Carnegie Read Online Free
Author: Raymond Lamont-Brown
hold that they cannot maintain it long – that they must give way to the German element which, you know, is Anglo-Saxon and therefore has the right ‘blend’. 9
Four years after Carnegie’s trip Napoleon III declared war on Prussia, leading to the capitulation of Paris on 28 January 1871. Carnegie had sensed the impending Gallic doom, but in this letter home he also foreshadowed his own attraction towards Germany which would lead to his future support for Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Back home, though, all was not happy. Carnegie’s brother Tom was feeling the pressure of tending to his brother’s business, and the mail from Europe regularly brought a flurry of letters urging Tom to undertake a whole range of tasks. Now 22, Tom’s early education was more firmly based than Carnegie’s, and he had a more relaxed nature. Where Carnegie was melancholy by nature, Tom was cheerful, and where Carnegie was solemn, Tom was bright, and although his brother was ‘protective’, Tom never forgot the childhood bullying. The stress brought about by Carnegie’s letters was continually rising and Tom took to the bottle. Finally he could stand it no more and sent Carnegie a letter of complaint. In a condescending reply Carnegie attempted to assuage his brother’s ire:
It is a heavy load for a youngster to carry, but if you succeed, it will be a lasting benefit to you. Talk to mother freely; I always found her ideas pretty near the right thing. She’s a safe counsellor, safer than I, probably, who have made money too easily and gained distance by carrying full sail, to be much of an advisor when storms are about, or sail should be taken in. 10
Carnegie showed little real understanding of his brother’s predicament or his feelings, but continued his trip with a resolve to search for more moneymaking ideas in Europe. Victorian London particularly pleased him. The underground railway was progressing from its first operation in 1863, and as novelist Sir Walter Besant was to remark in
South London
(1899), houses ‘sprang up as if in a single night: streets in a month, churches and chapels in a quarter’. London was the focus of ‘national thought and industry’, and as he viewed all that was going on from pavement and cab Carnegie was enchanted by the ‘World City’. ‘I am quite taken with London,’ he wrote to his mother, ‘and would like to spend a year or two there.’ 11
As he sought out new ideas and business concepts Carnegie was particularly interested in steel replacing iron for railways; at that time his own company was finding that iron rails were too brittle for high-speed main line trains. A new process strengthening iron rails with steel had been invented by one Thomas Dodd, who evolved ‘dodderised rails’ which were stronger than the ones used by the Pennsylvania Railroad. So along with cousin Dod, Carnegie investigated the matter further with a view to investing in the idea. He took steps to win an exclusive contract for supplying such rails to the American market. With his persuasive business acumen at full blast, Carnegie talked Dodd and his colleagues into a satisfactory deal. All this was undertaken while his travelling companions spent three weeks in Switzerland. Carnegie joined his friends at Mayence, but followed up his steel researches at the Iron Works in Prussia and the cast-iron plant at Magdeburg, and looked into the manufacturing of ‘dodderised’ material at Ruhwart on the Rhine.
Carnegie arrived back in America during the spring of 1866 raring to get back into business, although his commercial interests had rarely been far from his thoughts in Europe. He launched afresh into his bridge-building, telegraph and sleeping-car interests, but the manufacture of iron would increasingly grab more of his attention. His companies were very much tied to the production of iron and this was one of the reasons why he had founded the Cyclops Iron Co. with Thomas Miller back in 1864; this had been merged in
Four years after Carnegie’s trip Napoleon III declared war on Prussia, leading to the capitulation of Paris on 28 January 1871. Carnegie had sensed the impending Gallic doom, but in this letter home he also foreshadowed his own attraction towards Germany which would lead to his future support for Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Back home, though, all was not happy. Carnegie’s brother Tom was feeling the pressure of tending to his brother’s business, and the mail from Europe regularly brought a flurry of letters urging Tom to undertake a whole range of tasks. Now 22, Tom’s early education was more firmly based than Carnegie’s, and he had a more relaxed nature. Where Carnegie was melancholy by nature, Tom was cheerful, and where Carnegie was solemn, Tom was bright, and although his brother was ‘protective’, Tom never forgot the childhood bullying. The stress brought about by Carnegie’s letters was continually rising and Tom took to the bottle. Finally he could stand it no more and sent Carnegie a letter of complaint. In a condescending reply Carnegie attempted to assuage his brother’s ire:
It is a heavy load for a youngster to carry, but if you succeed, it will be a lasting benefit to you. Talk to mother freely; I always found her ideas pretty near the right thing. She’s a safe counsellor, safer than I, probably, who have made money too easily and gained distance by carrying full sail, to be much of an advisor when storms are about, or sail should be taken in. 10
Carnegie showed little real understanding of his brother’s predicament or his feelings, but continued his trip with a resolve to search for more moneymaking ideas in Europe. Victorian London particularly pleased him. The underground railway was progressing from its first operation in 1863, and as novelist Sir Walter Besant was to remark in
South London
(1899), houses ‘sprang up as if in a single night: streets in a month, churches and chapels in a quarter’. London was the focus of ‘national thought and industry’, and as he viewed all that was going on from pavement and cab Carnegie was enchanted by the ‘World City’. ‘I am quite taken with London,’ he wrote to his mother, ‘and would like to spend a year or two there.’ 11
As he sought out new ideas and business concepts Carnegie was particularly interested in steel replacing iron for railways; at that time his own company was finding that iron rails were too brittle for high-speed main line trains. A new process strengthening iron rails with steel had been invented by one Thomas Dodd, who evolved ‘dodderised rails’ which were stronger than the ones used by the Pennsylvania Railroad. So along with cousin Dod, Carnegie investigated the matter further with a view to investing in the idea. He took steps to win an exclusive contract for supplying such rails to the American market. With his persuasive business acumen at full blast, Carnegie talked Dodd and his colleagues into a satisfactory deal. All this was undertaken while his travelling companions spent three weeks in Switzerland. Carnegie joined his friends at Mayence, but followed up his steel researches at the Iron Works in Prussia and the cast-iron plant at Magdeburg, and looked into the manufacturing of ‘dodderised’ material at Ruhwart on the Rhine.
Carnegie arrived back in America during the spring of 1866 raring to get back into business, although his commercial interests had rarely been far from his thoughts in Europe. He launched afresh into his bridge-building, telegraph and sleeping-car interests, but the manufacture of iron would increasingly grab more of his attention. His companies were very much tied to the production of iron and this was one of the reasons why he had founded the Cyclops Iron Co. with Thomas Miller back in 1864; this had been merged in
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