Aye, and if that didn't work, the whole blooming bunch of middlemen who batten and fatten between the factory and the family could be eliminated, and the arrogant retailer, wholesaler, factor and agent be placed on the retired list through the Mail-Order Plan. Or, aye again, the consumers' wants could be anticipated as they are by The Standard Oil Company, and the gentlemanly salesman, psychic in his instincts, would be at the door in answer to your sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.
When the times changed, Carnegie the Elder was undone. A few years later and his son Andy could have shown him fifty-seven ways by which the consumer could be reached. Andy would have known only one defeat, and that would have come when all the consumers were dead and ceased to consume. When Carnegie the Elder quit the loom, the consumers were using more cloth than ever, but the goods were being made in a new way. "Hunger is the first incentive to migration," says Adam Smith.
Hunger and danger in right proportion are good things. It is a great idea for a woman who would give to the world superior sons, to marry a man without too much ambition. If too much is done for a woman she will never do much for herself. This proves that she is a human being, whether she can vote or not.
Hunger, hardship, deprivation breed big virtues. Before deeds are born they are merely thoughts or aspirations. The desire to better her condition, and the struggle with unkind fate on behalf of her children, often is the heritage of mother to son. The mother endows the child with a tendency—a great moral tendency—a reaching out towards a success which she has never seen, as planet responds to the attraction of planet. And the things she dreamed, her child grown to manhood makes come true. Temperance fanatics are often the offspring of drunken parents. Shiftless fathers breed financiers. We are taught by antithesis.
Andrew Carnegie is the son of his mother. When the looms stopped and the piteous voice of the father said, "Andy, we have no work," the mother lifted up her voice and sang one of the songs of Zion. There were always morning prayers. When there was no work, the father would have forgotten the prayers, because there was nothing to be thankful for, and prayer wouldn't stop the steam-factory. "What's the use!" was the motto of Carnegie the Elder.
The mother led the prayers just the same. There was a reading from the Bible. Then each one present responded with a verse of Scripture. Legend says that little Andy, once, at seven years of age, when it came his turn to give a verse from the Bible, handed in this: "Let every tub stand on its own bottom." But as the quotation was not exactly acceptable, he tried again with this: "Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves." Thus do we see that the orphic habit was already beginning to germinate.
Before Andrew Carnegie was ten years old he had evolved a beautiful hatred of kings, princes and all hereditary titles. There was only one nobility for him, and that was the nobility of honest effort. To live off another's labor was to him a sin. To eat and not earn was a crime. These sterling truths were the inheritance of mother to son. And these convictions Andrew Carnegie still holds and has firmly held since childhood's days.
The other day, in reading a book on military tactics, I came across this: "An army has but two duties to perform: one is to fight the enemy and the other is to evade the enemy." Which duty is the more important the writer did not say. So let that pass. There are two ways of dealing with misery. One is to stay and fight the demon to a finish, and the other way is to beat a hasty and honorable retreat.
"There is no work."
"Then we will go where work is," said the mother of a multimillionaire-to-be. The furniture went to pay the grocer. The looms were sold for a song. The debts were paid, and there was enough, with the contribution of a ten-pound note by a fond uncle, to buy passage to New York for the father, mother, Thomas and Andrew. It was the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight. Thomas was sixteen, and Andrew was eleven. Tom was more handsome than Andy, but Andy had the most to say. The Carnegies came to Pittsburgh, because the mother's two sisters from Dunfermline were in Pittsburgh, and they had always gotten enough to eat. Then the sound of the name was good, and to this day Andrew Carnegie spells the final syllable "burgh," and pronounces it with a loving oatmeal burr.