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 him-
self 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 in 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. Volunteers
were asked for, who wished to ride. Forty men and one
woman responded. These rode on the engine and in a big
coach attached behind. They covered the top of the coach and
18
PETER COOPER
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 of 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 jt jt,
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 pro-
jecting 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.
Beside 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 stage-coach line that ran parallel
19
PETER COOPER
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 stage-coach 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 Hun-
dred and 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 jt jt
The engine led for five miles, when the boiler sprung a leak
and stopped, the engineer in his anxiety getting on too much
pressure.
The horse won, and thh proved to many people a fact which
they had suspected and foretold, that the steam-engine for
land-carriages was only a plaything.
Farmers in that vicinity took heart and began again to
raise horses.
20
PETER
COOPER
JN Eighteen Hundred and 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 over two hun-
dred thousand dollars. He was one
of the richest men of New York,
and he was a man of influence.
<I 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 that they patrolled, just as in country towns they
sprinkle the streets in front of the residences owned by the
21
PETER COOPER
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 jfc 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 and 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 and Thirty to Eighteen Hundred and
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
22
PETER COOPER
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.
But perhaps it is well that his fine optimism could not foresee
the flavor of religious bigotry and superstition which would
exist in our whole school system for many years.
And the end is not yet.
During his 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. Blessed be difficulty!
The many lag behind the few go on. And if a man's actions
and thoughts outstrip the rabble, he surely should not com-
plain because the rabble does not sympathize with him.
His virtue lies in the very fact that he can do without popular
support and push on alone.
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 has great dis-
advantages. 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 and Fifty, he as sole
commissioner could and would have set the world a pace in
pedagogy < &
23
PETER
COOPER
The contention of Disraeli 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 jfc &
|j HE block bounded by Third and
Fourth Avenue 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 and 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 offers were smilingly pigeonholed.
In Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-four, when Peter Cooper was
24
PETER COOPER
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 bridges, riveted together, of rolled
iron " boards," as they were first called. 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 fire-proof structure.
The ability of Peter Cooper to adapt himself to new con-
ditions, turning failure into success, is here well illustrated.
*I 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 jfc jfc
Cooper Union was nearly five years in building. A financial
panic had set in, and business was at a standstill. But Peter
did not cheapen his plan, and the idea of abandoning it never
occurred to him.
The land and building cost him six hundred and thirty
25
PETER COOPER
thousand dollars and came near throwing him into bank-
ruptcy. 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 op-
portunity 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, 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 each other 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.
26
PETER COOPER
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 plat-
form 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. Ingersoil
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 introduced the
speaker himself. He sat on the platform during the address,
at times applauding vigorously. It was an epoch, but then
27
PETER COOPER
Peter Cooper was an epoch-making man. flCooper Union is
now conducted along the identical lines laid out by its founder.
JIt 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 chemis-
try 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 jfc
When the building was built, there were no passenger-
elevators in New York, or elsewhere. Peter Cooper's mechan-
ical 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.
*I 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 use-
fulness Jt>
And into all the work there goes the unselfish devotion and
the untiring spirit of Peter Cooper, apprentice, mechanic,
inventor, business man, financier, philosopher and friend
of humanity.
28
EST is valu-
able only so
far as it is a
contrast Pursued as an
:3 *"
end it becomes a most
pitiable condition*
DAVID
'SWING
E are always
complaining
that our days
few, and acting as
though there would be
no end of them* Seneca
. 25
AUGUST, MCMIX
No. 2
XJL
ii
- -in
IX -VQIX
\X/ VQIX
M -TvXl
ILLION-
AIRES
WHO
LAUGH
E RARE
ANDREW CARNEGIE
i
i
Entered at the pest-office, in East Aurora, New York, for transmission as second-class matter.
Copyright, 1909, by Elbert Hubbard, Editor and Publisher.
Andrew Carnegie
*
I
naw
____^_^__ r "'O r t
XJ ^
S2
\X/ VQI
T 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.
ANDREW CARNEGIE
LITTLE JOURNEYS
T
HE fact that Andrew Carnegie is a
Scotsman, so far as I know, has
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 jt ^t
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.
fl 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."
<J 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.
Dr. 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 Dr. Johnson
29
ANDREW and how much is Boswell. {[What Connecticut has done
CARNEGIE for New England, Scotland did for Great Britain.
The Scotch gave us the iron ship, the lamp-chimney, the
telephone jfc j*
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 Scots-
man 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 McLaren
and Sir Walter. Then came Christopher North and Dr. John
Brown with deathless Scotch stories of sacrifice and unsel-
fishness that shame the world, and secure the tribute of our
tears ^t &
To speak of the Scotch as having certain exclusive character-
istics 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
30
to religion, fl Then the Scotch are supposed to be a pugna- ANDREW
cious, quarrelsome and fighting people, but here is a man CARNEGIE
who has made his name known as the symbol of disarma-
ment and international peace.
In the list of twelve great business men that comprise the
present series of Little Journeys, we have, by a curious coin-
cidence, three Scotsmen : James Oliver, Philip D. Armour and
Andrew Carnegie.
These three men 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.
*I They carry no excess baggage. They travel light. They can
change their minds and change their plans easily. Such men
take charge of things by a sort of divine right.
ANDREW
CARNEGIE
NDREW CARNEGIE>as born in
decent poverty at Dunfermline in
fthe year Eighteen Hundred and
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 appren-
tices & &
There was no ring-up clock, and
no walking delegates.
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.
<I 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 did n't work, the whole blooming bunch of
middlemen who batten and fatten between the factory and
family could be eliminated, and the arrogant retailer, whole-
saler, 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
32
and the gentlemanly salesman, psychic in his instincts, would ANDREW
be at the door in answer to your sincere desire, uttered or CARNEGIE
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.
fl 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 con-
sumers 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