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1865 with the rival company of Kloman & Phipps to form the Union Iron Mills. However, at the time of his return the Union Iron Mills were not doing well; orders were not coming in via the feeder companies like the Keystone Bridge Co., and internal management rivalries made meetings sticky. In essence Thomas Miller could not stand Henry Phipps and meetings regularly boiled over until Carnegie bought out Miller’s share of the company, which was renamed as Carnegie, Kloman & Co.
    Meanwhile Carnegie’s negotiations for an extended exclusive contract for the ‘dodderised’ rails were not proceeding smoothly. Thomas Dodd had travelled to the United States and set up the American Steeled Rail Co., and had granted rights to other American companies. The exclusivity that Carnegie thought he had won was not valid, and he endeavoured to clarify the position. Carnegie did much to promote the Dodd process to keep his interests high. Alas, the rails did not stand up to the American weather conditions. J. Edgar Thomson advised that the Pennsylvania Railroad had no further trust in them. For a while Carnegie pressed on with the Dodd process but at last he had to withdraw his efforts. In true Carnegie fashion he kept his name clean by blaming Dodd for the failure.
    Back in Britain the London-based engineer James Livesey, who was acting as Carnegie’s agent with the Dodd company, wrote about the ‘Webb process’ he had discovered for economically priced hard-wearing rails. Negotiations for this process also failed, as the product proved dubious. Carnegie began to look elsewhere.

TEN
R OUND THE W ORLD
    It is therefore only a matter of time when the Chinese will drive every other race to the wall. No race can possibly stand against them . . .
    Andrew Carnegie, December 1878
    D uring mid-October 1878 Carnegie left the management of the Edgar Thomson Steel Co. in the hands – he thought capable – of William P. Shinn. He was now bound for the greatest tour of his life, this time to the Orient. Settling his mother with brother Tom at Pittsburgh, Carnegie packed his bags – including a 13-volume pigskin-bound
Works of William Shakespeare
a gift from his mother to while away the long hours at sea – and met up with John ‘Vandy’ Vandervort on the first leg of the journey to San Francisco. This was the realisation of an undertaking they had made on their Grand Tour, while at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, that they would tour ‘around the Ball’. This was no modern package tour with each booking made in advance; Carnegie was entering lands of which he had little or no knowledge, to meet people whose languages and writings were a mystery to him. But it would be the commencement of a new epoch of his life away from the luxuries of his New York habitat and the fussings of his mother.
    They set sail on 24 October 1878 aboard the SS
Belgic
and on 15 November they reached Japan’s main island of Honshu. For Carnegie it was a complete culture shock. They based themselves in Tokyo, which had been the capital of Japan only since 1868. Here they were introduced to the bustling metropolis, the imperial capital of Emperor Meiji (r. 1867–1912) who had seized the reins of government from the Shoguns (generalissimos) who had ruled Japan for centuries. Carnegie was able to observe how the emperor was beginning to raise the status of his nation from an obscure, insular and little-known country to a first-class power. Even so he observed much that had not changed from Japan’s medieval past, from the
tera
(temples) to the
chamise
(tea-houses), while the modern warships at Yokohama – part of Emperor Meiji’s developing fleet – depressed Carnegie as a symbol of Japan’s developing militarism.
    Traditional dress was being replaced by Western costume, but as the
jinrikshas
(man-powered carriages) weaved in and out of the traffic Carnegie saw their women passengers sporting the fashions, hairstyles and make-up of an ancient era – and he was not