The result was far beyond the wildest hopes of the projectors of the plan. In less than a year almost $700,000 was subscribed by over eight thousand subscribers, from every corner of the vast city, from every class of society, from rich and from poor.

It was the realization of the dream of Thomas’s youth. The home of the Thomas Orchestra was dedicated in 1904. This building, contributed by the people that the music which he had brought into their lives might become a part of their existence, is his monument, which will long endure. But more lasting than those walls of stone is the recognition which history will accord to him who in his way made the world a better living-place for his countrymen.

Theodore Thomas died in the year that followed the dedication of the home of his orchestra. The fourteen final years of his life had found in Chicago the material appreciation which he deserved. A second marriage—this time to Miss Rose Fay—brought him its happiness. With no precedents, no traditions, and no experience of others to guide him, he had done the kind of work for music in the United States that the first settlers had done when they ploughed their first furrows in the wilderness. He had blazed the trail; he had opened the way that others might follow on.

“German-born, associated with German musicians all through his life, meeting them daily, and living as it were in a German atmosphere, yet he was the strongest of Americans in sentiment, disposition, feeling and patriotism. Many a time have I heard him resent foreign slurs upon American institutions, and defend the national government’s policy against its critics. His love for the United States, where he had lived from boyhood, and his respect and admiration for the broad-minded views of its people as well as their public spirit, was deep, hearty, and sincere.” Such was Theodore Thomas in the estimation of one who knew him well.

His creed was simple, but it was a creed from which he never deviated. “Throughout my life my aim has been to make good music popular, and now it appears that I have only done the public justice in believing, and acting constantly on the belief, that the people would enjoy and support the best in art when continually set before them in a clear and intelligent manner.”

VI
ANDREW CARNEGIE

Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, 1835
Died in Lenox, Massachusetts, 1919

The little town of Dunfermline in Scotland has for centuries been famous for its weaving. For generations have the sturdy inhabitants devoted their lives to the looms. And here, in this quiet and humble corner of the busy world, was born, on the twenty-fifth of November, 1835, a small baby whom his parents named Andrew, who was destined to become one of the richest men that the world has seen, a citizen of the United States, a world philanthropist, and a true captain of industry. So simply was Andrew Carnegie born into the tremendous nineteenth century.

Andrew’s father was a weaver of damasks, as had been his father and grandfathers for generations back in the Carnegie history; and the boy was doubtless expected by his parents to carry on the established vocation of the family. But, as so often happens, circumstances unforeseen and impossible to anticipate abruptly changed the whole life-work of a community, and in the change the small boy’s life was directed into a new channel which was destined to bring him the greatest material rewards. The Carnegies wove with hand-looms. Suddenly, invention gave the power-loom to the world. Gone immediately was the demand for the now more costly product of skilled and patient fingers. The swift machines destroyed a trade to build an industry, and in the destruction the Carnegie family was swept into new work and a new environment.

With his only means of earning a living destroyed, necessity compelled the elder Carnegie to seek occupation somewhere beyond the limits of the quiet Scotch town. Across the Atlantic a great new republic was just reaching its young manhood. Its fast-sailing clippers had made the Stars and Stripes of its flag known on every sea, and tales of the daring Yankee skippers had brought to complacent England a rude awakening from her peaceful sense of maritime supremacy. Within its boundaries even greater developments were taking form under the firm hands of the Americans. A rich inland empire was disclosing wealth beyond dreams of men: mines of iron and coal and various metals, forests unexplored and seemingly limitless, millions of rich acres unturned by the ploughshare and destined in time to come to feed the world. Already minds of vision were organizing railroads to bring together these riches and to make them accessible to the nation as a whole. All over the world people were turning from war-scarred and time-worn nations oppressed by the rule of kings to this free land of promise. Men and women and little children crossed the broad Atlantic to live happily in a country where men ruled themselves by self-imposed laws, and where education gave to all an equal opportunity. And with these went also the Carnegie family, to add their sturdy strength to the great Republic.