The trip to Europe was for the double purpose of seeing whether old Dunfermline was really the delightful spot that memory pictured, and of getting the latest points in bridge-building and iron-making. Timber was scarce in England, and iron bridges and iron boats were coming as an actual necessity.
Sir Henry Bessemer had invented his process of blowing a blast of cold air through the molten metal and thus converting iron into steel. The plan was simple, easy and effective. The distinguishing feature of Andrew Carnegie's mind has always been his ability to put salt on the tail of an idea. He came back from England with the Bessemer process well outlined in his square red head. Others had put the invention through the experimental stage—he waited. That shows your good railroadman. Let your inventors invent—most of their inventions are worthless—when the thing is right we will take it on.
The Carnegie fortune owes its secret to the Bessemer steel rail. The fishplate instead of the frog, and the steel rail in place of the good old snakehead! "The song of the rail" died out to a low continuous hum when Carnegie began making steel rails and showed the section-hands how to bolt them together as one.
Andrew Carnegie was a practical railroadman. He knew the buyers of supplies and he knew how to convince them that they needed his product. Manufacturing is a matter of formula, but salesmanship is genius. Moreover, to get the money to equip great factories is genius, and up to the Nineties the Carnegie Mills were immense borrowers of capital.
Our socialistic friends sometimes criticize Andrew Carnegie for making the vast amount of money that he has. We can't swear a halibi for him, and so my excuse for the man is this: He never knew it was loaded—it was largely accidental. In truth he couldn't help making the money. Fate forced it on him. He has played this game of business for all there was in him. And he has played it according to the rules. Carnegie has never been a speculator. He is no gambler. He never bought a share of stock on margin in his life. The only thing he has ever bet on has been his ability to execute. He has been a creator and a builder. That his efforts should have brought him this tremendous harvest of dolodocci is a surprise to him. He knew there would be a return, but the size of the return no living man was able to foresee or foretell.
Andrew Carnegie has acted on the times, and the times have acted on him. He is a product—a child, if you please—of Opportunity and Divine Energy.
When James Anderson, of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, stagecoach boss and ironmaster, about the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty threw open his library to the public, he did a great thing.
Anderson owned four or five hundred books. Any one who wanted to read these books was welcome to do so. Especially were the boys made welcome. Anderson did not know what a portentous thing he was doing—nobody does when he does a big thing. Actions bear fruit—sometimes.
And into Anderson's library, one Sunday afternoon, walked a diffident, wee Scotch laddie, who worked in a boiler-room all the week. "Where would you like to begin?" asked Mr. Anderson, kindly. And the boy answered, as another boy by the name of Thomas A. Edison answered on a like occasion, "If you please, I'll begin here." And he pointed to the end of a shelf. And he read through that library, a shelf at a time. He got the library habit.