Have you a library in your town? What is it called? Should you like to know why Andrew Carnegie decided to spend millions and millions of dollars in building beautiful libraries in this country and Scotland? I should like to tell you, for the story is very interesting.

Mr. Carnegie was born in far away Scotland in the year 1835. His father was a poor man who earned his living by weaving linen by hand. Soon machines were invented for the weaving of linen. As these machines could weave more cheaply, those who had made a living by hand weaving were thrown out of work. “Andie’s” father was thus thrown out of employment and, hardly knowing which way to turn, decided to come to America.

Accordingly, when Andie was seven years of age, in company with his parents and brother, he came to this land of promise. In a land so large, it was not an easy matter for them to decide where to live. Finally they decided to settle in Allegheny City, just across the river from Pittsburg.

After the home was settled, one of the first questions to be solved was, whether Andie should go to school or go to work. But what could a boy so small do? He could be a bobbin boy in a big factory, he was told. So as bobbin boy, we soon see him earning his first money. Can you guess what his first wages were? From early 170 morning until late at night he worked and, for a whole week’s work received but one dollar and twenty cents.

So faithful and energetic was he, that he was soon promoted to engine-boy at a salary of a dollar and eighty cents a week. While the increase in salary pleased him, the work was not so pleasant, for he had to work in a damp cellar away from fresh air and sunlight. Then, too, he was alone most of the time.

It was while he was engine-boy that an event happened that caused him later in life to build libraries. Suppose we invite Mr. Carnegie, in his own language, to tell us about it.

“There were no fine libraries then, but in Allegheny City, where I lived, there was a Colonel Anderson, who was well-to-do and of a philanthropic turn. He announced, about the time I first began to work, that he would be in his library at home, every Saturday, ready to lend books to working boys and men. He had only about four hundred volumes, but I doubt if ever so few books were put to better use. Only one who has longed, as I did, for Saturday to come, that the spring of knowledge might be opened anew to him, can imagine what Colonel Anderson did for me and other boys of Allegheny City. Quite a number of them have risen to eminence, and I think their rise can be traced easily to this splendid opportunity.”

No doubt it was the kindness of Colonel Anderson that prompted Mr. Carnegie, later in life, to bestow his wealth for the founding of libraries.

Since the work as engine-boy had never appealed to Andie, he was delighted when another promotion was earned. This time he was made messenger boy in a telegraph office in Pittsburg at a salary of two dollars and fifty cents a week. In speaking of this period Mr. Carnegie said: “If you want an idea as to heaven on earth, imagine what it is to be taken from a dark cellar, where I fired the boiler from morning until night, and dropped into an office, where light shone from all sides, with books, papers, and pencils in profusion around me, and oh, the tick of those mysterious brass instruments on the desk, annihilating space and conveying intelligence to the world. This was my first glimpse of paradise, and I walked on air.”

Fortunately, the man in charge of the office, a Scotchman by the name of James Reid, took a liking to the Scotch lad and began to help him by teaching him telegraphy. Accordingly, during the leisure moments when Andie had no messages to deliver he studied so diligently that in a remarkably short time he became a skillful telegraph operator.

At this time his father died, leaving the support of the family to Andie. To support them he must earn more money, and so he left his job as messenger boy to become a telegraph operator on the Pennsylvania railroad. While thus engaged as an operator he invented a system of train dispatching that, each year, saved the company thousands of dollars. This invention attracted 172 the attention of the railroad officials to young Carnegie, and he was made private secretary to Colonel Scott, vice-president of the road, and a little later was made superintendent of the Western division of the Pennsylvania railroad, all before he was thirty years of age.

It was while he was superintendent of the railroad that Mr. Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping car, came to him with the invention. Mr. Carnegie listened to a description of the proposed cars. He saw that the idea was good and adopted it at once. Thus it was that on Mr. Carnegie’s division of the Pennsylvania railroad the first sleeping cars in the United States were run.

Prior to this time all the railroad bridges had been made of wood; but it occurred to Carnegie that bridges should be made of steel, rather than wood. Accordingly, he organized the Keystone Bridge Company that built the first steel bridge across the Ohio River. As the bridge business grew, Mr. Carnegie decided that he could make more money by making his own steel for the bridges. To do this he organized a company and built the Union Iron Mills. So profitable were these mills that in a short time he purchased the Edgar Thompson Steel Rail Mill and the Homestead Steel Works. Gradually his business grew until in 1901, when he retired, his payroll exceeded eighteen million dollars a year, and he received two hundred and fifty millions for his share of the business.

But, I hear you ask, “How could he earn so much money? How did he get the money to start these great 173 enterprises?” From the first he was economical and saved every penny possible; and fortunately for him his investments were always profitable, as the following examples will show.

When he was a telegraph operator, his friend, Mr. Scott, urged him to buy ten shares in the Adams Express Company for six hundred dollars. As Mr. Carnegie was able to get together but five hundred dollars, Mr. Scott lent him the extra hundred, and the investment was made. Soon these shares were yielding large dividends, which Mr. Carnegie carefully saved.

Already I have told you how Mr. Woodruff, the inventor of the sleeping car, came to Mr. Carnegie to get him to try out these cars. So enthusiastic was Mr. Carnegie over the invention, that he organized the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company, and borrowed money from every possible source to finance the enterprise. Here, too, he met with a degree of success that was far beyond his fondest expectations.

Suppose we invite Mr. Carnegie to tell us about his third investment. He says: “In company with several others, I purchased the now famous Story farm, on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, where a well had been bored and natural-oil struck the year before. This proved a very profitable investment. When I first visited this famous well, the oil was running into the creek where a few flat-bottomed scows lay filled with it, ready to be floated down the Allegheny River on an agreed upon day each 174 week, when the creek was flooded by means of a temporary dam. This was the beginning of the natural-oil business. We purchased the farm for forty thousand dollars, and so small was our faith in the ability of the earth to yield, for any considerable time, the hundred barrels per day which the property was then producing that we decided to make a pond capable of holding one hundred thousand barrels of oil, which we estimated would be worth, when the supply ceased, one million dollars.

“Unfortunately for us, the pond leaked fearfully. Evaporation also caused much loss, but we continued to run the oil in to make the loss good day by day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in this fashion. Our experience with the farm is worth reciting: its value rose to five million dollars, and one year it paid in cash dividends one million dollars.” Surely this was a very profitable investment.

But most of Mr. Carnegie’s money was made in the steel business, and, you ask how this was done.

Prior to 1868 the process of making iron into steel had been extremely expensive. In that year Mr. Carnegie introduced a method for making steel known as the Bessemer process. For years his mills had a monopoly of the process; and, as it reduced the cost of making steel by more than half, he made vast sums of money.

About all rich men two questions are always asked: How did they get their money, and what did they do with it?

While Mr. Carnegie may be justly criticized for some of the methods he adopted in getting his money, few can criticize the beautiful spirit that he has shown in giving it away. So liberal has he been that in a single year he gave away one hundred and twelve million dollars. Some of his more notable gifts are $22,000,000 for the Carnegie Institution in Washington, $24,000,000 for the Carnegie Institution in Pittsburg, $15,000,000 for Teachers’ Pensions, $10,000,000 for Scotch Universities, and $70,000,000 for libraries.

In the northern part of Scotland is a large and beautiful mansion known as Skibo Castle. This was Mr. Carnegie’s country estate, and here he and his wife and daughter lived in comparative quiet. In his late years, as in boyhood days, he loved to tread on the free heather of his beloved country. As the years multiplied, his sympathies gradually enlarged and his vision broadened. Though some, as they grow old, become sour and crabbed, Mr. Carnegie became increasingly optimistic and youthful in spirit, until death claimed him.

“He is never alone that hath a good book.”