Carnegie, Andrew, 1835-1919; Industrialists -- United States -- Biography; Philanthropists -- United States -- Biography
[Footnote 43: Mr. Carnegie was very fond of this story because, being
human, he was fond of applause and, being a Robert Burns radical, he
preferred the applause of Labor to that of Rank. That one of his men
thought he had acted "white" pleased him beyond measure. He stopped
short with that tribute and never asked, never knew, why or how the
story happened to be told. Perhaps this is the time and place to tell
the story of the story.
Sometime in 1901 over a dinner table in New York, I heard a statement
regarding Mr. Carnegie that he never gave anything without the
requirement that his name be attached to the gift. The remark came
from a prominent man who should have known he was talking nonsense. It
rather angered me. I denied the statement, saying that I, personally,
had given away money for Mr. Carnegie that only he and I knew about,
and that he had given many thousands in this way through others. By
way of illustration I told the story about McLuckie. A Pittsburgh man
at the table carried the story back to Pittsburgh, told it there, and
it finally got into the newspapers. Of course the argument of the
story, namely, that Mr. Carnegie sometimes gave without publicity, was
lost sight of and only the refrain, "It was damned white of Andy,"
remained. Mr. Carnegie never knew that there was an argument. He liked
the refrain. Some years afterward at Skibo (1906), when he was writing
this Autobiography, he asked me if I would not write out the story for
him. I did so. I am now glad of the chance to write an explanatory
note about it.... _John C. Van Dyke._]
CHAPTER XVIII
PROBLEMS OF LABOR
I should like to record here some of the labor disputes I have had to
deal with, as these may point a moral to both capital and labor.
The workers at the blast furnaces in our steel-rail works once sent in
a "round-robin" stating that unless the firm gave them an advance of
wages by Monday afternoon at four o'clock they would leave the
furnaces. Now, the scale upon which these men had agreed to work did
not lapse until the end of the year, several months off. I felt if men
would break an agreement there was no use in making a second agreement
with them, but nevertheless I took the night train from New York and
was at the works early in the morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account