The age-herald., 1901-11-08
IN HOTEL LOBBIES
 AND ELSEWHERE
mr. Carnegie and the saronetaue.

I 4ae statement given our touay og the Associated Press as coming from the Exchange Telegraph Company. an Eng fish news agency. to the efrect that Andrew Carnegie had been offered and had declined a baronetcy of the United Kingdom Of Great Britain and Ireland. should be accepted with caution. to say the least" said Birmingham man who has resided in the mother country.
 The only power which could offer haronetey to any man is the king himself. or the prime minister. Lord Salisbury, the constitutional spokesman for the king. And not once in a generation Is an honor of any sort offered to any subject of the British sovereign until after it has been privately and confidentially ascertained that the honor in question is desired by It's suggested recipient
 Now 1t Is quite possible that the king caused Mr. Carnegie to se questioned as to whether the scoteh-American would be pleased to accept d baronetcy. but that is a possibility wholly improbable. In the first place. the king would not in the ordinary course of royal procedure offer any hereditary title to a foreigner. The statutes of the various orders of British nobility forbid in express terms the conferring of noble rank upon ,ny person not British subject. This fact was fully reviewed in 1897. when the late I queen raised Baron de Worms to the peerage The baron held his title of baron from Germany, in which country he was born. but he had been British subject for well nigh forty years. had been a member Of Parliament for twenty and odd years. and had long served In 1 the government that is the circle of | high officers of state with the prime minister at their head. charged by the sovereign under the constitution with the business of governing the country. The German. or. more widely speaking, the continental title of baron Is of very small consequence. while a British baron is a peer. a member of the House Of Lords. Baron in Great Britain is the lowest title in the peerage. the order of precedence ranging downward thus: Duke. marquis, earl. yiscount, baron.
 "The title baronet. said to have been refused by Mir. Carnegie. is the lowest hereditary title in England. and it means actually hereditary knighthood, the bearer of 1t being addressed as Sir a title that is used before his Christian name just as in the case of an ordinary knight. such as Sir Thomas Lipton is. Any person whosoever addressing Sir Thomas Iipton would say simply Sir Thomas and that is what a person would say if the -yachtsman were a baronet. which he is not. In other words. bsronet Is a commoner.
 a 'Baronet is a title that was created nearly three centuries ago-in 1911. to be precise-by King James I. whose object ;n creating it was to raise money for the purpose of conauering the ancient Irish kingdom. now province. of Ulster King James promised to create but 200 baronets in England. He kept the promise. but cteated earonets of Scotland and of Ul- ster. This title his majesty sold for cash money. but the sale of it ceased with the death of the King who created it. Now adays it is conferred at the discretion of the sovereign and cannot be purchased. King Edward VII could create every man in his empire a baronet if his majesty so wilied.
 There have been many American baronets. beginning with Sir William Alexander. afterwards Earl of Stirling. | but no citizen of the existing United States has ever borne or received that honor. Our written constitution forbids hereditary titles.
 "In respect to Mir. Carnegie. if King Edward had contemplated offering him a | t..x pains to ascertain whether Mir. Carnegie held American citizenship. Investigation will show that the records of the United State Court in Pittsburg demonstrate that Mfr. Carnegie took out his citizenship papers in 1886 or 1888. after he had lived about forty years in this country and ac- cumulated thirty million dollars. accord ing to a statement he made to an inti- mate. friend of his own who in turn told me.
 ~It was believed in MT. Carnegie's na- tive Fifeshire that previous to 1885 he desired British knighthood. for he still remained a British subject and gave liberally to Gladstones political funds He gave s25.O0O to the royal college of music in London. and the letter of &C., acknowledgement from the Prince of Wales. then chairman of the college committee. now King Edward. MT. Carnegie kept in a costly frame. and carried it with him on his travels. A friend of my own saw the letter hanging Tn Mir Carnegie's stateroom on a steamship crossing the Atlantic.
 | Afterwards MT. Carnegie became very harsh in his utterances respecting tho royal family of England. and made un- generous filings at the late Queen and the | present King. About that time he brought out his book Triumphant Democracy which was mainly a compilation of Amer ican government statistics. On the front of the fiashy board cover to the book was a golden pyramid represented upon its apex. or it's base upward. and labeled 'Ergiand.' This book caused much amuse- ment in England.
 "7t is quite possible that Mir. Carnegie has renounced his tardily assumed Amer ican citizenship. and has been offered a baronetcy of Great Britain; but I don't believe a word of the latter proposi- tion.''
 The King of the shlrtwaist Men.
 Squire A C. Roberts of Toadvine the most famous classic rural retreat of Jef- ferson county or of Alabama. was in this town yesterday as coatless as any shirt