Imperial Valley press., 1919-08-11
ANDREW CARNEGIE
Continued From Page y

family council that night CarnegieS
mother decided she would mortgage
her little home for $500. The stock
was bought. and it brought monthly
dividends of one per cent.
The next step toward independence
and fortune came when T. T. Wood
ruff, the inventor of the sleeping car,
approached him with model of the
invention Carnegie invested for the
manufacture of the cars. Then earn
ing $50 monthly, he had to borrow
$500 on his filst installment of cap
ltal, but later when he scld out his
interest to the Pullman company he
had realized $4,000 for the venture.
Carnegie WAS 26 when the Civil
war broke out. He won ali appoint
ment as director of government rail-
ways and telegraphs. To the earn
age he saw at several battles may
be traced his lifelong belief in the
folly of warfare-''a blot upon civ
iliZation."
Carnegie, at 80 years Of age, in
vested in oil. AS one of syndicate
Re bought up vast tract of oil land.
In year, to the surprise of all the
investors, it paid the astonishing re-
turn of $1,000,000 in cash dividends
upon capital of $4,000.
But iron was the magnet then at
tracing Carnegie. The railroads were
experimenting with cast-iron bridges.
Carnegie foresaw the demand for a
factory that could turn out the iron
parts, and he formed the Keystone
Bridge Works. They built. as their
first great piece, a bridge over the
Ohio river, with a span of 300 feet.
Demand for similar structures be-
came general. and the keystone works
got the big orders and profits.
Carnegie then began to see that
iron rails must be given up for steel.
On visit to England in 1868 he dis
covered the success being obtained
there with the Besscmer process. Car
negie quietly brought it home, and
before the English makers were
aware of the fact, he had adopted it
in his mills.
the romance of his success was
such that the immigrant boy of 1S4S
became some forty years later the
worlds leading producer of steel, a
multi-millonaire himself, and fast
! bringing q score of other men into
the same category. Many square
miles of his. mills surrounded Pitts
burg. He reached into upper Michi-
gan, 700 miles away, and acquired
vast regions of ore land. He estab-
! lished railway and steamship lines to
bring the ore to him. He boasted of
/ tie reduction in price of steel rails
from $95 ton down to S26. His
| critics claimed that even the lower
figure was maintained only by the
fact that he had monopolized the in
duStry. A former secretary once di-
vulged what was alleged to have been
official correspondence to the effect
that the Carnegie steel combination
could sell rails at profit as low as
Sl2 ton.
1t was certain that the grip which
! he had upon the steel situation made
his elimination necessary if others in
/ quest of wealth in steel were to real
izc the millions they saw going to
him. He was, accordingly, bought out
in 1901. The syndicate headed by
J. p Morgan, which desired to form
! The billion dollar United States Steel
Corporation, paid $420,00O000 in
! their five per cent bonds for the Car
negie company's holdings.
! What a fool | was,' Carnegie
later said in a hearing before con-
i gressional committee at Washington,
'to sell out TO the steel corporation
for only s12O,000,000 | have since
learned from the inside that ! could
have received Sl00,OOO,000 more from