It owned thousands of acres of ore-land in the Lake Superior country. It owned a line of iron steamships that carried the ore to the Pittsburgh railroad connections. It owned the railroads that brought the ore from the mines to the docks, and it owned the docks. It owned vast coalmines in Pennsylvania, and it owned a controlling interest in the Connellville coke-ovens, whence five miles of freight-cars, in fair times, were daily sent to the mills, loaded with coke.
These properties were practically owned by Mr. Carnegie personally, and his was the controlling hand. He had a daily report from every mill, which in a few lines told just what the concern was doing. There was also a daily report from each branch office, and a report from the head cashier, where one line of figures presaged the financial weather. When "the billion-dollar trust"—the United States Steel Corporation—was formed, Mr. Carnegie sold his interests in the Carnegie plants to the new concern for two hundred fifty million dollars, and took his pay in five-per-cent bonds.
It was the biggest and cleanest clean-up ever consummated in the business world. As a financial get-away it has no rival in history.
There were many wise ones who said, "Oh, he will foreclose and have the works back in a few years." But not so—the United States Steel Corporation has made money and is making money, because it is being managed by men who, for the most part, were trained by Carnegie in the financial way they should go.
As far as money is concerned, Mr. Carnegie could have made much more by staying in business than by selling out, but Andrew Carnegie quit one job to take up a harder one. "To die a millionaire will yet be a disgrace," he said. To give away money is easy, but to give it away wisely, so it will benefit the world for generations to come—that is a most difficult and exacting task.
The quarter of a thousand million in Steel Bonds did not constitute Mr. Carnegie's whole wealth. He had several little investments outside of that. In fact, that clever saying, "Put all your eggs in one basket," is exoteric, not esoteric. What Mr. Carnegie really meant was, if you are only big enough to watch one basket, to have two were folly. Mr. Carnegie himself has always had his eggs in a dozen or so baskets, but he never has had any more baskets than he could watch. His baskets were usually coupled together like the "grasshopper," which pumps several oil-wells with one engine. Wealth is good for those who can use it; power the same; but when you cease to manage a thing and the thing begins to manage you, it may eat you up.
In East Aurora there used to be a good friend of mine who had a peanut-stand at the station. The business flourished and some one advised my friend that he should put in popcorn as a sideline. He did so, and got nervous prostration. You see, he was a peanut man, and when he got outside of his specialty he was lost. One realizes the herculean task of dying poor which confronts Mr. Carnegie, when you think that he is worth, say, five hundred million dollars. This is invested so that it brings an income of five per cent, or twenty-five million dollars a year.
So far, Mr. Carnegie has been barely able to give away his income, to say nothing of the principal. His total benefactions up to the present time amount to about two hundred millions. He has nearly worked the territory with libraries. You can't give two libraries to a town, except in the big cities—people protest and will not have them. There is a limit to pipe-organs.
Heroes are so plentiful that it is more or less absurd to distinguish them with medals. Dunfermline is almost done for by a liberality that would damn any American town.
To give faster than people grow is to run the grave risk of arresting development. A benefaction must bestow a benefit. Give to most people and they will quit work and get a job with George Arliss, for the devil still finds mischief for idle hands to do.