Famous Givers and Their Gifts. Bolton Sarah Knowles
of this work. There is also a department of military science, a two years' course being given, with one recitation a week. A United States army officer is one of the college faculty, and commandant of the battalion.
The annual cost of clothing and educating each of the two thousand orphans, including current repairs on the buildings, is a little more than three hundred dollars. On leaving college, each boy receives a trunk with clothing and books, amounting to about seventy-five dollars.
Probably Mr. Girard, with all his far-sightedness, could not have foreseen the great good to the nation, as well as to the individual, in thus fitting, year after year, thousands of poor orphans for useful positions in life. Mr. Arey well says: "When in the fulness of time many homes have been made happy, many orphans have been fed, clothed, and educated, and many men rendered useful to their country and themselves, each happy home, or rescued child, or useful citizen, will be a living monument to perpetuate the name and embalm the memory of the dead 'Mariner and Merchant.'"
ANDREW CARNEGIE
AND HIS LIBRARIES
"This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community, – the man of wealth thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren."
Thus wrote Andrew Carnegie in his "Gospel of Wealth," published in the North American Review for June, 1889. This article so interested Mr. Gladstone that he asked the editor of the Review to permit its republication in England, which was done. When the world follows this "Gospel," and those who have means consider themselves "trustees for their poorer brethren," and their money as "trust funds," we shall see little of the heartbreak and the poverty of the present age.
"Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."
Andrew Carnegie was born at Dunfermline, Scotland, Nov. 25, 1835, into a poor but honest home. His father, William Carnegie, was a weaver, a man of good sense, strongly republican, though living under a monarchy, and well-read upon the questions of the day. The mother was a woman of superior mind and character, to whom Andrew was unusually devoted, till her death in 1886, when he had reached middle life.
When Andrew was twelve years of age and his brother Thomas five, the parents decided to make their home in the New World, coming to New York in a sailing-vessel in 1847. They travelled to Pittsburg, Penn., and lived for some time in Allegheny City.
Andrew had been sent to school in Dunfermline, and, having a fondness for books, was a bright, ambitious boy at twelve, ready to begin the struggle for a living so as to make the family burdens lighter. Work was not easily found; but finally he obtained employment as a bobbin-boy in a cotton factory, at $1.20 a week.
Mr. Carnegie, when grown to manhood, wrote in the Youth's Companion, April 23, 1896: —
"I cannot tell you how proud I was when I received my first week's own earnings. One dollar and twenty cents made by myself, and given to me because I had been of some use in the world! No longer entirely dependent upon my parents, but at last admitted to the family partnership as a contributing member, and able to help them! I think this makes a man out of a boy sooner than almost anything else, and a real man too, if there be any germ of true manhood in him. It is everything to feel that you are useful.
"I have had to deal with great sums. Many millions of dollars have since passed through my hands. But the genuine satisfaction I had from that one dollar and twenty cents outweighs any subsequent pleasure in money-getting. It was the direct reward of honest manual labor; it represented a week of very hard work, so hard that but for the aim and end which sanctified it, slavery might not be much too strong a term to describe it.
"For a lad of twelve to rise and breakfast every morning, except the blessed Sunday morning, and go into the streets and find his way to the factory, and begin work while it was still dark outside, and not be released until after darkness came again in the evening, forty minutes' interval only being allowed at noon, was a terrible task.
"But I was young, and had my dreams; and something within always told me that this would not, could not, should not last – I should some day get into a better position. Besides this, I felt myself no longer a mere boy, but quite 'a little man;' and this made me happy."
Another place soon opened for the lad, where he was set to fire a boiler in a cellar, and to manage the small steam-engine which drove the machinery in a bobbin factory. "The firing of this boiler was all right," says Mr. Carnegie; "for fortunately we did not use coal, but the refuse wooden chips, and I always liked to work in wood. But the responsibility of keeping the water right and of running the engine, and the danger of my making a mistake and blowing the whole factory to pieces, caused too great a strain, and I often awoke and found myself sitting up in bed through the night trying the steam-gauges. But I never told them at home that I was having a 'hard tussle.' No! no! everything must be bright to them.
"This was a point of honor; for every member of the family was working hard except, of course, my little brother, who was then a child, and we were telling each other only all the bright things. Besides this, no man would whine and give up – he would die first.
"There was no servant in our family, and several dollars per week were earned by 'the mother' by binding shoes after her daily work was done! Father was also hard at work in the factory. And could I complain?"
Wages were small, and in every leisure moment Andrew looked for something better to do. He went one day to the office of the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company, and asked for work as a messenger. James Douglas Reid, the manager, was a Scotchman, and liked the lad's manner. "I liked the boy's looks," said Mr. Reid afterwards; "and it was easy to see that though he was little he was full of spirit. His pay was $2.50 a week. He had not been with me a full month when he began to ask whether I would teach him to telegraph. I began to instruct him, and found him an apt pupil. He spent all his spare time in practice, sending and receiving by sound, and not by tape as was largely the custom in those days. Pretty soon he could do as well as I could at the key, and then his ambition carried him away beyond doing the drudgery of messenger work."
The boy liked his new occupation. He once wrote: "My entrance into the telegraph office was the transition from darkness to light; from firing a small engine in a dirty cellar to a clean office where there were books and papers. That was a paradise to me, and I bless my stars that sent me to be a messenger-boy in a Pittsburg telegraph office."
When Andrew was fourteen his father died, leaving him the only support of his mother and brother, seven years old. He believed in work, and never shirked any duty, however hard.
He soon found employment as telegraph operator with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. At fifteen he was train-despatcher, a place of unusual responsibility for a boy; but his energy, carefulness, and industry were equal to the demands on him.
When he was sixteen Andrew had thought out a plan by which trains could be run on single tracks, and the telegraph be used to govern their running. "His scheme was the one now in universal use on the single-tracked roads in the country; namely, to run trains in opposite directions until they approached within comparatively a few miles, and then hold one at a station until the other had passed." This thought about the telegraph brought Andrew into notice among those above him; and he was transferred to Altoona, the headquarters of the general manager.
Young Carnegie had done what he recommends others to do in his "How to win Fortune," in the New York Tribune, April 13, 1890. He says, "George Eliot put the matter very pithily: 'I'll tell you how I got on. I kept my ears and my eyes open, and I made my master's interest my own.'
"The condition precedent for promotion is that the man must first attract notice. He must do something