Famous Givers and Their GiftsBolton, Sarah Knowles
History
Famous Givers and Their Gifts
Bolton, Sarah Knowles
Philanthropists
"It is a proud day for a man when he pays his last note, but not to be
named in comparison with the day in which he makes his first one, and
_gets a banker to take it_. I have tried both, and I know. The cars paid
the subsequent payments from their earnings. I paid my first note from
my savings, so much per month; and thus did I get my foot on fortune's
ladder. It is easy to climb after that. A triumphant success was
scored. And thus came sleeping-cars into the world. 'Blessed be the man
who invented sleep,' says Sancho Panza. Thousands upon thousands will
echo the sentiment, 'Blessed be the man who invented sleeping-cars.' Let
me record his name, and testify my gratitude to him, my dear, quiet,
modest, truthful, farmer-looking friend, T. T. Woodruff, one of the
benefactors of the age."
Mr. Pullman later engaged in sleeping-car building, and Carnegie advised
his firm "to capture Mr. Pullman." "There was a capture," says Mr.
Carnegie, "but it did not quite take that form. They found themselves
swallowed by this ogre, and Pullman monopolized everything."
While a very young man, Carnegie was appointed superintendent of the
Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. As superintendent he
became the friend of Colonel Scott; and, together with some others, they
bought several farms along the line of the road, which proved very
valuable oil-lands. Mr. Carnegie says of the Storey Farm, Oil Creek, "We
purchased the farm for $40,000; 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, $1,000,000.
Unfortunately for us the pond leaked fearfully, evaporation also caused
much loss; but we continued to run oil in to make the losses good day
after day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in this
fashion.
"Our experience with the farm may be worth reciting. Its value rose to
$5,000,000; that is, the shares of the company sold in the market upon
this basis; and one year it paid in cash dividends $1,000,000--rather a
good return upon an investment of $40,000. So great was the yield in the
district that in two years oil became almost valueless, often selling as
low as thirty cents per barrel, and not infrequently it was suffered to
run to waste as utterly worthless.
"But as new uses were found for the oil, prices rose again; and to
remove the difficulty of high freights, pipes were laid, first for short
distances, and then to the seaboard, a distance of about three hundred
miles. Through these pipes, of which six thousand two hundred miles have
been laid, the oil is now pumped from two thousand one hundred wells. It
costs only ten cents to pump a barrel of oil to the Atlantic. The value
of petroleum and its products _exported_ up to January, 1884, exceeds in
value $625,000,000."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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