Persecution had given the Huguenots a sternness of mental and moral fiber, just as it had blessed and benefited the Puritans. The habit of independent thought got into the veins of these Huguenots, and they played important parts in the War of the Revolution. Like the Jews, they made good Freethinkers. They reason things out without an idolatrous regard for precedent.

For fifty-seven years Peter and Sarah fought the battle of life together. He clarified his thought by explaining his plans to her, and together they grew rich—rich in money, rich in knowledge, rich in experience, rich in love.

* * * * *

There are men who are not content to put all their eggs into one basket, and then watch the basket.

Peter Cooper craved the excitement of adventure. His nature demanded new schemes, new plans, new methods upon which to break the impulse of his mind. The trade-wind of his genius did not blow constantly from one direction. Had he been content to focus on coach-building, he could have become rich beyond the dream of avarice. As it was, the fact that he could build as good a coach as any one else satisfied that quarter-section of his nature.

When the war of Eighteen Hundred Twelve closed, there was a great shrinkage in wool. Peter Cooper sold his holdings for a grocery-store, which he ran just long enough to restock and sell to a man who wanted it more than he did.

Then he started a furniture-factory, for he was an expert worker in wood. But the bench for him was only by-play. As he worked, his mind roamed the world.

He used glue in making the furniture. He bought his glue from a man who had a little factory on the site of what is now the Park Avenue Hotel. The man who made the glue did not like the business. He wanted to make furniture, just as comedians always want to play Hamlet. Peter Cooper's furniture-shop was in a rented building. The glue-man owned his site. Peter Cooper traded his furniture-shop for the glue-factory, and got a deed to the premises.

He was then thirty-three years old. The glue-factory was the foundation of his fortune. He made better glue and more glue than any other concern in America. Few men of brains would get stuck on the glue business. There are features about it not exactly pleasant. The very difficulties of it, however, attracted Cooper. He never referred to his glue-factory as a chemical laboratory, nor did he call it a studio. He was proud of his business. He made the first isinglass manufactured in America, and for some years monopolized the trade.

But one business was not enough for Peter Cooper. Attached to the glue-factory was a machine-shop which was the scene of many inventions. Here in Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven and Eighteen Hundred Twenty-eight, Peter Cooper worked out and made a steam-engine which he felt sure was an improvement on the one that Watt had made in England.

Peter Cooper's particular device was a plan to do away with the crank, and transform the rectilinear motion of the piston into rotary motion. He figured it out that this would save two-fifths of the steam, and so stated in his application for a patent, a copy of which is before the writer.

The Patent Office then was looked after by the President in person. Peter Cooper's patent was signed by John Quincy Adams, President, Henry Clay, Secretary of State, and William Wirt, Attorney General. The patent was good for fourteen years, so any one who cares to infringe on it can do so now without penalty.

There were then no trained patent-examiners, and the President and Secretary of State were not inclined to hamper inventors with technicalities. You paid your fee, the patent was granted, and all questions of priority were left to be fought out in the courts. More patents have been granted to one individual—say, Thomas A. Edison—than were issued in America, all told, up to the time that Peter Cooper went down to Washington in person and explained his invention to John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, who evidently were very glad to sign the patent, rather than bother to understand the invention. In his application Peter Cooper states, "This invention is a suitable motor for hauling land-carriages."

It was one year before this that Stephenson in England had given an exhibition of his locomotive, the "Rocket," on a circular two-mile track in Manchester. Cooper had not seen the "Rocket," but Stephenson's example had fired his brain, and he had in his own mind hastened the system.

At this time he was thirty-six years old. His glue business was prosperous. Several thousand dollars of his surplus he had invested in charcoal-kilns near Baltimore. From this he had gone into a land speculation in the suburbs of that city. His partners had abandoned the enterprise and left him to face the disgrace of failure.

Commerce was drifting away from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York. The Erie Canal had been opened and it looked as if this would be the one route to the West—the Hudson River to Albany, thence by canal to Buffalo, and on by the Great Lakes to the land of promise.

Pennsylvania had a system of canals, partially in use, and the rest in building, which would open up a route to the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. But engineers had looked the ground over, and given it as their opinion that Baltimore was hedged in by insurmountable difficulties. Prophecies were made that soon ships would cease to come to Baltimore at all. And under this lowering commercial sky, Peter Cooper saw his Baltimore investments fading away into the ether.

At this time the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad was in operation. The coaches and wagons were simply those in use on the roads, but with new tires that carried a flange to keep the wheel on the rail. It was found that a team of horses could draw double the load on a railroad that they could if the wheels of the vehicle were on the ground.

The news was brought to America. Wooden rails were first tried, and then these were strengthened by nailing strap iron along the top. It was a great idea—build a railroad from Baltimore to the Ohio River, and thus compete with the Pennsylvania canals to the Ohio!

In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-seven the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was formed. It was the first railroad company in America. Peter Cooper bought shares to the extent of his ability. It was a life-and-death struggle. If the railroad was a success, Baltimore was saved, and Peter Cooper was a rich man; otherwise he was a bankrupt. Stephenson's "Rocket" in England was pulling three or four carriages at a speed of ten miles an hour, while a team of horses on the same track could pull only one carriage at the rate of six or seven miles an hour.

The City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland were empowered to buy shares in the new transportation company. Thus we find government ownership of the first American railroad. The Mayor of the City and the Governor of the State had heard of Peter Cooper's engine, which he said could be used for "land-carriages," and they now importuned him to come to their rescue.

Robert Fulton had already proved that the steamship was practicable; but Fulton wasn't interested in railroads. He maintained, as did almost every one else, that the water-route was the only safe and sure and economical way of transportation. When the railroad was built from Albany to Schenectady the first idea was to have the engine tow canal-boats. Peter Cooper heard the wail of the Baltimoreans, and said, "I'll knock an engine together in six weeks that will pull carriages ten miles an hour and beat any canal-boat that ever collected barnacles."

* * * * *

Peter Cooper went back from Baltimore to New York with a few misgivings as to whether he had not promised too much.

The real fact was he had gotten a patent on his engine before he had put it to an actual test. He had made the engine, but now he must make a boiler in which to generate the steam to make the wheels go round. This boiler he made and riveted with his own hands. It stood upright and was as high as his shoulder. It had a furnace beneath. It contained no tubes, and the proposition was to fill it half-full of water and then boil this water.

It took three weeks to make the boiler. It was about as big as the tank in an average kitchen-range. There were no water-gauges or steam-gauges. The engineer had to guess as to the pressure he was carrying.

When the boiler was complete, the great difficulty was how to carry the steam from the boiler to the engine. There were no wrought-iron pipes then made or sold in America. Cooper took a couple of muskets and used the barrels for pipes to connect his boiler and engine. These were duly soldered into place. The engine and boiler were then placed on a small, flat-top wagon and bolted down. The engine had a wheel which projected over the side, and an endless chain was run over the projecting hub of the wagon.

Peter experimented and found that the water in the boiler would last one hour; then the fire would have to be drawn, and the boiler cooled and refilled. He tried the engine and it worked, but there was no railroad upon which to try the wagon until the machine was taken down to Baltimore. A team was hitched to the wagon, and the drive was made to Baltimore in three days.

Peter placed his wagon with its flange-wheels on the track and pushed it up and down along the rail. It fitted the track all right. He then went back to his hotel with the two boys who were helping him. After the boys were abed, he sneaked off in the darkness, filled up his boiler, screwed down the top, and fired up. It was a moment of intense excitement. He turned on the steam—the wheels revolved—then the thing stuck. He had a pike-pole and using this pushed himself along for a few rods. The endless chain was working, and the machine was going—flying—almost as fast as a man could run. And Peter ran the machine back into the barn, went home and went to bed. He had succeeded. The next day he invited the President of the road and the Mayor of the City to ride with him.

The machine had to be poled or pushed to start it, but it proved the principle. The following day a public exhibition was given. Forty men and one woman responded to the request for volunteers to ride. They rode on the engine and in a big coach attached behind. They covered the top of the coach and clung to the sides. A dozen men got hold and gave a good push and they were off.

The road was just thirteen miles long. The distance was made in one hour and twelve minutes. The fire was then drawn and the boiler refilled. Also, all the passengers refilled, for whisky flowed free.

Peter Cooper was ready to start back. He ordered every man to hold on to his hat. A push and a pull, all together, and they were off. They ran the thirteen miles back in just fifty-eight minutes. The engine was a success beyond the fondest hopes of Peter. There were difficulties in the way, however. One was that the pulling only on one side caused a cramping of the flange on the other side against the rail. This was remedied by putting a wheel on both sides and running a chain on the two projecting hubs.

The pulling by hand to start was also criticized. Next, the fact that the engine had to be shut down every hour for water was noted. Peter Cooper stopped the mouths of the carpers by calling attention to the fact that even a horse had to be watered. And as for giving a push on starting, it was a passenger's duty to collaborate with the engineer. Besides that, passengers get thirsty and hungry as well as horses, and want a little change. Peter Cooper assured the critics that the boiler could be refilled while a man was getting a drink and stretching his legs.

The people who owned the stagecoach-line that ran parallel with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad made a lot of fun of Peter Cooper's teakettle. On one occasion they loosened a rail, so the thing ran into the ditch. For a time this sort of discouraged traffic, but there were others who prophesied that in a few years horses could not be given away.

Finally, the owner of the stagecoach-line challenged the railroad folks to race from Riley's Tavern to Baltimore, a distance of nine miles. The race was between a noted gray horse, famed for speed and endurance, and the teakettle. The road ran right alongside of the wagon route. In truth, it took up a part of the roadway, which was one cause of opposition. The race occurred on September Eighteenth, Eighteen Hundred Thirty. Thousands of dollars were bet, and a throng of people lined the route from start to finish. The engine pulled but one coach, and had one passenger. The gray horse was hitched to a buggy that carried one man besides the driver.

The engine led for five miles, when the boiler sprang a leak and stopped, the engineer in his anxiety getting on too much pressure. The horse won, and this proved to many people a fact which they had suspected and foretold; namely, that the steam-engine for land-carriages was only a plaything. Farmers in that vicinity took heart and began again to turn their attention to raising horses.

* * * * *

In the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-one, when Peter Cooper was forty years old, he was worth fifty thousand dollars; when he was forty-five, he was worth a hundred thousand dollars; when he was fifty, he was worth more than two hundred thousand dollars. He was one of the richest men of New York, and he was a man of influence. Had he centered on money-making, he might have become the richest man in America.

He held political office that he might serve the people, not that he might serve a party or himself. In all deliberative bodies, the actual work is done by a few. A dozen men or less run Congress.

For forty years Peter Cooper served the City of New York and the State, and always to his own financial loss. He saw the last remains of the Indian Stockade removed from Manhattan Island. When he was elected alderman, the city was patrolled by night-watchmen, who made their rounds and cried the hour and "All's Well!" For five hours, from midnight until five o'clock in the morning, they walked and watched. They were paid a dollar a night, and the money was collected from the people who owned property on the streets they patrolled, just as in country towns they sprinkle the streets in front of the residences owned by the men who subscribe.

Peter Cooper inaugurated a system of "public safety," or police protection. He also replaced the old volunteer fire-department with a paid service. He was the first man to protest against the use of wells as a water-supply for a growing city.

The first water-pipes used in New York City were bored logs; he fought against these, and finally induced the city to use iron pipes. As there was no iron pipe at this time made in America, he inaugurated a company to cast pipe. Very naturally his motives in demanding iron pipes were assailed, but he stood his ground and made the pipes and sold them to the city rather than that the city should not have them. He was brave enough to place himself in a suspicious position, that the people might prosper.

In Eighteen Hundred Thirty, he organized "The Free School Society," to fight the division of the school funds among sectarian schools. The idea that any form of religion should be taught at public expense was abhorrent to him. He was denounced as an infidel and an enemy of society, but his purity of life and unselfish devotion to what he knew was right were his shield and defense. The fight was kept up from Eighteen Hundred Thirty to Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three, when it was fixed in the statute that "no fund raised by taxation should be provided or used for the support of any school in which any religious or sectarian doctrine or tenet is taught, inculcated or practised." The Free School Society was then fused with the School Board, and ceased to exist as a separate institution. That the amalgamation was a plan to shelve Peter Cooper's secular ideas dawned upon him later. And that the struggle for a school free from superstition's taint was not completely won, Peter Cooper fully realized.

During this long service on the School Board of New York City, Peter Cooper worked out in his own mind an ideal of education which he was unable to impress upon his fellow townsmen. No doubt their indifference and opposition tended to crystallize his own ideas.

It will not do to say that Peter Cooper was exactly disgusted with the public-school system of New York, for he, more than any other one man, had evolved it and carried it forward from very meager beginnings. Democracy is a safeguard against tyranny, but it often cramps and hinders the man of genuine initiative. If the entire public-school system of the State had been delegated to Peter Cooper in Eighteen Hundred Fifty, he as sole commissioner could and would have set the world a pace in pedagogy.

Disraeli's contention that democracy means the rule of the worst has in it a basis of truth. Peter Cooper's appeals to his colleagues on the School Board fell on idle ears. And so he decided to do the thing himself, and the extent to which he would do it was to be limited only by his fortune.

Cooper Union was to be a model for every public school in America.

* * * * *

The block bounded by Third and Fourth Avenues and the Bowery was bought up by Peter Cooper, a lot at a time, with the idea of a model school in mind. When Peter Cooper bought the first lot there in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six, the site was at the extreme north limit of the city. Later, A. T. Stewart was to build his business palace near at hand.

Cooper offered his block of land to the city, gratis, provided a school would be built according to his plans. His offer was smilingly pigeonholed.

In Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four, when Peter Cooper was sixty-one years old, he began the building of his model school on his own account.

His business affairs had prospered, and besides the glue-factory he was making railroad-iron at Ringwood, New Jersey, and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. These mills were very crude according to our present-day standards. But Peter Cooper believed the consumption of iron would increase. Bridges were then built almost entirely of wood. Peter Cooper built his bridges of rolled iron "boards," as they were first called, riveted together. But he found it difficult to compete with the wooden structures.

When he began building Cooper Union, he found himself with a big stock of bridge-iron on hand for which there was no market. The excavations were already made for the foundations, when the idea came to Peter Cooper that he could utilize this bridge-iron in his school-building and thus get an absolutely fireproof structure. The ability of Peter Cooper to adapt himself to new conditions, turning failure into success, is here well illustrated.

Not until he had accumulated an overstock of bridge-iron did he think of using iron for the frames of buildings. It was the first structural use of iron to re-enforce stone and brick, in America.

Cooper Union was nearly five years in building. A financial panic had set in, and business was at a stand-still. But Peter did not cheapen his plan, and the idea of abandoning it never occurred to him.

The land and the building cost him six hundred thirty thousand dollars and came near throwing him into bankruptcy. But business revived and he pulled through, to the loss of reputation of many good men who had persistently prophesied failure. Be it said to the credit of his family that the household, too, partook of the dream and lent their aid.

Altogether, the assets of Cooper Union are now above two million dollars.

The ideal man in the mind of Peter Cooper was Benjamin Franklin. He wanted to help the apprentice—the poor boy. He saw many young men dissipating their energies at saloons and other unprofitable places. If he could provide a place where these young men could find entertainment and opportunity to improve their minds, it would be a great gain. Peter Cooper thought that we are educated through the sense of curiosity quite as much as in reading books. So Cooper Union provided a museum of waxworks and many strange, natural-history specimens. There was also an art-gallery, a collection of maps and statuary; and a lecture-hall was placed in the basement of the building. Peter Cooper had once seen a panic occur in a hall located on a second story and the people fell over one another in a mass on the stairway. He said a panic was not likely to occur going upstairs. This hall is a beautiful and effective assembly-room, even yet. It seats nineteen hundred people, and the audience so surrounds the speaker that it does not impress one as being the vast auditorium which it is.

Cooper Union has always been the home of free speech. Next to Faneuil Hall it is the most distinguished auditorium in America, from a historic standpoint.

William Cullen Bryant, Edward Everett, Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillips, and every great speaker of the time, spoke here. Victoria Woodhull brought much scandal on the devoted head of Peter Cooper when he allowed her to use the platform to ventilate her peculiar views. Peter Cooper met the criticism by inviting her to come back and speak again. She did so, being introduced by Theodore Tilton. Here came Lincoln, the gaunt and homely, and spoke before he was elected President. His "Cooper Union Speech" is a memorable document, although it was given without notes and afterwards written out by Lincoln, who seemed surprised that any one should care to read it.

The speech given in Cooper Union by Robert G. Ingersoll lifted him from the rank of a Western lawyer to national prominence in a single day. Other men had criticized the Christian religion, but no man of power on a public platform had up to that time in America expressed his abhorrence and contempt for it. The reputation of Ingersoll had preceded him. He had given his lecture in Peoria, then in Chicago, and now he made bold to ask Peter Cooper for permission to use the historic hall. Cooper responded with eagerness. There was talk of a mob when the papers announced an "infidel speech."

The auspicious night came, and Peter Cooper himself introduced the speaker. He sat on the platform during the address, at times applauding vigorously. It was an epoch, but then Peter Cooper was an epoch-making man. Cooper Union is now conducted along the identical lines laid out by its founder.

It is a Free University, dedicated to the People. It has a yearly enrolment of over thirty-five hundred pupils. Only three Universities in America surpass it in numbers. Its courses are designed to cover the needs of practical, busy people. Art, architecture, engineering, business and chemistry are its principal features. Its fine reading-room and library have a yearly attendance of a million visitors. The great hall is used almost every night in the year. And just remember that this has continued for fifty years.

When the building was put up, there were no passenger-elevators in New York, or elsewhere. Peter Cooper's mechanical mind saw that higher buildings would demand mechanical lifts, and so he provided a special elevator-shaft. He saw his prophecy come true, and there is now an elevator in the place he provided. The demand now upon the building overtaxes its capacity.

The influx of foreign population in New York City makes the needs of Cooper Union even more imperative than they were fifty years ago. So additional buildings are now under way, and with increased funds from various worthy and noble people, Cooper Union is taking a new lease of life and usefulness. And into all the work there goes the unselfish devotion, the patience and the untiring spirit of Peter Cooper, apprentice, mechanic, inventor, businessman, financier, philosopher and friend of humanity.



ANDREW CARNEGIE

I congratulate poor young men upon being born to that ancient and honorable degree which renders it necessary that they should devote themselves to hard work.

—Andrew Carnegie



The fact that Andrew Carnegie is a Scotsman has, so far as I know, never been refuted nor denied. Scotland is a wonderful country in which to slip the human product. Then when this product is transplanted to a more sunshiny soil we sometimes get a world-beater.

Scotland is a good country to be born in; and it is a good country to get out of; and at times it may be a good country to go back to.

I once attended a dinner given to James Barrie in London. One of the speakers sprung the usual joke about how when the Scotch leave Scotland they never go back. When Barrie arose to reply he said: "Perhaps it is true that the Scotch, when they leave their native land, seldom return. If so, there is surely precedent. In truth, Englishmen have been known to go to Scotland, and never return. Once there was quite a company of Englishmen went to Scotland and they never returned. The place where they went was Bannockburn." In literature Scotland has exceeded her quota. From Adam Smith, with his deathless "Wealth of Nations," and Tammas, the Techy Titan, with his "French Revolution," to Bobbie Burns and Robert Louis, the Well-Beloved, we have a people who have been saying things and doing things since John Knox made pastoral calls on Mary Queen of Scots, and saw the devil's tail behind her chair.

Doctor Johnson pretended to hate the Scotch, but he lives for us only because he was well Boswellized by a Scotchman. And now nobody knows just how much of Boswell is Doctor Johnson and how much is Boswell.

What Connecticut has done for New England, Scotland did for Great Britain. The Scotch gave us the iron ship, the lamp-chimney, the telephone. Also, they supplied us Presbyterianism. And this being true, they also supplied the antidote in David Hume.

We have been told that it is necessary to agree with a Scotsman or else kill him. But this is a left-handed libel, like unto the statement that the reason the Scotch cling to breeks is because the breeks have no pockets, and when the drinks are mentioned Sandy fumbles for siller, but is never able to find the price, and so lets some one else foot the bill. Another bit of classic persiflage is to the effect that there are no Jews in Scotland, because they could no more exist there than they could in New Hampshire, and this for a like reason: they find competition too severe.

The canny Scot with his beautiful "nearness" lives in legend and story in a thousand forms. The pain a Scotsman suffers on having to part with a shilling is pictured by Ian MacLaren and Sir Walter. Then came Christopher North and Doctor John Brown with deathless Scotch stories of sacrifice and unselfishness that shame the world, and secure the tribute of our tears.

To speak of the Scotch as having certain exclusive characteristics is to be a mental mollycoddle. As a people they have all the characteristics that make strong men and women, and they have them, plus. The Scotch supply us the eternal paradox. Against the tales of money meanness and miserly instincts, we have Andrew Carnegie, who has given away more money in noble causes than any other man who has ever lived since history began.

The Scotch stand in popular estimate for religious bigotry, yet the offense of Andrew Carnegie to a vast number of people is his liberal attitude of mind in all matters pertaining to religion. Then the Scotch are supposed to be a pugnacious, quarrelsome and fighting people, but here is a man who has made his name known as the symbol of disarmament and international peace.

Those three great and good Scotsmen, leaders in the world of business—James Oliver, Philip D. Armour and Andrew Carnegie—were each the very antithesis of dogmatists and sectarians. They respected all religions, but had implicit faith in none. All were learners; all were men of peace; all had a firm hold on the plain, old, simple virtues which can not be waived when you make up your formula for a man. They were industrious, systematic, economical, persistent and physically sound. If there is any secret in the success of the Scotch it lies in the fact that they are such good animals. The basis of life is physical. The climate of Scotland makes for a sturdy manhood that pays cash and seldom apologizes for being on earth.

Unlike James Oliver and Philip Armour, Andrew Carnegie is small in stature. He belongs to the type of big little men, of which Napoleon, Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and General Grant are examples—deep-chested, strong-jawed, well-poised, big little men who wear the crowns of their heads high and their chins in. These are good men to agree with. They carry no excess baggage. They travel light. They can change their minds and plans easily. Such men take charge of things by a sort of divine right.

* * * * *

Now, be it known that Andrew Carnegie was born in decent poverty at Dunfermline, Fifeshire, Scotland, in the year Eighteen Hundred Thirty-seven.

His father was a weaver by trade. This was in the day of the hand-loom. There were four damask-looms in the Carnegie house, worked by the family and apprentices. There was no ring-up clock, and no walking delegates were in evidence. When business was good these looms sang their merry tunes far into the night. When business was dull, perhaps one loom echoed its tired solo. Then there came a time when there was no work; hopeless melancholy settled on the little household, and drawn, anxious faces looked into other faces from which hope had fled.

Steam was coming in, and the factories were starving out the roycrofters. It is hard to change—in order to change your mind, you must change your environment.

The merchants used to buy their materials and take them to the weaver, and tell him how they wanted the cloth made. The weaver never thought that he could get up a new pattern, buy materials and devise a scheme whereby one man could tend four looms—or fourteen—and advertise his product so the consumer would demand it, and thus force the merchant to buy.

Aye, and if that didn't work, the whole blooming bunch of middlemen who batten and fatten between the factory and the family could be eliminated, and the arrogant retailer, wholesaler, factor and agent be placed on the retired list through the Mail-Order Plan. Or, aye again, the consumers' wants could be anticipated as they are by The Standard Oil Company, and the gentlemanly salesman, psychic in his instincts, would be at the door in answer to your sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed.

When the times changed, Carnegie the Elder was undone. A few years later and his son Andy could have shown him fifty-seven ways by which the consumer could be reached. Andy would have known only one defeat, and that would have come when all the consumers were dead and ceased to consume. When Carnegie the Elder quit the loom, the consumers were using more cloth than ever, but the goods were being made in a new way. "Hunger is the first incentive to migration," says Adam Smith.

Hunger and danger in right proportion are good things. It is a great idea for a woman who would give to the world superior sons, to marry a man without too much ambition. If too much is done for a woman she will never do much for herself. This proves that she is a human being, whether she can vote or not.

Hunger, hardship, deprivation breed big virtues. Before deeds are born they are merely thoughts or aspirations. The desire to better her condition, and the struggle with unkind fate on behalf of her children, often is the heritage of mother to son. The mother endows the child with a tendency—a great moral tendency—a reaching out towards a success which she has never seen, as planet responds to the attraction of planet. And the things she dreamed, her child grown to manhood makes come true. Temperance fanatics are often the offspring of drunken parents. Shiftless fathers breed financiers. We are taught by antithesis.

Andrew Carnegie is the son of his mother. When the looms stopped and the piteous voice of the father said, "Andy, we have no work," the mother lifted up her voice and sang one of the songs of Zion. There were always morning prayers. When there was no work, the father would have forgotten the prayers, because there was nothing to be thankful for, and prayer wouldn't stop the steam-factory. "What's the use!" was the motto of Carnegie the Elder.

The mother led the prayers just the same. There was a reading from the Bible. Then each one present responded with a verse of Scripture. Legend says that little Andy, once, at seven years of age, when it came his turn to give a verse from the Bible, handed in this: "Let every tub stand on its own bottom." But as the quotation was not exactly acceptable, he tried again with this: "Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves." Thus do we see that the orphic habit was already beginning to germinate.

Before Andrew Carnegie was ten years old he had evolved a beautiful hatred of kings, princes and all hereditary titles. There was only one nobility for him, and that was the nobility of honest effort. To live off another's labor was to him a sin. To eat and not earn was a crime. These sterling truths were the inheritance of mother to son. And these convictions Andrew Carnegie still holds and has firmly held since childhood's days.

The other day, in reading a book on military tactics, I came across this: "An army has but two duties to perform: one is to fight the enemy and the other is to evade the enemy." Which duty is the more important the writer did not say. So let that pass. There are two ways of dealing with misery. One is to stay and fight the demon to a finish, and the other way is to beat a hasty and honorable retreat.

"There is no work."

"Then we will go where work is," said the mother of a multimillionaire-to-be. The furniture went to pay the grocer. The looms were sold for a song. The debts were paid, and there was enough, with the contribution of a ten-pound note by a fond uncle, to buy passage to New York for the father, mother, Thomas and Andrew. It was the year Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight. Thomas was sixteen, and Andrew was eleven. Tom was more handsome than Andy, but Andy had the most to say. The Carnegies came to Pittsburgh, because the mother's two sisters from Dunfermline were in Pittsburgh, and they had always gotten enough to eat. Then the sound of the name was good, and to this day Andrew Carnegie spells the final syllable "burgh," and pronounces it with a loving oatmeal burr.

It was seven weeks in a sailing-ship to New York, and one week to Pittsburgh by rail and raging canal.

The land of promise proved all that had been promised. The Carnegies wanted jobs—they did not wait to accept situations. The father found a place in a cotton-mill at a dollar and a half a day. Andy slipped in as bobbin-boy and got one dollar and twenty cents a week. Five shillings a week, all his own—to be laid in his mother's lap each Saturday night—spelled paradise. He was helping to support the household! To know you are useful, and realize that you are needed, is a great stimulus to growth. Never again did the Carnegies hear that muffled groan, "There is no work!" The synonym of the word "Carnegie" is work.

In a year little Andy had graduated to the boiler-room at two dollars a week. It was twelve hours a day, a constant watching of water-gauges, and a feeling of bearings for hotboxes.

Andy used to awaken the family in the dead of the night by roaring out in hot-mush accents, "The boiler, it ha' busted!" And being shaken into wakefulness the boy was much relieved to know that it was only a horrid dream, and the factory had not been blown into kingdom come because a wee laddie, red-headed and freckled, had nodded at his work.

"A rolling stone gathers no moss." This is true. However, it is also true that if it does not gather moss, it may acquire polish.

Andrew Carnegie from boyhood had the habit of using his head as well as his hands. The two years in the boiler and engine room of a little factory did him a lot of good.

But when fourteen he firmly felt that he had to get out towards the sunlight, just as potatoes in a dark cellar will in the Spring send their sprouts reaching out towards the windows.

In Pittsburgh at this time was a young man by the name of Douglass Reid, who was born in Edinburgh. On Sunday afternoon Reid used to visit the Carnegies and talk about old times and new. Reid was an expert telegraph-operator, and afterwards wrote "A History of the Telegraph." The more he saw of Andy the more sure he was that the lad could learn the dot and dash, and be an honor to the profession.

The Carnegies had never had a telegraph-message come to them, and didn't want one, for folks only get messages when some one is dead.

The way you learned "the key" then was to start in as messenger, and when there were no messages, to hang around the office and pick up the mystery by induction. One great drawback to acting as messenger was that Andy did not know the streets. So he started in memorizing the names of all the business firms on Penn Avenue, up one side and down the other. Then he tackled Liberty Street, Smithfield Street and Fifth Avenue. At home nights, he would shut his eyes and call the names until the household cried for mercy and shrieked, "Hold, enough!"

Before the operators got around in the morning, the boys used the keys, calling up other boys up and down the line. Needless to say, young Andy didn't spend all of his time on the streets. A substitute operator was needed one day, and Andy volunteered to fill the place. He filled it so well that the regular man, who was a bit irregular in his habits, was given a permanent vacation. At this time all of the telegraph business was taken care of from the railroad-offices, just as it is now in most villages.

"Who is the sandy, freckled one?" once asked Thomas A. Scott, Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. "He's a Scot from Scotland, and his name is Carnegie," was the answer.

The play on words pleased Mr. Scott. He got into the habit of sending his messages by young Carnegie. And when one day he discovered that the Scotch lad had spoken of him as "Tomscot" over the wire, the economy of the proceeding so pleased him that he took Andy into his personal service at a raise of ten dollars a month.

About this time there came a sleet-storm which carried down the wires. Volunteers who could climb were in demand. Young Carnegie's work indoors had reduced his physical powers, so climbing was beyond his ability. It was a pivotal point. Had he been able to climb he might have evolved into a construction boss. As it was he stuck to his desk, and eventually owned the line.

Thus did he prove Darwin's dictum that we are evolved by our weakness quite as much as through our strength.

Daniel Webster once said that the great disadvantage in the practise of law is that the better you do your work, the more difficult are the cases that come to you. It is the same in railroading—or anything else, for that matter. Cheap men can take care of the cheap jobs. The reward for all good work is not rest, but more work, and harder work. Thomas A. Scott was a man of immense initiative—his was the restless, tireless, ambitious nature which makes up the composite that we call the American Spirit.

Andrew Carnegie very early in life developed the same characteristics. He never made hasty and ill-digested suggestions and then left them to others to carry out. When young Carnegie, just turned into his twenties, became private secretary to Thomas A. Scott, he was getting along as well, I thank you, as could be expected. And nobody was more delighted than Andy's mother—not even Andy himself. And most of Andy's joy in his promotions came from the pleasure which his mother found in his advancement.

* * * * *

When Thomas A. Scott became President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Andrew Carnegie became Superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division, as a matter of course. His salary was fifteen hundred dollars a year. And this was the topmost turret of the tower: it was as far as the ambition of either the mother or the young man could fly. But the end was not yet.

Thomas Alexander Scott was born at the forgotten hamlet of London, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. London, Pennsylvania, did not flourish as its founders had expected. Behold the folly of giving big names to little things. Caesar Augustus Jones used to be the town fool of East Aurora, until he was crowded to the wall by Oliver Cromwell Robinson.

Scott walked out of his native village—a lad of ten who warmed his feet on October mornings where the cows had lain down. Later he came back and bought the county. Scott was a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, and he also took several post-graduate courses. He received knocks all his life—and gave them. His parents had come from bonny Scotland, and it was a joke along the whole line of the Pennsylvania Railroad that a man with red hair and a hot-mush brogue could always get a job by shouting "Hoot, mon!" at "Tomscot."

Scott loved Andy as well, probably, as he ever loved any one outside of his own family. He loved him because he was Scotch, and he loved him because he rounded up every task he attempted. He loved him because he smiled at difficulty; and he loved him because he never talked back and said, "We never did it that way before."

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-one, President Lincoln made Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of War.

Cameron was awfully Scotch, although I believe he was accidentally born in America. Cameron in time made Thomas A. Scott Assistant Secretary of War. And Thomas A. Scott made Andrew Carnegie Superintendent of United States Railways and Telegraphs. Lincoln once said that it was the most difficult and exacting position in the whole government service.

The bent of the minds of both Scott and Carnegie was towards construction and peace. They were builders, financiers and diplomats. They accepted government position as a duty and they did their work nobly and well. But if these men had had their way there would have been no war. They would have bought the slaves and paid for them, and at a price which we have paid out for pensions and interest on the war debt every year since. They would have organized the South on an industrial basis and made it blossom like the rose, instead of stripping it and starving it into a dogged submission.

The lessons Carnegie learned in war-time burned deep into his soul, and helped to make him as he is today, the foremost exponent of international disarmament in the world. The game of finance Carnegie learned from Scott, his foster-father. When but a salaried clerk Carnegie was once called into Scott's office. "Andy, I know where you can buy ten shares of Adams' Express stock—you had better get it!" "But I have no money," said Andy. "Then go out and borrow some!" And Andy did, the mother mortgaging their little home to raise the money—she never failed her Andy. He bought the stock at par. It was worth a third more, and paid dividends "every few minutes," to use the phrase of Scott. There is a suspicion that Scott threw this little block of stock in the way of Andy on purpose.

It was an object-lesson in finance. Scott taught by indirection and did good by stealth.

When Carnegie helped to organize the Woodruff Sleeping-Car Company, which later was absorbed by the Pullman Company, he was well out on the highway to fortune. Next came investments in oil-lands, and Andrew Carnegie, twenty-seven years of age, sold his oil interests for a decently few hundred thousand dollars.

At this time all the bridges on the Pennsylvania Railroad were made of wood. It was a wooded country, and the natural thing was to use the material at hand. But there were fires, accidents, washouts, and the prophetic vision of Andrew Carnegie foresaw a time when all railroad-bridges would be made of iron. He organized the Keystone Bridge Works, and took a contract to build a railroad-bridge across the Ohio River. The work was a success, and practically the Keystone Bridge Works was without a competitor in America. But America was buying most of her iron in Birmingham.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-eight, Andrew Carnegie made a trip to Europe, taking his mother with him. He was then thirty-one years old and a man of recognized worth and power. The pride of the mother in her son was modest yet profound, and his regard for her judgment, even in bridge-building and railroad affairs, was sincere and earnest. Besides, she was a good listener, and by explaining his plans to his mother, Andy got them straight in his own mind.

The trip to Europe was for the double purpose of seeing whether old Dunfermline was really the delightful spot that memory pictured, and of getting the latest points in bridge-building and iron-making. Timber was scarce in England, and iron bridges and iron boats were coming as an actual necessity.

Sir Henry Bessemer had invented his process of blowing a blast of cold air through the molten metal and thus converting iron into steel. The plan was simple, easy and effective. The distinguishing feature of Andrew Carnegie's mind has always been his ability to put salt on the tail of an idea. He came back from England with the Bessemer process well outlined in his square red head. Others had put the invention through the experimental stage—he waited. That shows your good railroadman. Let your inventors invent—most of their inventions are worthless—when the thing is right we will take it on.

The Carnegie fortune owes its secret to the Bessemer steel rail. The fishplate instead of the frog, and the steel rail in place of the good old snakehead! "The song of the rail" died out to a low continuous hum when Carnegie began making steel rails and showed the section-hands how to bolt them together as one.

Andrew Carnegie was a practical railroadman. He knew the buyers of supplies and he knew how to convince them that they needed his product. Manufacturing is a matter of formula, but salesmanship is genius. Moreover, to get the money to equip great factories is genius, and up to the Nineties the Carnegie Mills were immense borrowers of capital.

Our socialistic friends sometimes criticize Andrew Carnegie for making the vast amount of money that he has. We can't swear a halibi for him, and so my excuse for the man is this: He never knew it was loaded—it was largely accidental. In truth he couldn't help making the money. Fate forced it on him. He has played this game of business for all there was in him. And he has played it according to the rules. Carnegie has never been a speculator. He is no gambler. He never bought a share of stock on margin in his life. The only thing he has ever bet on has been his ability to execute. He has been a creator and a builder. That his efforts should have brought him this tremendous harvest of dolodocci is a surprise to him. He knew there would be a return, but the size of the return no living man was able to foresee or foretell.

Andrew Carnegie has acted on the times, and the times have acted on him. He is a product—a child, if you please—of Opportunity and Divine Energy.

* * * * *

When James Anderson, of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, stagecoach boss and ironmaster, about the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty threw open his library to the public, he did a great thing.

Anderson owned four or five hundred books. Any one who wanted to read these books was welcome to do so. Especially were the boys made welcome. Anderson did not know what a portentous thing he was doing—nobody does when he does a big thing. Actions bear fruit—sometimes.

And into Anderson's library, one Sunday afternoon, walked a diffident, wee Scotch laddie, who worked in a boiler-room all the week. "Where would you like to begin?" asked Mr. Anderson, kindly. And the boy answered, as another boy by the name of Thomas A. Edison answered on a like occasion, "If you please, I'll begin here." And he pointed to the end of a shelf. And he read through that library, a shelf at a time. He got the library habit.

Andrew Carnegie has given away two thousand libraries. The first library built by Mr. Carnegie was in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-seven, at Braddock, Pennsylvania. This was for the benefit, primarily, of the employees of the Carnegie Steel Works.

In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-nine, it was suggested that the city of Allegheny was in need of a library, quite as much as was Braddock. Mr. Carnegie proposed to build a library, art-gallery and music-hall combined, at a cost of three hundred thousand dollars, provided the city would supply the site, and agree to raise fifteen thousand dollars a year for maintenance. The offer was accepted and the building built, but at a cost of nearly one hundred thousand dollars more than was expected.

Yet Mr. Carnegie did not complain. To show that his heart was with the venture, he also presented a ten-thousand-dollar organ for the hall. It was a first attempt, but the "North Side Library" is a model of beauty and convenience today.

The way in which the people of Allegheny awakened, responded and availed themselves of the benefits to be obtained from the Carnegie Library at Allegheny was most gratifying. The place was formally dedicated on February Thirteenth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety. President Harrison was present and made an address. The music for the occasion was supplied by "Young Damrosch" and his orchestra. Leopold Damrosch, the noted leader, had died only a few years before, and his son Walter had taken up his work. The manly ways of "Young Damrosch" and his superb skill as a conductor made an impression on Mr. Carnegie then and there that bore speedy fruit.

In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-one, Mr. Carnegie built the Carnegie Music-Hall at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue in New York City, especially with Walter Damrosch and the Damrosch needs in mind. I have spoken in this hall a score or more of times, and I never stand upon its spacious platform but that I think with admiration of the ironmaster who had the courage to back with two million dollars his faith in the musical appreciation of New York City.

It is good to know that the prophetic business instincts of Mr. Carnegie did not here play him false. The various offices and studios connected with the splendid auditorium were quickly rented, and the investment has paid a fair return from the first. When it was built it was the noblest auditorium in America. One of its chief benefits has been to show the people of America that such a building will pay. For one thing, it gave certain Western capitalists heart to erect the Fine Arts Building in Chicago. And now in a dozen cities of the United States there are great auditoriums where big events, musical and oratorical, bring the people together in a way that enlarges their spiritual horizon. Andrew Carnegie has ever had a passion for music. At Skibo Castle the meals are announced by bagpipe. Of course I admit that whether the bagpipe is a musical instrument or not is a matter of argument, for just what constitutes music my Irish friend, George Bernard Shaw, says is a point of view.

Andrew Carnegie has given the musical interests of America an immense impulse. His presentation of pipe-organs to churches, schools and halls bids fair to revive the age of Sebastian Bach. "Music helps us to get rid of our whims, prejudices and petty notions," says Andrew Carnegie. The famous Pittsburgh Orchestra was first made possible by his encouragement, and without Carnegie we would have had no Damrosch, or at least a different Damrosch.

From almost its inauguration, Mr. Carnegie has been President of the New York Oratorio, and for many years President of the Philharmonic Society.

I was once present at a meeting of this Society when a memorial volume of thanks from "The Philharmonic" was presented to Mr. Carnegie. The book contained the autographs of every member, working and honorary, of the association. Among the rest I added my name to the list. Shortly after the presentation exercises I met Mr. Carnegie on the stairs. He had the book under his arm. He graciously thanked me for adding my name, and spoke of how he prized my autograph. I replied somewhat loftily, "Oh, don't mention it—it is nothing—it is nothing!" And then I felt how feeble my attempted pleasantry was. To Mr. Carnegie it was no joke. In fact, he was as tickled with his book of names, and its assurance of affection, as a girl who has just been presented by her lover with a volume of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's poems. Then I saw how sensitive and tender is the heart of this most busy man, and how precious to him is human fellowship. This is a side of his nature that was new to me.

Shakespeare says, "Sad is the lot of princes." They are pushed out and away from the common heart of humanity. Most of the men they meet want something, and as these folks want the thing they want awful bad, they never tell the prince the truth. In his presence they are like brass monkeys, or, more properly, like monkeys filled with monkey desires. They are shorn of all human attributes. Pity the lot of the multimillionaire who has most incautiously allowed it to become known that he considers it "a disgrace for any man to die rich."

Five hundred letters a day are sent to Andrew Carnegie, with suggestions concerning the best way in which he can escape disgrace. The lazzaroni of America are as bad as the same tribe in Italy, only they play for bigger stakes. The altruistic graft is as greedy as the grab of commercialism, that much-berated thing.

Mr. Carnegie can not walk a block on Broadway without being beset by would-be philanthropists who offer to pit their time against his money, and thereby redeem the world from its sin and folly. And these philanthropists do not realize for a moment that they are, for the most part, plain grabheimers from Grabville. And all of their pious plans for human betterment have their root in a selfish desire for personal aggrandizement. Mr. Carnegie's plan of giving only where the parties themselves also agree to give is a most wise and prudent move.

The town that accepts thirty thousand dollars for a library and agrees to raise three thousand a year to maintain it, is neither pamperized, patronized nor pauperized. In ten years the town has put as much money into the venture as did Mr. Carnegie. Like Nature, Andrew Carnegie is a good deal of a schemer. Ask a town to start in and raise three thousand dollars a year for library purposes, and the whole Common Council, His Honor the Mayor, and the Board of Education will throw a cataleptic fit. But get them fired with a desire to secure thirty thousand dollars from Mr. Carnegie, and they make the promise to love, honor, obey—and maintain—and strangely enough, they do. An action for non-support is a mighty disgraceful thing. It is a wonderful bit of psychology—this giving with an obligation—and Andrew Carnegie is not only the Prince of Ironmasters, but he is a pedagogic prestidigitator, and an artistic financial hypnotist. Not only does he give the library, but he sets half the town hustling to maintain it. The actual good comes, not from the library building, but from the human impulses set in motion—the direction given to thousands of lives. The library is merely an excuse—a rallying-point—and around it swings and centers the best life of the town.

This working for a common cause dilutes the sectarian ego, dissolves village caste, makes neighbor acquainted with neighbor, and liberates a vast amount of human love which otherwise would remain hermetically sealed. Gossip is only the lack of a worthy theme. A town library supplies topics for talk, and the books there supply ten thousand more. To accept a Carnegie library means to take on an obligation. Achievement always stands for responsibility. "Is it possible that you are nervous?" asked the man of Abraham Lincoln when the orator was about to appear before an audience. "Young man," was the reply, "young man, I have spoken well." To have done well and then live up to your record is a serious matter. Responsibility is ballast. A town that has taken on a Carnegie Library is one big committee intent on making the thing a success. There is furniture needed, pictures to secure, statuary to select, books to buy. A Carnegie Library is usually an annex to the High School.

O most clever, cunning and canny Carnegie! did you know how great and wise was your scheme? Not at all, any more than when you were a bobbin-boy you could have guessed that one day you would own two hundred fifty million dollars in five-per-cent bonds. You are as much astonished as any one to see the perfection of your plan. Like all great men, you sail under sealed orders.

As you "worked" the people by allowing them to "work" you for a gift, which once secured turns out to be not gift but a responsibility, so has a Supreme Something been using you for a purpose you wist and wot not of. And the end, it seems, is not yet.

* * * * *

The only time I ever heard Mr. Carnegie relate one of my pleasing stories was at a banquet of railroad officials, some months ago, in New York. Be it said, as a matter of truth, that Mr. Carnegie gave me due credit, although if he had not mentioned my name I would have been complimented to know that he had read the Good Stuff closely and pondered it well. As brother authors, you will please take notice that we observe the amenities.

So here is the story: One lowering Fall day I was walking along the road that leads from the village to my farm, two miles out of town. And as I trudged along I saw a horseshoe in the middle of the road. Now, I never go by a horseshoe—it means good luck!

So I picked up the horseshoe, and instantly my psychic sky seemed to brighten. And as I walked along with the horseshoe in my hand I saw another horseshoe in the road. "Everything is coming my way," I said. I picked up the second horseshoe, and then I had one in each hand.

I had gone about a quarter of a mile when I saw two more horseshoes right together in the road. "It seems as if some one is working me," I said. I looked around and could see no one. "And anyway, I accept the bluff," I said to myself, as I picked up the two horseshoes. Then I had two horseshoes in each hand, but I wasn't four times as happy as when I had one.

I had gone about a quarter of a mile when I saw a pile of horseshoes in the road. "I've got 'em, I fear!" I said to myself. But I braced up and walking up to the pile of horseshoes I kicked into them. They were horseshoes all right.

And just then I saw a man coming down the street picking up horseshoes in a bag. I watched him with dazed eyes and swallowed hard as I tried to comprehend the meaning of this strange combination. Just then I saw the man's horse and wagon ahead.

He was a junk gentleman and had lost the tailboard out of his wagon and been strewing horseshoes all along the way. He called to me and said, "Hey, ol' man, dem's my horseshoes!" "I know," said I; "I've been picking them up for you." And the moral is: While it is true that one horseshoe brings you good luck, a load of horseshoes is junk.

* * * * *

In way of personal endowments, Mr. Carnegie has favored two individuals: Booker T. Washington and Luther Burbank. And so far as I know, these are the only men in America who should be endowed. Even the closest search, as well as a careful scrutiny in the mirror, fails to find any one else whom it would be wise or safe to make immune from the struggle.

To make a man secure against the exigencies of life is to kill his ambition and destroy his incentive. To transform a man into a jellyfish, give him a fixed allowance, regardless of what he does. This truth also applies to women. Women will never be free until they are economically free.

The fifteen million dollars which Mr. Carnegie has given for a pension-fund for superannuated college professors is quite another thing from pensioning a man so he will be free to work out his ideal. The only people who have ideals are those in the fight.

But even this beneficent pension-fund for teachers turned out to grass requires the most delicate and skilful handling. Several instances have already arisen where colleges have retired men well able to work, in order that these men might secure the pensions and the college could put in younger men at half-price. There has even been a suspicion that the pensioner "divvied" with the college.

To supply an incentive or temptation for a man in middle life to quit work in order that he may secure a pension is a danger which the donor mildly anticipated, but which he finds it very hard to guard against. What is "middle life"? Ah, it depends upon the man. Some men are young at seventy, and Professor Mommsen at eighty was at the very height of his power. Some teachers want to "retire," others don't. Nature knows nothing of pensions. Let each man be paid for his labor and let him understand that economy of expenditure is the true and only insurance against want in old age.

The pensioning of the youth is really more dangerous than to pension age. The youth should ask for nothing but opportunity. To make him immune from work and economy is to supply him a ticket—one way—to Matteawan.

In order to educate a boy for life, we should not lift him out of life. The training for life should slide into life at an unknown and unrecognizable point. The boy born into poverty, who fetches in wood for his mother and goes after the cows, has already entered upon a career. His brown bare feet are carrying messages, and his hands are taking on the habit of helpfulness. He is getting under the burden; and such a one will never be a parasite on society.

In East Aurora there used to live a noted horseman. He bred, raised, trained and drove several trotters that made world's records. Then behold another man comes on the scene—and a good man, too—and says, "Go to, I will raise and train horses that will go so fast that Pa Hamlin's horses will do only for the plow."

So he built a covered and enclosed track, a mile around. It cost nearly a hundred thousand dollars. And here the wise one was to train his colts all Winter, while the other man's horses ran barefoot, and with long woolly coats plowed through snowdrifts waiting for Spring to come with chirrup of birds and good roads.

Result—the man with the covered track had his horses "fit" in April, but in July and August, when the races begin, they had "gone past." Moreover, it was discovered that horses trained on a covered track could not be raced with safety on an open course. The roofed track had shut the horse in, giving him a feeling of protection and safety; but when he got on an open track, the sun, the sky, the crowds, the moving vehicles, sent him into a nervous dance. A bird flying overhead would stampede him. He lost his head and wore out his nerve.

But the horses that had been woolly in February grew sleek in May, and being trained in the open grew used to the sights, and for them every day was a race-day. In August they were hard and cool and level-headed, and always had one link left when called upon at the home-stretch.

The covered track was all right in theory, but false in practise. It ruined a thousand colts, and never produced a single trotter. Don't train either horses or children indoors, and out of season, and expect a world-beater.

Next, make your teaching and training, life, not an indoor make-believe. The school that approximates life will be the school whose pupils make records. What is needed now is a line of colleges in the North that will do for white folks what Booker T. Washington does for the colored. And the reason we do not have such schools is because we have not yet evolved men big enough as teachers to couple business and books.

The men who can make money can't teach, and those who can teach can't make money. The man of the future will do both. Tuskegee has no servants, no menials, and employs no laborers. The work of housing and feeding two thousand persons is all student labor. This is a great achievement. But the university that is to come will go beyond Tuskegee in this: it will supply commodities to supply to the world what the world wants.

Three or four hours of manual labor a day will not harm either the body or the brain of a growing youth. On the other hand, such a course will give steadiness to life. This labor will be paid for, so the student will be independent of all outside help at all times. Thus will it make for manhood and self-reliance.

* * * * *

Mr. Carnegie's success, like that of every master businessman, has turned on his selection of men. He has always been on the lookout for young men who could carry the Message.

His success proves his ability to judge humanity. Whenever he was sure he had the genuine article he would tender the young man an interest in the business, often a percentage on sales or output. This was the plan of Marshall Field.

By this method he transformed a good man into a master, and bound the man to him in a way that no outside influence could lend a lure. The only disadvantage in this, Mr. Carnegie says, is that when the young man becomes a millionaire you may have him for a competitor, but even with this risk, it is much wiser than to try to carry all the burden yourself. A multimillionaire should raise a goodly brood of millionaires, and of necessity does. Wise is the man who sees to it that he has an understudy.

Once upon a time, along in the Eighties, Mr. Carnegie got somewhat overworked and took a trip to Europe. Just before going, he went around and bade good-by to each of the Big Boys who ran the mills. One of these was Captain William Jones, more familiarly known to fame as plain Bill Jones. "Bill," said Mr. Carnegie, "I'm a bit weary and I feel I must get away, and the only place for me to go is Europe. I have to place an ocean between me and this mighty hum of industry before I can get rest. And do you know, Bill, no matter how oppressed I am, just as soon as I round Sandy Hook and get out of sight of land, I get perfect relief." And Bill answered, "And, O Lord, just think of the relief we all get," and everybody roared, Andy loudest of all. And the last thing that Andy did before sailing was to raise Bill's salary just ten thousand dollars a year.

Mr. Carnegie has always liked men who are not afraid of him; and when one of his workers could convince him that he—the worker—knew more about some particular phase of the business than Mr. Carnegie, that man was richly rewarded. Mr. Carnegie has ever been on friendly terms with his men.

And had he been in America when the Homestead labor trouble arose, there would have been no strike. He is firm when he should be, but he is always friendly. He is wise enough and big enough to give in a point. Like Lincoln, he likes to let people have their own way. He manages them, if need be, by indirection, rather than by formal edict, order and injunction.

* * * * *

Barbaric folk prize gold and make much use of silver. But the consumption of iron is the badge of civilization. Iron rails, iron steamboats, iron buildings! And who was there thirty years ago who foresaw the modern sky-scraper, any more than a hundred years ago men foretold the iron steamship!

The business of Andrew Carnegie has been to couple the iron-mines of Lake Superior with the coal-fields of Pennsylvania. And to load the ore at Duluth and transport it to Pittsburgh, a thousand miles away, and transform it into steel rails, was a matter of ten days. When the Carnegie Steel Company was reconstructed in Nineteen Hundred, it was with no intention of selling out. It was the biggest, best-organized business concern in America, with possibly one exception. Its capital was one hundred million dollars. It owned the Homestead, the Edgar Thomson and the Duquesne Mills. Besides these, it owned seven other smaller mills.

It owned thousands of acres of ore-land in the Lake Superior country. It owned a line of iron steamships that carried the ore to the Pittsburgh railroad connections. It owned the railroads that brought the ore from the mines to the docks, and it owned the docks. It owned vast coalmines in Pennsylvania, and it owned a controlling interest in the Connellville coke-ovens, whence five miles of freight-cars, in fair times, were daily sent to the mills, loaded with coke.

These properties were practically owned by Mr. Carnegie personally, and his was the controlling hand. He had a daily report from every mill, which in a few lines told just what the concern was doing. There was also a daily report from each branch office, and a report from the head cashier, where one line of figures presaged the financial weather. When "the billion-dollar trust"—the United States Steel Corporation—was formed, Mr. Carnegie sold his interests in the Carnegie plants to the new concern for two hundred fifty million dollars, and took his pay in five-per-cent bonds.

It was the biggest and cleanest clean-up ever consummated in the business world. As a financial get-away it has no rival in history.

There were many wise ones who said, "Oh, he will foreclose and have the works back in a few years." But not so—the United States Steel Corporation has made money and is making money, because it is being managed by men who, for the most part, were trained by Carnegie in the financial way they should go.

As far as money is concerned, Mr. Carnegie could have made much more by staying in business than by selling out, but Andrew Carnegie quit one job to take up a harder one. "To die a millionaire will yet be a disgrace," he said. To give away money is easy, but to give it away wisely, so it will benefit the world for generations to come—that is a most difficult and exacting task.

The quarter of a thousand million in Steel Bonds did not constitute Mr. Carnegie's whole wealth. He had several little investments outside of that. In fact, that clever saying, "Put all your eggs in one basket," is exoteric, not esoteric. What Mr. Carnegie really meant was, if you are only big enough to watch one basket, to have two were folly. Mr. Carnegie himself has always had his eggs in a dozen or so baskets, but he never has had any more baskets than he could watch. His baskets were usually coupled together like the "grasshopper," which pumps several oil-wells with one engine. Wealth is good for those who can use it; power the same; but when you cease to manage a thing and the thing begins to manage you, it may eat you up.

In East Aurora there used to be a good friend of mine who had a peanut-stand at the station. The business flourished and some one advised my friend that he should put in popcorn as a sideline. He did so, and got nervous prostration. You see, he was a peanut man, and when he got outside of his specialty he was lost. One realizes the herculean task of dying poor which confronts Mr. Carnegie, when you think that he is worth, say, five hundred million dollars. This is invested so that it brings an income of five per cent, or twenty-five million dollars a year.

So far, Mr. Carnegie has been barely able to give away his income, to say nothing of the principal. His total benefactions up to the present time amount to about two hundred millions. He has nearly worked the territory with libraries. You can't give two libraries to a town, except in the big cities—people protest and will not have them. There is a limit to pipe-organs.

Heroes are so plentiful that it is more or less absurd to distinguish them with medals. Dunfermline is almost done for by a liberality that would damn any American town.

To give faster than people grow is to run the grave risk of arresting development. A benefaction must bestow a benefit. Give to most people and they will quit work and get a job with George Arliss, for the devil still finds mischief for idle hands to do.

To relieve the average man from work would simply increase the trade in cigarettes, cocaine, bromide and strong drink, and supply candidates for Sing Sing. To make a vast fortune and then lose the tailboard out of your hearse and dump your wealth on a lazy world merely causes the growler to circulate rapidly. And so we sympathize with Andrew Carnegie in his endeavor to live up to his dictum to die poor, and yet not pauperize the world by his wealth. But let us not despond. The man is only seventy-eight. His eyes are bright; his teeth are firm; his form is erect; his limbs are agile; and his brain is at its best. Most hopeful sign of all, he can laugh. He can even laugh at himself. If this counts for anything at all, it means sanity and length of days.



GEORGE PEABODY

The great deeds for human betterment must be done by individuals—they can never be done by the many.

—George Peabody



George Peabody was a noted American merchant and banker. He was born in the village of Danvers, Massachusetts, in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-five. He died in London in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-nine.

In childhood, poverty was his portion. But he succeeded, for he had the persistent corpuscle, and he had charm of manner—two things which will make any man a winner in the game of life.

He gave away during his lifetime eight million dollars. When he died he had four million dollars left, which was distributed, by his will, largely for the betterment of society. The fact that Peabody left so much money was accidental. He intended to give this money away, under his own personal supervision, but Death came suddenly.

Has the world made head the past forty years? Listen, Terese; it has made more progress during the past forty years than in the two thousand years preceding.

The entire fortune of George Peabody, including what he gave away during his life and what he left, was twelve million dollars. This is just the income of Andrew Carnegie for six months. We scarcely realize how much civilization smells of paint until we remember that George Peabody was the world's first philanthropist. No doubt there were many people before him, with philanthropic impulses, but they were poor. It's easy to sympathize with humanity when you have nothing to give but advice. The miracle comes in when great wealth and great love of mankind are combined in one individual.

In the Occident, giving to the poor is lending to the devil. The plan has always been more or less of a pastime to the rich, but the giving has usually been limited to sixpences, with absolute harm to the poor. All any one should ask is opportunity. Sailors just ashore, with three months' pay, are the most charitable men on earth—we might also say they are the most loving and the least lovable. The beggars wax glad when Jack lumbers their way with a gay painted galley in tow; but, alas, tomorrow Jack belongs to the poor. Charity in the past has been prompted by weakness and whim—the penance of rogues—and often we give to get rid of the troublesome applicant.

Beggary and virtue were imagined to have something akin. Rags and honesty were sort of synonymous, and we spoke of honest hearts that beat 'neath ragged jackets. That was poetry, but was it art? Or was it just a little harmless exercise of the lacrimal glands? Riches and roguery were spoken of in one breath, unless the gentleman was present—and then we curtsied, cringed or crawled, and laughed loudly at all his jokes.

These things doubtless dated back to a time when the only mode of accumulating wealth was through oppression. Pirates were rich—honest men were poor. To be poor proved that you were not a robber. The heroes in war took cities, and all they could carry away was theirs. The monasteries were passing rich in the Middle Ages, because their valves opened only one way—they received much and paid out nothing. To save the souls of men was a just equivalent for accepting their services for the little time they were on earth.

The monasteries owned the land, and the rentals paid by the fiefs and villeins went into the church treasuries. Sir Walter Scott has an abbot say this: "I took the vow of poverty, and find myself with an income of twenty thousand pounds a year."

But wealth did not burden the monks forever. Wealth changes hands—that is one of its peculiarities. War came, red of tooth and claw, and the soldiery, which heretofore had been used only to protect the religious orders, now flushed with victory, turned against them. Charges were trumped up against churchmen high in authority, and without doubt the charges were often true, because a robe and a rope girdle, or the reversal of haberdashery, do not change the nature of a man. Down under the robe, you'll sometimes find a man frail of soul—grasping, sensual, selfish.

The monasteries were looked upon as contraband of war. "To the victors belong the spoils," was the motto of a certain man who was President of the United States, so persistent was the war idea of acquiring wealth.

The property of the religious orders was confiscated, and as a reward for heroic services, great soldiers were given great tracts of land. The big estates in Europe all have their origin in this well-established custom of dividing the spoils. The plan of taking the property of each or all who were guilty of sedition, treason and contumacy was well established by precedents that traced back to Cain. When George Washington appropriated the estate of Roger Morris, forty centuries of precedent looked down upon him.

Also, it might be added that if a man owned a particularly valuable estate, and a soldier desired this estate, it was easy for this soldier to massage his conscience by listening to and believing the report that the owner had spoken ill of the king and given succor to the enemy.

Then the soldier felt it his "duty" to punish the recreant one by taking his property. And so the Age of the Barons followed the Age of the Monasteries. And now the Barons have given way to the Age of the Merchant.

The Monks multiplied the poor by a monopoly on education. Superstition, poverty and incompetence formed the portion of the many. "This world is but a desert drear," was the actual fact as long as priests and soldiers were supreme. The Reign of the Barons was merely a transfer of power with no revision of ideals. The choice between a miter and a helmet is nil, and when the owner converses through his head-gear, his logic is alike vulnerable and valueless.

So enter the Merchant, whose business it is to carry things from where they are plentiful to where they are scarce. And comes he so quietly and with so little ostentation that men do not realize the change.

And George Peabody, an American, gives three million dollars to the poor of London. This money was not tossed out to purchase peace, and to encourage idleness, and to be spent in strong drink and frills and finery, and the ways that lead to Nowhere, but to provide better homes for men, women and children.

"Lay hold on eternal life," said Paul, writing to Timothy. The proper translation we now believe should be, "Lay hold on the age to come." Philanthropy now seeks to lay hold on the age to come. We are building for the future.

The embryo has eyes, ears and organs of speech. But the embryo does not see, nor hear, nor speak. It is laying hold on the age to come—it is preparing to live—it is getting ready for the future. The past is dead, the present is dying, and only that which is to come is alive.

The life of George Peabody was not in what he gave, but in what he taught the millionaires that are to be. He laid hold on the age to come.

* * * * *

George Peabody is another example of a boy who succeeded in spite of his parents. The rigors of climate and the unkindness of a scanty soil may be good things. They are good, like competition, very excellent, provided you do not get more than your constitution requires.

New England has her "white trash," as well as the South. The Peabodys of Danvers were good folks who never seemed to get on. They had come down from the mountains of New Hampshire, headed for Boston, but got stuck near Salem. If there was anything going on, like mumps, measles, potato-bugs, blight, "janders" or the cows-in-the-corn, they got it. Their roof leaked, the cistern busted, the chimney fell in, and although they had nothing worth stealing the house was once burglarized while the family was at church. The moral to little George was plain: Don't go to church and you'll not get burgled. Life was such a grievous thing that the parents forgot how to laugh, and so George's joke brought him a cuff on the ear in the interests of pure religion and undefiled. A couple of generations back there was a strain of right valiant heroic Peabody blood.

Among the "Green Mountain Boys" there was a Peabody, and another Peabody was captain of a packet that sailed out of Boston for London. To run away and join this uncle as cabin-boy was George's first ambition.

People in the country may be poor, but in America such never suffer for food. If hunger threatens, the children can skirmish among the neighbors. The village of Danvers was separated by only a mile or so of swale and swamp from Salem, a place that once rivaled Boston commercially, and in matters of black cats, and elderly women who aviated on broomsticks by night, set the world a pace. Fish, clams, water-lilies, berries, eels, and other such flora and fauna were plentiful, and became objects of merchandising for the Peabody boys, bare of foot and filled with high emprise.

Parents often bestow upon their progeny the qualities which they themselves do not possess, so wonderful is this law of heredity.

George was the youngest boy in the brood, and was looked after by his "other mother," that is to say, by an elder sister. When this sister married, the boy was eleven years old. To the lad this marriage was more like a funeral. He could read and write and count to a hundred, having gone to school for several months each Winter since he was seven. He could write better than his father or mother—he wrote like copperplate, turning his head on one side and chewing his tongue, keeping pace with his lips, as the pen glided gracefully over the paper. His ambition was to make a bird with a card in its bill, and on this card, written so small no one could read it, the proud name, G. Peabody.

This ability to write brought him local fame, and Sylvester Proctor, who kept a general store in the village, offered to take him on a four years' apprenticeship and teach him the trade of green grocer and dealer in W. I. Goods. The papers were duly made out and signed, the boy being consulted afterward. What the consideration was, was not stated, but rumor has it that the elder Peabody was paid twenty-five dollars in "W. I. Goods" and also wet goods.

Proctor was a typical New England merchant of the Class B type. He was up at daylight, shaved his upper lip, and swept off the sidewalk in front of his store. At night he put up the shutters with his own hands. He remembered every article he had on his shelves and what it cost. He bought nothing he could not pay for. There was one clerk besides the boy. After George came, the merchant and his clerk made all the memoranda on brown paper, and the items were duly copied into the ledger by George Peabody.

I have been told that a man who writes pure Spencerian can never do anything else. This, however, is a hasty generalization, put forth by a party who wrote a Horace Greeley hand.

A country store is the place for a boy to learn merchandising. In such a place he is never swallowed up by a department. He learns everything, from shaking down the ashes in the big stove to buying and selling fadeless calico. He becomes an expert with a nail-puller, knows strictly fresh eggs from eggs, and learns how to adapt himself to the whims, caprices and notions of the customers who know little and assume much.

George Peabody slept in the attic over the store. He took his meals with the Proctor family, and used to wipe the dishes for Mrs. Proctor. He could wait on store, tend baby, wash a blue wagon, drive a "horse and team" and say "backsshe!" in a way that would throw you off the front seat when the horse stopped, if you didn't look out.

That is to say, he was a New England village boy, alive and alert to every phase of village life—strong, rapid, willing, helpful. The villager who knows too much gets "fresh" and falls a victim of arrested development. The boy in a village who works, and then gets out into a wider sphere at that critical period when the wanderlust strikes him, is in the line of evolution.

George Peabody remained at Proctor's store until nine o'clock in the evening of the day that marked the close of his four years of apprenticeship. He was fifteen, and all tempting offers from Mr. Proctor to pay him wages thereafter in real money were turned aside. He had a new suit of clothes, five dollars in his pocket, and ambition in his heart. He was going to be a draper, and eliminate all "W. I. Goods."

* * * * *

Over at Newburyport, George had a brother, David Peabody, who ran a "draper's shop." That is to say, David Peabody was a drygoods merchant. This was a comparatively new thing in America, for a "store," at that time, usually kept everything that people wanted. The exclusive draper idea came from London. It seemed to work in Boston, and so Newburyport tried it.

David and George had talked it over together, and a partnership was in mind. In the meantime George was only fifteen years old, and David thirty. "I am twice as old as you," once said David to George, with intent to make the lad know his proper place. "Yes, I know; but you will not be twice as old as I very long," replied George, who was up in mathematics.

The brothers did not mix very well. They were tuned to a different vibration. One had speed: the other was built for the plow.

And when the store caught fire and burned, and almost all of Newburyport was burned up, too, it was a good time for George to strike for pastures new. He walked down to Boston, and spent all his money for a passage on a coaster that was about to sail for Washington, in the District of Columbia. This was in the latter part of the year Eighteen Hundred Eleven.

Washington was the capital of the country, and there was an idea then that it was also going to be the commercial metropolis—hence the desire to get in on the ground floor. Especially was the South to look to Washington for her supplies. George Peabody, aged sixteen, looked the ground over, and thought he saw opportunity nodding in his direction.

He sat down and wrote to a wholesale drygoods-dealer by the name of Todd in Newburyport, ordering draperies to the amount of two thousand dollars. Blessed is that man who knows what he wants, and asks for it.

Todd remembered the boy who had given him orders in Proctor's, and at once filled the order. In three months Todd got his money and an order for double the amount. In those days the plan of calling on the well-to-do planters, and showing them the wares of Autolycus, was in vogue. English dress-goods were a lure to the ladies. George Peabody made a pack as big as he could carry, tramped, smiled and sold the stuff. When he had emptied his pack, he came back to his room where his stock was stored and loaded up again. If there were remnants he sold them out to some crossroads store.

The fact that the Jews know a few things in a worldly way, I trust will not be denied. George Peabody, the Yankee, adopted the methods of the Chosen People. And at that early date, it comes to us as a bit of a miracle that George Peabody said, "You can't afford to sell anybody anything which he does not need, nor can you afford to sell it at a price beyond what it is worth." Also this, "When I sell a woman draperies, I try to leave the transaction so I can go back next week and sell her more." Also this: "Credit is the sympathetic nerve of commerce. There are men who do not keep faith with those from whom they buy, and such last only a little while. Others do not keep faith with those to whom they sell, and such do not last long. To build on the rock one must keep his credit absolutely unsullied, and he must make a friend of each and all to whom he sells."

The Judaic mental processes have been sharpened by migration. To carry a pack and peddle is better than to work for a Ph. D., save for the social usufruct and the eclat of the unthinking. We learn by indirection and not when we say: "Go to! Now watch us take a college course and enlarge our phrenological organs." Our knobs come from knocks, and not from the gentle massage of hired tutors. Selling subscription-books, maps, sewing-machines or Mason and Hamlin organs, has given thousands of strong men their initial impulse toward success. When you go from house to house to sell things you catch the household in their old clothes and the dog loose. To get your foot in the front door and thus avoid the slam, sweetening acerbity by asking the impatient housewife this question, "Is your mother at home?" and then making a sale, is an achievement. "The greatest study of mankind is man," said Pope, and for once he was right, although he might have said woman.

From fifteen to nineteen is the formative period, when the cosmic cement sets, if ever. During those years George Peabody had emerged from a clerkship into a Businessman.

What is a Businessman? A Businessman is one who gets the business, and completes the transaction. Book-keepers, correspondents, system men, janitors, scrub-women, stenographers, electricians, elevator-boys, cash-girls, are all good people and necessary and worthy of sincere respect, but they are not Businessmen, because they are on the side of expense and not income. When H. H. Rogers coupled the coalmines of West Virginia with tidewater, he proved himself a Businessman. When James J. Hill created an Empire in the Northwest, he proved his right to the title. The Businessman is a salesman. And no matter how great your invention, how sweet your song, how sublime your picture, how perfect your card-system, until you are able to convince the world that it needs the thing, and you get the money for it, you are not a Businessman.

The Businessman is one who supplies something great and good to the world, and collects from the world for the goods. Taffy, guff and oxaline are all well and good in their way, but they have the great disadvantage of not being legal tender.

* * * * *

In migrating from New England to the District of Columbia, George Peabody had moved into a comparatively foreign country, and in the process had sloughed most of his provincialism. It is beautiful to be a New Englander, but to be nothing else is terrible.

George had proved for himself the most valuable lesson in Self-Reliance—that he could make his way alone. He had kept his credit and strengthened it.

He had served as a volunteer soldier in the War of Eighteen Hundred Twelve, and done patrol duty on the banks of the Potomac. And when the war was over, no one was quite so glad as he. Serving in the volunteer ranks with him was one Elisha Riggs, several years his senior, and also a draper. They had met before, but as competitors and on a cold business basis. Now they were comrades in arms, and friends. Riggs is today chiefly remembered to fame because he built what in its day was the most palatial hotel in Washington, just as John Jacob Astor was scarcely known outside of his bailiwick until he built that grand hostelry, the Astor House. Riggs had carried a pack among the Virginia plantations, but now he had established a wholesale drygoods house in Georgetown, and sold only to storekeepers. He had felt the competitive force of Peabody's pack, and would make friends with it. He proposed a partnership. Peabody explained that his years were but nineteen, and therefore he was not legally of age. Riggs argued that time would remedy the defect. Riggs was rich—he had five thousand dollars, while Peabody had one thousand six hundred fifty dollars and forty cents. I give the figures exact, as the inventory showed.

But Peabody had one thing which will make any man or woman rich. It is something so sweetly beneficent that well can we call it the gift of the gods. The asset to which I refer is Charm of Manner. Its first requisite is glowing physical health. Its second ingredient is absolute honesty. Its third is good-will.

Nothing taints the breath like a lie. The old parental plan of washing out the bad boy's mouth with soft soap had a scientific basis. Liars must possess good memories. They are fettered and gyved by what they have said and done. The honest man is free—his acts require neither explanation nor apology. He is in possession of all of his armament.

The outdoor work of tramping Maryland and Virginia highways had put the glow of high health on the cheek of George Peabody. He was big in body, manly, intelligent and could meet men on a basis of equality. If I were president of a college, I would certainly have a Chair devoted to Psychic Mixability, or Charm of Manner. Ponderosity, profundity and insipidity may have their place, but the man with Charm of Manner keeps his capital active. His soul is fluid. I have never been in possession of enough of this Social Radium to analyze it, but I know it has the power of dissolving opposition, and melting human hearts. But so delicate and illusive is it that when used for a purely selfish purpose, it evaporates into thin air, and the erstwhile possessor is left with only the mask of beauty and the husk of a personality. George Peabody had Charm of Manner from his nineteenth year to the day of his death. Colonel Forney crossed the Atlantic with him when Peabody was in his seventy-first year, and here is what Forney says: "I sat on one side of the cabin and he on the other. He was reading from a book, which he finally merely held in his hands, as he sat idly dreaming. I was melted into tears by the sight of his Jove-like head framed against the window. His face and features beamed with high and noble intellect, and his eyes looked forth in divine love. If ever soul revealed itself in the face, it was here. He was the very King of Men, and I did not at all wonder that in the past people had worked the apotheosis of such as he."

* * * * *

The firm of Riggs and Peabody prospered. It outgrew its quarters in old "Congress Hall" in Georgetown, and ran over into a house next door, which it pre-empted.

Moreover, it was apparent by this time that neither Georgetown nor Washington would ever be the commercial metropolis of America. The city of Baltimore had special harbor advantages that Washington did not have; the ships touched there according to natural law. And when Riggs and Peabody found themselves carting consignments to Baltimore in order to make shipment to Savannah and Charleston, they knew the die was cast. They packed up and moved to Baltimore. This was in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifteen.

In order to do business you had better go where business is being done. Trade follows the lines of least resistance. The wholesale dealer saw the value of honesty as a business asset, long before the retailer made the same unique discovery.

Doctor Algernon S. Crapsey says that truth is a brand-new virtue, and the clergy are not quite sure about it yet. To hold his trade the jobber found he had to be on the dead level: he had to consider himself the attorney for his client. Peabody was a merchant by instinct. He had good taste, and he had a prophetic instinct as to what the people wanted. Instead of buying his supplies in Newburyport, Boston and New York, he now established relations with London, direct. And London was then the Commercial Center of the world, the arbiter of fashion, the molder of form, the home of finance—frenzied and otherwise. Riggs and Peabody shipped American cotton to London, and received in return the manufactured production in its manifold forms.

In Eighteen Hundred Twenty-nine Riggs withdrew from the firm, retaining a certain financial interest, merely, and Peabody forged to the front, alone, as a financier. For many years Peabody dealt largely with Robert Owen, and thus there grew up a close and lasting friendship between these very able men. Both were scouts for civilization. No doubt they influenced each other for good. We find them working out a new policy in business—the policy of reciprocity, instead of exploitation. Robert Owen always had almost unlimited credit, for he prized his word as the immediate jewel of his soul. It was exactly the same with Peabody.