Before the operators got around in the morning, the boys used the keys, calling up other boys up and down the line. Needless to say, young Andy didn't spend all of his time on the streets. A substitute operator was needed one day, and Andy volunteered to fill the place. He filled it so well that the regular man, who was a bit irregular in his habits, was given a permanent vacation. At this time all of the telegraph business was taken care of from the railroad-offices, just as it is now in most villages.
"Who is the sandy, freckled one?" once asked Thomas A. Scott, Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. "He's a Scot from Scotland, and his name is Carnegie," was the answer.
The play on words pleased Mr. Scott. He got into the habit of sending his messages by young Carnegie. And when one day he discovered that the Scotch lad had spoken of him as "Tomscot" over the wire, the economy of the proceeding so pleased him that he took Andy into his personal service at a raise of ten dollars a month.
About this time there came a sleet-storm which carried down the wires. Volunteers who could climb were in demand. Young Carnegie's work indoors had reduced his physical powers, so climbing was beyond his ability. It was a pivotal point. Had he been able to climb he might have evolved into a construction boss. As it was he stuck to his desk, and eventually owned the line.
Thus did he prove Darwin's dictum that we are evolved by our weakness quite as much as through our strength.
Daniel Webster once said that the great disadvantage in the practise of law is that the better you do your work, the more difficult are the cases that come to you. It is the same in railroading—or anything else, for that matter. Cheap men can take care of the cheap jobs. The reward for all good work is not rest, but more work, and harder work. Thomas A. Scott was a man of immense initiative—his was the restless, tireless, ambitious nature which makes up the composite that we call the American Spirit.
Andrew Carnegie very early in life developed the same characteristics. He never made hasty and ill-digested suggestions and then left them to others to carry out. When young Carnegie, just turned into his twenties, became private secretary to Thomas A. Scott, he was getting along as well, I thank you, as could be expected. And nobody was more delighted than Andy's mother—not even Andy himself. And most of Andy's joy in his promotions came from the pleasure which his mother found in his advancement.
When Thomas A. Scott became President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Andrew Carnegie became Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division, as a matter of course. His salary was fifteen hundred dollars a year. And this was the topmost turret of the tower: it was as far as the ambition of either the mother or the young man could fly. But the end was not yet.
Thomas Alexander Scott was born at the forgotten hamlet of London, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. London, Pennsylvania, did not flourish as its founders had expected. Behold the folly of giving big names to little things. Cæsar Augustus Jones used to be the town fool of East Aurora, until he was crowded to the wall by Oliver Cromwell Robinson.