[This is
the 2nd in a series about Scots who made an impact outside their
native country.]
This piece describes two Scots who knew and wrote about
Wealth. The first rose to giddy heights in the USA as a steel mogul and then
flourished as a generous philanthropist; the second proclaimed the virtues of
Self-Help and became a business guru, influencing aspiring 19th
century generations. They were physically similar in their bearded sagacity but
their philosophies differed markedly.
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| Andrew Carnegie |
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| Samuel Smiles |
The career of Andrew
Carnegie (1835-1919) is a classic rags-to-riches story. He was born in
Dunfermline, Fife, where his father, William, was a handloom weaver. An uncle introduced
him to the joys of books. To escape poverty they emigrated when Andrew was 12
to Allegheny, Pennsylvania where father worked in a cotton mill and mother,
Margaret, made shoe bindings. Andrew worked from the age of 13 as a bobbin-boy
at the cotton mill. In 1850 he became a telegraph message boy, worked hard, was
promoted and educated himself when a local benefactor opened his library to
poor boys.
In 1850 he became PA to Thomas Scott, managing director of
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company and helped the President J. Edgar Thomson.
Carnegie flourished and was promoted to Superintendent of the Pittsburgh
Division. He was included in various deals Scott and Thomson did, often via
insider trading which we would now call corrupt. He started to amass capital.
Carnegie was grateful and cut in Scott and Thomson to many steel deals he
completed later.
After playing a leading role in military transportation for
the Union during the Civil War, Carnegie left the railroads for the quickly
growing steel industry in 1864 to establish the Keystone Bridge Company and
later Carnegie Steel, an integrated steel producer converting pig-iron to steel
using the Bessemer system. This became one of the largest enterprises in the
USA. Carnegie was not a notoriously hard-boiled businessman but 19th
century US tycoons were not gentle souls. In 1901 Carnegie sold his company for
$480m to J. P. Morgan who was creating United Steel. Carnegie personally
pocketed $225m, an immense sum at that time, the consideration being paid in 5%
bonds. Carnegie was hailed as “the richest man in the world” – wrongly, he was
second to John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil. He devoted the rest of his long
life to philanthropy.
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| Carnegie, the legendary philanthropist |
Carnegie, an eager autodidact himself, sought the company of
the leading minds of his time and met Mark Twain, Matthew Arnold, befriended
W.E.Gladstone and was a correspondent and disciple of Herbert Spencer. Spencer
was a highly influential evolutionary philosopher of Victorian England who
coined the expression “the survival of the fittest”. Carnegie adopted
Spencerian views on the struggle between independent Man versus the
ever-encroaching State and embraced the doctrine of Laissez-Faire. (In practice Carnegie was quite happy when tariffs
hindered competition and he lobbied Congress for his steel industry
energetically!)
But there is no doubting the sincerity of his philanthropy. He
had written in an early memorandum to himself, aged 33, that it was wrong
simply to amass wealth and he proclaimed his famous dictum “a man who dies
rich, dies dishonoured”. In his admired book The Gospel of Wealth, endorsed by Mr Gladstone, he recommended the
first third of life for education and training, the second third for making
money and the final third for giving the money away.
He started his philanthropy in 1879 with public swimming
baths in Dunfermline, followed the next year with a public library there. He
toured Scotland with his aged mother in 1881 and over the years he was a
generous donor, especially to his home town. But he was busy in the US too; he
teamed up with Enoch Pratt, associate of the earlier American benefactor,
George Peabody, and focussed on public libraries; eventually, Carnegie funded
over 3,000 libraries. He also lavished money on universities and medical
schools in the US and in Scotland; he sponsored music too, building and owning
famous Carnegie Hall in New York, opened in 1891.
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| Carnegie and Skibo Castle, Sutherland |
Carnegie wrote in his Triumphant
Democracy that the American political system was superior to the British –
he disparaged the British hereditary monarchy and her aristocracy. He was
anti-Imperialist, in particular an opponent of the US annexation of the
Philippines. He advocated closer union of the English-speaking peoples. He kept
his distance from religion, but worked for World Peace with the churches and
was dismayed by the Great War.
In his retirement Carnegie lived in New York and in Skibo
Castle, in remote Sutherland, Scotland. By the time he died in 1919 he had
given away about $350m and his executors gave away his final $30m. His
philanthropy was copied by many other rich men, an attractive feature of
American life.
-----------------------------------
Samuel Smiles
(1812-1904) was a less spectacular figure but possibly more influential. Born
in Haddington, East Lothian, where his parents ran a small shop. His father was
a Cameronian, a member of that Puritan Presbyterian sect, but Samuel was never
religious. Educated at the local school, he was apprenticed to a doctor and
studied medicine at Edinburgh University in 1829-32. His father died of cholera
in 1832 and his mother worked tirelessly to support her family of 10. He paid
her fulsome tribute in his 1871 book Character:
“Whilst writing all this,
I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have
failed to support me in these contentions. I lost her thirty years ago --nevertheless,
ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age. She suffered with me
in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune. When young, I
made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones
are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!
And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words not to mention my features and gestures, I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood which gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more. What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers”
Although Smiles practiced as a doctor briefly in Haddington,
he became politically interested in the tumultuous 1830s and turned his talents
to journalism. He became editor of the radical Leeds Times 1838-42 and supported Chartism with its programme of
parliamentary reform, but he shied away from the movement when its leaders
advocated physical force. He married in 1843 but despaired of radical change,
working from 1845 for railway companies.
Smiles finally earned celebrity with his widely read
handbook to success Self-Help
published in 1859. The book, rejected by conventional publishers, eventually
sold 250,000 copies and was followed by Character
(1871) Thrift (1875) and Duty (1880). His Self-Help philosophy
firmly placed responsibility on the individual to better himself, and struck a
chord in Britain and America. Smiles saw a vital role for the state and
inveighed against laissez-faire liberalism in an eloquent passage:
When typhus or cholera
breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame. That terrible Nobody! How
much he has to answer for. More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the
world besides. Nobody adulterates our food. Nobody poisons us with bad drink.
Nobody supplies us with foul water. Nobody spreads fever in blind alleys and
unswept lanes. Nobody leaves towns undrained. Nobody fills gaols,
penitentiaries, and convict stations. Nobody makes poachers, thieves, and
drunkards. Nobody has a theory too—a dreadful theory. It is embodied in two
words—Laissez faire—Let alone.
When people are poisoned by plaster of Paris mixed with flour, "Let
alone" is the remedy. When Cocculus indicus is used instead of
hops, and men die prematurely, it is easy to say, "Nobody did it."
Let those who can, find out when they are cheated: Caveat Emptor. When people live in foul dwellings, let them
alone. Let wretchedness do its work; do not interfere with death.
Smiles has been criticised as a Philistine and as a champion
of Victorian self-righteousness, finding virtue in the lifestyle they happen to
enjoy. But there is an honourable place in society for sturdy individualism and
a determination to get on in life. Carnegie and Smiles would have approved of
Thatcherism, which had a strong flavour of Self–Help with Norman Tebbitt’s
unemployed father “getting on his bike to find a job” and Thatcher’s “There is
no Alternative” being a direct quote from Carnegie’s mentor Herbert Spencer. What
comes around, goes around, as they say.
SMD
13.03.15
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015
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