Andrew Carnegie (signature)
There were four in the little family—the father, mother, and two boys, Andrew and Thomas. Andrew was thirteen years old and his brother four when this great life-changing event occurred—too young to realize its significance or to find in it much else but the romance and adventure of a sea-voyage and the excitement of seeing new places and strange faces. There was a considerable cotton manufacture in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, and there the Carnegie family settled, in a neighborhood known as Barefoot Square in a part of the city called Slabtown. Andrew was old enough to work, and money was needed to meet the higher costs of living in this new land; so both father and son found work in the same cotton mill, Andrew as a bobbin-boy at a wage of $1.20 a week.
This was the first step in Andrew’s career, and other steps came with what seemed a marked rapidity. But it was not that unusual opportunities confronted the lad; on the contrary, nothing could have seemed to offer a more slender promise than the arduous and elementary work which he gladly accepted. The promise lay rather in the boy; and, as is ever the case, Andrew was in those early years proving the old truism that the right kind of a boy rises above adversity and grows strong by battling with discouragement.
Andrew was soon promoted, at a slight increase in pay, to be engineer’s assistant in the factory. For twelve long hours each day he shoveled coal under the boilers and ran the engine. His pay was now $1.80 a week, and all of it went into the family purse; for not only was all the money earned by father and son required for the household expenses, but Mrs. Carnegie added her mite by taking in washing from the neighbors. And it is interesting to recollect that of these neighbors one named Phipps, a shoemaker, had a son Harry, a chum of Andrew’s, who also, in later years, became a man of wealth and importance in the nation’s business affairs.
A year later Andrew again made an advance; for, leaving his work in the cellar of the factory, he took a job as district messenger boy for the telegraph company, at $3.00 a week. Now came an opportunity which his conscientious study enabled him to grasp. Ever since he had obtained his job with the telegraph company he had studied telegraphy and spent all his spare time in practice. “My entrance into the telegraph office,” he once said, “was a transition from darkness to light—from firing a small engine in a dirty cellar into a clean office with bright windows and a literary atmosphere; with books, newspapers, pens, and pencils all around me, I was the happiest boy alive.” One morning, before the telegraph operator reached the office, a message was signaled from Philadelphia. Andrew was always early at work, and although the boys were not supposed to know anything about the instruments or allowed to touch them, he jumped to the receiver and took down the message with accuracy. His resourcefulness and willingness to assume responsibility were immediately recognized, and he was promoted to operator, at a salary of $300 a year.
In addition to his study of telegraphy Andrew, during this period, became a constant reader of good books. A gentleman living in the neighborhood had opened his private library to Andrew and a few other boys every week-end, and gave them permission to take certain books home with them. Andrew made full use of the opportunity. “Only he who has longed as I did for Saturdays to come,” he said in after years, “can understand what Colonel Anderson did for me and the boys of Allegheny. Is it any wonder that I resolved, if ever surplus wealth came to me, I would use it imitating my benefactor?”
The boy’s earnest attention to his work was not long unnoticed, and the divisional superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, hearing of his quickness and enthusiasm, appointed him railway operator in his own office, increasing his salary to $35 a month. A second opportunity to assume responsibility occurred. During the superintendent’s absence from the office early one morning, an accident was reported on one of the lines, which tied up the road and threatened a costly blockade. Andrew at once took charge of the situation, and knowing exactly what the superintendent would do in such a situation, wrote out the necessary orders, to which he signed the superintendent’s name, to set the trains again in motion, and straightened out the whole difficulty. When his chief arrived, Andrew reported what he had done. The superintendent said nothing to him, but to the president of the railroad he wrote that he “had a little Scotchman in his office who would run the whole road if they would only give him a chance.”
When Andrew was sixteen his father died, and the boy became the head of the family; and it was at this time that he made his first investment, although it was necessary, with his mother’s help, to borrow the required money.
“One day Mr. Scott [the superintendent of his division], who was the kindest of men and had taken a great fancy to me, asked if I had or could find five hundred dollars to invest.... I answered promptly: