After Mr. Kloman had passed through the bankruptcy court and was again free, we offered him a ten per cent interest in our business, charging for it only the actual capital invested, with nothing whatever for good-will. This we were to carry for him until the profits paid for it. We were to charge interest only on the cost, and he was to assume no responsibility. The offer was accompanied by the condition that he should not enter into any other business or endorse for others, but give his whole time and attention to the mechanical and not the business management of the mills. Could he have been persuaded to accept this, he would have been a multimillionaire; but his pride, and more particularly that of his family, perhaps, would not permit this. He would go into business on his own account, and, notwithstanding the most urgent appeals on my part, and that of my colleagues, he persisted in the determination to start a new rival concern with his sons as business managers. The result was failure and premature death. How foolish we are not to recognize what we are best fitted for and can perform, not only with ease but with pleasure, as masters of the craft. More than one able man I have known has persisted in blundering in an office when he had great talent for the mill, and has worn himself out, oppressed with cares and anxieties, his life a continual round of misery, and the result at last failure. I never regretted parting with any man so much as Mr. Kloman. His was a good heart, a great mechanical brain, and had he been left to himself I believe he would have been glad to remain with us. Offers of capital from others--offers which failed when needed--turned his head, and the great mechanic soon proved the poor man of affairs.[33] [Footnote 33: Long after the circumstances here recited, Mr. Isidor Straus called upon Mr. Henry Phipps and asked him if two statements which had been publicly made about Mr. Carnegie and his partners in the steel company were true. Mr. Phipps replied they were not. Then said Mr. Straus: "Mr. Phipps, you owe it to yourself and also to Mr. Carnegie to say so publicly." This Mr. Phipps did in the _New York Herald_, January 30, 1904, in the following handsome manner and without Mr. Carnegie's knowledge: _Question:_ "In a recent publication mention was made of Mr. Carnegie's not having treated Mr. Miller, Mr. Kloman, and yourself properly during your early partnership, and at its termination. Can you tell me anything about this?" _Answer:_ "Mr. Miller has already spoken for himself in this matter, and I can say that the treatment received from Mr. Carnegie during our partnership, so far as I was concerned, was always fair and liberal. "My association with Mr. Kloman in business goes back forty-three years. Everything in connection with Mr. Carnegie's partnership with Mr. Kloman was of a pleasant nature.