune. Some men think that poverty is a dreadful burden, and that wealth leads to happiness. They have lived only one side; they imagine the other. I have lived both, and I know there is very little in wealth that can add to human happiness, beyond the small comforts of life. Millionaires who laugh are rare. My experience is that wealth is apt to take the smiles away."
But we are getting ahead of our story. That small increase in salary meant a good deal to the little family, whose father was working from dawn to dark in the cotton-mill, and whose mother was contributing what she could to the family earnings by binding shoes in the intervals of housework. Meantime the superintendent of the company for which the boy was working happened to meet him while visiting the Pittsburgh office, and it was discovered that both of them had been born near the same town in Scotland. The fact may have had something to do with the boy's subsequent promotion, and it is worth noting that forty years later, he was able to secure for his old employer the United States consulship to the town of their birth. But for the time being, he was busy with his work as messenger-boy. He soon learned the Morse alphabet and practised making the signals early in the morning before the operators arrived. He was soon able to send and receive messages by means of the Morse register—a steel pen which embossed the dots and dashes of the message on a narrow strip of paper. But young Carnegie soon progressed a step beyond this, and was soon able to read the messages by sound, without need of the register. It was, of course, only a short time after that when he was regularly installed as operator.
He was not to remain long in the telegraph business, however, for Thomas A. Scott, superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, offered him a position at a salary of $35 a month. Carnegie promptly accepted, and on February 1, 1853, at the age of seventeen, entered the employ of the road. His promotion was rapid, and he rose to be superintendent of the Pittsburgh division before the success of his other ventures caused him to resign from the service. These ventures were, in the first place, investment in the newly-developed oil-fields of Pennsylvania, which yielded a great profit, and afterwards the establishment of a steel rolling-mill, in the development of which he found his true vocation, building up the most complete system of iron and steel industries ever controlled by an individual. Some idea of the value of the business may be gained from the fact that, when the United States Steel Corporation was organized in 1901 to take over Mr. Carnegie's interests he received for them, first mortgage bonds to the amount of three hundred million dollars.
It is this sum which he has been disposing of for years. Unlike most other philanthropists, he has not used his wealth to endow a great university, but has devoted it mainly to another branch of education, the establishment of free public libraries. He conceived the unique plan of offering a library building, completely equipped, to any community which would agree to maintain it suitably, and, by the beginning of 1909, had, under this plan, given nearly fifty-two millions of dollars for the erection of 1858 buildings, of which 1167 are in this country. Among his other great gifts was one of $12,000,000, for the founding at Washington of an institution "which shall, in the broadest and most liberal manner, encourage investigation, research, and discovery, show the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind, and provide such buildings, laboratories, books, and apparatus as may be needed."
The sum of ten millions was given to the great Carnegie Institute, of Pittsburgh; still another ten millions were given to Scottish universities, and still another for the purpose of providing pensions for college professors in the United States and Canada; and finally five millions for the establishment of a fund to be used for the benefit of the dependants of those losing their lives in heroic effort to save their fellow-men, or for the heroes themselves, if injured only. What great benefaction will next be announced cannot, of course, be foretold, but that some other announcement will some day be forthcoming can scarcely be doubted, since Mr. Carnegie has announced his ambition to die poor.
Although born in Scotland and maintaining a great estate there, he is an American out-and-out. He proved his patriotism during the Civil War by serving as superintendent of military railways and government telegraph lines in the east; and has proved it more than once since by enlisting in the fight for civic betterment and good government. Thousands of benefactions stand to his credit, besides the great ones which have been mentioned above, and it is doubtful if in the history of the world there has ever been another man armed with such power and using it in such a way.
We will end here the story of American benefactions, although scarcely the half of it has been told. During the last forty years, not less than one hundred millions of dollars have been given to American colleges; nearly as much again has been given for the endowment of hospitals, sanitariums and infirmaries; vast sums have been given for other educational or charitable purposes, so that, of the great fortunes which have been accumulated in this country, at least three hundred millions have been returned, in some form or other, to the people. And the end is not yet. Scientific philanthropy is as yet in its infancy. Just the other day, Mrs. Russell Sage set apart the sum of ten million dollars for a fund whose chief and almost sole purpose it is to obtain accurate information concerning social and economic conditions—in other words, to furnish the data upon which the scientific philanthropy of the future will be based. The disposition toward such employment of great fortunes, and away from the selfish piling-up of wealth is one of the most cheering and promising developments of the new century in this great land of ours; the kings of finance are coming to realize that, after all, wealth is useless unless it is used for good, and the next half century will no doubt witness the establishment of philanthropic enterprises on a scale hitherto unknown to history.
We have already said that the highest form of philanthropy is not the giving of money, but the giving of self, and we shall close this chapter with a brief consideration of the careers of a few of the many men and women who, in the course of American history, have devoted their lives to the betterment of humanity, either as ministers of the gospel or as laborers for some great reform.