39516	----	A Captain of Industry BEING _The Story of a Civilized Man_ BY UPTON SINCLAIR AUTHOR OF "THE JUNGLE," ETC. GIRARD, KANSAS THE APPEAL TO REASON 1906 COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY J. A. WAYLAND. _All rights reserved._ A CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY PREFACE This little story was written nearly five years ago. The verdict upon it was that it was "unpublishable," and so I put it away until I should be in position to publish it myself. Recently I read it over, and got an interesting vision of how the times have changed in five years. I put it away a revolutionary document; I took it out a quiet and rather obvious statement of generally accepted views. In reading the story, one should bear in mind that it was written before any of the "literature of exposure" had appeared; that its writer drew nothing from Mr. Steffens' probing of political corruption, nor from Miss Tarbell's analysis of the railroad rebate, nor from Mr. Lawson's exposé of the inner life of "Frenzied Finance." U.S. A CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY I I purpose in this chronicle to tell the story of A CIVILIZED MAN: casting aside all Dreams and Airy Imaginations, and dealing with that humble Reality which lies at our doorsteps. II Every proverb, every slang phrase and colloquialism, is what one might call a petrified inspiration. Once upon a time it was a living thing, a lightning flash in some man's soul; and now it glides off our tongue without our ever thinking of its meaning. So, when the event transpired which marks the beginning of my story, the newspapers one and all remarked that Robert van Rensselaer was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Into the particular circumstances of the event it is not necessary to go, furthermore than to say that the arrival occasioned considerable discomfort, to the annoyance of my hero's mother, who had never experienced any discomfort before. His father, Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer, was a respected member of our metropolitan high society, combining the major and minor _desiderata_ of wealth and good-breeding, and residing in a twentieth-century palace at number four thousand eleven hundred and forty-four Fifth Avenue. At the time of the opening of our story van Rensselaer _père_ had fled from the scene of the trouble and was passing the time playing billiards with some sympathetic friends, and when the telephone-bell rang they opened some champagne and drank to the health of van Rensselaer _fils_. Later on, when the father stood in the darkened apartment and gazed upon the red and purple mite of life, proud emotions swelled high in his heart, and he vowed that he would make a gentleman of Robert van Rensselaer,--a gentleman after the pattern of his father. At the outset of the career of my hero I have to note the amount of attention which he received from the press, and from an anxious public. Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer was wealthy, according to New York and Fifth Avenue standards, and Baby van Rensselaer was provided with an introductory outfit of costumes at an estimated cost of seventeen thousand dollars. I have a file of van Rensselaer clippings, and would quote the elaborate descriptions, and preserve them to a grateful posterity; but in the meantime Master Robert van Rensselaer would be grown up. I pass on to the time when he was a growing boy, with two governesses, and several tutors, and a groom, and such other attendants as every boy has to have. III Many lads would have been spoiled by so much attention; and so it is only fair to say at the outset that "Robbie" was never spoiled; that to the end of his days he was what is known as "a good fellow," and that it was only when he could not have what he wanted that anger ever appeared in his eyes. Before many more years he went away to a great rich school, followed by the prayers of a family, and by the valet and the groom. There he had a suite of rooms, and two horses, and a pair of dogs with pedigrees longer than his own; and there he learned to smoke a brand of choice cigarettes, and to play poker, and to take a proper interest in race-track doings. There also, just when he was ready to come away and to take a great college by storm, Robbie met with an exciting adventure. This is a work of realism, and works of realism always go into detail as to such matters; and so it must be explained that Robbie fell desperately in love with a pretty girl who lived in the country near the school; and that Robbie was young and handsome and wealthy and witty, and by no means disposed to put up with not having his own way; and that he had it; and that when he came to leave school, the girl fled from home and followed him; and that there were some blissful months in the city, and then some complications; and that when the crisis came Robbie was just on the point of getting married when the curiosity of his father was excited by his heavy financial demands; and, finally, that Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer and Mr. Robert van Rensselaer held an interview in the former's study. "Now, Robbie," said he, "how long has this been going on?" "About a year, sir," said Robbie, gazing at the floor. "A year? Humph! And why didn't you tell me about it when you first got into trouble?" "I--I didn't like to," said Robbie. "To be sure," said the father, "boys have no business in such scrapes; but still, when you get in them, it is your duty to tell me. And so you want to get married?" "I--I love her," said the other, turning various shades of red as he found the words sounding queer. "But, Robbie," protested van Rensselaer _père_, "one doesn't marry all the women one loves." Then, after a little pause, the father continued gravely, "Now, my boy, tell me where she is, and I'll arrange it for you." Robbie started. "You won't be cross to her?" he pleaded. "Of course not," said the father. "I am never cross with any one. It will all be settled happily, I promise you." And so a day or two later it was announced that Robbie was going abroad for a year's tour; and when he sought Daisy to bid her good-by, it was reported that Daisy had left for the West--a circumstance which caused Robbie several days' anxiety. IV My hero had gone abroad with a congenial friend a little older than himself, and the two stayed considerably over their time and enjoyed themselves immensely. They were plentifully provided with money, and Robbie had been told that he might do anything he liked, except get married. Therefore they wandered through all the cities of Europe, and saw all the beautiful things of the past, and all the gay things of the present. They stopped at the best hotels, and everywhere they went men bowed before them, and fled to do their bidding. Also there were many beautiful women who did their best to make Robbie happy. Robert was always a favorite with the girls, being a generous-hearted boy; he always paid for what he got, and paid the very highest prices in the market. He hired a pretty little yacht and took his friend and some congenial ladies for a beautiful trip upon the Mediterranean; and the sky was blue and the air warm, and Robbie stretched himself upon the deck, and basked in the sunlight and imbibed the soft fragrance of cigars and perfumes, and opened his heart and was happy as never in his life before. After which the two travellers turned homeward again. There was some thought of Robbie's going to college; in fact, he hired chambers and started, at some expense. But it was only for a year, for Robbie had seen too much of the world to go back into a college chrysalis, and when it was evident that he could not get through his exams, he quit and came back to New York to stay. V And now you may behold him fairly settled at the task that fate had set before him,--that of being a gentleman like his father. No suggestions were offered--he managed it all in his own way. He took a suite of rooms, and furnished them so that they were a joy to the few eyes that ever beheld them, and were described by the society journals as one of the great educational influences of the city. Also he joined some of the clubs, and took a box at the opera, and did everything else that was necessary to a young man of his station. It must be understood that Robbie moved in the highest "circles," and was invited to dinner-parties and balls where only a choice two dozen could go. He had a reputation as a golfer and polo player, and was one of Newport's most far-famed yachtsmen; but of course it was upon his automobile records that his reputation really rested. He was daily to be seen speeding about the metropolis in his favorite machine, _The Green Ghost_, and now and then he sent his valet to court to pay his fines. On the one unfortunate occasion when he killed a little boy, the parents of the child were made happy forever by Robbie's princely munificence. Also Robbie was making a reputation as a clubman and _bon vivant_. He knew a great deal about the world by that time; in fact, he knew everything there was to know about it; he had watched men, and understood them thoroughly, and all their ways. I would not have it imagined that he was a cynic, having already stated that he was the best-hearted fellow in the world; but he had a certain dry manner which was not to be imitated, and when he told an anecdote all the world stopped to listen. Robbie's stories were on all sorts of themes; but of course telling the truth about a man does not include telling his stories, even in the most realistic of biographies. I would not have any one get the idea that my hero was bad; on the contrary, he was a member of a church whose orthodoxy and respectability were beyond cavil, and every Sunday morning he escorted some exquisitely gowned young lady of his set to listen to the famous eloquence of the rector, the Reverend Doctor Lettuce Spray. Also whenever the church gave a fair for the benefit of the Fiji Islanders, Robbie bought up all the shares left over in the raffles, and allowed the young ladies to pin bouquets in his button-hole. In addition he actually taught Sunday-school for six whole weeks, at a time when he was desperately enamoured of a certain young lady who did likewise; bearing bravely all the chaffing on the subject, he put away _Les OEuvres de T. Gautier_ from his table and primed up every Saturday night and taught little boys how the good Lord made the fleece of Gideon to stay dry, and caused the soldiers to fall down to drink out of the stream, and did other unusual things calculated to impress little boys. Nothing came of this Sunday-school adventure, however, for van Rensselaer _père_ was of the opinion that the young lady was nothing like the match Robbie ought to make; and so the young man's affections returned to an elegantly furnished flat on the West Side, where there was a liberal stock of champagne and fine cigars, and two young ladies of Robbie's acquaintance. Three or four evenings every week you might have seen his automobile, and the automobiles of several friends, drawn up before the door of this apartment-house, and might have heard evidence to the fact that Robbie was happy, as so good-hearted a young fellow deserved to be. VI Enough has been told about Mr. Robert van Rensselaer's early period to indicate how those pleasant days were passed. Including the suite, the flat, and the clubs, the automobile, the yacht, and the polo stud, our friend's total expenses came to something in the neighborhood of three hundred thousand a year. And since, if he had been a master-poet, or an inspired musician, or a prophet with a new message for mankind, society would have paid about one one-thousandth of that sum to keep him alive, it is apparent that he was considered by society to be equivalent to one thousand such hypothetical persons. This idyllic existence continued for about three years all together; and then one bright winter day Robbie was invited to pay a call upon his father at his office, where the two had a long and serious conversation. "Now, Robbie," said van Rensselaer senior, "I haven't objected to your wild oats. That's every young fellow's right, and you haven't gone beyond the limit. I have always meant to give my son everything a gentleman ought to have; but now I think it's about time you'd had enough--don't you?" "Um-m," said Robbie, meditatively, "I hadn't thought about it." "You know," said van Rensselaer _père_, "the life of man isn't all play. We have some serious duties in the world--we owe something to society." "Yes," said Robbie, "I suppose so. But it's the hell of a nuisance." "It may seem so," said the other; "but one can get interested in the end." "Perhaps so," admitted Robbie, dubiously. "What I mean," said the father, "is that it's time you got ready to take your place in the world. You've seen life pretty much, and you know what I mean. You can't always be your father's son; you'll have to be yourself. I may die some day, and then somebody'll have to take over my affairs. Then, too, you might want to marry; you've wanted to twice already, you know" (Robbie blushed), "and if you have a family, you'll find they'll expect from you pretty much what you've had from me. The life of man, my boy, is a battle; and there comes a time when every one has to fight it." Robbie had never known his father to be philosophical before, and found it a curious experience; their talk was prolonged late into the afternoon, and by that time Robbie had expressed his willingness to make an effort to perform some of his duties to society. VII Robbie's father was president and chief stockholder of a certain vast manufacturing establishment; he was also a capitalist of national reputation, and a man whose hand was often felt by the stock markets of the world. Robbie knew about these things vaguely, and was not uncurious to know more; and so he took to rising at ten o'clock in the morning, and to turning his automobile down-townward; and his clubs saw him less and less often, and heard his merry laugh almost never. For a strange change came over Robbie. I do not know how I can better explain the phenomenon than by his father's words already quoted--that he was learning that the life of man is a battle. Formerly all that he had known had been the play side of it. When one goes in for a game of golf, he lays out all his cleverness and skill, and gets nothing but a silver cup and some newspaper clippings for the trouble; but when he plays at stocks, he gets real prizes of hard cash and negotiable securities. Mr. Robert van Rensselaer had set to work to learn the rules of this new game; and as he was a clever fellow, and had, besides, all the capital any one could need, it came about quickly that his name was one men reckoned with. He carried out some strokes that perplexed his adoring father, and it was not very long before the latter ceased to have to sign checks to the credit of his son's bank account. Before five years were past "young van Rensselaer" had taken his seat at the council-boards of several great corporations, and the things that he said there were always attended to; or if they were not he was apt to turn elsewhere, and in such cases it was generally not long before some one was sorry. And of course this could not take place without producing a change in him. To be sure, he was still "Robbie" to his old friends, and still as good-hearted a fellow as ever lived; to be sure, likewise, he still kept the yacht, and the automobile, and the flat. But before this he had never had an enemy, and now he had thousands; and every day his time was given up to a desperate hand-to-hand combat, as grim as any jungle ever saw. And so his mouth became set and his brow knit; and since he no longer had his way with absolute regularity, his temper was not so sweet as before. It is of importance to explain this, because our friend was much in the papers in those days, and secured a great deal of notoriety through an unfortunate exhibition of ill temper. It happened at a time when he had been for over ten years the new man we have pictured, and had supplanted his father as the president of a large and important manufacturing concern. The reader will perhaps divine that I refer to the historic Hungerville Steel Mills, and to the occasion of the great Hungerville strike that once shook the country. VIII The Hungerville Mills Company was one of the creations of the financial genius of van Rensselaer senior; the mills had existed before, but they had been run by several rival companies, which were always at war with each other, with the consequence that their stock was a by-word among men. But one day a rumor went flying through Wall Street, and then the stocks of those companies began to climb the ladder two steps at a time. And when they had once risen they stayed risen, and stood before the world like prosperity upon a monument. Robert van Rensselaer had quietly secured a controlling interest in them; and a few weeks later their affairs were combined, and the career of the Hungerville Mills Company began. There was war, of course, from the very beginning, a war of rates that broke the smaller mills by the dozen. The company nearly killed itself, and came still nearer to killing its employees. It ran for months at a loss, and on money furnished by the grim, far-seeing president; until at last came the time when the rivals went to smash, and afterward prices went soaring, and the Hungerville Company was safe. The mill employees had helped to bear these trials; and so they afterward submitted a new schedule, asking twenty per cent raise. They got five per cent, and the world seemed rosy indeed. But very soon the price of steel billets, the standard of the wages, began to go down, as fast as the prices of all other steel things rose; and men noticed how the new tariff act made the duty on billets so very low, and wondered if the Company had known anything about it. It was several years after all this that there came the dreadful winter when the snow lay two feet deep in the streets, and the price of coal went five per cent higher a month; and then the Hungerville Company, in the person of its new president, began to be pestered by delegations from this union and that union, a very annoying thing to the president, who was new at the business. No one must imagine, of course, that he was harsh in the matter. I might quote the experience of the good clergyman who had been persuaded by the unions to plead for them, and narrate how the president told him several capital stories, and finally begged off because he had an engagement to a poker party that night, and laughingly promised the clergyman all his winnings to help the poor along. And what could a good clergyman say to that--especially as Mr. van Rensselaer had only a few months ago donated to the same church a wonderful window representing the miracle of the loaves and fishes? IX The dreadful winter passed by without change, and without the promised rise in the price of billets. The Hungerville Savings Bank suspended business, because deposits were so few; and the Hungerville constables had their hands full preventing incendiary speeches to the excited crowds that filled the Hungerville saloons. But all through the long panting summer the giant mills toiled on, turning out their tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of tons of steel every day. The delegations could no longer see the president, for the _Aurora_, the magnificent single-sticker built for Robert van Rensselaer at a cost of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, was in those days electrifying the country by her wonderful performances at Newport. And then came the chill days of autumn and the prospect of another dreadful winter, with the price of billets three per cent lower yet. Mr. Robert van Rensselaer's palatial steam yacht, the _Comet_, was about to start on a trip down the coast of Florida, when he was called to Hungerville by an urgent telegram, saying that the crisis was at hand. And truly there was some bad feeling--even the president could see that; when one walked about the streets of Hungerville, he saw pale, sickly children, bent and haggard women, and men glaring at him from under lowering brows. He saw houses out of repair, and starving people being turned away from them. He saw angry crowds harangued by wild-eyed men, in Polish and other strange tongues. These things the president noticed as his carriage whirled through the streets, but they did not daunt him, and after a long and angry conference the delegates of the unions came back to report that all concessions had been refused. The next morning men read in the papers that the unions had demanded a final conference, and that if nothing was granted, then there would be a strike, and a war to the end. X In the first place, the president was in an angry mood when he went to that conference. The sailing of the _Comet_ had had to be postponed yet another day, and besides that a stone had been flung at his head only five minutes before. I mention the stone particularly because, as I have said, an unfortunate incident occurred at the conference. They sat at a long table one October afternoon,--eight men, seven of them pale and trembling, fingering their hats and gazing about them nervously, with long agony written on their faces, a certain hunted look that sportsmen know, but do not heed. And Mr. Robert van Rensselaer--it has been some time since we have looked at him. He was a gentleman of forty now, grown somewhat portly and a little florid, but not too much so. He had always been a man of distinction--you would have taken him for a diplomat, or a general, at the very least. He was a little pale just then about the lips, and he began the conference in a tone whose calmness any one could have told was forced. He began at the beginning--he explained the losses of the mills, and how they were barely established now. He mentioned the new machinery, and showed the cost of it. He laid before them a great mass of papers, and made plain how the new machinery had increased the output and been equivalent to a raise. He went on to the price of billets, he showed the state of the market with elaborately marshalled figures, and proved what the price must soon be. To all of which, a speech of nearly two hours, the men listened fixedly. Afterward one of the delegates, a little wiry, black-bearded Hungarian, took up the question. He wandered from the point at once, discussing the price of food, and the condition of the workingmen, much to the president's annoyance. The latter tried to bring him back to the point at issue--he returned to the papers again, and they argued back and forth for a long time. Several times Mr. van Rensselaer choked down an angry word. "You talk to me about the condition of the workingmen," he exclaimed, tapping on the table with his pencil. "But how can I help the condition of the workingmen? You say his wages are not living wages--but who can decide a question such as that? What one man can live on, another cannot. What if the workingmen spend much of their wages in intemperance, and then tell me they cannot live? What--" But then the president stopped, and frowning with annoyance, went on in a different voice: "But there is no use arguing about such questions as that! I have tried to explain to you the state of the market, and just what the Company can do. I can do nothing more. You must remember that we have trials, also, and that ruin is possible for companies, too. The laws of economy apply to companies just as well as men; there are living wages for companies--" The president stopped, and immediately the argumentative delegate observed, "We do not see any signs that the Company is afflicted with poverty." The president gazed at him sharply. "Hey?" he asked. "I say," repeated the man in a louder voice, "that anybody can go through this town and see what is happening to the workingmen. I know of a child that died yesterday of hunger, but I don't read that any of the officers of the Company are suffering from want." A flush shot over the president's face. "Do you mean to be impertinent?" he cried. "I mean nothing of the kind," said the man, amid breathless silence. "But you have not hesitated to talk of the workingman's intemperance--" And Mr. Robert van Rensselaer clutched the table. "Now," he cried, "this thing's gone far enough, and we'll settle it right now! You might as well quit your nonsense and understand this,--that the Hungerville Mills belong to Robert van Rensselaer, and not to a union, or to anybody else; and that they're going to be run the way Robert van Rensselaer chooses they shall be run; that they're run for his profit, that the wages they pay are the wages he chooses to pay, and that anybody who doesn't like it is welcome to go wherever else it happens to suit him! And you go out and give _that_ as my message, and, damn it, don't you ever come up here into my office to insult me again!" Then he stopped, purple with rage; and for half a minute the members of the union stared at him and at each other. Finally they arose and made their way from the room, leaving the president glaring at the closed door. XI When van Rensselaer ceased pacing the room, he went to the table and wrote an order closing the mills. Then he sent two telegrams, one to the governor and one to the sheriff, telling them that violence was threatened, calling upon them to enforce the law, and declaring that all damages would fall upon the county. After that he rang for his manager. "Mr. Grinder," he said, "I have closed the mills, and I intend to leave them in your charge. You will get three hundred private detectives, or three thousand, as may be necessary, to protect the property; and you will set to work to gather new hands, and in one week the mills will be running again. Let there be no shilly-shallying about it; I mean to put an end to this nonsense once and for all time: the mills are to be run, and run at once, if it takes all the troops in the state to do it. And that is all,--only that the members of the union are under no circumstances to be taken back except as individuals. I bid you good afternoon." So he put on his coat and left the building to enter his carriage. A fine rain was falling, and he buttoned his coat tightly and sat gazing fixedly ahead while he was whirled down the street. Suddenly, however, the carriage stopped, and he came out of his revery and saw that the way was obstructed by a crowd. They were opposite a dilapidated house, whose pitiful furniture had all been deposited upon the sidewalk; two half-starved, shivering children clung to an old bed that men were dragging out of the door, and a woman was crouching by the doorway, with a baby in her arms, crying hysterically above the hoarse murmurs. Then suddenly the bystanders saw who was in the carriage. A yell went up: "It's van Rensselaer! van Rensselaer!" Like a wave the mob surged about him. Hoots and hisses filled the air. The men shook their fists, the women shrilled abuse, and some one flung a stone. The president leaned forward to the coachman. "Drive on!" he shouted. "Drive on!" The man hesitated, gazing at the crowd in front and back at his master. "Drive on!" yelled the latter, again. And so the coachman lashed the horses, and forward they bounded like mad. Several of the crowd were knocked down; the rest scattered in terror; and away down the street sped the carriage, amid a rain of missiles and a din of curses. XII Mr. Robert van Rensselaer drove on to the depot, where stood his private car; as he sped away to the city he first took something to drink, and then sat smoking and meditating until the depot was reached. Here he heard street voices: "Extra! Extra!" and bought a paper. He stepped into his automobile, with the word "Home," and then settled back to read the news. There was the whole scene of the conference, with the embellishments of the usual kind, and the story of the strike resolutions and the beginning of rioting. There were also some savage editorials--it was a "yellow" journal. Mr. Robert van Rensselaer read them and smiled. He arrived at his residence,--which, it should be added, was no longer a little apartment, but a palatial mansion just a few blocks above the paternal one. As he was still meditating about the strike, it was with a start that he came back to himself when the butler, who opened the door for him, remarked:-- "I beg pardon, sir. There's a lady in the parlor to see you." Mr. van Rensselaer opened his eyes. "A lady?" he said. "A lady, I presume, sir," said the butler. "What's her name?" "She didn't give any name, sir. She just said she must see you; and she would not take any refusal, sir." "Humph!" said the other. "I'll go in." And so in he went and gazed at the woman, who wore a heavy veil. She rose up and flung it aside, disclosing a face ghastly white, and so like a death's head that the other started back. "Do you know me?" she asked. "Er--no," said Mr. van Rensselaer. "You really don't know me, Robbie?" And then suddenly he gave a gasp, and cried, "Daisy!" "Yes," said the other, "Daisy." They sat for a full minute gazing at each other: she at a well-filled face and waist-coat; he at a trembling skeleton. "Well?" said he, suddenly; "what do you want?" "Nothing much," she replied. "I'm dying, you know, Robbie." "What's the matter?" asked he. "Consumption." "Humph! It's been a long time. What have you been doing?" "I've been living up north--in Albany. I took another name, you know, as soon as I left New York. There's a child, Robbie." "Oh!" exclaimed the other. "Sure enough! A boy?" "No, a girl." "Humph! Must be--let's see--twelve years old now." "Thirteen, Robbie. That's what I've come to see you about." "So I guessed. Is she here--in New York?" "No; she's up in Albany--with some kind people. I couldn't bear to bring her; but I--I--" The woman stopped and gazed into his eyes a moment. Then she went on swiftly, stretching out her lean arms to him. "Do something for her, Robbie, won't you? That's what I want. I'm not for this world long, and I can't help her, but you can. I've led a hard life, but she hasn't an idea of it; she has the locket you gave me, but I've kept the secret from her, and she doesn't even know her father's name. I've never bothered you, Robbie; but do for her what you might have done for me." "I imagine the old gentleman did pretty well by you, didn't he?" said the other in a matter-of-fact way. "I'm not complaining," said she. "Only promise you'll find her and do something for her. It won't hurt you--do promise me, do." The woman's voice quivered, and she leaned forward in the chair, steadying her shaking form. The other, always a kind-hearted man, was touched. "I will, Daisy," he said, "I will." "You promise me?" gasped the woman. "Yes, I promise you." All right," said she, starting to rise. "That's all I want. You won't have any trouble in finding her. Her name--her--" And then suddenly she staggered. She lurched backward, grasping at the chair, and turned white, a horrible sound coming from her throat. The man leaped forward and caught her. She lay limp in his arms. He shouted for help, and when the butler came, sent him on the run for a cab. "Take her around the corner to the hospital," he commanded. So they bore out the gasping form; and Mr. Robert van Rensselaer went slowly and thoughtfully upstairs. "Devilish annoying," he mused. "How shall I find the girl after that?" When the butler came back he inquired anxiously. "She was dead before we got there, sir," said the man. XIII The death of "Daisy" came to seem more and more annoying the more Robert van Rensselaer thought it over. Open-handed man as he was, he would have thought nothing of sending the girl a few thousand dollars; but now all kinds of trouble might result from an attempt to do it. There were no means of identification about the body; and if he were to ask the police to find the woman's child, how long would it be then before scandal was busy? There are so many people ready to believe evil about a wealthy man; and besides, there were hundreds who had known about Daisy. To be sure, they never thought of it, at this late date; but how long would it take them to put two and two together, and to have the whole town gabbling and winking? And if he were to turn the matter over to private detectives, he would lay himself equally open to suspicion. One can never tell about such men, he mused--they might find out the story, and then anything could happen. It was by no means pleasant to think of one's own flesh and blood suffering poverty. But then van Rensselaer reflected that people would probably take care of her; and that in any case she had never been used to wealth, and would not feel the difference; also that if he sent her money it would very probably serve but to teach her extravagance and lead her into temptation. So it would seem to be his duty to let the whole matter drop and forget it. XIV These things he was meditating while with the assistance of his valet he was donning a dress-suit; afterward he descended and entered his automobile, and in half an hour they reached the dock. It was then nearing sundown, and the rain was gone, and the river was golden. Van Rensselaer drank in the fresh sea breeze as he alighted, and moved toward the waiting _Comet_. Steam was pouring out from the funnels of the yacht, and the captain stood at the gang-plank. "All ready, sir," he said. "Every one on board?" inquired the owner. "Half an hour ago, sir." "Very well. Cast off." And then, amid the shouting of orders, Mr. Robert van Rensselaer moved forward to the stern, where a dozen ladies and gentlemen were seated, wrapped warmly in coats and shawls, and enjoying the beautiful scene. They greeted him with laughter and merry welcome; they had cause to be a happy party, for in America there was no host like Robert van Rensselaer. And his guests were worthy of him. Here was the peerless Mrs. Dyemandust, mistress of seventy-two millions, and of all society; here was Mrs. Miner-Gold, worth fifty-seven and a half in her own name; here was Victor de Vere, leader in the smart set and wittiest man in town; here was Pidgin of the great Steal Trust, and Mergem, owner of forty-two railroads. Here was Miss Paragon, the _dèbutante_, about whom the town was mad, and here was his Grace the Duc de Petitebourse, the distinguished French visitor, who cried out that Miss Paragon was "_ravissante--un miracle!_" It is boldness merely to name such company in a novel. "And oh, by the way," asks Mrs. Dyemandust, suddenly, "how did you settle the strike?" "Strike?" echoes Mr. Robert van Rensselaer (he had forgotten it completely), "there are no strikes on the _Comet_." XV At nine o'clock that evening the guests of the yacht, being then twenty miles off Sandy Hook, sat down to dinner in the saloon. Mr. van Rensselaer's banquets were things that one did not soon forget; as also was his dining saloon. There were two state apartments in the _Comet_; the one with which we have now to do was lit with a blaze of electric lights, set amid flashing crystal and silver. One of its walls was occupied by a great buffet, dazzling with the same radiance; and the other three were occupied by life-size paintings, brilliant with the rich colors that only great artists dare. The subject was the Decameron--the beautiful gardens with the elegant ladies and gentlemen clad in all the splendor of the time, and hovering above them the immortal figures that peopled their dreams, the airy pageant of a poet's fancy. And the table! Mr. Robert van Rensselaer was not merely an American millionnaire, he was a man of exquisite culture, a traveller and a connoisseur. Every _pièce-de-service_ upon his table was of individual design, numbers of them the work of the celebrated Germain. The _surtout-de-table_ was a magnificent creation in glittering silver and gold--"_d' après Meissonier, XVIII^{e} siècle_." At either end were golden baskets filled with Indian orchids of priceless beauty. At every place were hand-painted menus upon satin, promising a delicate and unique repast. The wines of Mr. Robert van Rensselaer were one of the problems of metropolitan society; he got them from abroad, from an unknown estate of his own--if indeed he did not get them by means of a compact with the devil. Suffice it to say that a man or woman in New York would give up any other engagement for some of the wine of the president of the Hungerville Mills Company; and that when people asked him any questions about it, he merely smiled charmingly and said, "_On ne parle pas de cela!_" After the soup he served a bottle of a wonderful Madeira, and then by way of a prelude, so to speak, a taste of a dry Sicilian wine, for the secret of which a certain bank president was known to have offered a prize. The _premier service_ was a Burgundy,--_type côte de Nuits_,--a wine of a distinctive taste, approaching a Bordeaux; rich, full of fire, a little _enveloppé_, but of the greatest delicacy. The second service, with the roast, was a champagne, not the kind that one buys for money, but the kind that haunts one's dreams. With the _entremets_ was a Bordeaux--_Saint Estephe_. Then there was another champagne, and with the dessert a port, a new port of a deep, grand purple. His Grace the Duc de Petitebourse raised it on high and gazed upon it long, the company listening with interest for his sentiments, for his Grace was a famous gourmet. "_Magnifique!_" he observed, meditatively. "_C'est a'un gout savoureux--a'une grande rondeur! Corsé, mon Dieu!_" Such were the wines. There remains only to mention the little anteroom from which a hidden quartet sent ravishing strains. As to the company, one could not describe that--one could not describe even the dinner gown of Mrs. Dyemandust within the limits of a single chapter. And as for the conversation, when you bring together the élite of the earth, and warm their souls with a wine from heaven, perhaps there are authors who could write conversation for them, but I cannot. XVI At midnight the guests went up on deck. It was cool, but a heavenly night, the stars like diamonds, and the sea rolling gently; the yacht sped swiftly onward, throwing aside the water with a faint, lulling splash, as of a fountain. Warm wraps were brought, and the guests sat conversing and gazing out over the water; afterward some of them rose in couples and began pacing up and down the deck. Mr. Robert van Rensselaer, the host, was with Miss Paragon, the "_ravissante_"; but it was not very long before Miss Paragon felt chilly, and so the two went down into the main saloon. A wonderful apartment was the great saloon of the _Comet_; but we have to do with only the Oriental corner of it, with its divans, its precious silks and draperies, and its lamp, with the faint, soft glow. Miss Paragon, a dark, languishing brunette, with long, black lashes and a seductive gaze, sank down upon the divan with a sigh. She was clad in glowing red, a soft filmy stuff of wonderful beauty; and with her snowy arms and her perfect neck and shoulders, she made a picture not to be gazed upon too steadily. And Mr. Robert van Rensselaer bent toward her in soft conversation, feeding his hungry eyes; Mr. van Rensselaer had drunk a great deal of his own precious wine. There were those who did not see the idyllic side of this affair, who did not think of Miss Paragon as the tender, soft-hearted young person, but who believed that she knew quite well what she was doing. Certainly Robbie was not going in with his eyes shut, having argued the subject out with his father. Miss Paragon was hardly up to his standard, financially; but then Robbie argued that he was by this time wealthy enough himself to count beauty as something. So his voice became lower and lower, and his words more and more tender; and Miss Paragon gazed upon him languishingly, until at last he ventured to take her hand. She did not resist, and the touch of it made his pulses leap, and made him eloquent. He told her how long he had watched her, and how charming he had thought her; with his arm half about her, and half sunk upon one knee, he went on to reveal what he could no longer hide--that he loved her with all his soul. And as the wonderful, the incomparable Miss Paragon, with all her ravishing beauty, whispered her reply, he pressed her to his heart in ecstasy, and kissed her upon her cheeks and lips. When the merry company descended, van Rensselaer was pouring some wine from a decanter that stood on the centre-table. A few minutes later, when every one was gathered there, the host took Mr. de Vere, the celebrated wit, aside, and said things that made the celebrated wit first stare, and then slap his thigh; and afterward he made an irresistible speech which convulsed the company; and while the host stood blushing like a schoolboy, overwhelmed with all the applause, they opened more champagne, and drank far into the night to the health of the future Mrs. Robert van Rensselaer. It was dawn when at last they parted, and the sky was paling over the shores of Maryland, past which the _Comet_ was speeding on her southward way. XVII After that the cruise of the _Comet_ was a sort of preliminary honeymoon; and never did a gayer, happier party sail upon the rolling deep, nor was there ever a happier bridegroom-to-be than Robbie. All day long he fed his eyes upon the radiant vision, and whispered to himself that she was his. And so they steamed down the Florida coast, and at last came to Palm Beach, and went ashore; there he found a telegram awaiting him, signed by the superintendent of the Hungerville Mills. "MR. R. VAN RENSSELAER, "Palm Beach, Florida. "The trouble is over and the strike broken. Damage has been repaired, and the mills are moving as usual. Have retained chiefly non-union men. Newspapers virulent. "GRINDER." And Mr. van Rensselaer folded the telegram, and put it in his pocket, and smiled. "Damn the newspapers," he said meditatively, and sent his valet to procure some. When he got them he sat on the deck and read them while the cool sea breeze fanned his forehead. There had been quite a time at Hungerville, so it appeared. The strikers had held meetings; the whole town had been in an uproar. Strange as it might seem, a considerable part of the press had taken the side of the men. There had been no violence, however, until strange faces began to appear in the town, and some old abandoned freight cars outside the mills were burned. Then a force of five hundred detectives were rushed into the mills, and a high fence was put up, with loopholes. On the third day the Company sent up a car load of non-union men--men who had been out of work for a year, since the closing of the mills the Hungerville Company had beaten down. Instantly the town was in an uproar, and in spite of all precautions the "scabs" were stoned and beaten. The detectives fired upon the mob, killing three men, a woman, and two children, and wounding a dozen more; and that same night, the sheriff having appealed to the governor, the first companies of militia arrived. Following that were three days of furious excitement; on several occasions a pitched battle all but occurred. Twice the soldiers fired on the mob, killing several, and one militiaman was stabbed in the dark. But the Company insisted upon starting the mills; and the strikers being without money, and many of them half-dead with starvation, they gave up in scores. At last reports the union had been on the point of abandoning the strike, so that its members might secure what few places were left. Then Mr. Robert van Rensselaer read his telegram again, and smiled. "Tell me, dearest," said Miss Paragon, "what good news have you heard?" "That you will soon be mine," he answered her. XVIII The wedding came off about four months later, after Miss Paragon's Paris trousseau had safely arrived. Just how to describe such a wedding in reasonable space is a problem, for the plans of it were described in the newspapers weeks beforehand,--all the decorations and preparations, as well as the ancestry, possessions, and accomplishments of both bride and groom. The Associated Press sent out two descriptions of the wedding gown,--one technical, by an expert, and one imaginative, by a sympathetic artist. On the day before the wedding the Fifth Avenue church--the church where "Robbie" had taught Sunday-school, and had for thirty years listened to the edifying sermons of the Reverend Doctor Lettuce Spray, the church, with all its marvellous riot of flowers--was pictured with pen and pencil, and after the great event the front pages of all the New York papers were given up to telling an eager and expectant people everything about it that could be described or imagined. By that time, of course, the radical press had forgotten all its vehemence about Hungerville, and Mr. Robert van Rensselaer was again the noted financier, the prominent social light, the eminent citizen, and the inimitable _raconteur_. After the couple were safely married, and had spent a long honeymoon upon the _Comet_, and drunk the full cup of their bliss, I remember reading in the New York papers an address which our Robbie had delivered before the Young Men's Mohammedan Association of Podunk, the theme being industrial brotherhood and the community of interest between capital and labor. XIX And now will the reader kindly imagine that four or five years more have sped by; and that Mrs. Robert van Rensselaer is a mother of two children, and a proud and majestic social queen,--_a grande dame_,--wearing serenely the crown of her exalted station; and that Mr. van Rensselaer is more than ever a power in the financial circles of the country, a man able to make governors and senators by the signing of his pen. His affairs have prospered steadily, fortunes springing up at his command like fruit trees beneath the hand of a Hindoo conjurer. He has organized a great corporation of the rivals of his Company for the preventing of ruinous competition; and he has done other things that have left Wall Street equally aghast. I should venture upon this portion of my hero's career with great trepidation, feeling dubious of my ability to conduct him safely amid the labyrinths of "the street"; but fortunately this story has been told by experts as to whose authority there can be no question, and I avail myself of the opportunity to quote from their narrative. The language of them is somewhat technical, to be sure; but every branch of human science has to have a vocabulary of its own, and the seeker of knowledge has to master it. All van Rensselaer's life in these days was Wall Street life, and it is necessary to give some idea of what manner of life that was. In Jabbergrab, "Heroes of Finance," p. 1492, one reads as follows:-- "The way that Robert van Rensselaer defended the stock on a certain occasion is still one of the stories of the town. He was in the act of stepping off the _Aurora_ on that immortal Tuesday--after sailing the race of his life--when a messenger handed him a telegram informing him that the bears, evidently underrating the speed of his yacht, had begun one more savage onslaught upon Kalamazoo Airship. There was plainly a conspiracy--the stock was going down by the point. Van Rensselaer immediately wired his brokers to take all the seller's options they could get, and likewise to buy the market bare of all cash stock; so that by the time his special reached New York he was the owner of pretty nearly the whole of K. A. except some he was quite sure would not appear. "Van Rensselaer was angry, for K. A. was a pet child of his. He had been meditating all the way to the city, and when he arrived, the bear-houses received orders to turn the stock, to buy cash from the cornering party and sell back on buyer's options of a month, the object of which game was that the bears, knowing that van Rensselaer was the defender of the stock, would conclude that he was short of cash, selling for ready money and buying to keep his corner by an option. The trick worked to perfection; the cash stock was taken up by van Rensselaer's own buyers, and the bears, taking new courage, fell upon the stock, and van Rensselaer purchased options in blocks of five and ten thousand, until the bears stopped short from sheer exhaustion. "And of course he had the money ready, and laughed gleefully while he sprung the trap. The options matured, and behold there was no K. A. on the market! The corner was the kind that one dreams of--the price went up by bounds; it began with 110, and before the market closed men were offering 190, and all in vain. There were sixty thousand shares to be delivered to van Rensselaer, sixty thousand shares that had been sold short at 110, and that now could not be covered at 190! "They came to him and begged for mercy; and he, generously, told them that they could not have the stock at 190, but that they might compromise and gain time, at the cost of five per cent per day on the par value of the stock. They, not having yet seen through the trick he had played them, and thinking that a break must soon come, were glad to accept. They paid the interest for ten days, and then the corner was as tight as ever; and in the end they paid him 260 for the stock, and thus he made two hundred dollars a share on sixty thousand shares. It was long before the bears ever interfered again with the pet stock of Robert van Rensselaer!" XX On the day of that curious "compromise," our friend and his victims had been arguing till late in the evening; and then van Rensselaer had taken a cab and driven up town. Feeling the need of fresh air and movement, he had done something unusual with him--gotten out and strolled along upper Broadway. It was after the dinner hour at home, and he was bending his steps toward his club; but passing a brilliantly lighted restaurant, from which strains of music poured, he yielded to a sudden impulse and went in. It was an unusual adventure to our hero; for it was rather a flashy restaurant, with gayly dressed women in it and men smoking. He watched them awhile, and then turned to study the menu. Famous as were his banquets, van Rensselaer himself was a man of very simple tastes, all his splendor coming from his desire to please other people. At present he ordered a cocktail, and sipped it meditatively while the waiter placed before him a plate of raw oysters, of a delicate and palatable variety. Before he ate them he ordered the next course, some sweetbreads and a quail on toast, fresh asparagus, and artichokes prepared in a special way; the waiter listened carefully to the description of exactly how the sweetbreads were to be cooked, and exactly the kind of sauce desired with the asparagus. "And bring me a pint of _Chambertin_," added the guest; "the best you have." While the waiter departed Mr. Robert van Rensselaer carefully tasted the oysters. The sweetbreads, when they came, proved to be correct, the wine was better than he had hoped, and so he felt quite pleased with himself. Now and then during the repast he would pause to breathe and gaze round him; he was growing rather stout, unfortunately, and at his meals he felt it. But he finished at last and smacked his lips, and leaned far back in his chair and began to light a cigar. The cigars of Robert van Rensselaer were, like everything else that he used, of his own importation; the aroma of them was a thing ambrosial, and so our friend half closed his eyes and felt very happy indeed. With the wine stirring in his blood, and his stomach purring contentedly, what more could a civilized man desire? There was but one thing; as Mr. van Rensselaer was gazing about the room, he suddenly espied it. His eye was arrested at a table across the way, where sat two women. One of them was a very stout woman, with yellow hair and many jewels. But the other--he had never seen anything like her before. She was a young girl--not out of her teens--and of a wonderful delicate beauty. She was plainly dressed, and pale; but her skin was like finely tinted marble, and her face--van Rensselaer could simply not take his eyes away from her face. And then suddenly the woman saw his gaze, and smiled. He saw her nudge the girl with her foot, and the girl looked up at him; then she turned scarlet, and gazed down at her plate. Van Rensselaer's heart beat faster, and he finished his demi-tasse rather quickly and threw away his cigar. When he saw that the women were ready to leave, he beckoned to the waiter, and after glancing at his check, gave him a twenty-dollar bill and told him to keep the change. Then he took his overcoat and strolled slowly out. The women were just in front of him, and he came up with them at the corner; they turned and strolled down a side street. "Your friend seems a little shy," he said, laughing, as he put himself by the young girl's side, and gently took her arm. "Just a little," replied the woman. "She has only been in New York a few days. Miss Harrison, Mr.--er--" "Mr. Green," said the other. "Mr. Green," repeated the woman, with a smile, "and Mrs. Lynch, myself." So they were happily introduced. "And where are you going?" asked Mr. Green. "We were just on our way home," said Mrs. Lynch. They strolled on down the street; the man felt the soft arm trembling in his, but the girl said nothing, and never raised her eyes when he spoke to her. Mrs. Lynch kept up the conversation until they reached a brown stone house. The curtains were drawn, but one could see chinks of light, and as the woman opened the door sounds of merriment broke upon the ear. The door of the parlor was open, but they passed by, and into a rear room, lighted by a dim lamp; they shut the door, and then everything was quiet. "Make yourselves at home," said Mrs. Lynch, taking off her hat and wraps. Mr. Green did likewise, and sat down upon the sofa. The girl seated herself. She was still pale and trembling, but Mrs. Lynch did not notice it, conversing lightly with her new acquaintance. Suddenly, however, she arose, remarking, "I have something to attend to, if you'll excuse me." So, frowning down the girl's attempt to remonstrate, she disappeared, shutting the door. XXI There was a little silence, and then Mr. Green went over and sat down by the girl. "Tell me," he said, "what is the matter?" She buried her face in her hands and shuddered. "Tell me," he repeated again, in a tender voice. "Trust me, won't you?" And suddenly she looked up at him, the tears streaming from her eyes. "Oh," she pleaded, "have mercy on me! I can't do it--I can't! You don't know how miserable I am." Robbie--one is moved intuitively to call him "Robbie" again at such a time, even though his hair is now an iron-gray--Robbie was gazing at the perfect face, and thinking that he had never seen anything so wonderful in his life before. "Listen," he said very gently. "You have no reason to be afraid of me. Tell me what is the matter, tell me how you come to be in such a place as this." The girl gazed at him with her frightened eyes; she choked back a sob. "I have only been here a few hours," she said. "And I cannot stay--oh, I cannot!" "Tell me about it," said he. She sat kneading her hands together nervously. "I came from the country," she said. "It is the old story--it will not interest you. My father was dead, and my mother dead, and then I had no money, and had to work. And then I loved a young man--" She made a sudden gesture of despair, and stopped. "Go on," said the other, tenderly. "It was only last week that I saw him last," she said, "and now I shall never see him again. He begged me to go and live with him--that was in the beginning. He was very rich, and so his parents would not let him marry me. But I loved him, so I did not care; I only wanted to be with him. That was a year ago; and then he went away and left me--he said his parents had found it out. I heard he had gone to New York, and I followed him--spent all I owned to come. And of course I could not find him; and I could find nothing to do--I walked the streets all last night, and the night before. And then this was all that there was left--I was nearly dead." The girl had flushed with excitement as she talked, and became more beautiful than ever. The other led her on; she told him all, for his was the first sympathetic voice she had heard. And Robbie talked to her as the Robbie of old had talked to women, gently, beautifully, with infinite tact, and sympathy, and grace. He was a handsome man and a brilliant man, and the girl forgot first her terror, and then her despair, and then her sorrow. No one disturbed them; they talked for an hour, for two hours, and with more and more understanding. Robbie's heart was beating faster and faster. She was not only a beautiful girl, she was a beautiful soul--a pearl in the mud, delicate and precious. And so he went on and on, pouring out his sympathy, and drawing out her whole heart. The time sped on yet faster, midnight came, and by that time Robbie had ventured to take her hand in his, and to sit down beside her on the sofa. He was trembling like a boy again, was Robbie, his whole being was on fire; and there had come a new blush to the girl's cheek, too. "And listen to me," he was saying in a low whisper; "you do not know how you have touched my heart, how much I admire you and wish to help you. You are so beautiful,--I have never seen any one so beautiful,--and I--ah, we could go far away from all this horror, and you need never know of it, or hear of it again. I would take care of you and watch over you. You should have everything to make you happy, for I love you, oh, I cannot tell you how I love you! This is a dreadful place to say it; but what does it matter what these people think? They cannot understand, but we need not care. Ah, I wish you to be mine! I do not care how, but I will never let you suffer any harm. And oh, you must know that I will never let you leave me!" And so he went on, swiftly, breathlessly, eloquently; and first he ventured to put his arms about her; and then to kiss her; and when he saw that she was trembling, and that tears of emotion had risen to her eyes, he clasped her to him passionately. And so another hour fled by; and when at last there came a tap upon the door, the girl sat upon Robbie's lap with her face buried in his shoulder. "And now," said Robbie, as Mrs. Lynch entered, "come and sit down, and let us settle." XXII After that Mary Harrison--such was her name--was soon installed in a pretty little flat up in Harlem; and Robbie, a happy and guileless boy once more, was to be found there not infrequently. We must content ourselves with this brief mention of the subject, and hurry back with our hero to the tedious affairs of Wall Street. For events moved swiftly in that part of the town; and even before the Kalamazoo Airship corner had been settled Robert van Rensselaer was busily planning the great coup of his life,--the smashing of Transatlantic and Suburban. About that desperate and historical campaign it is necessary that the reader should be told in detail. There are men in Wall Street, gamblers pure and simple, who will bull or bear any stock out of which they think they can get anything; and again there are also legitimate manipulators. A legitimate manipulator of stocks, in the view of Robert van Rensselaer, was a man who studied the financial and economic conditions of the world, and aimed to drive prices where they ought to go. If a man could see deeply enough, and bear only unsound stocks and over-produced commodities, he might be considered as a useful servant of society--and what would be no less pleasant, the eternal laws of the universe would work with him in all his trading. The story of the great Transatlantic and Suburban Railroad battle--the most sanguinary of all the conflicts of our hero, and one which Wall Street men will never forget while they live--the reader may find narrated in Jabbergrab, p. 1906, as follows:-- "It was the same marvellous grasp of conditions and of deep movements, men say. Van Rensselaer had been watching T. & S. for over a year, and watching the people who were engineering it. He had studied every phase of the problem and in the end he pricked a bubble that was shedding a rainbow effulgence upon mankind, and that had deceived some of the keenest financiers of the country. "In the first place Robert van Rensselaer had distrusted the T. & S. people, knowing some inside facts about them. Then he had studied the future of the line, its management, its plans, its huge issues of stock, which men whispered must be watered even while they bought it up like mad; and then from certain secret information about conferences, of which no one was supposed to know, from certain suspicious movements in the market as well, van Rensselaer became sure that the T. & S. financiers were prepared for a great boom in the stock. He was perfectly willing,--he helped them along,--for the more they inflated it, the better could he manage what he meant to do. Only when he thought they were about exhausted, he turned to the other side; and so began the battle of the giants." XXIII No one knew that van Rensselaer was the man who was causing the trouble to T. & S., so our historian goes on to assure us. One of his qualities was his mastership of concealment: he had brokers all over Wall Street, and often they were bidding against each other without knowing it. Those on the outside saw merely that T. & S. had gone up in a way that beat all telling, and that then it had found a steady price and was marvellously active; those on the inside knew a little more; they knew that somebody was selling short, but who it was, there was only one man in the world that knew. These things are complicated, and they are tedious; but they have to be understood, for they have to do with a crisis in the life of Robert van Rensselaer. For our friend was not a man who played at stocks; he never went in until he was sure he was right, and then he went in for all he was worth. Though as yet the market had not the least idea of it, he was stripped for a battle to the death with the supporters of Transatlantic and Suburban. Let the reader plunge boldly in,--and take our word for it that there is a path through the wilderness of the narrative. It was on Tuesday that van Rensselaer had begun, taking "seller's options" of three days, which amounted to a gigantic bet that in three days, by more and more selling, he could lower the price of the stock. As a matter of fact he meant to give them no three days; he meant that T. & S. was to go down on Wednesday, the first real day of battle. It was a situation like that in the K. A. corner, with the difference that nobody could think of cornering T. & S. Its stock was all over the country, it had been issued ten millions at a time, and what van Rensselaer and his opponents could secure was comparatively little; it was the market, the spectators of the battle, who were to award the prize of victory at the end. And as we have said, our hero had, or believed he had, the "eternal laws of nature" on his side. "It's coming down!" said van Rensselaer, grimly; "down! down!" XXIV The powers that stood behind T. & S. held a meeting that Tuesday afternoon and formed a syndicate. The unknown person who was "bearing" the stock must be whipped into line without a moment's delay, they agreed; and on the morrow they arranged to buy up one hundred and fifty thousand shares of T. & S. and see if he could stand that. Van Rensselaer was prepared to stand a good deal. On Tuesday, the market being strong, he had sold out every share of stock he owned, including even his K. A. holdings, including even all his interest in the great steel corporation he had made; and likewise he had borrowed upon his credit every dollar that he dared. All this cash was at his broker's, and on Wednesday morning when the market opened he was standing in his private office by the ticker, with his one trusted clerk at hand to telephone his orders. The struggle opened slowly, the two giants sparring and feeling each other's strength. The syndicate brokers called loudly for T. & S., but van Rensselaer waited and watched. Some was sold, but it was not his; he was waiting to see if the price would not go up yet higher, to make his enemies bolder, and himself safer. And about eleven o'clock it did start. T. & S. had opened at 155, and trading brisk; five thousand shares had been sold, and then the price went to 155-1/2 to 156-1/2. Then again it went on to 158, and there it stopped. Evidently that was as high as the enemy cared to send it; and after a while van Rensselaer sent his orders,--two thousand shares to five different brokers. T. & S. wavered, went to 157-5/8, then rallied; sales fifteen thousand. Robert sent out again; offers were still being made, and his agents took them. In the board-room one might have seen a frantic crowd of shrieking, gesticulating men about the T. & S. post; such trading had not been seen for months--something was surely "up." As yet it was not perceived that the bull movement was a defensive one, and wild rumors flew about: the Ghoul and Castoria interests were fighting for the road; Mergem was going to run it to Alaska. T. & S. had never touched such a point before--surely it could not stay there. And yet it did stay there, while offer after offer was made. It was not till noon that it started down; and by that time the syndicate had bought its one hundred and fifty thousand shares, of which van Rensselaer had sold them one hundred and thirty thousand. And now his brokers were shouting offers, and the price was settling steadily. The syndicate was again in hurried consultation; it was evident by this time that some powerful foe was against them in full force. Their peril was imminent and deadly; for the moment that the street perceived a bear attack, alarm would spread; and after that thousands would watch in wild uncertainty, and a single point might bring the panic, might fling thousands and hundreds of thousands of shares upon one side of the trembling balance. With only a few minutes' discussing, the syndicate pledged three hundred thousand more. The market was in a frenzy; T. & S. went to 157-1/2, and there held. The brokers of the syndicate were making the board-room ring with their shouts; and van Rensselaer, calm and ready, sold them all they wanted, and every single time that they let up, began to bear the stock. The result was that its value swayed back and forth, now gaining and now losing a point, the trading in the meantime being furious. The meaning of it all was fast becoming plain,--that some conspirators were trying to break the stock, and that those conspirators were of the giants. Robert van Rensselaer was calculated to be worth some twenty million dollars at that day; and that meant that at the present price of the stock he was in a position to buy about a million and a quarter shares. Whether his enemies could go that far he did not know; but he sat grimly and watched the ticker, while the fierce battle raged and sounds of frenzied excitement came up from the street below. So the hours crawled by, the three long weary hours more; and one by one he hurled his blows, and one by one they came to nothing. He was not a nervous man, and he did not drum the table; but his brow darkened and he swore softly. He was staking all that he owned against the unknown power of his opponents; and if he did not break them with his last offer, he would be without a dollar in the world. And so came the last few dreadful minutes of that ever memorable day of frenzy. There were a dozen brokers shouting his gigantic offers; there was one case where twenty thousand shares changed hands in one block. He emptied his quiver, he made the market reel and men turn white with terror; but his every order was snapped up on the instant, and T. & S. never gave an inch! And so the moment of closing came; and the dreadful day was at an end. XXV Robert van Rensselaer paced his office, his hands behind his back. He had no more money, but he was not frightened; his trust was in the eternal laws of nature,--and besides, he had one or two more cards to play. He was walking up and down meditatively, talking to himself half aloud. "I think," he was saying, "that I've gotten all the best of the pickings; and so it really won't do so much harm if I let them in." He rang for his secretary and sent five telephone messages. Four of them were to friends of his, Wall Street plungers who had generally worked and fought with him; and the fifth was to Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer. It was only a few minutes before the first four were in his office, breathless and wild. "Well," said van Rensselaer, "what do you think of it?" "Never saw anything like it," cried one of them; it was Shrike, the famous wheat plunger. "Never in my life! Who do you think it is? And what'll come of it?" "That's what I sent for you for," was van Rensselaer's reply. "Sit down." And then he talked to them. "I know who's in this, but I'm not at liberty to tell. But I know that they're going to win out, and I'm going to jump on to-morrow morning with every cent I have and help make it a smash-up. I know who's back of the T. & S. people,--it's Smith and Shark, in particular,--and I know just what they're good for. I know T. & S. pretty well, too, and it's hanging on the very verge. It's damned inflated stuff--you know that, as well as I do; and the street's just ready to jump on the losing side. The ring that's been making this fight is going to get most of it; but I'm going to get some, and I'm asking you in so as to make it a sure thing. We've only got to pile on to it, you know, and then suddenly let the street find out that it's us. The tumble will come in three seconds after that." It was several hours before those four gentlemen went out of van Rensselaer's office. They talked the situation over in all its phases: the weak points about the T. & S. road, and the rumors that might be used; the impossibility of their being caught in a corner; the fact that thousands of stockholders were hoping for a rise, and trembling in uncertainty and terror at the thought of a fall; the resources of Smith and Shark and the T. & S. financiers; their own resources, and the weight of their names. In the end the agreement was to buy all the T. & S. offered in the morning, and at the hour of eleven jump in and pound it into the dust. XXVI So they left, and in a few minutes more our hero was in his automobile and speeding rapidly up town. He entered his club-house, and went to a private room, into which shortly after there came hobbling an aged, red-nosed, and gouty old aristocrat, swearing furiously and demanding, "What in the devil did you want me here for, anyhow?" It was Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer. "Well," said the son, after dutifully helping him to a chair, "what do you think of it?" "That's not answering my question," growled the other. "But Lord, Robbie, I've had a day of it! Do you know I hold five thousand of T. & S.? And I've just been crazy all day, waiting--waiting--" Humph!" said Robert, with a smile. "Waiting for what?" "Why, haven't you got any?" cried the other. "Don't you know who's in that syndicate?" "Yes," said Robbie; "it's the T. & S. gang, and Smith and Shark, I supposed." "Yes," said the other, "just so; and they mean business, too, I can tell you. You'll see this stock up in the 200's to-morrow. Who do you suppose are those fools that are fighting them?" "I don't suppose," said Robbie, "I know." "And who are they?" "There aren't any 'they.'" "How do you mean?" "I mean there's only one man." "What! And who is it?" "It's Robert van Rensselaer." And the old gentleman leapt from his chair, in spite of his gout. "Good God, Robbie!" he cried. "You're mad!" "No," said Robbie; "it's a fact." "But you're ruined!" "Oh, no, not quite, Governor. (Robbie always had called him Governor.) I've spent every cent I own, but not quite ruined; for I'm going to be the richest man in New York City to-morrow at about two minutes past eleven o'clock in the morning. I'm going to have every cent that the T. & S. people and Smith and Shark can beg or borrow, and the bank accounts of several hundred lambs besides, including my aged and beloved daddy!" The aged and beloved daddy was gasping for breath. "You're lost, Robbie!" he cried. "It can't be! How can you do it without money?" "I've just arranged a syndicate," laughed Robbie. "But without money?" "They don't know I've no money," said he, cheerfully. "But I'm going to get some more, just for safety, from you." "Humph!" said Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer, laconically. "In the first place," said the other man, "you're going to sell those shares to-morrow morning at ten o'clock; and in the second you're going to sell short on T. & S. all you find takers for; and about eleven o'clock you're going to see the sky fall down and hit the earth." "What's going to cause it?" "For one thing, your being there selling short. You old Wall Street rounders are like vultures about a carcass--people will only have to see you hobbling down town, and they'll know there's a smash-up coming; and if you whisper you're selling T. & S. it'll come right then." "There's something in that," admitted the old gentleman, after some hesitation. "But that's not the thing I want to see you about," laughed Robbie. "The main thing is still to come. It is that you're going to make me a present right away of a couple of million dollars." Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer bounced slightly in his chair, and his eyes were very wide open. "Two millions, at least," reiterated Robbie, seeing that he was speechless. "And _give_ it, not lend it. If I asked you to lend it, then I'd have to go into all kinds of explanations, and I couldn't ever make you see the thing as plainly as I do. All I say is that I've been a good boy and supported myself for thirteen years without ever striking my old daddy for a cent; and that now I want it and want it bad. You're going to die some day, and then you'll leave it all to me. And by that time it'll be of no use in the world to me; for if this stroke fails, it'll be too little, and if it succeeds, it won't be anything at all. And so I want you to give it to me now." Mr. Chauncey van Rensselaer took a long, long breath; then he sat forward and drew up to the table. "Robbie," he said, "tell me about this business. Tell me all." "First I want the two millions." "Confound you," observed the other. "Don't you know if you want 'em, you'll get 'em? But go on now, and tell me about the thing, and don't be a fool." And so Robbie told him; and before the end of it the elder gentleman was rubbing his hands. Afterwards he hobbled out of the room and mailed a note to his brokers, ordering them to sell his T. & S. holdings at the opening price; also he wrote instructing his bankers that Mr. Robert van Rensselaer was to draw on his credit for three million dollars. * * * * * And in the meantime Mr. Robert van Rensselaer was still pacing up and down the room, his hands behind his back, and a very pleasant look upon his mellow countenance. He was at that moment, beyond question, the happiest and the contentedest man in New York: when all of a sudden there was a knock on the door, and an attendant entered. "A note for you, sir," he said. "It's marked 'Urgent.'" And our friend took it; he waited until the man had gone, and then he opened it, and read this:-- "MR. ROBERT VAN RENSSELAER: "Dear Sir,--Will you kindly request our friend Mr. Green to call this evening upon a matter of the utmost possible urgency to him at the house of his old friend Mrs. Lynch?" XXVII It would not profit to produce the remarks of Robert van Rensselaer upon reading the note. Possibly the reader had imagined that he was through with Mrs. Lynch; certainly, at any rate, Mr. Van Rensselaer had imagined it. But one of the disadvantages about some of the pleasant things of life is this fact that, when we wish to forget them, they are not always willing to forget us. Who had written the letter and what was the purpose of it was a problem which our hero pondered for many hours,--hours which he spent either in pacing up and down the room, or in sitting motionless in a chair, with hands clenched and eyes fixed upon vacancy. When finally he came to a decision, it was evidently a desperate one, for his brow was black and his eyes shone. He strode out of the room, and a moment or so later was whirling up town in a cab. Before long he got out and walked, and when the cab had disappeared, he called another, and entering that drove to the residence of Mary Harrison. She was clad in a pink silk gown, and her cheeks were bright with happiness; she was so altogether wonderful that Robert van Rensselaer's frown half melted, in spite of himself, as he walked into the room. The frown did not go so fast, however, that she failed to note it. "What's the matter?" she cried. And his frown came back again. "Mary," he said abruptly, "we've got to part." The girl gave a start. "What do you mean?" she cried. "I mean just what I say," he answered. "We've got to part." And then seeing the ghastly pallor that came over her, he drew her to him and went and sat down on the sofa. "Listen to me, Mary," he said more gently; "you're a good girl, and I have no fear to tell you the whole truth. I know that you have nothing to do with it; but I've gotten into serious trouble, and there is only one way in the world to save myself." "What do you mean, Jim?" she panted. (Jim was the name she had been taught to call him.) "Mary," said he, "you know that I'm a married man, don't you?" "Yes," she said, "but what--" "And that I'm a very rich man? Well, Mrs. Lynch has set to work to blackmail me." The girl shrunk back. "You--what!" she panted. "It's true," said he; "I've had to pay her several thousand dollars already." "Good heavens!" cried the girl. "It can't be so!" "It is," replied he. "And it means only one thing,--that we've got to part forever." XXVIII Mary Harrison was reeling like a drunken person; she clutched at a chair. "Jim," she gasped, "what's to become of me?" "You know that I'll always see that you are taken care of," he began. "I don't--I don't mean that," she cried. "But, oh--I love you--I can't do without you! Where in Heaven's name am I to go?" and she flung herself upon him with a passionate cry. "What am I to do?" she cried, again and again. "How can I bear it?" He strove to calm her. "Listen," he whispered, "don't take it so hard. Perhaps you may forget me--please don't act like that." She was shuddering convulsively. "No, no!" she cried. "It would kill me--it would!" And then suddenly she leapt to her feet, her eyes blazing. "I'll kill that woman!" she panted. "That's what I'll do!" The man drew her to him again, striving to calm her. "No, no, Mary," he said. "That will only make it worse for me. If you love me, you must give me up. That is the only way." She sat there, white and trembling, moaning to herself. She smoothed the beautiful hair back from her forehead, and sat staring in front of her with a dazed expression. "Give you up!" she whispered hoarsely. "Give you up!" Her companion felt extremely uncomfortable; naturally, a good-hearted man does not like to make a woman suffer, especially a woman whom he still loves. He had made up his mind, however, and he meant to carry it through. He let her lean on his bosom and sob away her grief. "And can't I ever see you--even just a little bit?" she moaned. "No," he said firmly. "Can you not see, Mary, that there is no place in the world where I could keep you that that woman could not track me to? She has found me out and tracked me here already and she could ruin me, Mary, drive me to kill myself." The other shuddered. "No," she said, "you must not do that. You are right, and I must make the sacrifice. I will go--I can bear it, I guess. But oh, Jim, I never really loved any one but you, and I never shall." "I shall never forget you," said he. "And I will give you all you need, Mary,--you won't have to worry about money." But the girl scarcely heard him; she was not thinking about money. "And where will you go?" he asked finally. "I don't know," said she. "I have no home. Where should I go? I suppose I'll go back where I came from--back to Albany." Robert van Rensselaer looked at her; the name Albany brought back a sudden memory to him. "Well, I declare," he said, "you did not tell me you came from Albany." He hesitated a moment and then went on, "Perhaps, maybe, you know a girl there--But I don't know her name," he added, with a slight laugh. "Then I'm afraid I couldn't tell you," said the other, answering his smile. "But I knew very few people there. I never knew any one at all until after my mother went away some years ago." "Went away?" asked the other. "I thought you said she died." "She must have died, for she was very ill," said the girl. "But I don't know what became of her--she never came back." The man was gazing at her in surprise. "Never came back?" he echoed; and then he added, "What was your mother's name?" "Helen," said she; and he sunk back. "Ah, it was an awful thing," went on the girl, her voice trembling. "Poor, dear mother, how hard she worked to take care of me--and how good she was! She worked herself to death, Jim, that's the truth." "What was the matter with her?" "She had consumption," said the girl, and she saw him start. "What's the matter?" she asked. "Nothing," said he, "that is--it's just a queer coincidence; but what was your father's name?" "I never knew anything about my father," said the girl. "Mother never told me; but I always suspected that he had not married her--that is--" She stopped again, for his manner was strange; then, however, she went on. "I think he was rich," she said, "and very handsome and good. She gave me a locket with his picture that she said only he would have the key to open; she had lost the one he gave her." And again she stopped; a ghastly, ashen pallor had come over the face of Robert van Rensselaer; he leaned close to her, his eyes, his whole face, looming large with horror. His hand shook like an autumn leaf as he stretched it out to her. "A locket! a locket!" he gasped. "My God! Have you got it?" "Yes," cried the girl, in astonishment, and she went to the bureau. She held it to him as he ran toward her, and he took one glance at it and staggered back like a man struck to the heart with a knife. He gave one wild, horrible cry, and clutched his hands to his head, and reeled, and would have fallen. But Mary had sprung to him in terror. "Jim! Jim!" she cried, "what is it?" She would have caught him, but he shrunk from her touch as from a wild beast. "No! no!" he screamed, and crouched in the corner with eyes of dreadful fear. "No! go back!" "But, Jim," cried the girl, "what is it? What is the matter?" The man had sunk down on his knees, shaking convulsively. "O my God!" he was gasping, "O my God!" Mary sprang to him again, and flung her arms about him. "Jim! Jim!" she cried hysterically, "you must tell me what it is--you must--you must! Do you know who my father was?" "Yes," he gasped, writhing, "I know--I know!" "And who was he? Who? Tell me!" He choked and caught his breath again; but he could not say the words. As he felt the warmth of her breath and the pressure of her arms about him, it sent a sudden shudder through his frame, and he flung her away with a force that sent her reeling across the floor. Then he staggered to his feet, and with a moan he rushed to the door. He caught one glimpse of the girl's face, and then fled madly down the steps. Outside his cab was waiting. He did not see it, and started away; but the driver shouted to him, and that brought him to his senses for an instant. He leaped in. "Drive! drive!" he panted. "Where to?" asked the man. "Anywhere," he screamed. "Drive!" And so they whirled away down the street, van Rensselaer crouching in a corner, writhing and twisting his hands together. There was a thought that came over him every few seconds like a spasm and made him cry out. He could not bear it very long; he shouted to the driver to stop, and sprang out, and flung him some money. They were in a deserted portion of the park, and he turned and fled away into the darkness. XXIX And meanwhile Mary was left alone in the ghastly silence of the room, crouching in the corner like a hunted animal. Her face was ashen, and her eyes distended; in her quivering hands she clutched the locket. She was staring at it and staring at it, in terror, powerless to move. She wished to open it; but ten minutes must have gone before she rose and groped her way across the room. She found a chisel and knelt down upon the floor, and worked in frenzied fear to force it. Her hands were like a drunkard's, and she cut herself again and again; but then suddenly the cover flew off, and she pounced upon it. One glance she took; and then it fell to the ground from her helpless grasp, and she staggered backward, with a shuddering moan, against the wall. She swayed there an instant, and then like a flash she turned and fled across the room. She fumbled for an instant in a drawer of the desk; then a pistol shot rang out, and she sunk down in a quivering heap upon the floor, her brains spattered out upon the carpet. XXX Wall Street was crowded long before nine o'clock that Thursday morning with a jostling, shouting mob of men; the gallery of the exchange was packed; the curb outside was thronged. The London quotations were on every tongue, and suspense and terror on every face, in the very air. All knew that the crisis of the combat had come, that one way or other all would now soon be known. Through this crowd Robert van Rensselaer pushed his way. Nobody heeded him, nobody knew him; his clothing was soiled and muddy, his hat broken and jammed down upon his head. His face was inflamed, his eyes blood-shot, and he reeled and groped about him as he walked. He was drunk. He made his way up to his office, staggered in, and sunk into a chair. "Get me some whiskey," he panted to his secretary. "Hurry up!" The latter was staring at him in amazement. "Some whiskey!" he shouted again. "Don't you hear? And shut the door, and don't let any one come in here. Quick!" The man turned and vanished, and van Rensselaer sat in the chair, staring in front of him with his wild eyes. He had made his way down town like a man in a dream; one idea had possessed him and driven him--he muttered it to himself as he walked: "Wall Street! Wall Street! Ten o'clock!" Now he turned suddenly and looked at the ticker, then rose and staggered to it and leaned there, swaying. He read the early reports, and then glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes to ten. "Ah!" he panted. "Safe!" The secretary returned, and the other seized the bottle he brought and drank from it. Then he said: "I wrote Jones and Co. yesterday to turn three millions over to my brokers. See that it's done. And tell the brokers to sell T. & S., and sell it just as fast as they can, until it's every cent gone. And then you come back here, and don't let any one into this room--not a soul, mind you, not a soul. Do you understand?" "I understand," said the man, and went away, lost in wonder. The first thing he did was to order his own broker to cover some T. & S. of his own; the secretary had never seen van Rensselaer lose his nerve before. And meanwhile van Rensselaer was kneading his hands and muttering, his eyes fixed upon the creeping clock, and the bottle of liquor on the table by his side. So the minutes passed by, and the hands passed the stroke of ten. XXXI It was worth going down into that seething crowd to see the floor of the exchange at that moment. A thousand men were swaying about one spot of it, and at the instant of ten they broke into a deafening chorus of yells. Transatlantic and Suburban! Transatlantic and Suburban! There was no other stock thought of that day--there were many of the smaller firms that had closed their doors, not daring to do business on such a market. And those who hung over the ticker read nothing but T. & S.,--157-1/4--157-1/2--157-3/8,--and so on and on. The fluctuating of T. & S. was the swaying of two monsters that wrestled in a death embrace; and van Rensselaer, as he fed his eyes upon it, was himself a free man once more. Horror haunted him no longer; the excitement drove the fumes of the liquor from his brain, and he was drunk, but with the battle ecstasy. To him every figure meant a blow, as with a war-axe, at foes of his; he could fancy that this stroke was his father's, and that his own, and that Shrike's, and so on. He clenched his hands and muttered swiftly, as one watching a fight: "Give it to them! Down with them! Down with them!" And meanwhile the ticker raced on: T. & S. 100--157-1/2; T. & S. 500--157-5/8; T. & S. 3000--157-3/8; T. & S. 10,000--157-1/4; and so almost without a pause. Down below in the street shrieked a frantic mob; it was like looking into a huge well packed full of writhing bodies. So half an hour crept by, and T. & S. still stood the onslaught; van Rensselaer had gotten help, but evidently so had the syndicate. It was as if Wall Street had divided into two armies, and vowed no quarter. And they fought on; the time crept along to 10.45; T. & S. was moving at last--it was 157-3/4, the highest mark of the day! Van Rensselaer took another great gulp of the liquor and pounded his bell. "Listen to me," he said swiftly to the breathless clerk. "The crisis has come--go outside as fast as you can and tell somebody that the Arkansas legislature has doubled the freight rates on the T. & S. There'll be a dozen people doing the same. And then wait five minutes--not a second more, do you hear? and let it out that I am breaking T. & S., and that the Governor's with me, and Shrike, and the rest of them." The man nodded and disappeared, and van Rensselaer turned once more to the ticker. There was a moment's pause, and he went to the window and stared out. Then it began again--T. & S. still holding. Van Rensselaer knew that the ticker was some minutes behind the market, and he cursed with impatience. Then he took a pencil and began figuring, as well as he could, with his trembling hands. He had put twenty-seven million dollars into this thing; he had bought the margins of something like a million and three-quarters shares. That was more shares than were in existence, actually; but under Wall Street's systems of speculating that is a common enough state of affairs. The fact that impressed him was that every point that T. & S. went down he stood to win a million and three-quarters of dollars from the men he had been fighting. And if instead it went up, and stayed up the time limit, he owed the same sum instead. And then suddenly the ticker clicked again; it was five minutes of eleven, and T. & S. still holding,--157-5/8--157-3/8--157-1/2. He could bear the thing no more; he drained the bottle and sprang out of the door. In a few moments more he was on the street. XXXII There were thousands of men flying this way and that, wild-eyed and shrieking. Van Rensselaer caught a phrase here and there,--"freight rates--ruin them--the van Rensselaers--Shrike." And meanwhile he was hurrying on his way to the board-room. He was a member and was admitted to the bedlam, to the edge of that writhing, hysterical mass of men who were crushing each other, breathless in their efforts to reach the trading-post. Van Rensselaer gazed at the figure of the stock--it was 157! He heard the same exclamations here that he had heard outside,--"freight rates--the van Rensselaers,"--and all the rest; and then suddenly he saw near him a huge ox of a man, waving a paper in one hand and bellowing in a voice that rang above the whole uproar. It was one of van Rensselaer's own brokers, the best of them; and as van Rensselaer heard him his heart stood still. The moment had come! "I offer twenty thousand three-day sellers! T. & S. twenty thousand!--one fifty-seven! one fifty-seven! Twenty thousand three-day sellers--one fifty-six and seven-eighths! one fifty-six and three-quarters!" And then again the roar swelled up and drowned him. Men were screaming from a hundred places: "One thousand at one fifty-six and a half! Thirty-five hundred at one fifty-six! one fifty-six! one fifty-five and a half!" And van Rensselaer, mad, drunk, and blind with passion, shook his hands in the air and screamed in frenzy, "Down! down with them! Down! Jump on them! Pound them! _Go on! go on!_" He knew now that it was victory; he could feel it in the air--the panic, the wild, raging, mad tornado that uproots all things on its way. It had begun--it had begun! There were no more takers--the enemy was retreating--the rout was on! And so he yelled and laughed in delirium; and the crowd, crushed tightly about the post, went mad likewise, with terror or joy, as the case might be. There were men there who were losing a million with every point--the millions that van Rensselaer was winning. And they saw defeat and ruin glaring at them with fiery eyes. So they raged and screamed for some one to buy T. & S.--to buy it at one fifty-six! to buy it at one fifty-five! to buy it at one fifty-three! And there was no longer any one to buy it at any price. So it was that the hurricane burst, in all its fury; it was not a panic, it was chaos and destruction let loose. The stock was "turned" at last; its supporters beaten; and the public, the great terror-stricken public, plunged in to overwhelm it. The price went no longer by fractions, no longer even by points; it went by three points, by five points, by ten points. Its speed was regulated by nothing but the time it took electricity to spread the panic through the whole country, for messages to come in bidding brokers to sell at any price. And in the meantime, of course, there stood van Rensselaer's bull-voiced agent hammering it down by five and by ten points at a bound with his twenty thousand shares to sell. The mad frenzy had gone on until van Rensselaer could no longer bear the strain, and backed out of the crowd and sat down and laughed and sobbed like an overwrought child. It was half an hour before he could command himself again; and then T. & S. was at seventy-six, and finding takers at last! That meant that the "shorts" were "covering," buying the stock they needed, and reaping their rewards; and so the awful panic at last was coming to an end. Van Rensselaer had estimated the true value of T. & S. at ninety, and so he sought out his brokers and bade them buy all there was to be had. XXXIII Our hero made his way out of the crush, jostling past men who were crying and men who were cursing, men who were tearing their hair and men who were shaking their fists at the sky--all of them men who had lost all they owned in the world and saw ruin and starvation ahead of them. It was a fearful, a hellish scene; but van Rensselaer did not heed it, he had emotions enough of his own. They were emotions not easy to describe--emotions of a man who has made seventy or eighty dollars a share upon a million or two of shares, and who has been made the wealthiest man in New York in half an hour. Van Rensselaer the elder came hobbling into the office a few moments later and flung his arms about his son. "Robbie!" he gasped, "Robbie!" and could say no more, for he was choking. Shrike and the other three were close behind him, and the five gentlemen went beside themselves with rejoicing--now singing, now laughing, now dancing about, now falling on each other's necks. I have said five; for van Rensselaer the younger, strange to say, joined them but halfway. Now he would sit back in the chair and laugh nervously, while his father told over the unthinkable sums he had gained, and his heart throbbed with exultation; but then a few seconds later he would be sitting staring in front of him, his quivering hands wandering aimlessly about. "Poor Robbie!" said the fond father; "it's easy to see he's done up. Here, have a drop." He was surprised to see Robbie gulp down the contents of a flask at one draught. For now the strain was over, the dreadful pressure gone; and Robert van Rensselaer's nervousness was suddenly coming back. While the others were still at the stage where it was possible for them to embrace each other, he arose and excused himself and went out. He went down to the street, where men were still crying aloud in their grief, and staggered away. He went on aimlessly, bending his brows and clenching his hands, and wrestling in his soul to keep before him the fact that he was the richest man in New York. But he could not do it; and then suddenly, with a wild, desperate resolve, he sprang into a cab and shouted an address. He was at the river-side in a few minutes, and there lay the _Comet_. It was a wild day on the river; a gale had been raging, and the waves were high even in the bay; but Robert van Rensselaer thought nothing of that as he rushed on board and called for the captain. "Steam up!" he shouted. "Put off the instant you are able." The captain stared at him in consternation. "To go where?" he cried. "To put to sea," answered the other. "But the storm! Surely--" "Curse the storm!" the man yelled. "Put to sea, I tell you, and get me out of this town. Do you understand? Why don't you start?" "But half the crew is away, Mr. van Rensselaer; and provisions--" "I told you to get ready!" yelled Robbie. "Get ready! Do as I tell you, and don't argue with me. Get on board what you can, only leave this place the first instant you have steam up. Now go on!" And he turned and staggered into the cabin. While men rushed about on the deck, and the fires burned bright below, he sat with another bottle of liquor before him; and when at last the _Comet_ slipped away from her dock, he was sunk against the table in a drunken stupor. XXXIV And he lay there, knowing nothing, while the engines throbbed and the vessel ploughed its way down the stormy bay. It was only when she plunged out into the open sea, and the giant waves smote upon her, that at least he gazed up again, brought to himself by a lurch of the vessel that flung him to the floor. He staggered to his feet, clinging to the table. Everything was reeling about him; the yacht stood nearly upon her beam-ends as she climbed on the waves. The din of the sea was deafening, indescribable; for a moment the man knew not where he was. Then the captain entered. "We are off, sir," he said grimly; "where do you wish to go?" "I don't care," answered the other. "Go where you please--only let me alone." "All right, sir," said the captain. "We shall keep on to the northeast, it is safest to face the storm. We shall be off the banks by to-morrow morning." With those words he turned and left, shaking his head. He had heard that the owner of the _Comet_ had made millions in Wall Street that day; but this looked as if he must have lost them. Meanwhile van Rensselaer crouched by the table, alone with his horror. The afternoon sped on, the sun sank, and darkness came, and with it a new fury to the storm. All the while he was either crouching in a chair and shuddering, or rolling about the cabin floor in his stupor. All through the night he knew nothing of what was going on; nothing of the seething billows that swept past them, tossing the yacht high up on their mountain crests, or crashing down upon her bow with deadly shock; nothing of the captain's vigil and fear, of the toil of the four men at the wheel who fought to hold the yacht's prow against the storm. He heeded nothing at all until there came all at once a shock, and a grinding noise of something that tore through the vessel's heart. Then he gazed up stupidly, feeling that her motion had changed, that she was rolling from side to side, that the blows of the waves were fiercer. Then the cabin door burst suddenly open, and the captain rushed in. "We've broke our shaft!" he panted. "The engines are wrecked!" Van Rensselaer gazed at him out of his dull eyes. "Hey?" he asked. "We've broke our shaft!" roared the other, above the noise of the storm. "Well, what of that?" demanded van Rensselaer. "What do I care?" "We are helpless!" yelled the captain, "Helpless! Don't you understand?--we are adrift--we will go on the rocks!" Van Rensselaer stood clinging to the table, staring; he was repeating the words, half to himself, as if the meaning of them were not yet clear in his clouded brain. "Helpless! adrift! go on the rocks!" And then, suddenly seeing the wild look in the captain's eyes, he sprang at him, screaming: "We don't want to go on the rocks! No; you are mad! Do something! Stop her!" The other saw that he was drunk; but fear was sobering van Rensselaer fast, as excitement had done once before. "Where are we?" he cried. "Where are we?" An awful blow shook the vessel; she reeled and staggered, and the two waited in fright; then, as she righted herself, the captain answered: "We are off the coast of Maine--about fifty miles off. But we are drifting; and we can do nothing at all. If help does not come, we are lost." "Help must come!" screamed van Rensselaer. He understood clearly at last. "You are crazy! It cannot be!" And he started toward the companionway, the captain at his side. As he tried to open the door, however, he stooped, appalled at the wildness of the night. It was black outside; but the wind was a fierce living thing that smote him in the face, and the hissing spray stung like hail. Van Rensselaer stared out only long enough to see a rocket start out from the deck and cleave its way into the sky, and then he reeled back into the cabin. The man was now aware of his situation, and every emotion was gone but terror. He staggered about, flung this way and that with the tossing of the yacht, raising his clenched hands in the air, and screaming in frantic fear: "My God, my God! It can't be! It's a lie! Save us! What shall we do?"--and so on, until the captain turned in sheer disgust and went back to the deck and his duty. But that van Rensselaer did not even know--he raced on back and forth, crazed and raving. All was dead in him now but the wild beast--if, indeed, there had ever been anything else alive in him. He wanted to live--he wanted to get on the land--he was worth a hundred million dollars--he--_he!_ and was he to be drowned like a prisoned rat in a cage? His cries rang above all the storm; he called on God--he wept--he prayed--he cursed; and all the while the mad storm roared on, howling outside like some savage beast that was fighting to get at him, and driving the little vessel on before it to its doom. There was no one to hear him, the prisoned rat in the cage, though he foamed at the mouth in his frenzy. XXXV So an hour or two went by; up above the dawn broke and the daylight came. Van Rensselaer was still howling, though so weak that he could scarcely stagger, when the cabin door was flung wide again, and the captain, white, and with set lips, came in. "It is all over, sir," he said. "We are lost." The owner's eyes were glaring like a maniac's. "What do you mean?" he shrieked. "Come up and see," was the reply, and van Rensselaer rushed blindly to the deck. Clinging to the companionway door, he stared about him, dazed at first, and realizing nothing but his own horror. A mad chaos was about him; the yacht was like a bubble tossed about by the gigantic seas; the waves were like mountains around her. Down into a great valley she sank, down--down--plunging, and van Rensselaer gasped in fear; and then a great rolling mountain came sweeping down over her, and up she rose--higher and higher--to the very crest, and sped along with the speed of an express train, the mad waters seething and hissing and roaring and thundering around her. From the mountain top van Rensselaer gazed about him--and his cries died in his throat. Not half a mile away, right upon them, as it looked, was the shore--the wild, lonely, horrible shore--the shore with the jagged rocks and the merciless iron cliffs--and destruction, imminent and inevitable! The sight took the last atom of the soul out of van Rensselaer. He whimpered, he wailed, he would have fallen down upon the deck and grovelled but that instinct made him cling to his support. To stand there alive and safe, and be swept thus to death, foot by foot! To be helpless in the grip of these grim, relentless forces; it was too much, it was too much! It made him hysterical, it turned him into a beast, into a fool. He screamed, he laughed, he sobbed; but the words he spoke no longer had meaning. His eyes were fixed upon the black rocks before them; as they came nearer he heard the sounds made by the mountains of water hurled against them,--a sound far-reaching, all-pervading, elemental, cosmic. Only once he turned elsewhere, to see the crew flinging out their anchors in a last vain hope; to see the yacht whirl round as they caught, to see the waves lift her up, and sweep her on, and snap the cables like so many threads. Then again he perceived that the crew was trying to get out one of the boats; and he bounded to the spot, and waited. He did not help, he clung to the davits. But the instant the boat touched the water, he struck one of the men out of the way and leaped in. Several followed, and there was a cry, "Enough!" and they pushed off, and were whirled away from the yacht. An instant later a breaking wave struck them a glancing blow, and over they went. Van Rensselaer came to the surface, strangling and gasping, still in his frenzy of fear. The boat was near, and he struck out and caught it. There was another man close to him, a sailor, stretching out his hands to him; as the waves tossed them about he touched van Rensselaer's foot and gripped it. The other kicked at him madly, in frantic rage--kicked him off, and kicked him down. So he clung alone to the storm-tossed life-boat. It was a fearful struggle: the waves choked him, stunned him, half drowned him; but he hung like mad, and fought to keep his head above the water, while the sea was sweeping him nearer and nearer to the iron shore. He was staring at it wildly, a monstrous enemy with open mouth, and huge jagged teeth that gaped at him. They were looming high above him now; the roaring of the breakers swelled in his ears, in his soul, dazing him, appalling him, poor shivering mite of life that he was. And then suddenly he felt himself sinking--downward, deep down in a valley; he felt himself tossed and rocked, swaying as if in a tree-top; and then upwards he started--higher--higher--right to the boiling crest, the hovering, poising crest. He screamed, he writhed, it was like some hideous nightmare, terrifying to the soul. But the wave seized him--he felt it seize him; and it started--slowly--then faster, then faster yet--with the speed of a cannon ball--and hurled him, smote him, upon the jagged rocks. It battered his face, it broke his limbs, it crushed his skull like an egg-shell; and so the last spark of his hungry life went out of him. XXXVI I share in Ruskin's distrust of the "pathetic fallacy"; and I have no intention of implying that the waves had any sentiments whatever in connection with Robert van Rensselaer. It was purely an accident that they kept him in their grasp, and beat him against the cliff all day; that one by one they rushed up to seize him, and spent all their force in hurling him, in pounding him, until he had lost all semblance of a man; it was not until night, and when the wind died out, that they washed him on down the shore, and sought out a little cove and bore him to the sandy edge. It was a still spot; there was no voice but the waves' voice, and all night long they called to each other on the beach, and tossed the body back and forth in the silver moonlight. When the morning broke it was swollen and purple, and it lay half hidden in the sand. The sun came up and still it was there, unheeded save by innumerable small creatures that walked awkwardly, bearing long weapons in the air. One of them soon climbed upon the face and fastened its claws in the lips; and others came quickly, for it was choice prey. Was it not true that for twoscore years and more the earth had been searched for things rare and precious enough to help make up the body of Robert van Rensselaer? Think of the hogs-heads of rare wines that had been poured into it! Of the boxes of priceless cigars that had flavored it! Of the terrapin, and the venison, and the ducks--the strangely spiced sauces--the infinity of sweetmeats--the pink satin menus, full of elegant French names! Had not thousands of men labored daily to fetch and prepare these things, to serve them upon crystal and silver before that precious body--and to clothe it and to house it, and to smooth all its paths through the world? And now it lay at last upon the sand, to be devoured by a swarm of hungry crabs! So another day came, and in the afternoon two fishing boats rowed by, and one of the fishermen espied the body. He landed with his companion, shouting to the other boat that there must have been a wreck, and to go on up the shore and look for it. Then he went toward the body, or what there was of it. The clothing was still intact, and so he searched in the pockets, pulling out first of all a marvellous gold watch that had cost eighteen hundred dollars in Geneva. That interested him, of course, and he went on in haste, and found a wallet, with plenty of money, and with some cards in it. They were blurred, but one could still make out the name on them, and the fisherman gave a cry, "Good God! this says Robert van Rensselaer!" "Who's Robert van Rensselaer?" demanded the other, wonderingly. "You never heard of him? Why, he's the richest man in the country." The speaker was gazing down, awe-stricken, at the body; but his companion merely moved away a little. "He smells like the devil, anyhow," said he. XXXVII It was not long before the other boat came back to tell of the wreck of the _Comet_, and of the finding of several more bodies. And so in a few hours the news reached New York, causing another panic in Wall Street, and dreadful grief in the bereaved family of the unfortunate millionnaire. Before night the newspapers reported that the remains (their own phrase!) of Robert van Rensselaer were on their way to the city by special train. They were received in state, of course; and two days later there was a most solemn and impressive funeral, many columns of description of which I might quote, were it not that this story is too long already. Suffice it to say that the ceremony was held in the great Fifth Avenue Church, and that it was attended by all the wealth and fashion of our metropolis; and that the Reverend Doctor Lettuce Spray preached the most eloquent of all his sermons upon the text, "Blessed are the millionnaires, for they have inherited the earth, and you can't get it away from them." TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: Text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. 
20068	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 20068-h.htm or 20068-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/0/6/20068/20068-h/20068-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/0/0/6/20068/20068-h.zip) SARAH'S SCHOOL FRIEND by MAY BALDWIN Author of 'Two Schoolgirls of Florence,' 'Barbara Bellamy,' &c. With Six Illustrations by Percy Tarrant [Illustration: He took Sarah by the hand and pulled her up on to the bank. Front. PAGE 179.] London: 38 Soho Square, W. W. & R. Chambers, Limited Edinburgh: 339 High Street Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company TO MY KIND FRIENDS OF 'ALDAMS' CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. A MILL-HAND'S MANSION 1 II. A DREARY BANQUET 11 III. STALLED OXEN 20 IV. AN UNANSWERED QUESTION 31 V. A RELUCTANT INVITATION 41 VI. AN EXTRAORDINARY LETTER 51 VII. HORATIA'S ARRIVAL 61 VIII. HORATIA 71 IX. A YORKSHIRE MIXTURE 81 X. PLAIN SPEAKING CLEARS THE AIR 90 XI. HORATIA SPEAKS OUT 100 XII. A RINKING-PARTY 109 XIII. HORATIA'S INFLUENCE 119 XIV. A MILLIONAIRE FOR FIVE MINUTES 129 XV. A VISIT TO CLAY'S MILLS 139 XVI. THE MILLIONAIRE'S PICNIC 148 XVII. A DISASTROUS BONFIRE 158 XVIII. NANCY PACKS UP 167 XIX. AN UNPLEASANT MOMENT 176 XX. SARAH'S FIRST STEP TO CONQUEST 185 XXI. CLAY'S MILLS PLAYING 194 XXII. 'FURRINERS' IN OUSEBANK! 204 XXIII. OUTWITTED 214 XXIV. GOOD-BYE TO BALMORAL 224 XXV. 'A BAD BUSINESS' 234 XXVI. TRUE YORKSHIRE GRIT 244 XXVII. SARAH IS MUCH IMPROVED 254 XXVIII. SARAH BECOMES A BUSINESS WOMAN 264 XXIX. 'A MIRACLE' 274 XXX. LAST 283 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE He took Sarah by the hand and pulled her up on to the bank _Frontispiece._ He took his young niece's arm and followed his sister-in-law into the drawing-room 21 'I'm so glad you've called me "lass"! I was so hoping some one would' 69 'Ask the band to play "La Rinka," Sarah,' cried Horatia 105 'We've come to say there's two men been turned off because they've been ill, and boys put on in their place' 132 As the two stood and watched the air-ship something dropped from it 220 Sarah's School Friend. CHAPTER I. A MILL-HAND'S MANSION. 'It's a dreadful thing to have a father you don't respect,' said Sarah Clay, as she walked into the gilded and beautifully painted drawing-room of the aforesaid father's mansion in Yorkshire. Her mother gave a little, sharp scream, and let fall the book she was holding in her hand. Sarah came forward swiftly, picked it up, and turned it over to look at the title, at sight of which she said, with a little laugh, 'What a humbug you are, mother! You know you've never read a single word of this book.' Mrs Clay's face flushed crimson. ''Ow dare you talk similar to that, Sarah?' Only she pronounced it fairly with a true cockney accent, and left out all her _h_'s. 'I don't know w'at women are comin' to nowadays, w'at wi' one thing an' another, w'en it comes to a chit o' sixteen talkin' like that about 'er mother bein' an 'umbug, let alone sayin' she doesn't respect 'er father; an' w'at 'e'd say if 'e 'eard 'er I couldn't say, I'm sure,' she said, flustered. 'Then don't say it,' observed Sarah lightly, as she threw herself lazily into one of the luxurious armchairs opposite her mother, and only then became aware that buried in the depths of another easy-chair was another figure--that of a man. For a moment she was taken aback, and started in fright, thinking that it was her father, of whom she might speak disrespectfully behind his back, but whom she did not dare to abuse to his face, fearless though she was by nature. However, to her relief, she saw it was not her father's big, burly form that filled the gold-brocaded chair, but her brother's tall, slight figure. 'Awfully bad form, Sarah,' he murmured in an effeminate voice, after which he laid his head back in an attitude of exhaustion against the chair, and gazed up at the ceiling. 'Yes; I think it must be that 'igh-class, fashionable school that's taught 'er to speak so of 'er parents, an' not respect any one,' agreed her mother in querulous accents. 'I didn't mean to speak disrespectfully to you, dear old mother,' said the girl with a kind of patronising affection. 'I don't know w'at you call it, then, callin' me an 'umbug,' objected Mrs Clay. 'I was in fun, and you know it _is_ humbug your pretending to read Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_,' persisted Sarah. At the title, the youth in the arm-chair roused himself, and said in quite a different tone, 'Were you reading that, mater? Is it my copy?' 'Well, I can't say I'd really read it, not to understand it; but I saw it was one o' the books you were studyin', an' I thought I'd take a look at it just to know a little w'at you were studyin' w'en you got back to college,' said his mother apologetically. 'That's awfully nice of you, mater; but why didn't you ask me about it? I'd have told you anything you wanted to know about my work. That's such a frightfully dry book. I should grind it up for my trip,' replied her son. 'I don't know that I want to know about "trips;" but I feel I ought to try an' educate myself now you two are comin' on, so as not to disgrace you,' began his mother. But her son, with an impatient movement--which, however, he immediately suppressed--interrupted her. 'Dear mater, what does it matter whether you are learned or not? For my part, I don't see what women want to be educated for at all.' 'Oh, you don't, don't you? You ought to have lived about the year one. You're several centuries behind the times, George!' exclaimed his sister indignantly. 'I wish I had. I'm sure the girls of that time were nicer than they are nowadays,' he replied, calmly relapsing into his nonchalant attitude. 'I'm sure they never talked about not respectin' their dads,' said Mrs Clay plaintively. She had, as will be seen, a habit of harping back to the same grievance, and this remark of her daughter's evidently rankled in her mind. 'Perhaps their fathers were more respectable than mine,' replied Sarah. 'Well, I never did!' cried Mrs Clay, scandalised. 'Draw it mild, Sarah! The pater may be a bit of a tartar sometimes, but he's respectable enough, in all conscience,' remonstrated her brother. 'I don't think so,' declared Sarah. Before her mother could utter the protests which her son saw in her face, George said, 'Oh, let her talk! She's got some maggot in her brain, and she wants to air it. It amuses her, and it doesn't hurt us, as long as the pater doesn't come in and hear her; and she'll take good care to shut up if he does,' he wound up with a laugh. His laugh exasperated his sister, and she retorted with some warmth, 'If I do shut up when he comes in, it's only because he's so violent and hateful!' 'Sarah! Sarah!' came from the mother and son simultaneously, in accents of horrified indignation; and Mrs Clay continued, 'Leave the room at once, miss. I won't sit 'ere an' 'ave my 'usband insulted like that.' Without a word, the girl rose from her seat and left the drawing-room, shutting the door sharply behind her. 'What's the governor been doing to upset her now?' inquired Mr George Clay of his mother. 'Nothin' that I know of. It's some crotchet of Sairey, now she's begun studyin' the woman's question, as she calls it, an' thinks 'e treats the women 'ere badly.' 'Oh goodness, don't you tell me she's started that! Do they go in for politics at that school, then?' cried her brother. 'I never heard of such a thing at a girls' school; it ought not to be allowed.' 'Well, I don't know that it's politics exactly; it's somethin' to do wi' women's duties to each other an' the 'ard life our mill-lasses 'ave, or somethin'. She was talkin' to me the other evenin' about it, quite beautifully; an' I will say that for Sairey, she don't mind my not understandin', but explains, an' never seems to despise me for my ignorance,' said his mother. 'I should think not, indeed! Book-learning isn't everything. With all your experience of life you could teach Sarah a precious sight more than she can teach you,' said George. 'It's very nice o' you to talk like that, dear; but I know you're both far above me wi' your beautiful manners an' ways o' talkin',' said the poor woman humbly. 'For goodness' sake, don't talk like that, mother, or I shall be sorry I ever went to Eton and Cambridge if it makes you feel any distance between us!' he cried. 'I don't feel it so much wi' you, dear. It's Sairey I feel it worse wi', an' it's not 'er fault either; it's only that she's so clever an' so beautiful.' 'She's good-looking, certainly; but, then, so are you. She's taken after you, like me.' The young man smiled at his mother in a very pretty way. He certainly had beautiful manners, as his mother said. 'But as for being clever,' he continued, 'I call her a proud peacock.' 'Oh George, I was never as good-lookin' as Sairey, nor you either; nor 'alf such a lady. W'y, she might be a duchess's daughter! Every one says so,' cried his mother, woman-like, dwelling upon the subject of good looks rather than on her son's criticism of Sarah's cleverness. 'That's only education. You'd have been just as duchessy if you'd been educated,' insisted her son, hesitating for a word to use instead of lady-like, for he would not, even to himself, own that his mother was not a lady in the world's acceptation of the word. What every one in the West Riding, or heavy woollen district, said was, what a most extraordinary thing it was that the son and daughter of that brute Clay should be so refined when their father was such a rough, uncouth man! The Clay family was one of the many instances in Yorkshire of the mill-hand who rose from being a labourer to be the owner of a large mill and enormous wealth, and who gave to his children the education he had never received himself. But though in most cases the children were better educated and superior in outward seeming to their parents, it was not often that the contrast was so marked. In this case it may have been caused by the fact that Mark Clay, instead of marrying a mill-lass, had taken to wife a very pretty, delicate-looking girl from London, who had bequeathed her good looks to her two children. She, or rather her husband--for little Mrs Clay had no voice in the matter--had sent the boy to Eton and then to Cambridge, and the girl to what her mother called a ''igh-class, fashionable school'--which, if high prices are any criterion, it certainly was. Mrs Clay shook her head at her son's last remark. 'I should never 'ave made a duchess. I was always timid, an' couldn't 'old up my 'ead as Sairey does. It's somethin' in you both, though I don't 'old wi' Sairey speakin' of 'er father in the way she does.' 'I should think not, indeed,' put in her son. 'Still, we can't expect 'er to respect us as much as she would if we 'ad the same good manners an' way o' talkin' that she an' you 'ave. It's natural she should feel superior, an' show it, too,' argued the poor woman with some shrewdness; 'an' I've told your dad that it was only w'at 'e might 'ave expected.' 'Pray, don't talk of Sarah's manners being good, nor her way of talking either; they're both as bad as bad can be,' said George Clay, with his soft drawl. 'W'y, you don't never mean to say that, George, an' after all the pounds dad's paid for 'er? For goodness' sake, don't tell 'im, or 'e'll 'alf-kill 'er--'e would! You don't know your father as I do,' cried the mother in consternation. An expression of annoyance came over her son's face at these words. 'Don't make the pater out worse than he is, my dear mother. He may be violent at times, but I hope he knows better than to use physical force. Anyway, I shall not tell him anything of the sort, and when I say her manners are bad and her language unlady-like'---- 'But that's just w'at 'e thinks it isn't; an' though 'e gets angry, 'e thinks a lot o' 'er. An' w'en I don't like the words she uses sometimes, 'e says I don't know the way o' society; that the aristocracy speak like that, an' be'ave so, too.' 'Well, so they do, some of them,' admitted her son. But before he could finish his remark his mother interrupted him. 'Well, then, that's w'at 'e wants; so if you tell 'im that, dear, 'e'll be in a good temper for the rest o' the evenin'.' She looked wistfully at her son as she made this suggestion. He laughed good-humouredly. 'All right, mother; if Sarah gives him some of her cheek to-night I'll tell him it's the fashion of the day. It's true enough; but, oh dear! I wish you wouldn't have such fearfully long dinners. That's not the fashion; it's the thing to starve.' 'It's not a bit o' good you tellin' 'im _that_, for 'e says 'e can afford a Lord Mayor's banquet every day 'e likes, an' 'e 'll 'ave it, an' 'e can't abear to see you sittin' there pickin' at a bit o' chicken, an' not even takin' whisky-an'-soda wi' him.' 'Well, I must go and dress for this Lord Mayor's banquet, and so must you, mother; so go and put on your black silk,' he remarked, as he rose lazily from his arm-chair. 'Not that old dress, dear; it's so plain an' dowdy. I've somethin' better than that;' and, looking as pleased as a young girl at his interest in her dress, she went off nodding and smiling at the thought of the pleasure she was going to give him at sight of her new finery. George Clay was just going to beg her not to put on anything better than the black silk, but on second thoughts checked himself. After all, if it pleased her that was the chief thing, not to mention that his father would probably think her choice more suited to his banquet, for such the dinners at the Clays' might well be called. On her way to her own room Mrs Clay had to pass her daughter's suite of rooms, and after a little hesitation she knocked at the door of her boudoir. 'Come in,' said a voice, and she entered. Sarah was sitting on the wide window-seat, looking out over the park towards the town, the tall factory chimneys of which could be seen, at the bottom of the hill, belching out their volumes of smoke, which made even the trees in the park unfit to touch, thanks to the soot it deposited upon their leaves, stems, and trunks. 'W'y, Sairey, ain't you goin' to begin to dress? W'y 'asn't Naomi put out your things?' exclaimed her mother. 'I'm not coming down to-night; I don't want to see your husband,' said Sarah, still staring out into the park. 'My 'usband, indeed! Who do you think you're talkin' to? You seem to forget I'm your own mother, an' that my 'usband, as you call 'im, is your father, miss! 'Usband, indeed!' cried Mrs Clay. 'You're sure there's no mistake, mother? You're sure he _is_ my father? I sometimes wonder if I could have been kidnapped as a baby, and changed.' But she got no further, for little Mrs Clay could stand no more. 'You're my child, Sairey. Though you're a deal better-lookin' than ever I was, you are like enough for any one to know I'm your mother,' she protested. 'I wish to goodness I wasn't! Oh mother, don't look like that! I didn't mean you, of course. I'm glad to be your child; but, oh, why did you marry that man? Now, if you had only married Uncle Howroyd.' 'Seein' that I 'ave married 'im, an' that 'e's your father, it's no use talkin' about such things. An', dear, 'e's not as bad as 'e might be. 'E doesn't drink nor beat me,' she said. 'Mother, you talk as if he were a coalheaver,' cried her daughter indignantly. ''E wasn't a coalheaver; but 'e was a mill-'and, an' I was a milliner's girl in a little shop in London w'en I married 'im, an' I 'adn't a farthing. An' look at the beautiful 'ouse I'm mistress o' now, an' look at the money 'e spends on you an' me both--never stints us for anythin'! I'm sure you ought to be grateful to 'im. I am, for I never expected to rise to this w'en I was a milliner's 'prentice in London.' 'You needn't talk about that. It's bad enough to be a vulgar millionaire's daughter,' replied the girl, and at the same time she dropped from the window-seat and came towards her mother; adding, 'Well, if you want me to come down to dinner I suppose I must ring for Naomi. It's an awful nuisance, and I shall probably have a row with the pater.' Mrs Clay was going to plead with her daughter as she had with her son; but Sarah, who had suggested dressing partly to get rid of her mother, pointed to the clock, and Mrs Clay hurried away to get ready for dinner herself. CHAPTER II. A DREARY BANQUET. After the mother had left the room, her daughter seemed in no hurry to get ready for dinner; she turned back to the window, and, taking up her old position on the wide window-seat, sat gazing down at the hideous view of the big manufacturing town, with blackened buildings and tall, smoky chimneys, which lay at the bottom of the hill, and seemed to have a weird fascination for her. It must certainly have been from choice that Sarah Clay looked at them, for she had only to sit at the other side of the broad window-seat, turn her back on Ousebank, and, looking out on the other side of the hill, she would have had a beautiful view over the hill of pretty vales and villages and smiling pasture, and their own fine park; but the girl deliberately turned her back upon nature, and looked not upon art--for art there was not in Ousebank except what was produced in the mills--but upon nature perverted by man, who had turned the beautiful vale into a Black Country with its big factories, which polluted earth and sky, air and water. She was still staring out with a frown on her face when a knock came to the door, and she called out, 'Come in,' without turning her head to see who the new-comer was. 'Excuse me, miss,' said the voice of the maid, 'but the mistress sent me with this, and you'll best be getting ready for dinner, for it's late.' Sarah turned her head, with the air that her mother declared was like that of a duchess's daughter, and looked at the large cardboard box which her maid held in her arms, with a gaze which, to do her justice, she was quite unconscious was haughty. 'What is it?' she asked shortly. 'You just come and see, Miss Sarah,' replied the maid quite politely, but with Yorkshire independence. Sarah did not resent the tone of the advice, but came slowly from her window-seat, and watched the maid undo the string of the box and take out, with many exclamations of admiration, a beautiful white silk frock elaborately trimmed with lace and ribbons. 'It's grand! Oh miss, make haste and let me do your hair, and put it on you!' cried the maid. 'Now? I have no time. Put it away, and get out my white muslin, Naomi,' replied Sarah, and she turned away after hardly a glance at the pretty dress. 'But you are to wear it to-night. At least, the mistress said would you, please, put it on,' corrected Naomi, as she saw her young mistress's look of indignation at the peremptory order. Sarah was just going to refuse decidedly; but the thought of her mother's disappointment made her hesitate. The girl had good enough taste to feel that the dress was far too smart for an ordinary family dinner; but, then, as she reflected, it would be in keeping with the rest, which was far too smart, all of it. So she said, 'Very well. Make haste, Naomi.' 'There, miss, you look just like a queen, and fit to live in a palace; though, to be sure, ours is one, or as good as one. Now, just look in the glass and see if you aren't lovely.' 'Yes; it's very pretty,' said Sarah impatiently. 'Are you ill, miss? You don't seem a bit pleased to have such beautiful things. I'm sure if I had everything I could wish for like you I'd be as happy as a queen,' observed Naomi, whom Sarah allowed to say what she liked; in the first place, because she was the daughter of the head mill-watchman, and her family had all--some still did--worked in Clay's Mills; and, in the second place, because they had played together as little children. 'I dare say you would; so am I, because a queen is not at all a happy person; at least, if she is, it's not because she is a queen and can have lots of new dresses and things,' remarked Sarah. 'You wouldn't talk like that if you'd ever had to do without them,' replied the girl. Sarah turned round and faced the girl. 'Naomi,' she said passionately, 'I'd give anything on earth to be poor and work for my living as you do.' 'Oh miss!' cried Naomi, and 'Oh Sal!' cried another voice, whose owner had overheard this last remark. For Mrs Clay had just entered the room, and had forgotten that her daughter objected strongly to this shortening of her name, which it was one of her father's aggravating habits to do. 'Oh Sarah,' she cried, 'don't talk such nonsense, and before Naomi, too! Some must be poor an' some rich. It's always been so, and always will be so, an' it's flyin' in the face o' Providence not to be thankful that you're not poor; an' with that lovely gown on, too. 'Ow could you earn enough money to buy a gown like that, do you suppose? W'y, Naomi doesn't earn enough in a year to pay for it, I'd have you to know.' 'Then she ought to,' began Sarah; whereupon Mrs Clay cleared her throat noisily, and said in quite a decided tone for her, 'That'll do, Naomi; you can leave the room.' And when Naomi had done so, she continued in a tone of reproof to her daughter,'What are you thinkin' of, wishin' you earned your own livin' like Naomi? A nice one you'd be if such a dreadful thing 'appened to you, wi' your 'aughty airs an' scornful ways that no one would put up wi', let alone that you could never earn a penny if you tried.' 'I'm not so sure about that. I've a good mind to try, to show you that you're wrong,' said Sarah meditatively. Her mother cast a frightened glance at her, and said soothingly, 'There, my dearie, there's no need to think about it; you're far too pretty even to do such a thing. You were born for a mansion, an' I 'ope you'll always 'ave one to live in.' 'I don't. I hope I shall one day have to work for my living, and I shall do it whether it is necessary or not, you'll see,' she declared. Fortunately both the dinner-gong and an elaborate set of chimes rang out through the house, and Mrs Clay, with a nervous start, said hurriedly, 'There's the chimes! Well, we must be goin'. Don't you look grand to-night, Sairey?' 'That's just what I feel, mother--a great deal too grand for a quiet family dinner; and so are you,' she added, as she looked critically at her mother in the elaborately trimmed, plum-coloured silk dress, so rich that it seemed to prop up the delicate little woman and almost stifle her with its heavy gold trimmings and fringes. 'It's to please your father and George, and nothing's too grand to do that,' said Mrs Clay, as she went out of the room, making a rustle as she passed along the richly carpeted passages and down the grand marble staircase into the drawing-room. Mr Clay did not trouble himself to go into the drawing-room to fetch his wife, but always walked straight to the dining-room at the first note of the chimes. George was waiting, as he did every evening, to give his arm to escort his mother to the dining-room, and took her to the dinner-table, where his wife and children found Mark Clay sitting at the top of the large table which groaned under its massive gold ornaments and plate. He was a big, bull-faced man; at first sight so different from his son and daughter that the latter might almost be forgiven her extraordinary suggestion to her mother that perhaps he was not her father at all! It would require a closer observer than Sarah to see a certain set of the chin which was common to him and his two children, though hers took the form of haughtiness, and her brother's had such a pleasant, if indolent, expression that his father had never discovered this hidden characteristic. 'Well, lass, thee'rt grand to-night. How much did tha gown cost? A pretty penny, I'll be bound. Well, lasses will be lasses, and the mills can give as many on 'em as ye like. An' your mother, too, though she's a bit old for such vanity; it's the young uns as want fine feathers. Now then, what are ye scowling at?' cried her father, all in the broadest Yorkshire. 'It's the fashion to scowl at personal remarks, my dear father,' remarked George, as he 'played,' in his mother's words, with his food. 'Then it's one fashion thee'll ha' to onlearn, dost hear? I'll ha' no lass o' mine scowling at me at my own table,' replied her father, as he brought his fist down on the table with a thump, which made his poor wife jump as well as the crystal and glass, 'which it's a wonder he don't have of gold too,' his well-bred butler observed, with a touch of contempt for his master, which he allowed himself to vent to the equally well-bred housekeeper, and to her only. George stepped into the breach again. 'How's the market, dad?' he inquired. 'Wool's going up, I hear.' 'Wool's going up, you hear? An' what might you know about wool? Nought as I know of. I wish you did; but there, thee'rt too fine for t' wool-trade, and thou'll never need to know about it, only to spend money,' said the millionaire, purposely, as his son believed, talking in such broad Yorkshire as is not often heard nowadays, and so broad as to be unintelligible to the reader of this tale, for which reason it must be taken for granted, as perhaps his wife's cockney dialect had better be. However, the inquiry had turned the mill-owner's attention from his daughter and her unbending attitude, and had apparently produced a good effect, for Mr Clay, senior, seemed to be in a better temper for the rest of the dinner, the long, wearisome dinner which he was the only one who seemed to appreciate. There was no conversation but the remarks made in a gentle tone by George to his mother, to whom he was as attentive as he would have been to the highest and most beautiful lady in the land. Sarah kept a silence which might have been considered either sulky or dignified, and Mrs Clay responded in low tones to her son's remarks. Mr Clay did not condescend to talk to any of them. His wife he never considered as a companion or a person to be conversed with, women being inferior beings in his eyes, and for this reason he did not talk to Sarah, whom he treated with the same contempt, in spite of being very proud of her looks and bearing; while George he considered a nincompoop and weakling, though he was secretly proud, too, of his fine manners and aristocratic appearance. And so the four ill-sorted people sat each at a different side of the table, with a long stretch of gold-decked and flower-laden cloth between them. 'And a good thing, too, or I think we should fight,' announced Sarah one day. Poor Mrs Clay put her hand to her head once or twice, and her ever-observant son bent towards her with solicitude as he inquired, 'Don't you feel well, mother?' 'It's only the smell of all these flowers; they make me feel faint-like,' she said. 'It's these lilies; they are too strong for a dining-table; just take them away, Sykes,' he said to the butler, who happened to be close behind George Clay's chair. The man looked hesitatingly at his master, and then at the young man, and apparently decided to obey the younger one, whom he, like the rest of the staff, liked and respected, instead of the father, whom he detested, and who now cried in a voice of thunder, 'Leave 'em alone, I say! I don't pay for lilies to be thrown away for a woman's whim. Leave 'em alone.' 'They're cheap enough, and they really never are used for table-decorating. It must have been a mistake of the maid's. Sykes had better remove them, if you don't mind,' said George. Sykes, being of the same opinion, swiftly removed the vase and handed it to one of the footmen. Mr Clay, awed by his son's superior knowledge of what was done and not done (in society, he supposed), remained silent, and at last the banquet came to an end, and with suspicious alacrity Mrs Clay and her daughter rose and left the room, followed by George after his usual murmured apology to his father for not staying with him; for George Clay was as polite, in an indolent way, to his father as he was to every one else. 'Phew, I breathe again!' cried Sarah, as she stamped her feet outside the dining-room door. 'Sh, sh, my dear! Your father might 'ear you. The flowers did make the air sickly.' 'Flowers! It wasn't the flowers. It was everything. I always think of Miss Kilmansegg and her "Gold, gold; nothing but gold!" Phew! how I loathe and detest it all!' 'Draw it mild, Sarah! Even gold has its advantages.' 'It mayn't have to every one's mind. Look what an effeminate creature it's made of you!' she cried. George Clay lit a cigarette, with a 'May I?' to his mother, and only smiled as he leant back in an armchair and puffed contentedly away. Clearly Sarah was not able to rouse her brother by her criticism. CHAPTER III. STALLED OXEN. 'Now then, now then; have I just come in time for fireworks?' said a man's voice; and Sarah felt a hearty clap of a man's firm hand on her shoulder. 'Uncle Howroyd!' she cried, as she turned and threw her arms round her uncle's neck. 'Gently there, my lass; you needn't stifle me if you can't breathe yourself.--Well, George,' turning to the youth, 'you find life very exhausting as usual, I suppose. But, I say, you haven't got company, I hope?' he inquired, as he noticed the elaborate toilettes of the ladies. 'Oh no; we're only dressed for dinner. W'y didn't you come in time for it, Bill? We've just finished; but you'll find your brother in the dinin'-room, an' he'll ring for something to be brought back for you; there's plenty,' said Mrs Clay. 'I don't doubt that; but I've had my dinner, thank you. I'm a plain man, as you know, Polly, and my dinner isn't such a big affair as yours, by a long way. And I'm not thirsty either, so I'll leave Mark to drink his wine in peace and come along with you into the drawing-room--or _salon_, is it you call it?' he added, with good-humoured banter. At that moment the voice of Mr Mark Clay could be heard raised in angry tones, apparently scolding the butler or some of his assistants, and Sarah laughed as she said, 'You mean _you_ want to be left in peace. There's not much peace in that room or anywhere else where that man is;' and she gave a wave of her hand towards the dining-room. [Illustration: He took his young niece's arm and followed his sister-in-law into the drawing-room.] Mr William Howroyd's bright, cheery face grew grave as he said kindly but seriously, 'Nay, lass, you shouldn't speak so of your father.' 'I don't see what difference that makes. I can't help his being my father. People ought to be allowed to choose. I would sooner have our watchman for my father than him.' 'Nay, lass, you don't mean that, and I can't have you speak like that of my brother,' said her uncle. 'He's only your step-brother, and you don't get on with him any too well yourself. But don't look so solemn. I'll be quite good and proper if you'll let that twinkle come into your eye again; it isn't you without a twinkle.' Her uncle laughed good-humouredly as he took his young niece's arm and followed his sister-in-law into the drawing-room. His keen eye flashed round the room, seeming to take in every detail in that one look, just as in his own mill Mr William Howroyd knew every 'hand' and everything they did or did not do, as some of them declared. 'Why, what's been doing here? Here's some fine painting!' he exclaimed, as he went up to a panel in the wall where a landscape was painted, evidently by a master-hand. 'Yes, a Royal Academician came down from London to do that; one thousand pounds it cost. Mark was goin' to 'ave 'im do the lot; but 'e wouldn't do any more after the first, so another man's got to come.' 'Ah, how's that?' inquired Mr Howroyd. 'It's well done; you won't better this. Why, I see it's by Brown--Sir John Brown. It's worth one thousand pounds, is that.' 'Sir John? 'E wasn't no Sir; just plain Mr Brown 'e was, though 'e gave 'isself airs enough for a Sir, an' wanted to dine with us--a common painter chap!' said Mrs Clay. George Clay looked annoyed, and coloured at his uncle's amused laugh; his love and loyalty to his mother were much tried when she made a speech of this kind, which, to do her justice, was not often, and generally was, as in this case, an echo of her husband's opinions. 'My dear mother, I had no idea that it was Brown you had here. Why, he's a gentleman we might be proud to see at our table. I wish I had been at home,' he said hastily. 'W'at did 'e call 'isself Mr Brown for, then? If we'd known 'e was a Sir John it would 'ave made all the difference,' objected Mrs Clay. 'It ought not to have made any difference. A man's a man, and with a talent like that even father might have known better than to treat him like a servant,' cried Sarah hotly. 'Well, it doesn't matter; it's over and past now. And he wasn't Sir John then; he's only just been made so, and I dare say he's forgotten all about Ousebank and his treatment here; and for my part I'd sooner have a picture on canvas that you can take away than a painted panel. It's a lot of money to give for that; though, to be sure, he can afford that, can Mark,' said Mr Howroyd. 'Uncle Howroyd, why do you waste time at the end of your sentences like that, when you are always saying you have no time to waste, because it is so precious?' 'What are you after now, lass?' said her uncle, bending his keen and kindly eyes upon his young niece. 'I expect it's your uncle's rough north-country tongue that's the matter. Come, out with it. What have I said wrong now?' 'Oh, I don't mind your north-country tongue, as you call it, only I don't like the way you repeat yourself. You say, "That's a fine picture, is that," or "She's a good girl, is Sarah;" and it would be quite enough and shorter to say, "That is a fine picture," or "Sarah is a good girl."' 'Sarah! There's manners, correctin' your uncle; a chit o' sixteen that's not left school yet!' protested Mrs Clay. 'Don't you be corrected, Uncle Howroyd. It's very musical the way north-countrymen repeat themselves at the end of the sentence,' said George gently. Mr Howroyd paid no attention to the last two speakers, but, with an amused twinkle in his eye, tried the two ways of expressing himself. 'You're right, lass; it's a waste of words, is that.' There was a hearty laugh at this, in which both Mrs Clay and her brother-in-law joined, as the latter said, with a shake of his head, 'I'm afraid I'm too old to get out of the habit of repeating myself. Still, as I talk very fast, perhaps I don't waste so much time after all; so I think you'll have to put up with your old uncle's ways, and try and reform some one else nearer home.' 'If you mean my father'----began Sarah. But the tone in which she said 'my father' made her uncle interrupt her sharply. 'No, I don't. I mean nearer home than that; I mean your own tongue, young woman. You let it run on too fast and too freely. I'm sure I don't know what kind of a school that is that you're at; but they don't teach you respect for your elders; and I'm beginning to wonder if you've paid the twopence extra for manners. If you have, you haven't got your two-pen'orth, that's certain.' 'Oh yes, I have; only you don't understand them up in the north,' replied Sarah airily, not in the least abashed or offended, apparently, by her uncle's candid criticism. 'No, we don't that,' he replied emphatically. But, all the same, he most evidently cared more for Sarah than he did for her mother or for her languid brother, to whom he always talked with a kind of good-natured contempt. 'The fact is, Uncle Howroyd, you're worried, and your way of showing it is by scolding me, which is not fair, as _I_ am not the person you are angry with, but some one whom you have come to see to-night, unless I'm very much mistaken,' observed Sarah, nodding her head knowingly at her uncle. 'You little witch! how dare you go guessing at your uncle's private affairs like that?' cried Mr William Howroyd, laughing at his niece. 'Oh, dear Bill, I 'ope there's nothin' wrong between you an' Mark? Per'aps you'd better not say anythin' to 'im to-night; 'e's a little put out, just for the minute,' said Mrs Clay. 'For the minute? I'd like to see him at a minute when he isn't put out! And if you're going to say anything to annoy him I wish you would say it to-night, for I'd like to myself, only'---- 'She daren't!' put in George from the depths of an arm-chair. Mr William Howroyd turned from his handsome niece, whose hair he was gently smoothing, to her equally handsome brother, who was lying back in the softest chair he could find (and they were all comfortable, 'all of the best,' as Mark Clay said of them, as of everything else he possessed). 'No; and as for you, I don't suppose you'd trouble to say anything to your father if it was to save you all from the workhouse,' he said scornfully. George Clay was nearly hidden from view by the cushions he had carefully adjusted behind his head; consequently the sudden slight start and swift opening wide of his lazy-looking eyes passed unnoticed even by the eyes of his uncle, who, indeed, would never have thought of looking for alertness or energy in his nephew. 'I might,' he replied lazily. 'I don't fancy the workhouse. Is there any chance of it?' Somehow every one seemed to think this a joke, and his uncle remarked, 'No, the workhouse would not suit you; no easy-chairs there. It might do you good, though.' 'I wish there was a chance of it! Now that _would_ be life!' cried Sarah eagerly. 'Don't talk so silly, child; you don't know w'at the work'ouse is like. It's enough to call down a judgment upon you, bein' so ungrateful to Providence for all the good things it's given you,' cried her mother. 'Fancy the work'ouse after _this_!' Mrs Clay put a world of expression into the last word, as she looked round the sumptuous drawing-room in which they were gathered. 'Yes, it would be a change; though stranger things have happened,' said Mr Howroyd in his brisk way, and again he missed the look George shot at him. 'I should like to know if there is any chance of it,' George remarked. 'You haven't answered my question yet, uncle.' 'What question? Oh, whether there's any chance of your ever going to the workhouse?' laughed his uncle. 'How can I tell? One hears of kings becoming beggars, so why not Mr George Clay?' 'There's no chance of that,' remarked George. 'How do you know?' began his uncle. 'Don't you be too sure. Our mills might be burnt down, or anything might happen,' cried Sarah. 'Oh, if you mean by a beggar being penniless, that's always possible, of course. What I meant was that I should never beg,' said her brother with quiet decision. 'What would you do? Work?' inquired his uncle. 'I fancy so,' said George; and they all laughed again, as though the idea of George working was a good joke. But Mrs Clay added, 'An' I'm sure George is clever enough to earn money in any way 'e likes; though, thank 'eaven! 'e'll never 'ave to.' 'I'm not so sure of that,' replied that youth. 'What do you mean by that?' demanded his uncle. 'Just what you meant,' replied the nephew, and this time Mr William Howroyd was struck by the expression on his nephew's face. 'I'm sure I don't know w'at you're all talkin' about--work'ouses, an' workin' for your livin', an' Sarah wishin' she was poor, an' all! W'ere's the good of 'avin' riches if you can't enjoy it?' said Mrs Clay plaintively. 'Look at this lovely 'ouse, with everythin' in it that mortal man can wish for. W'y, Mrs Haigh was 'ere to-day, and she says Bucking'am Palace isn't grander, and she's been there.' 'I dare say it isn't,' agreed her brother-in-law. 'Who's talking about Buckingham Palace?' cried Mark Clay, as he came into the room. 'We were, Mark, and saying that it wasn't any better than your place,' said his half-brother, as he shook hands with the master of the house. 'Ay, you're right there; as far as money can go you can't beat this house. But why didn't you coom to dinner, lad?' he cried, his brother's remark having, as the latter intended, put him in a good humour. 'Lad' in the north-country is as often used as 'man,' especially among relatives, and Mark Clay used the word in a friendly way, though his brother was near fifty. 'I had my dinner before I came; but I thought I'd like to have a smoke and a few minutes' talk with you, Mark,' he replied. 'Sit thee down and have a pipe,' cried Mark Clay. 'Not here,' remonstrated his brother, looking round on the delicate brocade hangings and furniture. Poor Mrs Clay did not dare to open her mouth, though she in her secret heart felt as indignant about it as Mr Howroyd. But Sarah had no such qualms. 'You'll have to redecorate this room if you're going to smoke here, and you'll have to find us another drawing-room. Ladies don't sit in a drawing-room where men smoke,' she said. 'Daughters sit where their parents tell them, if they're worthy of the name of daughters.--But, if you don't mind, Mark, we'll go into your study; we can talk better alone,' said her uncle before Sarah's father could say anything. Whether motives of economy moved him, or whether it was a certain influence which Bill Howroyd, as he was familiarly called, had over most people, Mark Clay got up from his seat, saying, 'Yes, we'll be better without that pert lass's company, Bill,' and led the way to his study. 'That's a blessing!' said Sarah. 'A nice state of things it would be if father took to smoking his horrid pipe here.' 'It would ruin the rose-coloured brocade, and the curtains would smell 'orrid,' said her mother. 'That wouldn't be so bad as not having a single room free from him,' said Sarah, and then added to her brother, who got up at the time, 'Where are you going, George?' 'To have a smoke,' he replied. 'You can smoke your cigarette here, dear; no one would smell that,' said the fond mother. 'Thank you, mother; but I thought of smoking with my father and uncle,' he replied. 'What! beard the lion in his den? What on earth for, George? You know you never do go and smoke with him,' observed Sarah. 'Don't go to-night, my dear. Your uncle 'as somethin' particular to say to 'im, an' nothin' very pleasant, I could see that; an' you'd best not be there in case 'e's upset. Not but w'at Bill manages 'im better than any one else; still, they'll get on better alone.' George Clay hesitated a minute, and then, turning back, took up his old position in his arm-chair, observing, 'Perhaps you're right, and I can go down and see him to-morrow.' 'See whom--Uncle Howroyd?' demanded Sarah. But George made no reply, and remained sunk among the cushions, his head tilted back and his eyes staring at the painted cupids on the ceiling, which did not give him much pleasure, judging by the half-frown upon his face. 'It's my belief that there's something the matter,' said Sarah after a silence. 'Nonsense, child! W'at should be the matter? There's always worries in business, an' women 'ave no right to interfere in such things nor make any remarks,' said Mrs Clay. 'Well, all I can say is, I wish something would happen. We're just stalled oxen here,' observed Sarah. 'Stalled oxen? W'atever can you mean?' asked Mrs Clay in bewilderment, for she did not recognise the allusion to the verse in Proverbs: 'Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.' George gave a little chuckle. 'She certainly does not mean what she says.--You'd better read your Bible again, and you'll see that stalled oxen is what we eat, not what we are.' 'Stalled oxen?' said Mrs Clay, repeating, as was her custom, any remark which she did not understand or agree with. 'Is Sarah callin' us stalled oxen?' 'No, I'm not, mother; I'm the only one that feels like that. George hugs his golden chains, and so do you,' replied Sarah. 'And he doesn't care how doubtful the means are that give them to him.' George made no reply at all, and after some time the three got up and went to bed. And so ended an evening typical of many passed in the millionaire's house, which was only less dreary than usual owing to William Howroyd's visit. CHAPTER IV. AN UNANSWERED QUESTION. 'It's a beautiful morning, Miss Sarah,' said Naomi, as she pulled up the blinds in her young mistress's room the day after the scenes described in the foregoing chapters. Naomi's rosy face was glowing with health and happiness, and this seemed to strike Sarah, for she said, as she looked at her, 'Is it your birthday, Naomi?' 'To-day, Miss Sarah? Why, no. I was seventeen the 1st of October. I'm a year and three months older 'n you, miss.' 'What are you so pleased for, then?' she asked. 'I dunno as I'm more pleased than usual, unless it be the fine weather makes one feel happy like.' 'It doesn't make me feel very happy; at least not when I'm at home. I like a fine day at school, because we can go for a long ride or walk, or play tennis or something out of doors,' observed Sarah. 'And so you can do all them things here, miss; there's horses and carriages, and motor-cars, and a beautiful bit of grass for tennis; and if you want a nice walk you can go over the fields and through Brocklehurst coppice to Driffington, or by the Dunnings to Thornborough,' said Naomi, chattering with freedom while she prepared the bath in the little bathroom attached to Sarah's suite of rooms. Her mistress let her chatter on, and listened while she gave an enthusiastic description of the lovely country walks and rides and drives to be taken in the immediate neighbourhood; and when the maid stopped for a moment to take breath, Sarah remarked, 'Yes; but I don't care to do any of these things up here. Do you know, Naomi, when the train gets near Ousebank, and I see its horrid high chimneys and all the air black, I feel as if the smoke came and wrapped itself round me and smothered me somehow, and I don't breathe freely again till I'm in the train going back to school.' Naomi stopped short at the door of the bathroom, her mouth wide open, and stared at her young mistress. She said at last, 'You'll have had a nightmare, I'll be thinking;' then, cheering up at this explanation of Miss Sarah's unpleasant sensations, she went on cheerfully with her preparations for her mistress's toilet. 'And the very best thing you can do, Miss Sarah, is to go for a lovely ride across Cowpen, and over t' hill to Driffington. My! think of all the lasses in the mills as 'u'd give their eyes to have the chance! There's Liza Anne now, she'd be glad eno' of a holiday; these bright days make her back ache dreadful, so she says.' 'Liza Anne's in Clay's Mills, isn't she?' inquired Sarah. Liza Anne was Naomi's elder sister. 'Yes, Miss Sarah; she's a ligger-on, is Liza Anne, and so's Jane Mary,' explained Naomi. 'What's a "ligger-on," Naomi?' inquired Sarah. 'Why, she puts the wool on the carding-machine and ligs it out. She's a good, steady worker is Liza Anne.' 'Oh, I see; layer-on, you mean. I wish I were a "ligger-on," as you call it; there'd be some object to get up for, at any rate.' 'You spend one day in Liza Anne's place or Jane Mary's, and you'd talk different to that, Miss Sarah,' said Naomi. Sarah sighed impatiently. 'You all say the same thing to me, and it's all nonsense. You're much happier than I am; you have only to look in the looking-glass and you'll see that, and yet you all persist in saying that I'm happier than you.' 'You ought to be,' replied Naomi, as she gave a final adjusting pat to the lace-bedecked matinée she had just put ready for Sarah to slip into; but she did not attempt to argue with her mistress on a subject which she felt, somehow, was too difficult for her. Sarah dressed slowly; not that she was a deliberate young person at all, but because she did not see any good in making haste, as there was nothing to do, or rather, to put it truly, as she did not care to do anything. However, in about an hour Sarah went downstairs dressed in a simple but fresh and dainty print frock, and found her brother sitting at breakfast. 'Morning, Sarah. What are you going to do to-day? Anything special on?' he inquired. 'No; at least, I'm not going to do anything special. I believe there's a tennis tournament on at the Haighs'; but I don't feel inclined to go; it's going to be hot to-day, I think.' 'Piping, I should say. Well, if you don't want me to take you to the Haighs' I'll cry off myself; it's a fearful fag playing a tournament in this weather. Good-bye; I'm off,' he added, as he rose from the table. 'Where are you going, George?' inquired Sarah. 'If it's anywhere nice I'll come with you.' 'It isn't,' he replied, and was going out of the room. 'Where is it?' persisted Sarah. 'Into Ousebank,' he replied laconically. 'But that is nice. Take me with you, George.' 'You are the most perverse girl I ever met. You know you hate Ousebank, and yet you call it a nice place to go for a walk,' he scoffed. 'It's interesting. I love to see the mills turn out at twelve o'clock; it's like a living stream of human beings pouring out of a lock-gate, and I love Uncle Howroyd's mill.' 'Well, I sha'n't be there at twelve o'clock, so if that's what you want to go for you'd better stay at home,' observed her brother, who evidently was not very anxious to take his sister with him this particular morning, though, as a rule, he was a most good-natured and attentive brother. Sarah was quick to notice this, and being the girl she was it made her all the more determined to go with her brother; so she said, 'Ah, but I can go to see Uncle Howroyd, and that's always nice. I simply love going over the mill.' 'Oh!' ejaculated George, looking discomfited for a moment; and then he apparently changed his mind, and said, 'All right, I'll go there with you.' But when they got to the door of Mr William Howroyd's office he did not say good-bye, but was coming in with her, when Sarah said, 'You needn't stop for me. I may be here some time. You had better go and do your own business, and come and fetch me on your way back.' 'I think I'll come in,' said George, and in he came. 'Uncle Howroyd, do send George off, and say you'll take care of me for an hour or so; he's so dreadfully polite even to his sister that he won't leave me alone with you,' said Sarah. 'Ah, but I don't know that I can take care of such a difficult young lady,' said her uncle teasingly. 'But I should like to see Uncle Howroyd, too,' objected George. 'That's nonsense! You've only come here to bring me, so if you want to see him you can come another time by yourself, not just when I'm here,' said Sarah. 'I thought you wanted to see the mill?' observed George. 'And I thought you came to Ousebank to do some business?' retorted his sister. 'So I did.--As a matter of fact, my business was to see you, sir,' said George, turning to his uncle, who had been listening to this argument between the brother and sister with his usual amused look and twinkle in his eye. But when his nephew made this direct appeal to him, Uncle Howroyd became the alert man of business, kind and keen, and said, 'At your service, nephew.--As for you, Sarah, if your frock isn't too fine for going into a dirty blanket-mill, old Matthew will take you and show you our wonderful new engine, of which we are so proud.' 'I don't care twopence about your grand engine. I hate grand new things. I'd rather go into the old dyeing-rooms; they have such lovely new shades every time I go,' declared Sarah. 'There! isn't that just like a woman? Hates new things, and wants to go into the dear old dye-rooms to see lovely new shades!' cried her uncle. Sarah only laughed, as her uncle called old Matthew, the foreman, and told him to take Miss Clay to the dye-rooms and show her all she wished to see, and take care she didn't get her skirts dyed. 'Well, George, anything wrong?' he asked as the door shut upon Sarah, who went off talking in a most friendly manner with old Matthew, and the uncle and nephew were left alone. 'That's what I came to you about,' said George. Mr William Howroyd looked at his nephew doubtfully. He did not understand him at any time, and this morning the young man spoke in his usual lazy tones, so that his uncle did not know whether George was in any trouble or not; for, as he argued to himself, 'the boy never did show feelings, so that he might be in love or debt or goodness knows what scrape, and yet talk like that;' and Mr William Howroyd had a deeply rooted conviction that all young men did at the universities was to get into mischief of some sort. So he said, 'Come, George, be frank with me. Have you got into any mess? You know if you have I'll be ready to do all I can to get you out of it.' The young man looked gratefully at his uncle as he replied in his pleasant tones, 'I'm sure you would, uncle, and there's no one I'd sooner come to if I wanted help; but I'm in no mess that I know of. It was only'--he hesitated--'something in your manner last night that made me think there was trouble at the mill either present or looming ahead. I know my father is not popular.' Mr Howroyd looked a little surprised for a moment; then he said cheerfully, 'Dismiss that notion from your mind. I was a little put out last night by something I heard, and I dare say I said all sorts of disagreeable, sharp things; but there's no danger for your father any more than there is for all of us. Business is not like a profession; you gain more, but you stand to lose more, and it's not so certain as the law, for example. So, if you'll take my advice, you'll go back and study hard, and have a profession at your finger-tips; it never comes amiss to any of us, and there's no harm done if you never follow it.' Then he changed the conversation, and began talking of other things, and was surprised to find what a pleasant and intelligent companion his nephew could be. 'Why, I'd no idea you took such an interest in the heavy woollen trade. It's almost a pity you're not going into it,' cried his uncle at last. 'But that is what I intend doing, in spite of your advice to the contrary,' observed George quietly. His uncle cast a swift look at him. 'All the same, I should pass all my law examinations, if I were you, in case--in case you might change your mind,' he observed equally quietly; and then the two got up and went across the mill-yard to the dyeing-rooms to find Sarah, who was still there with Matthew. George noticed the kindly words of greetings and the friendly glances that passed between master and 'hands,' as all the workers are called up north. 'Now, that man's been with us thirty years; he married his wife from here, and his family all work for us; and this one has been fifty years, and only comes once a week just to say he still works at the old mill,' explained Mr Howroyd. 'That's as it should be,' said George, touching his hat at each greeting, and raising it to an old woman who hobbled past them. His uncle smiled a little, for such courtesy is not usual in mills, where kind hearts are hidden under rough exteriors and blunt speech; but though the 'hands' smiled, they said to each other, after the uncle and nephew had passed by, that 'he was a gentleman was young Clay, and took after his uncle Howroyd more'n his father, that was plain!' 'Oh uncle, why did you come so soon? I didn't want you yet,' cried Sarah when she saw the two at the door. 'Didn't you? It strikes me it's about time we did come. My word, you've got yourself into a nice state, my lass!' exclaimed Mr Howroyd, as well he might, for Sarah, in her interest in the new shades, had gone too near the huge vats and wet materials, and her dress was the colours of the rainbow, while her hands were a deep crimson. 'But just look what a lovely colour this crimson is, George!' she exclaimed, holding up a rag which she had dyed. George contemplated his sister in silence, and then said, 'We'd better get a taxi to go home, I think;' and added, 'Yes, it's a pretty shade, but I think there's a little too much blue in it to be quite becoming.' And, turning to the dyer, he began talking pleasantly about dyeing; and when he went away the man remarked to Mr William Howroyd, 'He's a sharp young gentleman is yon, and I think I'll try his advice.' Meanwhile Sarah was sitting in the cab with her brother, contemplating rather ruefully her stained hands. 'I say, will it come off?' she inquired anxiously. 'Yes, in time, if you use some acid,' replied her brother, looking at her fingers. 'Oh, but I must get them clean by lunch-time, or father will make a row,' she cried. 'I should advise you to have lunch in your boudoir, as you call it. You can't possibly get all this off at first go. I can't imagine what old Matthew was about to let you get yourself in such a mess. Really, you are very childish for your age, in some ways.' 'What were you talking to Uncle Howroyd about?' demanded Sarah, who did not want to talk about her hands any longer. 'The heavy woollen trade,' replied her brother promptly. 'That wasn't what you came down to see Uncle Howroyd about. A lot you know of the heavy woollen trade or any other trade! Besides, that came out too pat. What you came down to Ousebank for was just the same thing that I came for.' 'I should not have said so,' replied George dryly, with a significant glance at her hands. 'It was, all the same. You came to ask Uncle Howroyd what he meant by talking about the workhouse last night, and so did I; but I thought one of us was enough to ask that question, so now just tell me what he said.' If George was taken aback by her astuteness, he did not say so, but answered simply, 'He said he did not mean anything, and that there was no chance of the workhouse for us more than for him.' 'Do you believe that?' asked Sarah. 'He said there was no more chance of our going to the workhouse than his going there,' repeated George. 'Do you believe that?' repeated Sarah. 'No, I do not,' said George gravely. 'Oh George, do you think we are ruined, or anything?' cried Sarah in excitement. 'Oh, do be quiet, and don't talk so loud, or the cabby will hear you! Of course we're not ruined; but it would never astonish me any day if we came a howler. The pater goes too fast, and---- But we're all right now; and, for goodness' sake, don't say a word to mother; it would upset her dreadfully. It's only for her sake I'd mind so much.' 'We'd work for her, and she'd be happier with us, without father always shouting at her,' said Sarah. 'Probably we'd have to work for him too, and he might not be angelic as a pauper,' suggested George grimly, perhaps with a view to subdue Sarah's desire for poverty. 'Oh, I never thought of that. Let's hope his money will last as long as he lives,' she cried. CHAPTER V. A RELUCTANT INVITATION. 'We'd better go in the back way, I think,' observed George, tapping at the window of the cab as he spoke and giving the order. Sarah laughed, as she spread her hands out before her and surveyed them. 'Perhaps it would be as well, for peace' sake,' she remarked. They were just getting out of the cab at the little back-door leading into the stable-yard behind the house, when, to their dismay, they saw Mr Mark Clay's burly figure come with swaggering walk along the little path through the park towards the same door, probably coming to give some order, or more probably, his children thought, to make himself disagreeable to his stablemen and chauffeurs. 'Quick! in with you; there's the pater!' cried George, who, polite as usual, was holding the cab-door open for his sister. Sarah needed no second bidding; but, instinctively clutching the front breadth of her skirt in her hands to conceal the stains, she jumped out, ran in at the little gate, and into the house, up to her room by the back-stairs. George paid the man, who touched his hat and drove off quickly, and the young man noticed that he passed the owner of the park through which he was driving without any greeting at all. George turned to meet his father. The tall, slim young man, with his refined features, looked a fit heir to the fine home, with its vast park; but a greater contrast to the coarse man who came towards him could not be imagined. He raised his hat to his father, and greeted him pleasantly enough. No one had ever heard George Clay speak otherwise than respectfully to or of his father, in which he compared favourably with Sarah; but if he could civilly do so he avoided his company, and, if the truth be known, he only spent his vacations at home for the sake of his mother and sister. On this occasion he could not with politeness avoid meeting him, and did so with a good grace. 'Mornin', lad! Where t' been?' inquired Mark Clay, as he gave his son a nod. 'Down to Ousebank, father. It's hot, isn't it?' 'Yes, it's fine and hot. Where's Sarah? Why didn't she stop and say good-mornin' to her dad? I'm not fine enough for her. I'm only good to make money, eh?' 'On the contrary, it was Sarah who was not fine enough to meet you. She stained her hands, and was running off to wash them,' said George. 'Stained her hands! What did she stain her hands for? I won't have her pretty hands soiled; there's no call for her ever to do aught with them but fancy work.' 'Sarah isn't fond of fancy work,' observed George, avoiding a direct answer. 'I don't know what she is fond of, without it's cheekin' me. What do you think she said yesterday? That I was no better than a murderer because I didn't pay a man his high wages when he got too old to work. A nice thing it would be if I had to keep all my sick workmen in luxury, and pay some one else for doing their work. It wasn't by such means that I built this house, I can tell 'e.' Mark Clay spoke broader Yorkshire than many of his men, and even he could speak, and did speak, better English when he chose; in fact, it was only when he was annoyed or angry that he broke out into dialect. Sarah ran to her room and plunged her hands into hot water, but, as might have been expected, without any effect; and when the lunch-gong sounded they were still far too brilliant to bear her father's scrutiny. So she rang for Naomi, and said, 'Just tell Sykes to send up some lunch to me, Naomi; and if any one asks where I am, tell them I am very busy. So I am, cleaning my hands; though you needn't tell them that.' Naomi went off to do her young mistress's bidding, but came back in ten minutes looking very grave, and said, 'Please, Miss Sarah, the master says as 'ow it don't matter about your hands, and you can go down to lunch with them as they are.' Sarah stamped her foot with vexation. 'I told you not to say anything about my hands, Naomi.' 'No more I didn't; but the master knew, for he told Mr Sykes to give me that message for you. And please, miss, excuse me saying so, but Sykes he said, "Try and make Miss Sarah come down, for master he gets into such a taking if he's crossed;" and Sykes he says'---- 'Never mind what Sykes said. Get me out my pink muslin,' said Sarah shortly, with her most haughty air, and Naomi obeyed in silence. Sarah's frock was not pinker than her face when she got to the dining-room. 'So you've been to Howroyd's Mill messing with his dyes, have you? What do you want to go there for when you could come to mine, eh? What did you go to him for, and what did he say?' her father asked suspiciously. 'Nothing very interesting; at least I don't remember anything. Oh yes; he said hands weren't money-making machines, but human souls which had to be cared for,' replied Sarah. 'I don't mean that kind of talk. Did he talk business, eh?' inquired Mr Clay. 'Oh dear no; he never does to me,' she answered. 'Not been croaking, has he?' the millionaire asked with hidden anxiety. This time it was George who spoke, inquiring, 'Is there anything to croak about, then?' 'I want an answer to my question, and, by gad, I'll have it!' exclaimed his father, bringing his fist down on the table with a crash. 'No; he was very cheerful, as he always is. And now, sir, perhaps you will be good enough to answer my question,' said George, who spoke very quietly but decidedly. Sarah gave her brother an approving look. 'What question? Oh, whether there's anything to croak about? Not in my opinion; but your uncle---- But there, it's no good taking any notice of him. He'd build a palace for his hands to work in and live in, and stop in that old mill all his life, would Bill Howroyd,' replied Mr Clay; and, frowning heavily, the millionaire got up from the table. 'I say, mother, would you mind if I went for a week's shooting to Scotland?' inquired her son. 'No, dearie; no. You go; it'll do you good. I suppose it's some o' your college friends as 'ave asked you? Yes, you go; there's nothin' for you to do 'ere,' said the fond mother. 'And what about me? What am I to do if you go off and leave me all alone? I shall go melancholy mad in this hole of a place!' cried Sarah. ''Ole!--w'en it's on the top o' a 'ill! W'at silly nonsense you do talk, child! 'Ole, indeed!' said Mrs Clay. 'It is rather rough luck to leave you in your holidays; but Cockburn has asked me so often. Couldn't you ask some one to stay with you--one of your schoolfellows, perhaps?' George suggested. 'Nice, comfortable house this is to ask any one to stay in!' said Sarah sarcastically. 'It's as comfortable as any o' theirs, if it isn't a great deal better,' cried her mother. 'I'd sooner live in Naomi's home if I'd my choice,' said Sarah gloomily. 'Sarah is right in one way, mother,' said George before Mrs Clay could say anything. 'It is not very comfortable to have constant disturbances in one's home; and the governor is very easily angered.' 'Yes, dear, I know,' agreed Mrs Clay, who adored her son, and thought everything he did or said perfection. 'An' it's 'ard for you an' Sarah, for you don't understan' your father, nor ain't used to 'im as I am. But that's not a bad idea o' yours that Sarah should ask one o' the young ladies at 'er school to come an' stay 'ere for a bit.--There's that Miss Cunning'am that you've got the photograph o' in your room. She's got a nice, 'omely face.' 'She's a duke's granddaughter, whether her face is homely or not. No, I couldn't ask her,' declared Sarah. 'Why not? She'd be the very one. Your father likes people o' 'igh class, though 'e was only a mill-'and 'isself. An' she's got such a nice smile on 'er photo,' persisted the mother. 'I couldn't possibly ask her; she'd never come and stay with a manufacturer,' declared Sarah again. 'I'd be bound she'd jump at it. She'd not get a better dinner at 'ome or anyw'ere, nor a better room to sleep in,' said Mrs Clay. This remark grated upon both her children, as so many of poor Mrs Clay's sayings did; but George, tactful as usual, remarked, 'Suppose you write and ask Miss Cunningham, Sarah; and if she is too proud to visit a maker of blankets, why, she will refuse, and there will be the end of it; and if she accepts, it will show that her friendship for you is stronger than class prejudices.' Sarah looked at her brother for a minute as if she wanted to say something, but did not do so, and only drummed with her crimson-dyed fingers on the white table-cloth, taking apparently great delight in their appearance. 'Yes; you do as your brother tells you, instead of sittin' there smilin' at them dreadful 'ands o' yours. I'm sure they're nothin' to be proud o'. Now, if you lived in Howroyd's Mill, w'ere your uncle Bill lives, you might be ashamed to ask the young lady to stay wi' you; but 'ere it's quite different,' said Mrs Clay. The brother and sister, it will have been noticed, always called their father's step-brother Uncle Howroyd, whereas their mother and father called him Bill or 'your uncle Bill.' The fact was that the younger people did not like 'Bill,' and George said he was thankful for one thing, and that was that his name could not be shortened; while Sarah had made violent protests against being called Sally or Sal, and would not allow any one except her father, whom she could not control, to call her anything but Sarah; and, indeed, the latter name suited her best. Sarah followed her brother into his smoking-den. 'Pshaw! What a stuffy room!' she exclaimed, as she threw herself upon the cushioned window-seat. 'If it does not please you I fail to see why you have come into it; and as for being stuffy'----Instead of completing his sentence George shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say the accusation was too absurd to be argued about. 'It _is_ stuffy, with all those cushions and carpets about, and pictures and gimcracks, for all its big windows. I can't think how you like to stuff it up with all this rubbish,' persisted Sarah. 'This rubbish, as you call it, is worth a pretty penny,' he remarked, lighting a cigarette. 'You're as bad as father, counting everything by what it costs. But, I say, George, why did you go and suggest my inviting Horatia Cunningham to come and stay here? I don't want her; and now you've started mother on it she'll give me no peace till I do ask her, and very likely say something to father, and he'll begin worrying about it, especially if he hears she's a duke's granddaughter. Besides, she wouldn't come if I did ask her,' Sarah remarked. 'In that case there'll be no harm done if you do ask her. But I can't imagine why you shouldn't; she looks a very nice girl, and you are great friends, aren't you? And what has her grandfather to do with it?' asked George. 'At school we are; but whether we should be after she'd been up here isn't so certain. And as for why I shouldn't ask her, the reason is pretty plain--father,' replied Sarah. 'You mean he might make himself unpleasant?' suggested George. 'There's no need for him to _make_ himself; Nature has made him unpleasant,' exclaimed Sarah. 'You need not see much of him. You can go for picnics or drives, and arrange to have lunch earlier or later; and you never breakfast and have tea with him, so it's only at dinner-time that they will meet. I should not think he will get into a rage before a stranger, especially a young girl.' Sarah seemed to be considering something, and suddenly she blurted out, 'It isn't only that. I don't want her to come here; can't you see why not? They don't know what my people are. Oh, they know we're manufacturers; but that's nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of manufacturers are gentlemen, but we are not gentlefolks, and they--they don't guess it from me,' she wound up half-shamefacedly. 'Then I wouldn't sail under false colours. We are risen from the people, and our parents have not had the education they have been good enough to give us; but it would be contemptible to be ashamed of the fact or of them.' 'That's very fine and high-flown; but I am ashamed of my father, at any rate. I'd rather not have Horatia Cunningham come here and laugh at my mother behind her back,' said Sarah. 'I should like to see any one dare to do that,' said George, with an angrier look than his sister had ever seen him give. 'She wouldn't mean it nastily; but it's no good pretending that mother does not say the wrong thing sometimes,' said Sarah. 'The wrong thing has been sending you to that school,' said George, his loyalty and love for his mother preventing his acknowledging the truth of this remark; and then he said more kindly, for he sympathised more with his sister than he chose to say, 'I don't believe Miss Cunningham would be nasty in any way. I know her brother slightly at college, and he is "Hail, fellow! well met," with every chap he meets. You take my advice, and write and ask her to come here. You can tell her, if you like, that--well, that we are _nouveaux riches_, and have no pretensions of being gentlefolks; but that she will have a hearty Yorkshire welcome, and that's not a thing to be despised, let me tell you. Here, sit down and write the letter at once. I shall enjoy myself much more in Scotland if I know you have a companion.' 'I shouldn't mind so much if you were going to be at home,' said Sarah, only half-won over. George ignored the implied compliment, and said, 'You will get on much better alone. Sit down and write the invitation here. I'll help you.' 'No, thank you; I'd rather write my own way,' remarked Sarah, as she rose from the window-seat. When she got to the door, she turned back to say, 'I have a presentiment that she'll accept, and it will be all your fault, remember. Whatever the consequences, they will be on your head.' George only laughed, and sat down himself to accept his shooting invitation. CHAPTER VI. AN EXTRAORDINARY LETTER. It did not take George Clay five minutes to write his acceptance of his friend's invitation; but his sister did not find her letter quite so easy to write, and she sat at the pretty Chippendale table biting the end of her pen for more than that length of time before she began to write in desperation, only to tear up the letter in despair. 'It's all very well for George to talk; but it's not so easy to sit down and tell a girl you are not a lady, and, what's more, that your parents are not gentlefolks,' said Sarah aloud to herself. Then she started again, and wrote a friendly invitation, without any embarrassing explanations or apologies. 'George may be able to say that kind of thing in a gentlemanly way--he always does say the right sort of thing--but I shall just chance it,' she muttered to herself, as she sealed up the letter and sent it off by Naomi, without showing it to any one or taking any one's advice upon it. To have done so would have been quite contrary to Sarah's habits, for she was of a very independent character, and the circumstances of her whole life no doubt fostered this characteristic. 'So we've got a grand young lady from London coming up to stay with us plain folk,' said Mr Mark Clay when he saw his daughter at dinner that evening. 'I've asked one of my schoolfellows to come to stay with me; but I don't know that she will come, and I don't know that you will think her grand. She dresses very plainly,' replied Sarah. 'Then she'll be all the more willing to come if she's poor,' said Mr Clay. 'She's not in the least poor. It's not the fashion for schoolgirls to dress very grandly,' said Sarah hastily. 'Nonsense! People dress as they can afford; and, I'll be bound, I could buy up her father twice over,' said Mark Clay in his boastful way. Sarah's lips curled scornfully. 'You couldn't buy his rank. I hope to goodness she won't come,' she said. No notice was taken of this remark, which was put down to Sarah's contradictoriness, and no one knew how heartily the girl repented of her invitation. Meanwhile Horatia Cunningham opened the letter from her friend, without in the least expecting it to contain an invitation to visit the schoolfellow whom they all talked of as the millionaire's daughter. Great was her surprise on reading it, for Sarah never talked at school of her people or her home, and the girls vaguely imagined that she was unhappy in her home. 'Mamma, just listen to this letter,' Horatia cried, as she read the letter aloud at the breakfast-table: '"DEAR HORATIA,--Will you come and spend as much of the holidays as you can spare with me? We live on a hill outside Ousebank, so that you will not be in a manufacturing town, and we can go for plenty of walks or rides and drives and play tennis as much as you like. I shall be all alone, as my brother is going to stay with friends in Scotland.--Your affectionate friend, SARAH CLAY."' 'What an extraordinary letter! She is not gushing,' said Lady Grace Cunningham, as she continued to pour out the coffee. 'Is she an orphan, and what does she mean by being all alone? Has she no guardian or chaperon?' inquired Horatia's father. 'She has a father and a mother. She is the daughter of a millionaire blanket-maker named Clay.' 'I believe I've heard the name; but I don't know what I've heard of him,' said Mr Cunningham. 'That would account for her odd way of writing,' said his wife. 'What is odd about it?' demanded Horatia. 'Her writing without mentioning her mother's name, and she never says she would like to see you. Besides, to begin with, as a matter of politeness, Mrs Clay should have written to me,' objected Lady Grace Cunningham. 'Sarah is very independent, and I expect she does as she likes at home,' said Horatia. 'But she is a very nice girl, mamma, and I may go, mayn't I?' she begged. 'Do you really want to go? You know these people, though they have great riches, are very often very unrefined. What is the girl like?' 'I'll show you her photograph, and she looks like a queen when she walks,' said Horatia; and in her eagerness to get leave to pay the visit she ran upstairs to fetch the photo, and came back with a portrait of a boy and girl. 'Dear me, what a handsome couple!' exclaimed Lady Grace Cunningham; 'and most refined,' she added, as she passed the photo to her husband for his inspection and opinion. 'A very fine face--the girl's, I mean; the young fellow looks rather effeminate. I don't think you'd learn anything but good from that girl; but she looks proud. I should never have taken her for a tradesman's daughter,' he remarked, as he put the photo down. 'She is not. He is a manufacturer,' protested Horatia. 'Some of our merchants are of good old stock, and as refined as ourselves, if I may be allowed that piece of boasting,' replied his wife. 'And no doubt these people are. Well, personally, I have no objection to Horatia's going to them, if you have not,' said Mr Cunningham; and he buried himself in his newspaper. 'Hurrah!' cried Horatia, clapping her hands. 'Why this excitement? Are you so fond of this schoolfellow, or do you find home dull?' inquired Lady Grace Cunningham. 'Oh no, mamma; of course I am never dull at The Grange, and I don't know that I am so fond of Sarah. I do like her very much, but I shall see her in another month; so, if you like, I will write and refuse the invitation.' 'By no means. I wish you to grow up large-minded; but you have not explained why you were so delighted at the thought of going to spend a month with these strangers. I don't suppose their riches attract you.' 'Oh no; I don't think one could have a nicer home than this. I believe the real truth is that I should like to see a mill. I read a story about mill-girls once; how they wore pattens on their feet and shawls on their heads, and talked so broadly that you couldn't understand them, and threw mud at strangers. I would like'---- 'To have mud thrown at you?' exclaimed her mother. 'Well, there's no accounting for tastes!' Horatia gave a merry laugh, such an infectious laugh that both her mother and father joined in it. 'No; I should keep out of their way, and look at them through a window,' she remarked. 'Perhaps they'd throw a stone through the window and break it,' observed Horatia's practical sister. 'Well, I promise to duck my head if I see one coming,' she assured them, laughing. 'I don't suppose there will be any need. I fancy mill-hands, as I believe they call them, are very much civilised, and dress quite grandly now,' said her mother. 'Oh, I hope not! I shall be disappointed if they do,' cried Horatia. Thus it came about that two mornings after she had despatched her letter Sarah had an answer from Horatia Cunningham, accepting her friend's kind invitation with pleasure, and announcing her arrival at the end of the week. 'So you were right, and she is coming,' Sarah said gloomily to her brother, as she twisted the letter in her fingers. 'That's very nice. You must think of nice expeditions to take her. There is lovely scenery within reach, especially if she's fond of motoring,' he said. 'I wish to goodness the visit were over. I have a presentiment that it will be a failure,' his sister persisted. 'Don't be absurd! It won't be a failure if you try to make it a success; and, if you don't mind my giving you a hint, be civil to the governor before Miss Cunningham, at all events; it's such bad form not to be, you know,' said George. 'I wish you'd give the governor, as you call him, a hint or two. He's the one who'll make the visit a failure, if it is one. Well, she's going to come, so it's no use groaning about it now,' said Sarah. 'Now, Sally, what are you looking so glum about? I suppose you don't think we're grand enough for your duchess-friend? Never you mind, we'll put our best foot forward. She shall have the royal suite of rooms. I've made up my mind to do the thing handsome,' said Mr Clay. 'Oh Mark, that is good o' you! I 'ope the young lady won't spoil 'em,' said his wife. The royal suite of rooms, it should be explained, consisted of a bedroom, anteroom, sitting-room, and bathroom, which had been so sumptuously decorated that the workmen called them the 'royal suite;' and Mr Clay, overhearing them, had said the royal suite they should be called. Perhaps it would be prophetic, for stranger things had to come to pass than royalty coming to stay with the Mayor of Ousebank, as he had been, and probably would be again. Sarah knew she ought to express her gratitude to her father for the honour he was showing to her friend; but no words would come. Sarah Clay was, unfortunately, more in the habit of uttering unpleasant truths than making pretty speeches to her father; and, if the truth be told, she was not altogether pleased at the honour shown, for the rooms were not very suitable for a young girl, and Sarah had an idea that the grandeur would be wasted on Horatia, who, she suspected, would rather have a room near hers. George, as usual, came to the rescue. 'That is very kind of you, father; but perhaps, as Miss Cunningham is very young, and is coming for the first time among strangers, she would prefer to be in the west wing near some one she knows. There's the anteroom, next Sarah's; that is very pretty for a girl, and they could share the boudoir.' Sarah shot a grateful look at her brother; but his pains were thrown away, for Mr Clay, who was not a man to be easily turned from his plan, said, 'She'll soon get used to us, and she can have her maid to sleep next door. No; I've promised she shall have the royal rooms, and I'll not go back on my word.' 'Let's hope she'll appreciate them,' said George in a non-committal tone. Sarah spent the intervening two or three days in a state of suppressed excitement and unsuppressed irritability; and George at last began to regret, like herself, that her friend was coming, and was sorry for having made the suggestion. He would even have given up his visit to the north if Sarah had accepted his sacrifice; but the latter declared brusquely, 'You couldn't do much good; and, considering that my excuse for asking her here was that I should be alone, it would look rather odd if you didn't go away, after all.' So George went off, his parting words to Sarah being, 'Don't worry. Just be as nice to her as you can, and don't, for goodness' sake, be ashamed of being what you are, for you have nothing to be ashamed of.' 'I don't think that,' said Sarah. 'We need be ashamed of nothing in this world except doing wrong,' said George; and the motor started with a hoot of approval of this worthy sentiment. Sarah waved her hand to her brother, and stood watching him until the motor was hidden behind the trees and a bend in a long avenue, and then turned back to the house, her head bent towards the gravel-path, the pebbles of which she kicked with her feet, to the distinct disapproval of the young gardener who had just rolled it, and viewed this destruction of his work from a distance. 'Ashamed of nothing but doing wrong!' she soliloquised. 'That's not true. One is ashamed of having dirty hands or muddy boots; there's nothing wrong in that.' She turned impulsively as if to say this to her brother, and have the last word; but that being an impossibility, she was reduced to arguing the question out with herself, as Sarah had a habit of doing. The only person she ever consulted, or whose advice or criticism she accepted, was her uncle Howroyd. But this question she could not ask him, for Sarah hardly liked to own to herself that she was a little ashamed of her uncle Howroyd; at least, not exactly ashamed, but she did not mean to take Horatia Cunningham to see him or the old-fashioned mill-house in which William Howroyd and his father had lived for three or four generations. So Sarah was reduced to herself as an authority upon this question for the present, and not being by any means a safe authority, she did not get a wise answer, which might have saved her a great deal of vexation and annoyance; for Sarah decided that George was quite wrong. There were things which were not wrong, and yet one could not help being ashamed of them; and one thing Sarah was ashamed of was having parents who were not only uneducated, but had unrefined ideas. Sarah had one day-dream, absurd as it may seem, of which she never spoke. Sarah always cherished the hope that she might some day find that she and her brother were not really George and Sarah Clay, but adopted children of Mark Clay, and that by-and-by the news would be broken to them. And yet Sarah was a well-educated, intelligent girl of sixteen, and lived in the twentieth century. The fancy arose from a remark her father once made when she was quite a child: 'They are not my children; they are a cut above me. They've got their mother's features, but they'll have nothing of me but my money.' And upon this half-bitter, half-proud speech of Mark Clay's Sarah built her romance, which varied as she invented different explanations of the mystery from time to time; but her favourite one was that her mother first married a lord who was ashamed of his wife, and would not acknowledge his children until they were grown up and properly educated; and Sarah used to picture the reconciliation between them and their proud relatives, for whose benefit she composed many fine speeches full of reproof and final forgiveness. This may be a little excuse for her want of respect to her father, Mark Clay, by speaking of whom, it will be remembered, as 'your husband' she used to anger her mother. She even half-thought of telling Horatia this tale; but Horatia had a way of turning everything into ridicule, and one of the many things that Sarah could not stand was being laughed at. The same motor that took George Clay to the station took Sarah that afternoon to meet Horatia Cunningham, who was to arrive at six o'clock, and who persisted in arriving at that hour, although Sarah had written to her and warned her it was the hour when the mill-hands came out; she said she did not mind at all, and supposed that she would be quite safe in a motor with its smart chauffeur; and Sarah, looking so fresh and dainty that many a one turned and looked after the millionaire's pretty daughter, started off for the station, and not one of them guessed she was feeling nervous, and wished with all her might that she were going on another errand. The girl even wished that something might have happened to prevent her friend from coming; but when the train stopped she saw the wish was vain, for Horatia's face was smiling at her from a window, and Sarah forgot her fears for the moment, and smiled back a welcome. CHAPTER VII. HORATIA'S ARRIVAL. Sarah stepped forward to help Horatia down from the carriage, and suddenly her expression changed to one of mingled surprise and annoyance; seeing which, the young visitor, with a merry laugh, jumped from the carriage to the platform, ignoring the steps and Sarah's outstretched hand. 'There! I said so, didn't I, Nanny?' she cried, turning to her maid, a highly respectable, middle-aged woman, with as good-humoured a face as her young charge.--'Sarah, I said the minute you saw us come out of a third-class carriage you would put on that shocked face of yours. That's partly why I did it.' 'You must excuse Miss Horatia, miss. She's full of mischief, and she got into this carriage at the junction without my seeing what class it was, or I would never have allowed her to do such a thing as arrive here third, with you to meet her, and the "chauffer" and all,' said Horatia's maid. 'Oh, bother the chauffeur! It's nothing to do with him which class I travel!' exclaimed Horatia, who, to do her justice, had no idea that the chauffeur was just behind her. That individual was far too well trained to give any sign of having heard this remark, though it was very different from the way his present employers treated him. Mark Clay bullied his servants, and his timid little wife hardly dared to speak to them. Sarah was very reserved, except with Naomi; while George was as courteous to a beggar as to a lord, having but one manner with them all. When Horatia saw what she had done she made a funny little face, and said in an undertone to Sarah, 'I say, Sarah, can't we walk to your house?' 'I don't think we had better. We shall meet the mill-hands coming out, and mother does not like us to do that,' said Sarah. 'Oh, of course, if your mother does not allow it, we can't; but do you think I had better apologise to your man?' she suggested. 'Apologise? Pray, don't think of such a thing! But I suppose you are only saying that to shock me, though why that should amuse you so much I can't think,' observed Sarah. 'You would if you could see your own face; but I really didn't get into that railway-carriage only to shock you. I got in to hear Yorkshire people talk. I saw some country men and women get in, and I just followed them; and, oh Sarah, what does "ginnel" mean, and a "fettle"?' 'I don't know what a "ginnel" is; but "fettle" is a verb. A fettler is the man who cleans the machines in the mill. I have heard the people here talk of "fettling" the hearth when they mean "clean up." And old Matthew, a mill-hand, said the other day he didn't feel in a grand fettle. I suppose he meant "well."' 'A ginnel's a narrow passage, miss. Yon's a ginnel we are just passing,' said the chauffeur to Horatia, slowing down as they passed what is generally called an alley, to which he pointed. 'Oh, thank you very much,' said Horatia genially, and added to Sarah, as she squeezed her arm, 'Oh Sarah, I am enjoying myself so much!' Her happiness was infectious, and Sarah turned to her visitor with an amused smile. 'Why, what can you find to enjoy already?' she asked, with some reason, for they were going almost at walking pace through the town, because of the crowds that poured into the streets from almost every side-turning, so that it could not be the exhilarating motion of motoring that she liked so much. 'Everything! Seeing all those people and hearing people talk Yorkshire,' cried Horatia. 'The people are just like poor people anywhere, only rather dirtier; and I don't like their way of speaking--they have such rough, loud voices,' replied Sarah. 'I think that kind of sing-song they have is musical, and they are not a bit like our villagers; I don't know how, but they are not,' said Horatia, glancing about her, and almost jumping up and down in her eagerness to see all there was to be seen, as they drove slowly along the narrow, and at this time crowded, streets of the grimy manufacturing town. 'Oh, oh, look, Nanny, at that lovely river all purple!' she cried enthusiastically. 'Well, really, Miss Horatia, I can't say that I do admire that. It looks shocking dirty,' said the maid. 'It is. It's lovely before it gets to Ousebank; but it's so polluted by the mills turning all their horrid dyes and things into it that fish can't live in it,' observed Sarah in tones of disgust. 'Well, I call it a lovely colour. Just think how delightful--when you get tired of a dress one colour, you have just got to dip it into the river when the water's the colour you want, and, hey, presto! there you are with a new dress!' Even the chauffeur on the seat in front let his face relax into a smile at Horatia's chatter; but Sarah, though she laughed, said decidedly, 'I'd rather send my dresses to proper dyers than put them into that dirty water; and I'd rather see the river clean, and so would you if you lived here.' They had got clear of the town now, and Horatia, having nothing to look at except an ugly row of cottages, in which even she could not find anything to admire, turned her attention to the car, which she declared most luxurious, and ever so much better than her father's. 'We can go out in it as much as you like, if you like motoring, and go for picnics in the country,' suggested Sarah. 'That will be very nice; but I want to see your mill first,' said Horatia. 'Is it near the house?' 'No; we passed it just now, when you said, "What a big stream of people"!' answered Sarah. 'But they didn't know you,' objected the other. 'Oh yes, they did--by sight, I mean. But what difference would that make? You don't expect them to nod to me, do you?' 'All our villagers do to me, even though I don't know them by sight,' said Horatia. 'Then they are different from our people, and perhaps there are not so many. We have over eight hundred men in our mill, besides women and boys.' Horatia began to see that Sarah did not care to talk about mill-people, as she called them in her mind, and as they entered the park at the moment, and the house in another moment, she found other subjects for conversation. Horatia was a year younger than Sarah and more than a head shorter, and a greater contrast than the two presented could not be imagined: the one tall, slender, dignified, with regular features and clear complexion; and the other short, square-set, with snub-nose and freckled skin, a face only redeemed from plainness by its merry, twinkling eyes and good-humoured mouth, which was always broadening into a smile. Mrs Clay had seen Horatia Cunningham's photograph, so that she was prepared for a girl with a homely face; but most photographs flatter, and Mrs Clay had not expected to see any one quite so ordinary in appearance, 'an' that plainly dressed,' as she confided to her husband. However, she came forward with a hearty welcome, and as soon as Horatia smiled at her she forgot the slight shock her young guest's appearance had given her. Horatia jumped out of the car as she had jumped out of the train. 'It is so kind of you to have me; and what a lovely view you have! One would never think the town was so near. I suppose it is hidden behind those trees?' she said. 'No, my dear--Miss Cunningham, I mean--the town is be'ind the 'ouse. My 'usband built the mansion this way on purpose,' said Mrs Clay, in her nervousness dropping the _h's_ more than usual. Sarah kept a keen eye upon Horatia during this speech. She had been dreading this moment, and had only forgotten her anxiety, thanks to Horatia's free praise of all she saw; but not a trace of mockery could she see in her schoolfellow's smile; in fact, Horatia was more polite than she was to the teachers at school, to whom they were expected to be most courteous. 'I suppose she didn't expect her to be educated,' thought Sarah, a little bitterly. But she did her school friend an injustice, for Mrs Clay was a far greater shock to Horatia than she was to her hostess; and it said much for the girl's innate good-breeding that she showed no sign of the fact, but only answered frankly, 'Please don't call me Miss Cunningham. I'm not grown up yet, and my name is Horatia.' And here the thought came into Horatia's mind that she would certainly be ''Oratia' to her hostess, and she felt a wild desire to laugh, but valiantly repressed it; for which she was very thankful when Mrs Clay, with a pretty, pink colour in her delicate, faded cheeks, said, 'Thank you, my dear; it's a very pretty name, but it's difficult to remember. I expect I shall always call you "my dear," as you don't mind, and I am sure you are a very dear young lady.' Horatia impulsively threw her arms round Mrs Clay's neck, and, kissing her, said, 'I am sure I am going to have a lovely time here, and I think it's awfully good of you to ask me.' Mrs Clay beamed with delight, and all fears on her part that the visit would not be a success were over. Sarah's brow cleared. She was rather surprised that Horatia and her mother had taken to each other; but so far so well. The worst was--her father; and Sarah almost longed for dinner-time, so that that meeting also should be over. 'She won't like him, I know,' she murmured, with a recollection of a scene at school when a visitor had been presuming in Horatia's opinion, and she had rather surprised her companions by the frigid air she assumed. 'He'll offend her, and she will say something, and, oh dear! I'm sure there will be a scene,' sighed Sarah. However, dinner was two hours off, and Sarah took Horatia through the vast corridors and up to the royal rooms, followed by Horatia's old nurse, who had come in the capacity of maid, and was by her mistress's orders keeping near her charge till she settled down in her new surroundings. Horatia and her maid were both used to large houses, and had stayed at the ducal mansion of Horatia's relative; but when the door leading into the royal rooms was opened she gave a cry of admiration. 'But am I to sleep here? It's far too grand for me, Sarah. And what a big room! I shall lose myself in it!' she cried. 'My father wished you to have these rooms. There's a bed for your maid next door, in the dressing-room. My mother thought you might be nervous in a new house,' explained Sarah. 'How kind you all are! Fancy taking all that trouble about making me comfortable! I'm afraid I sha'n't be able to give you such a lot of rooms when you come to stay with us,' said Horatia, as she wandered from room to room, and stopped first to admire the writing-table with gold everything, and finally the bathroom with silver fittings. 'I will leave you to rest a little, and when you are ready for a walk in the park, please ring the bell and Naomi will fetch me,' said Sarah as she went off, relieved to find that Horatia took everything in a friendly spirit. 'Oh Miss Horatia, this is a funny house!' exclaimed Horatia's nurse. 'I don't see anything funny in it,' said Horatia; 'it's a very beautiful one.' 'Yes, miss, it is that; these people must have a mint of money. Why, look at these rooms; they're fit for a king. And to think that poor thing is the mistress of it all. She doesn't look hardly fit,' said the woman. Horatia let this remark pass in silence; but if her loyalty to her hostess had let her she would probably have agreed with her nurse, for she did feel, somehow, as Sarah did, that it was all too grand, and oppressed her somehow. 'My dresses are not grand enough for these rooms, Nanny, or for this house,' she replied. But this was too much for the old nurse. 'You'll look a lady and be a lady in the commonest of them, and that's more than these Clays be, for all their money,' she cried indignantly. 'That isn't very nice of you when they are so kind to us, Nanny, and have asked us here so that we may enjoy ourselves,' said Horatia reproachfully. 'No, Miss Horatia, it isn't, and I ought to be ashamed of myself that you have to teach me my duty instead of me showing you a good example; but I felt wild to think of them, perhaps, thinking themselves better than you because they have such a lot of money out of blankets,' said the good woman. 'Why, I'd sooner have The Grange than this house any day.' 'So would I, of course, because it's my home; but I wouldn't mind having a bathroom like this, all marble and silver, and all those lovely little contrivances to wash yourself without any trouble; and I will some day, when I'm rich,' declared Horatia. [Illustration: 'I'm so glad you've called me "lass"! I was so hoping some one would.' PAGE 69.] And now, being ready for dinner, Horatia rang for Sarah, and the two went down to the painted and gilded drawing-room to wait till the gong sounded, which it presently did, and the three went into the dining-room, where they found Mr Mark Clay, as was his custom, seated at the table. When they arrived, Mrs Clay, whose duty it was to introduce Horatia to her host, left that duty to Sarah, and Sarah left it to her mother, with the result that no one performed that ceremony. Horatia had to introduce herself, which she did very prettily. 'How do you do, Mr Clay? Thank you for giving me such a lovely room'--everything was lovely according to Horatia; 'it's the loveliest I have ever seen--better than the peacock-room at Hasingfield. Now, Hasingfield was the palace of Horatia's ducal relative, her grandfather, and the peacock-room was so famous that even Mark Clay had heard of it; so that Horatia could not have said anything that would have pleased her host better. He held her hand for a moment, and looked down at her bright, smiling face, as he said, 'I'm right glad to see you here, and welcome you to Yorkshire. And there's nothing here that you are not welcome to use as your own. Make yourself at home, lass.' Horatia's smile broadened as she gave a laugh of delight. 'Oh, I'm so glad you've called me "lass"! I was so hoping some one would. That shall be your name for me, and Mrs Clay will call me "my dear,"' she answered, taking her seat at the table in the best of humours. It was a sumptuous repast, and if Horatia got tired of it and of her host's boastings and unrefined remarks, she gave no sign, but seemed, as she had said when she first arrived, to be enjoying herself immensely. 'So the dreaded introductions were safely and happily over, and either she is acting or else she doesn't notice or mind anything,' Sarah said to herself. But she was wrong, for Horatia was not acting, and she did notice, and did mind some things. Later on Sarah was undeceived on this point. CHAPTER VIII. HORATIA. So the dinner was over, and Sarah heaved a great sigh of relief as the two followed Mrs Clay to the drawing-room. 'What are you sighing for, Sarah? One would think you had just discovered that you were a pauper, and had eaten your last grand dinner; for it was a grand dinner. Was it in honour of little, insignificant me? Because, you know, if it was, perhaps you wouldn't mind telling Mrs Clay that I don't come down to dinner at home, but have schoolroom supper with Nanny; and I don't think mamma would like me to eat all those things every evening,' observed Horatia, taking Sarah's arm and doing a rink step along the hall. 'Oh, we have that kind of dinner every day. There may have been extra trouble taken because of you; but father likes it. You needn't eat any more than you like; but I shouldn't sigh if I heard it was my last in this house,' replied Sarah vehemently. She spoke so vehemently that Horatia stopped her rinking and looked at her friend in surprise. 'But it is your home,' she said. 'I'd rather live in a cottage,' declared Sarah. 'You say so; but I'd just like to see you turning up your aristocratic nose at the tiny rooms; only, of course, your nose wouldn't turn up properly, not being a snub like mine. Anyway, it would look down on everything. But, I say, Sarah, what a lovely rink this hall would make! If it weren't so hot we might have a fine rink this evening.' 'Oh my dear, not in this 'all; it's real cedar-board, brought express from abroad for Mr Clay!' cried Mrs Clay in shocked accents. 'I'm sure I don't know w'at 'e'd say if you was to suggest such a thing. Pray don't name it to 'im.' Horatia laughed gaily. 'I was only in fun. Of course, I shouldn't rink on a parquet floor. I should like to see our butler's face if I did it on our polished oak. I think I'll suggest it to Mr Clay this evening,' she announced. 'You won't see him again. He never comes into the drawing-room in the evening, thank goodness!' said Sarah. The 'thank goodness' slipped out from habit, and she was rather glad that Horatia did not notice it. 'We shall just 'ave a quiet evenin'. Mr Clay likes to smoke 'is pipe after dinner in 'is study, an' I go an' talk to 'im sometimes. So per'aps you won't mind if I go an' leave you two to enjoy yourselves alone.--Your father seems quite cheerful to-night.--I think you an' 'e will get on, my dear,' said Mrs Clay, who was quite cheerful herself, owing to her husband being in a pleasant humour. It was the first peaceful dinner they had had since Sarah came home; Mark Clay was never a very pleasant companion, and the dinner-table was very often the scene of his rages, but Sarah seemed to anger her father without even opening her mouth, and her mother, much as she missed her only daughter, was generally relieved when she returned to school. But before Mrs Clay thought it was time for her husband to have finished his wine and retired to his study to smoke, to the surprise of all three he appeared in the drawing-room, without the obnoxious pipe, and with quite a pleasant expression for him. 'I'm thinking this lass will be dull with only us plain folk, and so I've got a concert for her. Now, what would you like to hear--the opera at Covent Garden, the Queen's Hall concert, or what?' 'Oh, how lovely! The opera, please. That is better than rinking in your parquet hall, Mr Clay,' cried Horatia, clapping her hands. 'Rink in my hall!' cried the millionaire, scandalised; and then, seeing Horatia's twinkling eyes, he laughed his hoarse laugh, and said, 'You'd have Sykes after you if you did. What do you want to rink for? Senseless pastime, I call it. Now, skating I can understand; it's healthy exercise, and you might make use of it in cold countries; but rinking--what's the use on't?' 'Oh, it's such fun! I do love it so!' cried Horatia. 'Well, now, if it's like that, I'll see what we can do. I am afraid I can't get a rink built for you in a day, but I'll see what we can do. For to-night, you'll have to put up with the opera,' said Mr Clay good-naturedly. Horatia thanked him profusely, and after he had left she said to Sarah, 'Oh Sarah, you _are_ rich! I'm sorry I ever came here to stay with you.' 'Why?' inquired Sarah quickly, as the colour mounted to her forehead, for she expected that Horatia was going to say that she did not like people who made such a display of wealth. 'Because I sha'n't be contented to be just middlingly well off after this, and I never wanted to be rich before; but your father can do everything he likes,' she cried enthusiastically. 'Oh no, he can't,' retorted Sarah. 'What can't he do?' demanded Horatia. Sarah paused for a moment. She could not very well say what was in her mind, which was that he could not make himself a gentleman, so she said instead, 'He can't buy people's affection, for one thing.' Horatia gave Sarah one of her quick, quizzical glances, but only replied, 'I don't know so much about that. There's cupboard-love, at any rate; but never mind, let's go and listen to this opera. It's a lovely way of spending the evening,' she added, for Sarah's face had taken on its disdainful expression again. So the two sat down at the gramophone to listen to Tetrazzini singing in the opera, and Mrs Clay went off to her husband's study to take advantage of his being in a good humour to spend the hour with the husband she worshipped, although she feared him, and had none too happy a life with him. Mr Clay was smoking a short clay-pipe. If Sarah had been there she probably would have said that another thing that he could not do was to enjoy refined things, or give himself refined tastes, for one of Mark Clay's greatest enjoyments was to smoke his short clay-pipe and the rankest of rank tobacco, though he only did so in private. 'She's a nice young lady, Mark, this friend o' Sarah's, isn't she?' Mrs Clay hazarded. 'Yes, she's a grand lass, is yon. She's always got a joke ready to crack with you, and doesn't give herself no airs; and she might, for I find they're a very high family--two dukes in it, and other titles as well,' said Mr Clay. 'Oh, I don't care about 'er titles; she's a dear young lady in 'erself, an' I'm sure Sarah'll only learn good from 'er,' said Mrs Clay. 'I wish Sarah'd learn not to give herself airs; you'd think she was a duke's granddaughter and not the other. I'm sure she looks at me sometimes as much as to say, "I'm a princess, and you're only a common man," and treats me as if I was the dirt under her feet, instead of being her father, to whom she owes everything,' said Mr Clay, with an aggrieved air. 'She's not good-lookin',' said Mrs Clay, who alluded to Horatia and was trying to put a word in indirectly for her daughter. 'No, she isn't, there's no denying that; but I'd sooner have her opposite me at table, for all her plain looks, than I would our Sally.' 'I wouldn't go so far as that. I'm sure w'en the two came in to-night, an' our girl lookin' so straight an' 'andsome, I felt proud o' 'er; but the other is a dear young lady, an' keeps us all lively,' she said, repeating her one remark about Horatia that she was a dear young lady. 'And if you'll believe me, George,' she wrote to her son two days later, 'your father's a different man since that little girl has been here, as polite to the servants since he spoke sharp to Sykes and the little lady stared at him so surprised like; and so kind to me I hardly know myself. Not that I'm not very grateful to him, and know a man like him must have his worries, and can't always be even-tempered.' But much had happened during these two days. Sarah had planned these two days, and, indeed, all the visit, as a succession of excursions in the motor, picnics, tennis-parties (for the Clays knew every one for miles round), and rides, and the next morning, accordingly, she said to Horatia, 'I thought we might go to the lakes for lunch to-day; we might start directly after breakfast, and get back for dinner in the evening.' 'Oh, haven't you seen the lakes?' asked Horatia in rather a disappointed tone. 'Yes, of course; but they are always worth going to see,' replied Sarah. 'But if you don't care to see them, or would rather go anywhere else, or do anything else, you have only to say so, and of course we'll do that.' Horatia's face brightened. 'Do you really mean that? May I do what I like just for the first day or two?' she inquired eagerly. 'Of course you may do what you like to-day and every day while you are here. I would much rather you did. I'm tired of doing what I like; and, besides, it will save me a lot of bother, because I did not want to go to the lakes at all, and I was going to please you.' 'And I should have gone to please you,' cried Horatia, 'so we should both have wasted a day; but I'm afraid you won't care for my plan. I want to go and see your mills.' 'You mean my father's,' said Sarah hastily; but, though her face fell a little, she continued, 'We shall have to ask his leave. I'll ask mother to 'phone to him.' But this plan of Horatia's was not destined to be carried out, for a message came back to say that Mr Clay would rather they came another day, as he was busy that day, and could not take them over himself. 'Then just let's go down the town and see the outsides of the mills. No; not in the motor,' for Sarah had her hand on the bell to ring for it. 'How, then? Do you want to ride?' inquired Sarah in surprise. 'No; I want to go on Shank's mare, and poke into ginnels. I want to go up a ginnel,' she declared. 'But a ginnel is only a narrow passage. The chauffeur told you so, don't you remember? You've often been up a passage, I suppose?' 'Yes; but not when it's called a ginnel. I want to say I've been up one, and I can't bring it in unless I say, "I went up a ginnel at Ousebank,"' explained Horatia. Sarah laughed. 'You are funny, Horatia,' she said. However, to please her friend she put on her hat, and the two went off to Ousebank; and whom should they meet but Uncle Howroyd, who stopped quite naturally to speak to his niece and her friend. 'And what are you two lasses doing in Ousebank alone and on foot?' he inquired. 'We've come to go up a ginnel,' said Horatia, her eyes twinkling. Mr William Howroyd's twinkled in response. 'Eh, what, are you a Yorkshire lassie, then, that you talk so pat about ginnels? And what particular one do you want to go up--the ginnel against my mill?' he inquired. 'Oh, have you got a mill, and can I come and see it?' cried Horatia eagerly. 'Why, of course I've got a mill. Didn't Sarah tell you? Surely you weren't coming to Ousebank without coming to see me?' he inquired reproachfully. Then, seeing that Sarah coloured and looked rather ashamed, he half-guessed the truth, and turned quickly to another subject, and said, 'Come along, then, both of you.--This is not the grandest mill in Ousebank, Miss Cunningham, nor the largest. My brother Clay's is much bigger; but it's the oldest, and I like it best.' 'Oh, please, say Horatia,' she cried, as the three turned towards Howroyd's Mill. 'Horatia! Any relation to the great Nelson?' he inquired, looking kindly down on the eager young face smiling up at him. 'Yes; that's why I am called it; but I like Macaulay's Horatius best, so I pretend I am named after him.' 'What! Then out spake brave Horatius... And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers And the temples of his gods? Isn't that how it goes?' he asked. 'Not quite; you've left out three lines; but that's the man I mean,' she replied. 'But I forgot. Perhaps I ought not to have asked to go over your mill? Perhaps you are busy, and don't want us, like Mr Clay?' 'No, I'm not so busy as he is, and I have always time for Sarah, as she knows,' he replied; 'though I don't know that a warm summer morning is the time to go over a mill and into hot rooms.' 'Oh, please, don't discourage me! I've longed to see a mill, and now I am really going to.' Sarah privately thought Horatia rather childish, but she did not say anything; and Mr Howroyd, who did whatever he did thoroughly, took them over his mill. 'Now, I am going to show you the whole process of making a blanket out of sacks of woollen rags or wool as it comes off the sheep's back,' he announced. 'I hope you are not going to make a lesson of it, Uncle Howroyd,' protested Sarah. 'Of course I am, and am going to question you upon it afterwards,' he said, his eyes twinkling. 'Only, I hope you won't be like a young man that came here for a newspaper once, and went away saying he was much obliged, and had learnt a lot, and then wrote in his paper that we made blankets of old newspapers.' 'And don't you?' inquired Horatia innocently. 'No, we do not,' said Mr Howroyd with emphasis; 'and it's about time you did come and see a blanket-mill if that's all you know about it.' Horatia not only joined merrily in Sarah's laugh, but listened quite intelligently to Mr William Howroyd's explanation of the material used to make blankets. 'It's most fearfully interesting,' she said with a sigh. Mr Howroyd laughed. 'You'd best have gone to the lakes, as Sarah proposed. This is a very dull holiday task you've set yourself, Miss Horatia.' 'I never enjoyed any holiday so much in my life,' she protested stoutly, and a look at her beaming, interested face confirmed her words. CHAPTER IX. A YORKSHIRE MIXTURE. 'Do you particularly want to walk home, Horatia?' inquired Sarah as they were leaving Howroyd's Mill. 'No; I particularly don't want, considering that I have been driving Shank's mare up awful break-neck steps and down precipices,' replied Horatia, who had climbed up and down funny stairs and ladders in the mill, which she called precipices. 'You are not going home, anyway, just now, for the mills are just coming out, and the streets will be crowded, and it's luncheon-time; so you're going to have a plain lunch with me, if you will honour me so far,' said Mr Howroyd, and looked for a delighted acceptance from Sarah. But, to his surprise, Sarah coloured and looked at Horatia doubtfully. 'I think they'll be expecting us at home,' she said. 'Oh, will they? Can't we send a special messenger? I should so like to stay, and I am so hungry.--You've no idea how hungry I am,' she said, turning to Mr Howroyd with a merry laugh. 'Perhaps if you did you wouldn't ask us to stay.' Mr Howroyd laughed his cheery laugh. 'It would be the first time there wasn't enough for any stranger at Howroyd's. That's not a Yorkshire failing. We've always enough and to spare for any kind visitor, and they're always sure of a Yorkshire welcome.' 'What's a Yorkshire welcome like? Is it different from any other kind of welcome?' inquired Horatia slyly. 'Well, we think it's heartier and more sincere. You see, we don't go in for show so much as they do down south; we say there's real old oak up here, and French-polished deal down there.' 'Oh, what conceit!' cried Horatia. 'Are you hitting at me?' 'No; at me,' said Sarah a little bitterly. 'I'm hitting at myself; for old oak, you know, gets worm-eaten.--And you're quite correct, Miss Horatia; that was boasting, and in very bad taste. Let's hope my cook won't have burnt up the chicken and apple-tart to punish me for it,' he said as he led the way into the cool, old parlour of the mill, with its wainscoted walls and old-fashioned furniture. Horatia sat down in a rocking-chair, and gave a sigh of satisfaction. 'I feel I deserve a rest. I've done a good day's work this morning. I'm afraid I've tired you, Mr Howroyd, and taken up a lot of your time. I'd no idea it took so long to look over a mill. Why, we must have been nearly two hours.' 'Nearer two hours and a half. I calculate one and a half for most of my visitors; but, then, they don't all want to know so much as this young lady,' he replied, laughing. 'Oh, did I ask a lot of questions?' inquired Horatia. 'You did,' said Sarah. 'Well, I _am_ enjoying myself,' repeated Horatia for the hundredth time, with always the same emphasis on the 'am.' Mr Howroyd flashed one of his bright glances at her. 'That's right!' he said. 'I do like knowing new things and doing new things, and all this is so new to me. I feel as if I were abroad, out of England somewhere; and wool-making--I mean making blankets and woollen things--is most interesting,' said Horatia. Sarah seemed to be pondering over something. Suddenly she lifted her head--'What holiday-essay are you going to write this summer?' Horatia gave a merry laugh. 'Oh, well, it wasn't for that I came to stay with you, Sarah. You mustn't think that; but, of course, it will be nice and easy to write one upon wool.' 'Oh, ho! So I have been teaching you your holiday-lesson, have I?' said Mr Howroyd, as he helped Horatia to apple-tart and handed her the cheese; for at Howroyd's Mill no maid waited at lunch. William Howroyd said he had to be careful what he said before a servant, and he could reach all he wanted himself. Sarah was just putting out her hand to stop her uncle, but decided not to interfere with him, for Mr Howroyd never understood a hint, and, with what his niece considered a lamentable want of tact, would say, 'What are you driving at, lass?' or 'Speak out, child; I like plain speaking.' So, much as Sarah would have liked to prevent her uncle from offering 'such an unfashionable mixture' as apple-tart and cheese, she abstained. Horatia stared for a moment; then, thinking it was absent-mindedness on the part of her host, burst into a merry laugh. 'You've only just given me apple-tart, Mr Howroyd. I haven't come to the cheese course yet.' 'But we eat them together in Yorkshire. Come, you like new things; just try cheese and apple-tart; it's a very good mixture, to my mind,' said Mr Howroyd as he held the plate to Horatia. 'Very well, I will try it; but I don't think it sounds very nice, and if I don't like it you must give me a lump of sugar; in fact, I think I had better have one all ready in case it's horrid,' said Horatia, with pretended resignation. 'I can do better than that,' said Mr Howroyd, as, getting up from the table, he opened a cupboard and produced a long, flat box wrapped up in white paper. 'Now, if you don't like our Yorkshire mixture, you shall have one of these; but if you do like it you shall have the box.' 'Chocolates!' cried Horatia, opening the box. Then she took a spoonful of apple-tart, put a square piece of cheese in the middle of it, and ate it; but hastily took a chocolate out of the box, put it in her mouth, and said, 'Delicious!' Both Sarah and her uncle laughed at Horatia's way out of the difficulty. 'You didn't like it a bit. I saw by your face, so you don't deserve that box of chocolates,' said the former. 'Indeed, she does, and she shall have them if she will accept them!' protested Mr Howroyd. So Horatia won her chocolates. Mr Howroyd had telephoned to Balmoral to say that the girls were staying to lunch, and a message was sent back that the motor would be sent about an hour and a half after the lunch. So, when they had finished, William Howroyd led the way into the drawing-room, a big, old-fashioned room, and, drawing two chairs up to the large window, brought out all sorts of quaint, old things for Horatia to see. 'Oh dear! I never saw anything like these things before; I can't possibly put them into my essay, because I can't describe them. It is a pity, because I really think I should get the prize. I'm sure no one else will see anything so interesting in her holidays,' cried Horatia, as she examined Mr Howroyd's family treasures with interest and reverence. 'I'm sure, I can't see what you find so interesting in these old things; every one has them,' said Sarah half-impatiently. 'Nay, lass, every one has not got a tree made of hair, nor a beautiful model of their church, a hundred years old, made of cork,' her uncle corrected her. 'They may not have exactly that; but they have things that belonged to their grandmothers,' declared Sarah. 'I know you have much grander things at home, Horatia, though you pretend to admire these so much,' she protested. Horatia coloured a little; but it was not easy to offend her, and she said, with a little laugh, 'I'm not pretending at all; and I only said what was quite true, that I had never seen such things before.' 'Then you are simply laughing at us. You are only interested because we are like savages, with their trinkets and beads, which they think fine jewels,' said Sarah. This time Horatia was really offended, but she did not say anything; and Mr Howroyd said quickly, 'I shall begin to think you are ill, Sarah, or sickening for a fever, and shall telephone to your mother to send for a doctor, if you talk such nonsense.--Now, Miss Horatia, come and see my greatest treasure of all; and he took her into an adjoining room, without asking Sarah to accompany them at all. By the time they had seen his greatest treasure, which was some wonderful needlework, the motor was announced, and the two girls got into it. 'Now, I'm just going to time ourselves. We got home in seven minutes last time; do you think we could do it in five to-day?' inquired Horatia of Sarah. 'Certainly not. It's four miles from door to door. You'd no business to do it in seven minutes; and if you incite Tom to do it in five he'll get locked up, if he lives, and he'll well deserve it,' declared Mr Howroyd. Tom Fox smiled grimly. He had known Mr Howroyd and Mr Howroyd had known him since he was a tiny boy, so he answered, 'You'll not live to see me locked up, Mr Howroyd--not for furious driving in the public road; though I'll not deny that I did put on speed the day missie speaks of, going through the park.' 'Oh, well, if you choose to risk your necks in that wretched car, you must. For my part, there's nothing like a dogcart with a good trotting horse; that's fast enough for me; but then I'm fifty years behind the times, I know. Well, off you go. Good-bye; and come and see me again, and have some more cheese to your tart,' he added, with a laugh and a twinkle of his eye, as he raised his hat to the two girls. 'I will if you'll give me chocolates to help it down,' said Horatia; and the car, with a hoot, sped away. 'And we have done it in five minutes,' cried Horatia as they drew up at the front-door. Mrs Clay met them in the hall, breathless. 'Mercy on us, Sarah, w'atever 'appened to the car or Tom? I'm sure my 'eart was in my mouth w'en I saw you comin' along the park. I ran all the way down the stairs, thinkin' I should never see you alive w'en I got to the bottom,' cried the poor woman. 'It's all my fault. I'm so sorry, Mrs Clay! I begged Fox to get home in five minutes, and I made the car go when we got to the park-gates,' said Horatia penitently, as she linked her arm coaxingly in little Mrs Clay's. 'My dear, don't you go for to do such a thing again,' said Mrs Clay, smiling with indulgence at the girl; 'but it's not you I'm blamin', but Tom Fox, who ought to know better than endanger two lives, let alone takin' notice o' a child like you, if you'll excuse my speakin' so freely.' 'You are very good not to scold me; but I do so enjoy going at a tremendous speed, and the motor does run so smoothly, much better than ours, and mother is too nervous to go fast,' explained Horatia. 'I should think not, an' I don't blame 'er. For my part, I 'old on every time I go in it if my 'usband isn't lookin', an' I'd rather by 'alf walk or take the pony-chaise than go in it; but I'll stop Fox playin' such tricks. W'atever would your ma 'ave said if she'd seen you, I can't think.' They had gone upstairs by this time, and were walking along the corridor at the back of the house, which looked out on the back-yard, which was coach-yard and garage, and Mrs Clay had scarcely finished the above speech when they heard the angry voice of Mr Mark Clay in the yard below. 'How dare you drive my car at that speed, with my daughter and the Duke of Arnedale's granddaughter in the car? Don't excuse yourself, but take yourself off this moment, and never show your face in Ousebank again, or I'll have you locked up, do you hear?' stormed Mr Clay at the chauffeur. But his speech was interspersed with stronger language than that. Horatia dropped Mrs Clay's arm, and ran a little in front of her and Sarah, and both of them thought she was running to take refuge in her room from language to which she was not accustomed; but, on the contrary, she ran to the open window, and, leaning out of it, cried, 'Mr Clay, stop, please, and listen to me a moment.--Don't go, Tom Fox.' At sight of Horatia, Mr Clay's face changed a little, and perhaps he felt a little shame at the language he knew she must have heard; but he was too angry to heed her. 'Excuse me, but this is my business, and my orders must be obeyed.--Get out of this, do you hear, Tom Fox?' The man, white as a sheet, touched his hat, with a faint smile, to Horatia, and walked off. 'Tom Fox, stop!' said Horatia. 'Wait one moment. If you are really going I will go too, and you can come to the station with me.' 'Horatia!' cried Sarah; and, 'My dear!' echoed Mrs Clay. Mr Clay looked up at the flushed, determined little face at the window. He was a dogged, self-willed man, and gave way to no one; but he knew when he had met his match. 'What does this mean, Miss Cunningham?' he asked grimly, while Tom Fox stood hesitating in the doorway, and the other servants stood in the background, wondering what would be the end of the scene. 'It means that _I_ drove the car at that break-neck speed, because I turned the high-speed gear, and Tom could not help himself, and he was too much of a man to tell tales of me.' 'You can stop, Tom.--As for you, my lass'--the millionaire paused--'you're a plucky un, you are! You ought to have Yorkshire blood in you, if you haven't,' he concluded, and walked into the house without another word. 'Thank you, miss,' said the chauffeur, as he took off his hat and stood bareheaded, looking up at Horatia. 'I'm sorry I got you into a row, Tom Fox,' she said, 'and I promise you I won't interfere with the motor any more without leave.' Then she withdrew her head. 'Oh, my dear, I don't believe you'd be afraid of anything,' said Mrs Clay, looking at her with admiration. Horatia only laughed, and Sarah said nothing either. CHAPTER X. PLAIN SPEAKING CLEARS THE AIR. 'Your young lady's got a spirit,' said Sykes to Horatia's nurse, who was as popular below-stairs as her mistress was above, for it is a fact that 'Like mistress, like maid,' is a very true saying, and Miss Cunningham's old nurse behaved in the same kindly, tactful manner towards her fellow-servants that her mistress showed towards her. But on this occasion Nanny, or Mrs Nancy, as the servants called her, gave way to her feelings, which had been much ruffled on this visit. 'If by spirit you mean she don't allow injustice to be done to a poor man, you're right; but I should like you to know that this isn't what we've been used to--not by no means. Why, our last visit was to Miss Horatia's grandpa, his Grace the Duke of Arnedale, and there we didn't have no scenes; I should say not, indeed! It's not considered good form; that's what they call it.' 'It's not a bad word, isn't that? You talk of a prize-fighter being in good form,' observed Sykes. 'Well, our prize-fighter was in good form to-night, and yet Miss Cunningham knocked him out in the first round,' interposed a young footman, who went in for being a wit. 'Don't you get into the habit of making free with young ladies' names, nor making jokes on them, young man,' said Mrs Nancy severely, as she took up the work which she had been doing in the shade at the back of the house, and went indoors. 'Now, there's a funny thing; she's only a servant same as us, and yet she thinks herself our better because her family's got blood. Well, ours has got money, and, for my part, give me good wages and plenty to eat, and blood be blowed!' remarked the young footman, who had been nettled at the reproof. 'No low talk here, please,' said Sykes with dignity as he rose to see about the wine for dinner. Nanny went upstairs ostensibly to get her young lady's things out for dinner, although, as it was only three o'clock, it was rather early; but in reality she felt that Miss Horatia wanted one of her own people with her at this moment, so she knocked at her door, and found Horatia in the silver-fitted bathroom plunging her head into the marble basin. 'Miss Horatia, my dearie, what are you thinking about? This hot day it's enough to give you your death!' she cried. 'Oh Nanny, I was so hot, and my head does ache! I really couldn't help it,' exclaimed Horatia. 'You lie down on your bed, missie, and I'll lower the blinds and bathe your head with this spray. You've overdone yourself getting into such a taking with that wretched man,' said the old nurse soothingly, as she patted up the pillows for her charge and lowered the green sun-blinds. 'He wasn't a wretched man; he had nothing to do with it. I touched the high-speed gear, I tell you, and poor Tom Fox was as frightened as any one.' 'I wasn't speaking of him. I know he wasn't to blame. And I'm talking of some one else, as you very well know, whom there's no living in peace with; and I know what you're going to say, Miss Horatia--that he's our host, and my better, which he may be the first, but I don't know so much about his being the second, for my father wouldn't have demeaned himself by such language to any man, let alone before women. And as I'm speaking I may as well say it all out, which is that if the master and mistress had known what kind of place we were coming to they'd never have allowed it. And if I write and tell them'---- 'Tell them what, pray?' interrupted Horatia. 'What kind of a man Mr Clay is, which no one has a good word for him; and however you manage to keep him in good temper, Sykes says, he doesn't know,' wound up Nancy. 'I don't want to know what Sykes says; and if you can't talk of more agreeable things than that I'd rather you went away and left my headache to cure itself. I'm only tired after looking all the morning at machines turning round,' announced Horatia. 'And whatever you can find to please you in that passes me. Sykes says those woollen-mills are all one like another, and hot, dirty, greasy places!' declared Nancy. 'I believe you've fallen in love with Sykes,' said Horatia wickedly. 'Miss Horatia! Considering he's got a wife and family!' protested Nancy. But she quoted Sykes no more, which was just what Horatia wanted and expected. 'Now, Nanny, I'm quite all right, so you can get out my white muslin and blue ribbon,' she said. 'Not that white muslin, miss! You've worn it three times, and it is so plain compared with Miss Clay's,' objected the woman. 'So am I, so it's no good my trying to dress like her, and it's no use your getting angry about it, and arguing, because you know she's beautiful and I'm plain. And what's funnier still, I don't envy her a bit--oh, I don't mean her wealth, but I mean her face and figure--for she isn't a bit happy, and she doesn't enjoy life, and I do most awfully.' 'Because you try to make other people enjoy it, and you know the way to win people's hearts. Why, the way you've won Mr Clay's'---- Here Nancy paused. 'As Sykes says,' added Horatia slyly. 'Well, Miss Horatia, you will have your joke; and if I was going to say that it's no wonder, seeing that I have to sit at his right hand, as the place of honour, at the servants' hall dinner. And, oh, miss, if you did but see our table! Well, we live well at his Grace's; but here! You never saw such food--seven and eight courses we have, and fruit and wines. I'm sure I don't know how much they cost.' 'You'll be wanting to stay up here, Nanny; you will never be contented with our plain food after all these luxuries,' suggested Horatia. Nancy gave a scornful sniff. 'I suppose that is a joke, Miss Horatia; but it's a poor one. For if it were this house or the Union I'd not hesitate between them.' 'Is that a joke, or do you expect me to believe you'd rather live in the workhouse than this place?' inquired Horatia. 'It's no joke. Nothing would induce me to live here,' said Nancy. 'I wonder why,' said Horatia meditatively. It was just what Sarah said, she remembered. 'It's not half so wonderful as the way you seem to have taken to these people,' said Nancy; and then, feeling that she had gone too far, and that Horatia thought so, she changed the conversation and spoke of the dirt of Ousebank, which actually was blown to Balmoral. Then the gong rang, and Horatia, cheery and smiling as ever, went tripping down the grand staircase to the drawing-room to meet Mrs Clay and Sarah. This evening, rather to her surprise, Mr Clay was there, having departed from his usual habit of going straight to the dining-room and sitting down at the table before the ladies appeared. He came forward with a _gauche_ gallantry, and offered his arm to Horatia. 'Come, little lass, I hear you lunched at Howroyd's and went over his mill to-day. Couldn't you have waited one day more?' 'He didn't want us to,' said Horatia, taking the millionaire's arm with a simple grace, as if it was quite an ordinary thing for her to go in to dinner in this style, instead of its being the first time. 'I dare say not. Howroyd was only too proud to get you there. I'm talking of my mills, which you could have seen just by waiting a day,' explained Mr Clay. 'Oh, but I am going to see your mills too. I'll come to-morrow if you will let us. Of course they will be much grander than Mr Howroyd's, so it was better to see his first and keep the best to the last.' 'Oh ay, our stuff's much grander. We make finer cloth than Howroyd's, and turn out ten times as much, I'll warrant,' said Mr Clay, with his boastful laugh. 'I think, my dear, you'd better leave a day between. You can't spend all these fine days in factories. You look tired out, an' Sarah too, trapezing up and down greasy, slippery stairs,' protested Mrs Clay. 'The wife's right, and I'd as soon you waited a few days. I don't know that I want visitors in my mills for a day or so,' chimed in the millionaire. Sarah looked searchingly at her father, and did not seem to like what she saw in his face, for she turned away with a frown. Mrs Clay evidently did not see anything except that her husband upheld her opinion, and was kind to her, as he had been ever since Horatia had come to Balmoral. 'Why don't you want visitors, father?' inquired Sarah. 'Because I don't,' said her father shortly. 'I dare say you often don't; in fact, I shouldn't wonder if you would rather visitors never came, because they must interrupt work dreadfully,' said Horatia. 'Well, they do interrupt,' agreed the millionaire, glad to find an excuse, 'and we're just at a busy time for a special Colonial order; but I'll get you a day when everything is going smoothly.' 'But Uncle Howroyd is just as busy, and everything goes smoothly there.--Doesn't it, Horatia?--And he found time to take us round; he said it was doing his work all right, because he made a round of the mill every day, and he might as well take us with him as go alone, as it made it more agreeable.' Mr Clay gave a scornful laugh. 'I'd like to see myself go the round of all my mills daily! Why, I'd pretty soon be done for. It's easy enough in a paltry place like Howroyd's; and as for him, he spoils his people, and spoils other people's too.' And his face grew dark. Horatia felt dimly that Sarah was treading on dangerous ground, and that something was annoying her host, so she turned to Mrs Clay and said, 'Sarah says I am to choose what we do every day, so may I choose to go and fish in the Adder?' 'Why, certainly, my dear; not that you'll find any fish there; but if it amuses you, go by all means.' 'Don't you worry about an amusement for to-morrow. I've planned one for you,' said Mr Clay. 'Oh, what is it?' cried Horatia, eager as usual for novelty. 'If she wants to fish, why shouldn't she?' objected Sarah, who had no faith in her father's choice of a day's entertainment. 'But I don't want to fish if there are no fish to catch. There's nothing duller than sitting all day and catching nothing,' put in Horatia. 'What's your plan, Mr Clay?' 'You wait till to-morrow morning, and you'll see,' he replied as they rose from the table. 'It'll be something horrid, you'll see,' said Sarah after they had left the dining-room. 'Why should it be something horrid?' inquired Horatia rather sharply. 'Because my father has not the least idea what kind of thing will please you,' retorted Sarah. 'How do you know that?' demanded Horatia. 'Because he is far too ignorant,' said Sarah. 'You are not very respectful to your own father,' said Horatia rather coldly, 'and I think that's rather ignorant.' 'Why don't you say we're all ignorant and vulgar? You know you think it in your heart,' burst out Sarah. Horatia looked at Sarah for a minute. 'Would you like me to say what I really think?' she inquired. 'Yes, I would; I'd rather you said it than pretend to be enjoying everything and being at home, when you despise us all in your heart. You showed it this afternoon, and I know what you think of my father and mother and uncle, and all of us, although you are too much of a lady to say so. Oh yes; I can see your mouth curling with contempt. I know you are a lady and I am not,' said Sarah, and then stopped, breathless from her tirade. Horatia looked at her steadily. 'You are quite wrong about one thing. I am enjoying myself immensely,' she began. But Sarah interrupted her. 'Of course you are, because you make fun of everything and everybody, and you will go away home and make fun of us here as vulgar parvenus.' 'How dare you accuse me of such mean behaviour? You want to hear the truth, and you shall, Sarah. There is one person who is vulgar here, and that is yourself, and you are the only one. I am sorry I ever came to Balmoral just for that reason, because I used to like you so much at school, and be so proud that you liked me best--you seemed so superior to the other girls; but here you have quite changed and become despicable.' 'Because you have seen my parents, that is all,' said Sarah. 'No; it is not for any such reason. I like your parents very much, and I think your father is a wonderful man to have made such a position for himself without any school education; and I love your mother, and I can't see anything vulgar in them. Vulgarity, mother says, is pretending to be what you are not. Education has nothing to do with vulgarity in its bad sense.' 'I don't believe that. Do you mean to say that you thought my father's behaviour refined this afternoon?' inquired Sarah, speaking slowly. 'It was very natural. It would have been vulgar of my father; but Mr Clay is different. I can't explain very well; but if mother were here she would be able to do it. I don't want to discuss your parents; I'm sorry for you if you can't respect them. And, please, I'd rather you didn't say so to me. But I think there's nothing quite so contemptible as being ashamed of one's family. Why, I believe you are even ashamed of your uncle Howroyd, and I think he's the most splendid man I ever saw, and I am glad we met him this morning, for I verily believe you didn't mean to introduce me to him, and I should have been angry if I had missed seeing him and his mill.' Sarah did not make any reply, but said, 'Good-night, Horatia,' and turned to go. In a moment Horatia's arms were round her. 'Oh Sarah! don't be angry and horrid, and don't mind what I said. Forget it all.' Sarah turned with wet eyes. 'I dare say you're right, and I am horrid and contemptible; but you don't understand,' she said. 'Yes I do, a little; but why should you think so much about education and titles and things? They don't really matter, or make you happy; and papa says they're going quite out of fashion,' said Horatia, with a merry laugh, as she gave Sarah a final goodnight hug. CHAPTER XI. HORATIA SPEAKS OUT. One thing Sarah had learnt from Horatia, and that was to be outwardly respectful to her father, whatever she might inwardly feel towards him. It is true, she had been told the same thing by her mother and brother; but one word from her schoolfellow had had more effect than all her brother's arguments or her mother's scoldings. The next morning dawned cold and rainy; and Sarah was surprised to find that for once the bad weather did not depress her, and the prospect of a day in the house, which she generally dreaded, rather pleased her than otherwise. The fact was that Sarah was glad her father's plans for the day were put an end to. 'He's sure to have thought of something quite unsuitable, that Horatia would not like,' she said to herself. 'Isn't this horrid, Sarah?' cried Horatia when the two met at breakfast, and the rain was falling faster. 'It's a bore; but I dare say we can find something to do,' said Sarah, after looking out of the window and seeing no prospect of better weather. 'It 'as turned quite cold; one might think it was autumn,' complained Mrs Clay, rubbing her hands. 'That's the worst o' our climate, never two days alike. I'm sure I'm starved in this dress; an' so must you be, my dear,' she added to Horatia. 'Starved' is Yorkshire for 'cold.' 'I'm dreadfully sorry,' said Horatia, who was always in extremes of joy or sorrow; 'because of Mr Clay's lovely plan, which can't come off now.' 'What was it?' demanded Sarah, who imagined from her way of speaking that Horatia knew and liked the plan. 'I don't in the least know; but I'm quite sure it would have been lovely, and now we can't do it,' she replied. 'I'm not so sure about that,' remarked Mrs Clay. 'Oh, what is it? Do tell me!' cried Horatia. 'I don't think Mr Clay would like me to; but I think 'e'll be in by the time you've 'ad your breakfast, an' before it, if you go on as you're doin', my dear, not eatin' anythin',' she put in; for Horatia, in her excitement, had put down her knife and fork, and was letting her breakfast get cold while she questioned her hostess. 'Hasn't father gone to the mill?' asked Sarah. 'No; 'e's busy over this plan,' replied his wife, smiling at Horatia, and adding, 'It's not often 'e breaks 'is 'abit of goin' to the mill by nine o'clock, for all 'e's so rich, so you must take that as a compliment, my dear.' 'I do. I think it's most awfully kind of him, and I'm simply dying to know what his plan is,' cried Horatia. 'You look anything but dying,' said Sarah, with a glance at Horatia's bright, eager face. 'If you please, ma'am, the master has sent word that he'd be glad if the young ladies would come to the barn as soon as they've finished breakfast,' announced Sykes. Both girls looked in surprise at this request--which, however, they both prepared to carry out; and Sarah remarked that Sykes looked quite excited for him. 'It's the plan! What on earth can it be, Sarah? What kind of place is the barn?' 'A huge, ugly, dark, long room,' said Sarah in disgust, for the barn was the last place to amuse one's self in. 'Oh, then, your father is having a magic-lantern show for us. Well, it's very kind of him,' said Horatia in rather disappointed tones, for she was not fond of a magic-lantern. 'We'd better drive there; it will be wet across the grass. Put on your 'ats an' take wraps wi' you in case you get 'ot, for the barn may be draughty,' said Mrs Clay. 'Are you coming, mother?' said Sarah. 'Yes, my dear, if you don't mind. I sha'n't interfere wi' your pleasure, an' I'd like to see the magic-lantern, too,' said Mrs. Clay quite gaily for her. 'Of course, come along. Perhaps Nancy might come too; she'd like to see it.' 'If she goes, Naomi might as well go too; it's absurd to have a magic-lantern for three people,' said Sarah. Mrs Clay said no more, but put on the cloak her maid brought her, and sat there smiling, in what Sarah considered rather an aggravating way, till the large motor which was to take them all to the barn drove up to the door. Two minutes brought them to the barn-door. 'Why, there's a band!' cried Horatia; 'or is it a gramophone?' The door flew open as if by magic when they appeared, and even Sarah gave a cry of admiration as Horatia, clapping her hands, exclaimed, 'Why, it's a rink!--a lovely rink!' 'It is,' said Sarah, and said no more. 'It's better than a magic-lantern, isn't it, my dear?' inquired Mrs Clay with a happy smile. 'Oh Mr. Clay, you are good!' cried Horatia, as she laid her little hand in his huge, rough one. The millionaire held it for a moment as he said, 'That's all right. You're more than welcome, my little lass. Now, let's see you play this new-fangled game.' 'But how did you do it? When was it done? You must have had it done since I spoke two days ago,' declared Horatia. 'How did I do it? I did it by turning a golden key, my lass. There's few things that that can't do,' he replied with a rough laugh. 'I should never have imagined that the barn could have been made so pretty and artistic. It was very clever of you to think of it, father,' said Sarah. The millionaire looked pleased. Perhaps these few words of his proud daughter gave him more satisfaction than all Horatia's delighted thanks, for Sarah was hard to please, and her father always felt that she secretly, and sometimes openly, despised him; but he only said, 'You didn't think your rough, old father knew what dainty young ladies like you and Miss Horatia would like, did you?' Sarah coloured, for this was exactly what she had thought; but she replied, 'Then I was mistaken, for it is just the thing for this nasty, cold weather.--Isn't it, Horatia?' 'Yes; but my roller-skates! I have left them at home. I never thought I should get skating up here,' said Horatia suddenly, and her face fell. 'You can have mine. I'll send to the house for them, and we can get a pair in Ousebank for me,' said Sarah. 'I think we can manage that,' said the millionaire, as he made a sign to the footman, who brought two beautiful pairs of roller-skates, and prepared to put them on. 'It's just like Cinderella or a fairy pantomime,' cried Horatia, as she started skimming along the smooth floor. 'My!' cried Naomi to Nancy. 'However can they keep on their feet with they wheels under their boots?' 'It's habit. Miss Horatia's very fond of the pastime,' replied the nurse, as she followed her charge with admiring gaze. But in a moment Sarah joined Horatia, and then the relations between Nancy and Naomi became strained, for if Horatia rinked well, Sarah rinked much better. 'Oh, ain't she beautiful on they things? Why, it's like a bird, is that,' cried Naomi. 'It's a pastime where you want a good figger.' 'For my part, I like well-made, strong-built figures more than such thin ones,' said Nancy. 'If you'd be calling Miss Sarah thin, I'd have you to know she's not. Her arms are beautiful and round, and so is she, and it's the grapes that are sour, Mrs. Nancy,' retorted Naomi. Mrs. Nancy did not deign even to notice this remark with a look, but with a slow and dignified step walked over to where Sykes stood watching the two girls with grave, approving face; and Naomi, who was only a young servant, did not presume to join these two, and wished she'd kept her tongue still. [Illustration: 'Ask the band to play "La Rinka," Sarah,' cried Horatia. PAGE 105.] 'Ask the band to play "La Rinka," Sarah,' cried Horatia, 'and we'll go round together and dance it.' The band, a local one, struck up 'La Rinka,' and even Mr Clay exclaimed, 'That's something to look at, Polly, ain't it? There ought to be some folk asked to see 'em do it.' At that moment Horatia and Sarah, still with linked hands, skated up to them, and Sarah said, 'Horatia wishes we could have a skating-party this afternoon. It sounds rather absurd in August; but really the weather is more like November, so I dare say people will like to come.' 'They'll come right enough if I ask 'em to Balmoral,' said Mr Clay, with his usual laugh. 'There's not many refuses my invitations.' Sarah felt her lip curl; but the thought of Horatia checked her. She gave her a quick look to see if she, too, was disgusted at this boasting, and felt almost cross with her schoolfellow when, with a bright smile, she answered, 'Then do ask them, Mr. Clay. I don't wonder that your invitations are popular; you do have such good ideas for entertaining your guests. When could we have them? To-morrow?' 'You'd better have them to-day. Who knows but to-morrow may be summer again, and then it'll be too hot for rinking. We'll just 'phone up a hundred or so.' 'A hundred?' gasped Horatia, as she thought of the preparation a party of that kind would require at her own home. 'Oh, they won't all be able to come, but half will; and mother'll give orders for the spread. And now I must be off. Good-bye, and enjoy yourselves.' And the millionaire, with a brusque nod, was off. Mrs Clay soon followed him, and the girls skated for another hour, and then decided to stop, so as not to be tired for the afternoon. 'Well, mother, have you got victuals for seventy or so?' inquired Mark Clay when they all met at lunch. 'Yes, Mark, the _chef_ is seein' to all that, an' 'e is sure to 'ave everythin' to do you credit.' 'That's right. I've ordered the Ousebank band up, and I met Bill down town, and asked him up. He says he can't rink, but he supposes you'll want some to admire you, so he's coming to do that part. He's a great admirer of Miss Horatia already, it appears.' 'I like him most awfully, and everybody else seems to, too. All the people in his mill do, anyhow; they all looked glad to see him when he went into their part.' Mark Clay scowled. 'Ay, it's cheap popularity, is Bill Howroyd's; but it's bad policy and bad business. If you let sentiment come into your business you pretty soon have no business left for it to come into.' No one made any comment upon these remarks, and the millionaire went on in his harsh, dictatorial tones: 'Business is business, say I, and you've got to keep your people under. I'm not making blankets and cloth to please them, nor from philanthropy. I'm doing it to make money, and the man that can make the most money for me I keep, and the one that doesn't make enough goes, and the sooner the better.' And he gave another laugh. Mark Clay had been eating between his sentences, and had his eyes upon his plate, or he would have noticed Horatia's face. He gave a start of surprise when she said, with indignation in her voice, 'What a horrid, hard-hearted way to talk! I think Mr Howroyd's way is ten thousand times better.' Poor little Mrs Clay trembled, and even Sarah grew pale at the thought of the storm Horatia had brought down upon her devoted head. Mark Clay stared at this girl who presumed to call him horrid and hard-hearted, and to hold up as an example his bugbear and opponent, Bill Howroyd. Horatia returned his look with a perfectly fearless one. 'So you prefer Bill Howroyd's way? Perhaps you prefer his home to mine? He'll never build himself a Balmoral,' said the millionaire with a sneer. 'No; but he'll have a mansion up in heaven, and perhaps that's what he's thinking of,' said Horatia. Sarah looked at Horatia in amazement, and Mrs Clay looked anxiously at her husband, as if imploring him not to be hard on this daring child; but Mark Clay was not taking any notice of any one, not even of Sykes, who, to divert his attention from this dangerous conversation, was pressing some delicacy upon his master, who was staring moodily in front of him. Horatia had little idea that she had quoted his mother--William Howroyd's mother's last words to her sons, for they had had the same mother, though their fathers had been very different: 'I've been very happy here; but I am going to a better mansion up in heaven. Be sure and join me there, lads,' she had said. 'Ay, there's something in what you've said, my lass,' observed the millionaire after a pause, which seemed an eternity to those who were present. 'There's sommat in it.' And without another word he rose from the table. 'Oh Mrs Clay, what have I done? I'd no business to speak to Mr Clay like that. I don't know what made me,' said Horatia, rather ashamed of her plain speaking. 'I think the Almighty made you, my dear; an' may He bless you for 'avin' done so, an' bless the words to my dear 'usband,' said his faithful wife. And she, too, left the room. 'I'd no idea you were religious,' said Sarah to Horatia when they were alone. 'Do you mean you thought I was a heathen?' demanded Horatia with a laugh. 'No; but I never heard you talk like that before,' said Sarah, who could not get over her surprise at the way Horatia had come out. Truth to tell, Sarah had an idea that to talk religion was not good form. 'I never heard myself,' laughed Horatia. CHAPTER XII. A RINKING-PARTY. In spite of Horatia's laugh and her attempt to be as cheerful as ever, depression seemed to have fallen on every one, and Sarah looked the picture of melancholy. 'We'd better go and get ready for our rink-party. I expect everybody will be thankful to have something to do this horrid weather. Not that I mean that they will have accepted your invitation for that reason,' Horatia added hastily. 'Oh, they come because we're rich, of course,' said Sarah; and then she suddenly added, as if it were weighing on her mind, 'I wonder how many would come if we were to lose all our money. Would you, Horatia?' 'Thank you for the compliment. No, I don't think I should; but I should not stay away because you were poor, but because you are not what I thought you were--your character, I mean,' said Horatia, who could speak her mind at times, as will have been noticed. 'You would be the exception if you did stick to us. I expect Uncle Howroyd will, and Naomi, and she will have to be our general servant,' continued Sarah. Horatia gazed at her in amazement. 'What in the world are you talking about? How are you going to get poor? Oh,' as a thought struck her, 'is there anything the matter? Do you know, to-day I thought there was. Tell me, is there? Because, if so, I don't mean what I said. Of course I will come and see you, and help to cook, too. I can make toffee.' But instead of answering, Sarah demanded, 'Why did you think there was something the matter to-day of all days, when father has just shown you how much money he can spend merely for a few hours' amusement? What made you think anything was wrong?' 'I don't really know, now that I come to think of it. I don't think I had any reason; it was an idea that came to me while your father was talking at lunch,' replied Horatia, hesitating. 'It must have been intuition,' said Sarah solemnly. Horatia was not only a year younger than her schoolfellow, but she was far less fond of study, and she said frankly, 'What's intuition? I know what tuition is, because my brother has it--private tuition from his tutor; but what you mean I can't think, and I do wish you'd speak out plainly and tell me if you are in any trouble about money; because, you know, you need not go spending it on me. I'm quite content to play battledore and shuttlecock in the hall, and I didn't want a rink, really.' Sarah interrupted her with a smile. 'You need not mind father spending money like that; he's got more than he knows what to do with at present,' she said. 'But if he won't have any by-and-by, why don't you save it up for then?' inquired Horatia. 'He thinks he will always be a millionaire, and so did I till the other day; and then the idea came into my head, just as it came into yours--I can't tell how or why--that there was something the matter, or that there was going to be something the matter, and that one day we should not be so rich. But, Horatia, please don't ever say such a thing to anybody; it would do us great harm, even if it were quite untrue, and perhaps make it come true. And, after all, it may be only my imagination.' Horatia looked very grave. 'But, Sarah, if there is any chance of such a thing, why don't you begin to save up?' she repeated. 'But, don't you see? if the mill failed we should have to give up every penny we had, however much we had saved. But, of course, you don't understand these things, and the more I think of it the more impossible it seems. Clay's Mills are as prosperous as ever. Do let's forget about it. Not that I should mind for myself, but I should be sorry for mother, because she likes having lots of money and motors, though she is afraid to go out in them, so let us hope she will live and die in this hateful house.' Horatia did not argue with Sarah as to whether the house was hateful or not. She rather liked it, for she was too young to perceive that it was overladen with costly ornaments, and she revelled in the royal rooms in which she was installed, and of which she had written long and graphic descriptions home. 'Let us hope so, indeed,' was all she said; and added, 'But do leave off talking about miserable things and get ready for this party. What ought I to wear? One ought to have winter things for skating, but I haven't any best winter dress here.' 'Why not wear your white flannel? And, if you don't mind, I'll lend you a white feather hat and boa. I have never worn them, and I have heaps of other things to wear; mother has a mania for buying me clothes, and I have a wardrobeful never touched.' Horatia was just going to refuse, for she preferred wearing her own clothes; but she thought it might please Sarah, so she accepted, and went to her bedroom with them on. 'I've got a new hat and boa, Nanny,' she announced. Mrs Nancy looked at them, and cried, 'How well they suit you, Miss Horatia! The mistress ought to get you some like them;' for she guessed at once they were Sarah's. 'I'm going to wear them this afternoon,' replied Horatia. 'Wear Miss Clay's hat! Oh Miss Horatia! you can never do such a thing,' protested the old nurse. 'Why not?' inquired Horatia, as she pirouetted before the cheval-glass, admiring the pretty feather toque. 'It's the very thing for rinking, and so is this boa. Look how queerly it is made, with chiffon twined in; that's what makes it so becoming. Clothes make a lot of difference, Nanny. I don't look half so ugly with these on.' 'You never look ugly, Miss Horatia, and you look "distangy" whatever you put on, so there's no need for you to put on other folk's clothes to look nice; the mistress wouldn't like it at all, I'm sure,' said Nancy. 'I don't think she'd mind, Nanny, and I should vex Sarah if I refused, and that's just what I don't want to do,' said Horatia. 'Well, they do suit you, and if you've a fancy for them, and to please Miss Clay, perhaps you'd better; specially if she's got a temper anything like her father's, for they say he's fairly hated at the mills,' said Nancy. Nancy did not like Mr Clay, and not all his wealth could make her think him a fit host for her young lady; and, indeed, after his explosion in the back-yard she had taken it upon herself to write to Lady Grace Cunningham, and said: 'I feel sure, my lady, that if you knew the people we are with, you would never let us stay; for not but what this is a palace fit for a king, and we eat like fighting-cocks. Still, they are not what I've been used to since I've been in your service, and his language is shocking, except when in Miss Horatia'a presence, which she has a wonderful influence over him, every one says.' In spite of the grammar of this letter being somewhat involved, Nancy's meaning and opinions were pretty clear, and Lady Grace Cunningham took it to her husband, who had a character rather like Horatia's. 'Let the child stay where she is; it will do her all the good in the world, as, you see, she is evidently doing good--taming this boor, by all accounts. Nancy is a rank old Tory, and turns up her nose at any one not born in the purple. Times have changed, as Nancy will find out one day.' So Lady Grace Cunningham did not recall them, but only wrote and told Horatia that she must shorten her visit if she was not happy. 'I'm enjoying myself immensely. I never met kinder people,' Horatia wrote back. And so she stayed on; and as Nancy was living, as she expressed it, like a fighting-cock, she resigned herself very contentedly to her lot, as she resigned herself to Horatia's wearing Sarah's clothes. Horatia, with very mingled feelings, went down to the motor which was to take them to the barn. She wondered what kind of people would be there. She had an idea that, as the invitations were issued by Mr Clay, they would be his friends or people of his choice, and Horatia looked forward to an afternoon with a very rough and unrefined set of people. Sarah wore the daintiest of costumes, just the right thing for the day and pastime, for Sarah, if left to herself, had very good taste. 'What a lot of motors, Sarah! Does every one have one here?' inquired Horatia, as she saw a number of cars coming up the three avenues which led to Balmoral. 'Most people do,' said Sarah carelessly; 'and they'll use them to-day sooner than their horses because of the bad weather, and some have come a good distance.' Tom Fox put on speed so as to arrive at the barn before the first of the guests, which would not have been hospitable according to Yorkshire ideas; and the two girls, accompanied by Mrs Clay, had alighted, and were standing inside the door ready to receive the first guests; or, rather, Sarah and her mother were there, for Horatia had gone away under the pretext of putting on her roller-skates, and had her back to the door. The nearer the time came the less she liked the idea of this rinking-party, for though she managed to get on with Mr Clay, she felt that seventy people of that kind would be more than she could bear. 'Well, Miss Horatia, what will you touch with your fairy wand next, eh? I shall expect my old mill parlour to be turned into Aladdin's palace after your next visit,' cried a cheery, brisk voice. Horatia turned with delight to greet Mr Howroyd. 'I'm so glad you have come!' she said, with more feeling than she had any idea of. Mr William Howroyd's keen, kindly eyes gave her a quick glance, and his sympathetic nature jumped at the right conclusion. 'Yes, I'm here; and now, as I can't skate, and you don't know any one here yet, suppose we go to those raised seats there; we shall hear the band, and, I can tell you, our Ousebank band is not to be despised, and we shall see the people rinking, and if you see any one you particularly want to know we'll go down and ask Sarah to introduce her. I don't suppose I shall know half the people here. I'm not a society man, you know.' The first to arrive were two tall girls and their brother, very pleasant-looking and lady-like; and after them, people came so fast that Horatia could not look closely at them all; but she noticed that they were all well dressed and looked ladies and gentlemen. 'But, then, dress makes a lot of difference,' she repeated to herself for the second time that afternoon. 'Hallo, Horatia!' cried a boy's voice in her ear; and, turning, Horatia saw her cousin, once removed, George Cunningham, grinning at her. 'Oh George, how on earth did you get here?' she demanded, beaming with delight. 'In the Maddoxes' car, to be sure. Didn't you know I was staying there?' 'I knew you were staying somewhere in Yorkshire, but I didn't know it was near here,' she replied. 'As a matter of fact, it isn't so very near; but we came over in an hour, in spite of the beastly roads. But, I say, it's a jolly good idea of yours this,' he observed. 'Of mine? What do you mean? This isn't my party; it's Mr Clay's and Mrs and Miss Clay's idea--this rink, I mean.' 'Oh, well, he called it Miss Horatia Cunningham's party. That's what made us come. I wanted to see you, and see how you get on with these people. But I'm jolly glad I came. The old buffer does it in style.' 'This is Mr Howroyd, Mr Clay's brother,' said Horatia hastily, to warn her cousin that he must be careful what he said; but when she turned to introduce her cousin to him, Mr William Howroyd had disappeared. He had slipped away as soon as he saw that Horatia had a congenial companion. That was William Howroyd's invariable way, always doing kindly, unobtrusive acts, and then effacing himself. George Cunningham gave a hearty laugh. 'The bird has flown,' he said. 'And a good thing, too. Suppose he had heard his brother called an "old buffer"?' said Horatia reprovingly. 'He's heard him called much worse than that, by all accounts. Your host isn't too popular, for all his money.' 'Well, anyway, it's horrid of you to come and eat his food, and then criticise him,' said Horatia. 'Begging your pardon, I haven't eaten anything yet; and talking of grub, what do you say to coming and having some? There's a splendid spread behind that glass screen,' he said. 'It's much too early. Don't be so greedy, but come and rink before it gets too full,' said Horatia; and the two went off. When they had made several rounds, Horatia stopped near the two tall girls who had come in first, and they immediately complimented her on her rinking. 'You rink as if you thought no one was looking at you,' they told her. Horatia laughed. 'How should one rink when people _are_ looking? In a different way?' she asked. 'No, one shouldn't; only most people look a little self-conscious,' they replied. Horatia noticed the slight Yorkshire intonation which she thought so musical, and was inclined to laugh at her former fears, for there were no 'Mark Clays' at the party, and she soon heard many familiar names mentioned as being present. One of the Maddox party eventually asked her to have an ice. 'Come and sit in this alcove place, and I'll fetch you one,' he suggested. Horatia was tired, for she had already rinked for some time in the morning, and she sat back in the alcove, half-hidden from sight. 'I always wonder how many more entertainments Mark Clay will hold out for?' said a voice quite near her. 'Why, is he shaky?' inquired another. 'Not that I know of; but these fortunes made in a day, so to speak, generally melt away in the same way.' 'I understood he was a solid man,' said the second speaker. 'So he is--so he is, for aught I know. I only know that we all have that feeling about him. Perhaps the wish is father to the thought, for he's none too popular.' 'Still, you need not wish him to be ruined, even if you don't like him. I suppose he does some good with his money? These rich Yorkshire manufacturers are most generous as a rule,' said the other, evidently a stranger. 'He's an exception. His half-brother, Howroyd, gives twice as much, with not a quarter his money. Pity he's not the millionaire, now. He's beloved far and near.' 'What's wrong with Clay? This is a generous entertainment, for instance.' 'Oh yes, he'll do this to show off; but he's an awful brute to his workpeople--grinds them down and shows no mercy to weak or worn-out employés.' 'Here, Horatia, I've got the ice,' said young Maddox. 'Thank you. I'm glad we're not millionaires, Jack. People only hate you for it,' she remarked. 'Do they? I'd chance that if I could be one. Look what this man can do? Anything he likes! Make a rink in a day! Come on and have a turn,' said young Maddox, to whom this particular example of the power of wealth naturally appealed. Horatia was unusually quiet, for her, that afternoon, and the moment Mr Clay appeared at the door she started up to him to tell him how much they were enjoying themselves, for she wished to show him attention, and to show him, too, that she had not meant to criticise him that afternoon. CHAPTER XIII. HORATIA'S INFLUENCE. The millionaire did not look very prepossessing as he stood near the door, his tall, powerful form towering above the young skaters; his coarse, red face darkened by a scowl. 'There's an ugly-looking brute just come into the rink,' young George Cunningham had said to Horatia, who had replied, 'That's Mr Mark Clay,' and had made straight for her host, dodging the skaters very cleverly. Sarah, on the other hand, who had been near the door when her father appeared, gave one glance at his ill-tempered face, and skated in the opposite direction. She thought that he had not seen her. Not that it would have made any difference, for his family were wont to avoid their head when he was what his wife called 'put out about something'--which, alas! was only too frequently the case. Not so Horatia. She saw the danger-signals, but was no more afraid of him than she would have been of a fly, to use her own expression. 'We are enjoying ourselves so much! It was a brilliant idea of yours,' she said, beaming at him and giving his arm an approving pat. Mark Clay looked down at the eager little, freckled face, with its snub-nose; and, in spite of himself, he smiled back at her. 'I'm glad you are enjoying yourself. I did it for that. You must come and spend your winter holiday with us. It'll be a more seasonable pastime then, it seems to me,' he replied. 'But are you going to keep this as a rink? I thought you used it as a barn in the autumn and winter?' inquired Horatia. 'We can build another,' he replied lightly, as if building another huge barn was the work of a few hours. 'Come, let's see you go round.' Horatia accordingly started off, and Mark Clay followed her with approving eyes. 'She's a nice, dear girl, isn't she, Mark?' said his wife, emboldened by her husband's softer expression to approach him. 'She is that,' he replied with emphasis. 'The man seems fond of his daughter. I heard he was as harsh at home as he is abroad; but I see he has been maligned,' said a visitor, who did not know Sarah. 'That is not his daughter, I am sure, for they say she is the prettiest girl in Ousebank,' replied a friend. 'Well, that is a very nice, bright-looking girl, and a millionaire's daughter is always pretty in the eyes of the world; gold makes most things beautiful,' replied the lady; and she had hardly uttered the words when Sarah herself, noticing that the two were strangers, and had not had refreshments, came up to them. 'Won't you come and have some tea?' she asked in her dignified and rather stiff way. 'Thank you; it would be nice. Are you Miss Clay, then?' inquired the lady, who recognised that she was speaking to the prettiest girl present, at all events. 'Yes,' said Sarah gravely. 'We thought the young lady laughing and talking to Mr Clay must be his daughter; they seemed so friendly,' observed the stranger, as she and her friend skirted the barn to get to the refreshment-tables. Sarah could not help colouring slightly. 'No; she is only a schoolfellow who is staying with us,' she replied; and the lady thought she had never met with such an unapproachable girl, and wondered whether it was shyness or pride. She had no idea that she was touching on a sore point. When the party was over and the last motor had disappeared down the long avenue, Horatia gave a little sigh of relief. 'I am glad they have gone. I couldn't have skated another minute,' she said. 'You needn't have gone as long as you did. Why didn't you stop?' demanded Sarah with uplifted brows. 'I was wondering at you; you scarcely rested at all. I'm not a bit tired, because I rested at intervals.' 'I simply can't stop when I see other people. I must rink too,' she declared. There was a glorious sunset, and Tom Fox prophesied a fine day on the morrow. 'So it will be too hot to rink then, and it's just as well, as you have such a mania for it that you wear yourself out,' observed Sarah. 'Yes, my dear, you 'ave such dark circles round your eyes! I don't know w'at her ladyship would say if she could see you just now lookin' so tired,' added Mrs Clay. 'She would say I was a foolish girl, as she did last time I came from the rink dead-tired. I expect it's like taking to drink,' said Horatia, and she gave a merry laugh. Mr Clay smiled at her. He was very quiet; but he had lost the scowl he had when he arrived at the barn, for which his wife was very thankful. 'To-morrow I am going over your mills, you know, Mr Clay,' she informed him. He opened his mouth as if to protest, but only said, 'You'll be too tired; better rest a few days. You shall go over the mills before you go home. Not that there is anything so very wonderful to see, or to interest a young lady like you.' 'I haven't half-written my essay yet; I expect I shall find some more to put in after I've been round with you,' explained Horatia. 'Don't you go putting me and my mills into print,' said the millionaire, looking almost afraid. Horatia only laughed merrily as ever. 'I'll let you read my essay before I send it up. Yes'--clapping her hands--'that's an awfully good idea. You shall read it through, and tell me anything I have left out; and you shall sign at the end, "Audited and found correct.--Mark Clay, millionaire mill-owner."' It was impossible not to laugh at the girl, and equally impossible to be gloomy while Horatia was bubbling over with good spirits. The drooping line round Mrs Clay's mouth had almost disappeared since Horatia's advent. During this drive even, Horatia had managed to chase away Mr Clay's ill-humour, and his wife leant back comfortably, with a feeling that she need not fear any storms, as the dear young lady would 'keep things pleasant.' When they got out of the motor and were going together to their rooms, Horatia took Sarah's arm and began dancing along the polished surface with a rinking movement. 'I thought you said you were tired out, and I thought, too, that the rink was specially built to prevent you from rinking here,' observed the latter, who was trying, with some difficulty, to keep her balance and her dignity during this peculiar mode of progress. 'So I did. I must stop,' agreed Horatia. 'You said I had changed, and that you did not know me before you came here. And I certainly did not know you,' remarked Sarah abruptly. 'How am I changed? I feel just the same,' said Horatia, stopping short and facing Sarah. 'Didn't I always laugh and make jokes at school? Where's the difference?' Sarah did not reply directly, for it was difficult to explain what she meant. 'I did not say you were changed. I said I did not know you, and I don't now. Why are you so nice to my father?' she suddenly demanded. 'I've a good mind to ask you why you are so nasty to him,' retorted Horatia; 'but I won't, because I don't want to know. And as for my being nice to him; you don't generally go and stay in people's houses, and then be rude or disagreeable to them. Besides'----and here Horatia stopped. 'Besides what?' asked Sarah. 'Besides, it's time to go and dress for dinner. I shall feel quite dull and unimportant when I go home and have to be a schoolgirl again; no dressing for dinner, and no dinner to dress for, only schoolroom supper, and it all depends upon cook's temper whether we get anything very nice or not,' laughed Horatia. As Horatia evidently did not intend to answer her question, Sarah said no more on the subject; but she wondered very much what Horatia meant to say. Sarah knew quite well she had not meant to say, 'Besides, it is dinner-time.' Perhaps it was as well Horatia had stopped before she added that she was 'sorry for Mr Clay.' 'Because,' she observed to herself, 'she would have wanted to know why I was sorry for such a rich man, and I really could not have told her. And, besides, Sarah is so proud that she would hate to be pitied.' Sarah walked thoughtfully to her room, and there, instead of dressing for dinner, she threw herself down in her favourite place, the broad window-seat that looked towards Ousebank, her chin resting on the two palms of her hands. 'Why am I so nasty to him?' she muttered to herself. 'Why is every one nasty to him? At least, I don't know that we are any of us nasty--he wouldn't let us; but we are not "nice," like Horatia.' Sarah did not attempt to answer this question; she sat there staring out over Ousebank, and asked herself why she could not be 'nice' to her father if Horatia could. Naomi came to the door twice and knocked, and the second time she ventured to open it; but, seeing Sarah, as she thought, looking cross and staring out of the window, she went away again without daring to interrupt her. But as time went on and no call came from her young mistress, the good girl began to be anxious for fear Miss Sarah should be late for dinner and thereby 'upset' Mr Clay, a thing to be avoided. So she came in, and, standing at the door, coughed. She had to do this two or three times before Sarah woke up to the fact of her presence, which she did with a start. 'Oh Naomi, what is it?' she asked. 'Dinner, Miss Sarah,' said Naomi. 'Dinner?' Sarah started up in real fright this time. 'Has the gong gone? I never heard it,' she cried. 'No, miss, not yet, but it soon will,' said Naomi, bustling about to get Sarah ready. 'Then what do you mean by telling me such a story? I've a good mind not to get ready at all,' said Sarah irritably and rather foolishly. 'Whatever would be the good of that, Miss Sarah, upsetting of Mr Clay for nothing, let alone that I never told no story? You asked me what I came for--at least, so I understood it--and I answered you, "Dinner," and that's what I am here for. Oh, do make haste, Miss Sarah! You could keep on that white skirt, and just slip on this pretty bodice; master won't never notice. There's the gong! Oh dear, oh dear!' said Naomi, getting quite flustered in her anxiety to get Sarah ready in time. 'You needn't be in such a state, Naomi; we are not all slaves or prisoners that we have to be ready to a minute,' observed Sarah coolly, and taking extra long instead of hurrying. 'No, Miss Sarah; but there's no call to do things a purpose to annoy any one. Now, there's Miss Horatia going down as pleasant as can be,' protested Naomi. 'You see we can't all be as pleasant as Miss Horatia, Naomi,' remarked Sarah a little bitterly. 'You can be a deal pleasanter than her. Why, a word or a smile from you goes further than all Miss Horatia's smiles, if only you'd give yourself the trouble. Not that I'm saying a word against Miss Cunningham, for there's no denying she makes the house a different place; and so they all say, from the master downwards,' observed Naomi, her loyalty to her young mistress struggling with her desire to be just and truthful. 'How does she do it, Naomi? I can't make it out. The house has been much more comfortable since she came, and yet she doesn't do anything but laugh, and you know any fool can laugh,' said Sarah, as she laughed herself and ran off after Horatia. 'Miss Horatia's no fool, though,' observed Naomi, as she folded up and arranged Sarah's clothes. Before dinner was half-over, Sarah had to acknowledge to herself that she had not been fair to Horatia in saying that she made things pleasant by laughing, and it fell out in this wise. The two girls arrived in the drawing-room at the same moment, and there, according to his new practice, they found Mr Clay, who had taken to coming properly into the drawing-room and going into dinner with his women-folk. His face lightened as he saw the two girls; but instead of offering his arm to Horatia, he gave it to his wife. Mrs Clay did not take it for a moment. Such an attention had never been paid her before in all their married life, for long before Mark Clay had gained his wealth he had ceased to show any civility to his wife. Sarah was as much surprised as her mother, though she had more tact than to show it. Horatia looked pleased, but said nothing. In the middle of dinner one of the footmen, who had gone out to get a dish, came in with perturbed countenance, and said something to Sykes in an undertone. 'Impossible,' said the butler. 'Say we're at dinner, and they must wait.' 'They say they won't wait,' murmured the footman, and added something more, which apparently startled Sykes, who, giving some orders to the under-footmen, left the room, and after a short absence came back and said to Mr Clay, 'Excuse me, Mr Clay, but you're wanted just a minute.' 'Wanted?' exclaimed the millionaire, with a dark flush on his face. 'Tell them to be off, whoever it is.' 'Please, Mr Clay, sir, excuse me, but if you'd see them a minute. It's a deputation from the mill,' insisted Sykes. Mr Mark Clay turned with a face distorted by rage; but before he could say a word Horatia cried, 'Oh Mr Clay, do let me come with you and listen to the deputation. I do so want to hear real Yorkshiremen talk.' 'You can hear me. I talk broad enow at times,' said the millionaire, purposely speaking broad Yorkshire; 'and I've nowt to say to them.' 'You'd just better go,' she said, nodding her head at her host. 'Father says things are topsy-turvy now, and the poor man has more power than he used to have; and, besides, I would like to hear them talk.' 'Come forward, then,' said the millionaire, and rose from the table. Sykes cast a look of gratitude and relief at Horatia; and poor Mrs Clay, wiping away a tear, said, 'God bless her!' CHAPTER XIV. A MILLIONAIRE FOR FIVE MINUTES. 'Oh Sarah, I do 'ope they will come to an agreement! There's a lot o' discontent goin' on, an' your father is that determined,' sighed little Mrs Clay. 'Do you think he really is my father?' demanded Sarah. 'W'atever do you mean by talkin' such nonsense?' inquired Mrs Clay, indignation taking the place of anger for the time. 'Only that one would think he was Horatia's father, to see the way she goes on, as if she were a daughter of the house,' replied Sarah, her lip curling. 'Sarah, I'm ashamed o' you showin' such wicked jealousy to that dear girl. If you got on wi' your father there'd be no occasion for 'er to do as she does; but if she 'adn't interfered to-night w'at would 'ave 'appened? A strike very likely, an' we're not safe from it yet. There's a lot o' discontent,' repeated her mother. 'I hate interfering people!' was all Sarah said. Then there was silence, while both mother and daughter strained their ears to listen for any sound of voices from without, dreading to hear Mark Clay's loud, rough voice raised in angry tones. But no sound was to be heard, and Mrs Clay said after a time, 'I'm glad 'e's listenin' to 'em; it'll do 'em good if they can say their say, even if 'e don't give way to 'em.' Horatia meanwhile had tripped away with a light, dancing step, for which she was very often taken to task, not only at school, where she was told to walk properly and be more serious, but also by her mother, who said it was undignified for a girl of fifteen. Mark Clay walked heavily beside his young companion, scarcely listening to her chatter--for it must be confessed that Horatia was rather a chatterbox, or, as her father said, 'had a good deal to say for herself'--but some words she said caught his ear. 'I dare say they are envious of your riches. I never cared to be rich before; in fact, I never thought about money, because we always seem to have everything we want at home; but since I have been at Balmoral I have envied you your riches, and thought it was rather unfair that you should have such a lot.' 'Oh, you think I've more than my share, do you, like all the rest of them? Well, I s'pose it's natural; but I'm not going to share it up for all that, as they'll pretty soon find out,' replied the millionaire. Horatia had the sense not to say any more, and, indeed, there was no time, for they were at the door of the steward's room, where business was transacted in connection with the employés on the estate, and in this room were six men standing, cap in hand, near the outer door, which led into the yard. Horatia wondered to herself if they kept near that door so as to have a way of escape in case their master got into one of his passions; but these sturdy Yorkshiremen were afraid of no one and nothing. Strong, sturdy, and independent, they stood there, with civil but determined faces. They were the old mill-hands, and had been with Mark Clay from boyhood; and among them was Naomi's father. 'Well, men, is t' mill burnt down that I can't even eat my dinner in peace, but must come at once to speak with you?' inquired Mr Clay. 'Sorry to interrupt your dinner, master; but we know it's a long business, is that, up at Balmoral, and we've got to take an answer back to our mates down Ousebank by nine o'clock,' said Naomi's father, who was evidently the spokesman. 'Oh, and what may you want to know?' inquired Mark Clay in a tone which did not promise much. Luke Mickleroyd looked for a moment doubtfully at Horatia. 'It's business we want to talk, Mr Clay,' he said. 'Have your say, lad, and have done with it. This young lady is going to judge between us to-night, and the sooner you say what you've got to say the better we'll be pleased, for our dinner's cooling on the table, and that's not the way we treat guests up north,' said Mr Clay in a more conciliatory tone. The reminder of Horatia had done Luke Mickleroyd's cause a good turn, as he saw. 'Well, master, it's like this, only I doubt little missy there won't understand aught about it. The young men say there's a lot more boys taken on in the mill to what there ought to be,' began Luke. Mr Clay interrupted angrily. 'Ought to be? And who's to settle that but me?' 'I am, for to-night; you said I might. Do let me feel like a millionaire just for five minutes!' said Horatia in an undertone, pulling at the mill-owner's sleeve to make him attend to her. The millionaire threw himself into the big armchair at the top of the broad table which divided him from his men, and said with a rough laugh, 'Have your way, lass. I'm rich enough to let you have your whim, if you don't go too far. Let's see how you'd manage a mill.--Now then, Luke, let Miss Cunningham hear your tale, and see what she says to it.' 'We've got to deal with you, master,' began one of the others rather gruffly, for he thought Mark Clay was treating them and their wrongs lightly. But Luke Mickleroyd had heard from his daughter Naomi of the influence Horatia had over the mill-owner, and said, 'I'm spokesman, if you please, mates.--And this is what we've come to say. There's two men been turned off because they've been ill, and boys put on in their place.' 'They did no more work than the boys,' observed Mark Clay, 'and took double the wages.' 'They didn't do quite as much work, 'tis true; but they did it better, and we always made up by the end of the day between us what they couldn't manage when 'twas heavy work; but the men say they ain't going to do it for the boys.' 'No, of course not,' said Horatia impulsively. 'Oh, of course not, you say?--Well, go on,' said Mr Clay. 'And these men have got wives and families to support, and who'll take them on if they're turned out of Clay's Mills for not being able to do their work?' [Illustration: 'We've come to say there's two men been turned off because they've been ill, and boys put on in their place.' PAGE 132.] 'I've nought to do with that. Business is business, and you can't mix sentiment up with it,' said the master. 'But, then, some one will have to support them,' said Horatia. 'The rates will,' said Mr Clay. 'Well, you pay the rates, so you may just as well keep them at the mills; the work gets done, and it makes no difference to you whether their friends help them to do it or not, and, you see, it won't get done with those boys, because the men won't help them. So, I say, take the two men back.--And, oh! I do think it kind of you men to do their work, and come and speak up for them,' wound up Horatia. Mr Clay gave her a glance. The plain little face was lit up by animation, and he smiled. Then he turned to the men. 'Very good, lads; you hear what the young lady says. I promised her her way, and she shall have it.' Here his face grew stern. 'But it's to her I've given way, not to my men, remember that. What Mark Clay does is done, and won't be undone; and there's no parleying between master and man in Clay's Mills; so the next time the men want to come up to see me, tell them it's no good; Mark Clay receives no deputations from his men. If they don't like his ways they can leave him; it's as they like.' 'We're not likely to do that without we're forced. We've worked for you, man and boy, these thirty years, some of us, Mr Clay,' said Luke Mickleroyd. 'I sha'n't force you. I know good workers when I've got 'em, and give 'em good wages, too,' said Mr Clay. And this was quite true, and no better work was turned out of any mill than that done by Clay's Mills. 'We thank you for receiving us to-night, master.--And we are much obliged to you, miss, for your kind words,' said Luke Mickleroyd. The millionaire rose from his seat. 'And now, I suppose, we can go and have our dinner?' he said sarcastically. 'Good-night, Mr Clay.--Good-night, miss,' said the men, and they filed out into the yard. The millionaire grunted something which might be interpreted to be a farewell, and turned to walk out of the other door. He did not wait to let Horatia pass out first; indeed, he had never even offered her a seat, though he had sat down himself, these courtesies not being in his way. Horatia, however, did not seem to notice the want of politeness, but said a bright goodnight to the deputation, and followed her host out of the room. Sykes was waiting at the back-door, watching the door of the steward's room; and beside him was Naomi, and the moment the men appeared she ran forward and said, 'Has he given in, father?' Sykes followed, and came up in time to hear Luke Mickleroyd reply, 'Yes, he's given way this time, lass.' 'That's a good job! Well, go on into the servants' hall, and have a drink to celebrate the good news. I must make haste and serve the rest of the dinner. And another time do you take and come a little later and give a man a chance to have his dinner in peace,' said Sykes, hurrying off. 'I think we'll be going on to give the answer. I don't feel in no mood for drink,' said Luke. 'Why not, lad? All's well that ends well, and we've got our way this time,' said one of the others. 'Ay, we've got it this time; but we sha'n't get it next, without that young lady works miracles, same as she seems to do wi' Mark Clay,' replied the man gloomily. 'Tell us about it, father. She's really jolly, ain't she? Whatever did she go to see you for? She's a caution, is Miss Horatia!' exclaimed Naomi. 'She's a real good young lady, and wanted to do the family and us men a good turn. Now, if he'd got a daughter like that!' said Luke. 'Oh, come, father, I'm not going to have a word said against Miss Sarah. She's not gay like Miss Cunningham, 'tis true; but she's as grieved ['grieved' means 'vexed' in Yorkshire] about the way her father carries on as can be, only she's too much of a lady to go putting herself in a man's place,' said Naomi, defending her young mistress hotly. 'The other's more of a lady if you go by blood,' put in Tom Fox, who was a staunch admirer of Horatia since the affair of the motor, and had heard from Cunningham's chauffeur who Horatia was. 'We don't go by blood here; we go by money,' said Naomi scornfully; and the other servants laughed. Mrs Nancy, needless to say, was not there, or this conversation could not have taken place. Mrs Clay looked up eagerly when the two returned. Sarah, too, looked up, and, though she did not show it, she was just as anxious to hear the result. But neither of them dared to put any questions to Mr Clay. 'Here's a young lady who wanted to be a millionaire for five minutes,' he said, with a hoarse laugh. 'W'atever do you mean, Mark?' asked Mrs Clay timidly. 'It's all right, Mrs Clay. Mr Clay agreed to do what they wanted,' said Horatia hastily, to relieve her anxiety. 'Nay, lass, that I didn't. I agreed to do what you wanted, and that's a very different thing, as the men'll find out if they try it on again. There's only one will in Clay's Mills, and one person to have any wants,' said the mill-owner. 'What does he mean about your being a millionaire for five minutes?' demanded Sarah, who did not want her father to begin a tirade about Clay's Mills and his rights. 'I just wanted to be a millionaire for five minutes, and Mr Clay let me.--You _are_ good-natured to me!' Horatia said, turning to her host and beaming at him. 'And you used that five minutes' power to give the men their way? They'll always want it now,' said Sarah slowly. 'That's what I'm a bit afraid of; but I'll teach them a lesson next time,' said Mr Clay grimly. 'Oh Mark! don't be 'ard on 'em,' began Mrs Clay. But Horatia exclaimed, 'He wasn't a bit; he was very nice, and has taken two delicate men with families back into the mills.--I must see these mills, Mr Clay,' said Horatia. 'So you shall to-morrow, if you like, and then you'll see them two fettlers doing their work, as if they'd all day to fettle one machine,' replied Mr Clay. 'What's a fettler, and what is to fettle a machine?' inquired Horatia with interest. 'I think I've heard that word before.' 'Clean it up, and if they don't do it sharp while the machine is going there's an accident, and they get caught in the works, and that's what'll likely happen to them two, and you'll feel sorry then you had them back,' he replied. It was late when they had finished dinner, and the mill-owner said 'Good-night' when his wife and the girls left the dining-room. 'Oh my dear, God bless you!' cried Mrs Clay when they were in the drawing-room, as she took Horatia's hand in hers. 'I didn't do anything; I just amused myself,' said Horatia, laughing. 'But I expected to see quite different men. They looked quite quiet and respectable.' 'What did you expect them to look like?' demanded Sarah. 'They were respectable mill-hands, as my father was years ago.' 'But I expected to see wild, fierce men, like those in the French Revolution, demanding their rights, and brandishing sticks and things.' 'Oh my dear! we ain't come to that, an', please God, we never shall,' protested Mrs Clay with a shudder. 'They can look wild and fierce. You've only to watch them at a football-match to see what they'd be like in earnest if they're like that at play,' said Sarah. 'Then I 'ope I shall never see 'em so,' repeated Mrs Clay. 'And that's what you wanted to do--amuse yourself with the sight of infuriated Yorkshiremen?' said Sarah, whom some demon seemed to possess that evening. Horatia turned indignantly to her. 'I didn't do it for any such reason. I suppose you think I meddled, and perhaps I did; but I only did it as your friend, Sarah, and I don't think you're very nice,' she said. 'I can't think w'at's come to you, Sally! Don't be so disagreeable. Miss Horatia only means to be kind, and we're all much obliged to 'er,' said Mrs Clay. 'Yes, we are,' said Sarah; 'I expect the men meant mischief; but you have only done good for to-night. There'll be a row, sooner or later, and then father'll have to stand firm or lose his position. Not that I think that would be a bad thing, except for mother's sake. Still, it isn't every one that would use five minutes of being a millionaire just to do good to other people, and you're a good sort, Horatia. So don't mind what I say. I'm always cross at Balmoral. I can't breathe here.' CHAPTER XV. A VISIT TO CLAY'S MILLS. The next morning dawned bright and sunny, as Sarah saw when Naomi drew up her blinds. She also saw that the girl's face was swollen with crying. 'What is the matter, Naomi?' she asked anxiously, for Sarah was very kind-hearted, and she was very fond of her young maid. 'It's Ruth, miss; she's been took with the croup, and mother's been up all night with her, and the doctor says he doubts if we shall pull her through. And, oh, she's such--a--darling, is Ruth!' Here Naomi burst into tears again. 'Poor little Ruth! I'll go and see her to-day, Naomi, and ask if there is anything we can do for her,' said Sarah; and she dressed with more alacrity than usual, in her desire to go and visit Naomi's home. Horatia was always up earlier than Sarah, and generally went for a run in the park before breakfast. She had just come in and was sitting at the breakfast-table chattering with Mrs Clay when Sarah appeared, and, with a hurried 'Good-morning' to them both, plunged into the subject of which she was full. 'Naomi's sister is ill, mother. I'm going to see her this morning, so will you, please, go to the mills with Horatia?' she said. Mrs Clay looked a little vexed. 'Your father will be grieved if you don't go, Sarah. 'E thinks you might go to your own mills sometimes, instead of always goin' to your uncle Howroyd's,' she protested. 'They're not my own mills. I have nothing to do with them. If I had I'd soon alter them,' Sarah replied hotly. 'Besides, Uncle Howroyd's mill is a pleasure to go over; my father's are a pain.' 'Oh Sarah, you do say such things! An' w'at-ever you mean I don't know 'alf the time. I'm sure there's no need to go over more of the mills than you like. You can stop before you get a pain, if that's w'at you mean,' Mrs Clay added doubtfully, for Sarah had begun to laugh. 'It's not a pain in my body, mother; it's a pain in my mind that they give me.--But I would have gone with you to-day, Horatia,' she observed, turning to her schoolfellow, 'if my maid Naomi's sister had not been taken ill; but I must go and see how she is. And I shall take Naomi with me, and let her have a holiday for the rest of the day,' she announced. Mrs Clay did not rebuke her daughter for taking it upon herself to give a servant a holiday, any more than she did for settling her plans for the day without any reference to her mother; but only said plaintively, 'W'at's the matter with little Ruth? I suppose it's nothin' catchin', or they'd 'ave told me first; but still, I do think I should be more use than you, Sarah; you don't know anythin' about sickness. W'at 'as Ruth got?' 'Croup, and I thought I'd take her some jelly or something; children always like jelly,' said Sarah. 'Jelly--when the poor child can't swallow, very like! You'd better by 'alf let me go, Sarah; the poor mother'll not 'ave a moment to talk to you if the child's really bad, an' you'll only find yourself in the way. You go with Horatia to the mills, an' I'll call at Mickleroyd's an' do w'at I can do for 'em.' 'Martha Mickleroyd won't stand on ceremony with me, and I'm not so ignorant as you think about croup. You have to put the child in hot water. We had first-aid and domestic lessons at school. Besides, I promised Naomi I'd go, so I must,' declared Sarah in such a determined tone that Mrs Clay, who never could oppose any one for long, gave way with a sigh. Horatia had been looking from one to the other, listening with her quick, eager look to the conversation, and longing to join in it, but half-afraid for fear of vexing Sarah; but now she could no longer resist the temptation. 'Can't we all go on our way to the mills? I should like to see a mill-hand's cottage, and I needn't go into the sick-room at all.' Mrs Clay looked relieved. 'I'd far rather 'ave it so, Sarah. You don't know for certain that it isn't 'oopin'-cough or somethin' o' that sort. Women are that ignorant,' she declared. 'Martha Mickleroyd isn't ignorant; she's a very clever woman, and no more ignorant than--lots of ladies,' Sarah finished hurriedly. She had nearly said, 'than you are,' but luckily remembered in time. 'I believe that; but it isn't every lady that knows as much about illness as I do; an' as Miss 'Oratia 'ere wants to go to see a mill-'and's 'ome'----Mrs Clay was saying. But Sarah broke in with impatience, 'One would think we were Hottentots or savages, or something, by the way Horatia talks! Horatia coloured as she answered, 'Oh, but indeed I don't; you quite mistake me. Father is very much interested in the housing question, and all sorts of things that have to do with the poor, and putting stone baths in their houses, and all that will make them healthier,' she explained eagerly. 'Very kind of your father, I'm sure, my dear; but I think you'd better not talk about stone baths for the Mickleroyds. Mark won't 'ave it. 'E won't, indeed; 'e told Luke Mickleroyd so,' said Mrs Clay. Sarah's lip curled. 'If that child has no bath to be put into it will die, and it'll be his fault, then,' she observed, as she rose from the table. 'No, it won't; it'll be the fault of its mother, who hasn't a small bath in her house,' said Horatia. Horatia had spoken on the impulse of the moment, without any thought of contradicting or annoying Sarah; but the latter cast her a furious look, and then, drawing herself up, said, 'When will you be ready to start?' Horatia felt crushed by Sarah's manner; but it was so uncomfortable to start out in the morning in this way that she determined to try to conciliate her. 'Don't be horrid and up in the clouds above us all;' and she took Sarah's arm with a coaxing smile. Sarah could not help smiling, for this was an old school accusation which Horatia had made when Sarah once asked how she looked proud and haughty, and the girls had all laughed at it. 'I don't feel there; I've told you that before; but you can't or won't understand how I hate and despise it all.' 'Well, never mind; let's go and see those Mickleroyds. You don't hate and despise them,' said Horatia. Half-an-hour later the party in the motor stopped at the point of the main street from which a 'ginnel' or alley led to the Mickleroyds' house, in one of the oldest parts of the town, and quite near the mills. Luke Mickleroyd, as will be remembered, was the chief watchman of Clay's Mills, and could have afforded a nice little house in the suburbs on the tram-line, for he earned good wages; but he found it more convenient to be close to the mills, so that he could rest between his rounds, and in cold weather warm and refresh himself during the night. 'What a funny old place! I wonder they don't pull it down,' said Horatia, as she picked her way over uneven and broken paving-stones to the house, which had steps, with no balustrade, leading down to an open cellar-door and up to another door. 'It belongs to my father,' said Sarah curtly. Horatia said no more, and determined not to make any comments whatever she saw, 'not even if the paper were hanging off the walls and the place in ruins,' she said to herself. But once they were inside the cottage the scene was changed. Everything was spotlessly clean; the walls were prettily papered; the furniture was handsome and old-fashioned; and Maria Mickleroyd came forward with a pleasant smile on her tired, anxious face. 'Pleased to see you, Mrs Clay, and Miss Sarah; and you've brought Omi,' pronounced 'Oh my,' to Horatia's amusement. 'That's main kind of you. Little Ruthie's dropped off into a lovely sleep for the minute; but, thank you, I shall be glad to have Omi for the day, if Miss Sarah is sure she can spare her, for I shall be up to-night again, and I might rest a bit by-and-by. Luke's resting now.' 'No, I'm not resting, missus,' said Luke Mickleroyd, coming down a narrow staircase. 'I've had my sleep, and was coming to take a turn at watching. I ought to be good at that, seeing it's my trade; but Miss Sarah's found us some one better, I see, in Omi.' 'We're glad to know the child is better, Luke,' said Mrs Clay, as she added some suggestions about the child's treatment. 'An' now we're goin' on to the mills; but if the doctor orders anythin' special, or Ruthie fancies w'at you can't get, be sure an' send up to us. The master won't grudge you that. An' if you want Naomi the night, keep 'er, so long as we know. Jane Mary could come wi' the message after the mills are out. A walk would do her good.' 'Jane Mary won't come nigh Balmoral,' put in Naomi suddenly. 'How'd thy tongue, Omi!' said her father, and Naomi subsided. 'Jane Mary should do w'at she's told; she's too independent,' said Mrs Clay, and, with a short 'Good-morning,' they all went off. Sarah turned to wave a friendly farewell, whereupon Mrs Clay said, with some irritation, 'It seems to me, Sarah, that folk 'ave only got to be nasty to your father for you to like 'em. It's not much good goin' on like that. You know w'at the Bible says: a 'ouse divided against itself cannot stand.' 'I wonder if that's true,' said Sarah gravely. 'Sarah, 'owever dare you!' exclaimed Mrs Clay; and even Horatia looked rather shocked at this remark. 'Oh, I'm not talking about the Bible; of course I believe that. I meant what you said,' explained Sarah. But this was not much better. 'Thank you, Sarah. W'atever I said, I 'ope it was true. I'm not in the 'abit of tellin' untruths.' Mrs Clay had forgotten what she had said. 'You only said what you thought, and we can all make that kind of mistake. I only meant that I wonder whether I do like people better if they dislike father.' 'Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself, for 'e's a good father. An' look at all these mills; every brick is 'is an' built by 'im--'is money, I mean--an' thousan's of poun's' worth of wool goods sent out every week--well-made goods, too, as every one will tell you. 'E's a wonderful man is your father, an' one to be proud of, not despised. Most girls would 'old their 'eads 'igh for bein' 'is daughter, not 'old it 'igh to despite 'im.--Oh, good-mornin', my men! good-mornin'!' Mrs Clay exclaimed, as the gates were thrown open for them to enter, and she saw some men crossing the yard. The men replied by a surly 'Good-morning;' one or two touched their hats, but the most of them took no notice of the master's wife and daughter at all. Mark Clay met them at the door of his private office, a plainly furnished little room, the same now as it had been thirty years before, when it had been just built. 'This is my private room,' he said. Horatia looked round with interest. 'It's a very business-like-looking room,' she said, after searching in vain for something more complimentary to say. 'That's the biggest compliment you can pay it, and it is a true one, too. There's millions have passed through my hands in this room,' he said proudly. ''Ave you 'eard that Luke Mickleroyd nearly lost his little Ruth in the night?' said Mrs Clay. 'We've just been to see 'em an' leave Naomi there.' Mrs Clay never liked to take the responsibility of doing anything herself; but Mark Clay turned to her more angrily than Horatia had ever seen him, and said, 'I won't have you go to the hands, encouraging them in independence and idleness. You call for Naomi on your way back. Do you hear? She doesn't get wages for nursing her sister. What's her mother there for?' 'But, Mark, the mother's got the 'ouse to clean an' meals to cook; they're such a large family, an' useful to us,' protested Mrs Clay. 'I don't care. I won't have it, I say. I shall have the other girl wanting her day off; so you do as I tell you. If the mother can't see to the girl, let her go to the hospital. What do I pay to the hospitals for if it isn't for them to be useful to me? You can tell her so on your way home, and take Naomi back with you to her work,' blustered Mark Clay. 'Oh, are we going straight home? I thought we could, perhaps, go to Fountains Abbey to-day, and you would come with us?' cried Horatia. Sarah shot a quick look of surprise at her friend, who added, 'You said I might choose what I liked best to do every day, didn't you, Sarah?' 'Of course,' said Sarah. 'But, my dear, w'yever didn't you mention it before we started? We would 'ave taken a picnic-basket along wi' us,' cried Mrs Clay. 'That doesn't matter, Polly; send Fox for it while we're looking over the mills. That's a good idea of the lass. We'll all go to Fountains. Do you go and telephone to them to put in plenty of champagne and lemonade for the girls,' said the mill-owner boisterously. Mrs Clay hurried off to the telephone to give her directions, while Mark Clay started with the two girls over the mills. 'I couldn't write an essay on this,' said Horatia, as they were hurried through yard after yard, on each side of which were doors which the millionaire just ordered to be opened, and into which they gave a peep as he told them, 'In there there's thousands of pounds' worth of rags and wool for blankets,' or 'cloth,' as the case might be. 'My father doesn't want you to; he only wants you to see what a huge business he has. I hope he has succeeded,' said Sarah. Horatia was saved the trouble of answering, for they now entered the room where the machinery drowned every sound. 'Doesn't it make them deaf or make their heads ache?' she shouted at length to Mark Clay. 'Make me deaf? No fear; I don't stop in here long enough,' he replied, misunderstanding her, and not imagining it was the workpeople she was thinking of. And again Horatia was silent. CHAPTER XVI. THE MILLIONAIRE'S PICNIC. 'Oh dear! my head aches, at any rate,' sighed Horatia when they came out of about the fiftieth room. 'I am glad we are going motoring; it will blow my headache away.' 'Ay, it's a big place, is Clay's,' said the millionaire with an air of satisfaction. 'There's Uncle Howroyd. I'm going to ask him to come with us to-day,' observed Sarah abruptly. 'What's he wanting?' inquired his half-brother. Whatever Mr William Howroyd wanted with the millionaire, it did not seem important, for he stopped when Sarah met him, and the two went off together, away from Clay's Mills; and Mr Clay, after waiting a moment to see if his brother was returning, turned to Horatia. 'If you'll excuse me, young lady, I'll give some orders for this afternoon, and tell them to have some pieces done, ready for me to see when I come back. That's the way to get rich, my lass; look after the pieces and the bales'll look after themselves.' And the millionaire, with a hoarse laugh, went off to 'look after the pieces.' Horatia stood at the door looking after him, and scarcely noticed a man who half-smiled and raised his hat. She supposed that he was a man with some manners, which the rest of them did not seem to possess; she had no idea that it was a personal attention to her till he said, 'We're much obliged to you for making t'master listen to us. It's saved a lot o' trouble for the minute.' Now, Horatia, as will have been noticed, acted and spoke upon impulse, so she now asked eagerly, 'What trouble has it saved? And why has it only been saved for the minute? Were you all going to strike if he hadn't seen you?' 'Can't say what we mightn't have been obliged to do,' said the man. 'I don't see how you are obliged to do anything unless you like; but was that what they wanted you to do?' persisted Horatia. 'That was one thing. But, see here, missy, if you can speak a word for us, do 'e. They say you can do a lot wi' the master; he's a bit too hard wi' us, and the young uns won't stand it. That's where the trouble will come in.' 'What kind of trouble?' inquired Horatia. The man did not look at her. He was gray-haired, and had been at Clay's Mills for twenty years, and had an affection for the place. Besides which, he was 'used to the master's ways,' and knew that a good workman earned good wages and need not fear being turned off so long as he did good work; but the younger men hated Mark Clay, and there were fewer old men there than in most mills, for the moment they got ill or showed signs of feebleness in any way they were discharged. Mark Clay lost more than he gained, for they would have kept the younger ones in order. But all this the man did not say to Horatia; he only repeated, 'I can't say what they might not do when their blood's up.' 'But tell me what they say they'll do.' 'Strike,' said the man. 'But you'd best not repeat that,' he added, almost regretting his confidence, and going off for fear of adding more. 'There's a fool's trick you've been at, Sam,' said a comrade, 'a-telling that young lady what the men say. She'll repeat it all to the master.' 'I never breathed a word of their threats. I only said they'd strike, and he knows they've threatened that before.' 'You didn't say a word about what them young lads said they'd do--you know what?' the other demanded. 'They'd be turned off to-morrow if he got wind on 't.' 'D' ye think I'm a fool? Of course I didn't. But I'll tell you what. They've got som'at in their heads at Balmoral, for that young lady kept on asking what they would do and what trouble there would be if the master didn't do what we asked him,' retorted the first speaker. The second looked gloomily before him. 'It'll be a bad day for my Tom if them words of his get repeated to the master; and it's nought but lads' hotheaded talk; they don't mean it.' 'I'm none so sure o' that, mate; but it's best to forget it. Anyway, the master's off gallivanting for the day, and mayhap it'll take his mind off the mills a bit. If he'd do that more frequent it 'u'd be better for all--better for him and better for us,' the man wound up gravely. In the meantime Sarah had gone to meet her uncle, and invited him to come motoring. 'Me! Nay, lass; I've other fish to fry. I'm not a millionaire like Mark, able to go away and amuse myself all day.' 'Now, uncle, you know that's nonsense; you can get away far more easily than father, because you are not in such a frightful hurry to get rich. Besides, you can always stop your work to do an act of charity, and it is a real act of charity to come with us to-day,' declared Sarah, tucking her arm in her uncle's. 'Indeed! How's that? Is Tom Fox, the chauffeur, ill, and have I got to do his work?' inquired Mr Howroyd. 'No; and if he were, one of the other chauffeurs could take his place. You've got to come and sit beside me, so as to prevent any one else sitting beside me, because you are the only one I can bear to have near me,' explained Sarah. 'Upon my word, if I were not your old uncle I should feel quite flattered,' said Mr Howroyd in a joking way; but he grew grave as he added, 'But as it is, my lass, I'm sorry to hear you talk like that. What's wrong with the others, eh?' 'I don't know that there's anything wrong with them. I think it's me that there's something wrong with,' replied Sarah. 'But I don't understand. Didn't you tell me Miss Horatia was to be of the party? What's gone crooked between you two?' he inquired. 'I don't know; at least, it sounds silly, but I can't bear her being such friends with father. She seems to think everything he does and says all right, and it isn't; it's all wrong, and I think it's horrid of her!' said Sarah. 'Steady there, my lass. I don't think it's the place of children to criticise their elders at all, and certainly not their fathers; and as for this you tell me about Miss Horatia, why, what would you have her do--abuse her host, and talk against him to his daughter?' 'You don't understand, Uncle Howroyd. Just you come for this picnic, and then see if I am not right,' begged Sarah. 'I sha'n't think that; but I think I'll come, only I must go home and change first, and give some orders for the men,' said her uncle. 'Then I'll come too. I feel as if I shall say something horrid to somebody if I don't.' 'Then you'd best come along with me, for you'll be poor company for the others in this mood;' and he took her back to Howroyd's Mill with him. An hour later the five started for Fountains Abbey, with a huge hamper strapped on at the back of the car. 'It's a pity you don't appreciate good liquor, Bill, for there's first-class champagne there,' said Mark Clay as they spun along. 'I don't know that it is, for I couldn't afford it very often,' remarked his brother cheerfully. 'Pshaw! I've no patience with such rubbish! You could afford it fast enough if you didn't waste all your money in pensioning off half your old incapables and keeping the others at work, and going on as if you ran a mill for the benefit of the hands,' said the millionaire. 'So I do, I hope,' replied his brother, with the same good-humoured twinkle in his eye. 'Then I suppose you'll be giving them all the profits next, and we shall see you working as a hand yourself?' said Mark Clay, in a tone that implied his expectation of such a thing, as, indeed, was the case. Mr William Howroyd laughed quietly. 'I shall keep the head of Howroyd's Mill as long as I live, as my father was before me, and his father before him, and I shall look after the old folks as they did, and, as I hope, those that'll come after me will do.' There was silence for a moment, for Mr Howroyd was not married, and they wondered who would come after him. Mark Clay thought the mill should be made into a company with his; but William Howroyd had very decidedly declined to entertain that idea. So it happened that it was with these words in their ears that they came into sight of the beautiful ruins of Fountains Abbey, built by those who acted upon the same principles. Horatia had sat between Mr and Mrs Clay all the way; but the minute they arrived she caught Sarah by the arm and said, 'Come and explore the ruins, and let us find a place and take a sketch of it.' 'We must stop with the others,' said Sarah. 'Oh no, we needn't; you are only saying that because you are cross with me, and it's no good, because I can't help the things that you don't like in me. And besides, I want to talk to you.' 'How do you know what things I don't like?' inquired Sarah. Horatia danced a queer little dance of her own, and then, coming back to Sarah, said, 'Of course I can feel when you don't like things, but I can't help that. Come and have a walk with me; I want to ask you about something.' There was no resisting Horatia's good spirits, and it was too glorious a day to quarrel or be disagreeable; so, after seeing that Mr William Howroyd had gone off with her father and mother, Sarah walked along with Horatia. 'What do you want to ask me about?' she demanded of her friend. 'Well, it's this: why do you hate being rich?' she asked. Sarah stared at her in wonder for a moment. 'Was that really what you wanted to ask me?' and as Horatia nodded her head, she continued, 'What an extraordinary question! I should think any one could see why for herself. Do you think it's any pleasure to eat off Sèvres china, so valuable that a servant goes in dread of his life lest he should break a piece, or to have gold plate one is afraid of scratching, or to be surrounded by stuffy carpets?' Horatia interrupted her with a merry little laugh. 'How can you be surrounded by carpets?' she demanded. 'You know quite well what I mean, only you choose to turn it off with a laugh, and that's one of the things I don't like about you; you turn things just the way you choose. And the carpets do seem to stifle me, though you don't believe it,' declared Sarah. 'I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to laugh; but the picture of you surrounded by stuffy carpets did amuse me so. But one thing I don't believe, and that is that you really hate being rich,' persisted Horatia. 'You mean that I tell untruths?' replied Sarah. 'No, I don't; I mean that you wouldn't really like to be poor. I don't believe you'd even like to have so little money as we have, though it's plenty for us; and as for being really poor, I'd just like to see you try it. At least, I just wouldn't, because I'd hate to see you miserable, and you would be miserable with no money and no one bowing down before you and getting you what you want before you asked for it, and everything.' 'Well, I've a kind of idea that you will have a chance of seeing who is right, you or I, one of these days,' was Sarah's answer. 'I wish you'd tell me why you say that, Sarah--I do really,' said Horatia. To say what she really felt was impossible to Sarah, for at the bottom of her hatred of her riches was the feeling that they had been unjustly, if not dishonourably, obtained, and that other people knew it and despised them for it, and this was gall and wormwood to a girl of her proud spirit. 'How can I possibly tell you why any idea comes into my head any more than I can tell you why I think it's going to rain to-night in spite of its being so lovely just now?' demanded Sarah. 'That's quite a different thing. There's a west wind blowing, and it feels like rain,' said Horatia; 'there's a reason for that.' 'Very well; there's a feeling in the air as if the home of Clay were going to fall,' retorted Sarah. 'Then there must be some reason for it; and if you know it I think you ought to try and prevent it for your mother's sake, even if you would like it to fall,' said Horatia. 'You think girls can do anything, but you are wrong; they can't, and I don't know any reason why it should fall, and I dare say it's all imagination. Why does it interest you so much?' asked Sarah. 'Sarah, tell me, why won't Naomi's sister come near Balmoral?' asked Horatia abruptly. 'Because she hates my father. Every one isn't so fond of him as you are,' said Sarah. 'Why does she hate him? Doesn't she work in his mills?' Horatia inquired. 'Yes, that's one of the reasons. Besides, her young man was a hand, and was turned off. Father is not popular with his hands,' said Sarah sarcastically. 'Are you?' demanded Horatia, turning upon her. Sarah did not answer for a minute, for the question took her aback; then she laughed. 'No, I don't fancy I am. They think me proud, and I suppose I am, though goodness knows what I have to be proud of,' she said. 'You might be proud of being so pretty, but I know you are not,' said Horatia. 'I don't see why that girl should hate your father.' 'And I don't see why you should like him,' returned Sarah. 'I know you don't, and I am sorry for it and for lots of things; but it's no good worrying about them when we are out on a picnic, especially as I am starving of hunger, as you say here, and I see Tom Fox waving the flag to show that lunch is ready.' The millionaire was in the best of humours, paying his wife attention, telling Tom Fox playfully to be sure and have a good lunch, and see that his horse had one too! and joking with Mr Howroyd and Horatia, and with Sarah when she gave him a chance. 'Have you got right yet?' inquired her uncle after lunch, as they were preparing to go back. 'Not right enough to change places with any one; but they were better to-day, I must say.' 'Oh, were they? How very condescending you are! Upon my word, Sarah, you want taking down a peg badly,' said her uncle, who, however, took his old place beside his niece. CHAPTER XVII. A DISASTROUS BONFIRE. The return journey, as return journeys after a day's pleasuring often are, was a much quieter affair than the drive on the way out. Even Horatia was rather silent as she sat between her host and hostess, and Mr William Howroyd seemed lost in thought. It was the millionaire who broke the silence with one of the hoarse laughs with which he generally prefaced his boastful remarks. 'See that speck yonder? That's Balmoral, on t' hill; you can see it for twenty miles round on a clear day like this. There's not another property in the country that comes nigh it, though I say it as shouldn't.' 'Is that really Balmoral? Oh yes, of course I see it; they are making a bonfire of weeds in the park,' exclaimed Horatia. Mr Clay leant forward. 'Bonfire of weeds? I don't see any bonfire. Your eyes must be sharper than mine,' he remarked; and then turning to Tom Fox, he said, 'Can you see aught, Tom?' 'No, sir; leastways, not at Balmoral. That fire's far enough from us,' replied the chauffeur. 'Fire?' cried Mrs Clay, starting nervously. 'Pshaw! Fire! It's a bonfire,' said Mr Clay very decidedly; adding, 'Put on steam, Tom; we're crawling. I don't go in a motor to crawl, man.' But he looked anxiously and uneasily in the direction of Balmoral, for he, too, could now see a bonfire or something. Mr William Howroyd had said never a word; but his face grew stern and grave as he leaned forward. Sarah looked at him, then towards Balmoral, and then she turned to him again. 'It's not near the house, Uncle Howroyd; it's only a bonfire.--What are you all so upset about?' she demanded; for Tom, who was noted for his cautious driving, seemed to have caught the excitement, and was driving faster than Sarah had ever known him do. Mr Howroyd took field-glasses from his pocket, and fixing them to his eyes, gazed earnestly in front of him; then he muttered something under his breath. When he took the glasses away, he had an expression in his eyes Sarah had never seen there before; but he did not answer her question, and his niece could not imagine what had come to her cheery, good-humoured uncle. The car was going pretty fast, and Mr Clay seemed satisfied with the progress they were making for the next few minutes, as well he might, for it was above legal speed. 'Uncle Howroyd, we shall be fined, if we don't get killed first,' observed Sarah, who was surprised that her uncle did not make some protest against what she considered reckless speed. Mr Howroyd did not seem to hear what she said, and she gave his arm a tug; but at that moment a red tongue of fire shot up high above the trees in Balmoral park; and now that they were nearer, all--including Mark Clay himself, whose eyesight was not very good--could see that this was no bonfire. 'Put on speed!' he roared to the frightened Tom Fox. 'We're at thirty-five now, sir,' said the man. 'Put on the highest you can,' again shouted Mr Clay, with a muttered imprecation. But Mr Howroyd leant forward, and putting his hand on his brother's arm, said kindly but firmly, 'Nay, lad, we'll be there in a short time now. Think of the wife and these two lasses. You've no right to put their lives in danger, even if you think your property's in danger.' 'They're in no danger,' he answered brusquely, as he threw off the other's restraining arm. Horatia, who did not know what fear was, and was rather enjoying the rate at which they were going, happened to glance at Mrs Clay, who was really fainting with fright. 'Oh, Mrs Clay's ill!' she cried in alarm. 'Stop--pray stop!' Whether Mr Clay would have taken any notice of her or not is doubtful; but Tom Fox, who had reluctantly put on speed at his master's repeated commands, took advantage of this excuse to slow down a little, which was just as well; for, springing up out of nowhere, as they seem to reckless drivers to do, appeared a policeman, who commanded them to stop. 'Confound you, man! can't you see my place is burning?' Mr Clay roared out to him. 'What! Mr Mark Clay is it?' exclaimed the man in surprise, and in no friendly tone. 'You've no right to endanger the public in this way, whatever trouble you may be in.' But Mr Howroyd interfered. 'And you've no right to stop us longer than to take the name when it's an urgent matter, Marmaduke,' he said. The man touched his hat. 'Beg pardon, Mr Howroyd, I didn't know you were of this party. We reap as we sow in this world, and Mr Clay's fond enough of the law when it's on his side and against others.--Go on, Tom Fox; only mind, if there's an accident I'm witness that you were warned,' he said, as he moved back and let them pass. 'Shall we be fined?' asked Sarah of her uncle. 'I don't know. No; I shouldn't think so in a case like this, especially as we had luckily slowed down a bit,' he replied. But he did not seem to care much, which surprised Sarah, who knew that he did not care for motoring at all, and was always severe on wild driving. 'I think we shall. You can't go scorching along just because some trees have caught fire. People's lives are more important than a few hundred pounds. You don't seem to care about us at all,' she protested. 'Don't be so silly and childish, Sarah; and mind you go straight into the house and stay there,' he replied. They were now near enough to see that some trees were burning; but as they were nowhere near the house, Sarah could not quite understand her uncle's 'fidgetiness,' as she called it. 'How on earth did that tree catch fire,' Horatia suddenly ejaculated as a tall poplar was seen blazing, 'and after such a wet day as yesterday?' 'I can tell you how it caught fire. It was set on fire by some of your friends of yesterday; that's how it's caught fire, and that's their way of saying "Thank you" to me for giving in to them; but they've taught me a lesson, and one I sha'n't forget, and I hope it'll satisfy you too, young lady,' replied Mark Clay grimly. 'I don't believe it. It would be too silly of them, to begin with; and, besides, why should they burn the trees? If they wanted to be wicked like that they'd burn the house,' declared Horatia. 'Ay, so they would have done before now if they'd had half a chance; but it's too well protected. Why, there's police in it day and night, and they know it!' he declared. 'All the same, I agree with Horatia, it does seem funny after yesterday,' chimed in Sarah from the back-seat. 'And I can't think how those top branches caught.' 'No, because you don't know your home as well as you might,' said her father. 'What does he mean?' asked Sarah of her uncle. 'I suppose he means that the granaries are on fire, and that they've set the trees alight,' explained Mr Howroyd, whose face was very white and set, but with a different look of determination from his brother's. They were in the park now. 'Turn off to the right, Tom,' said his master. 'Take the women-folk to the house first, Mark,' pleaded his brother. 'To the fire, Tom. I'll catch the rascals red-handed!' roared Mr Clay. 'Don't get out; go on in the car,' said Mr Howroyd to his niece in an undertone; but his advice fell on deaf ears. Sarah was excited enough now, for they had turned a sharp corner at an angle, which made Mrs Clay give a sharp cry, and there in front of them were the blazing remains of two huge barns and some charred trunks of trees, while others were still burning. In the roar and crackle of the flames and the crash of falling timber, the approach of the motor had not been heard by the excited and interested crowd who were watching the progress of the flames. 'Watching! Not one of them raising a hand to stop it!' muttered Mr Howroyd between his teeth. Mrs Clay clasped her hands in despair. The millionaire bounded from the car and was among them before any one saw him. 'You cowardly curs, that'll take my money and burn my property! Off my land, I say! I'll pay you for this! You shall all be in prison before the week's out! I see you all, and know you too well, curse you!' 'We haven't done aught to your property. You can't say we have. We saw the flames in Ousebank oop o' top o' t' hill, and we ran to see. There's no harm in that, and you can't have the law on us for't,' said a big, burly man. 'You're trespassing on my land, every one of you, and I'll prosecute you for that, if I can't for aught else. There's plenty of boards to warn you,' said Mr Clay. The crowd melted away as if by magic, and they saw the gardeners trying feebly to check the progress of the flames. Their master stood and watched them in grim silence for a little time. His presence and the disappearance of the crowd seemed to give them increased vigour, for they worked with a will now, and crash came down a tree which had just caught and would have carried on the flames to another plantation. 'That's right; rather late in the day. If you'd done that earlier it might ha' been better. And where's the rest of you? There's twenty men in the grounds somewhere, let alone the house; you could have had thirty at this, and worsted those scoundrels if you'd chosen; but you didn't, and I'll not forget it--I'll not forget it!' 'The others are guarding t' house, master' said the head-gardener. 'Sykes wouldn't let a man leave; he's there--armed, and swore he'd shoot the first hand that came nigh the house, let his business be what it might.' A grim smile relaxed the millionaire's features for a moment as he heard this news; but they grew grim again as he asked bitterly, 'And weren't the garage and stable men enough to guard the house without the rest of you, whose business is to keep my ground in order?' The man turned back to his work of chopping off smouldering branches, as he said in a surly tone, 'I'm here, sir, doing my best, and so's these lads, seven on 'em, and it's no use blaming them that has tried to help when your property is being destroyed for the fault of them that hasn't had the courage to do it.' 'Courage to do your work!' said Mark Clay in a tone of contempt. 'And where's the police?' They were there, too, now, though where they had been up to this moment did not seem certain. 'You can stand here now; the harm's done and the robbers gone,' he said when they came to him. 'Bah! you're all in the same box.' 'Excuse me, Mr Clay, you mustn't bring charges like that against us,' said one of them. But Mark Clay took no notice of him or his protest, but walked back to the motor, where Mrs Clay and Horatia still sat. 'Home, Tom, as long as I've got one,' he muttered, as he got in and sat moodily looking before him, and taking no notice of his white and shivering wife, or of Horatia, who sat there looking the picture of misery; nor did he notice, apparently, that neither Sarah nor Mr Howroyd was of the party. Tom Fox drove up to the front-door, and Sykes, irreproachable as usual, came down the steps and helped his master and mistress out of the car. He gave no sign of anything at all unusual being amiss, for he was always very grave, till his master said in a grim tone, 'Had any visitors, Sykes?' 'No, sir; but we were ready for them if they'd come,' he then replied significantly. 'Ay, you're true Yorkshire grit,' said his master, as he passed on into the house in front of his wife, who, indeed, would hardly have got up the steps but for Horatia's help and support. 'Oh Sykes! Oh, w'at a dreadful affair this is!' moaned Mrs Clay. 'We'll have to get rid of them southerners; they wouldn't face the crowd, and are skulking in the stable-yard. I told the master what it 'u'd be, but he wouldn't hearken to me. I'd got my men all ready, and not one would have disobeyed me. Even Naomi came home to help, and offered to use a gun if I'd show her how,' related Sykes, hoping by this tale of devotion to please his mistress and distract her thoughts from a sad subject. But the effect was disastrous, for Mrs Clay gave a cry of horror and burst into tears. 'Shoot! W'y should Naomi want a gun to shoot wi'? 'Oo's she goin' to shoot? Oh, 'ow dreadful it all is! Shoot, indeed! 'Oo do you want to shoot, Sykes?' she asked wildly. 'I don't want to shoot any one, ma'am; no more don't Naomi. And as the danger's all over now we'd best say no more about it,' replied Sykes. 'Are you sure the danger's over?' demanded his mistress. And Horatia asked the same question with her eyes. Sykes made her a sign, which she did not understand, and replied to Mrs Clay by saying in a soothing tone, 'Yes, ma'am, yes; the danger's quite over, if there ever was any. There's not a soul inside these park-gates except those that have a right to be; and, after all, the master can afford a little loss like this afternoon.' Mrs Clay gave a little sigh, and said, 'I think, my dear, I'll lie down a bit, if you'll stop by me. I don't fancy bein' alone.' And Horatia willingly went with her hostess. CHAPTER XVIII. NANCY PACKS UP. Poor Mrs Clay lay down on the sofa in the drawing-room and shut her eyes. Horatia sat beside her, kicking the corner of one of the rich Persian rugs that lay about the drawing-room; not that she was in a bad temper--indeed, Horatia was rarely in a bad temper--but as an outlet to her superfluous energy. It was pain and grief to Horatia Cunningham to sit still at any time; but this afternoon, when she felt so excited and wanted to hear all about the fire, it was a severe trial to her patience. Mrs Clay was evidently worn out by the events of the day. Horatia glanced at her from time to time, but did not like to break the silence. Great was her relief, therefore, when a knock came at the drawing-room door. Mrs Clay opened her eyes. 'Who can that be?' she demanded, clutching Horatia's arm in her nervousness. 'Only one of the servants, I expect,' replied Horatia, looking towards the door, in the hope that it would be some one with news of some sort. 'But they never knock at the drawing-room door,' objected Mrs Clay. 'Hadn't you better tell them to come in?' suggested Horatia, for Mrs Clay lay there, clutching her hand and talking in whispers, but not giving any answer to the person at the door. 'Oh no, my dear. I--we don't know who it is,' gasped the poor thing, who was evidently quite unnerved, and no wonder. 'Shall I go and see who it is? I dare say it is one of the servants, who did not like to come in and disturb you, because they know you are resting,' said Horatia. 'I think you'd better ring for Sykes,' objected Mrs Clay, still keeping her hold of Horatia. 'I'm sure it's only a servant, perhaps Sykes himself. I'll only open the door a little bit,' said Horatia, loosening her hand from Mrs Clay's and running to the door, which she opened, as she promised, only a little bit, and then exclaimed, 'Nanny! it's you, is it? What's the matter?' For it was against all etiquette for Mrs Nancy to come down to this part of the house. Moreover, the old nurse looked disturbed and flurried. 'Excuse my disturbing you, Miss Horatia, but I couldn't get any one to come, they're all that upset and put about; but I want to know what train you're going by. The packing's all done, and you can start as soon as you like; and the sooner the better for me,' she wound up viciously. 'What nonsense are you talking, Nanny? Why should we pack up and go away just because a granary and a few trees are burnt down? We don't live in the trees!' said Horatia, laughing. 'It's no laughing matter. If you remember, I said to you when we first came here that it was no place for us, and now you see how true my words have come?' said Mrs Nancy. 'I don't remember any words of yours that have come true, and I shouldn't advise you to say that, Nanny, or they'll think you know something about it, and, perhaps, did it yourself,' retorted Horatia jokingly. Nancy gave a kind of snort. 'Don't you go carrying your love of a joke too far, miss; and if you think there's any chance of me being accused, that's all the more reason that we should go before worse happens,' she said gloomily. 'Why, Nanny, who would have thought you'd be such a coward? It's all over now, and we can't go away all of a sudden like this, even if we wanted to, and I don't. I want to stop and see what will happen next, and help if I can.' 'Help! You'll be burnt in your bed before you can help yourself, let alone any one else,' cried Nancy. 'Be guided by me, miss, and let us take the night-mail. Sykes says there's one passes about eight o'clock. We could telegraph at once, and her ladyship would be delighted to see you. Don't pass another night under this doomed house.' 'Miss 'Oratia, w'at is it? 'Oo are you w'isperin' to out there?' asked Mrs Clay. 'It's only Nancy, my nurse; she wants to speak to me about something. I won't be a minute,' Horatia answered her; and then, stepping into the passage, she said hurriedly, 'Nancy, who told you that? Tell me at once all you know. When are they going to set fire to the house? To-night?' 'How should I know, miss? I can only say what I think,' replied the old nurse, whose usually cheery face was puckered up with anxiety and fright. Horatia took her nurse by both arms. 'Now, Nanny, you've just got to tell me. Do you know anything, or don't you?' 'I know we're among a lot of savage folk that don't respect other folk's property, and it's about time we went home,' declared the old woman. Horatia gave a stamp of the foot. 'You are aggravating, Nanny! Do you know of any plot to burn the house? Because if so'----began Horatia; but she got no further. For Nancy broke in with indignation, 'Well, I never, miss! A pretty pass things have come to when you accuse me of knowing of plots! As if I'd mix myself up with their wicked deeds! No, miss, I do not _know_ anything; but I'm not blind nor deaf, and I have heard quite enough to make me pack our trunks,' said the nurse. 'That's just what I want to know. What have you heard or seen? Do tell me, Nanny. I shall be much more comfortable if I know,' entreated Horatia. 'We shall both be much more comfortable when we are back at The Grange,' said the nurse. 'It's no good you turning it off like that, Nanny, for I'm just going to hold your arms like this till you tell me, and it's no use your wriggling like that, for you can't get away; you may be bigger, but you didn't learn gymnastics in your youth, and so you are not so strong in the arms as I am.' 'I learnt one thing that you haven't, and that is respect for my elders,' said Nancy severely, and trying to look dignified, but failing, as may be imagined. 'I shall respect you all right if you tell me the truth,' replied Horatia, unabashed by the rebuke. 'You don't want me to go carrying tales from the servants' hall, do you? What do you suppose the mistress would say to that?' said Nancy. 'Mamma would say you were quite right in this case, because I am not asking out of curiosity, but because I really ought to know,' said Horatia. 'Well, miss, if you will have it, you will; but, of course, I only know what little Naomi has told me of what she has heard down the town to-day, and of course it mayn't be true,' said Nancy. Horatia stamped her foot with impatience. 'Never mind whether it's true or not; tell me what she said,' entreated Horatia. 'Naomi says that her sister Maria Jane says'--Horatia began to think that the tale was going to be too complicated altogether, but the old woman went on--'that the men say there wouldn't have been a brick left of Balmoral this morning if they hadn't been given way to yesterday; and that's your doing, miss.' Horatia coloured a little with pleasure. 'Then what on earth are you making this fuss about? The danger is over, as you see,' she cried eagerly. Old Nancy shook her head. 'You haven't heard the rest. That old stupid--well, I beg his pardon, as we're in his house, and you seem to like him, miss; though how you can, or what you can see in him, and after how you've been used'----she said. 'Oh, never mind all that, Nanny; do tell me the rest! Mrs Clay will be calling me again, so pray make haste!' exclaimed Horatia. 'Well, he goes down to the mills and undoes all the good you've done by saying it was the last time a mill-hand would put foot in his park, for he built that to be away from them, and he isn't going to have his peace disturbed; and it wouldn't do them any good either, for he'd let them have their way this time to please you, but it was the first and last time he'd do such a thing.' Nancy stopped. 'That's not all. Go on, Nanny,' said Horatia. 'Well, Naomi's sister, you know--she hates Mr Clay, of course'----began Nancy. 'Why of course?' interrupted Horatia. 'You know that story, surely, don't you, miss?' 'What story? How should I know why Naomi's sister hates Mr Clay? It's very wrong of her,' said Horatia. 'So it is; but her young man--the young man she was going to marry, I mean--was turned off by the master, and'---- 'I expect he was a bad workman; that's his own fault,' said Horatia. 'But never mind about that story. Oh dear! I don't know which story I want to know. You are tiresome to-day, Nanny. What did Naomi say?' 'It was her sister. Naomi had nothing to do with it; she's too fond of Miss Sarah,' said Nancy. Horatia peeped into the drawing-room. Mrs Clay still had her eyes shut, and by her breathing Horatia guessed what was indeed the case--that she had fallen asleep; so Horatia gave a sigh, and resigned herself to listen to Nancy's long-winded tale in the hope of getting at the truth in time. 'Come and sit on this seat outside the front-door, it is so hot in the house; and, besides, I am afraid of some one coming and hearing you,' she said, leading her nurse to a bench outside the drawing-room window. 'Now, about Naomi's sister.' 'It wasn't Naomi's sister herself,' began Nancy. Horatia gave a groan; but so great was her anxiety to hear the truth that she made a great effort and controlled herself. Then Nancy went on: 'He said he'd burn the Clays out of Ousebank, and that they should have a taste of it this very day, to show Mark Clay what he might expect if he didn't alter his ways;' and Nancy stopped again. 'What else did Naomi say?' asked Horatia, who looked grave enough now. 'She said they'd burn the house next, or try to, and then the mills; and that's what they will do, and very likely it'll be this night; and if it isn't, it'll be to-morrow or the next day. And now perhaps you'll come home with me,' Nancy wound up. 'Indeed I won't! Fancy leaving friends when they are in such trouble!' Horatia exclaimed. 'You won't help them by staying. I know you've done some good; but it hasn't helped, after all, and Miss Sarah's gone off and left you, and it isn't the proper place for you at all.' 'I wonder where she is. Do you know, Nanny?' inquired Horatia, for she had been wondering about this ever since she had turned round in the motor to speak to Sarah, and had found that she had vanished. 'No, miss, I don't. I supposed you'd know. At any rate, she had no call to go away at such a time, and leave you alone to take charge of her ma, and all these dreadful things happening. I'm sure her ladyship will blame me for not bringing you away at once; and if anything should happen'--here Nancy threw up her hands in horror as she wound up, 'I should never forgive myself--never, whatever the mistress might do.' 'As we're both going to be burned in our beds, according to you, you won't have to try to forgive yourself,' observed Horatia. 'Don't talk so dreadful callous, Miss Horatia; and, if you don't mind for yourself, you might consider me that you're running into danger,' protested Nancy. Not that she cared about herself half so much as she did for her young charge; but because she thought this argument might have some weight with Horatia, who always thought of others before herself. 'You needn't stop if you're afraid. I shall write to mother to-night and ask her to let me stay alone,' announced Horatia. 'Miss!' cried Nancy reproachfully. Horatia gave a little laugh. 'Oh dear! there's nothing to laugh at, only it always seems easier for me to laugh than to cry, or else I should cry now. It is dreadful to think that all this money is wasted,' she said. 'It isn't wasted yet, and perhaps Mr Clay will see reason, though they say he's wonderful obstinate; and if I was you, miss, I'd not meddle any more. You meant well, no doubt; but, you see, you're very young, and it hasn't done much good, after all; and it's best not to interfere in other folk's business.' The tears rose to Horatia's eyes. 'I know that. In fact, I'm afraid I've done harm, and that's one of the reasons I must stop,' persisted Horatia. 'But you won't tell Mr Clay what I've said. Leastways, I didn't say it,' cried Nancy, in alarm. 'Naomi said that her sister said that'---- 'Oh, never mind who said it. Of course I sha'n't mention any names, but I shall certainly warn Mr Clay of what the people mean to do.' 'Then you'll do the very harm you want to stop,' said old Nancy solemnly. 'Why?' asked Horatia. 'Because it'll only make him more determined. You don't know these Yorkshire folk; there's nothing will turn them if they get a thing into their heads. And let Mr Clay hear that they've threatened to burn him out of the place, and he'll make the place too hot to hold them, and they'll pay him out,' said the old woman shrewdly. Horatia did not make any reply. She felt that there was some truth in Nancy's remarks, and she gave a little sigh as she thought to herself how difficult it was not to harm where you only meant to do good. At last she said, 'I won't say anything to Mr Clay; but I'll have a talk with Sarah, and she shall do as she likes.' 'She won't tell him; she knows him too well,' said Nancy, and she had hardly uttered the words when Mrs Clay, who had evidently been dreaming, awoke with a start, and called Horatia. 'You won't leave to-night, miss?' the nurse said, in a last attempt. 'No, no; I really couldn't, Nanny; but we're quite safe, for there are a lot of police guarding us.' Nancy groaned as she went off. CHAPTER XIX. AN UNPLEASANT MOMENT. Mr Howroyd and Sarah, it will he remembered, had not been seen since they arrived at the scene of the fire in the park. Mr Howroyd had vaulted from the car as soon as his half-brother; and when the latter made his angry speech, and sent off the townspeople, William Howroyd went after them as quickly as he could. But he had not gone far when he heard quick, light footsteps behind him; and, turning to see who it was, he saw Sarah, looking very hot, coming hurrying after him. 'What do you want, my lass? You go home. The town's no place for you to-night,' he said. 'Yes it is, Uncle Howroyd. I want to see Jane Mary. I'm sure this is some of her doing,' she panted as she came up to her uncle. 'And if it is, what good will it do you to know it, even if she owned up, which she won't, you may be sure?' inquired her uncle, stopping, rather unwillingly, to talk to his niece. 'Oh, she'll tell me; she's not afraid of me. She knows I'm on her side,' said Sarah. 'A fine statement that! Then what are you going to do? Incite them to more outrages? Because, if that's your intention, you certainly won't come; and I must say, Sarah, you don't show a very nice spirit in taking this tone.' 'What tone?' demanded Sarah, looking rather defiant. 'Why, rejoicing in your father's loss, and openly taking the part of his enemies,' said Mr Howroyd. 'I'm not rejoicing in it; I'm awfully sorry. I would have given anything to have prevented it; and it's just to prevent any more that I am going down to Ousebank,' replied Sarah. William Howroyd turned and continued his way towards Ousebank. As it was evident that Sarah meant to go to the town, it was better that she should go with him than alone, which he was convinced she would do if he did not let her come with him; so he only said testily, 'I never did pretend to understand women, but you beat every one of them. I don't know what you do mean; but I'm glad to hear you are not so undutiful as I thought you were. Not that you'll do any good by going to Ousebank, because you'll not turn these people.' 'If you think I'm going to try to turn Jane Mary because I want to save papa's property for him you are mistaken, because I don't care a fig if it is destroyed or not; but I do care about Jane Mary, and I don't want her to get into trouble, and that's why I am going to see her.' 'You're a queer girl, Sarah; but I think you'll be sorry one of these days for the part you're acting now. Why, that little schoolfellow of yours has a more friendly feeling for your father than his own daughter,' observed Mr Howroyd, as the two walked hurriedly along the path through the park, which was a short-cut to the town. 'Oh Horatia! You say you don't understand me; but I think I'm much easier to understand than Horatia. She came up here to be my friend and companion, and sympathise with me, and, lo and behold! she goes and makes friends with father, and cares much more for father and mother than for me,' complained Sarah. 'And I don't blame her,' said Mr Howroyd. Sarah laughed. 'I wonder you don't follow her example; but you don't, and you know, Uncle Howroyd, it's no use your pretending to champion my father, because you don't really care for him a bit except from duty, and you like me much better,' she announced coolly. 'I don't like you at all to-night, and I disapprove of your behaviour to your parents very strongly. As I told you before, you will be sorry for it one day,' said her uncle. They had reached the outskirts of the park and come out on the high-road as Mr Howroyd said this; and about a hundred yards to the right of them, coming down the hill, they saw a crowd of people, and heard the murmur of many voices. It was the townspeople coming from the fire, who had been longer in coming because they had kept to the drive, not daring to use the short-cut. 'It's the hands!' said Sarah. 'You'd best turn back, my lass; you can't do any good, and you're far too young to mix yourself up with this kind of thing,' her uncle entreated her. Sarah shook her head. 'I am going on; but if you want to go ahead, do; I shall be all right with these people,' she affirmed. But this was more than Mr Howroyd could bear. 'Nay, you'll not do that if I can stop it, lass. You don't want to be the talk of the town, do you? But whether you do or not, you're not going to have your way. There'll be scandal enough without Mark Clay's daughter adding to it by going marching through the town with the rabble that have just burnt her father's barns,' said Mr Howroyd; and he quickened his steps to avoid being caught up by the rabble, as he called them. But in spite of his efforts, the crowd behind gained on them, and they heard the foremost say, 'It's William Howroyd, that's who it is. He's a different man to his brother, that he is. He'd never turn us out of his park, wouldn't Mr William.' 'He's got Clay's lass with him, though. What d'ye say lads, shall we let her come into t' town if he won't let us go into his park, or shall we turn her back same as he did us?' There were mingled shouts of 'Let her be!' and 'Nay, nay, let's turn her back, same as he did us, and teach him a lesson!' They were close behind now, and Mr William Howroyd could no longer pretend not to hear what they said. The road was wide, and bordered by banks and hedges. He took Sarah by the hand and pulled her up on to the bank with him; but even in that moment he noticed that her hand did not tremble in the least, but was, as a matter of fact, steadier than his own. 'I'm not going to run away from them, Uncle Howroyd. I'm not a bit afraid of them,' she protested, as he pulled her up after him. 'You do as I tell you; but you couldn't run away from them if you wanted to,' he replied. Sarah stood on the bank beside her uncle, and waited for the crowd to come up to them. They were only about fifty in all, and mostly young men, and they seemed undecided what to do when they saw Mr Howroyd standing upon the bank by the roadside, with his niece beside him. William Howroyd's pleasant, cheery face was graver than most present had ever seen it, as he stood and watched the men come up and stand, half-sheepishly and half-defiantly, in a kind of irregular semicircle round them. As none of them spoke, except in murmurs to each other, Mr Howroyd decided to break the ice, and began, in his brisk, ringing voice, which had a very stern tone in it to-night: 'Well, men, what do you want of me? I've made way for you to go forward. Why don't you go?' 'We want a word with you first, Mr Howroyd,' said one of the foremost, who had already shown himself to be antagonistic. 'I want no words with men who break the laws of the land,' replied William Howroyd sternly, and as he said this some of the men remembered that he was a Justice of the Peace. 'We've broken no laws, Mr William. We never set the barn afire, and you can't prove that we did,' said one rather anxiously. 'You stood by and let it burn; and you forget that it was my brother's property,' he replied. 'Mark Clay's no blood-brother of yours. We've nought again' you, Mr William.--Let 'im be, lad; he've allus right on his side, and he's a good master, is Mr William,' said an older man, walking on. 'Noa; but we've summat again' Mr Clay, and I say let the Clays stop in their park--they want it to themselves, and let 'em have it; but we won't have 'em in Ousebank,' said the first speaker in a surly voice. 'The park's private property, and you've no right there, and my brother had a right to turn you out to-night. I'd have done the same if you'd come into my house; but we're all equal on the public road, and if you molest us here you'll answer for it to me in another place,' said Mr Howroyd with determination. All this time Sarah had stood beside her uncle, her eyes flashing, but giving no other sign that she was moved by the discussion; but she now said, 'The men are right, Uncle Howroyd. I will go back to Balmoral;' and she turned to go up the hill. Poor Mr Howroyd might well say he did not understand women, for this was the last thing he had expected Sarah to do, and it embarrassed him very much, for he wanted to get to the town as soon as he could and stop possible disturbances; but it was impossible to let Sarah return to her home alone on an evening like this. He stood looking first at the crowd, which was now passing on, and then at Sarah, doubtful which to accompany, when the question was decided for him by a man in the crowd, who came forward and said, 'I'll see Miss Clay home, Mr William; you'll be wanted down Ousebank to-night.' 'Mickleroyd!' cried Mr Howroyd in amazement. 'You here! I didn't expect to see you among this lot.' William Howroyd feared no man, and 'said his mind,' as he was wont to express it, and he was far too popular for it to be resented, perhaps because his 'mind' had never anything but kindness in it, though it was very truthful. 'I'll answer for my presence here if need be, Mr. William; but let me take the young lady home. She'll be safe with me, and the town'll be safer if you are there,' said the old man, with sturdy independence. 'I'll come, Luke.--Good-night, uncle,' said Sarah, deciding the question, as usual, for herself. 'Good-night, Sarah. I'm glad you're going home; your mother'll be worrying about you, I'll be bound, and she'll want some one to comfort her,' said her uncle as he turned to go down the hill. 'Oh, Horatia's doing that, I've no doubt. I can't think why she wasn't me, and I her. She'd have liked to live at Balmoral,' replied Sarah. 'She's a good young lady, Miss Sarah, and, if you'll excuse me, she's done the master a mint of good. It's what he wants, some one to say a word in season, and make him a little softer like,' said Luke Mickleroyd. 'You're all alike, Luke; you think there's no one like Horatia Cunningham, and I can't think why except that she has a pleasant way of saying things,' said Sarah a little bitterly. 'It isn't only that, miss; it's that she's got a lot of heart. But I know you've got a heart too, and a heart of gold; only I often think 'tis a pity some people cover it up so carefully that it wants a lot of digging to come at,' remarked the man. 'I suppose you are talking about me; but don't I show you any feeling, Luke?' asked Sarah rather reproachfully. 'Yes, miss, of course; and I wasn't thinking of you at the minute, as it happened. I'm sorry I said what I did about Miss Cunningham if it annoyed you, for I know from Naomi how kind you are, and what a true friend to all our family. If I said anything, it was because I was thinking 'twas a pity you didn't take things as the other young lady does, for if you had very likely matters would never have come to this pass.' Sarah did not answer a word, and the two walked on in silence. Luke Mickleroyd was thinking bitterly of the part his daughter Jane Mary had taken in the day's work, and Sarah's thoughts were not more pleasant. 'I dare say you're right, Luke; but one can't change one's character. If a person's born proud and horrid like me she can't help it; it's her nature to be so,' she said after a pause. 'There's something above nature, Miss Sarah; and though I'm not one to preach, I know you know better than me, not being a scholar, that you can be changed,' replied the man. Sarah was so surprised at such a speech from a mill-hand that she found no words to reply; but when he had left her, by her desire, at the back of the house, she made her way to her room by the back-stairs, and taking up her favourite attitude on the wide window-seat, sat and gazed out over Ousebank. 'I hate them all! I hate Ousebank, and the mills, and the hands--the ungrateful people; they turned against me even, though they know I have always taken their parts and sympathised with them,' she burst out. Then the words of her uncle came back to her that she would one day regret the attitude she had taken up, and she wondered whether she didn't regret it a little now. And then Luke Mickleroyd's remarks haunted her, and with a sudden impatient movement she got up and went to the door. There she paused irresolutely, and then, half-shamefacedly, she turned back and knelt down by her bedside; and after ten minutes she got up and walked swiftly out of the room and down the stairs, wondering rather at have said; and though she said her prayers night and morning as a matter of habit, she did not remember ever having prayed in the daytime before. CHAPTER XX. SARAH'S FIRST STEP TO CONQUEST. Sarah walked swiftly along the passages, her head erect, her colour a little brighter, and her lips half-smiling instead of being curved in a contemptuous droop; and on her way she met Naomi. 'Oh miss!' cried Naomi, and then stopped short, and looked curiously at her young mistress. 'Well, Naomi, what is it? What are you looking at me like that for? Has anything more happened?' demanded Sarah. 'No, miss; thank goodness there's nothing more than you know, and that's enough, and too much. I was only thinking you look rare and beautiful this evening,' blurted out the maid. 'What nonsense, Naomi! I'm just hot and red, and you don't like pale people,' replied Sarah; but she was pleased all the same; for though she was not in the least vain of her good looks--which she would have exchanged willingly for Horatia's parentage--she liked to be admired, and she walked on, feeling very satisfied with herself. Naomi looked after her admiringly. 'There's not a young lady can hold a candle to her in all the county. But wherever's she going? Why, that's not the way to the drawing-room; she's going to the master's room. Well, it isn't often she pays him a visit, and it mostly ends badly, if it doesn't begin so. How she comes to be his daughter I can't think; she's too good for the like of him. I'd sooner have believed she was a duke's daughter,' she soliloquised. Meanwhile Sarah, conscious that she was doing a noble action in conquering her own feelings, walked on, as Naomi had said, to her father's special sitting-room, which he called his study, but in which his only study was how to make more money. Sarah tapped at the door, and her father's voice growled something which she took to be an invitation to come in, so she opened the door and entered the room; but on the threshold she paused and hesitated. Her father was sitting in his big easy-chair in front of his bureau, writing. He did not look up at once, thinking it was a servant, who could wait his pleasure, and Sarah had time to notice his forbidding expression. It seemed to her that her father had never looked more unlovable, as he sat there with a scowl on his face, writing no doubt letters to the police or whatever authorities he wished to invoke aid from to punish the incendiaries; and as he wrote such a malignant and fierce expression came over his face that Sarah made a movement to retreat; but the noise she made in doing so attracted Mr Clay's attention, and, looking up sharply, he exclaimed, 'What! you, Sally?' and laid down his pen to hear what his daughter had to say to him. 'Yes, father; I came to tell you how sorry I am about all this affair to-day,' she said. Mr Clay looked keenly and a little suspiciously at his daughter. She stood there, looking so like a culprit apologising for her misdeeds, that the thought flashed across him that perhaps she had something to be sorry for. She made no secret of her sympathy with the 'hands,' and she had not expressed sorrow or indignation at the time, so that the mill-owner may be excused if he believed for the moment that she had had something to do with the fire. 'Are you sorry?' he asked dryly. 'I thought you didn't care if I lost every penny of my money. That's what you always say. Are you sure you're not sorry that your friends are going to get into trouble, eh? I suppose you didn't know anything about it beforehand? Because, you know, I sha'n't make any exceptions. Those that burn my property shall pay for it.' 'Father,' cried Sarah indignantly, 'how can you think such a dreadful thing of me? If that's what you think, I'm sorry I came to you at all;' and she turned to go. 'Stop a minute, my lass,' said her father. 'I'd like to get to the bottom of this. Why did you come?' 'I came to tell you I am sorry for your loss,' said Sarah half-sullenly. 'You are sure you didn't come to beg these people off their punishment?' persisted Mr Clay. 'Yes, I am quite sure of that. I should never waste my time asking you to show mercy to any one,' cried Sarah, her eyes flashing. Mark Clay looked at his daughter with an angry light in his eyes. 'I'm glad you've got so much sense, my lass,' he said coldly, and went on with his writing. Sarah hesitated a minute. She was sorry for the words the moment they were out of her mouth. It was a miserable end to her attempt at making friends with her father; but her father's head was bent over his writing, and his face had on the stubborn look she knew so well, so she reluctantly turned away, and went back to her own room. 'He means mischief,' she said as she leant her chin on her hands. 'He's more dangerous when he is quiet like that than when he blusters.' How long she sat Sarah did not know, until she was startled by hearing the dinner-gong clanging through the house. She gave a violent start, and looked round to see if Naomi had put out her dress for dinner, and saw, to her surprise, not only that she had not done so, but that it was the dinner-hour, so that either dinner must be late--an unheard-of thing in that house--or she had not heard the dressing-bell, and this must be the dinner-gong. 'But where is Naomi, and why was my dress not put out for me?' Sarah asked herself, and in answer to her unspoken question Naomi appeared. 'Oh Miss Sarah, I'm so sorry; I've fair forgot everything to-day, with all the upset! Oh miss, do let me dress you quick!' she cried, in great distress. 'It's the dinner-gong, then?' inquired Sarah. 'Yes, miss; there hasn't been any other. Sykes he forgot to ring the dressing-bell; the first time in his life, he says, that he ever did such a thing. The only one that's gone on the same as usual is the French _chef_, and, of course, he doesn't care a bit about us English folk. All he said when he heard about this was, "Vell, he got plenty money build more barns; but if his dinner isn't to the minute he'll swear, and so there it is, ready to dish." So pray make haste, Miss Sarah, for master's sure to be upset easy to-night,' Naomi wound up. 'Naomi, was Jane Mary in this?' inquired Sarah abruptly. It will be noticed that they both alluded to the incendiarism as 'this.' Naomi replied, 'I couldn't say, Miss Sarah. I couldn't say anything for certain about it, on any account.' 'You mean you won't; and that means that you don't trust me,' replied Sarah. 'No, indeed, miss; I'd trust you as soon as I would myself. But it's the real truth; I don't know anything, nor I won't know anything. And if I was you I'd do the same. It'll be the safest way and the best in this business,' Naomi told her earnestly. Sarah sighed. 'It's going to be a bad business for those that do know anything about it,' she said. 'It would have been worse if some of them had had their way,' observed Naomi. 'Then you do know something about it?' exclaimed Sarah. 'I know what they're all talking about, but what's true and what's false I couldn't tell you.' 'Is my mother dressed for dinner?' inquired Sarah suddenly, abandoning the attempt to pump Naomi. 'No, Miss Sarah; the mistress has been lying down ever since she came in, with Miss Horatia.' 'Lying down with Horatia?' ejaculated Sarah. 'I mean lying down, with Miss Horatia sitting beside her holding her hand like a daughter,' Naomi corrected herself. Sarah coloured violently, and Naomi wondered what made her do so. Poor Sarah was being made to feel all round what a poor sort of daughter she was, and she felt irritably that it was only since Horatia came that this fact had been obvious. But Sarah was wrong. Her attitude towards her parents had always been noticeable, and her brother and mother had constantly upbraided her with it; but it was Horatia's coming which had brought this home to her, and she did not like it. 'That will do, Naomi,' she said, giving an impatient tug to the sash that the maid was tying, and she ran lightly down the corridors and the wide marble staircase to the dining-room. Mr and Mrs Clay and Horatia were all there, and dinner was begun; and Sarah noticed, to her annoyance, that all three were dressed in the clothes they had worn for the picnic. 'Oh, you haven't changed! I have; that's why I am late.' 'We were all too upset to think of dress; we're not like you, above caring about these things,' said her father bitterly. 'Sarah thought you wouldn't like to see 'er in 'er dusty clothes, Mark; an' I would 'ave changed too, only I was so tired I thought you'd excuse me; an' Miss 'Oratia 'ere was too kind to leave me alone, my nerves bein' upset,' put in Mrs Clay in order to shield her daughter, and really making things worse by contrasting Sarah's conduct with Horatia's. 'Yes, she's a good, kind lass, is Miss Horatia,' said Mr Clay, giving her a friendly look, as he pressed some favourite dish of his on her. Sarah had dreaded dinner, being of the same opinion as Naomi that her father would be upset. Indeed, he had looked very much upset and ready for an explosion when she left him in his study; but it was 'Horatia again,' she said to herself, and she thought angrily that Horatia cared nothing about those poor people who had got themselves into trouble. She was angrier still when Horatia replied, 'I'm not at all good or kind at this minute, for I should like to put all those people I saw in the park into prison.' 'You'll have your wish before long, little lass, for that's where they'll all be,' said Mr Clay. 'Oh, but I shall be very sorry if they really do go to prison. I only wished it from revenge, and, of course, that's a very wrong motive,' cried Horatia. She looked across at Sarah to help her; but Sarah would not look at her friend or join in the conversation at all. 'I don't know whether it's a wrong motive or not, but I do know that it's necessary to punish those wretches for destroying my property; and punished they will be,' Mr Clay replied. 'There wasn't many o' 'em really doin' that, Mark,' said Mrs Clay timidly. 'They were doing as bad, standing by watching the destruction; and I'll have every man of them clapped into prison,' said the millionaire. Mrs Clay said no more, and Horatia began to chatter about other things, amusing both Mr and Mrs Clay by her shrewd remarks. Sarah sat sullenly by, and when dinner was over she went straight up to her room instead of joining the others in the drawing-room. 'They prefer Horatia to me, so let them have her. I'm sure she's welcome to do daughter,' Sarah said to herself. Perhaps finding her place usurped awakened Sarah to the knowledge that she had a place to fill in her home, and that she was not filling it. The next day Mr Clay went down to his mills as usual, and no word had been said about the events of the day before; but Sarah was not deceived. Her father, she was sure, was planning his revenge, and sooner or later he would, as he had said, clap his enemies into prison. Naomi could give her no information on the subject, and Mr Howroyd refused point-blank to discuss the matter. 'You'll hear all there is to hear in time; but it may come before me to be heard, and I can't discuss it with you or any one else.' The next morning came a very polite letter from Lady Cunningham to Mrs Clay, thanking her for all her kindness to Horatia, and begging that she might return in time to pay a visit to some relatives, who desired that she might accompany her parents, as she was a great favourite. 'I don't wonder at that, my dearie; you'd be welcome anywhere, with your bonny bright face,' said Mrs Clay. 'I sha'n't let you go unless you promise to come again soon,' said Mr Clay, with a heavy attempt at humour. 'Oh, but I am coming! I've enjoyed myself immensely,' cried Horatia willingly.--'Good-bye, Sarah. I shall be so glad to see you back at school. We shall be friends again then as we used to be, sha'n't we?' 'I don't feel as if anything were going to be as it used to be,' said Sarah; but she kissed Horatia very affectionately when they parted. 'I believe it's your doing that mamma sent for us, Nanny,' said Horatia when the two were in the train. 'And if it was, I'm not a bit ashamed of it,' said Nancy stoutly, 'for I couldn't have stayed another night there, starting and trembling at every sound, and dreaming shocking dreams of being burnt alive in my bed.' 'It's awfully selfish of us to come away and let them be burnt alive in their beds, if you think it's at all likely,' remarked Horatia. 'Then I'll have to be selfish, for I don't consider it's any part of my duty to stop and be burnt with them, which it's their own fault in a way, for they do say that Mr Clay's made himself fairly hated by his ways.' 'I don't hate him,' observed Horatia. 'No, miss, so I saw; but however you put up with him and his common ways, let alone his hasty temper, I can't make out. Well, we've seen the last of them, thank goodness! so I'll say nothing against them,' remarked Mrs Nancy with satisfaction. 'I've promised to go and stay with them again soon,' observed Horatia. 'That's if her ladyship allows it,' replied Nancy, in a tone that implied that the mistress wouldn't allow it. Horatia only laughed. 'It will be nice to see them all again,' she said. And this time she meant her own family. CHAPTER XXI. CLAY'S MILLS PLAYING. Sarah was sitting in her own room, rather cross with herself for feeling lonely, and trying not to acknowledge, even to herself, that she missed Horatia, or to own that her schoolfellow made things go more smoothly, somehow. It was a stormy-looking morning, and Sarah was wondering what she should do with herself, when she felt a gentle hand placed on her shoulder, and, turning in surprise, saw her brother standing behind her, with his usual pleasant smile on his face. 'Good-morning!' he said, as he kissed her. 'Goodness me, George! Where on earth did you spring from?' she cried in surprise. 'I thought you were in Scotland.' 'So I was till yesterday; in fact, I've only just arrived,' he remarked. 'You've been travelling all night, and you look as fresh and clean as if you'd just dressed for breakfast! But that's just like you. I believe you'd be miserable if you had your hair untidy or your face dirty,' she observed. 'It certainly isn't a pleasant idea. Besides, there is no need for it in this case, seeing that they provide plenty of hot water in the through sleeping-car,' remarked George, seating himself on the window-seat opposite his sister. 'All the same, I should think it would be pleasanter to travel by day. And what brought you back a week before your time?' Sarah demanded. 'I thought I should like to have a last look at the old home,' he replied dryly. 'I have more affection for it than you have, you see.' 'How did you hear about it?' inquired Sarah. 'I saw something in the papers, and wired to Uncle Howroyd, and he said I had better come back. I meant to come in any case, though, as soon as I saw the papers,' explained George. 'What did the papers say? I haven't seen one, and no one will tell me anything. Uncle Howroyd is worst of all, because, he says, he's a magistrate; but I suppose it's just because I am only a girl, since he will talk to you,' said Sarah. 'He only told me the real facts of the case, and said he thought my place was at home, if only to comfort my mother.' Here George paused a moment, and then continued, 'She seems to miss that little Miss Cunningham. She's been rather lonely these last two days.' There was a tone of reproach in his voice, and Sarah answered quickly, 'I've been too miserable and worried to talk to any one.' 'I'm afraid the pater will be in a terrific rage about it,' replied George; and, having made his reproach, did not recur to it. 'Will be in a rage? What do you mean? He has been in a rage ever since it happened. He ought to be cooling down by now; but I don't suppose he'll do that till he's got them all in prison,' replied Sarah. 'Then you don't know?' inquired George. 'Know what? Have they been tried and let off? It's too bad of Uncle Howroyd not to tell me, and I wanted so to know,' cried Sarah. 'They can't get a case against them. No one will give evidence, not even the head-gardener; he says he didn't see how the fire began, and it might have been burning weeds that caused it,' said George. Sarah laughed. 'I am glad!' she exclaimed in a tone of delight. 'I'm not. It's a very disgraceful thing that a man's property should be destroyed and no one punished,' said George, with unwonted sternness. 'But father said he'd prosecute them all for trespassing,' observed Sarah. 'You'll be glad to hear that he has been told that no magistrate would convict; it's something about a right of way,' said George. 'George, I am sorry they did it; but I do think he has provoked them, and he is hard to his workpeople,' said Sarah. 'I know; but this isn't the way to make him better. In fact, I am afraid they've enraged him so that goodness only knows what will be the end of it,' said George gloomily. 'I suppose you'd mind dreadfully if we did lose all our money?' suggested she. 'Of course I should; and so would you, whatever nonsense you may talk to the contrary!' cried George testily. 'And it's to do what I can to smooth matters down and prevent any such catastrophe that I have hurried home. Not that I can do much good,' he wound up. 'Oh George, it would be jolly to live in a little cottage, and do as one liked, and dress as one liked, and not have to sit for hours over long, stupid meals, and have to walk half a mile from your bedroom to the dining-room!' cried Sarah. 'You'd be a nice one in a cottage! You'd want the whole of it to yourself to begin with; and as for doing what you like, you would not be able to do that if you were poor any more than, or nearly as much as, if you were rich. You'd have to keep the house clean, and do the cooking, and be a drudge. How would you like that, pray?' he inquired. 'Lovely!' said Sarah with enthusiasm. George looked at her curiously, with a half-amused expression. 'I only hope you mayn't be put to the proof, but it wouldn't surprise me. However, I mustn't stop here talking; I want to see the governor. I suppose he's gone to the mills?' 'Yes; but I don't advise you to go there after him. You know he's always in a worse humour in the morning than he is in the afternoon when he's had some lunch. Wait and see him then. We might go down to the rink father had made on purpose for Horatia. I think he'd have got her the moon if she had asked for it,' observed Sarah. George laughed. 'She was very nice to mother. By the way, if you really want to skate, I'll go and tell her; she'd like to come down and watch us, and the walk would do her good.' 'All right,' agreed Sarah, as her brother went off to fetch his mother. 'It was so kind o' your father to 'ave this floor laid. 'E's good enough to people if they only take 'im the right way, only 'e mustn't be crossed; 'e never 'as been. Oh deary me! w'at 'e'll do now that they've crossed 'im in this business, I don't know. 'E says 'e'll best 'em yet, for 'e's never been bested by any man, an' doesn't mean to be,' said Mrs Clay as she walked along, clinging to her son's arm. 'I dare say he'll calm down in a day or two. It is very irritating. He can't "best" the law, as he calls it,' said George in a soothing tone. 'Well, there's no fear o' 'is goin' against the law, for 'e doesn't 'old wi' that,' said Mrs Clay. 'Then we may console ourselves that his "besting" will be legal, in which case no harm will come of it,' said George with a smile, as, having put his skates on, he gave his hand to his sister and took her for a round. Mrs Clay sat on the raised stand, and watched the two as they skated round and round, doing all sorts of figures, and performing rinking feats for her special benefit, as she was well aware. 'Beautiful, my dears--beautiful! But, oh, do be careful! Suppose you were to fall an' break your pretty noses or legs, or anythin'!' she ejaculated at intervals. The two skaters laughed heartily at this last remark. 'I believe you would care more about our noses than our legs, mother,' said Sarah, 'though they aren't half so important.' 'There's nothin' so important to a woman as good looks--except bein' good,' said Mrs Clay seriously when they stopped to rest for a few minutes beside her. After a couple of hours they went back to lunch, and found their father had just come back from the mills. He greeted George in a friendly enough manner. 'I got your telegram, my lad, thank you; and it's nice of you to hurry home to stand by your dad in his fight. For I suppose that's what you've come for, isn't it?' 'Yes, father, certainly, as I told you in my telegram. I only wish I had been there; they wouldn't have got off scot-free, the scoundrels!' replied George. 'That's the right spirit, my lad. I wish you had been there; but I've got the best of them. They didn't know Mark Clay when they tried that game on with him; but they'll know him better now,' said the mill-owner. 'What have you done, sir?' inquired George, in his calm way, which gave no sign of his secret anxiety on the subject. Mark Clay gave a chuckle, which made Sarah feel very uneasy; but only said, 'You'll see, my boy--you'll see. Just wait till the end of the week. It'll be public property then, and folks will see whether Mark Clay's an easy man to beat.' George avoided looking either at his mother or Sarah; for, truth to tell, he felt very uncomfortable. This cheerfulness on the part of his father boded no good. But he asked no more questions, and talked about the sport he had had in Scotland. 'George,' said Sarah after lunch, 'what's he up to?' 'I don't know,' replied her brother, too depressed to comment upon her mode of expression. 'Well, I believe I know. He's going to turn them all off. You see if he isn't. That's what he means by saying, "Wait till the end of the week." Oh dear! oh dear! What a business there'll be! There were at least a hundred in the park that day.' 'It's their own fault. But that would be cutting off his nose to spite his ears, wouldn't it? It would inconvenience him dreadfully to dismiss so many men at once,' objected George. George, it will be observed, knew even less of his father's business than Sarah, whose visits to her uncle Howroyd's mill and her acquaintance with the Mickleroyd family gave her some knowledge of the working of the mills; so she answered now, 'Oh, he won't care. He'll shut a workroom up and make the others work harder. You may trust him for not inconveniencing himself; it's the people who will be thrown out of employment that I am sorry for.' George did not argue the matter with her, but walked off to see his uncle, who had nothing consoling to say to him, except that he would stand by them whatever happened. 'And what do you suppose he expects to happen?' George asked his sister, rather irritably, when he returned. 'Goodness knows! All I know is that I shall be glad when this week is over,' she replied. But Sarah was wrong, for when the time came there was no gladness at Balmoral. 'You were right, Sarah,' said George, coming in and throwing himself down on a cane arm-chair in the garden, near where his sister was sitting reading. 'I generally am,' said Sarah lightly. She and her brother were great friends in spite of their abuse of each other. 'It's no joke,' he replied seriously; and Sarah, looking to see what was the matter, was struck by her brother's grave looks. He was coming out in quite a new aspect. 'What's no joke? Oh, do you mean that I was right about father's revenge?' she inquired. 'I don't know about its being a revenge; but he's turned out that crowd that looked on at the fire, and the hands have revenged themselves by striking, and Clay's Mills are "playing."' It should be explained that 'playing' in the north country means not working, and a very serious thing it is, especially in a large mill. Sarah dropped her book, and sat there, open-mouthed, looking at her brother. 'Clay's Mills "playing"! Our hands have gone out on strike?' she gasped. Her brother nodded silently. 'Of course they'll have to give in; the governor can hold out longer than they can; but it means a terrible loss,' he said at length. They were sitting there staring blankly at each other when they heard their father's voice. Both started as if they had been caught doing something wrong, and instinctively looked round to see if there was any possibility of escaping without being seen; but they saw that this was impossible, for Mr. Clay was making for them. 'Oh George! he'll be in a towering rage. You talk to him. I'm sure to say something to irritate him,' said Sarah in a hurried undertone. 'He doesn't look much upset,' observed George; and just at that minute the millionaire came within hearing, and called out a cheery 'Good-morning' to them. 'Well, my lad, I've got rid of a lot of bad material to-day,' he remarked jocosely. 'You mean the hands, father?' said George, as he rose and politely placed a chair for his father. 'Yes, I mean the hands,' said Mr Clay, mimicking, with little success it must be owned, his son's soft, drawling tones and refined accents. 'I'm sorry you found them all bad material,' George replied, without noticing this. 'I didn't say I did; but part of it was bad, and as the good wouldn't stay without the bad, out they both had to go, and bitterly they'll rue the day they did it,' declared Mr Clay. 'I hope you won't,' burst out Sarah. Her father looked as if he were going to get into one of his violent rages, but refrained, as he had done lately; and again Sarah could not help noticing the change that had taken place since Horatia's coming, though Horatia had not been able to prevent him from doing this latest act. 'I hope not; Clay's Mills sha'n't "play" for them,' he said quietly; but there was a satisfied look on his face that Sarah could not understand. It was Saturday, and all that day and all Sunday the millionaire went about looking aggressively cheerful. 'He only does it just to annoy us,' said Sarah. 'It doesn't annoy me. I'm only too glad to see one cheerful face in the midst of so many gloomy ones, though I should like to know what it means,' said George. 'So should I, for Naomi says father has a big contract on, and will lose thousands every day he stands idle,' said Sarah. George looked very serious. 'What can he be thinking of? He must be going cracky,' he opined. 'Oh no, he isn't,' said Sarah a few minutes later; 'he's done them, somehow. Look!' George looked out of the window. 'The mills are working!' he exclaimed. 'How has he done it?' CHAPTER XXII. 'FURRINERS' IN OUSEBANK! The young Clays stood and stared at each other in blank amazement. Then they looked out again at the cluster of tall chimneys which belonged to Clay's Mills, and which were belching forth great volumes of smoke as if in contemptuous defiance of those who had dared to try to stop their mighty engine. 'It is our mills!' repeated Sarah, as if she had almost disbelieved her eyes. 'Yes, there's no mistake about it; they are our mills; and yet I could have vowed I saw some of the hands pass by the park-gate this morning when I went to speak to the park-keeper. They were going away from Ousebank in search of work, I supposed.' 'I expect you are mistaken. How could the mills work without the hands? Unless they climbed down, and I'm sure they won't do that. Besides, you don't know their faces, do you?' asked Sarah. 'I guessed who they were by the way they glared at me; it made me pretty uncomfortable,' said George. Sarah looked at her brother, who was smoking a gold-tipped cigarette. 'You don't look very uncomfortable,' she observed. 'Oh George! Oh Sarah! Do you see that the mills are workin' again?' cried Mrs Clay, her lips trembling, as she came into the room where her children were. George put his arm round his mother. Even Sarah was moved to be demonstrative, and, taking her mother's hand, fondled it. 'What is it, mother? Why does that frighten you so? It is a very good thing, though I don't know how it has come about,' said George gently. Mrs Clay only shook her head. She made no reply, but stood gazing out over Ousebank, her eyes fixed on the cluster of chimneys that belonged to their mills. They had finished the firing probably, for the chimneys were not smoking so violently now, but some smoke was still coming out. Sarah seemed very thoughtful, and soon left the room to go in search of Naomi. 'Have the hands gone back, Naomi?' she asked abruptly. 'You've seen it, then? Our lads haven't, I know. I can't make it out at all. I'd give something to know what's happened; but now that none of the townspeople are allowed farther than the park-gates we hear no news at all,' replied Naomi. 'Naomi, I must know how they've managed it. I shall come down the town with you,' cried Sarah. 'Very well, miss. I'll be ready in two minutes,' said Naomi, and went off. On her way she met Mrs Clay, who looked relieved at meeting her, and remarked, 'Oh Naomi, just tell Miss Sarah that Mr Howroyd 'as 'phoned to say that none of us are to go into the town to-day.' 'None of us, ma'am? Do you mean not even me?' inquired Naomi, looking blank. 'Oh, you! No, you won't matter; they won't 'urt you,' said Mrs Clay, quite severely for her. Naomi returned slowly to Sarah's room. 'Mistress says no one is to go into the town to-day, by Mr Howroyd's orders, except me; so, please, miss, may I run down and find out what it all means?' As may be imagined, Sarah did not understand this message at all; but when Naomi had explained as well as she could, her young mistress said with decision, 'I'm coming with you, Naomi. Something dreadful is the matter. I expect they are burning up all the fuel, or doing some damage to the mill.' 'Please, Miss Sarah, don't be angry, but I daren't take you. It's as much as my place is worth, and you might get roughly handled if the lads are angry with the master,' said Naomi. 'You need not take me, but you can't prevent me from going with you. In fact, if you like you can start first. I will go alone,' persisted Sarah. Naomi would have liked to argue with Sarah; but she knew it would be a waste of time, so she went off, and instead of making herself smart, she caught up a shawl, threw it over her head, and ran down the back-stairs and out at the back-door as quick as she could. 'No, you don't!' cried a voice behind her, and a strong hand grasped her shoulder none too gently. With a little cry Naomi turned, to see herself confronted by Sykes, who exclaimed, 'Whatever are you up to, Naomi? I thought you were a mill-lass, and we don't want none of them up here.' 'So I am for the moment. Let me pass, Mr Sykes. Miss Sarah wants to know what's on in Ousebank.' 'No good, I'll warrant; and don't get mixing up with it,' was the butler's parting remark as he released her. Naomi sped across the park; but what was her surprise to see ahead of her, running as fast as she could, another mill-lass! Naomi made after her quickly, meaning, if she were a friend, to ask what was doing in Ousebank, and, if not, to demand her business at Balmoral. 'Wait a bit, lass,' she called out when she got near enough to be heard; but the girl only ran on faster. She was tall and slender, and not unlike Jane Mary, Naomi's sister; and the thought struck Naomi that if it was her sister, she was after no good. 'Jane Mary,' she shouted, 'if you don't stop I'll heave this stone at you!' The figure in front stopped at this threat, and turned. 'Miss Sarah! I beg your pardon, miss; I didn't know you,' cried Naomi in surprise. 'Now that you do know me, and see that I mean to go to Ousebank, perhaps you'll drop that stone--it might have killed me if it had fallen on my head--and let me walk beside you instead of in front.' Noami looked rather guiltily at the stone in her hand, and dropped it, saying apologetically, 'I thought it might be some one up to no good. But do you suppose they won't know you, miss?' 'You didn't,' observed Sarah with a laugh. 'Not your back; but all Ousebank knows your face, and they'll maybe turn nasty to you,' Naomi warned her. 'They'll be too busy to stare at a mill-lass, and I shall keep as well behind you as I can.' Naomi looked doubtfully at her mistress. 'Perhaps if you were to tie this handkerchief round your face, as if you'd got toothache, you'd pass better,' she suggested, handing Sarah a large white pocket-handkerchief with a coloured border. Sarah took it and wrapped it round her face, saying as she did so, 'It will make me very hot. But I'll tell you what, we'll go straight to your house, Naomi; they will know all about it there, and we sha'n't mix in the crowd.' Sarah's courage, as may be seen, was oozing away with all Naomi's warnings. But Naomi proved a Job's comforter. 'I doubt we'd better not go home, Miss Sarah. There's Jane Mary fair off her head, she's that mad with the master, and she's turned against all of you. She'd think you were a spy or something, and be nasty as like as not.' Sarah said no more, and as they had come to the town now they had enough to do to pick their way through the crowded streets. 'The mills can't be working, Naomi. Here are some of the chief hands,' she said in an undertone. 'I never thought they were. It's some mischief they're doing. Hark! did you hear what yon man said?' inquired Naomi in the same tone. 'No; at least, I could not understand, he spoke such broad Yorkshire. I thought he said something about "furriners,"' replied Sarah. 'That's what he did say. Oh miss, come into the ginnel [alley] till these men pass,' cried Naomi, pulling Sarah into the said 'ginnel,' just in time to avoid a party of young men, who were evidently very excited, and were anathematising Mark Clay. 'Miss, you'd best go to Howroyd's. There's a fine to-do to-day,' entreated Naomi. 'Perhaps I'd better,' agreed Sarah, who was not very happy in her mill-lass's get-up. At no time did Sarah like meeting the 'hands;' but in this disguise she disliked it still more. It was only a mad impulse which made her don the disguise, and she rather regretted it now that she saw the state of the town. So she willingly turned towards Howroyd's Mill. 'The master's at the telephone. He's been there most of the morning, and it's no use your coming to-day; you'd best leave your message,' said the maid, who did not recognise Sarah. Indeed, she had only opened the door a few inches, taking them to be poor girls come to ask help from the ever-ready philanthropist, William Howroyd. 'Let me in, Mary,' said Sarah, coming forward and untying her disguising handkerchief. The maid gave a little shriek, and grasping Sarah by the hand, drew her inside. 'Miss Sarah, my dear! however could you? And the town all against your father! Come forward! Pray, come forward!' Sarah very willingly went 'forward,' as they say in Yorkshire, and gave a sigh of relief as she threw off the shawl which covered her head, and sank into a chair. 'What is the matter, Mary? What has my father done now?' she demanded. 'You don't know? Oh deary me!' cried the maid, with lifted hands and much shaking of the head. 'No; tell me quick,' said Sarah abruptly. Mary looked fearfully round, as if the information was dangerous to give. 'He's got in a lot of furriners--blacklegs--to run the mills,' she said in a hoarse whisper. Sarah looked at her in horror, mingled with incredulity. 'Foreigners! How could he? And how could they do the work? Besides, where did he get them from, and when did they come? It's impossible!' she cried. 'It's true for all that,' said Mary, nodding her head. 'I must see Uncle Howroyd,' said Sarah. 'Go and tell him I'm here, Mary.' 'I told you not to leave the house,' was her uncle's remark when he came in, looking graver and sadder than Sarah had ever seen him. 'Yes, I know; but I simply had to come, and no one recognised me. See, I was a mill-lass,' said Sarah, throwing her shawl over her head to show her uncle. She looked so pretty and coaxing--for Sarah could be charming to those she loved--that her uncle smiled, and said with a sigh, 'Well, you're safe enough now you're here, and I've half a mind to send for your mother and George. Anyway, I must telephone to tell them you are here.' 'Oh no, Uncle Howroyd; I must go back for lunch,' cried Sarah, not adding what was in her mind--that her father would be angry if she were not home for lunch. 'You'll have to stay now you've come, child. There'll be no going home for you to-day, so you'll have to do with a plain dinner to-night; and Naomi had better go back and fetch what you want, unless I go and fetch them and your mother myself,' replied Mr Howroyd. 'Do you mean that you think mother isn't safe at Balmoral?' cried Sarah, starting up. 'I hope so. Do you suppose I should be here and not with her if she weren't?' demanded Mr Howroyd. 'No; it's only that I doubt if your father will be able to get home to-day, and I thought she 'd feel safer with me.' 'She has George,' said Sarah quickly, for she sometimes resented other people speaking slightingly of her brother, however much she might do so herself. 'Ah yes, she has George. Well, I'll just 'phone to her;' and he went off, only to return in a few minutes to say, 'You are right; she prefers George, and George prefers Balmoral. He says I am to tell you to stop where you are, if it's any use telling you to do anything.' 'I sha'n't obey George; but as it's Hobson's choice, I will stay with you, Uncle Howroyd; but, please, tell me, how did father manage to get foreigners to do his work?' 'That's more than any one but himself knows; but he smuggled them into the mills yesterday, and they slept there all night, it seems; but who they are, or where they came from, or how they are getting on, no one knows,' replied Mr Howroyd. 'They can't stop in there always, and the people will kill them when they come out,' said Sarah. 'Your father will protect them, and so shall I, if it comes to that; but it's a bad business, a very bad business; and what will be the end of it, who can tell?' 'I know they'll burn down the mills--that's what always happens--and we shall be ruined,' said Sarah. 'That won't ruin you, because they are insured, and let us hope it won't come to that. Besides, the mills are so well guarded that they can't get near them,' said Mr Howroyd in a tone which showed that he had thought of this danger himself. Mr Howroyd was now called away, and Sarah was left to her own thoughts, which were not pleasant ones. Somehow, when it came to the point, the thought of her father being burnt in his mill or ruined by his workpeople's spite was not so lovely, and she was relieved when Naomi reappeared with a bundle in her arms. 'I didn't dare to bring a portmanteau, miss, or even your dressing-bag. I was afraid with all these folk about ready for any mischief, so I've just brought a few necessities, as the mistress says; and she sends her love, and says she's glad you are safe with your uncle, though she wishes you'd stayed with her.' 'I wish I had, Naomi. Tell her I would never have come if I had known I should not be able to get back, and that if she will tell Uncle Howroyd I may, I'll come home at once,' said Sarah. Trouble was doing Sarah good, and her affectionate message did her mother good; though she hurried off to the telephone to tell Mr Howroyd that she forbade Sarah to attempt to come home, and to inform him that Mr Clay was stopping at the mill too. And so the weary, dreary day wore on, and the excitement in the streets grew. After nightfall the older men held indignation meetings in public, where they had huge audiences of sympathisers, the entire population being on their side, as a matter of fact. 'Foreigners in Ousebank! We've never had such a thing before, and we don't want it now,' they all agreed. As for the younger men, they held meetings too; but their meetings were held within closed doors, and what was said at them was not divulged. 'They're brewing mischief they young uns, sir,' said Luke Mickleroyd to Mr Howroyd when he came in for a few minutes before he took his watch for the night. 'I'm afraid they are. We must only pray and trust that they may not carry it out,' replied Mr Howroyd. 'Ay, sir, that's all we can do. I shall keep a sharper lookout to-night than I've ever done, and, please God, they'll be kept from doing harm to others and bringing sorrow on themselves,' said the good and pious old watchman. CHAPTER XXIII. OUTWITTED. All that night Sarah lay and tossed and turned, or fell into fitful slumbers, in which she had hideous dreams of the mills being burnt down, and her father with them. After a very vivid one, in which she saw the mill-owner standing, a tall, burly figure, on the top of one of the chimneys, with flames all round him which in a minute must devour him, she woke with a muffled cry, to find Naomi standing beside her with a frightened face. 'What has happened, Naomi? Tell me the worst at once,' cried Sarah. 'There's nought to tell, good or bad, so far as I know. But are you ill, Miss Sarah?' inquired the maid. 'No; I'm quite well. But the mills, and my father--are you sure that--that he's alive and well?' asked Sarah. 'So far as I know he is, and so are the mills; but no one has seen the master since yesterday, for he never came home last night. He sent to say he should stop in the mills all night,' said Naomi. 'Naomi, I must get up. Quick, get me some hot water,' cried Sarah, jumping up as she spoke. 'It's only six o'clock, miss. I shouldn't have come in and wakened you, only I thought I heard you call. You'd best go to sleep again; you're upset with all these doings, and no wonder.' 'I can't sleep, and I want to go to the mills,' declared Sarah. But Naomi exclaimed in alarm, 'Impossible, miss! Don't you think of doing such a thing! Mr Howroyd won't hear of it, I know. Besides'--here Naomi paused, and added in a rather embarrassed manner, 'you can't, Miss Sarah.' 'I can't go to the mills--our own mills, Naomi? What do you mean? You are hiding something from me. Are they burnt down or damaged in any way?' asked Sarah anxiously. 'Not so far as I know, miss; but you can't go into them for all that. No one can,' repeated Naomi. 'Naomi, have you seen the mills to-day? Are the chimneys all standing just as usual?' demanded Sarah. 'Why, yes, to be sure they are, and smoking; and big fires they are making, too, for I saw red sparks coming out of one. Why, what's the matter, Miss Sarah? You must be getting downright nervous,' observed Naomi, for Sarah had started and given a little shiver at this last remark. 'It's nothing, only I had a horrid dream about one of the chimneys; but if you say you saw them standing, with nothing unusual about them, it's all right.' And Sarah gave a half-nervous laugh as she thought of the 'unusual' appearance they had in her dream. 'All the same, I'm going to get up; it's no use lying in bed when you can't sleep,' she continued. While she was dressing, Sarah's thoughts recurred to the conversation she had just had with Naomi, and she suddenly remembered that the girl had never explained her mysterious statement that no one could go into Clay's Mills. So she rang her bell, and telling Naomi to do her hair, sat down on a chair while this process went on, and came to the point at once. 'I suppose father has barricaded himself and the men into the mills; but I could have got through all right,' she observed. 'The master has barricaded himself in; but the pickets set by the hands to guard the mills have barricaded every one else out, and they wouldn't let you pass if it was ever so, not for life or death, for it's been tried,' replied Naomi. 'How do you mean for life or death?' asked Sarah, bewildered at this extraordinary statement. 'What I say. One of those foreigners was taken ill and wanted a doctor, and no doctor would they let through, not even Mr Howroyd; and if any one could get round Ousebank folk it would be Mr William, for he's fair worshipped by them all for his goodness.' 'What's going to be the end of it all?' cried Sarah. 'I couldn't say, Miss Sarah. I don't know what's going on, nor I don't want to. It's safest not, and so mother thinks, for she won't have a word about it in our house; and Jane Mary has to hold her tongue there, though they do say she talks like a man at the young fellows' meetings, and is as bad or worse than they, egging them on. Not that I know anything about it,' Naomi hastened to add. 'There are none so ignorant as those that won't know, eh, Naomi?' said Sarah slyly. 'Perhaps not, miss,' agreed Naomi, as she shut her lips tightly, and was not to be induced to say any more. Meanwhile the night at Balmoral had not been much more restful. In the morning George said to his mother in a decided tone which she had not heard him ever use, 'I am going into Ousebank, mother. I shall go and see Uncle Howroyd, and if he approves I shall try and see my father.' 'Oh my dear, my dear, don't you do it! I couldn't stay here alone--I couldn't really!' she cried, wringing her hands. 'Then come with me. We'll motor down, and at best they can only stop the car and make us turn back; but I don't think they will. Come, mother, that's not a bad idea; it will make a change, and bring you nearer to the governor, and you will see Sarah and give her a scolding for her disobedience.' 'I don't feel like scolding any one. I shall only be too thankful to have her safe by me; though who knows whether any of us are safe anywhere?' said poor little Mrs Clay, whom the events of the past week had frightened out of her wits. 'I think you exaggerate the danger. They may try to fire the house--in fact, I rather expect they will, only I fancy the police are guarding us too well for them to succeed; but as for touching us or attempting our lives, I don't for a moment believe they would do any such thing--not Ousebank men,' said George, composed as ever. 'Oh, but it isn't only Ousebank men; there are some agitators come down,' cried his mother. 'They'll not put their heads in a noose, catch them, however much they may incite other fellows to. Don't you worry, mother; trust to me. I'll take you safe to Uncle Howroyd's,' said George. Mrs Clay meekly did as she was bid. At bottom she was rather pleased to be going near her husband and insubordinate daughter, and by the time she got into the motor her fears were calmed. Sarah was looking out of the mill-house window when she saw the car drive up to the big gates of the little front-garden. 'Mother, oh, I am glad to see you!' she cried, as she kissed her mother affectionately. Mrs Clay's pale cheeks grew pink with pleasure at the affectionate greeting, and she clasped her tall daughter in her arms. 'My dearie, I am glad to have you again!' she exclaimed. 'You ought to scold her well, Polly, instead of petting her; but it is always the way with the prodigal--he has the fatted calf,' said Mr Howroyd. 'George says he's going to see his father,' said Mrs Clay. 'If the pickets will let him,' observed his uncle. 'Exactly so,' said George. 'You can't possibly,' cried Sarah; 'they won't even let Uncle Howroyd through, so they certainly won't let you.' 'There's no harm in trying, anyway. I half-thought they might be unpleasant when we passed through the town; but they only scowled a bit,' observed George, as, having made his mother comfortable in an easy-chair, he kissed her and took up his hat to go. 'You are really going, dear?' said his mother. Sarah expected her to protest with tears; but she did nothing of the kind. 'I believe,' mused Sarah, 'that she cares more for father's safety than she does for George's!' And this idea was so surprising to her that she, too, let her brother go without a protest. Not that arguments would have been any good, as his sister knew. 'That boy has more grit in him than I suspected,' said George's uncle, as he watched his nephew walk with his deliberate gait out at the gate towards the notorious mills. 'I'd have given something to go with him to see what will happen when they turn him back. George is awfully obstinate, uncle; I dare say he'll stand there and argue with them till they let him through because they're sick of him and his polite requests to be allowed to go into his own father's mills,' observed Sarah. Mr Howroyd laughed, though it was not his usual cheery laugh. 'He'll be a cleverer fellow than I take him for if he gets past that picket, will George.' However, half-an-hour later the telephone rang. 'It's from Clay's Mills,' Mr Howroyd informed them, 'and they're calling for you, Polly.' 'Oh dear, 'ave they 'urt 'im?' Mrs Clay cried, and flew to the telephone. 'It's George,' she announced in accents of surprise; 'an' 'e says father is quite well, an' very glad to see 'im, an' 'e shall stay a bit.' 'How did he get in? Ask him that, mother,' demanded Sarah, who was naturally curious on the point. ''E says 'e walked in,' repeated her mother. Sarah went to the receiver herself. 'Nonsense; he couldn't.--How did you get past the pickets, George?' 'Walked past, I tell you. They argued a little, but I told them I was on their business as well as my own, and they let me walk in. They're awfully good fellows, really, and you all exaggerate their ferocity.' Suddenly Naomi came running into the room. Howroyd's house was not so ceremoniously ordered as Balmoral; but still Sarah was a little surprised at Naomi, till she said, 'There's a balloon-ship up above Ousebank, and you never saw such a funny thing in your life. Come and see it, Miss Sarah.' 'I suppose she means an air-ship,' said Sarah; but as she had nothing else to do, and time was hanging heavy on her hands, she followed Naomi into the garden. 'Yes, it is an air-ship,' she said. 'I wonder what it is doing up here.' 'It's going towards the hill--over Balmoral. We shall see where it goes if we go up to the roof, Miss Sarah,' said Naomi, who had never seen such a thing before, and was all agog with curiosity. To please her, Sarah went up to the roof lookout. 'Yes, it is over Balmoral, and they seem to be descending and doing manoeuvres over the house. I suppose they are going to look at it closer; but they won't be allowed in to-day, for Sykes is suspicious of a bird even. We really might be in Russia, to judge by the state of siege we are in,' she observed. She had still more reason to make the comparison a little later, for as the two stood and watched and commented on the movements of the air-ship something dropped from it. 'What was that, Miss Sarah?' asked Naomi. 'Fire! They've outwitted us after all!' said Sarah, and she fled downstairs as hard as she could.--Uncle Howroyd, ring up the fire-brigade. They've set fire to Balmoral!' she panted. [Illustration: As the two stood and watched the air-ship something dropped from it.] 'How do you know? Who told you so?' he inquired, evidently unbelieving, as well he might, for there was a posse of police guarding the house and grounds. 'We have seen it. They dropped fire out of an air-ship. Do send for the brigade!' cried Sarah, stamping her foot with rage at the delay. For a moment her uncle stared at her in stupefaction; then he clapped his hand to his forehead. 'It's that agitator scoundrel that's put them up to it!' he cried; and he rang up the brigade, only to drop the receiver with a gesture of despair. 'They've had a call some miles off,' he cried. 'Uncle Howroyd, we must do something.' 'Yes,' he agreed. 'Wait a bit.' Presently Sarah heard the mill-bell ring, and saw her uncle standing bareheaded at a window looking on his yard, in which the hands summoned from their work were gathered. 'My friends of many years, I have to ask a favour of you. My brother's house is burning, and the brigade is away. Who'll help to save a Yorkshireman's home, however much he has blundered, for a Yorkshire family?' 'We will, Mr William,' cried a hundred voices, and five minutes later there was not a man to be seen in the yard; but Sarah and Naomi, who had climbed to the lookout, saw them hurrying up the road to the hill on which Balmoral stood. Flames were coming out of the top windows. 'They may save the lower part,' said Sarah. 'The marble staircase won't burn, will it?' asked Naomi. Sarah laughed hysterically. 'No; but it won't be much use alone,' she remarked. 'It's going to be a big fire,' observed Naomi in an awe-struck voice. 'I'm glad my father is not there,' was Sarah's apparently irrelevant reply. Naomi was surprised for the second time that day at Sarah's solicitude for her father. She did not know that her dream had something to do with it. Besides, Mr Mark Clay, boastful and blustering, was a different man from Mark Clay a prisoner in his own mills, with his beautiful house burning. 'Oh miss, the royal suite is on fire! See!' cried Naomi, as she saw the flames come out of that wing. Sarah said nothing; but her lips tightened as she saw the wanton destruction of her home, and, now that she came to think of it, there were countless treasured possessions of her own there that she wanted to save. 'I wonder if I ought to tell mother?' she asked herself. But she need not have troubled. Mrs Clay knew, and was talking about it in melancholy accents to Mary, her brother-in-law's maid. 'It's no more than I expected, Mary; an' the mills will go next,' she said. 'Let's hope not, ma'am; and now that Mr William's gone up something may be done to save it,' said Mary, who had great faith in her master. But Mrs Clay had no faith in any human help; and when Sarah came down she found her mother dry-eyed and resigned. 'Yes, my dear, I know; it's the Lord's will. The Lord gave, an' the Lord taketh away. I began poor, an' I suppose it's 'is will I should end so. Per'aps I lay too great store by riches.' 'Never mind, mother, I'll work for you, and you shall never want, even if I have to scrub floors to support you,' said Sarah. Mrs Clay shook her head; but the tears came now and relieved her. 'It's for you I care most, dearie. Your 'ands were never made to scrub floors or do any menial work,' she declared, as she stroked Sarah's soft, white hands. 'I don't believe anybody's hands were made to be idle, and I mean to use mine, you'll see,' she said. 'Per'aps it's not so bad as we think. We must 'ave patience,' said Mrs Clay. 'Go an' see 'ow it's goin', my dear.' CHAPTER XXIV. GOOD-BYE TO BALMORAL. It is always the unexpected which happens. Here was Mrs Clay taking the destruction of her cherished possessions quite calmly, and only praying silently, as Sarah saw, that her husband and son might be saved. And here was Sarah getting angrier and angrier as she watched the fire spreading, apparently unchecked, and swallowing up not only the costly treasures for which she did not much care, but her own personal treasures, for which she cared more than she expected. Naomi made matters worse by her lamentations. 'To think of all the beautiful carpets and curtains ruined; and, oh, Miss Sarah! all your dresses, and that picture in your boudoir that you are so fond of, some Italian view or something! Oh dear! oh dear! the more I think of it the worse it seems. It's wicked, is this morning's work!' 'It's a fine morning for a fire--the sun shining, and just a nice breeze blowing to fan the flames,' observed Sarah sarcastically. But Naomi did not perceive the sarcasm; and after a wondering and rather reproachful glance at her young mistress, she remarked, 'It's what I call a bad morning; but, then, I suppose you're glad, because you want to be poor; though how you can stand there quiet-like, and see all your poor ma and pa's things burnt up, let alone everything you can call your own, passes me--it does.' A smile flitted over Sarah's face as she thought how far out Naomi was in her judgment; but it passed speedily as she saw a huge tongue of flame dart up and blaze high above the trees. 'It's the garage! The petrol has taken fire!' said Naomi. 'Whatever could they have been thinking of to leave it there? Surely they've never left those beautiful cars to burn themselves up?' 'They don't seem to have done anything to stop the fire. If Uncle Howroyd hadn't been there himself, and if they had not been his hands, I should have said they had helped it, like the men the other day,' remarked Sarah. 'No fear of that. Mr William's men will stand by him and do what he says, for his sake. It's not been their fault that Barmoral's burnt to the ground, I'll lay,' declared Naomi with vehemence. 'No, I'm sure of that,' said Sarah, who felt a pang which surprised her at the words, 'Barmoral's burnt to the ground.' Not that they were quite true, for Balmoral was still burning furiously; but they soon would be. Suddenly Naomi made a terrible suggestion. 'Miss Sarah, suppose anybody is in the house?' she cried. Sarah turned on her quite angrily. 'Who should there be in the house? Of course there's no one in it. The fire began at the top, and it's not likely any one would stay up there to be burnt,' she cried, for this thought had never struck her; she had taken it for granted that the servants would have escaped at once. After the first fright she added more calmly, 'Of course they are safe. Balmoral is only three stories high, and the top story is only attics and storerooms and servants' bedrooms, and they are not likely to be up there at this time of the day. But, pray, don't go suggesting horrors of that kind to mother, or you will make her quite ill.' 'I'm sorry if I upset you, and I know you've a feeling heart, though you don't care about the house burning, so I'll say no more and hope for the best,' said Naomi. Sarah felt as if she could shake her for her determined pessimism. However, she said nothing, but stood and watched the flames in silence till they seemed to be dying down a little, and then she reluctantly turned from the absorbing sight, and went downstairs to give her mother the news. 'I think they've got the flames under, mother,' she said; but Mrs Clay took little notice. 'Mother, don't you hear? They've got the flames under at last.' 'Yes, my dear, I 'ear, an' I'm glad of it; but it's your father I'm thinkin' about. I do 'ope an' pray 'e's safe,' she replied. 'Why shouldn't he be? The mills are all right,' said Sarah. 'Yes; but I don't know if 'e's there. I keep ringin' 'im up, an' there's no answer, so 'e's not in the mills, for they always call 'im for the telephone.' 'The old hands would; but, you see, everything is different now. Let me try,' observed Sarah, taking up the receiver, and ringing, at intervals, for some minutes. 'They are all looking at the fire from the lookout,' she remarked at length, as she put the receiver down. Mrs Clay shook her head. 'It isn't like your father to stand an' watch 'is property burn; 'e'll be up an' doin' somew'ere,' she declared. 'Would you like me to go and see if he is still there?' suggested Sarah. Not that she supposed for a minute that her mother would allow her to go, for she objected to her walking through Ousebank on ordinary occasions when the mill-hands were out, so she was still less likely to let her go to-day when the town was in a state of excitement never known before, and, to crown all, their mills in a state of siege and their family so unpopular. But Sarah was mistaken. Her mother said gratefully, 'If you would just run to the mills, dear, I should be very glad. Even if they won't let you through, they'll tell you, or some one will tell you, if your father 'as come out.' Sarah was just starting for her room to fetch her hat, when she remembered that she had no hat. She had come down with a shawl over her head like the mill-lasses, for whom she hoped to be mistaken; and Naomi had not thought of bringing one with the other necessaries which she had made into a bundle. 'And I don't suppose you've got a hat to your name now, Miss Sarah,' the maid observed gloomily when consulted on the subject. Sarah gave her hair a brush, and remarked lightly, 'Well I must go bareheaded. Perhaps it will please those people to see the state of poverty they have reduced me to.' And off she started, regardless of Naomi's protests and offers to go and get a hat somewhere. 'Eh, but she's a proud lass, is yon!' said more than one whom she passed, her head high and her eyes looking straight ahead of her, not seeing or noticing the groups through which she passed. 'Ay, she counts us the dust under her feet,' said another, and the group agreed; while one of the number observed, 'Perhaps she'll think differently when she sees her property laid in the dust;' and a younger man laughed, though the others said, 'Nay, 'tis nought to laugh at. Clays are no friends of mine; but I was always agin that. 'Tis a wicked deed they've done up at Balmoral, and tricks with air-ships isn't a Yorkshire way of fighting, though 'tis a dirty trick he've played us with his foreigners.' But Sarah had not the satisfaction of hearing any of the remarks disapproving of the fire, and her heart swelled as she thought that all Ousebank was glad of their loss; for no one--not even an acquaintance, herself the wife of a mill-owner--stopped her to condole with her. Sarah had no idea that it was her own repellent bearing that prevented them, nor that this same lady went home and said to her family, with tears in her eyes, 'It made my heart ache to see her walking alone through all those crowds, with her head bare and face so grave. I'd have been glad to take her hands and say how sorry I was; but she wouldn't look at me, but passed me as if I was quite beneath her. I didn't dare to stop her.' Nor, apparently, did the pickets dare--or care--to do so either, as Sarah came straight up to the chief gate and knocked at it. A cautious face appeared at the other side of a little window, and a moment afterwards the little postern-gate was opened wide enough to let her slip in, and speedily shut to with a clang by two men who were posted there in case any one should attempt to enter with her. 'Thank you. Will you take me to my father?' she said to the men, whom she recognised as old hands. 'He's in the dye-house, miss. They 're making a beautiful new colour, and the master's rare and pleased about it,' replied the elder man. 'But the fire? Doesn't he mind about the fire?' inquired the girl. The man looked at her, not understanding. The fire's all right, miss; they made it a bit too hot this morning, but it's all right now. We've got proper stokers and all,' he assured her, evidently thinking she was afraid the engine was not being properly attended to, and alluded to that. It flashed across Sarah that they did not know of the fire at Balmoral. Then her father did not know, and she would have to tell him! She went very slowly towards the dye-house. This possibility had never struck her. Even though they could not see Balmoral from Clay's Mills, there was the telephone, and the pickets outside; but then Sarah remembered that for some reason or other the telephone had been abandoned, and naturally the pickets would not for obvious reasons choose to give the news. She found her father and George in the dye-room as she had been told, the former jubilant over the new shade, and George standing by apparently as interested as his father. 'What! Sally? There's a brave girl to come and see the prisoners! But it's an ill wind that blows no one any good. Here's George showing himself quite a business man, with the makings of a fine wool-merchant in him, and I never knew it. So that's all the strike has done--got them two Clays to fight instead of one,' cried Mr Clay, and Sarah was struck by her father's pride in George. She did not answer, but stood looking appealingly at her brother. Mr Clay misunderstood her, and said, 'You don't like the idea of a merchant-brother; but you'll have to get used to it. I don't mean to let him go back to college. He knows a lot of useful stuff, and these are ticklish times.' George understood his sister better, and, answering her look, said, 'What's the matter, Sarah? Is mother ill?' Mr Clay looked anxiously at her. In his egotism he had not thought of his timid little wife, whom all this might well have made ill; but that he was not devoid of regard for her Sarah saw by his face. 'No, it's not mother; it's Balmoral.--Father, I thought you knew,' she stammered. 'Knew what? Speak out, girl. What's happened there. Nothing short of an earthquake could harm it; it's well enough protected.' 'It's burning, father,' Sarah blurted out. The mill-owner looked at her unbelievingly, and laughed his boisterous laugh. 'Burning! Nonsense! They couldn't get near it to damage it. Why, there's fifty police up there guarding it, and a pretty penny it's costing me--a pretty penny all this.' Sarah looked pitifully at her father. 'They dropped fire from an air-ship, father; but Uncle Howroyd and all his hands have gone up there to try to put it out,' she hastened to add, for her father's face terrified her. He took no more notice of her; but turning to George, on whom he seemed all of a sudden to rely, he said,' What does the girl mean with her cock-and-bull story of an air-ship setting my house on fire? Why should an air-ship'----He paused. 'How could they get an air-ship?' he continued. 'Perhaps I'd better go to the lookout, father,' said George.--Come, Sarah;' and he took his sister by the hand and hastened along the dye-yard towards the spiral staircase to the lookout. The mill-owner let them go without a word, not attempting to follow them, for it was an arduous climb to the lookout, and the mill-owner was a stout and heavy-built man, and had not been up there for years. He stood for a little as if puzzled, then went to the entrance-yard to the porter, and asked, 'Have you seen or heard aught of any fire at Balmoral?' 'No, sir; not except what Miss Clay said,' he replied. Meanwhile Sarah was breathlessly hastening up the stairs, and telling George all that had happened. 'Why didn't you tell us before?' he demanded. 'Because we never imagined you didn't know. I thought every one in the town knew, and mother did try to telephone to you, but she couldn't make any one hear,' explained Sarah. George groaned, but made no more reproaches, and soon they came out on the lookout. The flames were still raging, though not so high. Evidently the petrol had burnt out; but not so the fire, alas! 'It will burn to the ground,' George remarked, as he stood there with glasses to his eyes. 'They are trying to save the west wing, but I doubt if they will.' 'Oh George, let me look! I never thought of using glasses! Why, you can see the people running about with buckets!' cried Sarah. 'It feels like a bit of myself gone; but you don't care, of course,' he remarked, as he reluctantly tore himself away to go down and tell his father. 'I do care. And, oh George, I'm awfully sorry for father! What will he do or say?' cried his sister. 'I don't know. But how did mother take it?' he asked. 'She said it was God's will. Somehow, I don't think it surprised her; she seemed to expect a disaster as soon as she knew about these foreigners being brought in, and I don't think she'll care if only father is safe,' said Sarah. 'Poor mother; she doesn't think of herself at all. Still, I know the place is heavily insured. Father is too cautious a man not to see to that, though he'll never get those pictures or their value back again, nor his plate. I must try to break it to him; but it isn't a thing one can break,' said George. 'Well, boy, what's this story? Any truth in it? More trees burnt?' asked Mr Clay. 'They've done worse this time, father; they have managed to set fire to the house. But Uncle Howroyd is working for all he's worth, and so are his men, so let us hope they'll save the valuables,' said George. He spoke so calmly and collectedly that his father failed to grasp the extent of the calamity. 'I don't rightly understand. Is it the house that's on fire, and which part?' he demanded. Evidently he only imagined that it was some small outbreak which would soon be got under. George hesitated. 'It's got a good hold of the house, sir--the fire, I mean; but we can build it up again.' 'Build it up again? Build up Balmoral again? You don't know what you're talking about. There's a million sunk in that house,' he cried angrily, and yet he did not believe them till he saw George's pitying look. 'It's not really bad, my lad?' he asked. 'Yes, father, it's pretty bad; but the house is insured.' The millionaire gave a yell of rage. 'If they've done it, by heaven they shall pay for it!' And he made a dash for the front entrance. CHAPTER XXV. 'A BAD BUSINESS.' After a moment of consternation, Sarah and her brother followed their father, and arrived at the front gate in time to see him dash out and down the street before the pickets on duty at the gate had seen what was happening, or had time to prevent his escape, if, indeed, they had wished to do so. Perhaps they felt that to prevent a man from going to rescue his property from destruction would be exceeding their duty, or perhaps they thought they had gone far enough, for they made no attempt to stop him, and looked after him with not unfriendly faces. 'He may run, but he'll not run so fast as the flames,' said one to the others. 'And you're a set of blackguards for what you've done, and I'd sooner be a blackleg any day than a blackguard,' shouted the watch inside the gate to the watch outside. 'I'd nought to do with it, Ben; I'm only obeying orders standing here, and there's no denying that the master's driven the lads to it. They've hot blood, and he's roused it,' replied the picket, who did not seem to resent the plain speaking of his former mate. 'No one is ever driven to setting other folk's homes on fire,' said the watchman bluntly. 'George, what do you think he's going to do?' demanded Sarah of her brother, who was standing, cigarette in mouth, listening with apparent indifference to the colloquy of the past and present hands. 'Gone to see what they are doing at Balmoral,' observed George. 'Hadn't you better go after him?' suggested his sister. 'I don't think so. Strikes me I'd better keep a lookout for possible air-ships dropping down upon us here. They'll get a warm reception if they do,' said George with significance. 'I wonder where they got the air-ships from. Naomi says it's the London agitators who have done it all,' said Sarah. 'Very likely. Well, it's a miserable business. I don't care for the men we've got here overmuch, though they do their work very well, and it was very clever of the governor to have got them here and at work so promptly,' said George. 'A good deal too clever! And see what the result has been! He tricked the hands, and the hands have tricked him, and he has come worst off so far,' retorted Sarah. 'I don't know about that! There's a proverb which says, "He laughs longest who laughs last," and we've yet to see who that will be. So far, the men have burnt Balmoral, but that loss is insured against; but they have not bettered their position, and they are losing money, whereas the governor is making money by the change.' 'One would think it was you who didn't care now; you stand there smoking, as if nothing were the matter,' remarked Sarah. 'If you will tell me what good I should do by getting excited I might try it; but I don't know of anything to be gained by making a row. You'd better go back to mother, and tell her the mills are all right, that father's gone to see what he can do at Balmoral, and that I shall stop here until further notice. Try to put a good face on it, and cheer her up, Sarah. She isn't fit for all this worry,' urged her brother. 'I'll do my best,' replied Sarah; and she went back to her mother, and left her brother in charge of the mills and of the men. The two porters at the gate were his devoted servants, and talked to him with the freedom of old workmen, as they deplored the present condition of things. 'And the sooner we see the backs of those chaps the better,' said one. 'They are quick enough, but they're not thorough; and they'd chuck it up to-morrow if it weren't for the high wages they're bribed with.' 'I shouldn't have thought that would pay,' observed George in his usual lazy, indifferent way. The man gave him a look, and said in a significant tone, 'It doesn't--at least, it wouldn't in the long-run; but it pays better than letting the mills "play," especially with this big contract on for blankets for abroad. The hands knew that, and that's why they struck. They thought the master'd have been obliged to give way to get it done. And so did I, and so he would have if he hadn't got those chaps by a miracle.' 'How did he get them?' inquired George, asking the same question that every one else was asking. The man laughed, with an evident appreciation of the smartness that could accomplish what looked like a miracle, although he shook his head disapprovingly. 'He telephoned to somewhere abroad--I don't rightly know if 'twas France or Belgium; in fact, he've been 'phoning for days; and it seems there was a wool-mill shut down, and these men out of employ, and he had the whole lot brought over and put in here by midnight on Sunday. They came in wagon-loads from a station ten miles off, and not a soul knew. Oh, he managed it well, did the master! But they laugh best who laugh last, as the saying is.' George took a whiff of his cigarette. 'So you think the men will laugh the last? Do you think they'll burn the mills down?' he inquired. 'No, sir; I don't think they could if they would, and I doubt if they would. 'Twould be wholesale murder, with all those hands inside. Besides, there'll be some arrests for this other job, and that'll cool their blood. No; what I 'm afraid of is those men in here,' said the old man, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder towards the mill-buildings. 'What do you think they'll do?' George demanded. 'They'll go. They're getting tired of the confinement and the dullness. Besides, they are frightened. Goodness knows how they've got to know anything of what's going on outside, but they have; and if they hear of this fire it'll be all up with us. They'll go, and a sack of gold won't keep them.' George looked very thoughtful. 'Where do they sleep, and what do they eat?' he asked. 'Oh, they sleep on blankets and wool in the barns. And they've got their own cooks, and there's plenty of food of the kind they like,' replied the man, with true British contempt for foreign messes. 'What food have they, and how did you get enough in for them?' George asked. 'That's the master again! There's sacks and sacks of flour and coffee and beans, and things that we thought were bales of wool, and tins of milk; and they eat a lot of them things, and very little meat, except bacon. But they're crying out for vegetables. Mark my words, Mr George, they won't be here much longer, double pay or not.' George turned and left him, and went for a walk through the mills. The men greeted him rather surlily, from which he opined that they could not be French, though they spoke that language; but when he put any questions they declined to answer, saying that their orders were not to give any information to any one. However, they seemed to be working well, and so George remarked to their manager. 'Yes, sir; they are doing time-work. They will get a bonus each if the work they are doing is finished by a certain time,' replied the man. 'I see,' said George, and then he looked thoughtful again. They would finish the contract and go. He walked back to the office, from whence he meant to go to the lookout again to see how the fire was going, but was in time to hear the ring of the telephone. 'Halloa!' he said. 'It's Sarah! Do you see what's happened at Balmoral?' she inquired. 'No; but I imagine it's burning or burnt to the ground,' said George in a resigned tone. 'The fire's out; at least, there's only smoke to be seen. But everybody's come away, and I am afraid some one is hurt, for I saw through the glasses that they were crowding round something, and then the men made a stretcher, and they are bringing whoever it is to Ousebank,' said Sarah. 'God forbid that any life has been lost! Let me know what it is as soon as you know. I can't leave the mills till father comes back, and I don't know that I shall even then. I think I'm wanted here.' 'I wish I could be there with you!' exclaimed Sarah. 'You've got to stay where you are and look after mother. How is she?' inquired George. 'She's all right. At least, she sits quite quietly, and says it's God's will, and that she doesn't care as long as she has all of us. But it's very dull here. Women always do have the dull work to do in this world,' observed Sarah. 'They think they have; but I don't think you'd be much better off here; it's not particularly lively being with a lot of sulky foreigners who won't talk to you.' 'How can they if they're foreigners?' protested Sarah. 'They can talk French all right, some of them; but they won't answer me in their own language,' said George. 'I dare say they don't understand your French,' said Sarah. But George declined to notice this insulting remark. Sarah was evidently called away from the telephone, and ring as he might he could get no answer from her or any one at Howroyd's. He tried to get on to the office, but was told that Howroyd's was 'playing,' as they say in the north country, because the most of the men were at Balmoral. So there was nothing for it but to possess his soul in patience, and watch the men at their dinner-hour eating bacon and haricot beans, and a kind of soup made out of George could not imagine what, seeing that the cooks had no vegetables to make it with, and drinking wine and water. 'They seem to enjoy their food,' George remarked to Ben the gate-keeper. 'Yes, sir, they do; and a little seems to go a long way with them. But listen to them now that their tongues are loosened! Goodness only knows what they are saying, but they seem excited enough. I'd give a good deal to understand their jargon,' replied Ben. 'It's Flemish, I fancy. Anyway, I can't understand it. I wish I had some one to send to Howroyd's. I suppose it wouldn't be safe for one of you to leave the gate?' said George. 'Safe or not, I daren't risk it. The master's orders were not to leave it without his permission, if I wanted to stay with him. But I shouldn't worry, sir; ill news travels apace, and if there were anything wrong you'd have heard it soon enough,' said the man. He had scarcely uttered these words when their attention was attracted by a knocking at the entrance-gate; and upon Ben going to the window to look out, he saw the picket on duty making signs to him to come to the gate and speak. The man looked so disturbed, and almost ashamed, that Ben knew there was nothing to fear from him except bad news, and that he felt pretty sure he should soon hear. 'Now, what villainy have you been up to?' he asked, as he opened the gate half-way. 'It's no use making bad blood by hard words, Ben. I told you before I've had nought to do with the happenings at Balmoral. We're only fighting for our rights and our livelihood, that you're trying to take away from us; but there, I didn't come to say all that, but to see the young master, if he 'll let me have a word with him,' said the man. 'I shouldn't think he'd have anything to say to you, and I shouldn't have thought you'd the face to speak to him when you're trying to ruin him; and as for me taking your livelihood away, you've done it yourselves. Dogs in the manger, I call you; won't work yourselves, and won't let any one else.' 'Have done, Ben, and let me see Mr George. I've got a message that won't wait,' said the other. The gate-keeper went to find George, who was again at the telephone in a vain effort to communicate with his sister, with whom he felt very irritated for leaving him without news for so long. 'Wants to see me? One of the pickets, you say? Does he want to come to terms, do you think?' inquired George. 'I doubt it, sir; but you'd better see him. He says his message won't wait.' Thus entreated, George left the telephone and went to the gate. 'Excuse me, Mr George,' said the man, standing bareheaded to speak to him, which even George knew was a token of great respect--was it also sympathy?--coming from a mill-hand of his father's. 'Excuse me, but we think you're wanted at Howroyd's. There's been an accident'---- 'An accident? To whom?' interrupted George. 'To the--to Mr Clay, sir,' said the man. George was just hurrying off, but stopped for a moment. Suppose this were a ruse to get him out of the mills. He half-thought of trying to get a message to Sarah before leaving the mills. But the man, seeming to guess his thoughts, said, 'We sha'n't interfere with the mills, sir, if you'll take my word for it.' 'You can scarcely expect me to feel very secure, can you?' said George quietly. 'No, sir, I know; but I swear to you I'll fetch you if you're wanted here. But do you go to Howroyd's at once,' said the man so earnestly that George hesitated no longer. Touching his hat as he passed them, he walked rapidly to his uncle's, where he found all in confusion. The first person he saw was Sarah. 'What is the matter with father?' he asked. 'I don't know,' said Sarah. 'Don't know! Where is he?' asked George. 'In the sitting-room; that's why I couldn't get at the telephone. They disconnected it to stop the noise. The doctors are with him,' replied Sarah, who looked white and shaken. 'How did it happen? Did he get burnt? Is there no one to tell me anything?' asked George in despair. 'I don't know. He was brought on a stretcher, and Uncle Howroyd came with him, and he and mother have gone into that room. I don't know any more than you; but, oh, I am glad you've come!' cried Sarah, bursting into tears. 'Come and sit down,' said George, putting his arm round his sister's shoulder. 'Some one will come out in a minute, I hope.' It was William Howroyd who came. 'You here, my lad! That's right. You'll have to take the head of affairs now,' he said kindly but sadly. 'Is my father--dead?' asked George, with pale lips. 'No, no, not dead; but it's a stroke, and he won't be fit for business for some time. If I can help you I will; but it's a bad business, a very bad business. Well, my home is yours, as you know, and you must all stay here for the present. As for the future, why, you can stay here then if you will. It's not a mansion, but there's room enough for us all.' CHAPTER XXVI. TRUE YORKSHIRE GRIT. 'Can I see my father, sir?' said George. 'Yes, of course, my lad. Go in. He won't know you, but you may go in,' said his uncle. Mrs Clay sat watching beside her husband, who lay on his improvised couch in the sitting-room, and she looked up dully when her son came in. 'They've killed 'im this time, George,' she said. 'I hope not, mother. He'll pull through this,' replied her son. But his mother shook her head. ''E'll never get over bein' bested by the men. 'E's always been so masterful all 'is life, an' they've mastered 'im at last,' she declared. 'I don't know so much about that. Father said I was to stop at home and help him, and I mean to do it, and see if things can't be straightened out again,' said George, with youthful confidence. Mrs Clay looked at her son proudly. 'You've the same spirit as your father, though you've never shown it before; but this coil's too 'ard for you to untwist, lad. You'd best leave it to your uncle Bill; 'e'll do the best 'e can for us all, an' there'll always be a bite an' a sup for us while 'e lives. But Clay's Mills are a thing of the past now, lad.' Sarah, who, without asking leave of any one, had followed her brother into the sick-room, broke in now. 'We're not going to live on charity, mother. If we really are poor I shall just work in a mill, that's all. I won't live on any one else, not even Uncle Howroyd.' Her mother and brother both gave her a warning glance. George said in low tones, 'It's no good exaggerating the misfortune. We have met with losses, and my father may not be a millionaire at this moment; but I hope we may not long trespass on Uncle Howroyd's hospitality, though there is no talk of living on charity.' As he said this his father opened his eyes, and it seemed to George that there was a gleam of consciousness in them. He bent over the sick man, and said in low, clear tones, 'Father, I'll do my best to keep the mills going. That is your wish, is it not?' ''E can't 'ear, George,' sighed his mother. 'I think he understood,' declared George; and though the others did not agree with him, they said no more to discourage the young man. 'Come, Sarah,' George said gently to his sister, as he drew her out of the room with him, 'you'll have to help me to put all this business right.' 'I? What can I do? I know nothing about accounts, you know,' cried Sarah, secretly pleased, all the same, at the idea of being of use. 'You are often down at Uncle Howroyd's, and I hear you talking of "fettles and pieces," and goodness knows what all,' observed George. Sarah laughed. 'I suppose you mean fettlers (people who clean the machines) and piecers (those who join the pieces of wool or yarn together when it breaks),' she explained. 'There! You see I don't even know these words, and if I have to go into accounts and details I must know them, or I shall be showing my ignorance, and the people will have no confidence in me,' returned George. 'But those foreigners don't understand you. What will you do with them?' inquired Sarah. 'Nothing. I shall send them off the minute this contract is done,' said George. 'That is to say, if Uncle Howroyd approves.' 'What are you going to do with my approval, my lad?' demanded William Howroyd, coming in and putting his hand for a moment kindly on his nephew's shoulder. Sarah was struck by his serious and troubled face. She wondered whether it was anxiety for his brother's health or sorrow for the misdeeds of the Ousebank men. She did not know that there was a third reason added to these two; but she soon was to know it. 'I want to pack off those men as soon as the contract we have in hand is finished,' said George. 'They've saved you and me any trouble, George, lad. They've discharged themselves,' said Mr Howroyd gravely. George looked at his uncle aghast. 'You mean that the foreigners have gone--without a minute's warning?' he asked. 'They have that,' replied Mr Howroyd. 'But why did they suddenly do that? They seemed to go back to work willingly enough after their dinner,' said George. 'It seems they had some means of communicating with the outside world. When they heard of your poor father's illness, and were told he was ruined, and his house even burnt down, they decided to leave a sinking ship,' said Mr Howroyd. 'Uncle Howroyd, do you think it is a sinking ship?' inquired Sarah. Mr Howroyd considered a little; but, being a man who thought honesty always the best policy, he replied frankly, 'I think we shall save enough out of the wreck to keep you afloat; but I think Clay's Mills must shut.' 'I don't understand that, sir. Of course, I know that we must have lost a good deal by the fire, and this contract, too, will be a serious loss; but there is the insurance of the house, and I understand that, thanks to you and other kind helpers, a good deal was saved at Balmoral,' observed George. 'That is so, my lad; but the trouble is--and that's what caused your father's illness--the house was not insured,' said Mr Howroyd. 'Oh, but, uncle, it was. I happen to know, because father said the insurance he paid would keep a family comfortably,' interrupted Sarah. 'I know, and so I thought; but, owing to threats they received, saying it was going to be burnt down, the company asked such a heavy premium that your father refused to pay it, and said he'd take precautions instead. It was a mad thing, and no one but him would have dared to do it. And now, what are you going to do with an empty mill, whose hands have all struck, and whose head is lying unconscious?' inquired Mr Howroyd kindly but discouragingly. The brother and sister had drawn closer to each other instinctively in this their first trouble, for trouble it was to both. 'If we give up the mills, what have we to live on? I don't know my father's affairs, but I imagine he has a large capital,' said George. 'It's difficult to explain to you, but most of it was in the mills. I expect that you will have a few hundreds a year when the business is wound up. But things have not been so prosperous as they have appeared of late with your father, and he spent freely,' replied Mr Howroyd. George sat silent after this; but Sarah suddenly exclaimed, 'George, don't give it up! Open the mills again, and try to keep them going with the old hands. I know you could, with Uncle Howroyd's help, and I'll stop at home and help you all I can, and take care of mother.' George gave his sister a swift glance, and then appealed to his uncle. 'What do you say, sir? Is it any use my trying?' 'My lad,' said Mr Howroyd in a moved tone of voice, 'if you had asked me that question a month ago I should have told you to go back to your Greek and your Latin at college, and leave blanket-making to those who know what they are doing; but if you like to try, I'll not be the one to stop you. It won't be much worse if you fail.' 'Oh, but he won't fail.--Will you, George?' cried Sarah. 'I hope not; I can but try,' said George. But the two enthusiasts had a sudden check when they informed their mother. 'George run the mills! You don't know w'at you are talkin' about.--That's your doin', Sarah; you 've always some maggot in your 'ead.' 'But Uncle Howroyd said he might try,' said Sarah. 'Your uncle Howroyd's kindness itself, an' generous to a fault. Don't you see you'd be runnin' them on 'is credit? Who'd trust George if they thought 'e was responsible? An' if your uncle Howroyd stan's surety 'e runs to lose 'eavily,' said Mrs Clay, who knew something about business. 'I never thought of that,' said Sarah slowly. 'Mother, you know that a certain sum was settled on me when I came of age, and was not invested in the business,' said her son. 'Yes, dear; but don't you touch that. You'll only lose it, an' then w'ere will you be?' she protested. 'Where I am now, under the necessity of earning my own living, and that will be no hardship,' said George, with his pleasant smile. But their mother was not to be persuaded. 'Your father was a wonderful man. You 'aven't 'is talents, though you're dear, good children,' was all she would say. 'My father's talents didn't prevent him from making a horrid mess of things,' began Sarah hotly. But George silenced his sister, and said to his mother, 'Very well, dear mother, if you do not wish me to try to carry on father's business for him till he is able to take it up again himself, then I will not do so; but I shall ask Uncle Howroyd to take me into his mill to learn the business of a blanket-maker. I mean to be sooner or later.' Mrs Clay looked at her son in amazement. 'You, George! But all your book-learnin'--w'at are you goin' to do wi' all that? Is it all goin' to be wasted? All your beautiful, expensive education an' all?' she expostulated. 'An' Sarah, too, talkin' o' stayin' at 'ome an' 'elpin'! She'll 'ave to go to some school, though I doubt whether we can afford her present one.' 'I don't think that school is much loss to Sarah, though it seems to have suited Miss Cunningham. But as for my book-learning, I mean to try to apply it to manufacturing; and if it is not much use there, as I fear it won't be, still no knowledge is lost, and I shall always have my books and the pleasure of reading,' remarked George. 'Well, my dear, you must do as you think best. If you could do such a thing as keep the mills goin' till your father was about again, 'twould be a grand thing, an' give 'im new life w'en 'e came to 'imself, an' I've no right to be a 'indrance in your way; so do as you wish, dear, an' God bless you for a dear, good boy!' said his mother, after some argument. 'Come along Sarah, let's go and look at our mills. It's rather disgraceful, but, do you know, I've never been over the whole of them before,' said George. 'It will be dreadful to see them empty and "playing," as the people say,' said Sarah. 'Please, sir,' said Naomi, 'the French _chef_ is here, and wants a month's wages and compensation for loss, he says.' George paused on the threshold. 'I thought Sykes was seeing to all that, and housing the people till we could settle with them?' said George. 'He says he wishes to leave this country of savages at once,' said Naomi, with a toss of her head. 'I expect there's money in the till at the mills,' said Sarah. 'I'll write him a cheque on my own bank, and I shall be thankful to eat no more of his elaborate messes,' observed George; and he did so, though the cheque was a much bigger one than he had expected, and the operation had to be repeated till most of the servants were satisfied, after which George said, with a laugh, to his sister, 'I hope Sykes and Naomi and Tom Fox won't present their bills, for, to tell the truth, I've used up all my balance, and rather more.' 'Have you paid every one else?' asked Sarah. 'Yes; and I had no idea we had such an army to wait upon us. You've no idea what the total comes to,' said George, as he ruefully totalled it up. 'There must be lots of money somewhere,' said Sarah vaguely. 'Ah, now you begin to understand what poverty means,' said George. 'It's not quite so lovely, is it, after all?' Sarah did not choose to answer this taunt, and was saved from the necessity of doing so by the announcement that Tom Fox and Sykes the butler were outside. 'I shall have to overdraw and realise some money,' observed George to his sister, after he had told Naomi to show them in. 'And please, sir, they speak for me, if you'll excuse me,' said Naomi as she ushered them into the room. Sarah was surprised to find how disappointed and hurt she felt at this cupidity on the part of Naomi, and she would not look at her at all. 'Ah, Sykes, you want your wages? How much will that be?' said George, quiet and pleasant as usual. 'No, no, Mr George, I didn't come for them, sir. If you'll excuse me, sir, and not think it a liberty, but I've a nice house, a biggish house, though 'tis a cottage compared to Balmoral of course; but it's lying empty, and it would be convenient to have it used, and I'm going there myself to-night, and if you'd condescend for the next few months'----said Sykes, with much clearing of his throat and apologetic coughs. 'That's exceedingly kind of you, Sykes,' cried George, much touched. 'Where is this house?' 'Right opposite Balmoral, on the hill, Mr George. It touches the grounds, and what I was thinking was, you could make a gate into the grounds, and you'd be like in your own park, same as before.' 'I know the house. It's a big one, as you say. You've made money, then, Sykes?' 'Yes, sir; the master was always liberal, and I've saved, and done well in investments. I'd be pleased to wait on you, same as before. And Tom Fox here---- Why don't you speak up, Tom?' urged Sykes. 'I'd be glad to remain in your service, Mr George, and motor you down to town, as I hear you are taking on the business. I saved the motors, all on 'em,' said Tom. 'I don't know how to thank you, my friends, except by accepting your offers with all my heart; and if the mills pay all right you must take shares,' said George, with his winning smile. 'Well, we've got three servants and a motor, so far,' said Sarah; 'because, of course, Naomi is going to stay, and it will be very nice to be still on the hill instead of living in Ousebank. I hate Ousebank'. George wanted to remind Sarah that she had hated Balmoral; but he decided not to cast up the past, as she was so much improved, so he only said, 'Yes, I've often looked at that Red House, and wondered whose it was, and who would come and live in it. I little thought that it would be ourselves.' 'It reminds me of the Bible,' observed Sarah abruptly. 'What does?' asked George. 'The Red House?' 'No; all the other servants fleeing like the hireling, but our own Yorkshire servants staying with us, and offering their services and houses, and all.' 'There's another text it makes me think of,' said George reverently, 'and that is to put your trust in God.' CHAPTER XXVII. SARAH IS MUCH IMPROVED. 'George, I'm going to cheer mother up by telling her what a nice house we have had offered to us,' said Sarah, full of the new plans. 'I don't fancy anything will cheer mother while father lies there in that condition. However, she will be glad that Sykes has shown himself loyal,' replied George, who was just going down to the mills. Mrs Clay had been sitting by her husband the whole of the day, and no power could induce her to leave him; but now Mr Howroyd had persuaded her to come and take some food. The two met George and Sarah in the passage. 'Going out, George? What are you living on to-day--air or excitement? Don't you know it's dinner-time?' he exclaimed when he saw that his nephew had his hat in his hand and was evidently going out. 'I was just going to the mills, uncle. I shall be back in half-an-hour,' said George. 'What are you going to do there? They are shut up, and Luke Mickleroyd and the other watchmen are in charge. Come and have some food, lad; it will help your mother to eat if she sees you eating. You must all badly want something; you've starved all day.' George Clay put down his hat, remarking, 'I had no idea it was so late.--Come, mother, take my arm.' 'Mother, we have something so nice to tell you,' said Sarah, speaking in a gentler voice than was her wont to her mother. ''Ave you, my dear?' said Mrs Clay indifferently. 'Yes; we've got a house for you to live in already.' 'I know, Sarah. Your uncle is very kind. I'm sure I'm very grateful to 'im,' said Mrs Clay. 'Oh, but it isn't Uncle Howroyd; it's Sykes. He wants us to live in his Red House on the top of the hill,' cried Sarah, her face aglow with pleasure at the good news she was imparting. 'Sykes, our butler! I 'aven't come to sharin' my butler's 'ouse,' said Mrs Clay, bridling. 'But he's going to wait on us just as he used to do,' explained Sarah. 'Wat's the good o' talkin' nonsense, Sarah? 'Ow can I order a man about in 'is own 'ouse? An' 'ow can you want your poor father to open 'is eyes an' look upon the ruins o' 'is beautiful mansion? It's downright indecent o' you to be so glad that you've got to live in a poky little 'ouse; but, at least, you sha'n't drag your father an' me to live there, to be reminded o' the beautiful past,' said Mrs Clay. 'Nay, Polly, my dear, you are taking this quite wrong. The children are behaving as well as can be, and Sykes too; and it's not a poky house, by any means. In fact, it's as big as this, and I don't know that it would be a bad idea, after a little while,' urged Mr Howroyd. 'I'm sure, Bill, I don't want to complain; but it's all so strange without Mark, an' to think o' 'im in Syke's 'ouse, after w'at 'e's been used to,' said his sister-in-law. Sarah restrained her first impulse to reply indignantly, and said, 'I don't think father would mind, and it was partly for his sake I was glad. I thought he could still have his park and grounds, and you forget he could not see the ruins of Balmoral, because the plantations come between.' 'Besides, mother, if things go well we shall perhaps be able to build the house again,' suggested George. But he was no more successful than his sister in cheering his mother. She answered him, quite shortly for her, 'That you'll never do, George. There'll never be another Balmoral, so don't you think it. There are not many men like Mark, an' there never was a 'ouse like 'is now'ere, not even the King's, so I've 'eard, an' I'm glad an' proud to 'ave lived in it; but I'll try an' be resigned to the will o' Providence; an' if you both wish it, an' your uncle thinks it right, I'll go to Sykes's 'ouse w'en your father is able to be moved.' Mrs Clay said 'Sykes's 'ouse' in a tone of such contempt that her brother-in-law observed, with his genial laugh, 'One would think it was the workhouse by the way you talk, instead of being as big as many a manufacturer's. But I know you are thinking of the old place, and, of course, after what you've been used to it is a trial; but you must pluck up courage and be thankful that you have your family still and no lost lives to mourn over.' Mrs Clay shook her head in a melancholy way; she was not to be comforted, and the others gave it up. 'One would think he had been the best and kindest husband in the world, instead of being'----began Sarah after dinner, when her mother had hurried back to her husband's room; but here she checked herself. 'Well, there's one thing--you'll excite no envy, hatred, and malice at the Red House; and you know the proverb, "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith,"' said their uncle. 'Oh!' cried Sarah, and then explained, 'That's just what I said when we lived at Balmoral; but I didn't mean it to come about in this dreadful way.' 'Ay; but things never do come about in the way we want or expect,' said Mr Howroyd as he rose from the table, leaving the brother and sister together. 'George, what are you thinking of?' asked his sister abruptly, after the former had sat for some time smoking a cigarette, and leaning back in his old indolent way. 'Thinking of? I'm thinking that I've undertaken a task too big for me, and that I should do better to accept Uncle Howroyd's offer of winding up affairs,' he replied. 'Then you are a coward! And I only wish I were your age and a man, and I'd carry on the mills myself, and show people.' George looked at his sister with an amused smile, which was his usual way of treating her outbursts, and which always exasperated her; but he hastened to say, 'Steady there, Sarah! I never said I was going to back out, only that things seem more difficult than they did when I began.' 'Why? After Sykes's offer, and Tom Fox's? I never told mother of him. It didn't seem to be any use, because she doesn't care for anything or feel grateful about anything.' 'I hope I shall have as good a wife; but she will be difficult to find,' observed George. 'You'll probably marry a virago; easy-going people like you generally do, and you'll be henpecked all your life,' was Sarah's consoling remark. Then they both laughed, which did them good. Not very long after they went to bed, and, being young and full of hope, to sleep. It seemed to them both that they had just shut their eyes when they heard the clanging of a bell; and, starting up in alarm, they recognised it as the bell of their uncle's mill calling the people to work. George decided to go down to the mills, and a very short time saw him dressed and at the gates. ''Tis young Clay,' he heard as he passed down the street, through groups of idle men, women, and girls, whom he guessed to be their former employés. They had nothing to get up for; but habit was too strong for them, and they had risen and turned out at the same hour. 'What'll he be going to do at t' old mills?' some of them inquired of each other. 'I be main sorry for him. He's a right good young gentleman, they say,' said one woman. 'I wish he'd run the mills. I'd work for him,' said another. 'If he'd have you; but I doubt he'd not have one of his father's hands after what's happened,' was the retort. 'He's but a youngster; he can't run the mills. They'll have to shut down till the old master comes to, or this one gets old enough,' said a shrewd old hand. 'Yes, 'twould never do for he to start blanket-making without experience; he'd soon run aground. I'd not work for him,' remarked another old man. Evidently no one had any idea that George intended to try his hand at the business, in spite of inexperience and youth; and, indeed, as he went down the street he found himself wondering how he was to set about it, and whether he had not better brave Sarah's scorn and give it up. But he reasoned with himself, 'I will go on till my private capital is exhausted, and if I have failed by then I'll own it and give up.' With new resolve, he walked briskly on and entered the silent mills. The clang of the gate as it shut after him struck painfully on his ears, and he went to the office and sat down to think. 'If only I knew what to do! Perhaps this room will inspire me,' he murmured. But the room did not seem to do so; on the contrary, he was oppressed with the sense of the failure in which all the business done in that room had ended. Suddenly the door opened, and Sarah, dainty and fresh in the muslin Naomi had thoughtfully brought her, almost her only possession in the way of clothes, came in. 'George, I have an inspiration,' she said. Her brother looked up with a smile. 'That's funny,' he replied, 'for that's just what I was sitting here waiting for.' 'That's a nice, useless thing to do!' said Sarah. 'On the contrary, it appears to have been answered,' he said. 'Oh, well, it wasn't your sitting there that made me come and have that inspiration; it was the clanging of Uncle Howroyd's bell. Why don't you do the same thing?' inquired Sarah. 'Do what?' demanded George, who did not think much of this inspiration. 'Ring the bell--the big bell, I mean--to call the hands in, just as if nothing had happened,' urged Sarah. 'Nothing would happen if I did, except that we should have a gaping crowd round the gate, and the fire-brigade coming to see if we had a fire. So, if that's your inspiration, I'm inclined to agree with you that my waiting for it has been useless,' returned George. 'I wish you'd try, George. I believe the hands would all come back, and we should get the contract done after all,' persisted Sarah. 'They looked at me in quite a friendly way as I passed, and lots of the men touched their hats, a thing they never did before.' George hesitated. 'But I don't feel that I could take them back again,' he said. 'Then what do you mean to do? You can't run the mills with new hands,' she protested. 'No; but I can't take back the men who have destroyed our property,' he declared. 'They are, or soon will be, taken up; so they won't apply,' began Sarah, when her brother interrupted her. 'Sarah,' he cried with sudden vigour, 'you have inspired me after all! I will have the bell rung, and when the people come, as some are sure to come, out of curiosity, I will make them a speech, and explain that those whom my father dismissed are still dismissed, but that the rest I shall be glad to have back. I'll speak to the manager, and see what he thinks.' The manager and Ben looked admiringly at George. 'There's pluck for you! Let's hope it will be rewarded. At any rate, we can but try,' they said; and they gave orders for the big mills-bell to be rung, and the few faithful ones stood in the yard, making a kind of bodyguard round George, and waited for the curious crowd to arrive. Sarah watched from the office window, and her eyes shone with excitement as she heard the sound of clogs and many footsteps coming down the street. 'I was right' she cried. 'It's our old hands! I knew they'd come.' And they did come, till the mill-yard was packed, and then George made them a speech. 'My father is stricken down by the misdeeds of some of his former employés, and in his absence I am going, with the help of my good friends here, to run my father's mills. Those of you who voluntarily left his employ are welcome to return to it; those he discharged will not be admitted.' Such, in brief, was the young man's speech. The hands noticed that he had not called them 'friends,' nor, indeed, had his tone been friendly, but only business-like and curt, in marked contradiction to the way he had spoken of 'my good friends here,' alluding to those who had remained at their posts. But they were just men, and they respected the young man all the more for bravely and boldly 'standing up to them,' and showing his loyalty to his father and those who had stood by his father. Some few slunk away. They were those Mr Clay had discharged--an act which had brought about the strike. But this time their discharge was accepted. Without exception the hands took up their old places; the engine, which had stopped, went on again; the fires, which had not yet gone out, were replenished; and before William Howroyd could get down to see what new misfortune this was, Clay's Mills had ceased to 'play.' 'Nay, my lass, you can't be serious. Men are not a flock of sheep to come back to you just because the bell rings,' he protested when Sarah told him the tale. 'Just go into the rooms and see for yourself,' she said. 'They are all setting to work with a will.' 'But I meant to have a talk with George and try to arrange things,' objected Mr Howroyd. 'One can't restart a business like this in this hap-hazard manner.' 'It's not hap-hazard; it's just natural. They're sorry for us and for everything, and they've just come back as if nothing had happened. I really think George is a born business man; he's quite left off being half-asleep all the time,' cried Sarah. 'It's my belief he's been more wide awake than we knew "all the time,"' quoted her uncle. 'Anyway, he's quite wide awake now. And, oh! it's so funny to hear him when they come and ask him some questions he doesn't know anything about. He puts up his pince-nez, looks very wise, and says, "You had better go on as you have always done for the present."' Mr Howroyd pinched her cheek. 'You are far too wide awake, especially when it comes to criticising other people. Well, I expect I can go back to my own mill. I'm not wanted here. I shall soon be coming to your George for advice. Dear, dear! who would have thought it? He looked as if it was too much trouble to live. This bad business has done you both good--you as well as him, and you badly wanted some improvement, my lass. It'll be a proud day for your father when he hears what you have both done,' said Mr Howroyd as he went off, looking bright and cheery again. CHAPTER XXVIII. SARAH BECOMES A BUSINESS WOMAN. Mr Howroyd had not been gone very long when George came in, his usually calm, unruffled brow puckered, and his face wearing a worried look. 'I say, Sarah, I'm afraid I've been very presumptuous in undertaking to carry on my father's business,' he said. 'What has happened? Aren't they behaving all right?' inquired Sarah, looking anxiously at him. 'Oh, the hands? Yes. Hurst, the manager, says they have come back in a good spirit, and are working all they know to get the contract done. He says he never saw smarter work,' George told her. 'Then I don't see what you are worrying about,' said Sarah, laughing, as she added, 'I expect they want to show that they are as good as any "Frenchies," as they call the foreigners.' 'But that isn't the trouble; it's father's customers and the people he has done business with. Some of them have called in and intimated pretty plainly that they don't mean to have any dealings with me,' he observed. 'How horrid of them! They might at least have waited to see how you got on,' exclaimed Sarah in great indignation. 'Well, it was rather my own fault. I suppose they can't afford to wait and see how things go in business. They began talking about business deals, and using all sorts of terms which, I suppose, are current in the wool-trade, and I let them see that I didn't understand anything about it,' said George. His face was so melancholy and his forehead so wrinkled that Sarah burst into a hearty laugh. 'It's no laughing matter; it spells ruin to us if our clients--customers, I mean--fight shy of us, and we shall be worse off than if I had never meddled with the matter,' he said severely. 'I am very sorry, George; but I could not help it; it is so funny for you to be so worried and fidgety. Why didn't you say Uncle Howroyd would stand surety, and refer them to Hurst? He has been manager for years, and father used to say that Hurst knew as much about the business as he did himself. If I were you I'd get him to write a circular-letter to all those people, and say that in father's temporary absence from business he is managing for you by Mr Howroyd's advice.' 'I never thought of it. I'm very unfit for all this. I like the dyeing and the chemical part of the business; but what all these men said was Chinese to me. I wish you'd just tell me what some of these words mean,' he said, as he sat down to the table and began questioning his sister. 'I can tell you a good deal, because, you see, I am always down at Uncle Howroyd's, and he lets me go into his office and talk to him while he is working. I've often seen the other merchants and buyers come in; but it seemed quite simple; they just ordered what they wanted, and Uncle Howroyd put the pieces on.' 'Put the pieces on what?' inquired George. 'Don't laugh; tell me what that means.' 'Put the pieces to be made on to the machines--the lengths of blanketing or cloth,' said Sarah. 'Excuse me, Mr George, but Mr Blakeley is here,' said Ben the gate-keeper, coming into the office. 'Who is Mr Blakeley?' inquired George. 'He's one of our buyers, sir,' replied the man. 'Oh George, I know him! Do have him shown in here,' entreated Sarah. 'He is such a nice, good-humoured man.' But circumstances alter cases, and Sarah was surprised to find that the good-natured Mr Blakeley, whom she always saw smiling and ready to complete a deal with her Uncle Howroyd, became a brusque, serious business man with her brother. 'I have an order on hand here, Mr Clay; but I should prefer if you will allow me to cancel it. I understand that there are changes in the mills, and it is rather particular that it should be woven exactly as it was,' he said, after having made some curt and perfunctory inquiries after Mr Mark Clay's health. George evidently did not understand what he meant, and was just saying, with his usual courtesy, 'Oh, certainly; we should not, of course, hold you to your word.' But Sarah broke in. She had been used to talk to these men when they came to see her uncle, and they had all admired the handsome girl, and showed her attention to please her uncle, who was evidently very fond of her and proud of his niece. So she felt no shyness with Mr Blakeley, and said, 'What difference do the changes make, Mr Blakeley? My father did not weave the cloth, and the manager and foremen who looked after these things are still here.' Mr Blakeley looked at her, and an amused smile crept over his face at her business-like tone. 'Quite true, Miss Sarah; but the weavers of this particular cloth have left, I understand, and I would rather not trust it to new ones.' 'Of course not,' began George. But Sarah interrupted again. 'You'd better hear what our manager has to say. Father won't be pleased if he finds we have sent good customers away.' 'There's a good business woman for you!' cried Mr Blakeley with a laugh. ''Tis a pity you are not a man; you could go into partnership with your brother and father.' Meanwhile George had acted on Sarah's advice, and sent for Mr Hurst, who came at once. 'There's no call for you to withdraw your order, Mr Blakeley. We've got the wools you asked for, and there's one of the weavers who has done your cloth before, so I think you may be easy in your mind about its being done as well as ever. We're turning out some fine work, and there's a new shade you might find useful, which perhaps you'd like to see.' Mr Blakeley pricked up his ears at the news of a new shade, and went off quite eagerly with the manager. George heaved a sigh of relief. 'You pulled us through that time, Sarah; but it won't always go like that. I can't push.' 'You must, or you'll get pushed to the wall; but I have had another inspiration since I came down. Why don't you weave a lot of coat-lengths of that new shade? It's much more suitable for that than for blankets.' 'I thought the same thing when I saw it, and said something of the kind to father, and he said he should try samples. They were almost the last words he said to me that day before he left me.' 'It was only yesterday,' observed Sarah. George stared at her. 'So it was! I can hardly believe it. It seems weeks ago; but I am glad you reminded me of it, for it will please father to find we have carried out his wishes, and I think it might "catch on," as he said.' 'The fact is, you've got dazed with the shock. I believe you felt it more than I did. I am very sorry for father being ill, and I think the hands who burnt our house behaved disgracefully, and I'm glad they were turned off; but I can't help feeling that it was father's own fault, and that perhaps it will do him good.' 'It's not our business to judge his treatment of his employés. He was a very liberal father to us,' said George. 'You are not so hard-hearted'----began Sarah; but a prolonged ringing at the telephone interrupted her. 'It's mother,' she announced, 'and she's calling for you.' George went and listened. 'Father is conscious, and has asked for us,' he cried, and his face lightened. 'I'm very glad,' replied Sarah quietly; but her face showed no such joy as her brother's. It is to be feared that where her father was concerned Sarah was somewhat hard-hearted. 'We must go at once,' said her brother, taking up his hat. 'I don't think you ought to leave the mill till the dinner-hour. The bell will ring in a quarter of an hour. Can't you wait till then?' objected Sarah, who, as is seen, was more business-like than her brother, thanks to her intercourse with her uncle Howroyd. 'Perhaps you are right. Then you had better go, and say I will be there almost directly,' he suggested. Sarah started with mingled feelings. She was glad, really glad, that her father had recovered consciousness, and was therefore, she supposed, getting better; but the fact was, Sarah felt very resentful and sore that he had made himself so hated, and she walked very slowly along the streets that separated her father's mills from Mr Howroyd's. ''E knows me, Sarah!' cried her mother, whose face was transfigured with joy. 'Thanks be to God, 'e knows me, my dear 'usband!' For the life of her, Sarah could not show any great joy, but only inquired, 'Has he asked for me, or is it only George he wants to see, mother?' ''E mentioned you both, an' asked w'ere Sally was,' said her mother, forgetting, in her great relief, the small detail that Sarah disliked being called so. 'Then I'd better go to him and tell him George will come in as soon as he can leave the mills,' said Sarah, preparing to go into the sitting-room, which was still being used as the stricken man's bedroom. 'Don't you say any such thing! Don't you breathe a word about the mills or Balmoral or anything. 'E's not to be excited, the doctor says. I've 'alf a mind to tell 'im 'e shall see you by-and-by; it would be a dreadful thing if you were to upset 'im. You don't always get on too well with your father, Sarah,' Mrs Clay wound up reproachfully. 'I sha'n't say anything to upset father while he is lying there so ill. I only meant to explain why George did not come at once,' explained Sarah. 'You needn't explain. Sick folk don't want explanations,' objected Mrs Clay. 'Say George is out.' 'Very well,' agreed Sarah, and she went into the sick-room. It was a relief not to see her father lying there with unseeing eyes and breathing so heavily; but, somehow, Sarah felt very uncomfortable under his keen glance to-day. Still, she managed to say, 'I am glad you are better, father.' 'Ay, I'm going to get better; but I'll never be the man I was. I've made a mess of it, Sally, and I shall not leave you the big fortune I meant you to have to match your pretty face, my little lass. I've not done right, and I shall never be able to do it now,' said the sick man. 'Yes, you will, father. You will be all right in a few weeks, and you can make another fortune, and build Balmoral again,' cried Sarah eagerly, as she impulsively took her father's hand, and then started on finding that it lay limp in hers. A spasm passed over the invalid's face at her words; and if Mrs Clay had not been too much afraid of her husband she would have stopped Sarah and sent her away. As it was, she gave a little groan from the background, as much as to say, 'You've done the very thing I told you not to do.' 'There'll never be another Balmoral. It would take me too long, and I doubt if Clay's Mills will ever be themselves again. I'd like those fellows to be sent off the minute the contract's done. It'll take them another week; but I'll be glad to see the backs of them. I wish they'd never come,' said Mr Clay, who seemed to have a feverish desire to talk. 'They've gone, father,' said Sarah. But this was too much for Mrs Clay's patience. 'That'll do, Sarah. Your father's not got to talk business w'ile 'e's so bad.--There, Mark, don't you worry; everything's going on as well as can be expected,' she said, in what she thought was a soothing tone. Her husband waved her aside. 'Let be, Polly! Let the lass speak; I must know the worst.--So they've gone, the villains! When they thought I was done for, the rats forsook the sinking ship. Ay, 'twas a bad day for us, was yon. Well, that ends it! The credit of Clay's Mills has gone for ever. I'd best not get better. You'll have a little something to live on; and that's all I've done with my toiling and moiling. I'm best dead,' he said. Mrs Clay grasped Sarah's arm in a convulsive grip. 'Don't breathe another word. I forbid you!' Sarah felt sure she should do more good by speaking; but she remained obediently silent. 'It's strange--a sick man's fancy, I suppose--but I thought I heard our bell. There's no mistaking it. And, hark! there it is again. Am I light-headed, Polly, or what's that bell I heard?' he asked. 'No, Mark, no, you're not light-headed; it is your own bell. All's goin' as well as can be expected,' replied poor Mrs Clay. 'What does she mean? Speak up, my lass; why are they ringing my bell? Speak, I tell you!' he commanded. So Sarah spoke, and told him what her brother had done. The mill-owner listened in silence, and Sarah scarcely recognised her father's voice when he said, 'Thank God, my credit's saved! I don't deserve such children; but you take after your mother, and she's brought you up right. I've been a hard man, and I'd have been your ruin if you hadn't prevented it.' Then he shut his eyes, only to open them and say, 'Tell the hands I'm glad they've come back;' and with a sigh he went off into a refreshing sleep. 'And, oh George! he was so different, so humble and gentle. It did make me feel so ashamed of myself,' cried Sarah to her brother when he came in to lunch. 'I'm glad to hear it. It's about time you were,' announced George. 'You needn't say that now,' said Sarah, 'just when everything is going all right.' 'I don't know that everything is going all right; in fact, I'm rather glad I did not come in time to talk to father, for I should not have given such a glowing account of everything as you have,' he remarked. 'You are dreadfully pessimistic. Of course there are ups and downs in business; it's only that you are not used to it,' insisted Sarah. 'It's mostly downs at present unfortunately,' said George; and he was to repeat the remark only too often in the weeks that followed. CHAPTER XXIX. 'A MIRACLE.' It was some weeks after the events related in the last chapter, and George was looking years older, so his mother told him. 'Nay, lad, you must let me help you,' said Mr Howroyd. 'I've a few thousands lying idle, and you'll want them to keep the mills going for the next few weeks.' 'Do you mean to say it costs a thousand a week to keep the mills going?' cried Sarah. 'It does that, lass, and I hear you've no orders coming in,' replied her uncle. 'Then what's the good of their doing work if no one will buy it?' said Sarah, whose enthusiasm had died out, and who was now as pessimistic as her brother. 'Have it done ready for buyers. We often have to fill our warehouses in bad times till we can find a market for our goods; and as George won't go and ask for orders'----began his uncle. 'I really could not, Uncle Howroyd. I should feel like a beggar,' protested George. 'Then you must sit here and wait till buyers come; it's only a case of holding out long enough. Hurst is a good man, and a first-rate manager. I don't know why the buyers have left you. I'm afraid it's some mischief that's been made over the trial of the young men for firing the house, and their heavy sentence. It has not done Clay's Mills any good.' 'I know that, uncle, and that's why I don't want to take your money. It's only throwing good money after bad,' said George. 'Haven't I got any money?' inquired Sarah. Mr Howroyd laughed as he said, 'Not yet. You'll have all that and more when I'm dead and gone.' 'And I hope that will be never!' cried Sarah impetuously. 'Then you'd better take this money now. I've neither chick nor child, so it's yours,' he said with his cheery smile. 'George, I think you'd better. Taking it from Uncle Howroyd is not taking charity,' said Sarah. 'I should think not,' put in her uncle. George let himself be persuaded, in spite of his firm conviction that feeling was so strong against Clay's Mills and their owners, and that they were practically being boycotted by the buyers. And he was right. The weeks dragged on, and since the big contract, which had been finished and sent off to time, thanks to the goodwill of the hands, no order of any importance had come in, and George heard of them being placed elsewhere in the town. 'It's no good, Sarah,' he said one day. 'I knew we were done for when I read that article in the paper about ill-gotten gains, and there have been others since.' 'Is Uncle Howroyd's money gone?' inquired Sarah. 'Practically, and the warehouses are full. I mind more for father and the hands; they've come back to us, and everything is going well in the mills, and Hurst is a good business man; but it's no use making good cloth if people won't buy it.' 'Hasn't the new dye taken at all?' inquired Sarah. 'Yes, to a certain extent, and it is the only thing we are selling; but it wants some fashionable person to take it up, and I really couldn't push it or ask any of my friends,' he observed. 'I might ask Horatia to get her mother to have a costume that colour,' said Sarah doubtfully; 'but she hasn't written lately. She said they were coming up north in their motor, and should call and see us all. But I expect they've read those things that have been written, and don't want to have anything to do with us now we're ruined, or going to be.' 'In that case you can't possibly write to her. But I wish I knew what to do. I have even been to see some of the buyers, only to be refused,' said George a little bitterly. 'Oh, have you really? That was plucky of you, because I know you hate it so. I do wish something would happen. I hate going into father's room and having to tell him that things are rather slack. You know the doctor says he will soon be able to go down to the mills himself, and then he'll know the truth,' said Sarah, who, it will be observed, had quite changed in her feelings towards her father. 'Well, they say when things come to the worst they will mend, and things have come to about the worst with us, so let's hope they will mend,' said George, rousing himself and trying to speak cheerfully. 'That proverb is rubbish,' said Sarah, with some of her old violence; 'things often come to the worst and just end there.' 'We've done our best, anyway, so we shall have that consolation,' remarked George. 'How much longer can you hold out?' inquired the practical Sarah. 'Practically I'm at the end of my tether, and was thinking of warning the hands that the mills may have to shut down at the end of next week.' 'Oh, wait a day, George, and don't do anything without asking father first; he ought to be asked, and he may think of a way out of the difficulty,' entreated his sister. 'All right; but a day won't make any difference, unless a miracle happens,' observed George. 'Father will have been out for his first drive, and will be stronger, for one thing,' said Sarah. 'And, who knows? a miracle may happen.' 'Lady Grace and Mr and Miss Cunningham to see you, Miss Sarah,' announced Sykes. Sarah gave a little cry of joy, and looked significantly at her brother. 'Oh George'----she began. But he said hastily, 'Don't ask a favour, Sarah. When people come to pay a call of civility they don't want to be bothered about business.' 'Very well,' said Sarah, who was not so self-willed as she used to be. Horatia rushed at her. 'Oh Sarah! I am so glad to see you, and so sorry to see Balmoral--I mean, not to see it. Father wants to look over your mills, and I want to see your father,' she cried, bubbling over with high spirits as ever. Meanwhile Lady Grace and Mr Cunningham were shaking hands with George, and congratulating him upon his energy and plucky attempt to keep on his father's business. 'Let's all go down to the mills,' cried Horatia. 'It's dinner-hour now; but if you will stop and have lunch with us we shall be very glad, and we will go after lunch. It won't be a Balmoral lunch,' said George, smiling at her. 'All the better; we shall be finished the sooner,' said Horatia,' and the mills take an awfully long time to see.' 'Then will you come and see father? He does not come down yet, and mother has her lunch with him; she can't bear to leave him,' said Sarah. Horatia accordingly went off with Sarah, and found the mill-owner looking very different; but it was Mrs Clay who seemed the most changed. She looked years younger, and so quietly happy. Horatia could not understand it at all, not being given to troubling her head about people's characters. After lunch--which, after all, was a very good one, and served in Sykes's best style, to do honour to the guests--the party drove down to the mills. Sarah could not help thinking what a good thing it would be if Lady Grace Cunningham should take a fancy to this new cloth, she was such a striking-looking woman, and a well-known figure in society; but the girl determined not to suggest it, though her heart beat a little quicker when they were coming to the dyeing-rooms. Before this they passed the warehouses, and George good-naturedly opened the doors to let Horatia see more blankets than she would ever see again in her life. 'How full it is! This place was quite empty when I last came,' she cried innocently. George blushed like a girl. 'It's a slack time with us,' he said, and hastily shut the door. But Mr Cunningham stopped a moment. 'They are not sold, then?' he inquired. 'No,' said George; 'but let me show you something more interesting.' 'Then it's rather fortunate I called, for I fancy I know a buyer. It's a large line of steamers I have a share in that are starting, and want a big consignment of blankets to be numbered and delivered by a near date,' said Mr Cunningham; and he began to go into figures with George. The two went off with the manager to do some telephoning, and Lady Grace Cunningham walked on with the two girls to the dyeing-rooms. Sarah felt more than ever that she could not say anything, though she showed the new shade and the cloth. 'Oh mother, do have a coat and skirt of it!' cried Horatia. 'It does suit you so well! Just see!' 'But I don't suppose I am allowed to buy it wholesale like this?' Lady Grace protested. 'I believe one firm in London has stocked some. George will know the name,' said Sarah; but her eyes were shining with such pleasure that Lady Grace saw that the suggestion had given great pleasure. 'If you will let me have the name I will certainly order a costume. I have never seen the shade, and I think it ought to become very popular; it is such a good winter colour,' she said. 'Thank you very much,' said Sarah quietly; but her face said a great deal more. When Mr Cunningham joined them, Horatia insisted on his looking at the new cloth. He admired it as much as his wife, and said, 'I wish you'd have a dress of that shade. I'm so sick of dull colours, and this is really becoming.' Horatia clapped her hands. 'She's going to when Mr Clay tells us the name of the place where you can buy it.' 'I can do that; but you would give me great pleasure if you would let me send you a length,' said George. And Lady Grace gracefully accepted the offer, knowing that it gave the young man, as he said, great pleasure; and adding, 'But let me know where it can be got in London, for I am sure to be asked.' When they took their leave, George and Sarah looked at each other, smiling. 'The miracle has happened, George!' the latter exclaimed. 'Thank goodness!' he said. 'Oh Sarah, if you only knew how that warehouse full of blankets has weighed upon me!' 'Then I wonder you're alive to tell the tale,' said a cheery voice behind him. They both laughed. 'Oh Uncle Howroyd, isn't it lovely? Mr Cunningham has given George such a big order, and Lady Grace is going to wear the new shade. They've been to call.' 'I know. They called on me first,' said their uncle. 'Did you ask them to help us?' cried Sarah, her face falling. 'Nay, lass; I'm as proud as you, and I never said a word except that young George was battling bravely. Mr Cunningham told me he had come on purpose to see if he could get blankets, and, as a matter of fact, he asked me; but I hadn't any ready. So, you see, it was Providence helping those who help themselves,' he replied. Meanwhile the Cunninghams were speeding south with the dress-length packed in the carrier at the back of the motor. 'I don't recognise the description I heard of that family,' observed Lady Grace Cunningham; 'and it just shows that one must never believe what one hears, for according to you and Nanny they were very different.' 'Yes; I noticed that. And young Clay, too, is not in the least like Maxwell's description of him. He said the young man was an easy-going fellow, who looked always half-asleep, as if life was a bore to live, and was only fit to lounge in fashionable drawing-rooms. I shall ask him what he means,' said her husband. 'But that's how Sarah talked of him. I expect he's changed, and so is she; in fact, they are all changed,' declared Horatia. 'But you told me Mrs Clay was a meek, trodden-down creature, and Mr Clay a rather violent man, and that Sarah could not bear him. And as for Nanny's description, it was worse still, and I find Mrs Clay very different, and Sarah is devoted to her parents, especially her father.' 'I know,' agreed Horatia, nodding her head. 'I was so astonished that my eyes nearly dropped out of my head. But it's the fire that has done it. It's burst up all their bad qualities. I can tell you it was pretty uncomfortable last time I stayed there; and when you tell Nanny your opinion of them, she'll say a miracle must have happened.' 'I think they have been having a hard struggle. The young fellow betrayed it when he showed that full warehouse. I heard something about it. There is a feeling against them. Even our shipping people objected to trading with them. But I'm glad I persuaded them; it may give them a lift, and one thing leads to another.' 'Yes; and you must make that shade the fashion, mother. Wear it at your big reception, will you?' begged Horatia. 'And get it copied at once?' laughed her mother. 'Yes, because Mr Clay was so kind to me. Think of that rink that he had made just to please me!' cried Horatia. 'Ah, that was a waste of money! They won't be able to throw their money about like that for some time to come,' said Mr Cunningham, shaking his head. 'No; and a good thing, too. I don't approve of these colossal fortunes,' said his wife. 'Unless one has it one's self,' laughed her husband. 'It just shows how quickly they can be lost,' she observed. 'Well, it seems to have done them all good, so I don't think we need regret it or pity them,' said Mr Cunningham. 'Only, I do wish you had seen Balmoral; it was like Aladdin's palace. I never saw anything like it,' cried Horatia. CHAPTER XXX. LAST. The worst had come and passed. Two days later Mr Clay announced his intention of going down to the mill. 'Not that I'm going to take things out of your hand, lad--nay, I shall never be good for much again--but just to see the old place, and say a word to some of the hands,' he explained. 'Will you wait till this afternoon, father?' asked George. 'Why? What's doing?' inquired his father. 'Only carrying bales for a big order,' said George. 'I'd like to see that; it means business,' persisted the mill-owner. And he had his way. 'I wanted to get the warehouse cleared before he came,' George explained to his sister, who was his confidante; for Mrs Clay, strange to say, took no interest in the mills or her son's proceedings except so far as it 'pleased father.' However, Mr Clay came down, and saw the huge bales being sent off to the shipping line. His quick business eye took in the whole situation at a glance. 'You've been slack. It's been a heavy pull,' he said gravely. 'Yes, father; but the worst is over, and things are looking up. We've cleared this side, and I've had two more smaller orders since Mr Cunningham's,' said his son. 'And you've borne all that worry alone, and never told me a word. You're too good to your old father, both of you, for I've brought it on you; it's me the buyers have forsaken, not you. But they'll come round again. We make good cloth and blankets, and they know it,' he said; but he did not boast as he used to do. The hands, looking rather ashamed and shy, greeted him respectfully as he walked slowly along, dragging his paralysed foot after him. 'I'm glad to see you again,' he said again and again. But when he had gone, they shook their heads and said Mark Clay would never be the man he had been, and that it was the young master they must look to now. 'And a good master he'll be, though he's a bit too polite, and down upon what he calls rudeness, which is only our way,' said one of the young men. 'You've taught them London manners, lad,' said Mark Clay, looking at his son quizzically, as he noticed how no man, woman, or child passed the young master without some greeting. George laughed. 'I couldn't stand their rough ways,' he admitted. 'Well, I've nought against it, and I see you've made some other alterations for their benefit; but I've nought against that either. You've done well by the mill and by me, and I'm proud of you, and proud of my girl, for she's got a shrewd business head, too, it seems.' 'Yes; I couldn't have done it without her. She is so quick, and seems to know the right thing by instinct,' said George. 'That's the woman's way. It's wonderful how they'll see things we can't. Your mother's the same,' replied Mark Clay. And George made no comment on this change of front, though he remembered the times without number that his blood had boiled when the millionaire had spoken contemptuously of his wife, and told her that she did not know what she was talking about. * * * * * It is two years later, and a motor-car drove up to a beautiful house that stood on the place that Balmoral formerly occupied. Out of the motor stepped a young man with a good-humoured, freckled face, very like Horatia, whom he handed out, and who was now a very nice-looking girl of seventeen. 'We've come to your house-warming, Sarah,' she cried. 'And, oh, what a beautiful house! It's almost as good as the last one. And you've got a marble staircase and all. Why, it's exactly like the other!' she cried. Sarah shook her head. 'It's not so big or so grand; but we tried to make it like the last to please father and mother. Poor mother was always talking of her marble staircase, so that's exactly copied, and so is the parquetry flooring, and her rooms are as like as we could make them; but we have no royal apartments for you this time,' she said. 'I'm glad of it. I don't mind telling you now that I used to have a nightmare every night, dreaming that burglars had come in and murdered me for my wealth--thinking it was mine, you know,' Horatia confided to her. 'Father is in the drawing-room waiting to see you. He is still rather an invalid,' said Sarah as she led the way to it. 'It's almost the same, Sarah!' Horatia cried again. 'Yes; and we still have the gold plate and Sèvres china. Sykes saved a lot of things, we found afterwards; but it's not so palatial, and father wouldn't have it called Balmoral any more. He said that was boastful.' 'Oh! What is the name of the house, then?' inquired Horatia. 'Father will tell you,' said Sarah. 'So you've kept your promise, and come to stay with us again; only, this time it's my son's house,' said Mr Mark Clay. 'Oh no, father; he says not,' cried Sarah. Mr Clay shook his head. 'I lost my all when I lost Balmoral, and he built up the fortune again. I'll never have a mansion here; but I'm content to stay in my son's till I get a mansion in the sky,' he said. Horatia smiled at the allusion to her speech. 'What is the name of the house?' she asked. 'Horatia House. We all wished to have something to remind us that it was your family we had to thank for having a home again. You made the tide turn and the dye take. George wanted to call it Arnedale House, after your ancestor; but Sarah said, "Call it Horatia House," and so we did.' 'And a very pretty name it is,' said little Mrs Clay, who looked very pretty herself. 'That is a very pretty compliment you have paid me! I feel I ought to make a pretty speech of thanks, but I don't know how,' cried Horatia with a merry laugh. 'Here's the mill-owner,' said his father, as George came in, looking as aristocratic as ever, with the same pleasant smile and perfect manners, only wide awake. 'I've a right to be proud of my children, haven't I? They're all I am proud of now,' said Mr Clay as he took a hand of each. And Horatia and her brother agreed with him that he had a right to be proud of his children. THE END. Edinburgh: Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited. 
46343	----	produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) THE MAN WITH THE BLACK FEATHER [Illustration: In horror I recognized my own handwriting (See page 21)] THE MAN WITH THE BLACK FEATHER BY GASTON LEROUX Author of "The Mystery of the Yellow Room," "The Phantom of the Opera," etc. TRANSLATED BY EDGAR JEPSON ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES M. RELYEA [Illustration] BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY (INCORPORATED) Entered at Stationer's Hall THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. HISTORICAL PREFACE THE SANDALWOOD BOX One evening last year I perceived in the waiting-room of my newspaper, _Le Matin_, a man dressed in black, his face heavy with the darkest despair, whose dry, dead eyes seemed to receive the images of things like unmoving mirrors. He was seated; and there rested on his knees a sandalwood box inlaid with polished steel. An office-boy told me that he had sat there motionless, silent, awaiting my coming, for three mortal hours. I invited this figure of despair into my office and offered him a chair. He did not take it; he walked straight to my desk, and set down on it the sandalwood box. Then he said to me in an expressionless, far-away voice: "Monsieur, this box is yours. My friend, M. Theophrastus Longuet, charged me to bring it to you." He bowed and was going to the door, when I stopped him. "For goodness sake, don't run away like that!" I said sharply. "I can't receive this box without knowing what it contains." "I don't know what it contains myself," he said in the same dull, expressionless tone. "This box is locked; the key is lost. You will have to break it open to find out." "At any rate I should like to know the name of the bearer," I said firmly. "My friend, M. Theophrastus Longuet, called me 'Adolphe,'" he said in the mournfullest tone. "If M. Theophrastus Longuet had brought me this box himself, he would certainly have told me what it contains," I said stiffly. "I regret that M. Theophrastus Longuet--" "So do I," said my visitor. "M. Theophrastus Longuet is dead; and I am his executor." With that he opened the door, went through it, and shut it behind him. I stared at the sandalwood box; I stared at the door; then I ran after the man. He had vanished. * * * * * I had the sandalwood box opened; and in it I found a bundle of manuscripts. In a newspaper office one is used to receiving bundles of manuscripts; and I began to look through them with considerable weariness. Very soon it changed to the liveliest interest. As I went deeper and deeper into these posthumous documents I found the story related in them more and more extraordinary, more and more incredible. For a long while I disbelieved it. However, since the proofs of it exist, I ended, after a searching inquiry into them, by believing it to be true. M. Theophrastus Longuet's reason for bequeathing this strange legacy to me was itself strange. He did not know me; but he had read articles by me in _Le Matin_, "his favourite organ"; and among the many contributors to that journal he had chosen me, not for my superior knowledge, an allegation which would have made me blush, but because he had come to the conclusion that I possessed "a more solid intellect" than the others. GASTON LEROUX CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE HISTORICAL PREFACE--THE SANDALWOOD BOX v I M. THEOPHRASTUS LONGUET DESIRES TO IMPROVE HIS MIND AND VISITS HISTORICAL MONUMENTS 1 II THE SCRAP OF PAPER 13 III THEOPHRASTUS LONGUET BURSTS INTO SONG 22 IV ADOLPHE LECAMUS IS FLABBERGASTED BUT FRANK 48 V THEOPHRASTUS SHOWS THE BLACK FEATHER 55 VI THE PORTRAIT 67 VII THE YOUNG CARTOUCHE 89 VIII THE WAX MASK 105 IX STRANGE POSITION OF A LITTLE VIOLET CAT 116 X THE EXPLANATION OF THE STRANGE ATTITUDE OF A LITTLE VIOLET CAT 124 XI THEOPHRASTUS MAINTAINS THAT HE DID NOT DIE ON THE PLACE DE GRÈVE 135 XII THE HOUSE OF STRANGE WORDS 144 XIII THE CURE THAT MISSED 155 XIV THE OPERATION BEGINS 171 XV THE OPERATION ENDS 186 XVI THE DRAWBACKS OF PSYCHIC SURGERY 200 XVII THEOPHRASTUS BEGINS TO TAKE AN INTEREST IN THINGS 206 XVIII THE EVENING PAPER 212 XIX THE STORY OF THE CALF 221 XX THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF AN EXPRESS TRAIN 234 XXI THE EARLESS MAN WITH HIS HEAD OUT OF THE WINDOW 242 XXII IN WHICH THE CATASTROPHE WHICH APPEARS ON THE POINT OF BEING EXPLAINED, GROWS YET MORE INEXPLICABLE 246 XXIII THE MELODIOUS BRICKLAYER 253 XXIV THE SOLUTION IN THE CATACOMBS 261 XXV M. MIFROID TAKES THE LEAD 273 XXVI M. LONGUET FISHES IN THE CATACOMBS 288 XXVII M. MIFROID PARTS FROM THEOPHRASTUS 300 XXVIII THEOPHRASTUS GOES INTO ETERNAL EXILE 308 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE In horror I recognized my own handwriting. FRONTISPIECE (See page 21) Theophrastus still gazed in wonder. 100 (See page 157) "Theophrastus Longuet, awake!" 200 THE MAN WITH THE BLACK FEATHER CHAPTER I M. THEOPHRASTUS LONGUET DESIRES TO IMPROVE HIS MIND AND VISITS HISTORICAL MONUMENTS M. Theophrastus Longuet was not alone when he rang the bell of that old-time palace prison, the Conciergerie: he was accompanied by his wife Marceline, a very pretty woman, uncommonly fair for a Frenchwoman, of an admirable figure, and by M. Adolphe Lecamus, his best friend. The door, pierced by a small barred peephole, turned heavily on its hinges, as a prison door should; the warder, who acts as guide to the prison, dangling a bunch of great old-fashioned keys in his hand, surveyed the party with official gloom, and asked Theophrastus for his permit. Theophrastus had procured it that very morning at the Prefecture of Police; he held it out with the air of a citizen assured of his rights, and regarded his friend Adolphe with a look of triumph. He admired his friend almost as much as he admired his wife. Not that Adolphe was exactly a handsome man; but he wore an air of force and vigour; and there was nothing in the world which Theophrastus, the timidest man in Paris, rated more highly than force and vigour. That broad and bulging brow (whereas his own was narrow and high), those level and thick eyebrows, for the most part raised a trifle to express contempt of others and self-confidence, that piercing glance (whereas his own pale-blue eyes blinked behind the spectacles of the short-sighted), that big nose, haughtily arched, those lips surmounted by a brown, curving moustache, that strong, square chin; in a word, all that virile antithesis to his own grotesque, flabby-cheeked face, was the perpetual object of his silent admiration. Besides, Adolphe had been Post-Office Inspector in Tunis: he had "crossed the sea." Theophrastus had only crossed the river Seine. No one can pretend that that is a real crossing. The guide set the party in motion; then he said: "You are French?" Theophrastus stopped short in the middle of the court. "Do we look like Germans?" he said with a confident smile, for he was quite sure that he was French. "It's the first time I ever remember French people coming to visit the Conciergerie. As a rule French people don't visit anything," said the guide with his air of official gloom; and he went on. "It is wrong of them. The monuments of the Past are the Book of History," said Theophrastus sententiously; and he stopped short to look proudly at his wife and Adolphe, for he found the saying fine. They were not listening to him; and as he followed the guide, he went on in a confidential tone, "I am an old Parisian myself; and if I have waited till to-day to visit the monuments of the Past, it was because my business--I was a manufacturer of rubber stamps right up to last week--did not give me the leisure to do it till the hour I retired from it. That hour has struck; and I am going to improve my mind." And with an air of decision he struck the time-old pavement with the ferule of his green umbrella. They went through a little door and a large wicket, down some steps, and found themselves in the Guard-room. They were silent, abandoning themselves entirely to their reflections. They were doing all they could to induce these old walls, which recalled so prodigious a history, to leave a lasting impression on their minds. They were not insensible brutes. While the guide conducted them over Cæsar's tower, or Silver tower, or Bon Bec tower, they told themselves vaguely that for more than a thousand years there had been in them illustrious prisoners whose very names they had forgotten. Marceline thought of Marie Antoinette, the Princess Elizabeth, and the little Dauphin, and also of the waxwork guards who watch over the Royal Family in museums. In spirit therefore she was in the Temple while she was in body visiting the Conciergerie. But she did not suspect this; so she was quite happy. As they descended the Silver tower, where the only relict of the Middle Ages they had found was an old gentleman on a stool in front of a roll-top desk, classifying the documents relating to political prisoners under the Third Republic, they came once more into the Guard-room on their way to Bon Bec tower. Theophrastus, who took a pride in showing himself well-informed, said to the guide: "Wasn't it here that the Girondins had their last meal? You might show us exactly where the table was and where Camille Desmoulins sat. I always look upon Camille Desmoulins as a personal friend of mine." "So do I," said Marceline with a somewhat superior air. Adolphe jeered at them. He asserted that Camille Desmoulins was not a Girondin. Theophrastus was annoyed, and so was Marceline. When Adolphe went on to assert that Camille Desmoulins was a Cordelier, a friend of Danton, and one of the instigators of the September massacres, she denied it. "He was nothing of the kind," she said firmly. "If he had been, Lucie would never have married him." Adolphe did not press the point, but when they came into the Torture-chamber in Bon Bec tower, he pretended to be immensely interested by the labels on the drawers round the walls, on which were printed "Hops," "Cinnamon," "Senna." "This was the Torture-chamber; they have turned it into a dispensary," said the guide in gruff explanation. "They have done right. It is more humane," said Theophrastus sententiously. "No doubt; but it's very much less impressive," said Adolphe coldly. At once Marceline agreed with him... One was not impressed at all... They had been expecting something very different... This was not at all what they had looked for. But when they came on to the Clock platform, their feelings underwent a change. The formidable aspect of those feudal towers, the last relics of the old Frankish monarchy, troubles for awhile the spirit of even the most ignorant. This thousand-year-old prison has witnessed so many magnificent death-agonies and hidden such distant and such legendary despairs that it seems that one only has to penetrate its depths to find sitting in some obscure corner, damp and fatal, the tragic history of Paris, as immortal as those walls. That is why, with a little plaster, flooring, and paint, they have made there the office of the Director of the Conciergerie and that of the Recorder; they have put the ink-spiller in the place once occupied by the executioner. It is, as Theophrastus says, more humane. None the less, since, as Adolphe affirmed, it is less impressive, that visit of the 16th of last June threatened to leave on the minds of the three friends nothing but the passing memory of a complete disillusion when there happened an incident so unheard of and so curiously fantastic that I considered it absolutely necessary, after reading Theophrastus Longuet's account of it in his memoirs, to go to the Conciergerie and cross-examine the guide himself. I found him a stolid fellow, officially gloomy, but with his memory of the events of Theophrastus' visit perfectly clear. At my questions he lost his air of gloom, and said with some animation, "Everything was going quite as usual, sir; and I had just shown the two gentlemen and the lady the kitchens of St. Louis--where we keep the whitewash. We were on our way to the cell of Marie Antoinette, which is now a little chapel. The figure of Christ before which she must have prayed is now in the Director's office--" "Yes, yes; let's get to the facts!" I interrupted. "We're just coming to them. I was telling the gentleman with the green umbrella that we had been compelled to put the Queen's armchair in the Director's office because the English were carrying away all the stuffing of it in their purses--" "Oh, cut out the English!" I said with some impatience. He looked at me with an injured air and went on: "But I must tell you what I was saying to the gentleman with the green umbrella when he interrupted me in such a strange tone that the other gentleman and the lady cried out together, 'What's the matter, Theophrastus? I never heard you speak like that before! _I shouldn't have recognised your voice!_'" "Ah! and what was he saying to you?" "We had come just to the end of Paris Street--you know the passage we call Paris Street at the Conciergerie?" "Yes, yes: get on!" "We were at the top of that dreadful black passage where the grating is behind which they used to cut off the women's hair before guillotining them. It's the original grating, you know." "Yes, yes: get on!" "It's a passage into which a ray of sunlight never penetrates. You know that Marie Antoinette went to her death down that passage?" "Yes, yes: cut out Marie Antoinette!" "There you have the old Conciergerie in all its horror... Then the gentleman with the green umbrella said to me, '_Zounds! It's Straw Alley!_'" "He said that? Are you sure? Did he really say '_Zounds_'?" "Yes, sir." "Well, after all, there's nothing very remarkable in his saying, '_Zounds! It's Straw Alley!_'" "But wait a bit, sir," said the guide with yet more animation. "I answered that he was wrong, that Straw Alley was what we to-day call 'Paris Street.' He replied in that strange voice: '_Zounds! Are you going to teach me about Straw Alley? Why, I've slept on the straw there, like the others!_' I said laughing, though I felt a bit uncomfortable, that no one had slept in Straw Alley for more than two hundred years." "And what did he say to that?" "He was going to answer when his wife interfered and said: 'What are you talking about, Theophrastus? Are you going to teach the guide his business when you've never been to the Conciergerie before in your life?' Then he said, but in his natural voice, the voice in which he had been speaking since they came in: 'That's true. I've never been to the Conciergerie in my life.'" "What did he do then?" "Nothing. I could not explain the incident, and I thought it all over, when something stranger still happened. We had visited the Queen's cell, and Robespierre's cell, and the chapel of the Girondins, and that little door through which the prisoners of September went to get massacred in the court; and we had come back into Paris Street. On the left-hand side of it there's a little staircase which no one ever goes down, because it leads to the cellars; and the only thing to see in the cellars is the eternal night which reigns there. The door at the bottom of this is made of iron bars, a grating--perhaps a thousand years old, or even more. The gentleman they called Adolphe was walking with the lady towards the door of the Guard-room, when without a word the gentleman with the green umbrella ran down the little staircase and called up from the bottom of it in that strange voice I was telling you about: "'Hi! Where are you going to? _It's this way!_' "The other gentleman, the lady, and myself stopped dead as if we had been turned to stone. I must tell you, sir, that his voice was perfectly awful; and there was nothing in his appearance to make one expect such a voice. I ran, in spite of myself as it were, to the top of the staircase. The man with the green umbrella gave me a withering glance. Truly I was thunderstruck, turned to stone and thunderstruck; and when he shouted to me, 'Open this grating!' I don't know how I found the strength to rush down the stairs and open it. Then, when the grating was opened, he plunged into the night of the cellars. Where did he go? How did he find his way? That basement of the Conciergerie is plunged in a terrible darkness which nothing has broken for ages and ages." "Didn't you try to stop him?" I said sharply. "He had gone too far; and I hadn't the strength to stop him. _The man with the green umbrella just gave me orders_; and I had to obey him. And we stood there for a quarter of an hour, half out of our wits: it was so odd. And his wife talked, and his friend talked, and I talked; and we said nothing of any use; and we stared into the darkness till our eyes ached. Suddenly we heard his voice--not his first voice, but his second voice, the awful voice--and I was so overcome, I had to hang on to the bars of the door. "'Is that you, _Simon the Auvergnat_?' he cried. "I didn't answer anything; and as he went past me, I fancied he put a scrap of paper into his breast pocket. He sprang up the staircase three steps at a time; and we went up after him. He did not offer any explanation; and I simply ran to open the door of the prison for them. I wanted to see their backs. When the wicket was opened and the man with the green umbrella was crossing the threshold, he said, for no reason that I could see: "'_We must avoid the wheel._' "There was no carriage passing." CHAPTER II THE SCRAP OF PAPER What did happen? The matter is very obscure. I cannot do better than give Theophrastus Longuet's account of it in the actual words of his memoirs in the sandalwood box. "I am a man with a healthy mind in a healthy body," he writes, "and a good citizen: that is, I have never transgressed the law. Laws are necessary; and I have always kept them. At least I believe I have. "I have always hated the imagination; and by that I mean that in all circumstances, whether, for instance, it has been a case of conferring my friendship on anyone, or of having to decide on a line of conduct, I have always been careful to stick to common sense. The most simple always seemed to me the best. "I suffered deeply, for instance, when I discovered that my old College friend Adolphe Lecamus was addicted to the study of Spiritualism. "The man who says Spiritualism says rubbish. To try to question spirits by turning tables is utterly absurd. I know what I am talking about, for, wishing to prove the absurdities of his theories, I have taken part in séances with Adolphe and my wife. We sat for hours round a little table which absolutely refused to turn. I laughed at him heartily; and that annoyed my wife, because women are always ready to put faith in the impossible and believe in the mysterious. "He used to bring her books which she read greedily; and sometimes he would amuse himself by trying to send her to sleep by making passes before her face. I have never seen anything sillier. I should not indeed have stood it from anyone else; but I have a strong liking for Adolphe. He has a powerful face; and he has been a great traveller. "He and Marceline called me a sceptic. I answered that I was not a sceptic in the sense of a man who believes in nothing or doubts everything. I believe in everything worthy of belief; for example, I believe in Progress. I am not a sceptic; I am a philosopher. "During his travels Adolphe read a great deal; I manufactured rubber stamps. I am what people call 'an earthy spirit.' I do not make a boast of it; I merely state it. "I thought it well to give this sketch of my character to make it clear that what happened yesterday is no fault of mine. I went to see the prison as I might have gone to buy a neck-tie at the Louvre. I wished to improve my mind. I have plenty of spare time nowadays, since we have sold the business. I said, 'Let us do as the English do and see the sights of Paris.' It was a mere chance that we began with the Conciergerie. "I am very sorry indeed that we did. "Am I really very sorry? I am not sure. I am not sure of anything. At present I am quite calm. And I am going to write down what happened exactly as if it had happened to someone else. All the same, what a story it is! "While we were going through the towers nothing happened worth setting down here. I remember saying to myself in Bon Bec tower: "'What, was it here in this little chamber, which looks just like a grocery, that there were so many agonies and so many illustrious victims martyred?' "I tried honestly to picture to myself the horror of that chamber when the executioner and his assistants with their horrible instruments came to the prisoners with the intention of forcing them to confess crimes affecting the state. But owing to the little labels on the drawers, on which one reads 'Senna,' 'Hops,' I did not succeed. "That Bon Bec tower! They used also to call it _The Prattler_ on account of the horrible cries which burst from it and made the quiet passer-by shudder and quicken his steps along the quay at the sound of the King's justice. "Now Bon Bec tower is peaceful and very still. I am not complaining of it: it is Progress. "But when we penetrated to that part of the Conciergerie which has hardly changed for centuries and were walking quietly along between those bare stone walls which no fresh facing, no profane plaster has ever covered, an inexplicable fever began to fill my veins; and when we were in the gloom at the end of Straw Alley, I cried, '_Zounds! It's Straw Alley!_' "At once I turned to see who had spoken those words. They were all staring at me; and I perceived plainly that I had spoken them myself. Indeed, my throat was still quivering from their utterance. "The idiot of a guide asserted that we had passed Straw Alley. I contradicted him; and he shut up. I was sure of my facts, you understand, quite sure that it was Straw Alley. I told him that I had slept on the straw in it. But it is absurd. How do you suppose I could have slept on straw in Straw Alley when it was the first time I had ever been in the Conciergerie? Besides, was I sure? That is what worries me. I had an atrocious headache. "My brow was burning even while I felt it swept by a strong current of cold air. Outside I was cool; inside I was a furnace. "What had we been doing? I had a moment before walked quietly through the chapel of the Girondins; and while the guide was telling us the history of it, I played with my green umbrella. I was not in the least annoyed at having just behaved so oddly. I was my natural self. But as for that, I have never ceased to be my natural self. "That which befell me later was also quite natural, since it was not the result of any effort. The unnatural is exactly what did not befall me. "I remember finding myself at the bottom of a staircase in front of a grating. I was endowed with superhuman vigour; I shook the grating and shouted, 'This way!' The others, _who did not know_, were slow coming. I do not know what I should have done to the grating, if the guide had not unlocked it for me. For that matter, I do not know what I should have done to the guide. I was mad. No: I have no right to say that. I was not mad; and that's a great pity. It is worse than if I had been mad. "Undoubtedly I was in a state of great nervous excitement; but my mind was quite lucid. I do not believe that I have ever seen so clearly; and yet I was in the dark. I do not believe that I have ever had clearer recollections; and yet I was in a place I did not know. Heavens! I did not recognise it and _I did recognise it_! I did not hesitate about my way. My groping hands found the stones they reached out in the darkness to find; and my feet trod a soil which could not have been strange to them. "Who will ever be able to tell the age of that soil; who will ever be able to tell you the age of those stones? _I do not know it myself._ They talk of the origin of the palace. What is the origin of the old Frankish palace? They may be able to say when those stones will end; they will never be able to say when they began. And they are forgotten, those stones, in the thousand-year night of the cellars. The odd thing is that I remembered them. "I crept along the damp walls as if the way were well known to me. I expected certain rough places in the wall; and they came to the tips of my fingers; I counted the edges of the stones and I knew that at the end of a certain number I had only to turn to see at the far end of a passage _a ray which the sun had forgotten there since the beginning of the history of Paris_. I turned and saw the ray; _and I felt my heart beat loudly from the bottom of the centuries_." M. Longuet interrupts his narrative for a while to describe the whirl of his mind during this singular hour. He has the greatest difficulty in remaining master of his thought, the utmost difficulty in following it. It rushes on in front of him like a bolting horse whose reins he has let go. It leaves him behind and bounds ahead, leaving on the paper, as traces of its passage, words of such profundity that when he looks at them, he says, they make him giddy. And he adds, in a paroxysm of dread: "One must stop on the edge of these words as one stops on the edge of a precipice." And he guides the pen with a feverish hand, as he goes on burying himself in the depths of these subterranean galleries: "And that's the Prattler! These are the walls which have heard! It was not up above, in the sunlight, that the Prattler spoke; it was here, in this night of the underworld. Here are the rings in the walls. Is it the ring of Ravaillac? _I no longer remember._ "But towards the ray, towards the unique ray, motionless and eternal, the faint, square ray, which from the beginning of ages took and preserved the form of the air-hole, I advance; I advance in a stumbling hurry, while the fever consumes me, blazes, and dizzies my brain. My feet stop, but with such a shock that one would believe them caught by invisible hands, risen from the soil; my fingers run over the wall, groping and fumbling that spot in the wall. What do my fingers want? What is the thought of my fingers? I had a pen-knife in my pocket; and all at once I let my green umbrella fall to the ground to take my pen-knife from my pocket. And I scraped, with certainty, between two stones. I cleared away the dust and mortar from between two stones. Then my knife pierced a thing between the two stones and brought it out. "That is why I know I am not mad. That thing is under my eyes. In my quietest hours, I, Theophrastus Longuet, can look at it on my desk between my latest models of rubber stamps. It is not I who am mad; it is this thing that is mad. It is a scrap of paper, torn and stained--a document whose age there is no telling and which is in every way calculated to plunge a quiet manufacturer of rubber stamps into the wildest consternation. The paper, as you can guess, is rotted by the damp of the cellars. The damp has eaten away half the words, which seem from their red hue to have been written in blood. "But in these words before me, in this document which was certainly written two centuries ago, which I passed under the square ray from the air-hole and gazed at with my hair rising on end in horror, I RECOGNISED MY OWN HANDWRITING." Here copied clearly out is this precious and mysterious document: "I rt uried my treasures after betrayal of April 1st Go and take the air at the Chopinettes look at the Gall look at the Cock Dig on the spot and you will be rich." CHAPTER III THEOPHRASTUS LONGUET BURSTS INTO SONG On leaving the prison, Marceline and Adolphe were, very naturally, full of curiosity to learn the reasons of Theophrastus' extraordinary behaviour; and he had the greatest difficulty in getting them away from the subject. He treated the matter lightly, declaring that the whim had taken him to visit the cellars of the Conciergerie; and he had visited them. They were even more impressed by his attitude to the guide than by his actual plunge into the cellars. That Theophrastus, the timid Theophrastus, should have browbeaten not a mere man, but an official, amazed them. Theophrastus admits that he was as much amazed as they, and felt rather proud of himself. All the evening they kept recurring to the matter until their amazement and their interest began to weaken by mere continuance of expression. But Theophrastus was glad indeed when sleep at last tied Marceline's tongue. The next day he shut himself up in his study on the pretext of straightening out his accounts. Its window looks down on to the little grass-plot in the middle of Anvers Square; and he leaned out over the sill, contemplating the prosaic reality of the scene as if he could not have enough of it. He was above all pleased by the nurses wheeling along their babies in perambulators and by the shouting of the children romping about the Square. His thought was of a great unity and a great simplicity. It was entirely contained in the phrase: "The World has not changed." No: the world had not changed. There were the babies in the perambulators; and as the clock struck two the Signora Petito, wife of the Professor of Italian who occupied the flat above his, began to play _The Carnival of Venice_. No: nothing in the world had changed; yet when he turned round, he could see on his desk, among the models of rubber stamps, a scrap of paper. Did that scrap of paper _really_ exist? He had passed a feverish night, almost a night of delirium; and at the end of it he had decided that his strange adventure must have been a bad dream. But in the morning he had found the scrap of paper in a drawer of his desk... Even now he kept saying to himself, "I shall turn round presently; and the scrap of paper won't be there." He turned round; and the scrap of paper was there--_in his own handwriting_. He passed his hand over his perspiring brow and heaved the sigh of a grieved child. Then he seemed to come to a definite resolve and carefully put the scrap of paper into his pocket-book. He had just remembered that Signor Petito had a great reputation as an expert in handwriting. His friend Adolphe was also an expert in handwriting, but from the Spiritualistic point of view. He told the character by it. Theophrastus had no intention of calling Adolphe into counsel. There was already too much mystery in the affair to entrust it to the overflowing imagination of a medium who boasted himself a pupil of a Papus. He went slowly upstairs and was ushered into Signor Petito's study. He found himself in the presence of a man of middle age, whose chief characteristics were a mass of crinkly black hair, a piercing glance, and enormous ears. After they had exchanged greetings, Theophrastus broached the subject of the scrap of paper. He drew it from his pocket-book and an unsigned letter which he had written a few days previously. "Signor Petito," he said, "I understand that you are a first-class expert in handwriting. I should be much obliged if you would examine this letter and this document, and inform me of the result of your examination. I assert myself that there is no connection--" He stopped short, as red as a peony, for he was not in the habit of lying. But Signor Petito had already scanned the letter and the scrap of paper with the eye of an expert; and with a smile which showed all his exceedingly white teeth, he said: "I won't keep you waiting for my answer, M. Longuet. The document is in a very bad state; but the scraps of handwriting one can read are in every respect the same as the handwriting of the letter. Before the Courts, M. Longuet, before God and before men, these two handwritings were traced _by the same hand_!" He laid his hand on his heart with a great air. He entered into particulars: a child, he declared, could not make a mistake about it. He became oracular. "The handwriting in both is equally angular," he said in a very pompous tone. "By angular, M. Longuet, we describe a handwriting in which the thin strokes which join the strokes of the letters and the letters to one another are at an acute angle. You understand? Look at this hook, and this one, and this thin stroke, and all these letters which increase progressively in equal proportions. But what an acute handwriting, M. Longuet! I have never seen handwriting so acute: _it's as sharp as the blade of a knife_!" At these last words Theophrastus turned so pale that Signor Petito thought that he was going to faint. None the less he took the letter and the document, thanked Signor Petito, and went out of the flat. He walked straight out of the house and wandered about the streets for a long while. At last he found himself in Saint-Andrew-des-Arts Place; then he took his way to Suger Street, and opened the latch of an old-fashioned door. He found himself in a dark and dirty passage. A man came down it to meet him, and recognising him, greeted him. "How are you, Theophrastus? What good wind blows you here?" he said in affectionate tones. "How are you, Ambrose?" said Theophrastus gloomily. Since they had not met for two years, they had a hundred inquiries to make of one another. Ambrose was an engraver of visiting-cards by profession. He had been a printer in the Provinces; but having put all his capital into a new invention in printing, it had not been long before he found himself a bankrupt. He was a cousin of Marceline; and Theophrastus, who was a good soul, had come to his aid in the hour of his gravest trouble. Theophrastus sat down on a straw-seated chair in a little room which served as workshop, and was lighted by a large, dusty skylight in the ceiling. "You 're a scientific man, Ambrose," he said, still gloomily. "Nothing of the kind!" said Ambrose quickly. "Yes; you are. No one could teach you anything in the matter of paper." "Oh, yes: that's true enough. I do know paper." "You know all papers," said Theophrastus. "All," said Ambrose with modest pride. "If one showed you a piece of paper you could tell the age of it?" "Yes; I have published a monograph on the water-marks of the papers used in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Academy crowned it." "I know it. And I have the fullest confidence in your knowledge of papers," said Theophrastus with unrelieved gloom. "It's well-founded; but really it's a very simple matter. The oldest papers presented at first, when they were new, a smooth, glossy surface. But soon wire-marks appeared in them, crossed at regular intervals by perpendicular lines, both reproducing the impression of the metal trellis on which the paste was spread. In the fourteenth century they had the idea of utilising this reproduction by making it a mark of the source or mill which the paper came from. With this object in view, they embroidered in brass wire on the trellis mould, initials, words, and all kinds of emblems: these are the water-marks. Every water-marked sheet of paper carries in itself its birth-certificate; but the difficulty is to decipher it. It requires a little practice: the pot, the eagle, the bell..." Theophrastus opened his pocket-book and held out his scrap of paper with trembling fingers. "Could you tell me the exact age of this document?" he said. Ambrose put on his spectacles and held the paper up to the light. "There's a date," he said. "172... The last figure is missing. It would be a paper of the eighteenth century then. Given the date within ten years, our task becomes very simple." "Oh, I saw the date," said Theophrastus quickly. "But is this really an eighteenth-century paper? Isn't the date false? That's what I want to know." Ambrose pointed to the middle of the scrap. "Look," he said. Theophrastus looked; but he saw nothing. Then Ambrose lighted a little lamp and threw its light on the document. In holding the scrap of paper between one's eyes and the lamp one distinguished in the middle of it a kind of crown. "This paper's extremely rare, Theophrastus!" cried Ambrose in considerable excitement. "This water-mark is almost unknown, for very little of it was manufactured. The water-mark is called 'The Crown of Thorns.' This paper, my dear Theophrastus, is exactly of the year 1721." "You are sure of it?" "Absolutely. But how comes it that this document, which is dated 1721, is, in every part of it which is visible, in your handwriting?" cried Ambrose in a tone of amazement. Theophrastus rose, put the document back into his pocket-book, and went out on stumbling feet, without answering. I reproduce from the medley of documents of which his memoirs are composed the following passage: "So now," writes Theophrastus, "I had the proof; I could no longer doubt; I had no longer the right to doubt. This scrap of paper which dated from the beginning of the eighteenth century, from the times of the Regent, this sheet which I had found, or rather _had gone to seek_ in a prison, was truly in my own handwriting. I had written on this sheet, I, Theophrastus Longuet, late manufacturer of rubber stamps, who had only retired the week before, at the age of forty-one years, I had written on this sheet the still incomprehensible words which I read on it, in 1721! Besides, I had not really any need of Signor Petito, or of Ambrose, to assure me of it. All my being cried, 'It's your paper! It's your paper!'" "So before being Theophrastus Longuet, the son of Jean Longuet, market-gardener at Ferté-sous-Jouarre, I had been in the past someone whom I did not know, but who was re-born in me. Yes: every now and then I 'foamed at the mouth' at remembering that I lived two hundred years ago! "Who was I? What was then my name? I had a strange certainty that these questions would not remain unanswered for long. Was it not a fact that already things of which in my present existence I was ignorant, were rising from my past? What did certain phrases I had uttered at the Conciergerie mean? Who was Simon the Auvergnat, whose name had risen twice to my burning lips? "Yes, yes: the name of long ago, _my_ name, would also rise to my awakening brain; and knowing who I was, I should recall the whole of my reviving life in the past, and read the document at a glance." Theophrastus Longuet might well be troubled in mind. He was a simple, rather dense, self-satisfied soul who had never believed in anything but rubber stamps. A good-natured, strictly honest, narrow-minded and obstinate tradesman, like the bulk of his class in France he had considered religion only fit for women; and without declaring himself an unbeliever, he had been wont to say that when one died one was dead for a long time. He had just learned in the most convincing, palpable fashion that _one was never dead_. It was indeed a blow. But he took it very well. From the moment that he remembered having been alive at the beginning of the eighteenth century, he began to regret that it was not two thousand years earlier. That is the nature of the French tradesman; he is full of common sense; but when he does exaggerate, he passes all bounds. In his uncertainty about his previous existence he had two definite facts to start from: the date 1721, and the Conciergerie prison. These enabled him to affirm that in 1721 he had been confined in the Conciergerie as a Prisoner of State: he could not admit for an instant that even in the wicked times of Louis XV he, Theophrastus Longuet, could possibly have been in prison for an offence against the Common Law. Again the scrap of paper gave grounds for certain inferences. At some desperate conjuncture, possibly on the eve of his execution, he had written it and hidden it in the wall, to find it on a passing visit, two centuries later. There was nothing supernatural about that; it was merely the logical explanation of the facts of the case. He betook himself once more to the consideration of the document. Two words in it seemed to him, naturally, of paramount importance. They were the words "Betrayal" and "Treasures." He hoped from these two words to reconstitute his earlier personality. In the first place, it was plain that he had been rich and powerful. Only rich men bury treasures; only powerful men are betrayed. It seemed to him that it must have been a memorable, perhaps historic betrayal, of _the betrayal of the First of April_. Whatever else was mysterious about the document, it was quite clear that he had been a great personage and had buried treasures. "By Jove!" he said to himself. "Provided that no one has touched them, those treasures belong to me! If need were, with this document in my own handwriting I could establish my claim to them." Theophrastus was not a rich man. He had retired from business with a moderate competence: a cottage in the country, with its little garden, its fountain, and its lawn. It was not much, with Marceline's occasional fits of extravagance. Decidedly the treasures would come in very useful. At the same time we must give him the credit of being far more interested in the mystery of his personality than in the mystery of the treasures. He decided to postpone his search for them till he could definitely give a name to the personage who had been Theophrastus in 1721. To his mind this discovery, which was of chief interest to him, would be the key to all the rest. He was somewhat astonished by the sudden disappearance of what he called his "historical instinct." It had been lacking during the earlier part of his life; but it had revealed itself to him in the cellars of the Conciergerie with the suddenness and emphasis of a clap of thunder. For a while the Other (in his mind he called the great personage he had been in the eighteenth century the "Other") had taken possession of him. The Other had been so completely master of him that he had acted with the Other's hands and spoken with his voice. It was the Other who had found the document. It was the Other who had cried, "_Zounds! It's Straw Alley!_" It was the Other who had called _Simon the Auvergnat_ and then had vanished. Theophrastus did not know what had become of him. He sought in vain. He sounded himself, plumbing the depths of his being. Nothing! Theophrastus would not stand it. He had not been troubled all his life long by any unhealthy curiosity about the beginning or end of things; he had wasted no time on the mysteries of philosophy. He had shrugged his shoulders at their futility. But since the revelation of the extraordinary fact that a man sold rubber stamps in 1911 after burying treasures in 1721, he swore to go to the end of the business. He would know. He would know everything. His "historical instinct" seemed to have left him for the time being, he would hunt for it in books. He would assuredly end by finding out who was the mysterious personage who had been shut up in the Conciergerie in 1721 after having been betrayed on the First of April. Which First of April? That remained to discover. Little as the selling of rubber stamps fits man for historical research, he betook himself to libraries and hunted for that personage. He studied the lives of the chief men of the period. Since he was at it, nothing was too grand for him: Princes, Peers, Statesmen, and Generals, he studied the lives of all. He paused for a while at the great financier Law, but found him too dissipated; the same objection applied to the Comte du Barry; and he was positively horrified by the thought that he might have been the Comte de Charolais, renowned for his debaucheries, whose hobby was to shoot thatchers at work on the house-roofs. For forty-eight hours he was the Cardinal de Polignac before he was disgusted to learn that that great Churchman had not been a man of stainless virtue. Whenever he did find a person whom the historians painted in the most engaging colours and adorned with the most solid virtues, that personage invariably disobliged him by not having been shut up in the Conciergerie or betrayed on the First of April. However he had just discovered, _in the Journal de Barbier_, a favourite of the Regent who, strangely enough, was exactly the man he was looking for, when there came a development of his case which plunged him into a profound consternation. He had sent Marceline down to his country cottage on the banks of the Marne, to which it was their habit to betake themselves at the beginning of July; and Adolphe had gone down to the village inn, to help her get it in order for their stay. Their absence left him freer to prosecute his researches. Then on the morning of the anniversary of his wedding-day he went down to join them at the cottage. He had called it "Azure Waves Villa," in spite of the remonstrances of Adolphe, who had urged that such a name was only suitable to a cottage by the sea. Theophrastus had been firm in the matter because, he declared, he had often been to Treport, and the sea was always green; whereas, fishing for gudgeon in the Marne, he had frequently observed that its waves were blue. He found his wife and friend awaiting him eagerly on its threshold; and as with the air of a favourite of the Regent, he complimented Marceline on her charming appearance, he gracefully waved his green umbrella, from which he seldom allowed himself to be parted, in the fashion in which he believed the dandies waved their canes at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He found the household in the stress of the preparations for the anniversary dinner, to which several of his friends in the neighbourhood brought their wives to do honour to Theophrastus and Marceline. Still the favourite of the Regent, to the astonishment of Marceline and Adolphe, he found a few gracious words of compliment for each guest. Neither of them had ever seen him so shine as host before. They dined in a tent in the garden; and the talk at once turned on fishing, a sport to which they were all devoted; and they did their best to be accurate about their exploits. M. Lopard had caught a three-pound pike; old Mlle. Taburet complained bitterly that someone had been fishing in her favourite pool; a third declared that the fish were being overfed; and there was a long discussion on ground-bait. Theophrastus said nothing: he suddenly found these good people too middle-class for him. He would have liked to raise the level of the conversation; and he would have preferred it to deal with the matters which filled his fevered imagination. Towards the end of dinner he found a way to set Adolphe talking of ghosts. Then Madame Lopard told them of the extraordinary doings of a somnambulist who lived near; and at once Adolphe explained the phenomena of somnambulism according to the Spiritualistic theory, and quoted Allan Kardec. Adolphe was never at a loss to explain "phenomena." Then, at last, they came to the matter to which Theophrastus was burning to bring them, the Transmigration of Souls. Marceline observed that our reason rejected the hypothesis; and Adolphe protested vigorously: "Nothing is lost in nature," he said authoritatively. "Everything is transformed, souls and bodies alike. The transmigration of souls with a view to their purification is a belief which goes back to the remotest antiquity; and the philosophers of all ages have been careful not to deny it." "But if one came back into a body, one would know it," said Marceline. "Not always, only sometimes," said Adolphe confidently. "Sometimes? Is that so?" said Theophrastus quickly; and his heart began to beat tumultuously. "Oh, yes: there are instances--authentic instances," said Adolphe emphatically. "Ptolemy Cæsarion, Cleopatra's son and King of Egypt thirty years before Christ, recollected perfectly that he had been the philosopher Pythagoras who lived six hundred years before him." "Impossible!" cried the ladies; and the men smiled with an air of superior wisdom. "It's nothing to laugh at, gentlemen. It's the most serious subject in the world," said Adolphe sternly. "The actual transformation of our bodies which is the last word in Science, is in entire accord with the theory of Reincarnation. What is this theory of transformation except that living beings _transform themselves into one another_? Nature for ever presents herself to us as a creative flame unceasingly perfecting types, on her way to the attainment of an ideal which will be the final crown of the Law of Progress. Since Nature has only one aim, what she does for bodies, she does also for souls. I can assure you that this is the case, for I have studied this question, which is the very foundation of all sound Science." None of the party understood Adolphe's discourse, a fact which filled him with quiet pride; but they listened to him in an ecstasy; and he was pleased to see that Theophrastus, as a rule so restive under such discussions, was listening with the liveliest interest. It was an attitude hardly to be wondered at in a man who was hearing that what seemed a wild imagining of his delirium rested on a firm scientific basis. "The transmigration of souls was taught in India, the cradle of the human race," Adolphe continued in his most professorial tone, delighted to have caught the ear of the party. "Then it was taught in Egypt, then in Greece by Pythagoras. Plato took the doctrine from him; and adduced irrefutable proofs in his Phædo that souls do not pass into eternal exile but return to animate new bodies." "Oh, if we could only have proofs of a fact like that!" cried Madame Sampic, the wife of the schoolmaster of Pont-aux-Dames, with enthusiasm. "If we had, I shouldn't mind dying one bit," said old Mlle. Taburet, who was in mortal fear of her approaching end. "There _are_ proofs--irrefutable proofs," said Adolphe solemnly. "There are two: one drawn from the general order of Nature, one from human consciousness. Firstly, Nature is governed by the law of contradictions, says Plato, meaning by that that when we see in her bosom death succeed life we are compelled to believe that life succeeds death. Is that clear to you?" "Yes, yes," cried several of the guests, without understanding a word he was saying. "Moreover, Plato continues, since nothing can be born from nothing, if the beings we see die were never to return to life, everything would end by becoming absorbed in death, and Nature would be moving towards an eternal sleep. Have I made this first proof clear?" "Yes, yes: the second!" cried his fellow guests, quite untruthfully. "Secondly," said Adolphe, growing absolutely pontifical, "when, after having observed the general laws of the Universe, we descend into the depths of our own being, we find the same dogma confirmed by the fact of memory. 'To learn,' cries Plato to the Universe, 'To learn is nothing else but to remember.' Since our soul learns, it is that it remembers. And what does it remember if not that it has lived before, and that it has lived in another body? 'Why should we not believe that in quitting the body which it animates at the moment, it must animate several others in succession?' I am quoting Plato word for word," said Adolphe in a tone of ringing triumph. "And Plato is a person to be reckoned with," said Theophrastus warmly. "Charles Fourier says," said Adolphe, moving on to the modern, "Where is the old man who does not desire not to be certain of carrying into another life the experience he has acquired in this one? To assert that this desire can never be realised is to admit that the Deity would deceive us. We must then recognise that we have lived already, before being what we are to-day, and that many more lives await us. All these lives--Fourier adds with a precision for which we cannot be sufficiently thankful--to the number of a hundred and ten are distributed over five stages of unequal extent and cover a period of eighty-one thousand years." "Eighty-one thousand years! That's pretty filling!" interrupted M. Lopard. "We spend twenty-seven thousand of them on our planet and the other fifty-four thousand elsewhere," explained Adolphe. "And how long is it before we come back into another body?" asked Madame Bache. "At least two or three thousand years, if we are to believe Allan Kardec, always supposing that we have not died a violent death. Then, especially if one has been executed, one may be reincarnated at the end of two hundred years," said Adolphe. "That's it! They must have hanged me," said Theophrastus to himself. "Or if they didn't hang a man of my quality, they beheaded me. All the same," he went on to think, with a natural pride, "if these people here knew that they were sitting with a favourite of the Regent, or perhaps a Prince of Royal blood, how astonished and respectful they'd be! But not a bit of it: they are merely saying to themselves, 'It's Theophrastus Longuet, manufacturer of rubber stamps'; and that's enough for them." The advent of the two waiters with the champagne cut short the dissertation of Adolphe; and though everyone had been deeply impressed by it, now they only wished to be amused. It was then that Marceline turned to Theophrastus and begged him to sing the song with which he was wont to delight their ears at dessert on each anniversary of their wedding-day. He had sung it on their wedding-day itself; and thanks to its charm and freshness, it had been a great success. It was Beranger's _Lisette_. But what was the amazement of Marceline and all the guests, when Theophrastus sprang to his feet, threw his napkin on the table, and bawled to the mistress of the house: "As you will, _Marie-Antoinette_! I can refuse you nothing!" "Gracious goodness! _That voice of his has come back!_" gasped Marceline. The guests had not recovered from the shock when Theophrastus bawled to an old French air, in a voice which none of them recognised as his, his voice of the Conciergerie, bawled to the most select society from Crécy-en-Brie to Lagny-Thorigny-Pomponne: "Bullies all! In our snug cribs We live like fighting-cocks: On dainties rich we splash the dibbs, And booze we never docks. Then guzzle, cullies, and booze away Till Gabriel's trump on Judgment Day!" In spite of the richness of the rhyme, no applause followed the stanza. The ladies did not clink their glasses with their knives; they stared at Theophrastus with their eyes starting out of their heads; and the eyes of Marceline projected furthest of all. Theophrastus did not need any applause; like one possessed of a devil, he bawled on: "Bullies all! In our snug cribs Dan Cupid loves to dance. He brings to help us splash the dibbs The prettiest silk in France. Then guzzle, cullies, and booze away Till Gabriel's trump on Judgment Day!" In a final triumphant roar he repeated the last couplet and prolonged the final note, his eyes on the sun, which was sinking over the edge of the horizon, laid one hand on his heart, embraced "Nature" with a sweeping gesture of the other, and bellowed: "Then guzzle, cullies, and booze away Till Gabriel's trump on Judgment Day!" He sat down with an air of supreme content, and said proudly: "_What do you think of that, Marie-Antoinette?_" "Why do you call me Marie-Antoinette?" gasped the trembling Marceline. "Because you're the prettiest of them all!" roared Theophrastus in that awful voice. "I appeal to Madame la Maréchale de Boufflers, who's a woman of taste! I appeal to all of you! And there's not one of you, by the Pope's gullet, who'll dare to deny it! Neither the big Picard, nor the Bourbonnais, nor the Burgundian, nor Sheep's-head, nor the Cracksman, nor Parisian, nor the Provincial, nor the little Breton, nor the Feather, nor Patapon, nor Pint-pot, nor St. James's Gate, nor Gastelard, nor Iron-arm, nor Black-mug, nor even Fancy Man!" Since Theophrastus had on his right old Mlle. Taburet, he prodded her in the ribs by way of emphasis, an action which nearly made her faint. No one dared budge; his flaming eye chained them to their chairs; and leaning affectionately towards Mlle. Taburet, he pointed to the gasping Marceline, and said: "Look, Mlle. Taburet, aren't I right? Who can compare with her? Pretty-Milkmaid, of Pussycat? Or even Blanche, the Bustler? Or Belle-Hélène who keeps the Harp tavern?" He turned towards Adolphe. "Here--you--old Easy-Going!" he said with a terrifying energy. "Let's have your opinion. Look at Marie-Antoinette a moment! By the Sucking-pig! there's not one to compare with her: not Jenny Venus, the flower-seller of the Palais-Royal, nor Marie Leroy, nor mother Salomon, the pretty coffee-house-keeper of the Temple, nor Jenny Bonnefoy _who's just married Veunier who keeps the Pont-Marie café_. Not one of them, I tell you! Not one of them! The Slapper, Manon de Versailles, Fat-Poulteress, the Lock, Cow-with-the-Baskets, or the Bastille!" With a bound Theophrastus was on the table; and the crockery round him smashed into a thousand pieces. He caught up a glass and bellowed: "I drink to the queen of the nymphs! Marie-Antoinette Neron!" He crushed the glass in his hands, cutting them in twenty places, and bowed to the company. But the company had fled. CHAPTER IV ADOLPHE LECAMUS IS FLABBERGASTED BUT FRANK Theophrastus stood on the table and gazed sheepishly round the empty tent. His fine ardour was extinguished. But I take up the narrative in the words of his memoirs: "I found myself on the table," he writes, "in the middle of the broken crockery, and all the company fled. My guests' rough fashion of taking leave of me had confused me a little. I wished to get down, but by a singular phenomenon, I found as much difficulty in getting down from the table as I had displayed address in mounting it. I went down on my hands and knees; and by dint of the most careful precautions reached the ground safely. I called Marceline, who did not answer; and presently I found her trembling in our bedroom. I shut the door carefully and set about explaining matters. Her appealing eyes, full of tears, demanded an explanation; and I felt it my duty as a husband to hide from her no longer my great and amazing trouble of mind. "'My dear Marceline,' I said, 'you must be entirely at a loss to understand what happened this evening; but never mind, I don't understand it myself. Still, by putting our heads together, reinforced by our love for one another, I do not despair of arriving at the correct explanation of it.' "Then I coaxed her to go to bed; and when at last her head rested peacefully on the pillow, I told her my story. I gave her a complete account of my visit to the cellars of the Conciergerie, concealing nothing, and describing exactly the extraordinary feelings which troubled me and the unknown force which appeared to control me. At first she said nothing; in fact she seemed to shrink away from me as if she were frightened of me; but when I came to the document in the wall which revealed the existence of the treasures, at once she asked to see it. "I took it from my pocket-book, and showed it to her by the light of the moon, which was at its full. Like myself, like all who had already seen it, she recognised my handwriting; and crossed herself for all the world as if she suspected something diabolical in it. "However the sight of the document seemed to relieve her; and at once she said that it was most fortunate that we had at hand an expert in Spiritualism, that Adolphe would be of the greatest service to us in this difficult matter. We had the paper on the bed before us in the moonlight; and in the presence of this unshakable witness, she was presently compelled to admit that I was a reincarnated soul dating from two hundred years before. "Then, as I was once more asking who I could have been, she annoyed me for the first time since our marriage. "'Poor Theophrastus, you couldn't have been up to much,' she said. "'And why not?' I said sharply, for I was nettled. "'Because, dear, this evening you sang a song in slang; and the ladies whose names you mentioned certainly couldn't have belonged to the Aristocracy. When one associates with the Slapper, the Lock, and Manon of Versailles, one can't be up to much.' "She said this in a tone of contempt which I put down to jealousy. "'But I also spoke of La Maréchale de Boufflers,' I said again rather sharply. 'And you ought to know that in the time of the Regent all the ladies of the Court had some queer nickname. It's my belief, on the contrary, that I was a man of quality--what do you say to a favourite of the Regent?' "I spoke rather huffily; and she gave me a kiss, and admitted that there was a good deal in what I said. "The next morning she repeated her suggestion that we should take Adolphe into our confidence. She declared that his wide experience in these matters and his profound knowledge of metaphysics could not but be of the greatest help to a man who had buried treasures two hundred years ago and wished to recover them. "'You'll see, dear, that he's the man who'll tell you what your name was,' she said. "I yielded to her persuasion; and as we sat in the garden after lunch, I explained to him the inner meaning of the strange occurrence of the evening before. I took him back from the song to the document, from the document to the Conciergerie, watching the effect of the astonishing revelation on the expression of his face. It was clear that he was utterly astounded; and it appeared to me very odd that a professed Spiritualist should be so flabbergasted at finding himself face to face with a retired man of business, sound in mind and body, who claimed to have existed two hundred years before. He said that my behaviour at yesterday's dinner and the incomprehensible phrases to which I had given utterance at the Conciergerie were indeed calculated to prepare him for such a confidence, but as a matter of fact he had not been expecting anything of the kind, and was entirely nonplussed. He would like to have actually in his hand the proofs of such a phenomenon. "I took out my document and handed it to him. He could not deny its authenticity; he recognised the handwriting. Indeed that recognition drew a sharp explanation from him; and I asked him the reason of it. He answered that my handwriting on a document two hundred years old explained a heap of things. "'What things?' I said. "He confessed loyally that till that moment he had never understood my handwriting and that it had always been impossible for him to see any connection between it and my character. "'Is that so?' I said. 'And what is your conception of my character, Adolphe?' "'Well, you won't be angry, if I'm frank with you?' he said, hesitating. "'Of course not,' I said. "On this assurance he described my character: it was that of a worthy business man, an honest merchant, an excellent husband, but of a man incapable of displaying any firmness, strength of mind, or energy. He went on to say that my timidity was excessive, and that my kindness of heart, to which he was fully alive, was always apt to degenerate into sheer feebleness. "It was not a flattering portrait; and it made me blush for myself. "'And now,' said I, hiding my mortification, 'you've told me what you think of my character: what do you think of my handwriting?' "'It's the exact opposite of your character,' he said quickly. 'It expresses every sentiment utterly opposed to your nature as I know it. In fact, I can't think of a more direct antithesis than your character and your handwriting. It must be, then, that you haven't the handwriting which goes with your actual character, but the handwriting of the Other.' "I might have been angry, if Signor Petito had not told me much the same thing; as it was, I exclaimed, 'Oh, this is very interesting! The Other, then, was a man of energy?' "I thought to myself that the Other must have been some great leader. Then Adolphe went on; and as long as I live I shall never forget his words, so painful did I find them: "'Everything shows, these thin strokes, the way they are joined to one another, their manner of rising, mounting, topping one another, energy, strength of will, pigheadedness, harshness, ardour, activity, ambition... for evil.' "I was dismayed; but in a flash of genius I cried: "'What is evil? What is good? If Attila had known how to write, he might have had the handwriting of Napoleon!' "'Attila was called "the flail of God,"' he said. "'And Napoleon was the flail of men,' I retorted on the instant. "I was hard put to it to restrain my anger; but I asserted that _Theophrastus Longuet could only be an honest man before this life, during this life, and after this life_. "My dear wife agreed with me, warmly. Adolphe saw that he had gone too far, and apologised." CHAPTER V THEOPHRASTUS SHOWS THE BLACK FEATHER From that day the conversations of Theophrastus, Marceline, and Adolphe were of fascinating interest to them. They pored and pored over the document; they discussed over and over again the "Cock," the "Gall," "Chopinettes," and the "Betrayal of April 1st" of the mysterious document. They soon left Azure Waves Villa and returned to Paris to ransack the libraries. Adolphe, the great reader, was much better adapted to historical research than either Marceline or Theophrastus; and their patience was exhausted long before his. One Sunday they were strolling along the Champs-Elysées; and both Theophrastus and Marceline had been complaining bitterly of their failure at the libraries, when Adolphe said thoughtfully: "What use would it be to us to find approximately the spot in which the treasures are buried _unless Theophrastus had his Black Feather_?" "What Black Feather? What do you mean?" said Marceline and Theophrastus with one voice. "Let's stroll back towards the Rond-Pont; and I'll tell you what I mean," said Adolphe. When they were under the trees, among the throng of careless strollers, Adolphe said: "You've heard of the water-finders?" "Of course," they said promptly. "Well, owing to some phenomenon, of which the explanation has not yet been discovered, these water-finders, equipped with forked hazel-twigs which they hold over the ground they are crossing, are able to _see_, through the different strata of the soil, the position of the spring sought, and the spot where the well must be sunk. I don't despair of getting Theophrastus to do for his treasures what the water-finders do for their springs. I shall take him to the place, and he will say, 'Here's where you dig for the treasures.'" "But all this does not explain what you mean by my Black Feather," interrupted Theophrastus. "I'm coming to it. I shall bring to this spot you, the treasure-seeker, as one brings the water-finder to the spot where one suspects the presence of water. I shall bring you there _when you have your Black Feather_." He paused, and then went on in his professorial tone: "I shall have to talk to you about Darwin; but you needn't be uneasy: I shan't have to talk about him for long. You'll understand at once. You know that Darwin devoted a great part of his life to some famous experiments of which the most famous were his experiments with pigeons. Desirous of accounting for the phenomena of heredity, he studied closely the breeding of pigeons. He chose pigeons because the generations of pigeons follow one another so closely that one can draw conclusions from them in a comparatively short space of time. At the end of a certain number, call it X, of generations he found once more the same pigeon. You understand, the same pigeon, with the same defects and the same qualities, the same shape, the same structure, and _the same black feather_ in the very place where the first pigeon had a black feather. Well, I, Adolphe Lecamus, maintain, and I will prove it to you, that to eyes opened by Darwin it is the same with souls as with bodies. At the end of a number X of generations, one finds the same soul, exactly as it was originally, with the same defects and the same qualities, _with the same black feather_. Do you understand?" "Not quite," said Theophrastus apologetically. "Yet I'm lowering myself to the level of your intelligence," said Adolphe, impatient but frank. "But it is necessary to distinguish between the soul which appears hereditarily and that which returns by reincarnation." "What do you mean?" said Theophrastus rather faintly. "An hereditary soul which revives the ancestor _has always its black feather_, owing to the fact that it is the result of a unique combination, since it exists in the sheath, the body, which is hereditary to the same extent. Is that clear?" "I notice that whenever you say, 'Is that clear?' my dear Adolphe, everything seems to go as dark as pitch," said Marceline humbly. Adolphe ground his teeth, and raised his voice: "Whereas a soul which returns in the course of reincarnation finds itself in a body in which nothing has been prepared to receive it. The aggregate of the materials of this body have their origin in--I take Theophrastus as example--several generations of cabbage-planters--" "Gardeners--market-gardeners!" interjected Theophrastus gently. "--at Ferté-sous-Jouarre. The aggregate of the materials of this body may for a while impose silence on this soul, originally perhaps--I am still taking Theophrastus as an example--belonging to one of the first families in France. But there comes a time when the soul gets the upper hand; then it speaks, and shows itself in its entirety, exactly as it was originally, _with its black feather_." "I understand! I understand the whole business!" cried Theophrastus joyfully. "Then when this soul speaks in you," cried Adolphe, warming to eloquence, "you're no longer yourself! Theophrastus Longuet has disappeared! It's the Other who is there! The Other who has the gestures, the air, the action, and _the Black Feather_ of the Other! It's the Other who will recall exactly the mystery of the treasures! It's the Other who remembers the Other!" "Oh, this is wonderful!" cried Theophrastus, almost in tears of joy. "I grasp now what you mean by my _Black Feather_. I shall have _my Black Feather_ when I'm the Other!" "And we will help you in the matter, dear friend," said Adolphe with unabated warmth. "But till we have disentangled the Unknown who is hidden in Theophrastus Longuet, until he is alive before our very eyes with the right amount of force, daring, and energy, until, in a word, he appears with _his Black Feather_, let us calmly devote ourselves to the study of this interesting document which you brought back from the Conciergerie. Let us make it our pastime to penetrate its mystery, let us fix the limits of the space in which these treasures were buried. But let us wait before ransacking the bowels of the earth till the Other, who is asleep in you, awakes and cries, 'It is here!'" "You speak like a book, Adolphe!" cried Marceline, overwhelmed with admiration. "But can we really expect the soil in which the treasures were buried to have remained undisturbed all these years--over two hundred?" "Woman of little faith," said Adolphe sternly, "they have been disturbing the sacred soil of the Roman Forum for over two thousand years as the soil of Paris has never been disturbed; and it was only a few years ago that they brought to light the famous rostrum from which Caius and Tiberius poured forth their eloquence... Ah, here's M. Mifroid, my friend the Commissary of Police, whom I've so long wanted you to know. Well, this is lucky!" A man of forty, dressed in the height of fashion and as neat as a new pin, with one white lock drawn carefully down on his unwrinkled brow, came up to them smiling, raised his hat, and shook Adolphe warmly by the hand. "How are you?" said Adolphe cordially. "Let me introduce you to my friends. M. Mifroid--Madame Longuet--M. Longuet." From the glance of respectful admiration which he bestowed on her charming face Marceline gathered that the Commissary of Police was also a squire of dames. "We have often heard our friend M. Lecamus speak of you," she said with a gracious smile. "I feel that I have known you for a long time. Every time I meet him, he talks about his friends of Gerando Street, and in such terms that the good fortune which this moment befalls me, this introduction, has been my most fervent desire," said M. Mifroid gallantly. "I hear that you are an accomplished violinist," said Marceline, delighted with his politeness. "Accomplished? I don't know about accomplished: I _play_ the violin; and I am something of a sculptor and a student of philosophy--a taste which I owe to our friend M. Lecamus here. And when I passed you just now, I heard you discussing the immortality of the soul," said M. Mifroid, who wished to shine before the eyes of the pretty Marceline. "Adolphe and I love to discuss these serious questions; and just now we were discussing the body and soul and the relations between them," said Theophrastus with a very fair imitation of the professorial air of Adolphe. "Haven't you got beyond that?" said M. Mifroid, burning to shine. "In the eyes of Science matter and spirit are one and the same thing, that is to say, they constitute the same unity in the same Force, at once result and phenomenon, cause and effect, moving towards the same end: the Progressive Ascent of Being. You two gentlemen are the only people left to make this distinction between matter and spirit." Theophrastus was a trifle huffed: "We do the best we can," he said stiffly. The little party had come into the Place de la Concorde. At the top of the Rue Royale there was a large crowd of people, shouting and gesticulating. At once Theophrastus, like a true Parisian, was on fire to learn what was going on, and plunged into the heart of the crowd. "Mind you don't get your pockets picked!" cried Marceline after him. "Oh, you needn't be afraid of getting your pocket picked when you're in the company of Commissary Mifroid," said that gentleman proudly. "That's true," said Marceline with an amiable smile. "You are here; and we run no risk at all." "I don't know about that," said Adolphe slyly. "My friend Mifroid appears to me more dangerous than all the pickpockets on the face of the earth--to the heart." "Ah, he will have his joke!" said M. Mifroid laughing; but he assumed his most conquering air. Theophrastus kept them standing there for fully ten minutes before he emerged from the crowd with his eyes shining very brightly. "It's a cab-driver who has locked his wheel with that of a motor car," he said. "And what has happened?" said Marceline. "Why, he can't unlock it," said Theophrastus. "And all this crowd about a trifle like that! How silly people are!" said Marceline. Thereupon she invited M. Mifroid to come home and dine with them. He needed but a little pressing to accept the invitation; and they strolled slowly back to Gerando Street. The dinner was very lively, for M. Mifroid was still bent on shining; and his example spurred Adolphe to splendid emulation. It was when they were taking their coffee at the end of dinner that M. Mifroid suddenly seemed uneasy. He felt in all his pockets, trying to find his handkerchief. His search was vain; it was not there. After a final search in the pockets in the tails of his frock-coat, he ground his teeth, gave his moustache a despairing tug, and took a deep breath. Two minutes later Theophrastus blew his nose. Marceline asked him where he had got that pretty handkerchief. M. Mifroid looked at it and saw that it was his. He laughed somewhat awkwardly, declared that it was an excellent joke, took it from Theophrastus, and put it in his pocket. Theophrastus could not understand it at all. Suddenly M. Mifroid turned pale, and felt in his left-hand breast pocket. "Goodness! What has become of my pocket-book?" he cried. The explanation of its absence was entirely simple: someone had picked the pocket of the Commissary of Police of his pocket-book with five hundred francs in it. M. Mifroid did not so much regret the loss of the five hundred francs as he was furious to find himself ridiculous. Marceline made fun of him gently as she condoled with him on its loss; she could not help it. He was furious indeed. "Let me lend you any money you want for to-night, M. Mifroid," said Theophrastus amiably. He pulled out a pocket-book. M. Mifroid uttered a sharp cry: it was his own pocket-book! Theophrastus turned a rich scarlet. M. Mifroid stared at him, took the pocket-book from his trembling fingers, recovered his five hundred francs, and put them in his pocket. Then he forthwith began to make a hundred pressing occupations his excuse for taking a hurried leave of them, and said good-bye. As he was clattering down the staircase, he called back up it, with some heat, to his friend Adolphe, who had hurried out of the flat after him: "Whoever are these people you have introduced me to?" Adolphe said nothing; he wiped his perspiring brow. The clattering footsteps of M. Mifroid died away down the stairs; and he went slowly back into the dining-room. Theophrastus had just finished turning out his pockets. On the table lay three watches, six handkerchiefs, four pocket-books, containing considerable sums of money, and eighteen purses! CHAPTER VI THE PORTRAIT The three friends stared at the three watches, the six handkerchiefs, the four pocket-books, and the eighteen purses in a blank and silent consternation. There was indeed nothing to be said. A dreadful despair rested on the face of Theophrastus; but he was the first to break the heavy silence. "My pockets are _quite_ empty," he said. "Oh, Theophrastus--Theophrastus!" moaned Marceline reproachfully. "My poor friend," said Adolphe; and he groaned. Theophrastus wiped away the cold sweat from his brow with a handkerchief of which he did not know the owner. "I see what it is," he said in a despairing tone. "I've had my _Black Feather_." Marceline and Adolphe said nothing; they were utterly overwhelmed. Theophrastus looked from one to the other and wiped the glasses of his spectacles. His face cleared a little; and then he said with a faint smile: "_Perhaps after all, in those days, it was a parlour game._" He stuck the index finger of his right hand into his mouth, with him a sign of grave preoccupation of spirit. Marceline heaved a deep sigh and said, "Take your finger out of your mouth, dear, and tell us how it came about that you had on you three watches, six handkerchiefs, four pocket-books, and eighteen purses, without counting the handkerchief and pocket-book of Commissary Mifroid. I turned your pockets out this morning to brush the linings; and as usual there was nothing in them but a few scraps of tobacco." "There was a large gathering in the Place de la Concorde. I plunged into it; and I came out of it with all these things. It's quite simple," said Theophrastus. "And what are we going to do with them?" said Adolphe in solemn tones. "What do you want me to do with them?" said Theophrastus sharply, for he was recovering a little from the shock. "You don't suppose I'm going to keep them! Is it my habit to keep things which don't belong to me? I'm an honest man; and I have never wronged a soul. You'll take these things to your friend the Commissary of Police. It will be easy enough for him to find the owners." "And what am I to tell him?" said Adolphe with a harried air. "Anything you like!" cried Theophrastus, beginning to lose his temper. "Does an honest cabman who finds a pocket-book and fifty thousand francs in his cab and takes them to the Police Station, bother about what he is going to tell the inspector? He says, 'I've found this in my cab,' and that's enough. He even gets a reward. All you have to say is: 'My friend Longuet asked me to bring you these things which he found in his pocket, and he doesn't ask for any reward.'" He spoke in a tone of impatient contempt for the intelligence of Adolphe, a tone to which Adolphe was quite unused. Adolphe frowned with ruffled dignity and was about to retort sharply, when Marceline kicked him gently under the table, a little kick which said plainly: "Theophrastus is going off his head! Come, friend, to his rescue!" Adolphe understood the message of that little shoe: the frown faded from his face, leaving on it only an expression of supernal gloom; he looked at the eighteen purses, scratched his nose, and coughed. Then he gazed at Theophrastus and said in very solemn tones: "What has just happened, Theophrastus, is not natural. We must try to find the explanation of it; we must force ourselves to find the explanation. It's no use shutting our eyes; we must open them, as wide as we can, to the misfortune, if it is misfortune, in order to battle with it." "What misfortune?" said Theophrastus, suddenly becoming his timid self again, and catching distressfully at Marceline's hand. "It's always a misfortune to have other people's property in one's pocket," said Adolphe gloomily. "And what else is there in the pockets of conjurors?" cried Theophrastus with fresh violence. "And conjurors are very honest men; and Theophrastus Longuet is a very honest man! _By the throttle of Madame Phalaris_, he is!" He shouted this out; then fell back exhausted in his chair. There was a gloomy silence. Presently he sat up again, and with tears in his eyes said plaintively: "I feel that Adolphe is right. I am threatened by some great misfortune and I don't know what it is--I don't know what it is!" He burst into tears; and Marceline and Adolphe strove in vain to comfort him. But after a while he dried his tears, grasped a hand of either, and said in a firmer voice: "Swear--swear never to abandon me _whatever happens_." They promised in all good faith; and the assurance seemed to cheer him a little. Then Adolphe asked him to let him see the document again; and he fetched it. Adolphe spread it out before him and studied it intently. Presently he nodded his head sagely and said: "Do you ever dream, Theophrastus?" "Do I ever dream? Well, I suppose I do sometimes. But my digestion is so good that I hardly ever remember my dreams." "Never?" persisted Adolphe. "Oh, I couldn't go so far as to say never," said Theophrastus. "In fact, I remember having dreamt four or five times in my life. I remember it because I always woke up at the same point in the dream; and it was always the same dream. But how on earth does it affect this business which is worrying us?" "Dreams have never been explained by Science," said Adolphe solemnly. "It fancies that it has said everything when it has ascribed them to the effect of the imagination. But it gives us no explanation of the quite clear and distinct visions we sometimes have which have nothing whatever to do with the events or preoccupations of the previous day. In particular how are we to account for those visions of actually existing things which one has never seen in the waking state, things of which one has never even thought? Who will dare to say that they are not retrospective visions of events which have taken place before our present existence?" "As a matter of fact, Adolphe, I can assure you that the things of which I dream--and I remember now that I have dreamt of them three times--are perhaps real in the past or future, but that I have never seen them in the present." "You understand my point," said Adolphe in a gratified tone. "But what are these things you have dreamt of but never seen?" "That won't take long to tell and thank goodness for it, for they're not particularly pleasant. I dreamt that I was married to a wife whom I called Marie-Antoinette and who annoyed me extremely." "And then?" said Adolphe, whose eyes never quitted the document. "And then I cut her up into little bits," said Theophrastus, blushing faintly. "What a horrible thing to do!" cried Marceline. "As a matter of fact it was rather horrible," said Theophrastus. "And then I put the pieces into a basket and was going to throw them into the Seine near the little bridge of the Hôtel-de-Ville. At that point I awoke; and I was jolly glad to awake, for it wasn't a pleasant dream." "It's awful!" cried Adolphe; and he banged his fist down on the table. "Isn't it?" said Marceline. "Not the dream! But I've just succeeded in reading the whole of the first line of the document! That's what's awful!" groaned Adolphe. "What is it? What have you found out?" cried Theophrastus in a panic-stricken tone as he sprang up to pore over the document. "It reads _I rt uried my treasures_. And you don't know what that _rt_ stands for? Well, I'm not going to tell you till I have made absolutely sure. I shall be absolutely sure by to-morrow. To-morrow, Theophrastus, at two o'clock, meet me at the corner of Guénégaud and Mazarine Streets." He rose. "In the meantime I'll take these things along to my friend Mifroid, who will restore them to their owners. Good-night, and courage, Theophrastus--above everything--courage!" He shook Theophrastus' hand, with the lingering pressure with which one shakes the hand of a relation of the corpse at a funeral, and departed. That night Theophrastus did not sleep. While Marceline breathed peacefully by his side, he lay awake staring into the darkness. His own breathing was irregular and broken by deep sighs. A heavy oppression weighed on his heart. The day dawned on Paris gloomily faint and dirty, throwing over its buildings a sinister veil. In vain did the summer sun strive to penetrate that thick and smoky air. Noon, the hour of its triumph, showed only a dull ball, rolling ingloriously in a sulphurous mist. At six o'clock Theophrastus suddenly jumped out of bed, and awoke Marceline by a burst of insensate laughter. She asked the reason of his strange mirth; and he answered that Nature had not given him a mouth large enough to laugh at the face Commissary Mifroid, who did not believe in pickpockets, would pull at the sight of Adolphe emptying his pockets of the collection with which he had stuffed them. Then he went on to say in the tone of an official instructor: "It's the work of a child to take a purse out of a pocket. If you can't get your hand in, insert a straw covered with bird-lime. That device is excellent in crowd-work." Marceline sat up in bed and stared at him. Theophrastus had never worn a more natural air. He was pulling on his pants. "There's a button off the waist-band," he grumbled. "You terrify me, Theophrastus!" said Marceline in a shaky voice. "And a good job too!" said her husband, going down on his hands and knees to recover his braces which had fallen under the bed. "One only does good work with a good woman. And I can't do anything with you. You will never be a good bustler." "A good--what?" "A good bustler. Next time you go to the Maison-Dorée, buy me a pair of braces. These are rotten. You don't even know what a bustler is. You ought to be ashamed of yourself at your age. A bustler is a person of your sex who is clever at hiding anything one gets hold of in her frock. I never had a better bustler than Jenny Venus." "My poor child!" groaned Marceline. An access of furious anger seized Theophrastus. He dashed at the bed brandishing the button-hook, and cried: "You know--you know perfectly well that I've forbidden anyone to call me '_Child_' ever since the death of Jenny Venus!" Marceline promised that she would never do it again. But oh, how profoundly she regretted having become, along with her husband, the owner of a document which promised them treasures, but which brought into their home trouble, fear, violence, madness, and the inexplicable. After Marie-Antoinette came Jenny Venus. She was unacquainted with either lady; and she had no desire to make their acquaintance. But Theophrastus spoke of them with a disquieting familiarity. In truth the unexpected phrases which fell from his lips, while filling her with a dread of the Theophrastus of two hundred years ago, made her regret indeed the Theophrastus, so easy to understand, of a few days before. She thought of the theory of Reincarnation with the unkindest feelings. Theophrastus had finished dressing. He complained bitterly that a tear in his flowered waistcoat had not been mended. Then he said that he would not lunch at home, since he had an appointment to meet his _friend Old Easy-Going_, at the corner of Guénégaud and Mazarine Streets, _to play a trick on a Monsieur de Traneuse, an engineer officer for whom he had a strong dislike_; but since the appointment was after lunch, he thought he would go and _take the air at the Chopinettes mill_ first. Marceline was trembling pitiably. She hardly had the strength to say: "It's very bad weather to go to Chopinettes mill." "Bah! _I'll leave my green umbrella at home and take my Black Feather with me_," said Theophrastus. With that he went out, putting the finishing touch to his cravat as he went. On the staircase he met Signor Petito; and they went down it together. Signor Petito greeted M. Longuet with the most respectful politeness, complained of the state of the weather, and paid him a thousand compliments on his air of good health. Theophrastus responded grumpily to these polite advances; and since, when they came out of the house, Signor Petito showed no intention of quitting him, he asked unpleasantly whether the Signora Petito could not be persuaded to learn some other infernal tune besides the _Carnival of Venice_. Signor Petito affected not to notice his carping tone and replied with an amiable smile that she was just going to begin to practise _The Star of Love_, and she would be charmed in the future to devote her talent to any piece which took M. Longuet's fancy. Then even more amiably he said: "And which way are you going, M. Longuet?" Theophrastus looked at him with suspicious disfavour and answered: "I was going to take a turn round Chopinettes mill; but the weather is certainly too bad for that: so I am going down to the Porkers." "To the Porkers?" said Signor Petito quickly; and he was going to ask where the Porkers was, when he thought better of it, and said, "So am I." "Indeed? Indeed?" said Theophrastus, eyeing him strangely. "So you're going to the Porkers too?" "There or elsewhere: it's all the same to me," said Signor Petito; and he laughed a most amiable laugh. They walked along side by side in silence for a while, till Signor Petito mustered up his courage to ask a question: "And how are you getting on with your treasures, M. Longuet?" he said. Theophrastus turned on him with a savage air, and cried, "What the deuce has it got to do with you?" "Don't you remember bringing, a little while ago, for my opinion on the handwriting--" "I remember quite well! But you--you'd jolly well better forget!" interrupted Theophrastus in a tone of dry menace; and he opened his green umbrella. Signor Petito, entirely unabashed, took shelter under it, saying amiably, "Oh, I didn't ask the question to annoy you, M. Longuet." They had reached the corner of Martyrs' Street in the Trudaine Avenue; and they turned down it, Theophrastus glowering. Then he said, "I've an appointment at the Sucking-Pig tavern next to the Porkers' chapel, and here we are, Signor Petito." "But that's Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and not Porkers' chapel at all!" cried Signor Petito. "I don't like to be contradicted to my face!" snarled Theophrastus, looking at him with a very evil eye and baring his teeth. Signor Petito protested that he had no intention in the world of doing anything of the kind. "To my face--I'm well aware that mine is a valuable head," said Theophrastus, regarding Signor Petito with an air which grew stranger and stranger. "Do you know how much it is worth, Signor Petito, the _Child's_ head? No?... Well, since an opportunity offers, I'm going to tell you. And while I'm about it, I'll tell you a little story which may be useful to you. Come into the Sucking-Pig." "B--B--But this is the Café B--B--Boussets," stammered Signor Petito, who was growing frightened. "The mist has muddled you. You've missed your way among _all these ploughed fields_," said Theophrastus, sitting down on a bench before one of the tables. Then he laughed on a very sinister note, and went on: "So you wanted to annoy me, M. Petito. So much the worse for you. What will you have to drink? A glass of ratafia? The excellent Madame Taconet[1] who keeps this tavern has set aside a bottle for me which will warm your in'ards." [Footnote 1: Theophrastus was quite accurate in these historical details. I have discovered that a Madame Taconet did keep, two hundred years ago, the Sucking-Pig tavern, close to Porkers' chapel which was pulled down in 1800, and on its site the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette was erected. All this district, north west of the Boulevard des Italiens, was covered, two hundred years ago, with ploughed fields, market-gardens, country houses, and Porkers' village. The Sucking-Pig tavern had the worst of reputations, for Madame Taconet sheltered in it all the most abandoned ruffians in Paris.] And as a waiter in his white apron came up to the table, without a change of tone Theophrastus added, "Two draught lagers; and we don't want them all froth." Thus, without any transition, without even noticing it, did he join his present-day existence to his existence of two hundred years before. Signor Petito was already full of the liveliest regret at having insisted on accompanying a man who fancied he was in the Sucking-Pig tavern, when the waiter brought the beer and set it on the table. Theophrastus said, "My head is worth twenty thousand francs; and well you know it!" He accompanied the "And well you know it!" with a bang of his fist on the table which made the glasses ring and Signor Petito jump. "Don't be frightened, Signor Petito: your beer isn't spilt," Theophrastus went on in a jeering tone. "You know then, my good sir, that my head is worth twenty thousand francs; but you'd better act as if you didn't, or some unpleasantness will befall you. I promised you a story. Well, here it is: "_Just about two hundred years ago_ I was walking along Vaugirard Street, with my hands in my pockets and without a weapon of any kind on me, not even a sword, when a man accosted me at the corner of the street, greeted me with all the politeness imaginable and declared that my face had taken his fancy--just as you said and did, Signor Petito!--that his name was Bidel, and all his friends called him Good Old Bidel, and he had a secret to confide to me. I encouraged him with a friendly tap on the shoulder." At this point Theophrastus fetched Signor Petito such a thump on the shoulder that it drew a short howl from him; and he pulled out his money under the constraining desire to go out and see if the mist had dispersed. "Put away your money, Signor Petito, I'm paying for the drinks!" said Theophrastus sharply; and he went on in his easy, conversational tone. "Well, Good Old Bidel, encouraged by my friendly tap," Signor Petito slipped along the bench, "told me his secret. He whispered in my ear that the Regent had offered twenty thousand francs to anyone who would arrest the _Child_; that he, Good Old Bidel, knew where the _Child_ was hiding; that I looked to him to be a man of courage, and that with my help he ought to go pretty near getting that twenty thousand francs. We would share it." Theophrastus paused to laugh a laugh which froze Signor Petito's blood. "Good Old Bidel was not in luck's way, Signor Petito, for I too knew where the _Child_ was hiding, since the _Child_ was me!" Signor Petito did not believe a word of it. It was his firm opinion that M. Longuet had ceased to be a child months ago. But he dared not say so. "I answered Good Old Bidel that it was a regular windfall, and that I was thankful indeed that he had chanced on me; and I begged him to take me straight to the place where the _Child_ was hiding. He said: "'To-night the _Child_ will sleep at the Capucins, at the inn of The Golden Cross.' "It was true, Signor Petito. Good Old Bidel's information was O.K.; and I congratulated him on it. We were passing a cutler's shop; and I went in, and under the astonished eyes of Good Old Bidel bought _a little penny knife_." The eyes of Theophrastus blazed; and the eyes of Signor Petito blinked. "When we came out into the street, Good Old Bidel asked me what on earth I was going to do with _a little penny knife_. I replied, 'With a little penny knife'"--M. Longuet moved nearer to Signor Petito; Signor Petito moved further from M. Longuet--"'one can always kill a _coppers' nark_!' And I jammed it into his ribs! He waved his arms round like a windmill and fell down dead!" He laughed his blood-freezing laugh again; but Signor Petito was not attending to it: he had slipped along the bench and under it. He crawled swiftly under bench after bench, to the astonishment of the staff of the café, gained the door, plunged through it, and bolted down the street. M. Theophrastus Longuet drained his glass and rose. He went to the desk, where Mlle. Bertha was counting the brass disks, and said to her: "Madame Taconet,"--Mlle. Bertha asked herself with some surprise why M. Longuet called her Madame Taconet; but the question met with no response,--"if that little Petito comes here again, tell him from me that the next time I come across him, _I'll clip his ears for him_." So saying, Theophrastus stroked the handle of his green umbrella as one strokes the hilt of a dagger, and went out without paying. There can be no reasonable doubt that Theophrastus had his _Black Feather_. The fog was still thick. He forgot all about lunching. He walked through the sulphurous mist as in a dream. He crossed the old Quartier d'Antin and what was formerly called Bishop's Town. When he saw dimly the towers of the Trinité, he muttered, "Ah, the towers of Cock Castle!" He was at St. Lazare station when he fancied that he was in "Little Poland." But little by little, as the mist cleared, his dream vanished with it. He had a more accurate idea of things. When he crossed the Seine at Pont-Royal, he had once more become honest Theophrastus, and when he set foot on the left bank of the river he had but a vague memory of what had happened on the other side. But he had that memory. In fact, when he examined himself closely, he found that he was beginning to experience three different mental states: first, that which arose from his actual existence as an honest manufacturer of rubber stamps; second, that which arose from the sudden and passing resurrection of the _Other_; third, that which arose from memory. While the resurrection of the _Other_ was, while it lasted, a terrible business, the memory was a pleasant and melancholy frame of mind, calculated to induce in a sorrowful heart a feeling of gentle sadness and philosophic pity. As he turned his steps towards Guénégaud Street, he asked himself idly why Adolphe had fixed the corner of Guénégaud and Mazarine Streets as their meeting-place. He took a round-about way to that corner, for _he could not bring himself to walk along the strip of Mazarine Street_ where it runs along the palace of the Institute, formerly the Four Nations. _He did not know the reason of this reluctance._ He went round by De la Monnaie house, and so came into Guénégaud Street. Adolphe was awaiting him, with a very gloomy face, at the corner, and slipped his arm into his. "Have you ever heard anyone speak of someone called the _Child_, Adolphe?" said Theophrastus, after they had greeted one another. "I have indeed," said Adolphe in a tone as gloomy as his face. "And I know his name, his family name." "Ah, what is it?" said Theophrastus anxiously. For all reply Adolphe pushed him along a little passage leading to an old house in Guénégaud Street, a few doors off De la Monnaie house. They went into the house, up a shaky staircase, and into a room in which the window curtains were drawn. It had been darkened purposely. But on a little table in a corner a flickering candle threw its light on a portrait. It was the portrait of a man of thirty, of a powerful face, with "flashing" eyes. The brow was high, the nose big, the strong, square chin shaven; the large mouth was surmounted by a bristly moustache. On the bushy hair was a cap of wool or rough leather; and the dress appeared to be that of a convict. A coarse linen shirt was half open across the hairy chest. "Goodness!" said Theophrastus without raising his voice. "How did _my portrait_ get into this house?" "Your portrait?" cried Adolphe. "Are you sure?" "_Who could be surer than I?_" said Theophrastus calmly. "Well--well--" said Adolphe Lecamus in a choking voice, his face contorted by an expression of the most painful emotion. "This portrait, which is your portrait, is the portrait of that great eighteenth-century king of thieves, CARTOUCHE!" Theophrastus stared at the portrait with eyes that opened and opened as a sickly pallor overspread his anguished face; a little grunt broke from his parted lips, and he dropped to the ground in a dead faint. Adolphe dropped on his knees beside him, unfastened his collar, and slapped his hands vigorously. Then he blew out the candle, turned the portrait with its face to the wall, and opened the window. Theophrastus was a long time recovering his senses. When he did, his first words were: "On no account tell my wife, Adolphe!" CHAPTER VII THE YOUNG CARTOUCHE On the morrow of this terrible discovery Theophrastus and Marceline sought once more the calm joys of Azure Waves Villa. Theophrastus had not said a word of the shocking business; and Marceline had not dared question him about it so that she was still ignorant of their dreadful misfortune. A blank consternation reigned perpetually on his gentle face; and every now and then tears filled his kind eyes. Adolphe, who had remained in Paris to make researches into the life of the famous King Of Thieves, was to join them in a couple of days; and the hours till his coming passed gloomily indeed: Marceline pottered about the house, busy with her household tasks; Theophrastus silently prepared his fishing-tackle, and on the afternoon of the second day fished with very little luck. But the third day dawned bright and sunny; and Theophrastus, who had passed a good night, showed an easier face of less dismayed expression; about his lips hovered a shadow of a smile. Adolphe Lecamus came to Esbly station by the 11.46 train, and was welcomed with transports of joy. They went straight to déjeuner, and did not rise from the table till two o'clock. Marceline once more breathed peacefully in the presence of their faithful friend; and Theophrastus regaled him with a detailed account of his afternoon's impassioned, but unsuccessful, fishing. M. Lecamus said little; but after his coffee he helped himself to a third glass of a curaçoa which he appreciated far more highly than it deserved. After lunch Theophrastus loaded himself with rods, lines, and bait; Adolphe took the landing-net; they bade Marceline good-bye; and walked down to the Marne with the quiet gait of men who have lunched well. "I have got everything ready for your afternoon's sport," said Theophrastus, when they reached its banks. "While you fish I will listen to your news and amuse myself by trolling. It's all I'm fit for. I've a can full of minnows under the willows. I am prepared for the worst." Adolphe said nothing; and when he was baiting his hook, Theophrastus said, with a touch of impatience in his tone, "Well?" "Well, my news is good and bad," said Adolphe. "But I must warn you that it's more bad than good: no doubt they have invented a good many stories about you; but the truth is bad enough for anything." "Your information is correct?" said Theophrastus with a sigh. "I went to the source, the original documents," said Adolphe. "I'll tell you what I learned; _and you can set me right if I go wrong_." "Go on," said Theophrastus in a tone of patient resignation. "I must make the best of it." "In the first place _you were born in the month of October, 1693, and you are named Louis-Dominique Cartouche--_" "There's no point in calling me Cartouche," interrupted Theophrastus, pulling a minnow out of the bait-can. "There's no reason anyone should know it. You know what these country people are: they'd laugh at the idea. Call me the _Child_: I prefer it." "You agree that _Cartouche_ is your real name and not a nickname?" persisted Adolphe. "Cut it out! Cut it out! It's a vile name!" said Theophrastus impatiently. "They relate that you were well educated at Clermont College and were a pupil there at the same time as Voltaire. But that's a mere legend: unless you learnt to read from the gipsies, you never learnt to read at all." "I like that!" cried Theophrastus. "How could I have learnt to write unless I knew how to read? And if I didn't know how to write, how could I have written the document I hid in the cellars of the Conciergerie?" "That's reasonable enough. But at your trial--" "Did I have a trial?" interrupted Theophrastus eagerly. "I should think you did--a very famous trial!" said Adolphe. "And at your trial you declared that you did not know how to write. You signed all your depositions with a cross, and you never wrote a line to a single soul." "Because one never should put anything in writing," said Theophrastus firmly. "I was doubtless afraid to compromise myself. None the less the document exists." "That's true. But let us go back to your eleventh year. One day you went with some of your school-fellows to Saint-Laurent fair--" "Look here, Adolphe: couldn't you put it differently? You keep saying, '_You_ went with your school-fellows to Saint-Laurent fair' ... '_You_ were born in 1693' ... 'You were a school-fellow of Voltaire.' After all, though I admit I was _Car_--" he stopped short--"the _Child_, I am also Theophrastus Longuet; and I can assure you that Theophrastus Longuet is not at all flattered at having been _Car_--the _Child_. Give everyone his due. I should be much obliged if you'd put it that 'The _Child_ went with his school-fellows.'" "Certainly--certainly. At Saint-Laurent fair little Cartouche--" "The _Child_!" "But you weren't yet called the _Child_--you weren't called the _Child_ till you were a man--" "Well, say, 'Little Louis-Dominique.'" "Louis-Dominique fell among a troop of gipsies--" "That shows you that parents ought never to let their children go to fairs alone," said Theophrastus solemnly. "The gipsies carried him off; they stole him--" "Poor little Louis-Dominique: he deserves our pity," said Theophrastus in a tone of warm compassion. "Do they express pity for him in the books?" "They say that he made no difficulties about being stolen." "And what do they know about it!" cried Theophrastus indignantly. "Well, the gipsies taught him cudgel-play, fencing, pistol-shooting, the art of springing from roof to roof, juggling, tumbling--" "All very useful things," said Theophrastus in a tone of approval. "They taught him to empty the pockets of tradesmen and gentlemen without their perceiving it. Oh, he was a nice boy! No one could touch him at collaring handkerchiefs, snuff-boxes, watches, sword-knots--" "That was not at all nice!" cried Theophrastus in scandalised tones. "Oh! If that were all!" said Adolphe gloomily. "The troop of gipsies was at Rouen, when Louis-Dominique fell ill." "Poor little boy! He was never meant for such a life," cried Theophrastus compassionately. "He was sent to the Rouen hospital; and there a brother of his father found him. He recognised him, embraced him with tears of joy, and swore to restore him to his parents." "A fine fellow that uncle! Louis-Dominique was saved!" cried Theophrastus joyfully. M. Lecamus lost patience, turned sharply on Theophrastus and begged him to cease his continual interruptions, declaring that it would take him a good ten years to tell the story of Cartouche, if he could not bring himself to listen without these comments. "It's all very well for you to say that!" said Theophrastus with some heat. "But I should like to see _you_ in my place! However, I'll do as you want; but just tell me first if Cartouche was as redoubtable as they say: was he a brigand chief?" "He was indeed." "Of many brigands?" "At Paris alone he commanded about three thousand men." "Three thousand? Goodness! That's a lot!" "You had more than fifty lieutenants; and there were always about a city twenty men dressed exactly like you--in a reddish brown coat, lined with amaranthine silk, and wearing a patch of black cloth over the left eye--to put the police off your track." "Oh, ho! it was a household of some size!" said Theophrastus, in a tone of irrepressible pride. "They attribute to you more than a hundred and fifty murders by your own hand." All this while Theophrastus had been trolling with a minnow without having had the slightest reason to suspect the existence of any fish in the waters of the Marne with the slightest appetite for his living bait. Of a sudden, the float which the minnow was drawing gently along among the green hearts of the water-lilies seemed smitten with frenzy. It leapt out of the water and plunged into it again, with such an unexpected swiftness and in such a resolute haste that it disappeared in the depths, carrying with it all the line which united it to the rod which united it to the hand of Theophrastus. The unfortunate thing was that after having taken after it all the line, it also took with it all the rod--with the result that nothing whatever united it any longer to the empty hand of Theophrastus. "The blackguard!" cried Theophrastus, with a gesture of despair, in such a manner that it is impossible to say whether he used that strong expression, so rare in his mouth, about the murderer of the past or the fish of the present. He added however: "It must have weighed a good four pounds!" Taking everything into account, Theophrastus appeared to regret the loss of his fish more bitterly than his hundred and fifty murders. Adolphe condoled with him and went on with his story. "This good uncle," he said, "rescued little Cartouche from his wretched condition, took him from the Rouen hospital, and restored him to his parents. There was joy in Cabbage-Bridge Street--it was at number nine Cabbage-Bridge Street that little Cartouche was born and his father followed the trade of cooper. Louis-Dominique, warned by his early misfortunes, swore that for the future there should not be a more obedient son or steadier apprentice than he in all Paris. He helped his good father make casks; and it was a pleasure to see him ply the hammer and adze from early dawn to dewy eve. He seemed to be making it his first business to forget his disastrous truancy. The few months he had passed in the company of the gipsies had however been of some service to him in that they had taught him some of the arts of pleasing; and in the dinner hour he would amuse his fellow workmen by conjuring tricks, and on holidays there was a rush to invite his family to dinner in order that the company might be amused by his dexterity and humour. He was a great success in the neighbourhood; and his growing renown filled him with pride. "In these occupations he reached that happy age at which the least sensible of human beings feels his beating heart awake the tenderest sentiments in him; and Louis-Dominique fell in love. The object of his affections was charming. She was a little milliner of Portefoin Street, with blue eyes, golden hair, a slender figure, and coquettish in the extreme--" "But I see nothing wrong in all this," Theophrastus interrupted. "It's all very natural, and shows no signs of depravity whatever. How he turned out so badly passes my comprehension." Adolphe looked at him gloomily and said, "I've just told you that the little milliner was a coquette. She was fond of dress and finery and trinkets, and burned to outshine her friends. Very soon the modest earnings of Louis-Dominique did not suffice to pay for her fancies--" "Oh, these women!" cried Theophrastus, clenching his fists. "You seem to forget that you have a wife who is your chief joy and pride," said Adolphe with some severity. "That's true," said Theophrastus. "But you forget that I am as deeply interested in the adventures of the _Child_ as if they were my own; and I am naturally irritated to see him so seriously compromise his future for the sake of a little milliner of Portefoin Street." "Well, presently he robbed his father; and his father was not long finding it out. He obtained an Order of Committal by which he could make his son enter the Convent of the Lazarists of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, which was really a House of Correction." "Just like parents!" said Theophrastus bitterly. "Instead of combating the evil instincts of their children by kindness, they drive them to despair by shutting them up in these villainous reformatories, where they only find bad examples, and where the spirit of revolt ferments, gathers force, boils over, and suffocates every other sentiment in their innocent young souls. I'd bet anything that if they had not shut up Louis-Dominique in a House of Correction, none of the rest would have followed!" "You needn't worry about that," said Adolphe drily. "Louis-Dominique was not shut up in a House of Correction." "How did that come about?" said Theophrastus in a less eloquent tone. "His father did not inform him of his discovery of his thefts, but one Sunday morning he invited him to come for a stroll. Louis-Dominique went with him with pleasure, for he was in a very good temper and had put on his best clothes with the intention of taking his sweetheart to the Palais-Royal in the afternoon. But when his father took the way to the Faubourg Saint-Denis, Louis-Dominique began to prick up his ears. He knew that at the end of the Faubourg were the Lazarists; and he also knew that parents sometimes took their children to the Lazarists. However, he showed none of the distrust which sprang from his uneasy conscience; but when they came to the corner of Paradise Street, and the buildings of Saint-Lazare rose before them, it seemed to Louis-Dominique that his father wore a strained air; and he took an instant dislike to the neighbourhood. He lagged a little behind. "When his father turned to look for him, Louis-Dominique had disappeared; and he was never to see him again." "And quite right too!" cried Theophrastus hotly. "In his place I should have done exactly the same!" "_But you were in his place_," said Adolphe. "Ah, yes--yes--of course I was! I keep forgetting it," said Theophrastus with less heat. [Illustration: Theophrastus still gazed in wonder (_See page 157_)] "Well, you were next heard of in a disreputable house on the other side of the Seine. Your pretty manners were found pleasing by frequenters of the _Three Tuns_ tavern at the corner of Rat Street. But since there was no credit on that side of the Seine, you were presently under the necessity of using the accomplishments you had learned from the gipsies and betook yourself to lightening the pockets of passers-by of everything that weighed them down: snuff-boxes, purses, handkerchiefs, bon-bon boxes, and patch-boxes. "After a while you became the confederate of a rascal of the name Galichon, who had taken a great fancy to you. You married his wife's sister. Marriage became quite a habit of yours; for, when at the end of six months Galichon, his wife, and his wife's sister were condemned to the galleys, you married an uncommonly clever pickpocket of Bucherie Street, and with her pursued your trade in the Palais-Royal." "Disgraceful!" cried Theophrastus, overwhelmed with shame. "But presently you were blown upon, and compelled to put your cunning at the disposal of the recruiting sergeants. The method of recruiting in those days was quite simple: the recruiting sergeants, to whom one brought simple young fellows or ragged ne'er-do-wells without a home, made everybody drunk; and when they awoke next morning, sober, they found that they had enlisted; and off to the wars they had to go. You provided the recruiting sergeants with recruits at a fixed price. But you were caught in your own trap; for having brought two young fellows to a recruiting sergeant one evening, you made merry with them at a tavern called 'the Sweethearts of Montrueil,' and awoke next morning to find that you had signed on yourself, you were the recruiter recruited." "Well, I don't complain of that," said Theophrastus. "I always had a taste for the army. Besides, if I signed on, it proves that I could write; and you can tell the historians so from me." A clock at Esbly chimed half-past six, and warned them that it was time to go home to dinner. Adolphe broke off his story and took his rod to pieces; and they started for home. On the way Theophrastus said: "Tell me, Adolphe: what was I like? I'm curious to know. I was a fine man, wasn't I? Big and well made?" "You are like that on the stage in that piece of Ennery's. But, as a matter of fact, you were, according to the poet Granval, a man who knew you well and chanted your glory--" "My what?" cried Theophrastus. "Your sanguinary glory--you were: 'Brown, dried-up, thin, and small, by courage great, Reckless and brisk, robust, alert, adroit.'" Theophrastus frowned as if he would have preferred a more romantic picture; then he said, "You haven't told me how you got hold of that portrait in the house in Guénégaud Street." "It's a copy of a photograph by Nadar." "But how on earth did Nadar take my photograph?" cried Theophrastus in extreme surprise. "He took it from a wax mask which must have been very like you, since it was moulded from your face by the order of the Regent. Nadar photographed this mask on the 17th of January, 1859." "And where is it to be found?" said Theophrastus eagerly. "At the Château de Saint-Germain." "I must see that mask!" cried Theophrastus, "I must see it and touch it! We will go to Saint-Germain to-morrow." At that moment the smiling Marceline opened the door of Azure Waves Villa for them. CHAPTER VIII THE WAX MASK At this point I let Theophrastus once more take up the narrative. "I had the strongest desire," he writes, "to see and touch that wax which had been moulded on my own skin; and this desire grew, if possible, stronger when Adolphe told me that the Château of Saint-Germain-en-Laye had contained the wax portrait of the famous Cartouche since the 25th of April, 1849. It had been presented to it by an Abbé Niallier, who had inherited it under the will of a Monsieur Richot, an Officer of the Household of Louis XVI, who had had it for many years. It was all the more valuable for having belonged to the Royal Family. "This bust was moulded by a Florentine artist a few days before my execution. On it is a cap of wool or rough leather; and it is dressed in a coarse linen shirt covered with soot, and a waistcoat and a jacket of black camlet. But the most extraordinary thing about it is, that my hair and moustache were cut off after I was executed, and glued on to my mask! The portrait is enclosed in a large, deep, gilded frame, a very pretty piece of work. A sheet of Venetian glass protects the portrait; and one can still see on the frame faint traces of the arms of France. "I asked Adolphe how he had obtained these exact details. He answered that they were the result of two days' work in the National Library. "My hair! my moustache! my clothes! All as they were two hundred years ago! In spite of the horror with which the relics of a man who had committed so many crimes should have inspired me, I could hardly contain myself in my impatience to see and touch them. O mystery of Nature! Profound abyss of the soul! Giddy precipice of the heart! I, Theophrastus Longuet, whose name is the synonym of honour, I who was always afraid of bloodshed, I already _cherished_ in my heart the relics of the greatest brigand in the world! "When I recovered my senses after the sight of the portrait in Guénégaud Street, I was at first amazed not to find myself in a state of despair bitter enough to disgust me with life, and plunge me once more into the tomb. No: I did not dream of suppressing this envelope, with the face of an honest man, which in the twentieth century was labelled 'Theophrastus Longuet,' which enclosed and bore about the world the soul of Cartouche. Undoubtedly at the first moment of such a revelation the least I could do was to faint; and I did so. But instead of finding despair in my heart I found a great compassion, which not only drew tears from me for the misfortune of myself, Theophrastus, but also for Cartouche. I asked myself in fact which was having the best time of it, the honest Theophrastus dragging the brigand Cartouche about inside him or the brigand Cartouche shut up in the honest Theophrastus. "'We must try and understand one another,' I said out loud. "The words had scarcely passed my lips when a dazzling light broke on me, as I recalled the theory of Reincarnation which M. Lecamus had revealed to me. "The whole object of evolution is the evolution of the reincarnate soul towards the Better. It is the Progressive Ascent of Being of which Commissary Mifroid had spoken to us with such delightful earnestness. It was quite plain that the powers who regulate the process of reincarnation had found nothing more honest on earth than the body of Theophrastus Longuet to enable the criminal soul of Cartouche to evolve towards the Better. "I must admit that when this idea took hold of me, instead of the childish despair which had caused me to faint, I felt myself filled with a sentiment more akin to pride. I was charged by the Planetary Logos, I, the humble, honest Theophrastus, to regenerate in ideal splendour that soul of darkness and of blood, the soul of Louis-Dominique Cartouche, known as the _Child_. I accepted willingly, since I could not do otherwise, this unexpected mission and at once I was on my guard. I did not repeat the phrase, 'We must understand one another'; but I at once commanded Cartouche to obey Theophrastus; and I promised myself that I would give him such a time of it that I could not prevent myself from saying with a smile: 'Poor old Cartouche!' "I confided these reflections to Adolphe, who received them with approval, but at the same time warned me against my tendency to separate Theophrastus from Cartouche. "'You must not forget,' he said, 'that they are one. You have the instincts of Theophrastus, that is to say, of the cabbage-planters (gardeners, market-gardeners) of Ferté-sous-Jouarre. These instincts are good. But you have also the soul of Cartouche, which is detestable. Take care: war is declared. The question is, which will conquer, the soul of long ago or the instincts of to-day.' "I asked him if the soul of Cartouche was truly altogether detestable, which would have grieved me. I was pleased to learn that it had its good points. "'Cartouche,' said he, 'expressly forbade his men to kill, or even wound, wayfarers without some reason. When he was at work in Paris with any of his bands, and his men brought him prisoners, he spoke to them with the utmost politeness and gentleness and made them restore a part of their spoil. Sometimes the affair was confined to a mere exchange of clothes. When he found in the pockets of the coat thus exchanged letters of importance, he ran after its late owner to give them back to him, wished him a pleasant evening, and gave him the password. It was a maxim of this extraordinary man that no one ought to be robbed twice on the same night, or treated too harshly, in order that the Parisians might not take a dislike to going out in the evening.' "Since, then, he was opposed to unreasonable murder, it is clear that this man was not utterly wicked. I regret, however, that, as far as he himself was concerned, he should have had in the course of his life a hundred and fifty reasons for assassinating his contemporaries. "But to come back to the wax mask, my friend Adolphe and myself had just descended from the train at Saint-Germain station when I fancied that I saw among a group of passengers a figure which I knew. Moved by a sentiment which was not altogether under my control, I dashed towards the group, but the figure had disappeared. "'That form is essentially repugnant to me. Where have I seen it?' said I to myself; and Adolphe asked me the reason of my excitement. All at once I remembered. "'I could swear that it was Signor Petito, the Professor of Italian who lives in the flat above us!' I cried. 'What is Signor Petito up to at Saint-Germain? He had better not get in my way!' "'What is it he's done?' said Adolphe, in some surprise at the emphasis with which I uttered the last sentence. "'Oh, nothing--nothing. Only if he gets in my way I swear to you _I'll clip his ears for him_!' "_And I would have done as I said, you know._ "We went on then, without bothering any more about Signor Petito, to the Château, that wonderful Château. We went into the museum; and I was extremely annoyed to find that those chambers which knew the whole history of France, and would have served as the frame of our past, even had they been empty, should be serving to-day as a bazaar for Roman plaster casts, prehistoric arms, elephants' tusks, and bas-reliefs from the Arch of Constantine. But my annoyance turned to fury when I learnt that the mask of Cartouche was not there. I had just stealthily thrust the ferule of my green umbrella into the eye of a plaster legionary and smashed it, when an old custodian came to us and said that he was sure there was a mask of Cartouche at Saint-Germain and he thought it was in the library; but that had, for a week, been closed for repairs. "We decided that we would return at a more favourable opportunity; for the further the mask withdrew itself, the fiercer I burned to touch it. "We went out on to the terrace, for it was a glorious day, and plunged into the forest, down a magnificent aisle of it, which brought us to the lodges built in front of the Château by the desire of Queen Anne of Austria. "As we reached the left corner of the wall, I thought I once more recognised, slinking into a thicket, the abominable silhouette and repulsive face of Signor Petito. Adolphe maintained that I was mistaken. "Was it because I was treading this old soil which I knew, because I found myself in that friendly forest among those familiar trees, or was it the result of a long, suggestive conversation about old times and the people of long ago? Of a sudden memory sprang to birth in me, a very pleasant memory, as sometimes a moving remembrance of one's youthful days comes back to one, days which one believed for ever lost, buried in the memory. And then I saw quite clearly that I was _the same_ soul, for I recalled Cartouche as if we had not been separated _by two hundred years of death_. "Yes, I had the same soul, a long same soul indeed: at one end was Cartouche, at the other Theophrastus. "I remembered the old days; and above all I remembered them when we had passed the northern wall, plunging always deeper into the forest. I threw myself down on the turf at the foot of an immemorial tree, my eyes sparkling with an amazing youthful fire, and looking round the spot I knew so well, I said: "'Ah, Adolphe! the last time I was here my fortune was at its height. I was feared and loved by all. I was even loved, Adolphe, by my victims, I plundered them so gracefully that afterwards they went about Paris singing my praises. I was not yet a prey to that dreadful thirst for blood which was some months later to drive me to commit the most atrocious crimes. Everything went well with me, feared and loved by all, I was happy, light-hearted, of a splendid daring, magnificent in love, of the finest nature in the world, and _master of Paris_. "'Do you remember that glorious September night when we broke into the house of the Ambassador of Spain, made our way into his wife's bedroom, took all her embroidered robes of silk and velvet, a buckle set with twenty-seven large diamonds (one might almost fancy that it happened yesterday), a necklace of fine pearls, six gold plates, six gold knives and forks, and ten silver-gilt goblets (what a thing what a wonderful thing, my dear Adolphe, the phenomenon of memory is!)? Do you remember how we wrapped up the jewels and plate in napkins, and went off to supper (oh, what an evening it was!) at La Belle Hélène's, who, _you remember_, kept the Heart tavern? "Now why, I wonder, did I say '_You remember_'? It must be that I regard you as a friend I had in those days, as trusty as yourself, of whom I was just as fond--Old Easy-Going--my favourite friend. _By the throttle of Madame Phalaris!_ he was a fine fellow--sergeant of the City Guard and one of my lieutenants. What a lot of those City Guards I did have among my men! Why, when I was arrested, _a hundred and fifty of them, officers and men, fled to the colonies_ for fear I should split. They had no need to: torture never drew a word from me! "'Do you remember the night you were on duty at the Palais-Royal and stole the Regent's silver-gilt candlesticks?'" The voice of Theophrastus died dreamily away down the vistas of the past; but M. Adolphe Lecamus said nothing: his face was flushed; and he was breathing heavily. Presently Theophrastus woke from his dream to tell his friend of yet another outrageous exploit, the theft of Mississippi Bonds to the value of a million and three hundred thousand francs from the great financier Law. He ended the story by saying, "How two hundred years do change a man!" Then he began to laugh at the phrase. He was joking, positively joking. That is the way with the Parisian tradesman of to-day: he begins by being scared to death by a mere nothing, and ends by laughing at everything. Theophrastus Longuet had reached the point of laughing at himself. The preternatural and terrifying antithesis between Cartouche and Longuet, which had at first plunged him into the gloomiest terror, a few days later became a joke! The wretched man was insulting Destiny! He was mocking the thunder! His excuse is that he did not realise the gravity of his case. Adolphe showed but little appreciation of his humour. At dusk they returned to Paris; and as they came out of Saint-Lazare station, he said to Theophrastus: "Tell me, Theophrastus, when you're Cartouche and are walking about Paris and observing its life, what astonishes you most? Is it the telephone, or the railway, or the motorcars, or the Eiffel Tower?" "No, no!" said Theophrastus quickly. "It's the policemen!" CHAPTER IX STRANGE POSITION OF A LITTLE VIOLET CAT It would seem that the Destiny which rules mankind takes a detestable pleasure in making the most serene joys come before the worst catastrophes. Never had the three friends enjoyed a dinner more than the dinner which they had that night at the café Des Trois Etoiles. They dined well, the coffee was excellent, and the cigars which Adolphe had brought with him, and the Russian cigarettes which Marceline smoked, were excellent too. They lingered talking together for a long while after dinner; and their talk, which, under the guidance of Adolphe, never wandered far from the sphere of the occult which now so practically concerned them, was interesting and fascinating, in spite of the fact that that inveterate Parisian Theophrastus would now and again jest about his dangerous plight. At half-past ten they left the restaurant and walked back to the flat in Gerando Street. Adolphe bade them good-night at the bottom of the stairs. That flat consisted of a narrow hall, nearly filled, and certainly cramped, by a chest of polished oak. Into this hall four doors opened, those of the kitchen and dining-room on the left, those of the drawing-room and bedroom, which looked out on to the street, on the right. There was a third window looking out on to the street, that of the tiny room which Theophrastus had made his study. _This study had two doors; one of them opened into the bedroom, the other into the dining-room._ In this study was a bureau against the wall; and in it were drawers above and below its writing-table. This writing-table let down and shut up, and was fastened by a somewhat elaborate lock at the edge of the bureau's top. When it was locked, all the drawers were locked too. As a rule, Theophrastus used to set a little violet cat on the keyhole of the lock, as much to hide it as for ornament. This little violet cat, which had glass eyes, was nothing but an ingenious silk ball which acted as a pen-wiper and pin-cushion. About four feet away from the desk was a very small _tea-table_. On entering their flat, Theophrastus and Marceline, as was their custom, made a careful search in every room for a hidden burglar. Having, as usual, failed to find one, (Heaven alone knows what they would have done with him if they had!) they went to bed with their minds at ease. As the more timid of the two, Theophrastus slept next the wall. They were soon asleep, Theophrastus snoring gently. Night. Not a carriage in the street. Silence. The snoring of Theophrastus ceased. Was it that he had sunk into a deeper sleep? No: he sleeps no more. His throat is dry; he stares into the darkness with affrighted eyes; he grips with a cold hand, a hand which fear is freezing, the shoulder of Marceline and awakens her. He says in a low voice, so low that she does not even hear him, "Do you hear?" Marceline holds her breath; she clutches her husband's icy hand. They strain their ears; and they undoubtedly do hear something--_in the flat_. In very truth it is nothing to laugh at. The man who can laugh at an inexplicable noise, at night, _in a flat_, has not yet been born! There are brave men, splendidly brave, who will stick at nothing, who will go anywhere at night, into the emptiest streets of the most disreputable quarters, who would not hesitate to venture, just for the pleasure of it, into lampless blind alleys. But I tell you, because it is the truth, and you know it is the truth, that the man who can laugh at an inexplicable noise, at night, _in a flat_, has not yet been born. We have already seen Theophrastus sleepless on the night of the revelation of the dreadful secret which sprang from the stones of the Conciergerie. The anxiety which weighed on his heart that night, terrible as it had been, was as nothing compared with that which was now strangling him, because there was at night, _in the flat_, an inexplicable noise. It was truly an odd noise, but beyond all doubting real; it was a long-drawn _pur-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r_. It came from behind the wall of the next room. They sat up in bed noiselessly, with bristling hair, and beads of cold sweat standing out on their brows. From the other side of the wall came the strange _pur-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r_. It was the purring of a cat; they recognised that purring: it was the purring of the little violet cat. Marceline slipped down under the clothes and whispered: "It's the purring of the violet cat. Go and see what's the matter with it, Theophrastus." Theophrastus did not budge; he would have given a hundred thousand rubber stamps to be walking along the boulevard at mid-day. "It's not natural that it should be purring like that," she added. "Go and see what's the matter with it. You must, Theophrastus! Get your revolver out of the drawer." Theophrastus found the strength to say faintly, "You know quite well that it's not loaded." They listened again; the purring had ceased; Marceline began to hope they had been mistaken. Then Theophrastus groaned, got out of bed, took the revolver, and quietly opened the door leading into his study. It was bright in a sheet of moonlight; and what Theophrastus saw made him recoil with a dull cry, shut the door, and set his back against it as if to bar what he saw from entering the bedroom. "What is it?" said Marceline hoarsely. The teeth of Theophrastus chattered as he said, "It has stopped purring; but it has moved!" "Where is it?" "On the tea-table." "The violet cat is on the tea-table?" "Yes." "Are you quite sure it was in its place last night?" "Quite sure. I stuck my scarf-pin in its head. It was on the bureau, as it always is." "You must have imagined it. Suppose I lit the light?" said Marceline. "No, no, we might escape in the darkness ... Suppose I went and opened the door on to the landing, and called the porter?" "Don't get so terrified," said Marceline, who was little by little recovering her wits, since she no longer heard the violet cat. "The whole thing was an illusion. You changed its place last night; and it didn't purr." "After all, it's quite possible," said Theophrastus, whose one desire was to get back into bed. "Go and put it back in its place," said Marceline. Theophrastus braced himself to the effort, went into the study, and with a swift and trembling hand took the cat from the tea-table, set it back on the bureau, and hurried back into bed. The violet cat was no sooner back on the bureau than he began again his _pur-r-r-r-r-r-r-r_. That purring only made them smile: they knew what had set it going. A quarter of an hour had passed; they were almost asleep, when a second fright made them spring up in bed. A third purring struck on their ears. If the first purring had smitten them with terror, and the second made them smile, the third purring frightened them out of their lives. "It's impossible!" said Marceline in a chattering whisper. "We're victims of an hallucination! B-B-B-Besides, it's n-n-not really surprising after what happened to you at the Conciergerie!" The purring once more ceased. This time it was Marceline who rose. She opened the door of the study, turned sharply towards Theophrastus, and said, but in what a faint and dying voice: "You didn't put the violet cat back on the bureau!" "But I did!" groaned Theophrastus. "_But it's gone back to the tea-table!_" "Good God!" cried poor Theophrastus; and he buried his head under the bed-clothes. The violet cat no longer purred. Marceline became persuaded that in his perturbation her husband had left it on the tea-table. She took it up, holding her breath, and set it back on the bureau. The violet cat made its purring heard for the fourth time. Marceline and Theophrastus heard it with the same equanimity with which they had heard the second purring. The fourth purring stopped. Another quarter of an hour passed: they were not asleep or even sleepy; and then there came _a fifth purring_. Then, incredible to relate, Theophrastus leapt from the bed like a tiger, and cried: "_By the throttle of Madame Phalaris!_ This is too much of a good thing! What the deuce is that infernal violet cat up to?" CHAPTER X THE EXPLANATION OF THE STRANGE ATTITUDE OF A LITTLE VIOLET CAT It is necessary to mount to the floor above, to the flat occupied by Signor and Signora Petito, to the room in which Theophrastus, with never a thought of the imprudence he was committing, had asked for the needful information about the handwriting of the document. What imprudence indeed could there be in showing to an expert in handwriting a document so torn, stained, and obliterated that it was impossible, at a first glance, to discover any sense or meaning at all in it? Yet by a truly strange chance it was that very document that Signor Petito and his wife were that night discussing. The Signora Petito was saying: "I don't understand it at all; and the behaviour of M. Longuet at Saint-Germain throws no fresh light on it. The fact is, you do not remember the instructions--all the instructions. _Go and take the air at the Chopinettes, look at the Cock, look at the Gall_: it's all so vague. What can it mean?" "The first thing it means is that the treasure is to be found on the outskirts of Paris, of the Paris of that epoch. _Go and take the air..._ My opinion is that we ought to search in the neighbourhood of Montrouge, or Montmartre, because of the Cock. There was a Château du Coq at Porkers village. Look at this plan of old Paris," said her husband. They pored over the plan on the table. "It's still very vague," said Signor Petito gloomily. "For my part, I think we ought to pay particular attention to the words 'The Gall.'" "That's just the vaguest thing in the whole thing," said his wife. "Still, I'm sure it's important," said her husband. "As I remember the document (and you know what a magnificent memory I have), there was a short space between the word 'the' and the word 'Gall,' and after 'Gall' a longer space. Reach me the dictionary." The Signora Petito rose with the greatest precaution, she walked noiselessly and stealthily across the room (she was the conspirator to her finger-tips), and brought a small dictionary. They began to run down a column, writing down all the words which began with the syllable gall: Gallantly, Gallery, Galley, and so forth. Then the clock on the mantelpiece began to strike twelve. The Signora Petito paled and rose to her feet; Signor Petito rose to his feet paler still. "The hour has come!" said the Signora Petito. "You will find the information you want below." She pointed a rigid finger at the floor. "They cannot hear you in your list slippers. Besides, there's no danger of it: they are at Esbly." Two minutes later a dark figure glided down to M. Longuet's flat, slipped a key into the lock of his door, and entered his hall. The flat of Theophrastus was of exactly the same construction as that of Signor Petito, and he found his way into the dining-room without a pause. He acted with the greater coolness because he believed that the flat was empty. He opened the door of the study, and saw the violet cat on the bureau. Since it was evidently on the lock of the bureau in which he was interested, he took it up, and set it on the tea-table. Then he hurried noiselessly back through the dining-room into the hall, for he fancied he heard voices on the staircase. He listened for a while at the door of the flat and heard nothing; doubtless his ears had deceived him. Then he came back to the study. He found _the violet cat on the bureau, purring_. In spite of their crinkliness, the hairs of Signor Petito stood stiffly upright on his head, the horror which filled him can only be compared to that other horror on the other side of the wall. He stood motionless, panting, in the moonlight, even after the little violet cat had stopped purring. Then he braced himself, and with a timid hand picked up the violet cat. As soon as he had moved it, it began to purr; and he became acquainted with the fact that in its cardboard interior there was a small marble which, as it rolled to and fro, produced an ingenious imitation of a natural purr. Since he had been frightened to death, he called himself a perfect fool. It was all quite clear; had he not before slipping out of the study moved the cat? Instead of having set it on the tea-table, as he thought, he had put it back on the bureau. Of course, it was quite simple. He set it back, still purring, on the tea-table. It must not be forgotten that this purring, which did not terrify Signor Petito, terrified Theophrastus and his wife afresh, while the second purring, which had taken the curl out of Signor Petito's hair with terror, had not terrified them at all. The cat was still purring, when there was another noise outside the flat. It was Signora Petito sneezing in the draught. Signor Petito hurried back into the hall and once more glued his ear to the door of the flat. When, reassured, he returned to the study, _the purring violet cat had gone back to the bureau_. He thought he was going to die of fright; he thought that a miraculous intervention was holding him back on the verge of a crime. He uttered a swift prayer in which he assured Heaven that he would not go on with it. However a quarter of an hour passed in the recovery of his scattered wits; and since he heard nothing more, he attributed these surprising happenings to the perturbation of spirit induced by his exceptional occupation. He took up the violet cat, which began to purr again. But this time the door of the study was flung violently open; and Signor Petito fell swooning into the arms of M. Longuet, _who expressed no surprise whatever_. M. Longuet contemptuously flung Signor Petito on the floor, dashed at the violet cat, caught it up, opened the window, tore his scarf-pin out of its head, and threw it into the street. "You beastly cat!" he cried with inexpressible fury. "You'll never stop our sleeping again!" Signor Petito had dragged himself to his feet, entirely at a loss to know what face to put upon the matter, inasmuch as Madame Longuet, in her nightgown, was assiduously pointing at him a large, shining, nickel-plated revolver. He only found the phrase: "I beg your pardon: _I thought you were in the country_." But it was M. Longuet who came to him, took between his thumb and first finger one of Signor Petito's long ears, and said: "And now, _my dear Signor Petito, we are going to have a little talk_!" Marceline lowered the barrel of the revolver; and at the sight of his calm courage, gazed at her husband in an ecstasy of admiration. "You see, my dear Signor Petito, I am calm," said Theophrastus. "Just now, indeed, I was in a devil of a temper, but that was against that infernal cat which prevented us from sleeping. So I threw it out of the window. But cheer up, Signor Petito, I am not going to throw you out of the window. Mine is a just nature. It wasn't you who prevented us from sleeping. You have taken the precaution of putting on list slippers. Many thanks for it. Why then, my dear Signor Petito, are you making that intolerable face? Of course, it must be your ear. I've good news for you then, news which will set you quite at your ease about your ear: _You are not going to suffer from your ears any longer_, my dear Signor Petito!" Then he bade his wife put on a dressing-gown, and begged Signor Petito come into the kitchen. "Don't be surprised at my receiving you in my kitchen," he said. "_I am very careful of my carpets, and you will bleed like a pig._" He dragged a table of white wood from against the wall to the middle of the kitchen, and bade Marceline spread a piece of oil-cloth on it, and fetch him the big bowl, and the carving-knife from the drawer of the dining-room sideboard. Marceline tried to ask for an explanation; but her husband gave her such a look that she could only shiver and obey. Signor Petito shivered too, and as he shivered, he made for the door of the kitchen, in which, he told himself, there was nothing for him to do. M. Longuet, unfortunately, refused absolutely to let his neighbour go. He bade him sit down, and sat down himself. "Signor Petito," he said in a tone of the most exquisite politeness, "I do not like your face. It is not your fault; but it is certainly not mine. There is no doubt that you are the most cowardly and contemptible of sneak-thieves. But what of that? It's no business of mine, but of some honest executioner of the King who will invite you next season _to go harvesting at the ladder_, where one fine day he will set you _floating gently in the breeze_ to the end that, like a fine fellow, _you may keep the sheep of the moon_. Don't smile, Signor Petito." Signor Petito was not smiling. "You have absurd ears; and I am certain that with ears like those you never dare go near Guilleri Cross-roads."[2] [Footnote 2: At Guilleri Cross-roads there stood a pillory. It was there that they used to cut off the ears of thieves.] Signor Petito clasped his hands and said with chattering teeth, "My wife's waiting for me." "What are you doing, Marceline?" cried Theophrastus impatiently. "Can't you see that Signor Petito is in a hurry? His wife's waiting for him! _Have you got the carving-knife?_" "I can't find the fork," replied the trembling voice of Marceline. The fact is, Marceline did not know what she was saying. She thought that her husband had gone quite mad; and between Signor Petito burglar, and Theophrastus mad, she was not in the mood for joking. She had instinctively hidden herself behind a cupboard door; and such was her agitation that in turning a little clumsily, at the moment at which Theophrastus was bellowing a volley of abuse at her, she upset the dessert service, and the Sarreguemines vase which was its chief ornament. The result was a loud crash and the utmost confusion. Theophrastus appealed once more to the throttle of Madame Phalaris and called Marceline to him in such a furious roar that in spite of herself she ran into the kitchen. A dreadful sight awaited her. The eyes of Signor Petito seemed to be starting from their sockets. Was it from fear? Fear had something to do with it, but also the suffocation produced by the handkerchief which Theophrastus had thrust into his mouth. Signor Petito himself lay at full length on the table. Theophrastus had had the time and strength to bind his wrists and ankles with string. The Signor's head projected a little beyond the table's edge; and under his head was a bowl which M. Longuet had placed there _not to make a mess_. Theophrastus himself with twitching nostrils (that was what Marceline chiefly noticed in the terrifying face of her husband) had hold of Signor Petito's right ear with the fingers of his left hand, and his right hand gripped a kitchen knife. He ground his teeth and said: "_Strike the flag!_" With these words he sliced neatly off Signor Petito's left ear. He dropped the ear into a little basin which he had ready, caught hold of the right ear, sliced off that, then carried the little basin to the sink, and turned on the tap. He returned to the kitchen; and while he waited for Signor Petito's ears to stop bleeding, hummed an old and forgotten French air, with the most cheerful face in the world. When the bleeding ceased, he fastened a dish-cloth round Signor Petito's head, withdrew the handkerchief from his mouth, cut the string which bound him, and bade him get out of his flat at once if he did not wish to be arrested for burglary. As the groaning expert in handwriting was leaving the kitchen, Theophrastus bethought himself, rushed to the sink, took the ears out of the basin, and slipped them into their owner's waistcoat pocket. "You go about forgetting everything!" he said indignantly. "What would the Signora Petito think, if you came home without your ears?" CHAPTER XI THEOPHRASTUS MAINTAINS THAT HE DID NOT DIE ON THE PLACE DE GRÈVE In his account, in his Memoirs, of that terrible night, M. Longuet appears to attach very little importance to clipping the ears of Signor Petito. He seems far more deeply concerned with the psychology of Mme. Longuet. "The soul of woman," he writes, "is a very delicate thing. I gathered this from the emotion of my dear Marceline. She would not admit that I was obliged to clip the ears of Signor Petito; and her process of reasoning was incredible and indeed incomprehensible. But I forgave her on account of her excessive sensitiveness. She said then that I was not obliged to clip Signor Petito's ears. I answered that manifestly one was never obliged to clip any man's ears any more than one was obliged to kill him; and yet, ninety-nine men out of a hundred, I affirmed (and no one will contradict me) would have killed Signor Petito when they found him in their flat at night. She herself, who was after all only a woman, would have done all she could to kill Signor Petito with the revolver in her hand, had it been loaded. She did not deny it. Well then, in clipping his ears, did I not demonstrate that there was no need to kill him? "A man prefers to live earless rather than die with his ears on; and Signor Petito found himself as thoroughly disgusted with night excursions into other people's flats as if he had been killed. "I acted for the best with great restraint and inconceivable humanity. "The logic of this reasoning calmed her a little; and what was left of the night would have passed comfortably, if I had not taken it into my head to reveal to her the whole mystery of my personality. It was her own fault. She insisted on knowing the reason of my sudden courage: which was natural enough, since up to that day I had hardly been a man of courage. It is not in selling rubber stamps that one learns to see the blood flow. Thereupon I told her straight off that I was Cartouche; and in a boastful vein which surprised me, I bragged of my hundred and fifty murders. She sprang out of bed, with every sign of extreme terror, took refuge behind the sofa, and informed me that she would have nothing more to do with Cartouche and was going to divorce me. On hearing this, I was deeply moved and began to weep. At this she came a little nearer, and explained how difficult her position was, when she had believed herself married to an honest man, and all at once discovered that she was the wife of a horrible brigand; that henceforth there could be no peace for her. I dried my tears, and condoled with her on her misfortune. We resolved to consult Adolphe. "Adolphe came early next morning and had a long interview with Marceline in the drawing-room. When they came out, Adolphe regarded me sadly, asked me to go with him, for he had some shopping to do; and we strolled down into Paris. On the way I asked him if the study of the document had revealed any new fact concerning our treasures; and he answered that all that could wait, that my health was the first consideration, and we would all three take the evening train to Azure Waves Villa. "I turned the talk on to the subject of Cartouche; but he shrank from it, until I was on the point of losing my temper at his reticence. Then he began to talk about it, and presently warmed to the subject. He took up my story at the point of my enlistment, and informed me that at the end of the war the greater part of the troops were disbanded, and that I found myself in Paris without any resources save those of my natural ingenuity and my special accomplishments. I employed these with such fortune and address that my comrades lost no time in electing me chief; and since we were successful, our band very quickly increased in numbers. "Now, at that time, the Police of Paris was in such a wretched state that I resolved to make it my business. It was my intention that everyone, gentleman, tradesman, or churchman, should be able to walk at any hour in all tranquillity about the good city of Paris. I divided up my troops very skilfully, appointed a district to each, and a leader who would remain my obedient lieutenant. When anyone went abroad after the Curfew or even before it, he was accosted politely by a squad of my men, and invited to pay up a certain sum, or if he had no money on him, to part with his coat. In return for this he was furnished with the password, and could afterwards walk about Paris, all night long if he wished, in perfect security, for I had become the chief of all the robbers. "I should be unworthy of the name of man, if I shrank from admitting that, to my shame, I admired myself for having risen to such a prodigious height of criminal enterprise. Quite criminal, alas! for though my intention of policing Paris might have been an admirable idea in itself, its execution drew us on to excesses that the original good faith of the plan could not excuse. The tradesfolk did not understand, and often resisted; and their resistance produced disaster. The clergy, however, were not against us, since we respected the churches. Indeed an unfrocked priest, whom we called the Ratlet, rendered us some services which presently led him to pronounce the Benediction with his feet in the air, _in communi patibulo_. "Here I stopped Adolphe, to ask the meaning of the Latin words. He said that if I had really been a fellow-pupil of Voltaire at Clermont College I ought to know Latin, and that _in communi patibulo_ meant 'on the common gibbet.' "'Ah! I know: we often passed it when we went to have a blow-out at Chopinettes mill,' said I. "'Oh, there were plenty of gibbets,' answered Adolphe, giving me a look of which I did not catch the meaning. 'The good city was not lacking in gibbets, gallows, or pillories. And even here...' "Again he gave me an odd look, and I saw that we had arrived at the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville. 'Do you want to cross the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville?' he went on. "'Of course I'll cross it, if that's the way you want to go,' I said. "'Have you often crossed it?' he said. "'Thousands of times.' "'And has nothing uncommon happened? Have you experienced no odd feelings? Have you remembered nothing?' "'Nothing at all.' "'Are there any spots in Paris that you haven't been able to cross?' "His look was insistent. It seemed to speak to me, to bid me reflect. Then I recalled several inexplicable aversions to places I had felt. More than once, on my way to Odéon Street, on finding myself in front of the Institute, I had turned into Mazarine Street. I had no sooner set foot in it than I had turned right about face and gone round another way. I had been vaguely aware of these changes of route and had put them down to absent-mindedness. But the more I think of it the less I believe that it was anything of the kind. In fact, I have found myself at that point more than twenty times; and more than twenty times I have retraced my steps. Never--never have I walked along that part of Mazarine Street which begins at the Institute and continues to the corner of Guénégaud Street and to the foot of the Pont-Neuf. Never! At the same time when I have gone along Mazarine Street on my way to the quays, I have stopped at Guénégaud Street and gone down it with a sense of pleasure. "I told Adolphe all this; and he said, 'Are there any other places from which you shrink?' "Then I remembered on reflection that I had never crossed the Pont-Neuf or the Petit-Pont; and that there is, at the corner of Vielle-du-Temple Street, a house with barred windows from which I have always recoiled. "'And why do you shrink from these places and from this house in Vielle-du-Temple Street?' he said. "Then I remembered exactly why; and the reason is the most natural in the world. I had thought I had no reason; but evidently I had, for it was because of the paving-stones. "'Because of the paving-stones?' he said in a tone of surprise. "'Yes: because the paving-stones in those streets are red. I don't mind red roofs or red-brick walls, but red paving-stones I cannot stand!' "'And the soil of this Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville? Isn't it red?' said Adolphe, leaning over me with the air of a doctor listening to the beating of a patient's heart. "'Do you think I'm colour-blind?' "'Don't you know that this was the Place de Grève?' "'Zounds! It was here that the gibbet stood--and the pillory, and the platform on which the wheel was set up! On the days of execution! Facing the entrance of Vannerie Street! I never crossed this Place without saying to my comrades, to the Burgundian, Fancy Man, Gastelard, and Sheep's-head, "_We must avoid the wheel._" And a lot of use it was to them!' "'_Nor to you, either!_' retorted Adolphe. 'It was here that you were executed! It was here that you were broken on the wheel!' "I burst out laughing in his face. "'Who told you that piece of idiocy?' I said indignantly. "'All the historians are agreed...' "'The silly idiots! I know perfectly well that I died at the Gallows of Montfaucon!' I said with absolute assurance. "'You? You died at the Gallows of Montfaucon?' cried Adolphe beside himself. 'You died in 1721 at the Gallows of Montfaucon? But it was years since they had executed anyone there!' "But I protested still louder than he, so that we became the centre of a little crowd. "'I didn't say that I was hanged at Montfaucon! the Gallows of Montfaucon! I said that I died there!' I cried. "As I shouted it, I must have seemed to call to witness the truth of my words the forty persons who seemed interested in our altercation, of which indeed they can have understood nothing, with the exception of one gentleman who seemed to have caught its meaning, for he said to Adolphe with the utmost calmness, and with extreme politeness: "'_Surely you're not going to teach this gentleman how he died!_' "Adolphe admitted himself worsted; and we walked along arm in arm towards the Pont-Neuf." CHAPTER XII THE HOUSE OF STRANGE WORDS Among all the papers I found in the sandalwood box, by Theophrastus himself, by M. Lecamus, or by Commissary Mifroid, those which relate to the death of Cartouche are beyond doubt the most curious and the most interesting. They are indeed of great historical interest since they contradict history. Moreover they contradict it with such force and with such irrefutable reasoning that one asks how men of such weight as Barbier, who was in the best position of all not to be duped, since he lived at the time, could have been the victims of a very poor comedy, and how succeeding generations have failed to suspect the truth. History then, serious history, teaches us that Cartouche, after having undergone the Question in its cruellest form without revealing one single name or fact,--how Cartouche, who had only to die and nothing to hope, was brought to the Place de Grève to be executed, and that there he decided to confess; that they took him to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and that he delivered to justice his chief accomplices; after which he was broken on the wheel. The papers of Theophrastus Longuet explain the fraud. Cartouche was not only an object of terror, but also an object of admiration. His courage knew no limits; and he proved it under torture. From the moment that the pain of the Boot failed to make him speak, it was morally impossible that he should speak. Why should he have spoken? All that was left for him was to die game. The greatest ladies of the Court and the city had hired boxes and windows to witness his execution. Among the three hundred and sixty people who were arrested were men whom he loved as brothers, and his tenderest and most constant flames. Some of them came to Paris from the Provinces, contemptuous of all danger, in the hope that, at the trial, the _Child_ would have the consolation of seeing them for the last time. The account of the trial which describes these women as throwing themselves, after he had denounced them, into his arms at the Hôtel-de-Ville itself, is manifestly nonsense. I will not reproduce here all the protests of M. Longuet against the dishonourable death ascribed to Cartouche, but the few lines which precede this chapter seem, to me at any rate, to prove, _a priori_, that he is right. But at this moment all that M. Longuet knew was that _he died at the Gallows of Montfaucon, but that he was not hanged there_. In the course of discussing this serious question Theophrastus and his friend had reached Petit-Pont Street without having crossed the Petit-Pont. Theophrastus did not so much as look in the direction of the Petit-Pont. Half-way down the street Theophrastus, who was in a state half of memory, half of possession, said to his friend: "Look at that house next to the hotel there, 'The Market-Gardeners' Hotel.' Do you notice anything remarkable about it?" Adolphe looked across the street at the hotel, a little old house, low, narrow, and dirty, with "The Market-Gardeners' Hotel" newly painted on it. It seemed to be propping itself up against a large eighteenth-century building to which Theophrastus was pointing with his green umbrella. This building had a bulging balcony of wrought iron, of solid but delicate design. "I see a very fine balcony," said Adolphe. "What else?" "The quiver of Cupid carved above the door." "What else?" "Nothing else." "Don't you perceive the thick bars across the windows?" "Of course I do." "At that time, my dear Adolphe, people took the greatest care to have their windows barred; never did one see as many barred windows in Paris as in the year 1720. And I could swear that these bars here were fixed the day after the affairs of Petits-Augustins Street. First the Parisians garnished all their ground-floors with bars. But this precaution gave us no trouble at all since we had _Simon the Auvergnat_." Adolphe thought the moment opportune to find out who Simon the Auvergnat, who was always appearing in their talk without any appreciable reason, exactly was. "He was a very useful object, he was _the base of my column_," said Theophrastus. "And what's that--the base of your column?" "You don't understand? I'll just show you. Suppose you're Simon the Auvergnat," said Theophrastus with almost boyish eagerness. Adolphe was quite willing, but not for long. Theophrastus drew him across the road, set him against the wall of the Market-Gardeners' Hotel, showed him the position he was to take: to set his legs apart, and lean, lowering his head and raising his crossed arms, against the wall. "I place you here," he said, "because of the little ledge on the left, _I remember that it is very convenient_." "And next?" said Adolphe, leaning against the wall in the required position. "Next, since you are the base of my column, I mount on that base..." Before M. Lecamus had the time so much as to imagine a movement even, Theophrastus had climbed up on to his shoulders, sprung on to the ledge, leapt from it with one bound to the balcony of the house next door, and vanished through an open window into the room which opened on to it. M. Lecamus in a dazed consternation was gazing into the air, and asked himself where his friend Theophrastus could have vanished, when the street rang with piercing cries. A despairing voice howled, "Help! thieves! murderers!" "I might have expected it!" cried M. Lecamus; and he dashed into the house from which the screams issued, while the passers-by stood still, or hurried to the spot. He bounded up the great staircase with the swiftness of a young man, and reached the first floor at the very moment when a door opened, and Theophrastus appeared, hat in hand. He was bowing low to an old lady with chattering teeth, and crowned with curl papers, and said: "My dear madame, if I had thought for an instant that I should give you such a shock by entering your drawing-room by the window, I should have stayed quietly in the street. I am not, my dear madame, either a thief or a murderer, but an honest manufacturer of rubber stamps." Adolphe seized his arm and tried to drag him down the stairs. But Theophrastus went on: "It is entirely Adolphe's fault, my dear madame. He would have me show him how _Simon the Auvergnat acted as the base of my column_." Adolphe, behind Theophrastus, made signs to the lady of the curl papers that his friend was off his head. Thereupon the lady fell fainting into the arms of her maid, who came running up. Adolphe dragged Theophrastus down the staircase just as the hall filled with people from the street. The crowd took them for fellow-rescuers; and they escaped from the house without difficulty. In the street Theophrastus said cheerfully, "The most surprising thing about the whole matter, my dear Adolphe, was that this Simon the Auvergnat served us as the base of our column for more than two years without ever suspecting anything. He thought that he lent his strong shoulders to a band of young gentlemen of quality, who were amusing themselves!"[3] [Footnote 3: This is authentic. It was proved at the trial of Cartouche's accomplices; and Simon the Auvergnat was acquitted.] But Adolphe was not listening to Theophrastus. With one hand he was dragging him towards Huchette Street, and with the other he was wiping the sweat from his brow. "The time has come!" he muttered. "The time has come!" "Where are you dragging me to?" said Theophrastus. "To see one of my friends," said Adolphe shortly, continuing to drag him along. In Huchette Street they passed through a red porch into a very old house. Adolphe seemed to know his whereabouts, for he dragged Theophrastus up a dozen worn stone steps and pushed open a heavy door. They found themselves in a large hall, lighted by a lamp hanging by iron chains from the stone ceiling. "Wait for me here, I shan't be long," said Adolphe, closing the door. Theophrastus sat down in a large armchair, and gazed round him. The sight of the walls filled him with the wildest amazement. In the first place, there was an incredible quantity of words painted in black letters. They seemed to crawl about the wall without any order, like flies. He spelt some of them to himself: Thabethnah, Jakin, Bohaz, Theba, Pic de la Mirandole, Paracelsus, Jacque Molay, Nephesch-Ruach-Neschamah, Ezechiel, Aïsha, Puysegur, Cagliostro, Wronski, Fabre d'Olivet, Louis Lucas, Hiram, Elias, Plotinus, Origen, Gutman, Swedenborg, Giorgius, Apollonius of Tyana, Cassidorus, Eliphas Levi, Cardan, Allan Kardec, Olympicodorus, Spinoza, and scores besides; and, repeated a hundred times, the word IHOAH. Turning towards the other wall, he saw a sphinx and the Pyramids, a huge rose, in the centre of which Christ stretched out his arms in a circle of flame, and these words on the rose: _Amphitheatrum sapientiæ æternæ solius veræ_. It was the rose of the Rosicrucians. Below it were these words: "Of what use are brands, and torches, and spectacles To him who shuts his eyes that he may not see?" "I am not shutting my eyes," said Theophrastus to himself, "and I am wearing spectacles, yet I'll be hanged if I know where I am!" His eyes fell on this inscription in letters of gold: "From the moment that you have performed an action, a single action, apply to it all the intelligence you have, seek its salient points, examine it in the light, _abandon yourself to hypotheses, fly in front of them, if need be_." He saw hawks, vultures, jackals, men with heads of birds, several scarabs, a god with an ass's head, then a sceptre, an ass, and an eye. Finally he read these words in blue letters: "The more the soul shall be rooted in its instincts, the more it shall lie forgotten in the flesh, the less shall it have knowledge of its immortal life, _and the longer it shall remain prisoner in living carcasses_." Growing impatient at the long absence of Adolphe, after a while he rose to draw apart the curtains through which his friend had disappeared. As he was about to pass through them, his head struck against two feet hanging in the air which rattled with the noise of dry bones. He looked up: it was a skeleton. He gazed at it with a sincere and gentle compassion. "You would be much more at your ease in Saint-Chaumont Cemetery," he said and went on with a sad smile. The corridor down which he walked had no windows. It was lighted from one end to the other by a crimson glow. At first Theophrastus could not make out where it came from. Then he perceived that he was walking on it. It came from the cellars, through the thick sheets of glass with which the corridor was paved. What were those crimson flames below, in whose glow he walked, doing? He did not know. He did not even ask. He did not even ask why he, Theophrastus, found himself walking in this glow. He had ceased to ask, "Why am I in this house in Huchette Street?" He had ceased to ask because nobody answered. _Emmanuel, Noun, Samech, Hain... Sabaoth... Adonai..._ Still names on the stone walls. The only ornament on these walls about which names crawled was, at the height of a man, an endless line of stars formed by the two triangles of Solomon's Seal. Between each star or seal, in green letters, was the word NIRVANA. The corridor did not run in a straight line. It had curves and angles. Presently he came to a spot at which two other corridors ran into it at right angles, and prudently stopped. But soon he grew impatient again, and plunged down one of these side corridors. Three minutes later, without knowing how it came about, he found himself back at the spot where the corridors crossed. Then he went back down the first corridor, retracing his steps to the hall. But he did not find the hall. He was on the point of howling with distress, when Adolphe appeared before him. His eyes were red as if he had been weeping. "Where am I?" cried Theophrastus tempestuously. "You are in the house of the Mage--in the house of M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox!" CHAPTER XIII THE CURE THAT MISSED At hearing that he was at the house of M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox, Theophrastus was somewhat reassured, for he had heard both Marceline and Adolphe speak of him with reverence as a leading member of the Pneumatic Club. Theophrastus had chanced to hear of the Pneumatic Club; and he had caused Marceline to become a member of it (he was at the time too busy to join it himself) under the impression that it was the chief social club of the most prominent people in the Rubber Industry. But of course everybody knows that Pneumatology is that part of metaphysics which deals with the soul, in Greek _Pneuma_; and the Pneumatics are those versed in this science, which has nothing whatever to do with the elastic and resilient substance extracted by incision from a tree, which was named by the benighted savages who discovered it, the Caoutchouc. Marceline did not trouble the busy Theophrastus with her discovery that the Pneumatic Club was a branch of Spiritualism and not of the Rubber Industry. She contented herself with inviting M. Adolphe Lecamus to join it also; and both of them became devout admirers and disciples of that great expert in the Occult, M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox. It is no wonder that, on learning from Marceline of the painful affair of the ears of Signor Petito, M. Lecamus should have urged instant recourse to that great expert, to learn the proper methods of dealing with a reincarnate soul of such unfortunate antecedents. Adolphe looked at Theophrastus with deep commiseration in his eyes, as if his conversation with the Mage had given him reason for dismay. "Come along, Marceline is here; and we are going to introduce you to a good friend," he said sombrely. He led the way down the corridor, opened a door, and ushered Theophrastus into a large, dim room. At once his eyes were attracted by a marvellous light which fell on the noblest, gentlest, and most beautiful face of a man he had ever seen. The light was marvellous because that striking figure did not seem to receive it, but to diffuse it. When it moved, the light moved with it; it was a figure and a torch. Before this torch knelt Marceline, her hands joined as if in supplication; and on her fell some of the rays from this gracious, almost divine figure. Then Theophrastus heard a friendly voice, a male voice, but sweeter far than the voice of any woman, which said, "Come to me without fear." Theophrastus still gazed in wonder at the kind of astral light which was diffused from the figure of the Mage, the light which the painter James Tissot has succeeded in reproducing, in an engraving of great beauty, from a photograph of a mediumistic apparition communicated to the Congress of Spiritualists of 1910 by Doctor Macnab. In this drawing, beside the materialised figure of a young girl, stands M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox and his light. Theophrastus gazed silently upon the radiant visage of M. Eliphas de la Nox (it would be unfair on the ink of the printer to give him his full name every time I mention him). Then, since he felt a sudden strong sympathy with this radiant being into whose presence he had been so suddenly introduced, in spite of having found him in a frame he thought almost diabolic, he plucked up courage and resolved to learn the meaning of all the strange things he had seen. "I don't know where I am," he said somewhat plaintively. "But since I see my friend Adolphe and my wife Marceline with you, I feel reassured. I should like very much to know your name." "My friend, I am called Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox." "You're really called all that?" said Theophrastus, who was beginning to recover his spirits. The radiant being bowed his head gravely. "Well, after all, there's nothing very astonishing in that," said Theophrastus. "My name, my real name, my actual family name, is Cartouche; and for a long time everybody has believed that it was a nickname." "Your name is _not_ Cartouche; it is Theophrastus Longuet," said M. Eliphas de la Nox with gentle firmness. "The one does not prevent the other," said Theophrastus, who better than anyone else knew what he was talking about, quite logically. "I beg your pardon," said M. Eliphas de la Nox, with the same gentle firmness. "You must not cherish this confusion of mind. _Once upon a time_ your name was Cartouche, but _now_ it is Theophrastus Longuet. Understand that: _you are_ Theophrastus Longuet. My friend, listen to me carefully, as you would listen to a physician who was going to heal you. For you are ill, my friend, very ill, exactly because you believe you are Cartouche, when you are really Theophrastus Longuet. I appeal to all the simplicity of your soul." "That's all right," said Theophrastus. "I like simple things myself; so I dislike very much, very much indeed, the way by which one comes to see you, through a labyrinth of passages, with skeletons hanging up in them. What's he doing in your house, by the way, that skeleton, instead of resting quietly on Saint-Chaumont Hill? _I recognised him at once._ They were dragging him to the charnel-house at the Gallows of Montfaucon the very day of my marriage with my dear wife Marie-Antoinette Neron, when we were having our wedding breakfast at the Chopinettes. Beaulieu and Old Easy-Going were with us. At that epoch, my dear M. Eliphas de Taillepot--" "Eliphas de Taillebourg," corrected Adolphe in a somewhat shocked tone. "At that epoch--my friend Adolphe, who's as serious as a donkey, will tell you so--they no longer hung people at the Gallows of Montfaucon, but they used to throw into the charnel-house of those gallows the remains of people whom they hung elsewhere. That's how it was that this poor Gastelard, whose skeleton I recognised just now, was dragged to the charnel-house after having been hung in the Place de Grève. Gastelard, my dear M. St. Elmo's-Fire--" "De Saint-Elme," M. Lecamus corrected him again. "My dear M. de Saint-Elme, Gastelard wasn't up to much, a poor beggar full of imagination, who, having one day disguised himself as a King's deputy, demanded his sword from a gentleman, showing him at the same time an Order of Committal. The gentleman believed that he was being duly arrested, and handed over his sword, the hilt of which was gold and the most beautiful you ever saw. The story ended with Gastelard at the end of a rope. But I'll be hanged, my dear M. de l'Equinox--" "De la Nox," insisted Adolphe. "De la Nose, my dear M. de la Nose, I'll be hanged if I ever expected that I should one day find his skeleton in a house in Huchette Street!" The Mage, motionless and silent, regarded Theophrastus and his talk with an attention nothing could divert. "I have never laughed anywhere so much as at Saint-Chaumont Hill, between Chopinettes mill and Cock mill," said Theophrastus with the same garrulous cheerfulness. "Chopinettes tavern was there; it had taken the place of the tavern François Villon was so fond of, where for centuries all the cullies and doxies of Paris used to come on hanging-days to carouse. It was between Chopinettes mill, Cock mill and the Gallows of Montfaucon that I buried my treasures; and if you have a plan of old Paris, my dear M. Elephant de Taillepot de St. Elmo's Fire de la Nose--" Theophrastus had not quite come to the end of his host's name, when, of a sudden, the darkness fled; and the room and all in it shone clear in the brilliant light of day. He looked round him with manifest satisfaction, at his wife, who was muttering a prayer, at his friend Adolphe, who was on the verge of tears, at the bookshelves, which practically walled the room, and at M. Eliphas de la Nox, who smiled at him with gentle compassion. The Mage had lost his supernatural air; his cloak of astral light had gone; and if his features had still their sublime and ineffable pallor, he none the less looked a man like anybody else. "I like this a good deal better," said Theophrastus with a deep sigh of relief. The Mage raised his hand. "No: I will not give you a map of old Paris to look at, though I have them of every age," he said. "You have nothing to do with old Paris. You are Theophrastus Longuet; and we are in the year 1911." "That's all very well. But it's a question of my treasure, treasures which belong to me," said Theophrastus stubbornly. "And I have every right to look in a map of old Paris at the place where I formerly buried my treasures, in order that I may see on a map of new Paris where I shall have to hunt again. It's clear--" The Mage interrupted him, saying to M. Lecamus, "I have often seen here crises of Karma; but it has never been my privilege to study one of such force." "Oh, but so far you've seen nothing--nothing at all!" cried Theophrastus. The Mage reflected a moment; then he took Theophrastus to a map of the Paris of to-day which hung on the wall of this great library, and pointed out to him the exact spot on which had stood Chopinettes mill, Cock mill, and the Gallows of Montfaucon. Then he laid his finger in the middle of the triangle they formed, and said: "Here is where you must hunt, my friend, to recover your treasures. But all this quarter has been altered again and again; and I very much doubt whether your treasures will still be found where you buried them. I have shown you the spot on a modern map, to clear your mind of the matter. For, my friend, _you must clear your mind_. You must not dwell on your treasures. You must not live in the past. _It is a crime._ You must live in the present, that is to say, _for the Future_. My friend, you must drive out Cartouche, because Cartouche is no more. It is Theophrastus Longuet _who is_." The Mage pronounced these words in a tone of the most solemn earnestness. Theophrastus smiled at him sadly, and said: "I'm very much obliged to you for your interest in me; and I will not hide from you the fact that I find you extremely sympathetic, in spite of your skeletons and the odd words which crawl about your walls. You must be very learned indeed, to judge from all these shelves full of books. And you must be very good-hearted, for you have certainly treated me with the greatest kindness; but I tell you--and sorry I am to say it--that you can do nothing for me. For unfortunately, my dear sir, you think that I'm ill; but I'm not ill at all. If I were ill, I've no doubt that you'd cure me, but one doesn't cure a man who's not ill. You say to me, you must drive out Cartouche. It's a grand thing to say, splendid; but I don't believe it, my dear M. Elephant de Brandebourg de St. Elmo's Fire de la Box." But the Mage took his hand, and said with unchanged kindliness: "None the less Cartouche must be _driven out, for if we do not succeed in driving him out_, we shall have to _kill him_; and I will not conceal from you, my dear M. Longuet, the fact that that is an exceedingly difficult operation." "When the Man of Light," says Theophrastus in his memoirs, "undertook to relieve me of this obsession by Cartouche, which was not, alas! a matter of imagination but a very real thing, I could only smile pitifully at his vast conceit. But when I understood that he proposed to drive him out by the sole miracle of the reason, I thought it was time to serve the Mage up hot at Charenton lunatic asylum. "But presently, when he had explained the matter more fully to me, and I began to understand his theory and method, I found myself in full agreement with him and ready to serve his purpose of driving Cartouche out of me by the sole miracle of the reason. Indeed I came in the end to appreciate the vast abyss which separated the Man of Light from my friend Adolphe, the vast abyss which will always separate the Man of Reason from the Learned Ape. "First of all, he assured me that I had been Cartouche. He was assured of it. And furthermore it was the most natural thing in the world. He said he had scolded Adolphe for having presented my case to him as exceptional, when my case was the case of everybody. Of course, everybody has not been Cartouche. But everybody has been, before their existence of to-day, a good many other people, among whom may very well have been found persons every whit as bad as Cartouche. "You understand the Man of Light: mine was an every-day case. Everybody has lived before living and will live again. He told me that it was 'The Law of Karma.' _One is being born all the time; one never dies. And when one dies, it is that one is being born again, and so on from the beginning of beginnings!_ "It is understood that at each birth the personality differs from the preceding and succeeding personalities, but each is only a modification of the divine and spiritual ego. These different personalities are in a way only the rings in the infinite chain of life which constitutes throughout the ages our Immortal Individuality. "And then the Man of Light told me that when one has grasped this immense truth, one should not be astonished that some of the events of _to-day_ recall some of the events of _long-ago_. But in order to live according to the law of wisdom one should live in the present and never look backward. I had looked backward too much. My spirit, badly guided by M. Lecamus, had during the last few weeks been wholly occupied with the _long-ago_; and undoubtedly, if that had gone on, I should soon have been reduced to a state dangerously near to that of madness. I ought to be no more astonished at having had another state of soul two hundred years ago than I ought to be astonished at having had another state of soul twenty years ago. Was it that the Theophrastus of to-day had any connection with the Theophrastus of twenty years ago? Certainly not. The Theophrastus of to-day ignored that young man; he even disapproved of him. Would it not be stupid indeed to devote all my faculties to reviving the Theophrastus of twenty years ago? Therefore the great mistake I had made had been only to live for Cartouche, because I had chanced to remember that I had once been Cartouche. "I tell you that I found the words of M. Elephant de la Box indeed refreshing. They did me a world of good. "He also told me other things which I shall remember if I live to be a thousand years old. He told me that what are called 'Vocations' in the men of to-day are only latent revelations of their past lives; that what is called 'Facility' is only a retrospective sympathy for objects with which they are better acquainted than with anything else, because they made a more careful study of them before this actual life; and that is the only explanation of it. "Thereupon he pressed me to his bosom, as a father embraces his child; he breathed upon my eyes and brow his healing breath; and he asked me if I was now persuaded of this truth, and realised that to live happily it was necessary to bear in mind our condition of perpetual change, and that by doing so we should learn to live in the Present and to understand that the whole of time belonged to us. "I wept with joy, and my dear wife wept with joy, and Adolphe wept with joy. I assured the Man of Light that I understood and believed, that I was no longer astonished that I had been Cartouche, though I was somewhat distressed by the fact, but that it was, after all, so natural that I should never again give it a moment's thought. I cried: "'Be at ease! Let us all be at ease! Let us live in _the Present_! _Cartouche is driven out!_' "Thereupon Marceline asked what time it was; and Adolphe answered that it was eleven o'clock. I pulled out my onion and saw that it was half-past eleven. Then, since my watch keeps perfect time, I declared that it was half-past eleven. "'No. I beg your pardon, but it's eleven o'clock,' said Adolphe. "'You can cut off my finger if it isn't half-past eleven!" I cried; for I was sure of my watch. "But the Man of Light looked at his watch and assured me that it was only eleven o'clock. My friend Adolphe was right; and I was sorry for it--on account of my finger. I am an honourable man and an honest manufacturer. I have always kept my word; and no bill of mine has ever been dishonoured. I did not hesitate. Could I have done otherwise? "'Very well,' I said to Adolphe. 'I owe you a finger.' "And seizing a small stone tomahawk, which lay on the desk of the Man of Light and was evidently used as a paper-weight, I raised it in the air, and was bringing it down on the little finger of my left hand which I had stuck well out on the corner of the desk--I had the right to give Adolphe the little finger of my left hand; for I had only said to him, 'You can cut off my finger,' without stipulating which finger; and I chose the finger the loss of which would inconvenience me the least. My little finger then would infallibly have been cut off, had not the Man of Light caught my wrist in a grip of steel and held it firmly. "He bade me put down the tomahawk. I answered that I would not put down the tomahawk till I had cut off my finger which belonged to Adolphe. "Adolphe exclaimed that my finger was of no use to him, and I could keep it. Marceline joined her entreaties to his, and begged me to keep my finger, since Adolphe made me a present of it. But I answered him that there was no reason for him to make me presents at this season of the year; and I answered her that she knew nothing at all about business. "Then M. Eliphraste de l'Equinox pointed out that I was not observing the conditions of the contract: I had said, 'You can cut off my finger'; consequently it was the privilege of Adolphe to cut off my finger. "I admired this exact logic, which indeed never failed him; and I put down my tomahawk. "I was wrong to put down my tomahawk in that house in Huchette Street; for they flung themselves upon me, and the Man of Light cried: "'_Come on! It's too late! The only thing to do is to kill him!_'" CHAPTER XIV THE OPERATION BEGINS It is to M. Lecamus that we owe the account of the operation which M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox thought it his duty to perform on Theophrastus Longuet. His account of it, apparently written for the Pneumatic Club, at the instance of Theophrastus himself, is among the papers in the sandalwood box. It runs: "The scene of savagery which would have ended in my poor friend Theophrastus losing the little finger of his left hand, but for the presence of mind of M. Eliphas de la Nox, proved to us that the bloodthirsty imagination of Cartouche had absolutely filled the brain of that honest man, my best and trustiest friend. It seemed to us therefore that the sole cure for this terrible evil was _the death of Cartouche_. "M. de la Nox, indeed, did not hesitate; he had tried reason in vain, though for a moment we had believed it victorious: an operation was indicated. Madame Longuet made a few protests, so half-hearted that we ignored them. As for Theophrastus, it was useless to ask his opinion. Besides, M. de la Nox had already fixed him with his gaze; and no one has ever resisted the gaze of M. de la Nox. "Theophrastus breathed several deep sighs, and began to tremble violently. But when M. de la Nox cried: 'I order you to sleep, Cartouche!' he fell back into the armchair behind him and never stirred. His breathing was so faint that we might almost have doubted that he was still living. "The operation of the death of Cartouche was about to begin. I knew, from several famous instances, that it was an operation of great difficulty, for one always risks, in essaying to kill a reincarnate soul, that is to say, to cast back into nothingness that part of the Individuality which has been someone in a previous existence, and pursues us into this with a violence which prevents us from living in the Present--one always risks, I say, _killing along with the reincarnate soul the body in which it is reincarnate_. We were going to try to kill Cartouche without killing Theophrastus, _but we might kill Theophrastus_. Hence our anxiety. "It needed all the authority, all the science, and also the absolute calmness of M. de la Nox to render me at all at ease in the extremity in which we found ourselves. But M. de la Nox has the most powerful and dominating will the world has known since Jacques Molay, whom he has succeeded in the supreme command of the actual and secret Order of the Templars. "Also I bore in mind the categorical demonstrations of his last treatise on Psychical Surgery, and the exact precision of his instructions in his monograph on the _Astral Scalpel_. My trust in M. de la Nox, and the criminal eccentricity of poor Theophrastus, of which the ears of the wretched Signor Petito had been the first victims and filled me with dread of irremediable catastrophes, led me to consider the operation of the death of Cartouche, in spite of its danger, the best course in these painful circumstances. "We carried the sleeping Theophrastus down into the basement, into the psychical laboratory of the Mage, which is lighted night and day by great hissing flames of a crimson gas of the nature of which I am ignorant. "We laid Theophrastus down on a camp-bed; and for more than a quarter of an hour M. de la Nox gazed at him in a marvellous stillness. We were silent. At last an admirable melody was heard. It was the voice of M. de la Nox praying. Of what angelic music, of what empyrean vibrations, of what syllables of heavenly glory and triumphant love, was that prayer composed! Who shall ever repeat it? Who shall ever re-compose it? Do you know the musician, incomparable Master of sound, who shall re-compose, once they have passed, the elements of that fragrant breeze of Spring which chants, for the first time, under the first leaves, its trembling song of hope and eternal life, on the threshold of the recurring seasons? "I only know that that prayer began somewhat like this: 'In the beginning, you were Silence, Æon eternal, source of Æons! Silent, as thou wert, was Eunoia, and ye contemplated one another in an inexpressible embrace, Æon, source of Æons, Eunoia, source of love, fruitful germ from which the Abyss should bring forth life! In the beginning, you were the Silence, source of Æons!'... "When the prayer came to an end, M. de la Nox took the hand of Theophrastus and commanded him. But since the lips of M. de la Nox did not move, since he commanded without speaking, and questioned Theophrastus through the sole interpreter of his dominating will, I only learnt what his commands and questions had been from the answers of the sleeping Theophrastus. "Theophrastus began without any apparent effort or suffering: "'Yes; I see... Yes; I am... "'....................... "'I'm Theophrastus Longuet... "'....................... "'In a flat in Gerando Street...' "M. de la Nox turned towards us, and said in a low voice: 'The operation is not going well. I put Cartouche to sleep; and it is Theophrastus who is answering. He is asleep in the Present. It would be dangerous to be abrupt. I am going to let him move about in _the Present_ for a while.' "Theophrastus began to speak again: "'I'm in Gerando Street, in the flat above my own. I see stretched on a bed an earless man. Facing him is a woman--a dark woman--young and pretty--her name is Regina--' "'....................... "'The pretty young woman ... whose name is Regina ... is speaking to the earless man ... She is saying: "'"As sure as my name's Regina, you'll see no more of me, and you'll never hear the 'Carnival of Venice' again, if in forty-eight hours from now you haven't found some way of making a big enough income to support me properly. When I married you, Signor Petito, you deceived me shamefully about the amount of your fortune and the character of your intelligence. A nice thing that fortune of yours, Signor Petito! We're two quarters behind with the rent; and unless we wish to lose our furniture, we must shoot the moon. And as for your intelligence! Well, when a woman is young and pretty like I am, she wants a husband with enough intelligence to find the money to pay her dressmaker's bill. Am I to go back to my mother, or are you going to do it?" "'The earless man is speaking... He says: "'"Oh, shut up, Regina, you're only making my head ache. Can't you leave me in peace to discover the hiding-place of the treasures, which the silly fool downstairs is incapable of getting out of the earth?" "'The silly fool,' said the sleeping Theophrastus, 'is Cartouche!' "'I was waiting for that word,' said M. de la Nox quickly. 'Now I can make him quit _the Present_! Pray, madame! pray, my friend! the hour has come! _I am going to tempt Providence!_' "Then, raising his hand above the brow of my sleeping friend, he said in a voice of command impossible, utterly impossible, to disobey: 'Cartouche, what were you doing at ten o'clock at night on the First of April, 1721?' "'At ten o'clock at night on the First of April, 1721,' said the sleeping Theophrastus without a moment's hesitation, 'I tap sharply twice on the door of the Queen Margot tavern... After the row I should never have believed that I could have got so easily to Ferronnerie Street... But I did for the horse of the French Guard, or rather he fell down near the pump at Notre-Dame... I have thrown my pursuers off my track... At the Queen Margot I find Patapon, Saint James's Gate, and Black-mug... Pretty-Milkmaid is with them... I tell them the story over a bottle of ratafia... I trusted them; and I tell them that I suspect Old Easy-Going, and perhaps Marie-Antoinette herself, of having whispered something to the Police... They all protested... But I shout louder than they; and they are quiet... I tell them that I have made up my mind to deal faithfully with all those who give me any reason to suspect them. I get into a fine rage... Pretty-Milkmaid says that there's no longer any living with me... It's true that there's no longer any living with me... But is it my fault?... Everybody betrays me. I can't sleep two nights running in the same place... Where are the days when I had all Paris on my side? The day of my wedding with Marie-Antoinette? The day when at the Little Seal tavern in Faubourg-Saint-Antoine Street, we sang in chorus: "Guzzle, cullies, and booze away, Till Gabriel's trump on Judgment Day!" We ate partridge that day--that was more than the King did--we drank champagne. My beautiful Marie-Antoinette loved me dearly. My Uncle and Aunt Tanton were there. And all that happiness was only last May, the fifteenth of last May!... And now!... Where is Uncle Tanton now? Shut up in the Châtelet... And his son?... I had to kill him last month to prevent him denouncing me!... I was quick about it... One pistol bullet at Montparnasse, and the body in a ditch; and I was sure of his silence... But how many more to kill?... How many more to kill to be sure of the silence of all?... By the throttle of Madame Phalaris! I had to kill Pepin, the Archer, and Huron the King's Deputy who were in full cry after me one evening, and five archers besides whom I massacred, poor beggars! in Mazarine Street... _I see their five corpses still_... And yet I'm not at all bad-natured!... I don't want to hurt anybody... I only ask one thing, to be allowed to quietly police Paris, for everybody's security... My chief councillor himself is grumbling. He doesn't forgive my executing Jacques Lefebvre... Of course, there's no living with me any longer; but it's only because I wish to live! "'After that little talk I leave them... I look out of the door of the Queen Margot: Ferronnerie Street is empty. I hurry off; and near the Cemetery of the Innocents I meet Madeline... But I don't tell her where I am going... As a matter of fact, I am going to spend the night in my hole in Amelot Street[4] like a wretched thief!... It's pouring with rain.'" [Footnote 4: In 1823, when they were cleaning the great sewer under Amelot Street, they found near its principal mouth a recess, a cave, about nine feet square which they still called, in the Official Report, "Cartouche's chamber," because that robber had often been obliged to spend the night in it. This is a long way from the legend which represents Cartouche as living in the best society and on the eve of marrying the daughter of a rich nobleman, when he was arrested.] M. Adolphe Lecamus declares that he has given us the exact words which came from the lips of Theophrastus in his hypnotic sleep, but that he has not been able to give us the modulation of these phrases, their strange tones, their sudden stops, their hurried starts, and their often dolorous endings. He makes no attempt to describe the physiognomy of Theophrastus. At times it expressed anger, at times scorn, sometimes extravagant daring, sometimes terror. Sometimes, he declares, at certain moving moments, _Theophrastus was exactly like the portrait of Cartouche_. M. de la Nox was desirous of bringing Cartouche to the hour of his death by slow degrees. He feared the shock of making him abruptly live it over again. Therefore he had taken him back to the First of April, 1721. The minutes which followed were exceedingly painful for us, as the wretched Cartouche once more went through the agony of those last months amid the perpetual treachery of his lieutenants and the incredible, dogged animosity of the police. The narrative of M. Lecamus, painful as it is, presents no new fact. It merely corroborates history. There is, indeed, nothing to be gained by descending to the laboratory of M. Eliphas de la Nox to acquire a knowledge of the sensational arrest and imprisonment in the Grand-Châtelet. We find in the Register of the Orders of Committal of the King: "May 16, 1721, Order of the King to seize and arrest one Cartouche, who has murdered Sire Huron, Lieutenant of the Short Robe, and one Tanton; and also Cartouche Cadet, called Louison; the Chevalier, called Cracksman; and Fortier, called Mouchy, for complicity in the murders." On the margin against the name of Cartouche is written the single word, "_Broken._" That arrest was much easier to order than to effect. It was not till October 14, 1721, that treachery bore its fruit, and we can read the report of Jean de Coustade, paymaster of the company of Chabannes, forty-seven years old, twenty-seven years' service. M. de Coustade took with him forty men and four sergeants, of whose trustworthiness he was assured by Duchâtelet (Lieutenant of Cartouche, who was betraying him, himself a sergeant of the French Guards; they had promised him a pardon), dressed as civilians, with their weapons hidden, and surrounded the house in which Duchâtelet had informed him that Cartouche was lying. It was a little after nine at night that they arrived at the Pistol Inn, kept by Germain Savard and his wife, at Courtille, near High Borne (Trois-Bornes Street). Savard was smoking his pipe on his door-step; and Duchâtelet said to him, "Is there anyone upstairs?" "No," said Savard. "Are the four ladies here?" "Up you go!" said Savard, who was waiting for these words. He stepped aside; and the whole troop dashed upstairs to attack Cartouche. "When we entered the chamber upstairs," writes M. Jean de Coustade in his report, "we found Balagny and Limousin drinking wine in front of the fire. Gaillard was in bed, and Cartouche sitting on the side of the bed, mending his breeches. We threw ourselves on him. The stroke was so unexpected that he had no time to make any resistance. We bound him with thick ropes, took him first to the house of the Secretary of State for War, and then, on foot, to the Grand-Châtelet, as soon as the order was given." As a matter of fact the affair was by no means as simple as M. de Coustade relates, though it ended as he says. In spite of his short stature, Cartouche was of exceptional strength; and they only overcame him and bound him to a pillar after a furious struggle. At last, after all precautions had been taken, they put him in a coach. He was in his shirt only; for he had not had time to put on the breeches he was mending. Since they hustled him fiercely, he said: "Look out, lads, you're ruffling my clothes!" He had retained all his usual calm; and he congratulated the lieutenant who had betrayed him on the fine clothes he was wearing that day. In truth, Duchâtelet had come out dressed in a very fine new black suit, on account of the death of the Duchess Marguerite d'Orleans, who had died a fortnight before. On the way, as the coach just missed crushing an unfortunate wayfarer, Cartouche once more uttered the words of which he was so fond: "_We must avoid the wheel!_" From the house of the Secretary of State for War he went on foot in the middle of a grand escort. Half the people of Paris rushed out of their houses to see him pass, crying, "It's Cartouche!" without any strong belief that it was. They had been deceived so many times. But they perceived that it was true, when an officer of the escort struck the prisoner with his cane, and the prisoner turned quietly round and gave him a kick on the jaw with his left foot, which sent him head over heels into the gutter. The crowd applauded, for it has a great affection for robbers--when they are taken. In the Grand-Châtelet Prison Cartouche was visited by all the Polite World. The Regent went out of his way to express his personal regret at this sad event. "But," said he, "my sovereign duties impose this unpleasant duty on me." The ladies of the Court vied with one another in their attentions to the prisoner. They refused him nothing. He had three pints of wine a day. He had never been so much the fashion. At once a play was produced entitled "Cartouche." Legrand, its author, and Quinault, who took the principal part, came to ask him for information about details of the production. At last, when Cartouche had sufficiently amused himself, he turned his attention to escape. In spite of the unceasing watch they kept on him, he was on the very point of success, having got out of his cell and by means of a rope twisted from the straw of his mattress, made his way down into a shop, when they caught him as he was drawing the last bolt of a door which separated him from the street. They found that the Grand-Châtelet was not safe enough for a man of such ingenuity; and he was secretly carried in chains to the Conciergerie, and imprisoned in the most secure corner of Montgomery Tower.[5] [Footnote 5: This tower is no longer standing.] CHAPTER XV THE OPERATION ENDS Firm in his intention of bringing his subject to his death by slow degrees, M. Eliphas de la Nox took Theophrastus slowly through the imprisonment, trial, and condemnation of Cartouche. But I omit that part of the narrative of M. Lecamus, since the historians have described that imprisonment and trial at length. I take it up at the point at which Cartouche was on his way to the Torture-chamber that they might force from him the names of his accomplices. "And now," says M. Lecamus in his narrative, "we were approaching the crucial point of the operation: _to kill Cartouche without killing Theophrastus_. Simple enough words, but the most difficult operation in Psychic Surgery. Truly M. de la Nox had been right when he said that he was about to tempt Providence. Truly, he had assumed the most appalling responsibility, the risk of killing Theophrastus without killing Cartouche, and consequently of letting that fiend in human form again become reincarnate in some unfortunate contemporary. "But then it was M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox who had assumed the responsibility, the greatest living expert in Psychical Surgery, the delicacy of whose Astral Scalpel is known to the initiates throughout the world, even to far Thibet. He knew how to move the spirit, quietly and calmly, _round its own death_, so preparing it for the last moment. _He made his dead man live till the very moment at which he made his dead man die!_ "He had brought Theophrastus-Cartouche to the hour when his jailors took him from his cell to lead him to the Torture-chamber. His next question was: "'And where are you now, Cartouche?' "'I am going down a little staircase at the end of Straw Alley... They are opening a grating... I am in the darkness of the cellars... These cellars frighten me... I know them well... Ah, yes: I was shut up in these cellars in the days of Philippe-le-Bel!' "M. de la Nox raised his voice in a tone of awful command, and said: "'Cartouche! You _are_ Cartouche! You are in those cellars by order of the _Regent_!' "Then he muttered, 'Philippe-le-Bel! Where in Heaven's name are we going now? We must not stray. We must not! Where are you now, Cartouche?' "'I am going deeper into the night of the cellars, I am surrounded by guards--many guards. It is too dark to see how many... Ah! I see at the end there, right at the end, a ray which I know well. _It is a square ray which the sun has forgotten there since the beginning of the history of France!_... My guards are not French Guards, they distrust all the French Guards. My guards are commanded by the military lieutenant of the Châtelet.' "There was a pause as M. de la Nox let Cartouche continue on his painful way; then he said: 'And where are you now, Cartouche?' "'I am in the Torture-chamber... About me are men dressed in long robes... Their faces are masked... They are binding me to the stool of Question... They are thick ropes... Well, they need them thick for me... But if they think they're going to get anything out of me, they're wrong--altogether wrong!' "The face of Theophrastus was set in an expression of stubborn pride, almost ferocious. Slowly it weakened in intensity as we stood waiting and watching him; then suddenly it changed to an expression of pain, and he uttered an ear-splitting yell. "M. de la Nox and I started back; Marceline uttered a cry. "Plainly M. de la Nox did not expect that yell, for he said in a tone of surprise, 'Why did you yell like that, Cartouche?' "'I yell because it's so awful _not to be able to denounce my accomplices_! Their names are on the tip of my tongue; but they won't come off it! Can't they see that if I don't denounce them, it's because I can't move the tip of my tongue? Why didn't Cartouche move the tip of his tongue? I can't; and it's most unfair!' "M. de la Nox was silent for a while. There was no reason why he should harrow our sensibilities with the pangs of that old-world ruffian. It was bad enough to see the anguished face of Theophrastus. After a while it grew serene again; and M. de la Nox said: "'And what are you doing now, Cartouche?' "'They are leaving me alone,' said Theophrastus. 'Only the doctor and the surgeon are feeling my pulse... They are congratulating themselves on having chosen the torture of the Boot, because it is least dangerous to life, and the least liable to accidents.' "I observed that he spoke in his ordinary voice, that it was not weakened by the pain he had suffered. It seemed as if he only felt it at the moment of its actual infliction, that he did not feel the after pain. "There came another long pause; then suddenly Theophrastus uttered another ear-splitting yell. "'What's the matter now, Cartouche?' said M. de la Nox anxiously. "'It's the tip of my tongue!' cried Theophrastus furiously.' Can't these silly fools see that the names are on the tip of my tongue, and won't come off it? Why don't the idiots take them off it? Is it my fault that Cartouche didn't split?' "'But Cartouche was silent: why are you yelling?' said M. de la Nox. "'_They're torturing Cartouche; but it's Theophrastus Longuet who yells!_' "M. de la Nox seemed thunderstruck by this response. He turned and said to us in a trembling voice: 'Then--then it's _he_ who suffers.' "It was the truth; one could not doubt it to see the anguish on the contorted face of Theophrastus. It was Cartouche who was tortured and Theophrastus who suffered. That proved the _identity_ of the soul; _but it also proved that the pain had not ceased to be effective after two hundred years_. That was what dismayed M. de la Nox. It was the first time that a case of this kind had come under his observation during his operations with the Astral Scalpel. The pain of Cartouche found voice through two centuries; this cry of anguish which had not issued from his stubborn lips, _had waited two hundred years to burst from the lungs of Theophrastus Longuet_! "M. Eliphas de la Nox buried his head, his luminous head, in his hands and prayed ardently: 'In the beginning you were the Silence! Æon eternal! Source of Æons!...' "At the end of the prayer he felt Theophrastus' pulse and listened carefully to the beating of his heart. Then he said: "'M. Longuet is plainly a man of strong constitution, and thoroughly sound. In fact, from that point of view there's scarcely anything to fear. _He will bury Cartouche._ I think we ought to go through with the operation.' "I said that I was of his opinion. Marceline hesitated a little, and then bade him continue. "'And now what are they doing, Cartouche?' said M. de la Nox. "'They keep asking me those useless questions; but I can't answer,' said Theophrastus impatiently. 'And I keep asking myself what that man in the right-hand corner of the cell is doing. He has his back turned to me; and I can hear a _sound of clinking iron_... The executioner is at the moment taking it easily. He's leaning against the wall and yawning... There's a lamp on the table which lights up two men who keep on writing and writing. What they're writing I can't conceive, for I haven't said anything--I can't. It's the man in the corner that puzzles me. There's a red light on the wall as if he were between me and a brazier. I wonder what those irons are he's messing about with.' "'It must be the red-hot irons. They used them,' said M. de la Nox; and he shivered. "We were silent; and presently there came a series of dreadful, ear-splitting yells from Theophrastus. M. de la Nox turned a very pale and troubled face to us, and declared that he had never come across, or even suspected that one could come across, pain so _effective_. He had no doubt that it must be owing to the fact that he had never before operated on souls reincarnate after an interval of less than five hundred years; that even those were very rare; and the bulk of his clientele was composed of souls at least two thousand years old. I fancied that he was somewhat out of his depth; and it surprised me beyond words. "Again Theophrastus yelled; then suddenly Marceline cried: "'Look! Look, his hair!' "The most surprising sight met our eyes: _the hair of Theophrastus was turning white_! "The whiteness spread over it as smoothly as the edge of the rising tide spreads over the sand, but more slowly. In five minutes all his hair had turned white except one lock on his brow. "We were silent; and I wiped the perspiration from my face. M. de la Nox was panting; Marceline was sobbing. Somehow that slow whitening of the hair was more painful, more impressively dreadful than those piercing, ear-splitting yells. "M. de la Nox seemed almost at his wits' end. Twice I saw him open his lips to question Theophrastus; twice he shut them without a word. Then suddenly he stooped down and listened to the beating of Theophrastus' heart. He stood upright again with an air of relief and said: "'What are you doing now, Cartouche?' "'Shamming dead. After the red-hot irons and the boiling water they poured into my ears I shammed dead. They have left me... I am slipping the paper I wrote in my cell this morning, with a splinter of wood, and my blood, into the crack in the wall above my head. It tells where I've hid my treasures.' "He was silent again; and again I saw the face of M. de la Nox grow intent as once more he concentrated all his being on his astral work. How I wished I had attained a height of psychic development which would have enabled me to follow the wonderful, the miraculous movements of his Astral Scalpel. "It must have been nearly three-quarters of an hour later that he heaved a deep sigh and said, 'Our work is nearly at an end. Where are you now, Cartouche?' "'I don't know quite what has happened,' said Theophrastus. 'I hid the document; and I have not seen anyone since. When I open my eyes--it is rather an effort--I do not recognise the place to which they have brought me... I'm certainly not in the Torture-chamber, nor in my cell in Montgomery Tower... There's a faint blue light falling through the bars of a grating in front of me... The moon is coming to visit me... The moonlight has descended two or three of the steps which lead up from the grating... I try to move... I can't... I'm a log. My will no longer commands my muscles or limbs... It's as if all relations between my will and my body had ceased... My brain is only master of my sight and understanding. It is no longer master of my actions... My poor limbs! I feel them _scattered_ round about me... I must have reached the point of suffering at which one suffers no more... But where am I?... The moonlight descends two more steps... And again two more steps... Ah! what is that it lights up?... An eye--a big eye... The moonlight moves... A skull... The moonlight moves... A bony hand!... I understand! I understand! They have thrown me into a common grave!... The moonlight moves... There are two legs of a dead man lying across my body!... I recognise those steps now!... And that grating!... I am in the charnel-house of Montfaucon!... _I am frightened!_ "'When I used to go up the street of the Dead to carouse at the Chopinettes, I often looked through that grating. I looked through it curiously because I saw that one day I should lie in the charnel-house. But never did it occur to me that when a body lay there, _it could look out from the other side of the grating_! And now my body looks out through it! They have thrown me into the charnel-house because they believed me dead! I am buried alive with the bodies of hanged men! My wretched fate surpasses anything that the imagination of men could invent! "'The saddest reflections assail me. I ask myself by what trick of Fate I am reduced to such an extremity. I am forced to confess that Fate played no part in the matter. It was my pride, nothing but my accursed pride. I could have quietly remained King of all the robbers, _if there had been any living with me_. Pretty-Milkmaid was right when she said at the Queen Margot _that there was no longer any living with me_. I would no longer listen to a word from anyone; and when I called together my Grand Council, I took no notice whatever of the resolutions it passed. I took a delight in playing the despot; and I ended with that mania for cutting up everyone I suspected into little bits. My lieutenants ran greater risks in serving me than in disobeying me. They betrayed me; and it was quite logical. _Oh, it's quite time for these reflections, now that I'm in the charnel-house!_ "'I'm alive in this charnel-house, alive among the dead; and for the first time in my life _I am frightened_.' "Theophrastus was silent for a minute; and we looked at one another with harried eyes. Then in the same mournful, plaintive tones he took up his tale again. "'It's odd--very odd. Now that I'm on the very boundary of life and death my senses perceive things which they could not perceive when I was in health. My ears hear no more--that boiling water destroyed my hearing--_yet they do hear_. There is a footfall, a slinking footfall on the steps leading down to the grating... Suddenly the moon ceases to light the charnel-house... Then I see between me and the moon on the steps of the charnel-house, a man! a living man!... Maybe I am saved! I wanted to cry aloud with joy; and perhaps I should have cried aloud, if the horror of what I _feel_, of what I _know_, had not sealed my lips. I _feel_, I _know_ that this man has come to rob me of my hand... I read it, clearly, _in his brain_. A lady of the Court has sent him for the charm--the charm to keep her husband's love--the hand of a murderer--the hand of Cartouche! "'_I read it in his brain as clearly as if I read it written_... He is lighting a lantern... He has unlocked the grating and entered the charnel-house... He has found my body, and is stooping over it... He has taken my left hand in his left hand, and his knife gleams in the light of the lantern... He is cutting through my wrist... I do not feel the blade in my wrist; I see it... Ah! I begin to feel the knife!... Oh! My wrist! My wrist!... It is nearly severed... Ah! Ah! Ah!... It is severed! "'What is this... The man howls... He is dancing about among the dead... I see! I see... My hand has come away in the left hand of the man who howls, but by a last miracle of the last life in my wrist, _as it was severed_, my hand gripped the hand of the man who howls!... Ha! Ha! he can't get rid of it!... It's gripped him!... How it grips him!... He is dragging at it with his right hand!... He can't stir it!... Ah, it isn't easy to rid oneself of a _dead man's last grip_!... He is out of the charnel-house, howling!... He bounds up the steps, howling!... As he goes, howling, he is waving, like a madman, in the moonlight, _my gripping hand_!' "The voice of Theophrastus died faintly away; and I heard the teeth of M. de la Nox chatter. Then he whispered: "'Where are you now, Cartouche?' "'I am entering the radiant darkness of death!' CHAPTER XVI THE DRAWBACKS OF PSYCHIC SURGERY "As soon as Theophrastus had uttered the words: 'I am entering the radiant darkness of death,' M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox raised his right hand above his head with a splendid gesture, then bent over the face of my friend, breathed upon his eyelids, and said: "'Theophrastus Longuet, awake!' "Theophrastus did not awake. His eyelids remained closed, and his stillness appeared to us stiller than ever. And now that he spoke no more, now that his lips were closed as tightly as his eyelids, it suddenly seemed to us, stricken with a horrible dread, that he had followed Cartouche into the radiant darkness of death. "His corpse-like pallor, his hair grown suddenly white, showed him to us terribly old, old with the age suddenly acquired in the depths of the tomb. [Illustration: "Theophrastus Longuet, awake!"] "M. de la Nox breathed on his eyelids again and again; again and again he moved his arms in splendid gestures; again and again he cried: "'Theophrastus Longuet, awake! Awake! Theophrastus Longuet, awake!' "Theophrastus did not awake; and our hearts sank and sank; then, at the very moment at which we abandoned hope of his ever awaking, he uttered an appalling groan, opened his eyes, and said quietly: "'Good-morning. Cartouche is dead,' "M. de la Nox gasped and said, 'Thank God, the operation has succeeded!' "Then he began his prayer again: 'In the beginning thou wert the Silence! Æon eternal! Source of Æons!...' Marceline and I were shaking the hands of Theophrastus, and laughing hysterically. In all conscience, the operation had been severe; but now that it was successful we congratulated Theophrastus warmly. We congratulated him on having escaped from his terrible plight at the cost of a bottle of hair-dye. It was not much to pay for _the death of Cartouche_. "Then we bade him get up and come with us. We were in a hurry to get out of the house in Huchette Street. It seemed to us as if we had been in it a good deal more than two hundred years. "'Come along, dear! Come along!' said Marceline. "'Speak louder,' said Theophrastus, 'I don't know what's the matter with my ears. I seem to be very deaf; and then I can't move.' "'You must be a little dazed, dear,' said Marceline. 'And considering the time you've been stretched on this camp-bed without stirring, it isn't to be wondered at. But make an effort and come along.' "'Speak louder, I tell you!' said Theophrastus impatiently. 'I can move my arms, but I can't move my legs. I want to move them, but they don't stir; and then there's a pricking in my feet.' "'It's pins and needles, dear. Bend your toes back quickly. I want to get home. We've had nothing to eat since this morning, and I'm dreadfully hungry,' said Marceline. "'I don't know whether I've got any toes,' said Theophrastus sadly. "'Come on. It's time we were going,' said I. "'Undoubtedly; but you'll have to carry me, for my legs are in such a state...' "M. de la Nox uttered a deep groan. He had turned back the socks of Theophrastus and seen his ankles. They were swollen and scarred and bleeding. In half a minute we had slit up the legs of his trousers and pants with a pair of scissors. What a dreadful sight met our eyes! _The legs of Theophrastus were the legs of a man who has suffered the torture of the Boot!_ "M. de la Nox groaned again, and with his eyes full of tears, he said: 'Incredible! incredible! Who could have believed that pain would be so _effective_ at the end of two hundred years?' "'This phenomenon is analogous to the stigmata of the Saints,' I said, suddenly realising its scientifically psychic significance. "But Marceline burst into tears and flung herself upon the unhappy Theophrastus. "I shook my fist in the face of Destiny, and hurried out to fetch a cab. "When I returned, Marceline was still weeping; Theophrastus was still examining his legs with extreme curiosity and inquiring how it was that he could not move them, and how they came to be in this extraordinary condition. "M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox did not answer; he was kneeling, with his face buried in his hands, sobbing in utter despair. "He said, or rather sobbed, in a lamentable voice: 'My Beloved! My Beloved! I believed that I was thy son, O My Beloved! I took my shadow for thy light! O My Beloved! Thou hast humbled my pride; I am only a little bit of the Night, at the bottom of the obscure Abyss, I, the Man of Light. And the Night does not _will_! And I have willed, I: the Night! I am only a dark son of the Silence, Æon, Source of Æons! And I have wished to _speak_! Ah, Life! Life! To know Life! To possess Life! To equal Life!... Temptation! Vertigo of the eternal Abyss! Mystery of the Ternary! Three! Yes; the three worlds are _one_! And the world is three! It was the truth at Tyre, at Memphis! At Babylon! One! Two! Three! Active, Passive, and Reactive! One and One make two! Two is neuter! But! But! But, O My Beloved! One and Two make Twelve. One is God! Two is matter! Put matter beside God! Pythagoras has said it, and you have Twelve. That means Union!... That means? That means? Who then here below has dared to pronounce the words: _That means?_' "Then he sobbed in the most heart-rending fashion, while Theophrastus on his camp-bed said: "'I should like very much to get out of this.'" CHAPTER XVII THEOPHRASTUS BEGINS TO TAKE AN INTEREST IN THINGS The unlucky Theophrastus was more than six weeks recovering from his Astral operation. M. Lecamus describes his illness in a somewhat long-winded fashion. Little by little he began to recover the use of his legs; but it seemed unlikely that his hearing would ever quite recover from the boiling water which had deafened Cartouche two hundred years before; at intervals he was for a few moments stone deaf. During all this time he made no allusion to the Past; I do not speak of that wretched past, bounded in the minds of all of us by the few years which have elapsed since our last terrestrial birth; he made no allusion to _his eighteenth-century past_. This fact assured Marceline, M. Lecamus, and M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox, who was a frequent visitor at the sick-bed, that Cartouche was indeed dead; and M. de la Nox was often heard to thank Æon, Source of Æons, for this happy event. Theophrastus, as his legs healed, had serious thoughts of returning to business. He had retired young, at the age of forty-one, owing to his invention of a superior rubber stamp which had ousted the rubber stamps of rival manufacturers from the market. His mind was full of yet another innovation which would revolutionise the whole Rubber-stamp Industry. There could be no stronger symptom of a complete cure, no stronger proof that the operation had not weakened his mind. And when he began to get about again, Mme. Longuet found that he had become so _natural_ that she, and M. Lecamus along with her, believed that their misfortunes had at last tired out Destiny. _Theophrastus would never have his Black Feather again: it had been extirpated for the rest of time._ However, by the instructions of M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox, they kept a careful watch on him. It was his habit to rise at an early hour, and after having breakfasted on a cup of chocolate and buttered toast, go for a stroll on the outer Boulevard. He was trying his legs. He began to find in them their pristine elasticity. He looked into the shops; he watched with a Parisian's interest the moving panorama of the streets. M. Lecamus, who followed him, observed nothing abnormal in his actions; and in his reports to M. de la Nox he only laid stress on a single fact, truly unimportant, a somewhat prolonged halt before a butcher's stall. If this halt had not been a daily habit, even Adolphe, on the look-out as he was, would have paid no attention to it. Theophrastus, his hands behind his back playing with his green umbrella, would gaze with satisfaction at the red meat. He often had a talk with the butcher, a big, square-shouldered, cheery soul, always ready with some simple joke. One day Adolphe found that Theophrastus was prolonging his halt unduly. He walked up to the stall and found him engaged, with the butcher, in adorning the fresh meat with paper frills. It was a harmless occupation; and so M. de la Nox thought, for there is a note of his on the margin of Adolphe's report: "He can look at the red meat on the butcher's stall. It is just as well to let him 'see red' at times. It is the end of the Psychic crisis, and hurts no one." Now this butcher, M. Houdry, was famous in his district for the whiteness and delicacy of his veal. His customers often wondered where the calves of M. Houdry were fed. It was a mystery which was making his fortune. In the course of time, Theophrastus won his heart and was admitted to his confidence. The secret of his success lay, not in the fact that his calves were specially fed, but in the fact that he killed them himself and in his method of killing them: he used to slice off their heads with a single stroke of a great cutlass. As their intimacy increased, Theophrastus was admitted to witness the operation; and he spent many a happy hour in the slaughter-house of the butcher, observing him kill and cut up the calves which were bringing him wealth and fame. Theophrastus was exceedingly interested in the whole process. He learnt the names of the different instruments with enthusiasm, and was presently allowed to help with the simpler parts of the process. It was a privilege. He came to feel even more than M. Houdry's scorn for the methods of ordinary butchers. But every day as he left the stall he made the same little joke. He said: "You kill a calf every day. You must be careful, my dear M. Houdry; or you will find that it will end in the calves getting to know about it." One day he said, "Look at the calf's eyes, M. Houdry! Look at his eyes!" "Well, what about them?" said M. Houdry. "Look how they're looking at you!" "But they're dead," said M. Houdry, somewhat puzzled. "And you're not afraid of the eyes of a dead calf which look at you?" said Theophrastus. "I congratulate you on your courage!" M. Houdry went on with his work, thinking that his pupil had certainly some queer fancies. When he began to deal with the calf's ears, Theophrastus cried, with angelic delight: "The ears? I understand all about ears! Leave them to me!" And he bought the calf's head. M. Houdry wished to have it sent to his house, but Theophrastus would not let it out of his hands. He disposed it carefully in the bottom of his green umbrella. As he went out of the slaughter-house he said: "Au revoir, M. Houdry, I am taking my calf's head away with me; but I have left you the eyes. I should not like the eyes of a calf to look at me as those eyes looked at you just now. The eyes of a dead calf--a nasty thing--very nasty. You laugh, M. Houdry? Well, well, it's your business... My congratulations on your courage. But all the same it will end in the calves getting to know about it!" He returned home; and when he showed Marceline and Adolphe his calf's head in his green umbrella, they smiled at one another. "He is beginning to take pleasure in things," said Marceline. "An innocent amusement," said Adolphe indulgently. CHAPTER XVIII THE EVENING PAPER It was the habit of the three friends to play a game of dominoes in the evening after dinner. M. Lecamus, who was a Norman, took a delight in using terms racy of the soil. When he set down the Double-six, he would cry: "Now for the double-nigger!" When he put down a Five, he would cry: "The pup! That bites!" When he put down a One, he would cry: "The maggot! Bait!" The Three drew from him this phrase: "If you've the pluck, down with the pig's-tail!" He called the Two "The beggar!" The unfortunate Four was blasted by the name of "The whelp!" and he could not put down a Blank without announcing: "The washerwoman!" Marceline took the greatest delight in these exclamations, and she was always ready to play dominoes. Theophrastus generally lost; and it was a pleasure to see him lose, for at this game he had displayed the most disagreeable nature in the world. Whenever he lost, he sulked. One evening Theophrastus had, as usual, lost; and with an angry frown on his brow, he had stopped playing, and buried himself in an evening paper. He was very fond of the political notes, and his opinions were limited. They were bounded on the north by "The Despotism of Tyrants," and on the south by "The Socialist Utopia." Between the Socialist Utopia and the Despotism of Tyrants, he understood everything, he declared, except that one should attack the army. He often said, "The army must not be touched!" He was a worthy soul. That evening he read the Political Notes without, as usual, commenting aloud on them, because he was sulking. And then his eyes were caught by this headline: CARTOUCHE IS NOT DEAD. He could not refrain from smiling, so absurd did this hypothesis seem to him. Then he ran his eyes over the first lines of the article, and let escape him the word "Strange!..." and then the word "Odd..." and then the word "Amazing..." But without any particular display of emotion. Then he decided that it was time to stop sulking, and said: "You haven't read this article entitled: 'Cartouche is not dead,' Adolphe. It's a strange and amazing article." Marceline and Adolphe started violently and looked at one another in dismay. Theophrastus read: "Is Cartouche, then, not dead? For some days the police, with the greatest mystery which we however have penetrated, have been solely occupied with a series of strange crimes of which they have been forced to conceal the most curious side from the public. These crimes and _the manner in which their author escapes from the Police at the very moment at which they believe they have caught him_, recall point by point _the methods of the celebrated Cartouche_. If it were not a question of an affair as reprehensible as a series of crimes, one could even admire the art with which the model is imitated. As an official of the Prefecture of Police, whose name we do not give since he insisted on secrecy, said to us yesterday, 'He's the very spit of Cartouche!' So much so that the detectives no longer call the mysterious robber, on the track of whom they sometimes find themselves, anything but Cartouche! Moreover the authorities, with great secrecy but with considerable intelligence--for once we find no difficulty in admitting it--have placed in the hands of three of them a history of Cartouche edited by the Librarians of the National Library. They have decided, quite subtly, that the history of Cartouche should be useful to them, not only in the matter in hand, which consists in their preventing to-day the criminal eccentricities of the new Cartouche and in arresting the new Cartouche himself, but also that his story ought to form a part of the general instruction of all detectives. Indeed a rumour has come to our ears that M. Lepine, the Prefect of Police, has ordered several of the evening courses at the Prefecture to be devoted to the authentic history of the illustrious robber." "What do you think of that?" said Theophrastus with an air of amiable indulgence. "It's a regular farce. The journalists are queer beggars to try to stuff us with all this rubbish." Neither Adolphe nor Marceline smiled. In a somewhat shaky voice Marceline bade him go on reading. "The first crime of the new Cartouche, the crime at least with which the Police was first called on to occupy itself, does not present that aspect of horror which we find in some of the others. It is a romantic crime. Let us say at once that all the crimes of which we have cognisance and which are attributed to the new Cartouche, have been committed during the last fortnight and _always between eleven o'clock at night and four in the morning_." Madame Longuet started up, her face as white as a sheet. Since the Astral operation, Theophrastus had been sleeping in the bedroom by himself, while she had slept in a small bed in the study. M. Lecamus caught her wrist and swiftly drew her back into her seat. His eyes bade her be silent. Theophrastus paused in his reading and said, "What on earth do they mean by their new Cartouche? _Myself, I only know the old one!_... Well, let's hear about the romantic crime..." He read on, growing calmer and calmer at every line: "A lady, young and charming, and very well known in Paris, where her Salon is filled by all those who occupy themselves gracefully with Spiritualism--the affair is, after all, somewhat compromising, therefore we do not publish her name--was in the middle of her toilet about one o'clock in the morning, preparing to enjoy her well-earned repose after a somewhat exhausting conference with the most illustrious of the Pneumatics, when suddenly her window, which opens on to a balcony, was flung open violently, and a man of little more than middle height, still young, and extremely vigorous (this detail is in the police report), but with his hair entirely white, sprang into the room. He had in his hand a shining, nickel-plated revolver. "'Do not be frightened, madame,' he said to the terrified lady. 'I am not going to harm you. Regard me as your most humble servant. My name is Louis-Dominique Cartouche; and my only ambition is to sup with you. By the throttle of Madame Phalaris! I've got a devil of a twist on me!' And he laughed. "Mme. de B.... (we will call her Mme. de B....) thought she had to do with a madman. But it was only a man resolved to sup with her, since, he said, he had been for a long time fascinated by her grace and charm. Yet this man was far more dangerous than a madman. For it was necessary to give way to him, _owing to his nickel-plated revolver_. "'You are going to ring for your servants, and order them to bring an excellent supper,' said the man coolly. 'Do not give them any explanation which might cause me trouble. If you do, you're a dead woman.' "Mme. de B.... is a lady of courage. She rose at once to the occasion, rang for her maid, ordered supper to be brought to her boudoir, and a quarter of an hour later she and the man with the white hair were facing one another at table, _the best friends in the world_. We need hardly say that the man with the white hair made no haste over that delightful meal; and it was after two o'clock when he climbed down from the balcony. It was perhaps not unnatural that the beautiful Mme. de B.... should not have informed the police of the adventure. It was necessity that compelled her to the avowal; for a few days later a Commissary of Police called on her, and informed her that the ring, containing a magnificent diamond, which she wore on the third finger of her right hand was the property of Mlle. Emilienne de Besançon; that that lady had seen it on her finger at a charity bazaar the day before; that Mme. de B.... was doubtless ignorant whose property it was; doubtless it had been given to her. Mme. de B.... was beyond words surprised and annoyed. She told the story of the balcony, the unknown, and the supper; and said that in bidding her good-bye he had forced the ring on her, saying that he had had it from a lady of whom he had been very fond, Mme. de Phalaris, _but who had died a long while ago_. It was impossible to suspect Mme. de B.... She furnished a proof: the shining, nickel-plated revolver, which the unknown had left on a small table in the boudoir. At the same time she begged the Commissary of Police to take away a hundred bottles of champagne of the finest brands, which the unknown had sent to her the day after that extraordinary night, on the pretext that the supper had been excellent, but the champagne alone had left something to be desired. She feared lest, like the ring, the champagne should have been stolen. "This adventure, which is the least of those we have to relate, is a faithful reproduction of an affair which took place on the night of July 13, 1721, at the house of Mme. la Maréchale de Boufflers. That lady also was at her toilet. The young man arrived by the balcony; he had not a shining, nickel-plated revolver in his hand, but he carried six English pistols in his belt. After having introduced himself as Louis-Dominique Cartouche, he demanded supper. And the widow of Louis-François, Duke de Boufflers, Peer and Marshal of France, the hero of Lille and Malplaquet, supped with Cartouche, and did not hurry over the supper. "Cartouche only complained of the champagne; and next morning Mme. de Boufflers received a hundred bottles. He had had them taken from the cellars of a great financier by his butler Patapon. "A few days later one of the bands of Cartouche stopped a carriage in the street. Cartouche looked in through the window and scanned the faces. It was Mme. la Maréchale de Boufflers. "He turned to his men and said in ringing tones, 'Let Mme. la Maréchale de Boufflers pass freely to-night and always.' "He bowed low to Mme. la Maréchale, after having slipped on her finger a magnificent diamond which he had previously stolen from Mme. de Phalaris. Mme. de Phalaris never saw it again! "And now let us pass on to the crime in Bac Street." CHAPTER XIX THE STORY OF THE CALF Marceline had risen and gone to her bedroom as much to hide her emotion as to ascertain whether the nickel-plated revolver was still in its drawer. When she came back into the dining-room, Theophrastus asked her what was the matter with her. Marceline replied that the revolver was no longer in its drawer. Theophrastus begged her to compose herself, and declared, in a tone which admitted of no contradiction, that since the revolver was not in its drawer, it must be somewhere else, and it was a matter of no importance whatever. "We are now going to accompany this newspaper man to the crime in Bac Street," he went on. "His comments on the story of Mme. de B...., who must of course be Mme. de Bithyinie, the lady of your Pneumatic Club who is such an intimate friend of M. de la Box, show him to be a well-informed man. I am pleased to see that he does not follow those idiots of historians who try to make scandal out of my supper with Mme. la Maréchale de Boufflers, forgetting that in 1721 she was more than sixty years of age. It's a mistake that I propose to set right. My reputation might suffer from it. She was a witty and delightful talker; but I should never have dreamed, for a moment, of making love to a woman of sixty!" As he said this, Theophrastus raised the index finger of his right hand, and waved it in the air with an authoritative gesture; and it was not Marceline or Adolphe who would have dared to contradict him. He took up the evening paper again. "The story of the Bac Street crime is simpler and more rapid in movement," he read. "A few days after the adventure of Mme. de B.... the Prefect of Police received the following note: 'If you have the pluck, come and find me. I am always at Bernard's, at the café in Bac Street.' It was signed: 'Cartouche.' The Prefect pricked up his ears and laid his plans. The same evening at a quarter to twelve, half a dozen police officers dashed into the café in Bac Street. They were at once hammered with a chair by a man of extraordinary strength, still young, but with quite white hair. Three men were stretched out on the floor, and the other three had barely time to drag the three bodies of their wounded companions into the street, to save them from being burnt alive, for the man with the white hair set fire to the first storey. Then he made his escape over the roofs, springing from one roof to another over a little court, narrow indeed, but forming a kind of well more than fifty feet deep, deep enough in fact to break his neck ten times over." "I like that," said Theophrastus, breaking off and smiling pleasantly. "Three men on the floor! I wasn't nearly so lucky in Bac Street _the other century_; for I left there nine of my lieutenants, who were arrested in spite of the massacre of the police. I thought all was lost; but one must never despair of Providence." He took up the paper again, amid the terrified silence of M. Lecamus and Marceline, and read on: "The new Cartouche" ("What idiots they are to keep calling him 'the new Cartouche'!") "has been also at his games in Guénégaud Street. There is in it a narrow passage crossed by a plank. Some days ago, there was found under this plank the body of a student at the Polytechnic School, M. de Bardinoldi, the mystery of whose death has so puzzled the press. What the police has confided to no one is the fact, that, pinned to the jacket of the student, was a little card on which was written in pencil: 'We shall meet again in the other world, M. de Traneuse.' There can be no doubt that this was a crime of the new Cartouche for the old one" ("One must be as stupid as a journalist," cried Theophrastus, "to suppose that there are two Cartouches!") "for the old one did in fact murder an engineer officer named M. de Traneuse on this very spot. Cartouche killed him with a blow on the back of the head with his cane; and the student had the back of his skull fractured by a blow from some blunt object." Theophrastus stopped reading and delivered himself of some comments. "They say to-day, 'blunt object.' Blunt object! It sounds well! Blunt object pleases me... You are pulling a mug," he said to Marceline and Adolphe. "And you're holding on to one another as if you expected some catastrophe. It's silly to lose your hair about a few practical jokes. I profit by the occasion, my dear Adolphe, to explain to you the pleasure I take in frequenting Guénégaud Street. This business of M. de Traneuse was the origin of one of the best tricks I ever played on M. d'Argenson's police officers. After the execution of M. de Traneuse, who had permitted himself to make some extremely disagreeable remarks about me, I was pursued by two patrols of the watch, who surrounded me and rendered resistance impossible. But they did not know that I was Cartouche, and contented themselves with conducting me to Fort-L'Eveque, the least severe prison in Paris, where they shut up debtors, disorderly actors, and people who had not paid fines. It was only on the 10th of January that they knew that they had captured Cartouche; but on the evening of the 9th Cartouche had escaped and resumed the direction of his Police. It was time, for everything was topsy-turvy in the streets of Paris. My dear Marceline, and you too, Adolphe, you look as if you were going to a funeral. And yet this article doesn't lack _a certain salt_. I thought at first it was a scribbler's joke, but I see that it is quite serious. It is really: take it from me. And wait for the story of the calf! We have only got to the affair of Petits-Augustins Street... Listen." Theophrastus raised the evening paper again, adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose, and went on: "The most incredible thing in this extraordinary story is that several times during the last week the police have been on the very point of catching the modern Cartouche, and that he has always escaped by the chimney, just like _the other_. History teaches us that that was the practice of the real Cartouche. On the 11th of June, 1721, he had formed the plan of robbing Desmarets House, Petits-Augustins Street. It was one of his men, the Ratlet, who had suggested the coup to him. But the Police had their eye on Cartouche and the Ratlet; and no sooner were they in Desmarets House than the archers rushed to the spot, and the house was surrounded. Cartouche had the doors of the rooms quietly locked and the lights put out. He undressed himself, climbed up the chimney, descended by another chimney into the kitchen, where he found a scullion. He killed the scullion, dressed himself in his clothes, and walked out of the house, shooting down with his pistols two archers, who asked him where Cartouche was. Well, what will you say when we tell you that yesterday our Cartouche, having been tracked to a confectioner's in the Augustins Quarter, escaped by the chimney, after having put on over his own clothes, which doubtless he desired to keep clean, the over-alls of the confectioner, which were found on the roof? As for the confectioner he was found, half cooked, in his own oven. But before putting him into it, Cartouche had taken the precaution of previously assassinating him." Here Theophrastus once more broke off his reading. "Previously!" he cried. "Previously! These journalists are marvellous!... I had _previously_ assassinated him!... But why have you gone into the corner? Am I frightening you? Come, come, my dear Marceline; come, Adolphe: a little coolness. You'll want it for the story of the calf!" "Never," says Theophrastus in his memoirs, which from this epoch become deeply tinged with a vast melancholy, "never before had either my wife or M. Lecamus worn such expressions at the reading of a mere newspaper article. But if we let ourselves be frightened by everything the newspapers tell us, we should _be for ever on the rack_. The journalists describe the events of the day with a particularly surprising power of imagination in the matter of crime. They must have their daily blood. It is indeed laughable. A knife-thrust more or less costs them nothing; and they only make me shrug my shoulders. The knife-thrusts of these gentlemen do not trouble my digestion in the slightest; and, I repeat, I shrug my shoulders at them. "When I came to the place in the article at which Cartouche put the baker's man in the oven, my wife groaned as heavily as if that baker's man had been her brother; and leaving her chair, she shrank back little by little into the left-hand corner of the dining-room, nearest the hall. M. Lecamus was in a position quite as ridiculous. He had retired to the right-hand corner of the dining-room, nearest the hall. They were staring at me as if they were staring at a phenomenon at a fair, an eater of live rabbits, or something of that kind. I was displeased; I did not conceal from them my opinion that such childish behaviour was unworthy of two reasonable beings; and with some severity I begged them to return to their places by my side. But they did not do so. Then I started on the story of 'The Calf's Revenge.' "I read: "'M. Houdry is a butcher on the outer Boulevard. His specialty is veal; and people come from all parts of the district to purchase it. His renown is explained by a fact so exceptional that we should have refused to believe it, except for the repeated declarations of the Commissary of Police, M. Mifroid, who held the first inquiry into the circumstances of the crime. It is well known that the Paris butchers receive their meat from public slaughter-houses, and are forbidden to have slaughter-houses of their own. But every day M. Houdry killed a calf at home!' "'That's quite right,' I said. 'M. Houdry explained it to me several times; and I was rather surprised at the confidence he showed in me when he told me about his mysterious slaughter-house. Why should he have revealed to me a fact which was known only to his wife, his assistant, a foundling whom he reckoned as one of the family, and to his brother-in-law who every night brought the calf? Why? There is no telling. Perhaps it was stronger than he! You know well that _one never escapes one's destiny_. I used to say to him: "Take care! It will end by the calves getting to know about it."' "I went on with my reading: "'This calf was brought to him _in silence_ every night by his brother-in-law; and since the little back-yard in which his slaughter-house is situated looks out on some waste land behind, no one ever saw a live calf at M. Houdry's house. M. Houdry attached so much importance to killing his calves himself because his veal owed its excellence to his manner of killing it.' "'As a matter of fact,' I broke off to say, 'he used to cut off their heads at a single blow, with a big cutlass.' "'Early yesterday morning M. Houdry shut himself up as usual in his slaughter-house, with his calf. His assistant helped him tie up the calf. As a rule, M. Houdry took from twenty-five to thirty minutes preparing his veal for the stall. Thirty-five minutes passed; and the double doors of the slaughter-house did not open. Sometimes M. Houdry called his assistant to help him finish the work. That morning he did not call him. Forty minutes passed. Then Mme. Houdry, the butcher's wife, came to the back door and said to the assistant: "What's your master doing this morning? He's a long time over his work." "'"Yes; much longer than usual," said the assistant. "'Then she called, "Houdry! Houdry!" There was no answer; and she walked across the back-yard, and opened the doors of the slaughter-house. At once the calf ran out and began to dance gracefully round her. (Dear! dear! I begin to dread some great misfortune!) She looked at the calf with some surprise, for at that hour the calf should have been veal. Then she opened the door wider, and called to her husband. He did not answer; she turned towards his assistant and said: "'"Your master isn't here. Are you sure he hasn't gone out?" "'"Quite sure, Mum. I've been in the back-yard all the time. I expect he's hiding behind the door to jump out and give you a fright, Mum. You know what a joker the master is. But all the same, _he'd much better be hiding the calf_. If anybody sees it, he'll get into trouble." "'So saying, he sprang at the head of the calf and slipped a halter over it. "'"Houdry! Houdry!" cried his wife. "You're hiding to give me a fright! Don't be silly!" "'There was no answer; and she went into the slaughter-house. Then she screamed; she had found M. Houdry. He was not hiding at all. "'_He was laid out, in neat joints of veal, on the table._' "'I told him so,' said I. 'I told him so more than once. My presentiments always come true. I expected some great misfortune! And here it is! Every day, again and again, I told M. Houdry to look out: that one does not kill so many calves without the calves getting to know about it. But he always laughed at me. Yet the Theory of Chances always confronts us. It confronted him. He took no notice of it. He took no notice of anything: neither of the way the calf looked at him, nor of the Theory of Chances. But I said to him: "My dear M. Houdry, if a butcher can kill more than a thousand calves in Paris, when it is forbidden by the law, there will certainly be found one calf to kill the butcher!" And here you are! The calf has cut up the butcher! Well, well, it's nobody's fault... Let us continue this interesting article.' "'Mme. Houdry screamed and fainted. The butcher boy also screamed and fainted--he was a foundling. A few minutes later the drama was discovered. One can imagine the emotion of the neighbourhood...' (There was reason for it. Poor M. Houdry: he was a fine fellow. And now they will have to try the calf. The calf will be a great success in the dock. It's a strange, fantastic, inexorable, and courageous calf!) "The journalist was not of the opinion that the calf had cut up the butcher. And once more he dragged in the name of Cartouche. (Poor old Cartouche!) Once more I shrugged my shoulders. Then, raising my eyes above the top of the paper, I looked into the two corners of the drawing-room for those two foolish creatures who had so childishly retired to them--my wife and M. Lecamus. I looked in vain. They had disappeared. I called to them loudly. They did not answer. I hunted through the flat without finding them. Then I tried to open the door on to the landing; but it would not open. They had locked me in. "That did not trouble me at all. When I am locked in, I go out by the chimneys, if they are big enough; if they are too small, I leave by the window. But my drawing-room chimney is a monumental chimney; there is not another like it in Gerando Street; and I climbed up it with the same ease with which I had climbed down the chimney of M. Houdry on the very morning on which the calf cut up that excellent but unfortunate man! I soon came out on to the roof into a very cold and rainy night which filled me with a profound sadness." CHAPTER XX THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF AN EXPRESS TRAIN That profound sadness was destined to affect seriously the future of Theophrastus. As he made his way over the roofs of Gerando Street, it increased to such a paralysing intensity that presently he sat down on the edge of a roof, with his legs dangling over the street, and plunged into the bitterest reflections. The result of this unwise action was that he caught a severe cold. As he sat reflecting, he slowly came to himself, his modern self. During the reading of the article which narrated the crimes of the new Cartouche, he had displayed a carelessness airy to the point of callousness. Now the sense of his responsibility, especially in the matter of cutting up the butcher Houdry, weighed on him more and more heavily. The memory of many midnight outings, by way of the chimney he had just climbed, came into his mind; and several sanguinary crimes filled his blinking eyes with the too tardy tears of an ineffectual remorse. So, in spite of all the suffering he had endured, in spite of all the passionate prayers of M. de la Nox to Æon, Source of Æons, _Cartouche was not dead; the Black Feather ever sprouted afresh_. This very night, as on so many other nights of crime, he was out on the roofs of Paris with his familiar spirit and his Black Feather. He wept. He cursed that mysterious and irresistible force which, from the depth of the centuries, bade him slay. He cursed the gesture which slays. He thought of his wife and his friend. He recalled with bitter regret the hours of happiness passed with those dear ones. He forgave them their terror and their flight. He resolved never again henceforth to trouble their peaceful hours with his red vagaries. "Let us vanish!" said he. "Let us hide our shame and our original obliquity in the heart of the desert! They will forget me!... I shall forget myself! Let us profit by these _moments of reason_ in which my brain, for the while free from the Past, discusses, weighs, deduces, and forms conclusions in the _Present_. It is no longer Cartouche who speaks. To-night it is Theophrastus who wills! Theophrastus who cries to Cartouche: 'Let us fly! let us fly! Since I love Marceline, let us fly! Since I love Adolphe, let us fly! One day they will be happy without thee; with thee there is no longer any happiness!... Farewell! Farewell, Marceline, beloved wife! Farewell, Adolphe, dear friend and comforter!... Farewell! Theophrastus bids you farewell!'" He wept and wept. Then he said aloud: "Come along, Cartouche." He plunged into the night, springing from gutter to gutter, crawling from roof to roof, sliding from the tops of walls with the ease, the balance, and the sureness of a somnambulist. * * * * * And now, who is this man who, with bowed head and stooping back, his hands in his pockets, wanders like Fortune's step-son through the bitter wind and the rain that falls all the dreary way? He moves along the road which runs beside the railway, a road dismally straight, bordered by dismal little stunted trees, the dismal ornaments of the departmental road, the road which runs beside the railway. Whence does this man, or rather this shadow of a man, this sad shadow of a man, with his hands in his pockets, come? On his right and on his left stretches the plain, without an undulation, without the bulge of a hill, without the hollow of a river--stretches grey and gloomy under the grey and gloomy sky. Now and again along the railway, so painfully straight, trains pass,--slow trains, express trains, freight trains. While they pass the railway snores; then it is silent, and one hears, borne on the wind, the ting-ting-ting-ting of the little electric bell in the little railway station in front. But what little railway station? There is one in front; there is one behind. They are three miles apart; and between them the double line of rails runs as straight as a die. Between the two railway stations there are no viaducts, no tunnel, no bridge, not even a level-crossing. I dwell on these details on account of the strange behaviour of the express train. That sad shadow of a man is Theophrastus. He has resolved to fly, to fly no matter where, from his wife--poor dear, unfortunate, heroic fellow! After a night passed on the roofs of Paris, not knowing whither to direct his steps, yet not wishing to stay them, he went into a railway station--what railway station? Shall we ever know?--And without a ticket he got on a train, and without a ticket somewhere he got off it and came out of another railway station. It may be that in this evasion of the duties of the passenger his Black Feather stood him in good stead. Behold him then on the road... At the entrance to a village... On the road which runs beside the railway. Whom does he perceive on the threshold of a cottage at the entrance to the village?... The Signora Petito herself! It was the first time the Signora Petito had seen M. Longuet since he clipped her husband's ears. She fell into a fury. She ran down to the garden gate; and her anger found vent not only in abuse, but in the most imprudent revelations. Had Signor Petito heard what his angry Regina said, he would have smacked her for her incredible folly. After abusing Theophrastus for his barbarity to Signor Petito, she told him with vindictive triumph that her husband had found the treasures of the Chopinettes, and that those treasures were the richest in the world, treasures worth far more than a couple of ears, were they as big as the ears of Signor Petito. "They are quits!" In the course of this outburst, Theophrastus with considerable difficulty interjected a few words; but he was not at all disturbed by it. Indeed he was grateful to the fury of Signora Petito for having given him such important information. He said grimly: "_I shall find my treasures, for I shall find Signor Petito._" The Signora Petito burst into a satanic laugh, and cried: "Signor Petito is in the train!" "In what train?" "_In the train which is going to pass under your nose._" "What is the train which is going to pass under my nose?" "The train which is carrying my husband beyond the frontier! Get into it, M. Longuet! Get into it if you want to speak to Signor Petito. But you'd better make haste, for it passes in less than an hour, and you can't buy a ticket for it at any of these little stations. _It doesn't stop at them!_" She laughed an even more satanic laugh, so satanic that Theophrastus longed for the moments when he was deaf. He raised his hat, and went quickly down the road which runs beside the railway. When he was alone, between the little trees and the telegraph posts, he said to himself: "Come, come! I must ask news of my treasures of Signor Petito himself... But how the deuce am I to do it? He is in the train _which is going to pass under my nose_." At this point it is necessary to give a map: Station A D C Station B. x------x----x----x It is unnecessary to give the names of the stations, for the demonstration is practically geometrical, and to geometry letters are more appropriate. Let us go to station A. The signal-man of station A hears the _ting!_ of the bell which announces that the express he is expecting has passed station B, and is on that section of the block-system which begins at station A and ends at station B. The express goes from B to A. It is on the line B A. That is clear. The signal at A announces the train by lowering its little red arm with a _ting!_ The signal-man at station A waits for the train, and waits for the train, and waits for the train! It ought to be there. It is a train which goes sixty miles an hour, and, if it is late, it goes seventy or eighty. The distance between station A and station B is at the most three miles and a furlong. Three minutes and a half is the longest an express takes to do the distance. The signal-man, frightened to death at not seeing the train appear, shouts to the station-master that the train ought to have gone through! The station-master dashes to the telegraph, and telegraphs station B: "Train signalled not arrived!" Station B answers: "Joker!" Station A: "It's serious. What are we to do? Horrible anxiety." Station B: "Notify Jericho!" Station A: "There must have been an accident! We are hurrying along the line! Come and meet us!" Station B: "What can have happened? We are coming." Then the station-master, the porters, and the ticket-clerks of stations A and B hurry along the line, the staff of station A going towards station B, the staff of station B going towards station A. They hurry along, in the full light of day, in the middle of a perfectly flat plain, a plain without a river, without ridge, and without hollow. They hurry along the line, and meet one another between A and B.... But they do not meet the train! The station-master of station A (I say particularly of station A), who suffered from heart disease, fell down dead. CHAPTER XXI THE EARLESS MAN WITH HIS HEAD OUT OF THE WINDOW Let us state this geometrical problem in the simplest words: an express train has to cover the ground between two little stations three miles apart. It is announced at the second when it passes the first; and yet they wait for it at the second in vain. They hurry from both stations down the line to find the wreck; but they do not so much as find the train, an express train in which there are perhaps a hundred passengers. That the station-master of A should have fallen down dead at the shock of this unheard-of, bewildering, stupefying, absurd, diabolical, and yet how simple (as we shall learn later) disappearance of the train, is not greatly to be wondered at. The minds of all of them were shaken by the occurrence. The station-master of B was not in a much better condition than his colleague. Everyone present uttered incoherent cries. They kept calling the train, as if the train could have answered! They did not hear it, and on that flat plain they did not see it! The ticket-clerk of station A knelt down beside the body of his chief, and presently said, "I am quite sure he is dead!" The rest gathered round the body of the dead man; and then, tearing up two of the little trees from the side of the road which runs beside the railway, they laid him on them. Carrying the body on this rude litter, they returned towards station A. We must bear in mind that the express had passed station B, and that no one had seen it reach station A. But they had not yet reached station A when, on the line, _on the line along which they had just come_, they perceived a railway-carriage, or rather a railway-carriage and a guard's-van! They greeted the sight in their excitable French way with the howls of madmen. Where did this end of a train come from? And what had become of the beginning of the train, that is to say, of the engine, the tender, the dining-car, and the three corridor carriages? Look at the plan. C marks the point on the line at which the staffs of stations A and B met, when they were hunting for the train. It is also the point at which the station-master of A fell down dead. The two staffs then, in a body, were bringing back the dead station-master towards A, when at the point D, a point they had passed a few minutes before, and at which they had seen nothing, they find a railway-carriage and a guard's-van. These people greeted this sight with the cries of madmen; and then they perceived an odd-looking head looking out of one of the windows of the railway-carriage. It waggled. This head had no ears; and the earless man _had his head out of the carriage window_. They shouted to him. From the moment they caught sight of him they asked him what had happened. But the man did not answer. The odd thing was that his head waggled from left to right, as if it were moved by the wind which was blowing at the time with some force. It was a head with crinkly hair. It was bent downwards; and the cravat round a high collar, very white on that grey day, was untied and streaming in the wind. At last when they came quite near (they moved slowly owing to the fact that they were carrying the station-master) they saw clearly the shocking reality. The man not only had his head out of the window, he had also got it caught in the window. The unfortunate wretch must have opened the window and stuck his head out while the train was in motion; and the window must have been jerked up violently and cut his head half off! On seeing this, the two staffs howled afresh; then they set down the body of the station-master, ran round the guard's-van, _in which there was nobody_, and opening a door on the other side of the carriage, they found that it was empty, except for the man _whose head was caught in the window_, and that his body, inside the carriage, was _stripped of every rag of clothing_. The news of these fantastic horrors at once spread throughout the district. An enormous crowd thronged the platforms of station A all the rest of the day. The chief officials of the line came from Paris. Not only were they unable to explain, on that day and the days following, the death of the man who had had his head out of the carriage window, but they were still unable to find either the train or the passengers. They talked of nothing but this strange affair at the funeral of the station-master of A, which was celebrated with great solemnity, and also throughout Europe and America. CHAPTER XXII IN WHICH THE CATASTROPHE WHICH APPEARS ON THE POINT OF BEING EXPLAINED, GROWS YET MORE INEXPLICABLE So far I have only given the simplest plan of the line that I might get the basis of the affair as clear as possible. That plan is not quite complete, for though there was only this one line joining the stations A and B there was a short side-line, H I, which led to a sand-pit which had supplied a glass-factory. But since the glass-factory had failed, they no longer worked the sand-pit; and the side-line was practically abandoned. Here is the complete plan: Station A D C Station B. x------x----x----x / H/ / K/ / I/ It will naturally be supposed that this side-line leading to the sand-pit is going to provide the explanation, the quite simple explanation of the disappearance of the express. But if the matter had been as simple as the side-line would appear to make it, I should hardly have omitted it from the first map. I could have said at once: "It is quite clear that, owing to a train of circumstances which it remains to determine, the express, instead of continuing to follow the line B A, must have turned off up the side-line H I, and buried itself in the vast mass of loose sand at the sand-pit I. Rushing along at a speed of over sixty miles an hour, it evidently plunged into the mass of sand, which covered it up; and that is the stupid but actual reason of its disappearance." But, to say nothing of the fact that this does not explain the presence, at the point D, of the guard's-van and railway-carriage, out of the window of which Signor Petito had stuck his head, this explanation could not have failed to occur to the alert intelligence of the engineers of the company. Moreover, there were points and a switch at the point H; this switch, in accordance with the rules, was padlocked; and the key had been taken away. I indeed attached no importance to the fact that _the padlock was locked_; for, it seemed to me quite probable that the key had been left in the padlock, _which had actually been the case_, and that Theophrastus, who had good reasons for stopping the train in order to join Signor Petito, had profited by the presence of that key, to shift the points. It was only a matter of thrusting over the lever of the switch; and that would explain why the train was not seen by the signal-man at A, since, instead of continuing along the line B A, it had turned off up H I towards the sand-pit. I told myself all this; and if it had explained anything, I should have stated it at once, and instead of giving two maps I should have given merely the latter with the side-line H I on it. That I have not done so is owing to the fact that the side-line H I explains nothing. I also believed at first that it was going to make the disappearance of the express clear to us, but as a matter of fact _it complicates the catastrophe instead of explaining it_; for here is the story, the true story; and that too continues to explain nothing at all. Wandering along the road which runs beside the railway, Theophrastus had noticed the little side-line, and seen that the key had been left in the padlock of the switch. This fact, which had been of no importance to him before his brief but stormy interview with Signora Petito, assumed an enormous importance when he resolved to join, at any cost, Signor Petito, who was in the train _which was about to pass under his nose_. M. Longuet said to himself: "I cannot board the express, rushing between the two stations A and B, in the usual way. But there is a little side-line H I, the key is in the padlock of the switch; I have only to turn the lever, and the express will dash up H I. Since it is broad daylight the engine-driver will see what has happened, he will stop the train, and I shall take advantage of its stopping to board it." Nothing could be more simple; and Theophrastus did it. He dragged over the lever of the switch, walked up the side-line, and waited for the express. Theophrastus, hidden behind a tree that none of the officials on the express might see him, awaited its coming at the point K, that is to say, rather more than half-way up the side-line, that is to say, _on this side of the sand-pit I_. He waited for the express coming from H, _with his eyes on the track_. If, as everyone must have been supposing ever since I mentioned the sand-pit, the train coming from H had buried itself in the sand at I, Theophrastus, who was at K, between H and I, must have seen it. But Theophrastus waited for the train and waited for the train and waited for the train. He waited for it as the signal-man at station A had waited for it; and he no more saw the express than did the signal-man at A and the rest of the officials of the line. _The express had disappeared for M. Longuet as it had disappeared for the rest of the world._ So much so that, tired of waiting, M. Longuet walked down as far as H to see what was happening. There he saw the staff of A, which was hurrying towards B in its search for the express. He asked himself sadly what could have become of the express; and finding no answer to the question, he walked up H I, and when he arrived at K, which he had just left, he found the empty guard's-van and the railway-carriage which a few minutes later the two staffs were to find at D! Once more he swore by the throttle of Mme. Phalaris, and buried his brow in his hands, asking himself how that guard's-van and that carriage came to be there, since the express itself had not come. _It had not come, since he, Theophrastus, had not quitted the track._ Suddenly he saw the head of a man waggling out of the window of the railway-carriage; and since this head had no ears, he recognised Signor Petito. He sprang up into the railway-carriage, _and without troubling to let down the window and release the head_ of the unfortunate expert in handwriting, he stripped him of his clothes, and proceeded to put them on. Theophrastus, who knew himself to be tracked by the police and in whom the astuteness of Cartouche sprang to life again, was disguising himself. When he was dressed, he made a bundle of his own clothes, and descended from the carriage. He felt in Signor Petito's pockets, took out his pocket-book, sat down on the embankment, and plunged into the study of the papers it contained, hunting for the traces of his treasures. But Signor Petito had carried to the tomb the secret of the treasures of the Chopinettes; never again were the Gall, the Cock, the Chopinettes, or the treasures to be discussed: with the result that Signora Petito, who learnt a few minutes later of the extraordinary death of her husband, presently went mad, and was confined in a lunatic asylum for six months. But we are only concerned with the misfortune of Theophrastus, which so surpasses all other human misfortunes, and which is so hard to believe that we need all the assistance that Science can give us to credit it wholly. I cannot believe that the minds of my readers are so base, or their imaginations so poor, that the matter of the treasures could be of any genuine interest to them, when they are confronted by this phenomenon, of such surpassing interest, the soul of Theophrastus. Presently that unfortunate man, on failing to find anything of interest to him in the papers of Signor Petito, heaved a deep sigh. He raised his head; and lo! _the guard's-van and the railway-carriage of Signor Petito had disappeared_! CHAPTER XXIII THE MELODIOUS BRICKLAYER Theophrastus, though he had with good reason made up his mind never again to be astonished by anything, was nevertheless astonished by the disappearance of the railway-carriage, with the earless head of Signor Petito waggling in the wind. With a melancholy air he walked down the little side-line, asking himself whether he ought to be more astonished by the disappearance of the carriage than by its sudden appearance. In truth, the suppression of the express was troubling his spirit deeply. It seems to me that I, who know the secrets of the sandalwood box, have no right to give the explanation of this suppression before the hour at which Theophrastus learnt it himself, from a quite commonplace observation which the Commissary of Police, M. Mifroid, an earnest student of Logic from his earliest years, made to him in the Catacombs of Paris. At the same time, it is only fair to say that all the points in the problem are already in the possession of the reader, who can solve it himself, if indeed he has not already done so, without further delay. Theophrastus then, in a state of prostration, walked down the side-line, arrived at the bifurcation, examined the switch, thrust back the lever which he had thrust over, locked the padlock, and carried away, once and for all, the key which had been so carelessly left in it a few days before. He performed this action because he felt that it was only right; and he restored the switch to its place, because he felt that his reason could not stand another disappearance of the express. Still melancholy, he reached the deserted station A. All the rest of the staff was absent on the search for the express; only the signal-man was on the look-out. Theophrastus questioned the signal-man, who could only say, as he pointed to the red arm of the signal: "_The express is signalled, but it does not come!_" "Was it really signalled from the last station?" said Theophrastus. "Yes, sir, the station-master and all the staff of the last station saw the express go through it. They telegraphed it to us. Besides, sir, look at my little red arm! Look at my little red arm! And it is quite impossible that there should have been a wreck between the last station and this one. There is no bridge, sir, no viaduct, no works of art. Besides, just now I climbed to the top of that ladder against the big tank there. From it you can see the whole line right to the other station. I saw our people down the line, gesticulating, but I did not see the express!" "Strange--very strange," said Theophrastus mournfully. "Strange isn't the word for it! Look at my little red arm!" "Inexplicable!" said Theophrastus gloomily. "The most inexplicable thing in the world!" cried the signal-man. "Not so: there is one thing even more inexplicable than an express which disappears with its engine and passengers without anyone being able to tell what has become of it," said Theophrastus in the same gloomy tone. "What on earth's that?" said the signal-man, opening his astonished eyes wider than ever. "Why, a railway-carriage without an engine which suddenly appears without one's being able to tell where it comes from." "What?" cried the signal-man. "And which disappeared as suddenly as it appeared... You haven't by any chance seen a railway-carriage with a man looking out of the window pass this way?" "You're laughing at me, sir!" said the signal-man with some heat. "_You're exaggerating!_ Just because you don't believe the story of the express which has been signalled and does not come! But look, sir, look! Look at my little red arm!" M. Longuet replied: "If you haven't seen the express, no more have I!" He shrugged his shoulders bitterly and left the station. An idea had occurred to him: his misfortune was so utter and so irremediable that he was resolved to die... for others. With a little astuteness the thing is practicable, even easy. Since he is dressed in the clothes of Signor Petito, nothing prevents him leaving his own clothes on the bank of the first river he comes to. This simple proceeding will constitute a formal act of suicide. Behold Marceline and Adolphe once more at peace! On the bank of what river did M. Longuet lay his clothes? How did he re-enter Paris? These are matters of such little importance that he makes no mention of them in his memoirs. There is only one thing that is really important, _the explanation of the disappearance of the express_. In the dull November sunset a workman was bricking up a hole in the roadway of a Paris square in the ancient Quarter d'Enfer. As he filled it he was singing the _Internationale_, the hymn of the advanced Labour Parties throughout the world. This workman, a bricklayer, was with his comrades engaged in assisting in that perpetual occupation of modern municipalities, getting the streets up; and the street was up. The municipal engineers had been making a new sewer through the Quarter d'Enfer with a patient disregard of the fact that under that quarter the Catacombs spread their innumerable tunnels. It was but natural that the bottom of the end of the excavation, in which they were laying the new sewer, should have fallen out, and that they should have been obliged to rest the pipes on railway sleepers cut in half. They were, however, at the end of their task: the hole at the bottom of the excavation, which ran right down to a passage of the Catacombs, had been nearly bricked up; and the aperture which remained could not have been much more than three feet across. As the bricklayer bricked it up, he sang the _Internationale_. At the same hour, a few yards down the side of the square, M. Mifroid stood before the counter of a shop at which they sold electric lamps, and was buying half a dozen of them for his men. Each lamp was guaranteed to give forty-eight hours' light, though they were not much larger than cigar-cases. His lamps had been packed up; and he had just put his fingers through the loop of the string of the packet, when a little way down the counter he perceived a man, still young but with quite white hair, slipping several examples of these electric lamps into his pocket without paying for them. They would doubtless be quite as useful to a thief as a policeman. M. Mifroid, with his usual courage, sprang towards the man, crying, "It's Cartouche!" He had recognised him owing to the fact that since the Calf's Revenge every Commissary of Police in Paris carried a portrait of the new Cartouche in his pocket. They owed them to Mme. Longuet herself and M. Lecamus, who had fled from the article in the evening paper to the nearest police-station, since they felt themselves bound, in the interests of humanity, to inform the police, somewhat tardily, of the bicentenary mental condition of Theophrastus. Therefore M. Mifroid, who had had the further advantage of a passing acquaintance with Theophrastus in his home, recognised him at once. Theophrastus, who had for some nights known the intentions of the police, when he saw M. Mifroid and heard his cry, said to himself, "It's time I was off!" He bolted out of the shop; and the Commissary of Police bolted after him. To return to our bricklayer, he sang the _Internationale_ all the time. He was alone, because his comrades had gone round the corner to refresh themselves. He was at the chorus of the song; and it was the seventy-ninth time he had sung it since two o'clock in the afternoon. He raised his head towards Heaven and roared: "Cellalutte finale Groupppons-nous etddemain..." With his head turned to Heaven he did not see two shadows flying headlong, which, one after the other, fell through the hole; their cries were drowned in the volume of sound which poured from his lungs. They were the shadows of Theophrastus and of M. Mifroid pursuing him through the dusk. In their careless haste they fell clean through the street which was up. The bricklayer turned his head a little to the right and roared enthusiastically: "L'lnterrrnationaaaaleu Sera le genrrhummain!..." And he finished bricking up the hole. Singing the _Internationale_, he had performed the symbolic act of interring a policeman and a thief. CHAPTER XXIV THE SOLUTION IN THE CATACOMBS "When one comes to oneself in the depth of the Catacombs," says Commissary Mifroid in the admirable report of the matter which he drew up, "the first thought which steals into one's mind is a fearful one: the fear of being old-fashioned. I mean by that a sudden anxiety lest one should find oneself reproducing all the ridiculous behaviour of which writers of romance and melodrama never fail to make their unfortunate heroes guilty when they find themselves immured in caves, grottoes, excavations, caverns, or tombs. "At the moment of my fall, even while I was so rapidly covering the space which separated me from the soil of the Catacombs, my presence of mind did not forsake me. I was aware that I was falling into those thousand-year-old subways which interlace their innumerable and capricious windings under the soil of Paris. The next thing I was aware of was a slight and painful numbness which followed my recovery from the insensibility into which I had been plunged by the inevitable shock. I was, then, in the Catacombs. At once I said to myself, 'Above all things I must not be old-fashioned.' "It would have been old-fashioned, for example, to utter cries of despair, to appeal to Providence, or to strike my brow against the wall of the passage. It would have been old-fashioned to find at the bottom of my pocket a bar of chocolate and at once divide it into eight pieces which would have represented assured sustenance for eight days. It would have been equally old-fashioned to find a candle-end in my pocket--a place in which no rational human being ever keeps candle-ends--and five or six matches, and so create the harrowing problem whether one ought to let the candle burn once it was lighted, or blow it out and rekindle it at the cost of another match, a problem which often interferes with the digestions of whole families who read romances. "I had nothing in my pocket. I assured myself of the fact with extreme satisfaction; and in the darkness of the Catacombs I slapped my pockets, repeating: 'Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!' "At the same moment it occurred to me that it would be quite up-to-date for a man in my situation to illuminate without further delay the opaque darkness which weighed so heavily on my eyes and tired them, with a sudden and radiant electric star. Had I not, before falling into this hole, bought half a dozen electric lamps of the latest pattern? The parcel must have accompanied me in my fall. Without stirring I groped about and laid my hand on it. By great good luck the lamps were unbroken; I took one of them and pressed the button. The excavation was lighted by a fairy glow; and I could not refrain from smiling at the unfortunate wretch who, shut up in some cavern, invariably crawls along, holding his breath, behind a miserable little flame which presently he hurriedly blows out. "I rose to my feet, and examined the ceiling. I had known that the streets were up, and that the work was nearly finished. I was the less surprised therefore, on looking up through the hole through which I had fallen, to see no spark of daylight, and to realise that it had been quite bricked up. Now several yards of earth separated me from living creatures, without the slightest possibility of my boring through them, even if the ceiling had not been far too high for me to reach. I satisfied myself of this without any feeling of annoyance; then, having turned my electric ray on the floor, I perceived a body. "It was the body of M. Theophrastus Longuet, the body of the new Cartouche. I examined it and perceived that it showed no signs of any serious injury. The man must be stunned, as I had been myself; and doubtless he would presently recover. I called to mind the fact that M. Lecamus had introduced me to his friend one day in the Champs-Elysées; and here I was face to face with him as one of the most abandoned of assassins. "Even as this flashed into my mind, M. Longuet heaved a deep sigh, and stretched out his arms. He complained of pains about his body, bade me good-evening, and asked me where we were. I told him. He did not appear utterly dismayed by the information, but drawing a pocket-book from his pocket, he traced some lines which looked like a plan, showed them to me, and said: "'My dear M. Mifroid, we are in the depths of the Catacombs. It's an extraordinary event; and how we are to get out I do not know. But the matter which fills my mind at this moment is really far more interesting, believe me, than falling into the Catacombs. I beg you to glance at this little plan.' "He handed me the leaf from his pocket-book, on which I saw the following: Station A D C Station B. x------x----x----x / H/ / K/ / I/ "He sneezed twice. "'Oh, you have a cold,' said I, taking the paper. "'Yes; I have had a bad cold since taking a somewhat long stroll one rainy night on the roofs of Gerando Street,' he said. "I advised him not to neglect it. I must say that this quiet and natural conversation between two men in the depths of the Catacombs, a few minutes after their recovery from such an unexpected fall, gave me infinite pleasure. Having considered the lines on the paper, I asked the explanation of them; and M. Longuet told me the story of the disappearance of an express train and of the reappearance of a railway-carriage, which was by far the most fantastic I had ever heard. This man had desired to make an express disappear between A and B by sending it up a side-line H I, by shifting the points, _and he had waited for it at K_. But the train had neither appeared at A nor at K, that is to say, either to him or to anyone else. Next a railway-carriage had appeared to him at K; and presently that railway-carriage itself had disappeared. I could well have believed that this man, considering his past (the past of Cartouche!) and the story which he now told me, was mad, if he had not expressed himself so logically, and given me the most exact material details about the points, the switch, and all the facts of the case. "Moreover, it is a matter of common experience that a madman always understands everything. But this man wanted to understand. I begged him to repeat the story. He said nothing. Twice I reiterated the request and still he said nothing. I was about to lose patience, when, grasping the fact that I had asked him something, he told me that now and then he was deaf for a few minutes. "Since he had recovered his hearing, we returned to the problem of the express. He assured me that he would rather die ten times in the depths of the Catacombs than come out of them once without knowing what had become of this express. 'I do not wish,' he added, 'to lose the most precious thing in the world: my Reason.' "'And when did this happen?' said I. 'For, as a matter of fact, I have heard nothing of the disappearance of an express; and it ought to be generally known.' "'It must be known by now,' he, said in a very melancholy tone. 'It only happened a few hours before our fall into the Catacombs.' "I examined the paper once more for quite five minutes. I reflected deeply, asked for certain complementary details, and then burst out laughing: though in truth it was not a laughable matter, for the catastrophe was truly appalling. What made me laugh was the seeming difficulty of the problem and the delight of having solved it in five minutes. "'You believe yourself a rational human being,' I cried, 'because you have Reason! But you're exactly like ninety-nine people out of a hundred, you don't know how to make use of it. You talk of Reason; _but what use is Reason in a brain which does not know by which end to take hold of it_? It's a wonderful instrument in the hands of a doll! Don't turn away your head in that sulky way, M. Longuet. I tell you: _you don't know by which end to take hold of your Reason!_ Come, M. Longuet: let us reason with this paper in our hands.' "He tried, the duffer! He said: 'There were five men at A, and five men at B. The five men at B saw the train pass; the five men at A did not see it. I--I was at K; and I am sure that it did not pass at K... consequently...' "'Consequently?... Consequently, there's no longer any express? Consequently your express has vanished--melted--flown away? Hey, presto: vanish express! _You think perhaps that the express is in the English Channel!_ You see clearly, M. Longuet, that if you have Reason, you don't know how to use it. Allow me to tell you _that you took hold of your Reason by the wrong end!_ The wrong end is that which begins by saying, 'We did not see the express,' and which ends by saying, 'Then there is no longer any express!' But I am going _to show you how to take hold of your Reason by the right end_. It is this: the truth is that the express exists, and that it exists between the points B, where it was seen to pass, A, where it was not seen to pass, and I, where it could not pass. Since we are in a plain, your express is between A, B and I. That is certain...' "'But!' "'Hush! Be quiet! And since we are in a plain, and in that plain there is an immense mass of loose sand, the only place in which the train could have disappeared is in that mass of sand: _that is the eternal truth!_'... "'I swear it didn't! I was at K waiting for the express; and I did not quit the line H I.' "'By the immortal Masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance I command you not to let go of the right end of your Reason which I have put into your hand. We are discussing at this moment what _is_; we are not yet at the _how_. It is owing to the fact that you began with the _how_ that you have not been able to reach what _is_. _The express is in I, since it cannot be anywhere else._ I am sure that the five men could not have seen it pass B, as they assert, unless it had passed. I am as certain that five men could not have been unable to see it at A if it had passed A; and since the line A B was examined and found not to contain the express, it must be that it turned off up the line H I. There we are, then, with the train on the line H I.' "'But I was there too,' cried Theophrastus, 'and I swear to you _that it wasn't_!' "'Dear! Dear! Do hold on to the right end of your Reason! You were at K; the express passed K; _it must pass K_; _it must go and plunge into I, since it cannot be anywhere else_. By a _necessary_ chance, while the beginning of the train is engulfed in the mass of sand (I take it for granted that the line H I is too short for the engine-driver, having perceived the error of direction half-way up it, to have had the time to ward off the catastrophe), the couplings of the last carriage broke, and the carriage and the guard's-van began to descend the line which was on a slope since it went to this mass of sand. There, after having gone down the line to H and back up it to K, you saw the carriage and Signor Petito at the window. (Probably Signor Petito opened the window with the intention of jumping out, at the moment he grasped the imminent catastrophe, and as it happened the shock of it shut his head in the window.)' "'That I understand; but what I don't understand...' "'_Let us first consider what we do understand_: that is the right end of Reason. We will next consider what we do not understand. No one is found in the guard's-van. The shock undoubtedly hurled the guard into the sand. _All that is certain._ Now, after having stripped Signor Petito of his clothes, you sat down on the embankment and read his papers. When you raised your head, the railway-carriage was no longer there. Well, since there was a slope and since there was a wind, which waggled the head of M. Petito at the window, the carriage, after having glided down to H, found itself once more on the line A B a little higher up than H on the side of B, where the staff of the station have by now certainly found it. _Do you understand now? Do you understand everything, except that you haven't seen the train pass K? Since everything is thus explained, it must be that that was how things happened._ Now I only seek how you were not able to see the train pass K. That which it is impossible to explain in the case of five persons at A or at B may very well be explained in the case of one at K.' "'I am waiting,' said M. Longuet. "I chuckled--and truly there was reason to chuckle--and went on, 'There are moments when you are deaf, M. Longuet?' "'There certainly are,' said M. Longuet. "'Suppose you were deaf during the moment you were waiting for the train at K, _then you would not have heard it_.' "'No, but I should have seen it.' "We have already arrived at the fact that you did not _hear it_. That is a considerable advance! God bless you, M. Longuet! God bless you!' (M. Longuet was sneezing.) "M. Longuet thanked me for my pious wish, and since he continued to sneeze, I took out my watch from _his pocket_ (he had already stolen it from me), and I said to him: 'Do you know, M. Longuet, how long a single one of your sneezes lasts, that is to say, how long you remain with your head bent while you sneeze?... Three seconds!... That is to say a second and two-fifths longer than is required to fail to see an express with four carriages pass in front of you, which is going sixty miles an hour. M. Longuet, the express has disappeared, or rather seemed to disappear, _because you were deaf and had a cold_!' "M. Longuet threw up his arms wildly towards the ceiling of the Catacombs. CHAPTER XXV M. MIFROID TAKES THE LEAD "When M. Longuet had recovered from the emotion with which my explanation of the disappearance of the express had filled him, he embraced me and handed me a revolver which he had found in the pocket of Signor Petito. He did not wish to keep it on him. He was desirous that I should be able, at need, to defend myself against the eccentricities of which he feared, on grounds based, alas! on a too real experience, the dangerous return. For the same reason he entrusted to me a large knife which had also come from the pocket of Signor Petito. "We laughed; and then we set ourselves to consider our situation seriously. M. Longuet went on emptying his pockets; and there came out of them seven little electric lamps similar to those I had myself bought before falling into this hole. He congratulated himself, saying that his instinct had been right in urging him to take plenty of them, for, adding my six to his seven, we now had thirteen lamps, guaranteed to give forty-eight hours' light each, which gave us six hundred and twenty-four hours of consecutive light. He added that since we should not need light for the ten hours a day, afternoon--he was an advocate of the; restful siesta--and night, during which we should sleep, we had light for forty-four days eight hours. "I said to him: 'You are altogether too old-fashioned, M. Longuet. Cartouche immured in the Catacombs would have done exactly the same with electric lamps as you are doing. But I, M. Longuet, I take your seven lamps and add three of mine to them; and this is what I do with them!' "I threw them carelessly down against the foot of the wall. "'There is no point in dragging about these _impedimenta_,' I said. 'Are you hungry, M. Longuet?' "'Very, M. Mifroid.' "'How long do you think you could be hungry?' "Since he did not seem to understand, I explained that I meant to ask him how long he thought he could remain so hungry without eating. "'I am pretty sure,' said he, 'that if I had to stay forty-eight hours as hungry as this...' "'Let us suppose that you stayed as hungry as this for seven days,' I interrupted. 'Three lamps would be quite sufficient for us, for at the end of those three lamps we should have no need of light!' "He had understood. But he smiled amiably, groped about, produced from the floor a good-sized parcel, and said: "'But you see, M. Mifroid, I need not endure this hunger a moment longer than I need. I have here a ham which weighs ten pounds, or a hundred and sixty ounces. I am assured that if a man chews it in the manner invented by M. Fletcher of the United States, he can live for an unlimited period on four ounces of ham a day, and retain the full possession of his faculties and muscular power. We have therefore food for one man for forty days, food for two for twenty days. And then'--he paused, and a singular light came into his eyes--'I think, M. Mifroid, that then--at the end of that twenty days, _one of us will Fletcherise the other_!' "'Nothing, M. Longuet, nothing would induce me to preserve my life by the degrading practice of cannibalism!' I said warmly. "'It is a sentiment which does you much honour, M. Mifroid,' said M. Longuet. 'But there is no need, and indeed it would be impossible, that we should both become cannibals.' "I was extremely disgusted, naturally, that M. Longuet should have been guilty of such an egregiously old-fashioned act as to be unable even to make an unexpected visit to the Catacombs, through a hole in the street, without bringing a ham with him; but I picked up the other ten electric lamps. I did not let my natural annoyance find vent in words; I only said to him, 'How on earth do you come to be walking about Paris with a ten-pound ham?' "'I am going to write my memoirs,' said M. Longuet. 'And since quiet is necessary to the writing of one's memoirs, and I feared that you gentlemen of the Police would do your best to rob me of that peace, if I gave you the chance, I was going to shut myself in a little hiding-place I know of with this ham, these electric lamps, and some more necessary provisions which I had not yet bought, in order to write uninterrupted. The paper and pens I have already purchased; and they are in my hiding-place.' "The excuse was valid, and there was nothing to be said. I set off down the passage. "'Where are you going?' he said. "'It does not matter where,' said I. 'But it is necessary to go anywhere rather than stay here, since here there is no hope. We will consider our course as we walk. Our only safety is in walking; and in walking for twenty days without taking any bearings we have every chance of arriving somewhere.' "'But why without taking our bearings?' he asked. "'Because,' I replied, 'I have remarked that in all the stories of the Catacombs it is always those bearings which have been the ruin of the unfortunate people who have got lost. They mixed up their bearings, were reduced to utter confusion, and fell into the exhaustion of despair. In our situation we must avoid every cause for despair. You are not in despair by any chance, M. Longuet?' "'Not at all, M. Mifroid; I am only hungry. And I don't mind saying that if I were less hungry in your delightful society I should have no regrets whatever for the roofs of Gerando Street.' "'We will eat presently, M. Longuet,' I said. 'An ounce of ham shall be our evening meal.' "M. Longuet smiled hungrily; then he said, 'Perhaps it would blunt the edge of my appetite a little if you were to tell me something about these Catacombs.' "'I think I ought to begin by giving you a general notion of the Catacombs,' I said. 'Then you would better understand why it is absolutely necessary to walk for a long time before getting out of them.' "The road we followed was a long passage of from fifteen to twenty feet high. Its walls were very dry; and the electric light showed us a stone free from any parasitic vegetation, free even from any mouldiness. It was a sight which caused me some disquiet, for if we were to subsist for twenty days on a diet of salt ham, without any vegetable food, I feared that we might fall a prey to scurvy. My mind was at ease about the matter of drink; for I knew that in the Catacombs there were little streams of running water; and we had only to walk far enough to come across them. "M. Longuet could not reconcile himself to the idea that we were walking _without caring where we were going_. I thought it wise to make him understand the necessity of not caring where we were going. I told him, as was the truth, that during the laying of the sewer the engineers, having descended into the Catacombs through the hole, had tried in vain to find their way about them and a way out. They had had to give it up, and to content themselves with building three pillars to prop up the roof, along the top of which their sewer ran, with materials let down through the hole by which we had so hastily descended, and which had been so definitely and unfortunately bricked up over our heads. "Not to discourage him, I informed him that to my certain knowledge we could reckon on at least _three hundred and ten miles_[6] of Catacombs, and that there was no reason that there should not be more. It was evident that if I did not at once make clear to him the difficulty of getting out, he would have yielded to despair at the end of a couple of days' journey. [Footnote 6: These are the official figures.] "'Bear in mind then,' I said, 'that they hollowed this soil from the third to the seventeenth century! Yes; for fourteen hundred years man has raised from under the soil the materials which were necessary for building on the top of it! So much so that from time to time, since there is too much on the top, and in places nothing at all beneath, the things on top have returned beneath whence they came.' "Since we found ourselves under the ancient Quarter d'Enfer, I recalled to his memory that in 1777 a house in d'Enfer Street was in that way engulfed. It was precipitated a hundred and twelve feet below the pavement of its own courtyard. Some months later, in 1778, seven persons were killed in a similar landslip, in the district of Menilmontant. I quoted several examples of a later date, laying stress on the loss of life. "He understood me and said, 'In fact, it's often more dangerous to walk about on the top than underneath.' "I had gained his attention, and finding him so cheerful and interested, forgetting all about his hunger, I profited by it to quicken our steps; and I chanted the most spirited chorus I could remember. He took it up and we sang together: 'Step out! Step out, boys, with a will! The road is hard and hot; There's an inn beyond the hill And good liquor in a pot!' "That's the song that makes you step out! "When we were tired of singing (one soon grows tired of singing in the Catacombs because the voice does not carry), M. Longuet asked me a hundred questions. He asked me how many feet of soil there were between us and the surface; and I told him that according to the last report it varied between eleven and two hundred and sixty feet. "'Sometimes,' I said, 'the crust of earth is so thin that it is necessary to prolong the foundations of public buildings to the bottom of the Catacombs. Therefore in the course of our peregrinations there is a chance of our coming across the pillars of Saint-Sulpice, of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, of the Panthéon, of the Val-de-Grâce, and of the Odéon. These buildings are, so to speak, raised on subterranean piles.' "'Subterranean piles!' he cried joyfully. 'Is there really a chance that in the course of our peregrinations we shall come across subterranean piles?' "Then he returned to his fixed idea: "'And in the course of our peregrinations is there any chance of our coming across a way out? Are there many ways out of the Catacombs?' he said wistfully. "'Plenty,' said I. 'In the first place, there are exits in the Quarter--" "'So much the better!' he interrupted. "'And others which are unknown, openings by which no one ever enters, but which none the less exist: in the cellars of the Panthéon, in those of Henri IV College, the Observatory, Saint-Sulpice Seminary, the Midi Hospital, some houses in d'Enfer, Vaugirard, Tombe-Issoire Streets; at Passy, Chaillot, Saint-Maur, Charenton, and Gentilly... More than sixty...' "'That's good!' "'It would have been better,' I replied, 'if Colbert had not on July 11, 1678--' "'Wonderful!' interrupted M. Longuet. 'You have as fine a memory as M. Lecamus!' "'It needn't astonish you, M. Longuet. I was formerly secretary of the Commissary of the district; and it pleased me to take an interest in the Catacombs, as it has since pleased me to practise the violin and sculpture. You have not got beyond the old-fashioned Commissary of Police, my dear M. Longuet.' "He did not reply to that; he said, 'You were saying that Colbert on July 11, 1678--' "'In order to put a stop to the cupidity of the builders, issued an order to close the openings into the Catacombs before Paris was quite undermined. That ordinance of Colbert's has, so to speak, walled us up.' "At this moment we were passing a pillar. I examined the structure and said: 'Here is a pillar which was built by the architects of Louis XVI in 1778, in the course of the consolidation." "'That poor Louis XVI!' said M. Longuet. 'He would have done much better to consolidate the monarchy.' "'That would have been to consolidate a Catacomb,' said I felicitously, though I believe that the word Catacombs is only used in the plural. "M. Longuet had taken the lamp from me, and without ceasing he turned its ray from right to left as though he were seeking something. I asked him the reason of this action which began to tire my eyes. "'I'm looking for corpses,' he said. "'Corpses?' "'Skeletons. I have always been told that the walls of the Catacombs are lined with skeletons.' "'Oh, that macabre tapestry, my friend (I already addressed him as 'my friend' because I was so pleased with his serenity in such serious circumstances), that macabre tapestry is barely three quarters of a mile long. That three quarters of a mile is very properly called the Ossuary, because skulls, ribs, shin-bones, thigh-bones, collar-bones, shoulder-bones and breast-bones form its sole decoration. But what a decoration! It's a decoration composed of three million and fifty thousand skeletons, which have been taken from the cemeteries of Saint-Médard, Cluny, Saint-Landry, the Carmelites, the Benedictines, and the Innocents. All the bones, well sorted, arranged, classified, and ticketed, form along the walls of the passages, roses, parallelograms, triangles, rectangles, spirals and many other figures of a marvellous exactitude. Let us desire, my friend, to reach this domain of death. It will mean life! For I do not know a spot in Paris more agreeably frequented. You only meet there engaged couples, couples in the middle of their honeymoon, lovers, and, in fact, all the happy people. But we are not there yet. What is three quarters of a mile of bones out of three hundred and ten miles of Catacombs?' "'Not much,' he said with a deep sigh. 'How many miles do you think we have gone, M. Mifroid?' "I begged him not to waste time in calculations which must be entirely futile; then, to cheer him up, I told him the story of the janitor and of the four soldiers. The first was very short: there was once a janitor of the Catacombs who lost his way in them; they found his body a week later. The second tells of four soldiers of the Val-de-Grâce who, by the help of a rope, descended a well two hundred feet deep. They were in the Catacombs. Since they did not reappear, they let down drummers who made all the noise they could with their drums. But since in the Catacombs _sound does not carry_, no one answered the roll-call. They searched for them. At the end of forty-eight hours they found them dying in a cul-de-sac. "'They had no moral force,' said Theophrastus. "'They were idiots,' said I. 'When one is stupid enough to lose one's way in the Catacombs, one is unworthy of pity, I will go so far as to say, of interest.' "Thereupon he asked me how I should myself escape losing my way in the Catacombs. Since we reached a place where another passage crossed the one we were in, I could answer without delay. I said: "'Here are two passages, which are you going to take?' "One of them ran directly away from our starting-point; the other almost certainly returned to it. Since it was our purpose to get away from our starting-point, M. Longuet pointed to the first. "'I was sure of it!' I exclaimed. 'Are you quite ignorant of the experimental method? The experimental method in the depths of the Catacombs has demonstrated for centuries that every individual who believes that he is returning to his starting-point (at the entrance to the Catacombs) is moving away from it. Therefore the logical thing to do to get away from one's starting-point is necessarily to take the road which seems to bring you back to it!' "We turned down the passage by which we appeared to be retracing our steps. In that way we were sure that we were not journeying in vain. "My two stories had carried us over another mile; then M. Longuet said: 'I must really have my supper.' "We had our supper, an ounce of ham each. There was some difficulty in judging how much an ounce was; but we did the best we could. He instructed me in the method of eating one's food discovered by M. Fletcher of the United States. We divided either ounce into four mouthfuls, not that they were by any means mouthfuls; and we chewed each patiently till we had extracted from it the last vestige of flavour. I could well believe him when he assured me that in this way we obtained from it the whole of the nourishment it contained. For my part, I should have been delighted to extract the last vestige of flavour from fifty more such mouthfuls. "After this meagre, but doubtless exceedingly nourishing supper, we continued our journey. We went another four miles, when I confessed that I began to feel tired. I was somewhat surprised to find a manufacturer of rubber stamps, a sedentary pursuit, like M. Longuet to be endowed with such untiring vigour. On learning from my watch, which he still carried, because he said he found it a comfort to carry somebody else's watch, that it was eleven o'clock, I suggested that we should go to sleep. "His fixed idea, that we should find an exit from the Catacombs, led him to display some reluctance. But I pointed out to him the extreme improbability of finding an exit in the first twenty miles of three hundred and ten; and we composed ourselves to rest. CHAPTER XXVI M. LONGUET FISHES IN THE CATACOMBS "We awoke the next morning with the appetites of youth. In the middle of our exiguous breakfast it occurred to me that we were behaving in an extremely old-fashioned way. The heroes of Romance invariably divide their bar of chocolate into a number of pieces. We, with our ham, were showing ourselves as commonplace as they. I imparted these reflections to M. Longuet, and suggested that instead of making our hundred and fifty-eight ounces of ham last for twenty days, we should eat ten ounces each a day, and be content to let them last eight. "M. Longuet objected firmly. He said: "'In the first place the admirable discovery of M. Fletcher of the United States has proved that such a quantity of food is unnecessary for the sustenance of the human being.' (I learned later that this was a misstatement.) 'In the second place, it is our duty as French citizens to postpone the degrading practice of cannibalism to the last possible moment.' "He spoke with a vigorous emphasis there was no gainsaying. I admired his strength of character, and was silent. "Immediately after breakfast we resumed our journey. "In about half an hour M. Longuet complained of thirst; and I explained to him that in our circumstances all complaints were utterly futile: a statement which, for all its undeniable logic, seemed to afford him very little comfort. But fortunately at the end of another hour our ears were greeted by the agreeable sound of rippling water; and presently the ray of our electric lamp gleamed on a little stream which ran from some subterranean spring across the passage. M. Longuet flung himself down and began to drink. I hesitated, for it appeared to me, as a logician, that since we could not carry water along with us, _to drink would only make us thirsty_. Then I reflected that we should find other springs, and presently followed his example. "We went on our way; and presently M. Longuet inquired of me whether there was no nourishment of any kind in the Catacombs on which we might sustain life when we had exhausted the resources of ham and the survivor of cannibalism. Fortunately I had visited the laboratory of the Catacombs of M. Milne-Edwards; and I could entertain him with an account of the fauna and flora of these caverns, on which he would be able, at need, to keep himself alive. I am bound to say that, contrary to my usual habit, I took great pleasure in this conversation about edible things. I felt indeed that such a subject was extremely old-fashioned; doubtless my pleasure in it arose from the exiguity of my breakfast. "'My dear friend,' I said, 'it is always possible not to die of hunger, even if you never get out of the Catacombs. The flora, the cryptogamic vegetation, the mushrooms, in a word, of the Catacombs, will not suffice, I fear, to keep you alive. But fortunately wherever you find water in these caverns, you find food. You can always become an ichthyophagus." "'What on earth is that?' he said suspiciously. "'An ichthyophagus is a fish-eater.' "'Ah!' he exclaimed with an immense satisfaction, 'there are fish in the waters of the Catacombs! I am very fond of fish!' He paused; then he added in a musing tone, 'After all, it is better to be an ichthyophagus than a cannibal.' "'They are not large fish; but certain streams contain incalculable quantities of them.' "'Really? Incalculable quantities?... Incalculable?... How large are they?' he said with great animation. "'Oh, they are of different sizes. Generally they are small. But they are not at all disagreeable to eat. I was told about them when I went down to visit the Fountain of the Samaritan, a very pretty, good-sized spring in the Ossuary.' "'Is it far from here?' he said eagerly. "'I cannot tell you at the moment. All I know is that this fountain was built in 1810 by M. Héricourt de Thury, Engineer of Subterranean Passages. As a matter of fact, this fountain is frequented by copepodes (Cyclops Fimbriatus)...' "'Ah! Copepodes! Are they fishes?' "'Yes; and they present modifications of tissue and coloration peculiar to themselves. They have a beautiful red eye.' "'What? One eye?' "'Yes; that is why they are called cyclops. But you need not be astonished that this fish has only one eye, for the Asellus Aquaticus, which also lives in the running streams of the Catacombs, a little aquatic isopode, as its name indicates, often has no eyes at all.' "'Impossible!' cried M. Longuet. 'How do they see?' "'They have no need to see, since they live in darkness. Nature is perfect. She is perfect in giving eyes to those who need them; she is perfect in taking away eyes from those who do not need them.' "M. Longuet appeared to reflect a little; then he said: 'Then, if we continued to live in the Catacombs, we should end by no longer having eyes?' "'Evidently: we should begin by losing the use of our sight and then our sight itself. Our descendants would soon lose their eyes altogether.' "'Our descendants!' he cried. "We laughed at this little slip; and then he pressed me to continue my description of the fishes of the Catacombs. "I discussed at length the modification of organs, their excessive development or their atrophy, according to the environment in which the species lives. I described the different kinds of fishes also at length. "But at last he said: 'All this about their organs is very interesting. But how do you catch them?' "'I can only tell you that the Catacombs which contain all these millions of bones cannot offer us a single maggot in the way of bait.' "'No matter,' said Theophrastus. 'There are more ways of killing a dog than hanging him. An angler has more than one trick in his basket; and the Asellus Aquaticus had better look out.' "That day and the days which followed it were very much alike. Whenever we came to a stream we stopped and drank. Always M. Longuet wanted to stop and fish. This was not wholly hunger; the sportsman's ardour burned in his soul. But I represented to him that, for anything we knew, we had the whole three hundred and ten miles of Catacombs to traverse before we came to the exit, and that it was our first duty to walk and walk. We might have fallen into them at the furthest end. "By eleven o'clock, not only the sustaining but also the satisfying effect of the ounce of ham appeared to be exhausted; we were not only extremely hungry, but we were moving at a much slower pace. I represented to M. Longuet that it would be wise to have our déjeuner at once. But his dreadful middle-class instincts were too strong for us. He had the habit of a regular life so ingrained in him that he would not hear of déjeuner before noon. Also I marvelled at his power of endurance: I had never suspected that the manufacture of rubber stamps could endow a man with those muscles of steel. None the less we talked very little between eleven and noon. "That ounce of ham was one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten. M. Longuet, who seemed in the course of our conversation to have caught some of my scientific spirit, timed the meal by my watch. It was a source of great satisfaction to him that he took from nine to eleven seconds longer over each mouthful than I did. After it we proceeded on our way with renewed vigour; and since I found that he was of the truly receptive type of mind, I found our conversation very enjoyable. "The afternoon was exactly like the morning. We walked, conversing about a dozen different subjects. The next morning was exactly like the last afternoon; and the days which followed were exactly like one another. The second and third days were the least comfortable. On those days the satisfying effects of our ounces of ham appeared to exhaust themselves more quickly. But after the third day I began to realise the great value of the discovery of M. Fletcher of the United States. Our appetites had become quite normal; an ounce of ham blunted them till the next meal. We were losing weight indeed, especially M. Longuet, whose waistcoat hung somewhat limply down in front. But the muscles of our legs appeared to have grown stronger; and undoubtedly our intellects had grown quicker and more alert. When we had exhausted my subjects, I learned from M. Longuet the process of making rubber stamps, with a thoroughness which fits me to embark at any moment on that career. I found that he was even quicker to acquire the knowledge which goes to the making of an able Commissary of Police. "It would indeed have been a very pleasant walking tour, thanks to that unlikeness of our natures which produces the most harmonious companionship, had it not been for the monotony of the scenery through which our way lay. The subterranean passages, illumined by our lamps, were sometimes vast, sometimes narrow, sometimes rounded like the naves of the cathedrals, sometimes square, angular, and mean, like the corridors of workhouses. But they presented no spectacle of great variety. When he had said, 'Look, stone! Look, clay! Look, sand!' we had said everything, because we had seen everything. "It was on the afternoon of the fourteenth day that M. Longuet embarked on a subject of conversation extremely distasteful to me, the edible qualities of the human body. I tried gently to divert him from it; but it appeared to have become one of his fixed ideas; and he harped on it for two very tedious hours. That evening I halted for supper on the banks of a stream, nearly eighteen inches wide, which ran across the passage we were in; and after supper I suggested that, before retiring for the night, he should for once glut his sportsman's ardour. "Though indeed he had no hooks, he fell to his angling with the liveliest eagerness. We turned the light of our lamp on to the waters of the stream, and presently out of the hole in the wall from which it issued, there came swimming a little fish. Then we found that hooks were unnecessary in the sport of the Catacombs. Owing to the fact that the little fish had no eyes, M. Longuet was able to lay his hand on the bed of the stream, which was, perhaps, at that point three inches deep, and when the little fish came swimming over it, to jerk up his hand and fling it on the bank. We examined his catch in the light of our lamp; but I was unable to say whether it was an Asellus Aquaticus or a Cyclops Fimbriatus. "In the course of the next quarter of an hour we caught three more of these little fishes (they were nearly four inches long); then, at the sight of fresh fish, a wolfish gleam came into M. Longuet's eyes; and he suggested that we should repeat the supper we had only just finished. After his distasteful conversation of the afternoon, I made no objection. But with his ineradicable middle-class instinct he complained that we had no means of cooking our catch. I explained to him that our early ancestors, the cave-men, probably ate most of their food raw, and whatever else we were, we were, at the moment, undoubtedly cave-men. With this new intellectual alertness, acquired by following the method of M. Fletcher of the United States, he saw my point. We cleaned the fish with the knife of Signor Petito and ate them. They were delicious. "But, as I should have foreseen, so much rich food coming suddenly after the rational diet on which we had subsisted during the last fortnight was too much for us, and for several hours we suffered the most acute pangs of indigestion. Moreover, with the greedy haste of gourmands, we had not timed ourselves over the meal, and had eaten the fish far too quickly. However, no experience is wasted on a rational man; and I realised that one Asellus Aquaticus, after ham, is enough for the logical Fletcherite. "After the passing of our indigestion, we slept soundly; and the next morning we resumed our journey entirely free from any anxiety: it might take us six months, or it might take us a year, but sooner or later we should find the Ossuary and the exit from the Catacombs, sustained in our task by the Asellus Aquaticus. Indeed it was extremely improbable that it would take us more than a few days longer, for since I had never missed a chance of taking a passage which appeared to lead back to our starting-point, we must necessarily have drawn further and further from it. "This expectation was realised sooner than I expected, for on the night of the seventeenth day, just as, at the close of a very interesting discussion on the neglect of the logical faculty by the great majority of men, we had turned our thoughts to supper and sleep, we were suddenly confronted by two skeletons. "They were fastened against the wall on either side, and _an arm of either, like the arm of a finger-post, pointed down the passage ahead_. CHAPTER XXVII M. MIFROID PARTS FROM THEOPHRASTUS "With a simultaneous cry of pleasure we quickened our steps, and presently we found ourselves between most interesting geometrical and ornamental figures composed entirely of bones. "I took off my hat to those bones, with a sense of profound relief and gratitude. My stay in the Catacombs had been far from unpleasant, since I had passed the time in the company of such an agreeable and sympathetic companion; but I was glad that it had come to an end. I had had enough of it--possibly the monotony of the scenery had tired me of it. I had fallen into the way of instructing Theophrastus; and at once I taught him to distinguish between the tibia, the cubitus, and the femur. A knowledge of anatomy harms no one. But I was sorry to observe that he listened to me with an air of gloom. He did not seem to share my joy at reaching our journey's end. "We had walked briskly for more than half an hour; and now and again I had paused to point out to Theophrastus some unusually artistic arrangement of the bones, when suddenly we came upon a lighted candle in the left eye of a skull. I concluded that we had at last reached the realm of the living. Then we came upon candles upon candles in the eyes of skulls, and then chandeliers full of twinkling candles. Then we heard voices: the babbling tinkling laughter of women. We were reaching the end of our journey. "The first twentieth-century words we heard were: "'Well, dear boy, this function isn't gay. I prefer the Bullier...' "'Thank goodness, I'm only eighteen years old--a good long way from replacing these tibias!' "We came into a big cavern to find ourselves in the middle of a fête. No one paid any attention to us; they took us for guests. "All along those funereal walls were ranged rows of chairs. The light was bright, the candles and the chandeliers of skulls gleamed. At the end of the cavern was a platform covered with lines of music-stands. The musicians were just coming on to the platform. The audience was taking possession of the chairs; people were arguing and joking about the macabre decoration of the walls. "All the cafés of the Abyss, all the artistico-mystico-macabre scenes in which life is laughed at and death jeered at, all those boxes of the Butte, in which skulls grin from the walls, and skeletons rattle on the floor, all the funereal carnival of Montmartre were surpassed. "We had before us fifty musicians of the Opera, of Lamoureux, and of Colonne, who had come down into the Kingdom of Bones to serenade the Dead. And under the vaults of the Catacombs, among their avenues and crossways, where stretch the tragic walls covered with the bony wrecks of men, the funeral march of Chopin raised its lamentation before an audience of æsthetes, of artists, of Bulgarians, of Moldo-Wallachians, of frequenters of first-nights, of M. Mifroid, and M. Theophrastus Longuet, who sleeps peacefully on his chair as he always does at the theatre. "'Perfect, that first violin! Perfect!' I said under my breath. (I am a connoisseur.) "What gave me the greatest delight was the exquisite fashion in which the orchestra rendered the adagio of the third symphony of Beethoven. Finally we had 'The Dance Macabre' of Saint-Saëns. Then I tapped Theophrastus on the shoulder and said that it was time we went home. The concert after three weeks of the Catacombs had done me a world of good. "We walked briskly, and ten minutes later we found ourselves on the surface of the earth. I breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction: with the exception of the ham, there had been nothing old-fashioned about our three weeks' journey through the Catacombs. "'I told you that we should get out!' I said. 'My wife will indeed be pleased to see me!' "'So much the better for you and for her,' said Theophrastus gloomily. "'I should never have believed that the Catacombs were so pleasant,' said I. "'Neither should I,' said Theophrastus gloomily. "We walked on for a few minutes in silence. It was so pleasant to be walking under the open sky and the stars instead of under a roof in electric light, that I did not hurry to take a cab. "Then Theophrastus said, 'What are you waiting for?' "What am I waiting for? I'm not waiting for anything or anyone. I am being waited for. And I'm sure that Mme. Mifroid must be in a terrible state of anxiety.' "'But why don't you arrest me? When I asked what were you waiting for, I meant what are you waiting for to arrest me?' "'No, M. Longuet, no. I shan't arrest you... It was my mission to arrest Cartouche. But Cartouche no longer exists! There is only M. Longuet; and M. Longuet is my friend!' "The eyes of Theophrastus filled with tears. "'I have a strong feeling that I'm cured... if only I could be sure of it.' "'What would you do if you were?' said I. "'I should go back to my wife, my dear Marceline,' he said wistfully. "'Well, you must go back to your wife, M. Longuet; you certainly must.' "'You advise me to?' "'Of course I do.' "'No, M. Mifroid, no. She no longer expects me. Before falling through that hole in d'Enfer Street, I was careful to leave my clothes on the bank of a river. She believes me dead--drowned. She must be plunged in profound despair. My only satisfaction is that my dear friend, M. Lecamus, whom you know, has done everything possible for her in her affliction.' "'That makes it all the more necessary for you to go back to her,' I said. "'I will,' said Theophrastus; and his face brightened. "We were shaking hands with one another, with the reluctance to separate of bosom friends; and indeed our sojourn in the Catacombs had made us bosom friends, when suddenly Theophrastus smote his brow and said: "'_I must tell you a story of your youth!_' "Now, if anyone, at such a time, with Mme. Mifroid in such a state of anxiety, had said to me, 'I must tell you a story of _my youth_,' I should have made some excuse and fled. But he said, '_I must tell you a story of your youth_.' It was extremely curious; I stopped and listened; and this was what he told me: "'The incident took place in this spot, the Buci Cross-roads,' said Theophrastus. "'Was I very young?' I asked, smiling. "'Well, you must have been between fifty and fifty-five.' "I gave a little jump. I am not quite forty. And you can understand my astonishment when M. Longuet spoke of an incident of my youth when I was between fifty and fifty-five. But he paid no heed to my movement, and went on: "'At that time you had a greyish beard, cut into two long broad points which flowed gracefully down to your belt; and you were mounted--I can see it now--on a fine Spanish horse.' "'Really? I was mounted on a Spanish horse?' (I have never been mounted on anything but a bicycle.) "'A Spanish horse, which you gave to one of your archers to hold.' "'Ah, I was in command of archers, was I?' "'Yes, of twenty mounted archers, and a hundred archers on foot. All this troop had come from the Palais de Justice; and when it reached the Buci Cross-roads, you dismounted, because you were thirsty, and wished before the ceremony to get outside a pint at the tavern kept by the Smacker.' "'And for what ceremony had I come from the Palais de Justice with my hundred and twenty archers?' said I, wishing to humour him, for I only wanted to get home. "'It was the matter of summoning me by Public Proclamation for the murder of the workman Mondelot. Therefore on that day, March 28, 1721, the Clerks of Court, trumpeters, drummers, archers on horseback, and archers on foot, issued from the Palais de Justice in an imposing procession, and after having made the proclamation first in the Court de May, where everything passed quietly, and then again in Croix-Rouge Place, they came back here to the Buci Cross-roads. You had drunk your pint, M. Mifroid, and were mounting your Spanish horse, when this remarkable incident took place. The Clerk of Court read very solemnly: 'In the name of the King, through the Lords of Parliament, the said Louis-Dominique Cartouche...' when a voice, cried: 'Present! Here's Cartouche! Who wants Cartouche?'... On the instant the Clerks of Court, archers on foot, and archers on horseback, drummers and trumpeters, the whole procession broke up and fled in every direction.... Yes; there did not remain a single person at the Buci Cross-roads, _not a single person except myself and the Spanish horse_, after I cried: "'Here's Cartouche!' "Phenomenon more curious than all curious phenomena in the depths of the Catacombs!... M. Longuet had no sooner said, 'Here's Cartouche!' than I started to fly from the Buci Cross-roads as fast as my legs could carry me, _as if the fear of Cartouche had dwelt in the calves of the police at the Buci Cross-roads for nearly two hundred years_!" CHAPTER XXVIII THEOPHRASTUS GOES INTO ETERNAL EXILE At this point I leave the report of the Commissary of Police, M. Mifroid. The conclusion of it indeed is filled with the most profound and philosophic reflections on the effect of companionship in misfortune on the human heart; but they are not relevant to the story of Theophrastus. When the noise of the flying feet of M. Mifroid no longer came echoing down the empty street, the heart of that unfortunate man filled with the deepest melancholy. Here was that accursed Black Feather again! Behold him in the flickering light of a street lamp. He shakes his head. Ah! with what a lamentable air does he shake his miserable and dolorous head! Of what is he dreaming, unhappy wretch, that again and again he shakes his luckless head? Doubtless the idea he had had of going back to disturb the peace of his dear Marceline no longer appears to him reasonable. Plainly he rejects it, for his heavy, lagging feet do not carry him towards the heights of Gerando Street. Some minutes later, he finds himself in Saint-Andrew-des-Arts Place, and plunges into the dark passage of Suger Street. He rings at a door. The door opens. In the passage a man in a blouse, with a paper cap on his head and a lantern in his hand, asks him what he wants. "Good-evening, Ambrose. You are still awake, are you--as late as this?" said Theophrastus. "It's me. Oh, a lot of things have happened since I last saw you!" It was true. A lot of things had happened to M. Longuet since he had last seen Ambrose, for he had not seen him since the day on which he had learned from him the date of the water-mark on the document found in the cellars of the Conciergerie. "Come in, and make yourself at home," said Ambrose. "I will tell you all about it to-morrow," said Theophrastus. "But to-night I want to sleep." Ambrose took him up to bed, and he slept the dreamless sleep of a little child. During the next few days Ambrose tried to induce Theophrastus to speak; but, oddly enough, he preserved a complete silence. He spent his time writing and writing. Once or twice he went out at night. Once Ambrose asked him where he was going. "A Commissary of Police, M. Mifroid, is writing an account of a journey we took together," said Theophrastus. "And I am going to ask him for a copy of it." I am inclined to believe that one of these nights he must also have returned to the flat in Gerando Street, by his favourite chimney, and taken away from it the report, which M. Lecamus had written for the Pneumatic Club, of the operation of M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox. Also on one of those nights he must have acquired the sandalwood box inlaid with steel; and since Ambrose believes that he had but little money, it is not improbable that when he acquired it he had his Black Feather. One evening he came downstairs carrying a box, the sandalwood box, under his arm; and with an air of gloomy satisfaction, he said to Ambrose, "I have finished my literary labours; and I think I will go and see my wife." "I did not like to speak to you about her," said Ambrose quickly. "Your gloom and your inexplicable behaviour made me afraid that you had some domestic difficulties." "She is as fond of me as ever!" cried Theophrastus with some heat. As he left the house, Ambrose said to him, "Be sure you remember me very kindly to Marceline." Theophrastus said that he would; but to himself he said: "Marceline will never see me; she must never see me. Not even the Catacombs have torn out my fatal Black Feather. I must not trouble her peace. She _shall_ never see me. But I--I wish to see her once again, from afar, _to see if she is happy_." He sobbed in the street. * * * * * It is nine o'clock at night, a dark winter's night. Theophrastus mounts the slope at the top of which rise the walls of Azure Waves Villa. With a trembling hand he draws back the bolt of the little door of the garden behind the house. He crosses the garden gently, noiselessly, one hand pressed against his heart, which is beating even more furiously than on the night of the purring of the little violet cat--his good heart, his great heart, still overflowing with love for the wife he wishes to see happy. There is a light in the drawing-room; and the window is a few inches open, for the night is muggy. You advance slowly, noiselessly to a screening shrub, set down the sandalwood box, and peer through the leafless branches into the cosy drawing-room. Ah! what have you seen in the drawing-room?... Why that deep groan? Why do you tear the white locks from your brow?... What have you seen?... After all, does it matter what you have seen, _since you are dead_? Did you not wish to see your wife happy? Well, you see her happy! She and M. Lecamus are sitting on the sofa. They are holding one another's hand; they are gazing at one another with the eyes of lovers. He kisses her, with respect but with devotion. He is consoling her for the loss of you. You wished it. How can he better console her than by replacing you? Theophrastus, the gentle, kind-hearted manufacturer of rubber stamps, perceives this. He drops on his knees on the cold, wet grass, weeping tears of bitter resignation. He is reconciling himself to the necessity of the cruel fact that they are sitting in his comfortable drawing-room, and he is kneeling on his cold, wet grass. He is almost reconciled to it; but not quite. What is that that is thrusting, thrusting forth? _The upward thrust of the Past_--_the Black Feather_! The tears are drying in the eyes of Theophrastus. His eyes are gleaming through the dim winter night with an evil gleam. He springs to his feet; he grinds his teeth; he cries hoarsely: "_By the throttle of Madame Phalaris!_" The Past has him in its grip; he is racked by the pangs of the old-time jealousy, and the pangs of the new. In three seconds he is through the window and in the drawing-room. Wild screams of terror greet his entrance; but in ten seconds more M. Lecamus lies senseless in the big easy-chair, bound hand and foot with the bell-rope. When he recovers his senses, the hand of the clock has moved on ten minutes. Torn by fears and suspense, he listens with all his ears. He hears faint movements on the floor above. The minutes pass; twenty minutes pass. Then there is a sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. Theophrastus enters, once more a changed Theophrastus: his eyes no longer gleam with an evil light; they are full of unshed tears. His face is working with intense emotion; and on his shoulder is a portmanteau. _What does that portmanteau contain?_ Theophrastus, his face working with intense emotion, crosses the room to his old friend. He wrings his hand, wrings it for the last time; and in a broken voice, a voice full of tears, he says: "Good-bye, Adolphe! Good-bye, dear friend, for ever! I am going to the _Seine near the Town Hall Bridge. I have to leave this portmanteau._ And then I go into eternal exile!" He loosed his grip of his friend's hand and, his face still working with intense emotion, he went through the window, bearing the portmanteau with astonishing ease. M. Lecamus has never seen him again; he has never seen Marceline again; he has never seen the portmanteau again. Does the unhappy Theophrastus, luckless exile from the Paris he loves, wander through the far East or the far West? Does he in the old eighteenth-century fashion police Bagdad, or does he build up a rubber stamp business in Chicago? * * * * * A new novel by the author of "Happy Hawkins" THE KNIGHT-ERRANT By ROBERT ALEXANDER WASON Author of "Happy Hawkins," etc., etc. Illustrated by HANSON BOOTH $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37 A modern, city-bred "Happy Hawkins," one Philip Lytton by name, a young man with ample fortune and excellent ideas about enjoying the good things in life, takes to heart the taunts of his lady love and engages entertainingly in business. Making a failure of it in his simple, blundering way he leaves New York to seek his fortunes in the Far West. Here Mr. Wason takes us over familiar ground in that country that he knows so well and has already written about so engagingly in _Happy Hawkins_, the country which Dr. Crothers so well names "the land of the large and charitable air." Mr. Wason knows men and women, their strength and weakness, their vices and virtues, and packed to the covers though it is with incident, with suspense, with the essence of story interest, his new book yet carries a strong moral. His fresh, spontaneous humor, which the Nation has called "American humor in its best estate," flashes everywhere. Someone has compared a Wason book to the wildwood, with its lights and shadows, its lilting melodies, its sudden storms, its joyous freedom. Editors, publishers, his friends, his critics, have all objected to an apparent lack of technique in Mr. Wason's writing; but he continues to mingle humor and pathos, the dramatic and the argumentative, the tender and the cynical, with all the prodigality and originality of old Nature herself. Of stories there is no end; but in addition to a real story, a Wason book gives the reader the rare privilege of intimate association with a broad, sympathetic and discriminating personality. It is not necessary to agree with him--he fattens on controversy--and the reader who enters into the spirit of it can find much of what Stevenson calls the joy of mental wrestling. SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY Publishers, Boston * * * * * AN UNUSUALLY POWERFUL NOVEL HER HUSBAND The Mystery of a Man By JULIA MAGRUDER Author of "Princess Sonia," "A Heaven-Kissing Hill," etc., etc. Illustrated by LUCIUS WOLCOTT HITCHCOCK $1.35 net; by mail $1.48 This is Miss Magruder's most powerful novel; in fact, it is the novel on which, in her own opinion, her literary reputation will rest. In it she displays to the full her command of the arts of the storyteller, her ability to lead the reader breathlessly from climax to climax, her power as a delineator of character, her broad acquaintance with human nature and her knowledge of how to express human emotions to their last, tingling vibrations. The story centres around the puzzling character of Egbert Lothian. And here indeed is a man who is a mystery from the very beginning of the novel--in his wooing, in his courtship, in his marriage to the remarkable heroine of the story,--the charming young American girl whom this interesting, distinguished Scotchman so captivates--in his married life--and who grows more and more remarkable and mystifying, even to his wife, as the romance goes on, until near the close of the story the wife and the reader are amazed and held breathless at a disclosure of which neither she nor any one else had the slightest hint or conception. Through the whole gamut of human emotions the girl in this novel passes, and the reader follows her and the man at her side with wonder and fascination. During its publication in the columns of a current popular magazine this novel created a storm of discussion. For serial purposes the story was condensed to about half its length. In book form it is now for the first time presented in its entirety. SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY Publishers, Boston * * * * * AN IMPORTANT AMERICAN NOVEL THE MARRIAGE PORTION By H. A. MITCHELL KEAYS Author of "The Road to Damascus," "He That Eateth Bread With Me," etc. $1.35 net; by mail, $1.48 In her new book, which is by far her most important, Mrs. Keays discusses her favorite theme--marriage. She lays the scene of her story in a modern university city which many readers will recognize, and she portrays the life there with an unsparing, but just, understanding. As usual, she develops her characters with unerring skill. In fact, she depicts all her people, both admirable and otherwise, so naturally, so truly, indeed so perfectly, that the delighted reader will be inclined to believe that she writes of real living, breathing, human beings, existing in the flesh in the shadow of a great American university. The story centers around Adela Cleave, a charming woman who, after a brief marriage and an early widowhood, has won a considerable reputation as an artist in Paris. Returning to her native land to be with her father, an old and honored professor, she is at first inclined to wonder whether life will offer in her new environment so wide a scope for her interest in humanity as had been offered to her delighted senses in Paris. But she early discovers that almost without her knowing it her life is seemingly inextricably entangled with the lives of a homogeneous yet strangely diverse social structure. Her father, "Daddy Mark," as she calls him, or Professor Kay, as he is known to his colleagues, is a most lovable character, and it is many years since we have had in fiction so keenly diverting a person as Mrs. Heming, Adela Cleave's aunt, and a woman with an infinite capacity for martyrdom. The interplay of interests in a university community is alertly realized in the development of the absorbing plot, which shows the gradual growth of as sweet, and tender a love-story as has been told by any American novelist. SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY Publishers, Boston * * * * * A BULLY GOOD STORY! THE INCORRIGIBLE DUKANE By GEORGE C. SHEDD Author of "The Princess of Forge," etc. Illustrated by STANLEY L. WOOD $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37 If Jimmy Dukane hadn't been a "good fellow," he wouldn't have got into so much trouble and if he _hadn't_ been a good fellow he wouldn't have--but that's the story! He had been easily acquiring the record as Perpetual Holiday-Maker for Broadway, when--well, "James A. Dukane, Sr., had, so to speak, brought down his fist on the table with a bang. James A. Dukane, _Jr._, had been under the fist and his eyes popped open very wide indeed." Dukane and Company were in the concrete construction business and they were erecting a big dam clear out in Nevada. The elder Dukane decided that the way to solve the problem of what to do with Jimmy was to set him to work, so he sent him out to "make a report" on the dam. He--Dukane, Sr.,--then vamoosed for Europe and left young Jimmy to work out his own salvation. "The green tail-lights of the train flickered, faded, then with a sudden mischievous wink altogether disappeared; the last puffing of the engine was like a hoarse chuckle. "'Dumped in a puddle at eleven o'clock at night', Jimmy Dukane vociferated resentfully. "In the caravan just departed there was everything to comfort the soul, to cheer the mind and moisten the palate--bright lights, snug chairs, jolly companions, a well-stocked buffet. Here?--what the deuce was here anyway except water? He faced about. A few miserable beams of light escaped through the dingy depot window out upon the wet platform and gleamed glassily along the rails; some distance away in front of him glowed half a dozen misty, luminous balls like swamp-lanterns, which he surmised to be windows. "'The governor stung his son and heir this time', he remarked in immense disgust." That was only the beginning of it. Things started to happen at once and when Jimmy woke up in the morning in this little sage-brush town of Meldon and found his clothes and money gone and a tramp's raiment in their place--with no money--he was naturally indignant. But his indignation fell on deaf ears. Nobody knew him; he knew nobody. He began to get hungry. What should he do? What would _you_ do? The story of what he _did_--and incidentally of how he met a charming girl by the name of Enid--is one of the most delightful that have fallen to the lot of the novel-reader in many a day. Youth--exuberant, unconquerable, "incorrigible" Youth--is in, around and over it all. You will _enjoy_ "The Incorrigible Dukane." SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY Publishers, Boston * * * * * ADVENTURE-HEROISM-LOVE THE LOSER PAYS A Story of the French Revolution By MARY OPENSHAW Author of "The Cross of Honour" $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37 In this, her second novel to be given to American readers, the author of "The Cross of Honour" tells a fine, brave story that will still further enhance the reputation won by her previous book. "The Loser Pays" is the story of the devotion to love and duty of no less a personage than Rouget de Lisle, the author of the "Marseillaise." Many other writers have already taken the French Revolution as their theme but Miss Openshaw is one of the few who have made it vivid and human. In fact, it is not too much to say that no one else, since Felix Gras wrote "The Reds of the Midi," has given us a story of the French Revolution of so fine a quality. "A stirring tale, capitally recounted."--_London Times._ "The possibilities of the Revolution in France as a subject of fiction are almost infinite, but they have seldom been used with so keen a dramatic perception and at the same time so just a regard for the main outlines of history as in Miss Openshaw's book."--_Glasgow Herald._ "The story is so fascinating that the reader closes the book only when he has reached the last page. 'The Loser Pays' will be successful because the author has a good story to tell. It may be recommended to all who like a dashing, romantic story full of incident."--_Glasgow Citizen._ "There is really fine description of the September massacres. The story deserves more than a transient place among recent fiction of the Great Revolution."--_The Outlook (London)._ SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY Publishers, Boston * * * * * AN AMERICAN AND AN ENGLISH NOVEL OF PERMANENT IMPORTANCE THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS By H. A. MITCHELL KEAYS Author of "He That Eateth Bread with Me," etc. $1.50 postpaid The story of a young wife who, when it is proved to her that another woman's boy should call her own husband father, adopts the boy without ever letting her husband know. From, this basic theme Mrs. Keays develops a dramatic and powerful story, "the finest novel of social import," says Mr. Percival Pollard, in his critical volume, "Their Day in Court," "written by an American woman in recent times; one of those rare books proving that all is not hopelessly chaff in the field of American fiction. 'The Road to Damascus' is a book, and contains a character, worthy of long life. The character of _Richarda_ in this book is one of the finest ever drawn by an American woman; the book itself has perhaps the broadest view of life that has been shown on our side of the water." "A novel of remarkable power. It grips the attention like an Ibsen drama."--_New York Times._ "It is all true," says Dean Hodges, "true to human nature and the laws of God." "I took up the 'Road to Damascus' after dinner," says Ida M. Tarbell, "and did not lay it down until the end. It is a fascinating handling of a difficult problem--a most successful handling, too." BROKE OF COVENDEN By J. C. SNAITH Author of "Araminta," "Fortune," "Mistress Dorothy Marvin," etc. $1.50 postpaid A remarkable novel, that makes ordinary fiction pale in comparison. Mr. Snaith has produced a book that holds its own among those of Meredith, Dickens, and Thackeray. It is the story of an English country family of the present day. "There is no living writer in England or this country to whom it would not be a credit."--_Springfield Republican._ "Almost alone of recent English fiction, it plays with equal mastery on all the stops of human emotion."--_New York Times._ "From the first moment Mr. Snaith makes your attention his willing slave, you read with that rare vacillation which urges you to hurry forward for the story and to linger for the detail."--_Atlantic Monthly._ "An exceedingly lively and diverting tragic comedy of men and old, acres. Mr. Snaith has invention, energy, and ideas of his own. He has courage and sympathy and the sovereign faculty of interesting his readers in the fortunes of most of his dramatis personae. The author has given us a delightful heroine, a wholly original hero, and a great deal of entertainment, for which we offer him our hearty thanks."--_London Spectator._ SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY Publishers, Boston * * * * * "A really notable brief for democracy that everybody ought to read."--_Nation._ ONE WAY OUT A Middle-Class New-Englander Emigrates to America By WILLIAM CARLETON $1.20 net; by mail, $1.32 In this remarkable narrative a man tells simply but with dynamic power how at thirty-eight he lost his position in the office of a big corporation; how he learned that the special training of his own office was of no value in getting him a position in any other office; how at thirty-eight he was already "too old" to get such a position as he had found easily enough at eighteen; how he and his wife and boy in their trim little suburban home were actually confronted with the fundamental problem of how to exist; how he met and solved that problem in a way unexpected and dramatic, though to him and his wonderful wife, Ruth, obvious and natural, by "emigrating" to America; and how in all their struggle they found their lives enriched and inspired by the old adventurous, pioneer spirit of their forefathers. Once in a while a book appears which so profoundly impresses the public mind that it wins its place as a force in public opinion. Such a book _One Way Out_ has proved itself to be. "It is a simple story of a simple life, one of the most convincing and interesting of its kind that I have seen in many a long day, and, in my opinion, the book is one that is bound to be widely read and thoughtfully discussed."--JAMES L. FORD in The _New York Herald_. "A rare volume: it has inspiration for the doubter, the man who fears he cannot strike out for himself."--_Boston Advertiser._ "You have done more good in publishing _One Way Out_ than you will ever know," writes Dr. A. E. WINSHIP, editor of the _Journal of Education_. "Will not some of the noble rich buy a million copies and see that they are given to those who need them?" "An engrossing, because a vitally human, story."--J. B. KERFOOT, in _Life_. "A great adventure that has most gripping appeal."--_New York Times._ "A very genuine inspiration."--_Outlook._ "There are some fine suggestions, much food for thought, and a dramatic story in the evolution of the theme."--_Literary Digest._ "A book worth forty novels."--WILLIAM MARION REEDY in the _St. Louis Mirror_. SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY Publishers, Boston * * * * * "A novel which deserves serious attention as an important contribution to modern American fiction."--Nation. THE GARDEN OF THE SUN A Story of Army Life in the Philippines By CAPTAIN T. J. POWERS, U. S. A. Illustrated. $1.25 net; by mail, $1.37 The _Nation_ says of _The Garden of the Sun_: "Two things distinguish this story from the general run of military novels. One is the vivacity of the dialogue, the other is the beauty of its descriptive passages. Not that it is lacking in action--there is battle, murder, and sudden death enough to stir the most jaded reader of romance. "The scene is laid in the Philippine Islands and the important male characters, with one exception, are officers of the American army. This exception is Tom Bennett, a rich _roué_, who is touring the world in his yacht with his unhappy young wife and her sister. Bennett and his party are attacked by Moro pirates in the Sulu Sea and rescued by Capt Ballard and his men. Later they visit the island of Jolo, where Capt Ballard is stationed. Between him and Barbara, Bennett's wife, a strong friendship arises which develops into love. The story of the relations of these two attractive and well-drawn characters is varied by clever pictures of the island life, of dances, of flirtations, of drinking bouts, and of skirmishes with hostile natives. "Many real and interesting types are introduced, among them a wandering dancing girl, who calls herself La Belle Syria, but is, in spirit and in language, redolent of New York's gay irresponsibility. She uses expressive slang and is a charming, amusing creature. But her place in the novel is not solely that of the comic relief. She is partly responsible for the drunken brawl in which Bennett receives the wound which causes partial paralysis. His helpless condition brings back his wife, who had resolved to leave him. "But the story does not end here. New complications ensue, in which both Bennett and Ballard are severely tested and from which they emerge heroically. The final chapters of the book, containing a strong and unexpected dénouement, are admirable pieces of dramatic writing. They form a fitting climax to a novel which deserves serious attention as an important contribution to modern American fiction. "Capt Powers should be given especial credit for his resistance to two temptations. In the first place, although writing of Anglo-Saxon soldiers residing among Orientals, he keeps absolutely clear of the Kiplingesque. In the second place, he describes tropical nature without the sensuous extravagance beloved of Robert Hichens." SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY Publishers, Boston * * * * * Transcriber's Note: The following typographical errors present in the original edition have been corrected. In Chapter III, "As you will, _Marie-Antoniette_!" was changed to "As you will, _Marie-Antoinette_!", and "Belle-Helène who keeps the Harp tavern" was changed to "Belle-Hélène who keeps the Harp tavern". In Chapter V, "The explantion of its absence" was changed to "The explanation of its absence". In Chapter VI, "Monsieur de Traineuse" was changed to "Monsieur de Traneuse". In Chapter VII, "these villianous reformatories" was changed to "these villainous reformatories", and a missing quotation mark was added before "He took it from a wax mask". In Chapter X, a missing period was added after "he fancied he heard voices on the staircase". In Chapter XV, "spread over it as smoothly, as the edge of the rising tide" was changed to "spread over it as smoothly as the edge of the rising tide". In the advertisement for _The Loser Pays_, "Marsellaise" was changed to "Marseillaise". 
17976	----	AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ANDREW CARNEGIE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS [Illustration: [signature] Andrew Carnegie] London CONSTABLE & CO. LIMITED 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY LOUISE WHITFIELD CARNEGIE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE After retiring from active business my husband yielded to the earnest solicitations of friends, both here and in Great Britain, and began to jot down from time to time recollections of his early days. He soon found, however, that instead of the leisure he expected, his life was more occupied with affairs than ever before, and the writing of these memoirs was reserved for his play-time in Scotland. For a few weeks each summer we retired to our little bungalow on the moors at Aultnagar to enjoy the simple life, and it was there that Mr. Carnegie did most of his writing. He delighted in going back to those early times, and as he wrote he lived them all over again. He was thus engaged in July, 1914, when the war clouds began to gather, and when the fateful news of the 4th of August reached us, we immediately left our retreat in the hills and returned to Skibo to be more in touch with the situation. These memoirs ended at that time. Henceforth he was never able to interest himself in private affairs. Many times he made the attempt to continue writing, but found it useless. Until then he had lived the life of a man in middle life--and a young one at that--golfing, fishing, swimming each day, sometimes doing all three in one day. Optimist as he always was and tried to be, even in the face of the failure of his hopes, the world disaster was too much. His heart was broken. A severe attack of influenza followed by two serious attacks of pneumonia precipitated old age upon him. It was said of a contemporary who passed away a few months before Mr. Carnegie that "he never could have borne the burden of old age." Perhaps the most inspiring part of Mr. Carnegie's life, to those who were privileged to know it intimately, was the way he bore his "burden of old age." Always patient, considerate, cheerful, grateful for any little pleasure or service, never thinking of himself, but always of the dawning of the better day, his spirit ever shone brighter and brighter until "he was not, for God took him." Written with his own hand on the fly-leaf of his manuscript are these words: "It is probable that material for a small volume might be collected from these memoirs which the public would care to read, and that a private and larger volume might please my relatives and friends. Much I have written from time to time may, I think, wisely be omitted. Whoever arranges these notes should be careful not to burden the public with too much. A man with a heart as well as a head should be chosen." Who, then, could so well fill this description as our friend Professor John C. Van Dyke? When the manuscript was shown to him, he remarked, without having read Mr. Carnegie's notation, "It would be a labor of love to prepare this for publication." Here, then, the choice was mutual, and the manner in which he has performed this "labor" proves the wisdom of the choice--a choice made and carried out in the name of a rare and beautiful friendship. LOUISE WHITFIELD CARNEGIE _New York_ _April 16, 1920_ EDITOR'S NOTE The story of a man's life, especially when it is told by the man himself, should not be interrupted by the hecklings of an editor. He should be allowed to tell the tale in his own way, and enthusiasm, even extravagance in recitation should be received as a part of the story. The quality of the man may underlie exuberance of spirit, as truth may be found in apparent exaggeration. Therefore, in preparing these chapters for publication the editor has done little more than arrange the material chronologically and sequentially so that the narrative might run on unbrokenly to the end. Some footnotes by way of explanation, some illustrations that offer sight-help to the text, have been added; but the narrative is the thing. This is neither the time nor the place to characterize or eulogize the maker of "this strange eventful history," but perhaps it is worth while to recognize that the history really was eventful. And strange. Nothing stranger ever came out of the _Arabian Nights_ than the story of this poor Scotch boy who came to America and step by step, through many trials and triumphs, became the great steel master, built up a colossal industry, amassed an enormous fortune, and then deliberately and systematically gave away the whole of it for the enlightenment and betterment of mankind. Not only that. He established a gospel of wealth that can be neither ignored nor forgotten, and set a pace in distribution that succeeding millionaires have followed as a precedent. In the course of his career he became a nation-builder, a leader in thought, a writer, a speaker, the friend of workmen, schoolmen, and statesmen, the associate of both the lowly and the lofty. But these were merely interesting happenings in his life as compared with his great inspirations--his distribution of wealth, his passion for world peace, and his love for mankind. Perhaps we are too near this history to see it in proper proportions, but in the time to come it should gain in perspective and in interest. The generations hereafter may realize the wonder of it more fully than we of to-day. Happily it is preserved to us, and that, too, in Mr. Carnegie's own words and in his own buoyant style. It is a very memorable record--a record perhaps the like of which we shall not look upon again. JOHN C. VAN DYKE _New York_ _August, 1920_ CONTENTS I. PARENTS AND CHILDHOOD 1 II. DUNFERMLINE AND AMERICA 20 III. PITTSBURGH AND WORK 32 IV. COLONEL ANDERSON AND BOOKS 45 V. THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE 54 VI. RAILROAD SERVICE 65 VII. SUPERINTENDENT OF THE PENNSYLVANIA 84 VIII. CIVIL WAR PERIOD 99 IX. BRIDGE-BUILDING 115 X. THE IRON WORKS 130 XI. NEW YORK AS HEADQUARTERS 149 XII. BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS 167 XIII. THE AGE OF STEEL 181 XIV. PARTNERS, BOOKS, AND TRAVEL 198 XV. COACHING TRIP AND MARRIAGE 210 XVI. MILLS AND THE MEN 220 XVII. THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE 228 XVIII. PROBLEMS OF LABOR 240 XIX. THE "GOSPEL OF WEALTH" 255 XX. EDUCATIONAL AND PENSION FUNDS 268 XXI. THE PEACE PALACE AND PITTENCRIEFF 282 XXII. MATTHEW ARNOLD AND OTHERS 298 XXIII. BRITISH POLITICAL LEADERS 309 XXIV. GLADSTONE AND MORLEY 318 XXV. HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS DISCIPLE 333 XXVI. BLAINE AND HARRISON 341 XXVII. WASHINGTON DIPLOMACY 350 XXVIII. HAY AND MCKINLEY 358 XXIX. MEETING THE GERMAN EMPEROR 366 BIBLIOGRAPHY 373 INDEX 377 ILLUSTRATIONS ANDREW CARNEGIE _Photogravure frontispiece_ ANDREW CARNEGIE'S BIRTHPLACE 2 DUNFERMLINE ABBEY 6 MR. CARNEGIE'S MOTHER 22 ANDREW CARNEGIE AT SIXTEEN WITH HIS BROTHER THOMAS 30 DAVID MCCARGO 38 ROBERT PITCAIRN 42 COLONEL JAMES ANDERSON 46 HENRY PHIPPS 58 THOMAS A. SCOTT 72 JOHN EDGAR THOMSON 72 THOMAS MORRISON CARNEGIE 118 GEORGE LAUDER 144 JUNIUS SPENCER MORGAN 156 JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN 172 AN AMERICAN FOUR-IN-HAND IN BRITAIN 210 ANDREW CARNEGIE (ABOUT 1878) 214 MRS. ANDREW CARNEGIE 218 MARGARET CARNEGIE AT FIFTEEN 240 CHARLES M. SCHWAB 256 THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTE AT PITTSBURGH 262 MR. CARNEGIE AND VISCOUNT BRYCE 270 MATTHEW ARNOLD 298 WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE 318 VISCOUNT MORLEY OF BLACKBURN 322 MR. CARNEGIE AND VISCOUNT MORLEY 326 THE CARNEGIE FAMILY AT SKIBO 326 HERBERT SPENCER 334 JAMES G. BLAINE 342 SKIBO CASTLE 356 MR. CARNEGIE AT SKIBO, 1914 370 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ANDREW CARNEGIE CHAPTER I PARENTS AND CHILDHOOD If the story of any man's life, truly told, must be interesting, as some sage avers, those of my relatives and immediate friends who have insisted upon having an account of mine may not be unduly disappointed with this result. I may console myself with the assurance that such a story must interest at least a certain number of people who have known me, and that knowledge will encourage me to proceed. A book of this kind, written years ago by my friend, Judge Mellon, of Pittsburgh, gave me so much pleasure that I am inclined to agree with the wise one whose opinion I have given above; for, certainly, the story which the Judge told has proved a source of infinite satisfaction to his friends, and must continue to influence succeeding generations of his family to live life well. And not only this; to some beyond his immediate circle it holds rank with their favorite authors. The book contains one essential feature of value--it reveals the man. It was written without any intention of attracting public notice, being designed only for his family. In like manner I intend to tell my story, not as one posturing before the public, but as in the midst of my own people and friends, tried and true, to whom I can speak with the utmost freedom, feeling that even trifling incidents may not be wholly destitute of interest for them. To begin, then, I was born in Dunfermline, in the attic of the small one-story house, corner of Moodie Street and Priory Lane, on the 25th of November, 1835, and, as the saying is, "of poor but honest parents, of good kith and kin." Dunfermline had long been noted as the center of the damask trade in Scotland.[1] My father, William Carnegie, was a damask weaver, the son of Andrew Carnegie after whom I was named. [Footnote 1: The Eighteenth-Century Carnegies lived at the picturesque hamlet of Patiemuir, two miles south of Dunfermline. The growing importance of the linen industry in Dunfermline finally led the Carnegies to move to that town.] My Grandfather Carnegie was well known throughout the district for his wit and humor, his genial nature and irrepressible spirits. He was head of the lively ones of his day, and known far and near as the chief of their joyous club--"Patiemuir College." Upon my return to Dunfermline, after an absence of fourteen years, I remember being approached by an old man who had been told that I was the grandson of the "Professor," my grandfather's title among his cronies. He was the very picture of palsied eld; "His nose and chin they threatened ither." As he tottered across the room toward me and laid his trembling hand upon my head he said: "And ye are the grandson o' Andra Carnegie! Eh, mon, I ha'e seen the day when your grandfaither and I could ha'e hallooed ony reasonable man oot o' his jidgment." [Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE'S BIRTHPLACE] Several other old people of Dunfermline told me stories of my grandfather. Here is one of them: One Hogmanay night[2] an old wifey, quite a character in the village, being surprised by a disguised face suddenly thrust in at the window, looked up and after a moment's pause exclaimed, "Oh, it's jist that daft callant Andra Carnegie." She was right; my grandfather at seventy-five was out frightening his old lady friends, disguised like other frolicking youngsters. [Footnote 2: The 31st of December.] I think my optimistic nature, my ability to shed trouble and to laugh through life, making "all my ducks swans," as friends say I do, must have been inherited from this delightful old masquerading grandfather whose name I am proud to bear.[3] A sunny disposition is worth more than fortune. Young people should know that it can be cultivated; that the mind like the body can be moved from the shade into sunshine. Let us move it then. Laugh trouble away if possible, and one usually can if he be anything of a philosopher, provided that self-reproach comes not from his own wrongdoing. That always remains. There is no washing out of these "damned spots." The judge within sits in the supreme court and can never be cheated. Hence the grand rule of life which Burns gives: "Thine own reproach alone do fear." [Footnote 3: "There is no sign that Andrew, though he prospered in his wooing, was specially successful in acquisition of worldly gear. Otherwise, however, he became an outstanding character not only in the village, but in the adjoining city and district. A 'brainy' man who read and thought for himself he became associated with the radical weavers of Dunfermline, who in Patiemuir formed a meeting-place which they named a college (Andrew was the 'Professor' of it)." (_Andrew Carnegie: His Dunfermline Ties and Benefactions_, by J.B. Mackie, F.J.I.)] This motto adopted early in life has been more to me than all the sermons I ever heard, and I have heard not a few, although I may admit resemblance to my old friend Baillie Walker in my mature years. He was asked by his doctor about his sleep and replied that it was far from satisfactory, he was very wakeful, adding with a twinkle in his eye: "But I get a bit fine doze i' the kirk noo and then." On my mother's side the grandfather was even more marked, for my grandfather Thomas Morrison was a friend of William Cobbett, a contributor to his "Register," and in constant correspondence with him. Even as I write, in Dunfermline old men who knew Grandfather Morrison speak of him as one of the finest orators and ablest men they have known. He was publisher of "The Precursor," a small edition it might be said of Cobbett's "Register," and thought to have been the first radical paper in Scotland. I have read some of his writings, and in view of the importance now given to technical education, I think the most remarkable of them is a pamphlet which he published seventy-odd years ago entitled "Head-ication versus Hand-ication." It insists upon the importance of the latter in a manner that would reflect credit upon the strongest advocate of technical education to-day. It ends with these words, "I thank God that in my youth I learned to make and mend shoes." Cobbett published it in the "Register" in 1833, remarking editorially, "One of the most valuable communications ever published in the 'Register' upon the subject, is that of our esteemed friend and correspondent in Scotland, Thomas Morrison, which appears in this issue." So it seems I come by my scribbling propensities by inheritance--from both sides, for the Carnegies were also readers and thinkers. My Grandfather Morrison was a born orator, a keen politician, and the head of the advanced wing of the radical party in the district--a position which his son, my Uncle Bailie Morrison, occupied as his successor. More than one well-known Scotsman in America has called upon me, to shake hands with "the grandson of Thomas Morrison." Mr. Farmer, president of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad Company, once said to me, "I owe all that I have of learning and culture to the influence of your grandfather"; and Ebenezer Henderson, author of the remarkable history of Dunfermline, stated that he largely owed his advancement in life to the fortunate fact that while a boy he entered my grandfather's service. I have not passed so far through life without receiving some compliments, but I think nothing of a complimentary character has ever pleased me so much as this from a writer in a Glasgow newspaper, who had been a listener to a speech on Home Rule in America which I delivered in Saint Andrew's Hall. The correspondent wrote that much was then being said in Scotland with regard to myself and family and especially my grandfather Thomas Morrison, and he went on to say, "Judge my surprise when I found in the grandson on the platform, in manner, gesture and appearance, a perfect _facsimile_ of the Thomas Morrison of old." My surprising likeness to my grandfather, whom I do not remember to have ever seen, cannot be doubted, because I remember well upon my first return to Dunfermline in my twenty-seventh year, while sitting upon a sofa with my Uncle Bailie Morrison, that his big black eyes filled with tears. He could not speak and rushed out of the room overcome. Returning after a time he explained that something in me now and then flashed before him his father, who would instantly vanish but come back at intervals. Some gesture it was, but what precisely he could not make out. My mother continually noticed in me some of my grandfather's peculiarities. The doctrine of inherited tendencies is proved every day and hour, but how subtle is the law which transmits gesture, something as it were beyond the material body. I was deeply impressed. My Grandfather Morrison married Miss Hodge, of Edinburgh, a lady in education, manners, and position, who died while the family was still young. At this time he was in good circumstances, a leather merchant conducting the tanning business in Dunfermline; but the peace after the Battle of Waterloo involved him in ruin, as it did thousands; so that while my Uncle Bailie, the eldest son, had been brought up in what might be termed luxury, for he had a pony to ride, the younger members of the family encountered other and harder days. The second daughter, Margaret, was my mother, about whom I cannot trust myself to speak at length. She inherited from her mother the dignity, refinement, and air of the cultivated lady. Perhaps some day I may be able to tell the world something of this heroine, but I doubt it. I feel her to be sacred to myself and not for others to know. None could ever really know her--I alone did that. After my father's early death she was all my own. The dedication of my first book[4] tells the story. It was: "To my favorite Heroine My Mother." [Footnote 4: _An American Four-in-Hand in Great Britain._ New York, 1888.] [Illustration: DUNFERMLINE ABBEY] Fortunate in my ancestors I was supremely so in my birthplace. Where one is born is very important, for different surroundings and traditions appeal to and stimulate different latent tendencies in the child. Ruskin truly observes that every bright boy in Edinburgh is influenced by the sight of the Castle. So is the child of Dunfermline, by its noble Abbey, the Westminster of Scotland, founded early in the eleventh century (1070) by Malcolm Canmore and his Queen Margaret, Scotland's patron saint. The ruins of the great monastery and of the Palace where kings were born still stand, and there, too, is Pittencrieff Glen, embracing Queen Margaret's shrine and the ruins of King Malcolm's Tower, with which the old ballad of "Sir Patrick Spens" begins: "The King sits in Dunfermline _tower_,[5] Drinking the bluid red wine." [Footnote 5: _The Percy Reliques_ and _The Oxford Book of Ballads_ give "town" instead of "tower"; but Mr. Carnegie insisted that it should be "tower."] The tomb of The Bruce is in the center of the Abbey, Saint Margaret's tomb is near, and many of the "royal folk" lie sleeping close around. Fortunate, indeed, the child who first sees the light in that romantic town, which occupies high ground three miles north of the Firth of Forth, overlooking the sea, with Edinburgh in sight to the south, and to the north the peaks of the Ochils clearly in view. All is still redolent of the mighty past when Dunfermline was both nationally and religiously the capital of Scotland. The child privileged to develop amid such surroundings absorbs poetry and romance with the air he breathes, assimilates history and tradition as he gazes around. These become to him his real world in childhood--the ideal is the ever-present real. The actual has yet to come when, later in life, he is launched into the workaday world of stern reality. Even then, and till his last day, the early impressions remain, sometimes for short seasons disappearing perchance, but only apparently driven away or suppressed. They are always rising and coming again to the front to exert their influence, to elevate his thought and color his life. No bright child of Dunfermline can escape the influence of the Abbey, Palace, and Glen. These touch him and set fire to the latent spark within, making him something different and beyond what, less happily born, he would have become. Under these inspiring conditions my parents had also been born, and hence came, I doubt not, the potency of the romantic and poetic strain which pervaded both. As my father succeeded in the weaving business we removed from Moodie Street to a much more commodious house in Reid's Park. My father's four or five looms occupied the lower story; we resided in the upper, which was reached, after a fashion common in the older Scottish houses, by outside stairs from the pavement. It is here that my earliest recollections begin, and, strangely enough, the first trace of memory takes me back to a day when I saw a small map of America. It was upon rollers and about two feet square. Upon this my father, mother, Uncle William, and Aunt Aitken were looking for Pittsburgh and pointing out Lake Erie and Niagara. Soon after my uncle and Aunt Aitken sailed for the land of promise. At this time I remember my cousin-brother, George Lauder ("Dod"), and myself were deeply impressed with the great danger overhanging us because a lawless flag was secreted in the garret. It had been painted to be carried, and I believe was carried by my father, or uncle, or some other good radical of our family, in a procession during the Corn Law agitation. There had been riots in the town and a troop of cavalry was quartered in the Guildhall. My grandfathers and uncles on both sides, and my father, had been foremost in addressing meetings, and the whole family circle was in a ferment. I remember as if it were yesterday being awakened during the night by a tap at the back window by men who had come to inform my parents that my uncle, Bailie Morrison, had been thrown into jail because he had dared to hold a meeting which had been forbidden. The sheriff with the aid of the soldiers had arrested him a few miles from the town where the meeting had been held, and brought him into the town during the night, followed by an immense throng of people.[6] [Footnote 6: At the opening of the Lauder Technical School in October, 1880, nearly half a century after the disquieting scenes of 1842, Mr. Carnegie thus recalled the shock which was given to his boy mind: "One of my earliest recollections is that of being wakened in the darkness to be told that my Uncle Morrison was in jail. Well, it is one of the proudest boasts I can make to-day to be able to say that I had an uncle who was in jail. But, ladies and gentlemen, my uncle went to jail to vindicate the rights of public assembly." (Mackie.)] Serious trouble was feared, for the populace threatened to rescue him, and, as we learned afterwards, he had been induced by the provost of the town to step forward to a window overlooking the High Street and beg the people to retire. This he did, saying: "If there be a friend of the good cause here to-night, let him fold his arms." They did so. And then, after a pause, he said, "Now depart in peace!"[7] My uncle, like all our family, was a moral-force man and strong for obedience to law, but radical to the core and an intense admirer of the American Republic. [Footnote 7: "The Crown agents wisely let the proceedings lapse.... Mr. Morrison was given a gratifying assurance of the appreciation of his fellow citizens by his election to the Council and his elevation to the Magisterial Bench, followed shortly after by his appointment to the office of Burgh Chamberlain. The patriotic reformer whom the criminal authorities endeavored to convict as a law-breaker became by the choice of his fellow citizens a Magistrate, and was further given a certificate for trustworthiness and integrity." (Mackie.)] One may imagine when all this was going on in public how bitter were the words that passed from one to the other in private. The denunciations of monarchical and aristocratic government, of privilege in all its forms, the grandeur of the republican system, the superiority of America, a land peopled by our own race, a home for freemen in which every citizen's privilege was every man's right--these were the exciting themes upon which I was nurtured. As a child I could have slain king, duke, or lord, and considered their deaths a service to the state and hence an heroic act. Such is the influence of childhood's earliest associations that it was long before I could trust myself to speak respectfully of any privileged class or person who had not distinguished himself in some good way and therefore earned the right to public respect. There was still the sneer behind for mere pedigree--"he is nothing, has done nothing, only an accident, a fraud strutting in borrowed plumes; all he has to his account is the accident of birth; the most fruitful part of his family, as with the potato, lies underground." I wondered that intelligent men could live where another human being was born to a privilege which was not also their birthright. I was never tired of quoting the only words which gave proper vent to my indignation: "There was a Brutus once that would have brooked Th' eternal devil to keep his state in Rome As easily as a king." But then kings were kings, not mere shadows. All this was inherited, of course. I only echoed what I heard at home. Dunfermline has long been renowned as perhaps the most radical town in the Kingdom, although I know Paisley has claims. This is all the more creditable to the cause of radicalism because in the days of which I speak the population of Dunfermline was in large part composed of men who were small manufacturers, each owning his own loom or looms. They were not tied down to regular hours, their labors being piece work. They got webs from the larger manufacturers and the weaving was done at home. These were times of intense political excitement, and there was frequently seen throughout the entire town, for a short time after the midday meal, small groups of men with their aprons girt about them discussing affairs of state. The names of Hume, Cobden, and Bright were upon every one's tongue. I was often attracted, small as I was, to these circles and was an earnest listener to the conversation, which was wholly one-sided. The generally accepted conclusion was that there must be a change. Clubs were formed among the townsfolk, and the London newspapers were subscribed for. The leading editorials were read every evening to the people, strangely enough, from one of the pulpits of the town. My uncle, Bailie Morrison, was often the reader, and, as the articles were commented upon by him and others after being read, the meetings were quite exciting. These political meetings were of frequent occurrence, and, as might be expected, I was as deeply interested as any of the family and attended many. One of my uncles or my father was generally to be heard. I remember one evening my father addressed a large outdoor meeting in the Pends. I had wedged my way in under the legs of the hearers, and at one cheer louder than all the rest I could not restrain my enthusiasm. Looking up to the man under whose legs I had found protection I informed him that was my father speaking. He lifted me on his shoulder and kept me there. To another meeting I was taken by my father to hear John Bright, who spoke in favor of J.B. Smith as the Liberal candidate for the Stirling Burghs. I made the criticism at home that Mr. Bright did not speak correctly, as he said "men" when he meant "maan." He did not give the broad _a_ we were accustomed to in Scotland. It is not to be wondered at that, nursed amid such surroundings, I developed into a violent young Republican whose motto was "death to privilege." At that time I did not know what privilege meant, but my father did. One of my Uncle Lauder's best stories was about this same J.B. Smith, the friend of John Bright, who was standing for Parliament in Dunfermline. Uncle was a member of his Committee and all went well until it was proclaimed that Smith was a "Unitawrian." The district was placarded with the enquiry: Would you vote for a "Unitawrian"? It was serious. The Chairman of Smith's Committee in the village of Cairney Hill, a blacksmith, was reported as having declared he never would. Uncle drove over to remonstrate with him. They met in the village tavern over a gill: "Man, I canna vote for a Unitawrian," said the Chairman. "But," said my uncle, "Maitland [the opposing candidate] is a Trinitawrian." "Damn; that's waur," was the response. And the blacksmith voted right. Smith won by a small majority. The change from hand-loom to steam-loom weaving was disastrous to our family. My father did not recognize the impending revolution, and was struggling under the old system. His looms sank greatly in value, and it became necessary for that power which never failed in any emergency--my mother--to step forward and endeavor to repair the family fortune. She opened a small shop in Moodie Street and contributed to the revenues which, though slender, nevertheless at that time sufficed to keep us in comfort and "respectable." I remember that shortly after this I began to learn what poverty meant. Dreadful days came when my father took the last of his webs to the great manufacturer, and I saw my mother anxiously awaiting his return to know whether a new web was to be obtained or that a period of idleness was upon us. It was burnt into my heart then that my father, though neither "abject, mean, nor vile," as Burns has it, had nevertheless to "Beg a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil." And then and there came the resolve that I would cure that when I got to be a man. We were not, however, reduced to anything like poverty compared with many of our neighbors. I do not know to what lengths of privation my mother would not have gone that she might see her two boys wearing large white collars, and trimly dressed. In an incautious moment my parents had promised that I should never be sent to school until I asked leave to go. This promise I afterward learned began to give them considerable uneasiness because as I grew up I showed no disposition to ask. The schoolmaster, Mr. Robert Martin, was applied to and induced to take some notice of me. He took me upon an excursion one day with some of my companions who attended school, and great relief was experienced by my parents when one day soon afterward I came and asked for permission to go to Mr. Martin's school.[8] I need not say the permission was duly granted. I had then entered upon my eighth year, which subsequent experience leads me to say is quite early enough for any child to begin attending school. [Footnote 8: It was known as Rolland School.] The school was a perfect delight to me, and if anything occurred which prevented my attendance I was unhappy. This happened every now and then because my morning duty was to bring water from the well at the head of Moodie Street. The supply was scanty and irregular. Sometimes it was not allowed to run until late in the morning and a score of old wives were sitting around, the turn of each having been previously secured through the night by placing a worthless can in the line. This, as might be expected, led to numerous contentions in which I would not be put down even by these venerable old dames. I earned the reputation of being "an awfu' laddie." In this way I probably developed the strain of argumentativeness, or perhaps combativeness, which has always remained with me. In the performance of these duties I was often late for school, but the master, knowing the cause, forgave the lapses. In the same connection I may mention that I had often the shop errands to run after school, so that in looking back upon my life I have the satisfaction of feeling that I became useful to my parents even at the early age of ten. Soon after that the accounts of the various people who dealt with the shop were entrusted to my keeping so that I became acquainted, in a small way, with business affairs even in childhood. One cause of misery there was, however, in my school experience. The boys nicknamed me "Martin's pet," and sometimes called out that dreadful epithet to me as I passed along the street. I did not know all that it meant, but it seemed to me a term of the utmost opprobrium, and I know that it kept me from responding as freely as I should otherwise have done to that excellent teacher, my only schoolmaster, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude which I regret I never had opportunity to do more than acknowledge before he died. I may mention here a man whose influence over me cannot be overestimated, my Uncle Lauder, George Lauder's father.[9] My father was necessarily constantly at work in the loom shop and had little leisure to bestow upon me through the day. My uncle being a shopkeeper in the High Street was not thus tied down. Note the location, for this was among the shopkeeping aristocracy, and high and varied degrees of aristocracy there were even among shopkeepers in Dunfermline. Deeply affected by my Aunt Seaton's death, which occurred about the beginning of my school life, he found his chief solace in the companionship of his only son, George, and myself. He possessed an extraordinary gift of dealing with children and taught us many things. Among others I remember how he taught us British history by imagining each of the monarchs in a certain place upon the walls of the room performing the act for which he was well known. Thus for me King John sits to this day above the mantelpiece signing the Magna Charta, and Queen Victoria is on the back of the door with her children on her knee. [Footnote 9: The Lauder Technical College given by Mr. Carnegie to Dunfermline was named in honor of this uncle, George Lauder.] It may be taken for granted that the omission which, years after, I found in the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey was fully supplied in our list of monarchs. A slab in a small chapel at Westminster says that the body of Oliver Cromwell was removed from there. In the list of the monarchs which I learned at my uncle's knee the grand republican monarch appeared writing his message to the Pope of Rome, informing His Holiness that "if he did not cease persecuting the Protestants the thunder of Great Britain's cannon would be heard in the Vatican." It is needless to say that the estimate we formed of Cromwell was that he was worth them "a' thegither." It was from my uncle I learned all that I know of the early history of Scotland--of Wallace and Bruce and Burns, of Blind Harry's history, of Scott, Ramsey, Tannahill, Hogg, and Fergusson. I can truly say in the words of Burns that there was then and there created in me a vein of Scottish prejudice (or patriotism) which will cease to exist only with life. Wallace, of course, was our hero. Everything heroic centered in him. Sad was the day when a wicked big boy at school told me that England was far larger than Scotland. I went to the uncle, who had the remedy. "Not at all, Naig; if Scotland were rolled out flat as England, Scotland would be the larger, but would you have the Highlands rolled down?" Oh, never! There was balm in Gilead for the wounded young patriot. Later the greater population of England was forced upon me, and again to the uncle I went. "Yes, Naig, seven to one, but there were more than that odds against us at Bannockburn." And again there was joy in my heart--joy that there were more English men there since the glory was the greater. This is something of a commentary upon the truth that war breeds war, that every battle sows the seeds of future battles, and that thus nations become traditional enemies. The experience of American boys is that of the Scotch. They grow up to read of Washington and Valley Forge, of Hessians hired to kill Americans, and they come to hate the very name of Englishman. Such was my experience with my American nephews. Scotland was all right, but England that had fought Scotland was the wicked partner. Not till they became men was the prejudice eradicated, and even yet some of it may linger. Uncle Lauder has told me since that he often brought people into the room assuring them that he could make "Dod" (George Lauder) and me weep, laugh, or close our little fists ready to fight--in short, play upon all our moods through the influence of poetry and song. The betrayal of Wallace was his trump card which never failed to cause our little hearts to sob, a complete breakdown being the invariable result. Often as he told the story it never lost its hold. No doubt it received from time to time new embellishments. My uncle's stories never wanted "the hat and the stick" which Scott gave his. How wonderful is the influence of a hero upon children! I spent many hours and evenings in the High Street with my uncle and "Dod," and thus began a lifelong brotherly alliance between the latter and myself. "Dod" and "Naig" we always were in the family. I could not say "George" in infancy and he could not get more than "Naig" out of Carnegie, and it has always been "Dod" and "Naig" with us. No other names would mean anything. There were two roads by which to return from my uncle's house in the High Street to my home in Moodie Street at the foot of the town, one along the eerie churchyard of the Abbey among the dead, where there was no light; and the other along the lighted streets by way of the May Gate. When it became necessary for me to go home, my uncle, with a wicked pleasure, would ask which way I was going. Thinking what Wallace would do, I always replied I was going by the Abbey. I have the satisfaction of believing that never, not even upon one occasion, did I yield to the temptation to take the other turn and follow the lamps at the junction of the May Gate. I often passed along that churchyard and through the dark arch of the Abbey with my heart in my mouth. Trying to whistle and keep up my courage, I would plod through the darkness, falling back in all emergencies upon the thought of what Wallace would have done if he had met with any foe, natural or supernatural. King Robert the Bruce never got justice from my cousin or myself in childhood. It was enough for us that he was a king while Wallace was the man of the people. Sir John Graham was our second. The intensity of a Scottish boy's patriotism, reared as I was, constitutes a real force in his life to the very end. If the source of my stock of that prime article--courage--were studied, I am sure the final analysis would find it founded upon Wallace, the hero of Scotland. It is a tower of strength for a boy to have a hero. It gave me a pang to find when I reached America that there was any other country which pretended to have anything to be proud of. What was a country without Wallace, Bruce, and Burns? I find in the untraveled Scotsman of to-day something still of this feeling. It remains for maturer years and wider knowledge to tell us that every nation has its heroes, its romance, its traditions, and its achievements; and while the true Scotsman will not find reason in after years to lower the estimate he has formed of his own country and of its position even among the larger nations of the earth, he will find ample reason to raise his opinion of other nations because they all have much to be proud of--quite enough to stimulate their sons so to act their parts as not to disgrace the land that gave them birth. It was years before I could feel that the new land could be anything but a temporary abode. My heart was in Scotland. I resembled Principal Peterson's little boy who, when in Canada, in reply to a question, said he liked Canada "very well for a visit, but he could never live so far away from the remains of Bruce and Wallace." CHAPTER II DUNFERMLINE AND AMERICA My good Uncle Lauder justly set great value upon recitation in education, and many were the pennies which Dod and I received for this. In our little frocks or shirts, our sleeves rolled up, paper helmets and blackened faces, with laths for swords, my cousin and myself were kept constantly reciting Norval and Glenalvon, Roderick Dhu and James Fitz-James to our schoolmates and often to the older people. I remember distinctly that in the celebrated dialogue between Norval and Glenalvon we had some qualms about repeating the phrase,--"and false as _hell_." At first we made a slight cough over the objectionable word which always created amusement among the spectators. It was a great day for us when my uncle persuaded us that we could say "hell" without swearing. I am afraid we practiced it very often. I always played the part of Glenalvon and made a great mouthful of the word. It had for me the wonderful fascination attributed to forbidden fruit. I can well understand the story of Marjory Fleming, who being cross one morning when Walter Scott called and asked how she was, answered: "I am very cross this morning, Mr. Scott. I just want to say 'damn' [with a swing], but I winna." Thereafter the expression of the one fearful word was a great point. Ministers could say "damnation" in the pulpit without sin, and so we, too, had full range on "hell" in recitation. Another passage made a deep impression. In the fight between Norval and Glenalvon, Norval says, "When we contend again our strife is mortal." Using these words in an article written for the "North American Review" in 1897, my uncle came across them and immediately sat down and wrote me from Dunfermline that he knew where I had found the words. He was the only man living who did. My power to memorize must have been greatly strengthened by the mode of teaching adopted by my uncle. I cannot name a more important means of benefiting young people than encouraging them to commit favorite pieces to memory and recite them often. Anything which pleased me I could learn with a rapidity which surprised partial friends. I could memorize anything whether it pleased me or not, but if it did not impress me strongly it passed away in a few hours. One of the trials of my boy's life at school in Dunfermline was committing to memory two double verses of the Psalms which I had to recite daily. My plan was not to look at the psalm until I had started for school. It was not more than five or six minutes' slow walk, but I could readily master the task in that time, and, as the psalm was the first lesson, I was prepared and passed through the ordeal successfully. Had I been asked to repeat the psalm thirty minutes afterwards the attempt would, I fear, have ended in disastrous failure. The first penny I ever earned or ever received from any person beyond the family circle was one from my school-teacher, Mr. Martin, for repeating before the school Burns's poem, "Man was made to Mourn." In writing this I am reminded that in later years, dining with Mr. John Morley in London, the conversation turned upon the life of Wordsworth, and Mr. Morley said he had been searching his Burns for the poem to "Old Age," so much extolled by him, which he had not been able to find under that title. I had the pleasure of repeating part of it to him. He promptly handed me a second penny. Ah, great as Morley is, he wasn't my school-teacher, Mr. Martin--the first "great" man I ever knew. Truly great was he to me. But a hero surely is "Honest John" Morley. In religious matters we were not much hampered. While other boys and girls at school were compelled to learn the Shorter Catechism, Dod and I, by some arrangement the details of which I never clearly understood, were absolved. All of our family connections, Morrisons and Lauders, were advanced in their theological as in their political views, and had objections to the catechism, I have no doubt. We had not one orthodox Presbyterian in our family circle. My father, Uncle and Aunt Aitken, Uncle Lauder, and also my Uncle Carnegie, had fallen away from the tenets of Calvinism. At a later day most of them found refuge for a time in the doctrines of Swedenborg. My mother was always reticent upon religious subjects. She never mentioned these to me nor did she attend church, for she had no servant in those early days and did all the housework, including cooking our Sunday dinner. A great reader, always, Channing the Unitarian was in those days her special delight. She was a marvel! [Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE'S MOTHER] During my childhood the atmosphere around me was in a state of violent disturbance in matters theological as well as political. Along with the most advanced ideas which were being agitated in the political world--the death of privilege, the equality of the citizen, Republicanism--I heard many disputations upon theological subjects which the impressionable child drank in to an extent quite unthought of by his elders. I well remember that the stern doctrines of Calvinism lay as a terrible nightmare upon me, but that state of mind was soon over, owing to the influences of which I have spoken. I grew up treasuring within me the fact that my father had risen and left the Presbyterian Church one day when the minister preached the doctrine of infant damnation. This was shortly after I had made my appearance. Father could not stand it and said: "If that be your religion and that your God, I seek a better religion and a nobler God." He left the Presbyterian Church never to return, but he did not cease to attend various other churches. I saw him enter the closet every morning to pray and that impressed me. He was indeed a saint and always remained devout. All sects became to him as agencies for good. He had discovered that theologies were many, but religion was one. I was quite satisfied that my father knew better than the minister, who pictured not the Heavenly Father, but the cruel avenger of the Old Testament--an "Eternal Torturer" as Andrew D. White ventures to call him in his autobiography. Fortunately this conception of the Unknown is now largely of the past. One of the chief enjoyments of my childhood was the keeping of pigeons and rabbits. I am grateful every time I think of the trouble my father took to build a suitable house for these pets. Our home became headquarters for my young companions. My mother was always looking to home influences as the best means of keeping her two boys in the right path. She used to say that the first step in this direction was to make home pleasant; and there was nothing she and my father would not do to please us and the neighbors' children who centered about us. My first business venture was securing my companions' services for a season as an employer, the compensation being that the young rabbits, when such came, should be named after them. The Saturday holiday was generally spent by my flock in gathering food for the rabbits. My conscience reproves me to-day, looking back, when I think of the hard bargain I drove with my young playmates, many of whom were content to gather dandelions and clover for a whole season with me, conditioned upon this unique reward--the poorest return ever made to labor. Alas! what else had I to offer them! Not a penny. I treasure the remembrance of this plan as the earliest evidence of organizing power upon the development of which my material success in life has hung--a success not to be attributed to what I have known or done myself, but to the faculty of knowing and choosing others who did know better than myself. Precious knowledge this for any man to possess. I did not understand steam machinery, but I tried to understand that much more complicated piece of mechanism--man. Stopping at a small Highland inn on our coaching trip in 1898, a gentleman came forward and introduced himself. He was Mr. MacIntosh, the great furniture manufacturer of Scotland--a fine character as I found out afterward. He said he had ventured to make himself known as he was one of the boys who had gathered, and sometimes he feared "conveyed," spoil for the rabbits, and had "one named after him." It may be imagined how glad I was to meet him--the only one of the rabbit boys I have met in after-life. I hope to keep his friendship to the last and see him often. [As I read this manuscript to-day, December 1, 1913, I have a very precious note from him, recalling old times when we were boys together. He has a reply by this time that will warm his heart as his note did mine.] With the introduction and improvement of steam machinery, trade grew worse and worse in Dunfermline for the small manufacturers, and at last a letter was written to my mother's two sisters in Pittsburgh stating that the idea of our going to them was seriously entertained--not, as I remember hearing my parents say, to benefit their own condition, but for the sake of their two young sons. Satisfactory letters were received in reply. The decision was taken to sell the looms and furniture by auction. And my father's sweet voice sang often to mother, brother, and me: "To the West, to the West, to the land of the free, Where the mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea; Where a man is a man even though he must toil And the poorest may gather the fruits of the soil." The proceeds of the sale were most disappointing. The looms brought hardly anything, and the result was that twenty pounds more were needed to enable the family to pay passage to America. Here let me record an act of friendship performed by a lifelong companion of my mother--who always attracted stanch friends because she was so stanch herself--Mrs. Henderson, by birth Ella Ferguson, the name by which she was known in our family. She boldly ventured to advance the needful twenty pounds, my Uncles Lauder and Morrison guaranteeing repayment. Uncle Lauder also lent his aid and advice, managing all the details for us, and on the 17th day of May, 1848, we left Dunfermline. My father's age was then forty-three, my mother's thirty-three. I was in my thirteenth year, my brother Tom in his fifth year--a beautiful white-haired child with lustrous black eyes, who everywhere attracted attention. I had left school forever, with the exception of one winter's night-schooling in America, and later a French night-teacher for a time, and, strange to say, an elocutionist from whom I learned how to declaim. I could read, write, and cipher, and had begun the study of algebra and of Latin. A letter written to my Uncle Lauder during the voyage, and since returned, shows that I was then a better penman than now. I had wrestled with English grammar, and knew as little of what it was designed to teach as children usually do. I had read little except about Wallace, Bruce, and Burns; but knew many familiar pieces of poetry by heart. I should add to this the fairy tales of childhood, and especially the "Arabian Nights," by which I was carried into a new world. I was in dreamland as I devoured those stories. On the morning of the day we started from beloved Dunfermline, in the omnibus that ran upon the coal railroad to Charleston, I remember that I stood with tearful eyes looking out of the window until Dunfermline vanished from view, the last structure to fade being the grand and sacred old Abbey. During my first fourteen years of absence my thought was almost daily, as it was that morning, "When shall I see you again?" Few days passed in which I did not see in my mind's eye the talismanic letters on the Abbey tower--"King Robert The Bruce." All my recollections of childhood, all I knew of fairyland, clustered around the old Abbey and its curfew bell, which tolled at eight o'clock every evening and was the signal for me to run to bed before it stopped. I have referred to that bell in my "American Four-in-Hand in Britain"[10] when passing the Abbey and I may as well quote from it now: [Footnote 10: _An American Four-in-Hand in Britain_. New York, 1886.] As we drove down the Pends I was standing on the front seat of the coach with Provost Walls, when I heard the first toll of the Abbey bell, tolled in honor of my mother and myself. My knees sank from under me, the tears came rushing before I knew it, and I turned round to tell the Provost that I must give in. For a moment I felt as if I were about to faint. Fortunately I saw that there was no crowd before us for a little distance. I had time to regain control, and biting my lips till they actually bled, I murmured to myself, "No matter, keep cool, you must go on"; but never can there come to my ears on earth, nor enter so deep into my soul, a sound that shall haunt and subdue me with its sweet, gracious, melting power as that did. By that curfew bell I had been laid in my little couch to sleep the sleep of childish innocence. Father and mother, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, had told me as they bent lovingly over me night after night, what that bell said as it tolled. Many good words has that bell spoken to me through their translations. No wrong thing did I do through the day which that voice from all I knew of heaven and the great Father there did not tell me kindly about ere I sank to sleep, speaking the words so plainly that I knew that the power that moved it had seen all and was not angry, never angry, never, but so very, _very_ sorry. Nor is that bell dumb to me to-day when I hear its voice. It still has its message, and now it sounded to welcome back the exiled mother and son under its precious care again. The world has not within its power to devise, much less to bestow upon us, such reward as that which the Abbey bell gave when it tolled in our honor. But my brother Tom should have been there also; this was the thought that came. He, too, was beginning to know the wonders of that bell ere we were away to the newer land. Rousseau wished to die to the strains of sweet music. Could I choose my accompaniment, I could wish to pass into the dim beyond with the tolling of the Abbey bell sounding in my ears, telling me of the race that had been run, and calling me, as it had called the little white-haired child, for the last time--_to sleep_. I have had many letters from readers speaking of this passage in my book, some of the writers going so far as to say that tears fell as they read. It came from the heart and perhaps that is why it reached the hearts of others. We were rowed over in a small boat to the Edinburgh steamer in the Firth of Forth. As I was about to be taken from the small boat to the steamer, I rushed to Uncle Lauder and clung round his neck, crying out: "I cannot leave you! I cannot leave you!" I was torn from him by a kind sailor who lifted me up on the deck of the steamer. Upon my return visit to Dunfermline this dear old fellow, when he came to see me, told me it was the saddest parting he had ever witnessed. We sailed from the Broomielaw of Glasgow in the 800-ton sailing ship Wiscasset. During the seven weeks of the voyage, I came to know the sailors quite well, learned the names of the ropes, and was able to direct the passengers to answer the call of the boatswain, for the ship being undermanned, the aid of the passengers was urgently required. In consequence I was invited by the sailors to participate on Sundays, in the one delicacy of the sailors' mess, plum duff. I left the ship with sincere regret. The arrival at New York was bewildering. I had been taken to see the Queen at Edinburgh, but that was the extent of my travels before emigrating. Glasgow we had not time to see before we sailed. New York was the first great hive of human industry among the inhabitants of which I had mingled, and the bustle and excitement of it overwhelmed me. The incident of our stay in New York which impressed me most occurred while I was walking through Bowling Green at Castle Garden. I was caught up in the arms of one of the Wiscasset sailors, Robert Barryman, who was decked out in regular Jackashore fashion, with blue jacket and white trousers. I thought him the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He took me to a refreshment stand and ordered a glass of sarsaparilla for me, which I drank with as much relish as if it were the nectar of the gods. To this day nothing that I have ever seen of the kind rivals the image which remains in my mind of the gorgeousness of the highly ornamented brass vessel out of which that nectar came foaming. Often as I have passed the identical spot I see standing there the old woman's sarsaparilla stand, and I marvel what became of the dear old sailor. I have tried to trace him, but in vain, hoping that if found he might be enjoying a ripe old age, and that it might be in my power to add to the pleasure of his declining years. He was my ideal Tom Bowling, and when that fine old song is sung I always see as the "form of manly beauty" my dear old friend Barryman. Alas! ere this he's gone aloft. Well; by his kindness on the voyage he made one boy his devoted friend and admirer. We knew only Mr. and Mrs. Sloane in New York--parents of the well-known John, Willie, and Henry Sloane. Mrs. Sloane (Euphemia Douglas) was my mother's companion in childhood in Dunfermline. Mr. Sloane and my father had been fellow weavers. We called upon them and were warmly welcomed. It was a genuine pleasure when Willie, his son, bought ground from me in 1900 opposite our New York residence for his two married daughters so that our children of the third generation became playmates as our mothers were in Scotland. My father was induced by emigration agents in New York to take the Erie Canal by way of Buffalo and Lake Erie to Cleveland, and thence down the canal to Beaver--a journey which then lasted three weeks, and is made to-day by rail in ten hours. There was no railway communication then with Pittsburgh, nor indeed with any western town. The Erie Railway was under construction and we saw gangs of men at work upon it as we traveled. Nothing comes amiss to youth, and I look back upon my three weeks as a passenger upon the canal-boat with unalloyed pleasure. All that was disagreeable in my experience has long since faded from recollection, excepting the night we were compelled to remain upon the wharf-boat at Beaver waiting for the steamboat to take us up the Ohio to Pittsburgh. This was our first introduction to the mosquito in all its ferocity. My mother suffered so severely that in the morning she could hardly see. We were all frightful sights, but I do not remember that even the stinging misery of that night kept me from sleeping soundly. I could always sleep, never knowing "horrid night, the child of hell." Our friends in Pittsburgh had been anxiously waiting to hear from us, and in their warm and affectionate greeting all our troubles were forgotten. We took up our residence with them in Allegheny City. A brother of my Uncle Hogan had built a small weaver's shop at the back end of a lot in Rebecca Street. This had a second story in which there were two rooms, and it was in these (free of rent, for my Aunt Aitken owned them) that my parents began housekeeping. My uncle soon gave up weaving and my father took his place and began making tablecloths, which he had not only to weave, but afterwards, acting as his own merchant, to travel and sell, as no dealers could be found to take them in quantity. He was compelled to market them himself, selling from door to door. The returns were meager in the extreme. [Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE AT SIXTEEN WITH HIS BROTHER THOMAS] As usual, my mother came to the rescue. There was no keeping her down. In her youth she had learned to bind shoes in her father's business for pin-money, and the skill then acquired was now turned to account for the benefit of the family. Mr. Phipps, father of my friend and partner Mr. Henry Phipps, was, like my grandfather, a master shoemaker. He was our neighbor in Allegheny City. Work was obtained from him, and in addition to attending to her household duties--for, of course, we had no servant--this wonderful woman, my mother, earned four dollars a week by binding shoes. Midnight would often find her at work. In the intervals during the day and evening, when household cares would permit, and my young brother sat at her knee threading needles and waxing the thread for her, she recited to him, as she had to me, the gems of Scottish minstrelsy which she seemed to have by heart, or told him tales which failed not to contain a moral. This is where the children of honest poverty have the most precious of all advantages over those of wealth. The mother, nurse, cook, governess, teacher, saint, all in one; the father, exemplar, guide, counselor, and friend! Thus were my brother and I brought up. What has the child of millionaire or nobleman that counts compared to such a heritage? My mother was a busy woman, but all her work did not prevent her neighbors from soon recognizing her as a wise and kindly woman whom they could call upon for counsel or help in times of trouble. Many have told me what my mother did for them. So it was in after years wherever we resided; rich and poor came to her with their trials and found good counsel. She towered among her neighbors wherever she went. CHAPTER III PITTSBURGH AND WORK The great question now was, what could be found for me to do. I had just completed my thirteenth year, and I fairly panted to get to work that I might help the family to a start in the new land. The prospect of want had become to me a frightful nightmare. My thoughts at this period centered in the determination that we should make and save enough of money to produce three hundred dollars a year--twenty-five dollars monthly, which I figured was the sum required to keep us without being dependent upon others. Every necessary thing was very cheap in those days. The brother of my Uncle Hogan would often ask what my parents meant to do with me, and one day there occurred the most tragic of all scenes I have ever witnessed. Never can I forget it. He said, with the kindest intentions in the world, to my mother, that I was a likely boy and apt to learn; and he believed that if a basket were fitted out for me with knickknacks to sell, I could peddle them around the wharves and make quite a considerable sum. I never knew what an enraged woman meant till then. My mother was sitting sewing at the moment, but she sprang to her feet with outstretched hands and shook them in his face. "What! my son a peddler and go among rough men upon the wharves! I would rather throw him into the Allegheny River. Leave me!" she cried, pointing to the door, and Mr. Hogan went. She stood a tragic queen. The next moment she had broken down, but only for a few moments did tears fall and sobs come. Then she took her two boys in her arms and told us not to mind her foolishness. There were many things in the world for us to do and we could be useful men, honored and respected, if we always did what was right. It was a repetition of Helen Macgregor, in her reply to Osbaldistone in which she threatened to have her prisoners "chopped into as many pieces as there are checks in the tartan." But the reason for the outburst was different. It was not because the occupation suggested was peaceful labor, for we were taught that idleness was disgraceful; but because the suggested occupation was somewhat vagrant in character and not entirely respectable in her eyes. Better death. Yes, mother would have taken her two boys, one under each arm, and perished with them rather than they should mingle with low company in their extreme youth. As I look back upon the early struggles this can be said: there was not a prouder family in the land. A keen sense of honor, independence, self-respect, pervaded the household. Walter Scott said of Burns that he had the most extraordinary eye he ever saw in a human being. I can say as much for my mother. As Burns has it: "Her eye even turned on empty space, Beamed keen with honor." Anything low, mean, deceitful, shifty, coarse, underhand, or gossipy was foreign to that heroic soul. Tom and I could not help growing up respectable characters, having such a mother and such a father, for the father, too, was one of nature's noblemen, beloved by all, a saint. Soon after this incident my father found it necessary to give up hand-loom weaving and to enter the cotton factory of Mr. Blackstock, an old Scotsman in Allegheny City, where we lived. In this factory he also obtained for me a position as bobbin boy, and my first work was done there at one dollar and twenty cents per week. It was a hard life. In the winter father and I had to rise and breakfast in the darkness, reach the factory before it was daylight, and, with a short interval for lunch, work till after dark. The hours hung heavily upon me and in the work itself I took no pleasure; but the cloud had a silver lining, as it gave me the feeling that I was doing something for my world--our family. I have made millions since, but none of those millions gave me such happiness as my first week's earnings. I was now a helper of the family, a breadwinner, and no longer a total charge upon my parents. Often had I heard my father's beautiful singing of "The Boatie Rows" and often I longed to fulfill the last lines of the verse: "When Aaleck, Jock, and Jeanettie, _Are up and got their lair_,[11] They'll serve to gar the boatie row, And lichten a' our care." [Footnote 11: Education.] I was going to make our tiny craft skim. It should be noted here that Aaleck, Jock, and Jeanettie were first to get their education. Scotland was the first country that required all parents, high or low, to educate their children, and established the parish public schools. Soon after this Mr. John Hay, a fellow-Scotch manufacturer of bobbins in Allegheny City, needed a boy, and asked whether I would not go into his service. I went, and received two dollars per week; but at first the work was even more irksome than the factory. I had to run a small steam-engine and to fire the boiler in the cellar of the bobbin factory. It was too much for me. I found myself night after night, sitting up in bed trying the steam gauges, fearing at one time that the steam was too low and that the workers above would complain that they had not power enough, and at another time that the steam was too high and that the boiler might burst. But all this it was a matter of honor to conceal from my parents. They had their own troubles and bore them. I must play the man and bear mine. My hopes were high, and I looked every day for some change to take place. What it was to be I knew not, but that it would come I felt certain if I kept on. Besides, at this date I was not beyond asking myself what Wallace would have done and what a Scotsman ought to do. Of one thing I was sure, he ought never to give up. One day the chance came. Mr. Hay had to make out some bills. He had no clerk, and was himself a poor penman. He asked me what kind of hand I could write, and gave me some writing to do. The result pleased him, and he found it convenient thereafter to let me make out his bills. I was also good at figures; and he soon found it to be to his interest--and besides, dear old man, I believe he was moved by good feeling toward the white-haired boy, for he had a kind heart and was Scotch and wished to relieve me from the engine--to put me at other things, less objectionable except in one feature. It now became my duty to bathe the newly made spools in vats of oil. Fortunately there was a room reserved for this purpose and I was alone, but not all the resolution I could muster, nor all the indignation I felt at my own weakness, prevented my stomach from behaving in a most perverse way. I never succeeded in overcoming the nausea produced by the smell of the oil. Even Wallace and Bruce proved impotent here. But if I had to lose breakfast, or dinner, I had all the better appetite for supper, and the allotted work was done. A real disciple of Wallace or Bruce could not give up; he would die first. My service with Mr. Hay was a distinct advance upon the cotton factory, and I also made the acquaintance of an employer who was very kind to me. Mr. Hay kept his books in single entry, and I was able to handle them for him; but hearing that all great firms kept their books in double entry, and after talking over the matter with my companions, John Phipps, Thomas N. Miller, and William Cowley, we all determined to attend night school during the winter and learn the larger system. So the four of us went to a Mr. Williams in Pittsburgh and learned double-entry bookkeeping. One evening, early in 1850, when I returned home from work, I was told that Mr. David Brooks, manager of the telegraph office, had asked my Uncle Hogan if he knew where a good boy could be found to act as messenger. Mr. Brooks and my uncle were enthusiastic draught-players, and it was over a game of draughts that this important inquiry was made. Upon such trifles do the most momentous consequences hang. A word, a look, an accent, may affect the destiny not only of individuals, but of nations. He is a bold man who calls anything a trifle. Who was it who, being advised to disregard trifles, said he always would if any one could tell him what a trifle was? The young should remember that upon trifles the best gifts of the gods often hang. My uncle mentioned my name, and said he would see whether I would take the position. I remember so well the family council that was held. Of course I was wild with delight. No bird that ever was confined in a cage longed for freedom more than I. Mother favored, but father was disposed to deny my wish. It would prove too much for me, he said; I was too young and too small. For the two dollars and a half per week offered it was evident that a much larger boy was expected. Late at night I might be required to run out into the country with a telegram, and there would be dangers to encounter. Upon the whole my father said that it was best that I should remain where I was. He subsequently withdrew his objection, so far as to give me leave to try, and I believe he went to Mr. Hay and consulted with him. Mr. Hay thought it would be for my advantage, and although, as he said, it would be an inconvenience to him, still he advised that I should try, and if I failed he was kind enough to say that my old place would be open for me. This being decided, I was asked to go over the river to Pittsburgh and call on Mr. Brooks. My father wished to go with me, and it was settled that he should accompany me as far as the telegraph office, on the corner of Fourth and Wood Streets. It was a bright, sunshiny morning and this augured well. Father and I walked over from Allegheny to Pittsburgh, a distance of nearly two miles from our house. Arrived at the door I asked father to wait outside. I insisted upon going alone upstairs to the second or operating floor to see the great man and learn my fate. I was led to this, perhaps, because I had by that time begun to consider myself something of an American. At first boys used to call me "Scotchie! Scotchie!" and I answered, "Yes, I'm Scotch and I am proud of the name." But in speech and in address the broad Scotch had been worn off to a slight extent, and I imagined that I could make a smarter showing if alone with Mr. Brooks than if my good old Scotch father were present, perhaps to smile at my airs. I was dressed in my one white linen shirt, which was usually kept sacred for the Sabbath day, my blue round-about, and my whole Sunday suit. I had at that time, and for a few weeks after I entered the telegraph service, but one linen suit of summer clothing; and every Saturday night, no matter if that was my night on duty and I did not return till near midnight, my mother washed those clothes and ironed them, and I put them on fresh on Sabbath morning. There was nothing that heroine did not do in the struggle we were making for elbow room in the western world. Father's long factory hours tried his strength, but he, too, fought the good fight like a hero and never failed to encourage me. The interview was successful. I took care to explain that I did not know Pittsburgh, that perhaps I would not do, would not be strong enough; but all I wanted was a trial. He asked me how soon I could come, and I said that I could stay now if wanted. And, looking back over the circumstance, I think that answer might well be pondered by young men. It is a great mistake not to seize the opportunity. The position was offered to me; something might occur, some other boy might be sent for. Having got myself in I proposed to stay there if I could. Mr. Brooks very kindly called the other boy--for it was an additional messenger that was wanted--and asked him to show me about, and let me go with him and learn the business. I soon found opportunity to run down to the corner of the street and tell my father that it was all right, and to go home and tell mother that I had got the situation. [Illustration: DAVID McCARGO] And that is how in 1850 I got my first real start in life. From the dark cellar running a steam-engine at two dollars a week, begrimed with coal dirt, without a trace of the elevating influences of life, I was lifted into paradise, yes, heaven, as it seemed to me, with newspapers, pens, pencils, and sunshine about me. There was scarcely a minute in which I could not learn something or find out how much there was to learn and how little I knew. I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and that I was bound to climb. I had only one fear, and that was that I could not learn quickly enough the addresses of the various business houses to which messages had to be delivered. I therefore began to note the signs of these houses up one side of the street and down the other. At night I exercised my memory by naming in succession the various firms. Before long I could shut my eyes and, beginning at the foot of a business street, call off the names of the firms in proper order along one side to the top of the street, then crossing on the other side go down in regular order to the foot again. The next step was to know the men themselves, for it gave a messenger a great advantage, and often saved a long journey, if he knew members or employees of firms. He might meet one of these going direct to his office. It was reckoned a great triumph among the boys to deliver a message upon the street. And there was the additional satisfaction to the boy himself, that a great man (and most men are great to messengers), stopped upon the street in this way, seldom failed to note the boy and compliment him. The Pittsburgh of 1850 was very different from what it has since become. It had not yet recovered from the great fire which destroyed the entire business portion of the city on April 10, 1845. The houses were mainly of wood, a few only were of brick, and not one was fire-proof. The entire population in and around Pittsburgh was not over forty thousand. The business portion of the city did not extend as far as Fifth Avenue, which was then a very quiet street, remarkable only for having the theater upon it. Federal Street, Allegheny, consisted of straggling business houses with great open spaces between them, and I remember skating upon ponds in the very heart of the present Fifth Ward. The site of our Union Iron Mills was then, and many years later, a cabbage garden. General Robinson, to whom I delivered many a telegraph message, was the first white child born west of the Ohio River. I saw the first telegraph line stretched from the east into the city; and, at a later date, I also saw the first locomotive, for the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad, brought by canal from Philadelphia and unloaded from a scow in Allegheny City. There was no direct railway communication to the East. Passengers took the canal to the foot of the Allegheny Mountains, over which they were transported to Hollidaysburg, a distance of thirty miles by rail; thence by canal again to Columbia, and then eighty-one miles by rail to Philadelphia--a journey which occupied three days.[12] [Footnote 12: "Beyond Philadelphia was the Camden and Amboy Railway; beyond Pittsburgh, the Fort Wayne and Chicago, separate organizations with which we had nothing to do." (_Problems of To-day_, by Andrew Carnegie, p. 187. New York, 1908.)] The great event of the day in Pittsburgh at that time was the arrival and departure of the steam packet to and from Cincinnati, for daily communication had been established. The business of the city was largely that of forwarding merchandise East and West, for it was the great transfer station from river to canal. A rolling mill had begun to roll iron; but not a ton of pig metal was made, and not a ton of steel for many a year thereafter. The pig iron manufacture at first was a total failure because of the lack of proper fuel, although the most valuable deposit of coking coal in the world lay within a few miles, as much undreamt of for coke to smelt ironstone as the stores of natural gas which had for ages lain untouched under the city. There were at that time not half a dozen "carriage" people in the town; and not for many years after was the attempt made to introduce livery, even for a coachman. As late as 1861, perhaps, the most notable financial event which had occurred in the annals of Pittsburgh was the retirement from business of Mr. Fahnestock with the enormous sum of $174,000, paid by his partners for his interest. How great a sum that seemed then and how trifling now! My position as messenger boy soon made me acquainted with the few leading men of the city. The bar of Pittsburgh was distinguished. Judge Wilkins was at its head, and he and Judge MacCandless, Judge McClure, Charles Shaler and his partner, Edwin M. Stanton, afterwards the great War Secretary ("Lincoln's right-hand man") were all well known to me--the last-named especially, for he was good enough to take notice of me as a boy. In business circles among prominent men who still survive, Thomas M. Howe, James Park, C.G. Hussey, Benjamin F. Jones, William Thaw, John Chalfant, Colonel Herron were great men to whom the messenger boys looked as models, and not bad models either, as their lives proved. [Alas! all dead as I revise this paragraph in 1906, so steadily moves the solemn procession.] My life as a telegraph messenger was in every respect a happy one, and it was while in this position that I laid the foundation of my closest friendships. The senior messenger boy being promoted, a new boy was needed, and he came in the person of David McCargo, afterwards the well-known superintendent of the Allegheny Valley Railway. He was made my companion and we had to deliver all the messages from the Eastern line, while two other boys delivered the messages from the West. The Eastern and Western Telegraph Companies were then separate, although occupying the same building. "Davy" and I became firm friends at once, one great bond being that he was Scotch; for, although "Davy" was born in America, his father was quite as much a Scotsman, even in speech, as my own father. A short time after "Davy's" appointment a third boy was required, and this time I was asked if I could find a suitable one. This I had no difficulty in doing in my chum, Robert Pitcairn, later on my successor as superintendent and general agent at Pittsburgh of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Robert, like myself, was not only Scotch, but Scotch-born, so that "Davy," "Bob," and "Andy" became the three Scotch boys who delivered all the messages of the Eastern Telegraph Line in Pittsburgh, for the then magnificent salary of two and a half dollars per week. It was the duty of the boys to sweep the office each morning, and this we did in turn, so it will be seen that we all began at the bottom. Hon. H.W. Oliver,[13] head of the great manufacturing firm of Oliver Brothers, and W.C. Morland,[14] City Solicitor, subsequently joined the corps and started in the same fashion. It is not the rich man's son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race of life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the "dark horse" in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office. [Footnote 13: Died 1904.] [Footnote 14: Died 1889.] [Illustration: ROBERT PITCAIRN] A messenger boy in those days had many pleasures. There were wholesale fruit stores, where a pocketful of apples was sometimes to be had for the prompt delivery of a message; bakers' and confectioners' shops, where sweet cakes were sometimes given to him. He met with very kind men, to whom he looked up with respect; they spoke a pleasant word and complimented him on his promptness, perhaps asked him to deliver a message on the way back to the office. I do not know a situation in which a boy is more apt to attract attention, which is all a really clever boy requires in order to rise. Wise men are always looking out for clever boys. One great excitement of this life was the extra charge of ten cents which we were permitted to collect for messages delivered beyond a certain limit. These "dime messages," as might be expected, were anxiously watched, and quarrels arose among us as to the right of delivery. In some cases it was alleged boys had now and then taken a dime message out of turn. This was the only cause of serious trouble among us. By way of settlement I proposed that we should "pool" these messages and divide the cash equally at the end of each week. I was appointed treasurer. Peace and good-humor reigned ever afterwards. This pooling of extra earnings not being intended to create artificial prices was really coöperation. It was my first essay in financial organization. The boys considered that they had a perfect right to spend these dividends, and the adjoining confectioner's shop had running accounts with most of them. The accounts were sometimes greatly overdrawn. The treasurer had accordingly to notify the confectioner, which he did in due form, that he would not be responsible for any debts contracted by the too hungry and greedy boys. Robert Pitcairn was the worst offender of all, apparently having not only one sweet tooth, but all his teeth of that character. He explained to me confidentially one day, when I scolded him, that he had live things in his stomach that gnawed his insides until fed upon sweets. CHAPTER IV COLONEL ANDERSON AND BOOKS With all their pleasures the messenger boys were hard worked. Every other evening they were required to be on duty until the office closed, and on these nights it was seldom that I reached home before eleven o'clock. On the alternating nights we were relieved at six. This did not leave much time for self-improvement, nor did the wants of the family leave any money to spend on books. There came, however, like a blessing from above, a means by which the treasures of literature were unfolded to me. Colonel James Anderson--I bless his name as I write--announced that he would open his library of four hundred volumes to boys, so that any young man could take out, each Saturday afternoon, a book which could be exchanged for another on the succeeding Saturday. My friend, Mr. Thomas N. Miller, reminded me recently that Colonel Anderson's books were first opened to "working boys," and the question arose whether messenger boys, clerks, and others, who did not work with their hands, were entitled to books. My first communication to the press was a note, written to the "Pittsburgh Dispatch," urging that we should not be excluded; that although we did not now work with our hands, some of us had done so, and that we were really working boys.[15] Dear Colonel Anderson promptly enlarged the classification. So my first appearance as a public writer was a success. [Footnote 15: The note was signed "Working Boy." The librarian responded in the columns of the _Dispatch_ defending the rules, which he claimed meant that "a Working Boy should have a trade." Carnegie's rejoinder was signed "A Working Boy, though without a Trade," and a day or two thereafter the _Dispatch_ had an item on its editorial page which read: "Will 'a Working Boy without a Trade' please call at this office." (David Homer Bates in _Century Magazine_, July, 1908.)] My dear friend, Tom Miller, one of the inner circle, lived near Colonel Anderson and introduced me to him, and in this way the windows were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of knowledge streamed in. Every day's toil and even the long hours of night service were lightened by the book which I carried about with me and read in the intervals that could be snatched from duty. And the future was made bright by the thought that when Saturday came a new volume could be obtained. In this way I became familiar with Macaulay's essays and his history, and with Bancroft's "History of the United States," which I studied with more care than any other book I had then read. Lamb's essays were my special delight, but I had at this time no knowledge of the great master of all, Shakespeare, beyond the selected pieces in the school books. My taste for him I acquired a little later at the old Pittsburgh Theater. John Phipps, James R. Wilson, Thomas N. Miller, William Cowley--members of our circle--shared with me the invaluable privilege of the use of Colonel Anderson's library. Books which it would have been impossible for me to obtain elsewhere were, by his wise generosity, placed within my reach; and to him I owe a taste for literature which I would not exchange for all the millions that were ever amassed by man. Life would be quite intolerable without it. Nothing contributed so much to keep my companions and myself clear of low fellowship and bad habits as the beneficence of the good Colonel. Later, when fortune smiled upon me, one of my first duties was the erection of a monument to my benefactor. It stands in front of the Hall and Library in Diamond Square, which I presented to Allegheny, and bears this inscription: To Colonel James Anderson, Founder of Free Libraries in Western Pennsylvania. He opened his Library to working boys and upon Saturday afternoons acted as librarian, thus dedicating not only his books but himself to the noble work. This monument is erected in grateful remembrance by Andrew Carnegie, one of the "working boys" to whom were thus opened the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination through which youth may ascend. [Illustration: COLONEL JAMES ANDERSON] This is but a slight tribute and gives only a faint idea of the depth of gratitude which I feel for what he did for me and my companions. It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community which is willing to support it as a municipal institution. I am sure that the future of those libraries I have been privileged to found will prove the correctness of this opinion. For if one boy in each library district, by having access to one of these libraries, is half as much benefited as I was by having access to Colonel Anderson's four hundred well-worn volumes, I shall consider they have not been established in vain. "As the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The treasures of the world which books contain were opened to me at the right moment. The fundamental advantage of a library is that it gives nothing for nothing. Youths must acquire knowledge themselves. There is no escape from this. It gave me great satisfaction to discover, many years later, that my father was one of the five weavers in Dunfermline who gathered together the few books they had and formed the first circulating library in that town. The history of that library is interesting. It grew, and was removed no less than seven times from place to place, the first move being made by the founders, who carried the books in their aprons and two coal scuttles from the hand-loom shop to the second resting-place. That my father was one of the founders of the first library in his native town, and that I have been fortunate enough to be the founder of the last one, is certainly to me one of the most interesting incidents of my life. I have said often, in public speeches, that I had never heard of a lineage for which I would exchange that of a library-founding weaver.[16] I followed my father in library founding unknowingly--I am tempted almost to say providentially--and it has been a source of intense satisfaction to me. Such a father as mine was a guide to be followed--one of the sweetest, purest, and kindest natures I have ever known. [Footnote 16: "It's a God's mercy we are all from honest weavers; let us pity those who haven't ancestors of whom they can be proud, dukes or duchesses though they be." (_Our Coaching Trip_, by Andrew Carnegie. New York, 1882.)] I have stated that it was the theater which first stimulated my love for Shakespeare. In my messenger days the old Pittsburgh Theater was in its glory under the charge of Mr. Foster. His telegraphic business was done free, and the telegraph operators were given free admission to the theater in return. This privilege extended in some degree also to the messengers, who, I fear, sometimes withheld telegrams that arrived for him in the late afternoon until they could be presented at the door of the theater in the evening, with the timid request that the messenger might be allowed to slip upstairs to the second tier--a request which was always granted. The boys exchanged duties to give each the coveted entrance in turn. In this way I became acquainted with the world that lay behind the green curtain. The plays, generally, were of the spectacular order; without much literary merit, but well calculated to dazzle the eye of a youth of fifteen. Not only had I never seen anything so grand, but I had never seen anything of the kind. I had never been in a theater, or even a concert room, or seen any form of public amusement. It was much the same with "Davy" McCargo, "Harry" Oliver, and "Bob" Pitcairn. We all fell under the fascination of the footlights, and every opportunity to attend the theater was eagerly embraced. A change in my tastes came when "Gust" Adams,[17] one of the most celebrated tragedians of the day, began to play in Pittsburgh a round of Shakespearean characters. Thenceforth there was nothing for me but Shakespeare. I seemed to be able to memorize him almost without effort. Never before had I realized what magic lay in words. The rhythm and the melody all seemed to find a resting-place in me, to melt into a solid mass which lay ready to come at call. It was a new language and its appreciation I certainly owe to dramatic representation, for, until I saw "Macbeth" played, my interest in Shakespeare was not aroused. I had not read the plays. [Footnote 17: Edwin Adams.] At a much later date, Wagner was revealed to me in "Lohengrin." I had heard at the Academy of Music in New York, little or nothing by him when the overture to "Lohengrin" thrilled me as a new revelation. Here was a genius, indeed, differing from all before, a new ladder upon which to climb upward--like Shakespeare, a new friend. I may speak here of another matter which belongs to this same period. A few persons in Allegheny--probably not above a hundred in all--had formed themselves into a Swedenborgian Society, in which our American relatives were prominent. My father attended that church after leaving the Presbyterian, and, of course, I was taken there. My mother, however, took no interest in Swedenborg. Although always inculcating respect for all forms of religion, and discouraging theological disputes, she maintained for herself a marked reserve. Her position might best be defined by the celebrated maxim of Confucius: "To perform the duties of this life well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom." She encouraged her boys to attend church and Sunday school; but there was no difficulty in seeing that the writings of Swedenborg, and much of the Old and New Testaments had been discredited by her as unworthy of divine authorship or of acceptance as authoritative guides for the conduct of life. I became deeply interested in the mysterious doctrines of Swedenborg, and received the congratulations of my devout Aunt Aitken upon my ability to expound "spiritual sense." That dear old woman fondly looked forward to a time when I should become a shining light in the New Jerusalem, and I know it was sometimes not beyond the bounds of her imagination that I might blossom into what she called a "preacher of the Word." As I more and more wandered from man-made theology these fond hopes weakened, but my aunt's interest in and affection for her first nephew, whom she had dandled on her knee in Scotland, never waned. My cousin, Leander Morris, whom she had some hopes of saving through the Swedenborgian revelation, grievously disappointed her by actually becoming a Baptist and being dipped. This was too much for the evangelist, although she should have remembered her father passed through that same experience and often preached for the Baptists in Edinburgh. Leander's reception upon his first call after his fall was far from cordial. He was made aware that the family record had suffered by his backsliding when at the very portals of the New Jerusalem revealed by Swedenborg and presented to him by one of the foremost disciples--his aunt. He began deprecatingly: "Why are you so hard on me, aunt? Look at Andy, he is not a member of any church and you don't scold him. Surely the Baptist Church is better than none." The quick reply came: "Andy! Oh! Andy, he's naked, but you are clothed in rags." He never quite regained his standing with dear Aunt Aitken. I might yet be reformed, being unattached; but Leander had chosen a sect and that sect not of the New Jerusalem. It was in connection with the Swedenborgian Society that a taste for music was first aroused in me. As an appendix to the hymn-book of the society there were short selections from the oratorios. I fastened instinctively upon these, and although denied much of a voice, yet credited with "expression," I was a constant attendant upon choir practice. The leader, Mr. Koethen, I have reason to believe, often pardoned the discords I produced in the choir because of my enthusiasm in the cause. When, at a later date, I became acquainted with the oratorios in full, it was a pleasure to find that several of those considered in musical circles as the gems of Handel's musical compositions were the ones that I as an ignorant boy had chosen as favorites. So the beginning of my musical education dates from the small choir of the Swedenborgian Society of Pittsburgh. I must not, however, forget that a very good foundation was laid for my love of sweet sounds in the unsurpassed minstrelsy of my native land as sung by my father. There was scarcely an old Scottish song with which I was not made familiar, both words and tune. Folk-songs are the best possible foundation for sure progress to the heights of Beethoven and Wagner. My father being one of the sweetest and most pathetic singers I ever heard, I probably inherited his love of music and of song, though not given his voice. Confucius' exclamation often sounds in my ears: "Music, sacred tongue of God! I hear thee calling and I come." An incident of this same period exhibits the liberality of my parents in another matter. As a messenger boy I had no holidays, with the exception of two weeks given me in the summer-time, which I spent boating on the river with cousins at my uncle's at East Liverpool, Ohio. I was very fond of skating, and in the winter about which I am speaking, the slack water of the river opposite our house was beautifully frozen over. The ice was in splendid condition, and reaching home late Saturday night the question arose whether I might be permitted to rise early in the morning and go skating before church hours. No question of a more serious character could have been submitted to ordinary Scottish parents. My mother was clear on the subject, that in the circumstances I should be allowed to skate as long as I liked. My father said he believed it was right I should go down and skate, but he hoped I would be back in time to go with him to church. I suppose this decision would be arrived at to-day by nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand homes in America, and probably also in the majority of homes in England, though not in Scotland. But those who hold to-day that the Sabbath in its fullest sense was made for man, and who would open picture galleries and museums to the public, and make the day somewhat of a day of enjoyment for the masses instead of pressing upon them the duty of mourning over sins largely imaginary, are not more advanced than were my parents forty years ago. They were beyond the orthodox of the period when it was scarcely permissible, at least among the Scotch, to take a walk for pleasure or read any but religious books on the Sabbath. CHAPTER V THE TELEGRAPH OFFICE I had served as messenger about a year, when Colonel John P. Glass, the manager of the downstairs office, who came in contact with the public, began selecting me occasionally to watch the office for a few minutes during his absence. As Mr. Glass was a highly popular man, and had political aspirations, these periods of absence became longer and more frequent, so that I soon became an adept in his branch of the work. I received messages from the public and saw that those that came from the operating-room were properly assigned to the boys for prompt delivery. This was a trying position for a boy to fill, and at that time I was not popular with the other boys, who resented my exemption from part of my legitimate work. I was also taxed with being penurious in my habits--mean, as the boys had it. I did not spend my extra dimes, but they knew not the reason. Every penny that I could save I knew was needed at home. My parents were wise and nothing was withheld from me. I knew every week the receipts of each of the three who were working--my father, my mother, and myself. I also knew all the expenditures. We consulted upon the additions that could be made to our scanty stock of furniture and clothing and every new small article obtained was a source of joy. There never was a family more united. Day by day, as mother could spare a silver half-dollar, it was carefully placed in a stocking and hid until two hundred were gathered, when I obtained a draft to repay the twenty pounds so generously lent to us by her friend Mrs. Henderson. That was a day we celebrated. The Carnegie family was free from debt. Oh, the happiness of that day! The debt was, indeed, discharged, but the debt of gratitude remains that never can be paid. Old Mrs. Henderson lives to-day. I go to her house as to a shrine, to see her upon my visits to Dunfermline; and whatever happens she can never be forgotten. [As I read these lines, written some years ago, I moan, "Gone, gone with the others!" Peace to the ashes of a dear, good, noble friend of my mother's.] The incident in my messenger life which at once lifted me to the seventh heaven, occurred one Saturday evening when Colonel Glass was paying the boys their month's wages. We stood in a row before the counter, and Mr. Glass paid each one in turn. I was at the head and reached out my hand for the first eleven and a quarter dollars as they were pushed out by Mr. Glass. To my surprise he pushed them past me and paid the next boy. I thought it was a mistake, for I had heretofore been paid first, but it followed in turn with each of the other boys. My heart began to sink within me. Disgrace seemed coming. What had I done or not done? I was about to be told that there was no more work for me. I was to disgrace the family. That was the keenest pang of all. When all had been paid and the boys were gone, Mr. Glass took me behind the counter and said that I was worth more than the other boys, and he had resolved to pay me thirteen and a half dollars a month. My head swam; I doubted whether I had heard him correctly. He counted out the money. I don't know whether I thanked him; I don't believe I did. I took it and made one bound for the door and scarcely stopped until I got home. I remember distinctly running or rather bounding from end to end of the bridge across the Allegheny River--inside on the wagon track because the foot-walk was too narrow. It was Saturday night. I handed over to mother, who was the treasurer of the family, the eleven dollars and a quarter and said nothing about the remaining two dollars and a quarter in my pocket--worth more to me then than all the millions I have made since. Tom, a little boy of nine, and myself slept in the attic together, and after we were safely in bed I whispered the secret to my dear little brother. Even at his early age he knew what it meant, and we talked over the future. It was then, for the first time, I sketched to him how we would go into business together; that the firm of "Carnegie Brothers" would be a great one, and that father and mother should yet ride in their carriage. At the time that seemed to us to embrace everything known as wealth and most of what was worth striving for. The old Scotch woman, whose daughter married a merchant in London, being asked by her son-in-law to come to London and live near them, promising she should "ride in her carriage," replied: "What good could it do me to ride in a carriage gin I could na be seen by the folk in Strathbogie?" Father and mother would not only be seen in Pittsburgh, but should visit Dunfermline, their old home, in style. On Sunday morning with father, mother, and Tom at breakfast, I produced the extra two dollars and a quarter. The surprise was great and it took some moments for them to grasp the situation, but it soon dawned upon them. Then father's glance of loving pride and mother's blazing eye soon wet with tears, told their feeling. It was their boy's first triumph and proof positive that he was worthy of promotion. No subsequent success, or recognition of any kind, ever thrilled me as this did. I cannot even imagine one that could. Here was heaven upon earth. My whole world was moved to tears of joy. Having to sweep out the operating-room in the mornings, the boys had an opportunity of practicing upon the telegraph instruments before the operators arrived. This was a new chance. I soon began to play with the key and to talk with the boys who were at the other stations who had like purposes to my own. Whenever one learns to do anything he has never to wait long for an opportunity of putting his knowledge to use. One morning I heard the Pittsburgh call given with vigor. It seemed to me I could divine that some one wished greatly to communicate. I ventured to answer, and let the slip run. It was Philadelphia that wanted to send "a death message" to Pittsburgh immediately. Could I take it? I replied that I would try if they would send slowly. I succeeded in getting the message and ran out with it. I waited anxiously for Mr. Brooks to come in, and told him what I had dared to do. Fortunately, he appreciated it and complimented me, instead of scolding me for my temerity; yet dismissing me with the admonition to be very careful and not to make mistakes. It was not long before I was called sometimes to watch the instrument, while the operator wished to be absent, and in this way I learned the art of telegraphy. We were blessed at this time with a rather indolent operator, who was only too glad to have me do his work. It was then the practice for us to receive the messages on a running slip of paper, from which the operator read to a copyist, but rumors had reached us that a man in the West had learned to read by sound and could really take a message by ear. This led me to practice the new method. One of the operators in the office, Mr. Maclean, became expert at it, and encouraged me by his success. I was surprised at the ease with which I learned the new language. One day, desiring to take a message in the absence of the operator, the old gentleman who acted as copyist resented my presumption and refused to "copy" for a messenger boy. I shut off the paper slip, took pencil and paper and began taking the message by ear. I shall never forget his surprise. He ordered me to give him back his pencil and pad, and after that there was never any difficulty between dear old Courtney Hughes and myself. He was my devoted friend and copyist. Soon after this incident Joseph Taylor, the operator at Greensburg, thirty miles from Pittsburgh, wishing to be absent for two weeks, asked Mr. Brooks if he could not send some one to take his place. Mr. Brooks called me and asked whether I thought I could do the work. I replied at once in the affirmative. "Well," he said, "we will send you out there for a trial." I went out in the mail stage and had a most delightful trip. Mr. David Bruce, a well-known solicitor of Scottish ancestry, and his sister happened to be passengers. It was my first excursion, and my first glimpse of the country. The hotel at Greensburg was the first public house in which I had ever taken a meal. I thought the food wonderfully fine. [Illustration: HENRY PHIPPS] This was in 1852. Deep cuts and embankments near Greensburg were then being made for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and I often walked out in the early morning to see the work going forward, little dreaming that I was so soon to enter the service of that great corporation. This was the first responsible position I had occupied in the telegraph service, and I was so anxious to be at hand in case I should be needed, that one night very late I sat in the office during a storm, not wishing to cut off the connection. I ventured too near the key and for my boldness was knocked off my stool. A flash of lightning very nearly ended my career. After that I was noted in the office for caution during lightning storms. I succeeded in doing the small business at Greensburg to the satisfaction of my superiors, and returned to Pittsburgh surrounded with something like a halo, so far as the other boys were concerned. Promotion soon came. A new operator was wanted and Mr. Brooks telegraphed to my afterward dear friend James D. Reid, then general superintendent of the line, another fine specimen of the Scotsman, and took upon himself to recommend me as an assistant operator. The telegram from Louisville in reply stated that Mr. Reid highly approved of promoting "Andy," provided Mr. Brooks considered him competent. The result was that I began as a telegraph operator at the tremendous salary of twenty-five dollars per month, which I thought a fortune. To Mr. Brooks and Mr. Reid I owe my promotion from the messenger's station to the operating-room.[18] I was then in my seventeenth year and had served my apprenticeship. I was now performing a man's part, no longer a boy's--earning a dollar every working day. [Footnote 18: "I liked the boy's looks, and it was very easy to see that though he was little he was full of spirit. He had not been with me a month when he began to ask whether I would teach him to telegraph. I began to instruct him and found him an apt pupil." (James D. Reid, _The Telegraph in America_, New York, 1879.) Reid was born near Dunfermline and forty years afterwards Mr. Carnegie was able to secure for him the appointment of United States Consul at Dunfermline.] The operating-room of a telegraph office is an excellent school for a young man. He there has to do with pencil and paper, with composition and invention. And there my slight knowledge of British and European affairs soon stood me in good stead. Knowledge is sure to prove useful in one way or another. It always tells. The foreign news was then received by wire from Cape Race, and the taking of successive "steamer news" was one of the most notable of our duties. I liked this better than any other branch of the work, and it was soon tacitly assigned to me. The lines in those days worked poorly, and during a storm much had to be guessed at. My guessing powers were said to be phenomenal, and it was my favorite diversion to fill up gaps instead of interrupting the sender and spending minutes over a lost word or two. This was not a dangerous practice in regard to foreign news, for if any undue liberties were taken by the bold operator, they were not of a character likely to bring him into serious trouble. My knowledge of foreign affairs became somewhat extensive, especially regarding the affairs of Britain, and my guesses were quite safe, if I got the first letter or two right. The Pittsburgh newspapers had each been in the habit of sending a reporter to the office to transcribe the press dispatches. Later on one man was appointed for all the papers and he suggested that multiple copies could readily be made of the news as received, and it was arranged that I should make five copies of all press dispatches for him as extra work for which he was to pay me a dollar per week. This, my first work for the press, yielded very modest remuneration, to be sure; but it made my salary thirty dollars per month, and every dollar counted in those days. The family was gradually gaining ground; already future millionairedom seemed dawning. Another step which exercised a decided influence over me was joining the "Webster Literary Society" along with my companions, the trusty five already named. We formed a select circle and stuck closely together. This was quite an advantage for all of us. We had before this formed a small debating club which met in Mr. Phipps's father's room in which his few journeymen shoemakers worked during the day. Tom Miller recently alleged that I once spoke nearly an hour and a half upon the question, "Should the judiciary be elected by the people?" but we must mercifully assume his memory to be at fault. The "Webster" was then the foremost club in the city and proud were we to be thought fit for membership. We had merely been preparing ourselves in the cobbler's room. I know of no better mode of benefiting a youth than joining such a club as this. Much of my reading became such as had a bearing on forthcoming debates and that gave clearness and fixity to my ideas. The self-possession I afterwards came to have before an audience may very safely be attributed to the experience of the "Webster Society." My two rules for speaking then (and now) were: Make yourself perfectly at home before your audience, and simply talk _to_ them, not _at_ them. Do not try to be somebody else; be your own self and _talk_, never "orate" until you can't help it. I finally became an operator by sound, discarding printing entirely. The accomplishment was then so rare that people visited the office to be satisfied of the extraordinary feat. This brought me into such notice that when a great flood destroyed all telegraph communication between Steubenville and Wheeling, a distance of twenty-five miles, I was sent to the former town to receive the entire business then passing between the East and the West, and to send every hour or two the dispatches in small boats down the river to Wheeling. In exchange every returning boat brought rolls of dispatches which I wired East, and in this way for more than a week the entire telegraphic communication between the East and the West _via_ Pittsburgh was maintained. While at Steubenville I learned that my father was going to Wheeling and Cincinnati to sell the tablecloths he had woven. I waited for the boat, which did not arrive till late in the evening, and went down to meet him. I remember how deeply affected I was on finding that instead of taking a cabin passage, he had resolved not to pay the price, but to go down the river as a deck passenger. I was indignant that one of so fine a nature should be compelled to travel thus. But there was comfort in saying: "Well, father, it will not be long before mother and you shall ride in your carriage." My father was usually shy, reserved, and keenly sensitive, very saving of praise (a Scotch trait) lest his sons might be too greatly uplifted; but when touched he lost his self-control. He was so upon this occasion, and grasped my hand with a look which I often see and can never forget. He murmured slowly: "Andra, I am proud of you." The voice trembled and he seemed ashamed of himself for saying so much. The tear had to be wiped from his eye, I fondly noticed, as he bade me good-night and told me to run back to my office. Those words rang in my ear and warmed my heart for years and years. We understood each other. How reserved the Scot is! Where he feels most he expresses least. Quite right. There are holy depths which it is sacrilege to disturb. Silence is more eloquent than words. My father was one of the most lovable of men, beloved of his companions, deeply religious, although non-sectarian and non-theological, not much of a man of the world, but a man all over for heaven. He was kindness itself, although reserved. Alas! he passed away soon after returning from this Western tour just as we were becoming able to give him a life of leisure and comfort. After my return to Pittsburgh it was not long before I made the acquaintance of an extraordinary man, Thomas A. Scott, one to whom the term "genius" in his department may safely be applied. He had come to Pittsburgh as superintendent of that division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Frequent telegraphic communication was necessary between him and his superior, Mr. Lombaert, general superintendent at Altoona. This brought him to the telegraph office at nights, and upon several occasions I happened to be the operator. One day I was surprised by one of his assistants, with whom I was acquainted, telling me that Mr. Scott had asked him whether he thought that I could be obtained as his clerk and telegraph operator, to which this young man told me he had replied: "That is impossible. He is now an operator." But when I heard this I said at once: "Not so fast. He can have me. I want to get out of a mere office life. Please go and tell him so." The result was I was engaged February 1, 1853, at a salary of thirty-five dollars a month as Mr. Scott's clerk and operator. A raise in wages from twenty-five to thirty-five dollars per month was the greatest I had ever known. The public telegraph line was temporarily put into Mr. Scott's office at the outer depot and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was given permission to use the wire at seasons when such use would not interfere with the general public business, until their own line, then being built, was completed. CHAPTER VI RAILROAD SERVICE From the operating-room of the telegraph office I had now stepped into the open world, and the change at first was far from agreeable. I had just reached my eighteenth birthday, and I do not see how it could be possible for any boy to arrive at that age much freer from a knowledge of anything but what was pure and good. I do not believe, up to that time, I had ever spoken a bad word in my life and seldom heard one. I knew nothing of the base and the vile. Fortunately I had always been brought in contact with good people. I was now plunged at once into the company of coarse men, for the office was temporarily only a portion of the shops and the headquarters for the freight conductors, brakemen, and firemen. All of them had access to the same room with Superintendent Scott and myself, and they availed themselves of it. This was a different world, indeed, from that to which I had been accustomed. I was not happy about it. I ate, necessarily, of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil for the first time. But there were still the sweet and pure surroundings of home, where nothing coarse or wicked ever entered, and besides, there was the world in which I dwelt with my companions, all of them refined young men, striving to improve themselves and become respected citizens. I passed through this phase of my life detesting what was foreign to my nature and my early education. The experience with coarse men was probably beneficial because it gave me a "scunner" (disgust), to use a Scotism, at chewing or smoking tobacco, also at swearing or the use of improper language, which fortunately remained with me through life. I do not wish to suggest that the men of whom I have spoken were really degraded or bad characters. The habit of swearing, with coarse talk, chewing and smoking tobacco, and snuffing were more prevalent then than to-day and meant less than in this age. Railroading was new, and many rough characters were attracted to it from the river service. But many of the men were fine young fellows who have lived to be highly respectable citizens and to occupy responsible positions. And I must say that one and all of them were most kind to me. Many are yet living from whom I hear occasionally and regard with affection. A change came at last when Mr. Scott had his own office which he and I occupied. I was soon sent by Mr. Scott to Altoona to get the monthly pay-rolls and checks. The railroad line was not completed over the Allegheny Mountains at that time, and I had to pass over the inclined planes which made the journey a remarkable one to me. Altoona was then composed of a few houses built by the company. The shops were under construction and there was nothing of the large city which now occupies the site. It was there that I saw for the first time the great man in our railroad field--Mr. Lombaert, general superintendent. His secretary at that time was my friend, Robert Pitcairn, for whom I had obtained a situation on the railroad, so that "Davy," "Bob," and "Andy" were still together in the same service. We had all left the telegraph company for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Mr. Lombaert was very different from Mr. Scott; he was not sociable, but rather stern and unbending. Judge then of Robert's surprise, and my own, when, after saying a few words to me, Mr. Lombaert added: "You must come down and take tea with us to-night." I stammered out something of acceptance and awaited the appointed hour with great trepidation. Up to this time I considered that invitation the greatest honor I had received. Mrs. Lombaert was exceedingly kind, and Mr. Lombaert's introduction of me to her was: "This is Mr. Scott's 'Andy.'" I was very proud indeed of being recognized as belonging to Mr. Scott. An incident happened on this trip which might have blasted my career for a time. I started next morning for Pittsburgh with the pay-rolls and checks, as I thought, securely placed under my waistcoat, as it was too large a package for my pockets. I was a very enthusiastic railroader at that time and preferred riding upon the engine. I got upon the engine that took me to Hollidaysburg where the State railroad over the mountain was joined up. It was a very rough ride, indeed, and at one place, uneasily feeling for the pay-roll package, I was horrified to find that the jolting of the train had shaken it out. I had lost it! There was no use in disguising the fact that such a failure would ruin me. To have been sent for the pay-rolls and checks and to lose the package, which I should have "grasped as my honor," was a dreadful showing. I called the engineer and told him it must have been shaken out within the last few miles. Would he reverse his engine and run back for it? Kind soul, he did so. I watched the line, and on the very banks of a large stream, within a few feet of the water, I saw that package lying. I could scarcely believe my eyes. I ran down and grasped it. It was all right. Need I add that it never passed out of my firm grasp again until it was safe in Pittsburgh? The engineer and fireman were the only persons who knew of my carelessness, and I had their assurance that it would not be told. It was long after the event that I ventured to tell the story. Suppose that package had fallen just a few feet farther away and been swept down by the stream, how many years of faithful service would it have required upon my part to wipe out the effect of that one piece of carelessness! I could no longer have enjoyed the confidence of those whose confidence was essential to success had fortune not favored me. I have never since believed in being too hard on a young man, even if he does commit a dreadful mistake or two; and I have always tried in judging such to remember the difference it would have made in my own career but for an accident which restored to me that lost package at the edge of the stream a few miles from Hollidaysburg. I could go straight to the very spot to-day, and often as I passed over that line afterwards I never failed to see that light-brown package lying upon the bank. It seemed to be calling: "All right, my boy! the good gods were with you, but don't do it again!" At an early age I became a strong anti-slavery partisan and hailed with enthusiasm the first national meeting of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, February 22, 1856, although too young to vote. I watched the prominent men as they walked the streets, lost in admiration for Senators Wilson, Hale, and others. Some time before I had organized among the railroad men a club of a hundred for the "New York Weekly Tribune," and ventured occasionally upon short notes to the great editor, Horace Greeley, who did so much to arouse the people to action upon this vital question. The first time I saw my work in type in the then flaming organ of freedom certainly marked a stage in my career. I kept that "Tribune" for years. Looking back to-day one cannot help regretting so high a price as the Civil War had to be paid to free our land from the curse, but it was not slavery alone that needed abolition. The loose Federal system with State rights so prominent would inevitably have prevented, or at least long delayed, the formation of one solid, all-powerful, central government. The tendency under the Southern idea was centrifugal. To-day it is centripetal, all drawn toward the center under the sway of the Supreme Court, the decisions of which are, very properly, half the dicta of lawyers and half the work of statesmen. Uniformity in many fields must be secured. Marriage, divorce, bankruptcy, railroad supervision, control of corporations, and some other departments should in some measure be brought under one head. [Re-reading this paragraph to-day, July, 1907, written many years ago, it seems prophetic. These are now burning questions.] It was not long after this that the railroad company constructed its own telegraph line. We had to supply it with operators. Most of these were taught in our offices at Pittsburgh. The telegraph business continued to increase with startling rapidity. We could scarcely provide facilities fast enough. New telegraph offices were required. My fellow messenger-boy, "Davy" McCargo, I appointed superintendent of the telegraph department March 11, 1859. I have been told that "Davy" and myself are entitled to the credit of being the first to employ young women as telegraph operators in the United States upon railroads, or perhaps in any branch. At all events, we placed girls in various offices as pupils, taught and then put them in charge of offices as occasion required. Among the first of these was my cousin, Miss Maria Hogan. She was the operator at the freight station in Pittsburgh, and with her were placed successive pupils, her office becoming a school. Our experience was that young women operators were more to be relied upon than young men. Among all the new occupations invaded by women I do not know of any better suited for them than that of telegraph operator. Mr. Scott was one of the most delightful superiors that anybody could have and I soon became warmly attached to him. He was my great man and all the hero worship that is inherent in youth I showered upon him. I soon began placing him in imagination in the presidency of the great Pennsylvania Railroad--a position which he afterwards attained. Under him I gradually performed duties not strictly belonging to my department and I can attribute my decided advancement in the service to one well-remembered incident. The railway was a single line. Telegraph orders to trains often became necessary, although it was not then a regular practice to run trains by telegraph. No one but the superintendent himself was permitted to give a train order on any part of the Pennsylvania system, or indeed of any other system, I believe, at that time. It was then a dangerous expedient to give telegraphic orders, for the whole system of railway management was still in its infancy, and men had not yet been trained for it. It was necessary for Mr. Scott to go out night after night to break-downs or wrecks to superintend the clearing of the line. He was necessarily absent from the office on many mornings. One morning I reached the office and found that a serious accident on the Eastern Division had delayed the express passenger train westward, and that the passenger train eastward was proceeding with a flagman in advance at every curve. The freight trains in both directions were all standing still upon the sidings. Mr. Scott was not to be found. Finally I could not resist the temptation to plunge in, take the responsibility, give "train orders," and set matters going. "Death or Westminster Abbey," flashed across my mind. I knew it was dismissal, disgrace, perhaps criminal punishment for me if I erred. On the other hand, I could bring in the wearied freight-train men who had lain out all night. I could set everything in motion. I knew I could. I had often done it in wiring Mr. Scott's orders. I knew just what to do, and so I began. I gave the orders in his name, started every train, sat at the instrument watching every tick, carried the trains along from station to station, took extra precautions, and had everything running smoothly when Mr. Scott at last reached the office. He had heard of the delays. His first words were: "Well! How are matters?" He came to my side quickly, grasped his pencil and began to write his orders. I had then to speak, and timidly said: "Mr. Scott, I could not find you anywhere and I gave these orders in your name early this morning." "Are they going all right? Where is the Eastern Express?" I showed him the messages and gave him the position of every train on the line--freights, ballast trains, everything--showed him the answers of the various conductors, the latest reports at the stations where the various trains had passed. All was right. He looked in my face for a second. I scarcely dared look in his. I did not know what was going to happen. He did not say one word, but again looked carefully over all that had taken place. Still he said nothing. After a little he moved away from my desk to his own, and that was the end of it. He was afraid to approve what I had done, yet he had not censured me. If it came out all right, it was all right; if it came out all wrong, the responsibility was mine. So it stood, but I noticed that he came in very regularly and in good time for some mornings after that. Of course I never spoke to any one about it. None of the trainmen knew that Mr. Scott had not personally given the orders. I had almost made up my mind that if the like occurred again, I would not repeat my proceeding of that morning unless I was authorized to do so. I was feeling rather distressed about what I had done until I heard from Mr. Franciscus, who was then in charge of the freighting department at Pittsburgh, that Mr. Scott, the evening after the memorable morning, had said to him: "Do you know what that little white-haired Scotch devil of mine did?" "No." "I'm blamed if he didn't run every train on the division in my name without the slightest authority." "And did he do it all right?" asked Franciscus. "Oh, yes, all right." This satisfied me. Of course I had my cue for the next occasion, and went boldly in. From that date it was very seldom that Mr. Scott gave a train order. [Illustration: THOMAS A. SCOTT] [Illustration: JOHN EDGAR THOMSON] The greatest man of all on my horizon at this time was John Edgar Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania, and for whom our steel-rail mills were afterward named. He was the most reserved and silent of men, next to General Grant, that I ever knew, although General Grant was more voluble when at home with friends. He walked about as if he saw nobody when he made his periodical visits to Pittsburgh. This reserve I learned afterwards was purely the result of shyness. I was surprised when in Mr. Scott's office he came to the telegraph instrument and greeted me as "Scott's Andy." But I learned afterwards that he had heard of my train-running exploit. The battle of life is already half won by the young man who is brought personally in contact with high officials; and the great aim of every boy should be to do something beyond the sphere of his duties--something which attracts the attention of those over him. Some time after this Mr. Scott wished to travel for a week or two and asked authority from Mr. Lombaert to leave me in charge of the division. Pretty bold man he was, for I was then not very far out of my teens. It was granted. Here was the coveted opportunity of my life. With the exception of one accident caused by the inexcusable negligence of a ballast-train crew, everything went well in his absence. But that this accident should occur was gall and wormwood to me. Determined to fulfill all the duties of the station I held a court-martial, examined those concerned, dismissed peremptorily the chief offender, and suspended two others for their share in the catastrophe. Mr. Scott after his return of course was advised of the accident, and proposed to investigate and deal with the matter. I felt I had gone too far, but having taken the step, I informed him that all that had been settled. I had investigated the matter and punished the guilty. Some of these appealed to Mr. Scott for a reopening of the case, but this I never could have agreed to, had it been pressed. More by look I think than by word Mr. Scott understood my feelings upon this delicate point, and acquiesced. It is probable he was afraid I had been too severe and very likely he was correct. Some years after this, when I, myself, was superintendent of the division I always had a soft spot in my heart for the men then suspended for a time. I had felt qualms of conscience about my action in this, my first court. A new judge is very apt to stand so straight as really to lean a little backward. Only experience teaches the supreme force of gentleness. Light but certain punishment, when necessary, is most effective. Severe punishments are not needed and a judicious pardon, for the first offense at least, is often best of all. As the half-dozen young men who constituted our inner circle grew in knowledge, it was inevitable that the mysteries of life and death, the here and the hereafter, should cross our path and have to be grappled with. We had all been reared by good, honest, self-respecting parents, members of one or another of the religious sects. Through the influence of Mrs. McMillan, wife of one of the leading Presbyterian ministers of Pittsburgh, we were drawn into the social circle of her husband's church. [As I read this on the moors, July 16, 1912, I have before me a note from Mrs. McMillan from London in her eightieth year. Two of her daughters were married in London last week to university professors, one remains in Britain, the other has accepted an appointment in Boston. Eminent men both. So draws our English-speaking race together.] Mr. McMillan was a good strict Calvinist of the old school, his charming wife a born leader of the young. We were all more at home with her and enjoyed ourselves more at her home gatherings than elsewhere. This led to some of us occasionally attending her church. A sermon of the strongest kind upon predestination which Miller heard there brought the subject of theology upon us and it would not down. Mr. Miller's people were strong Methodists, and Tom had known little of dogmas. This doctrine of predestination, including infant damnation--some born to glory and others to the opposite--appalled him. To my astonishment I learned that, going to Mr. McMillan after the sermon to talk over the matter, Tom had blurted out at the finish, "Mr. McMillan, if your idea were correct, your God would be a perfect devil," and left the astonished minister to himself. This formed the subject of our Sunday afternoon conferences for many a week. Was that true or not, and what was to be the consequence of Tom's declaration? Should we no longer be welcome guests of Mrs. McMillan? We could have spared the minister, perhaps, but none of us relished the idea of banishment from his wife's delightful reunions. There was one point clear. Carlyle's struggles over these matters had impressed us and we could follow him in his resolve: "If it be incredible, in God's name let it be discredited." It was only the truth that could make us free, and the truth, the whole truth, we should pursue. Once introduced, of course, the subject remained with us, and one after the other the dogmas were voted down as the mistaken ideas of men of a less enlightened age. I forget who first started us with a second axiom. It was one we often dwelt upon: "A forgiving God would be the noblest work of man." We accepted as proven that each stage of civilization creates its own God, and that as man ascends and becomes better his conception of the Unknown likewise improves. Thereafter we all became less theological, but I am sure more truly religious. The crisis passed. Happily we were not excluded from Mrs. McMillan's society. It was a notable day, however, when we resolved to stand by Miller's statement, even if it involved banishment and worse. We young men were getting to be pretty wild boys about theology, although more truly reverent about religion. The first great loss to our circle came when John Phipps was killed by a fall from a horse. This struck home to all of us, yet I remember I could then say to myself: "John has, as it were, just gone home to England where he was born. We are all to follow him soon and live forever together." I had then no doubts. It was not a hope I was pressing to my heart, but a certainty. Happy those who in their agony have such a refuge. We should all take Plato's advice and never give up everlasting hope, "alluring ourselves as with enchantments, for the hope is noble and the reward is great." Quite right. It would be no greater miracle that brought us into another world to live forever with our dearest than that which has brought us into this one to live a lifetime with them. Both are equally incomprehensible to finite beings. Let us therefore comfort ourselves with everlasting hope, "as with enchantments," as Plato recommends, never forgetting, however, that we all have our duties here and that the kingdom of heaven is within us. It also passed into an axiom with us that he who proclaims there is no hereafter is as foolish as he who proclaims there is, since neither can know, though all may and should hope. Meanwhile "Home our heaven" instead of "Heaven our home" was our motto. During these years of which I have been writing, the family fortunes had been steadily improving. My thirty-five dollars a month had grown to forty, an unsolicited advance having been made by Mr. Scott. It was part of my duty to pay the men every month.[19] We used checks upon the bank and I drew my salary invariably in two twenty-dollar gold pieces. They seemed to me the prettiest works of art in the world. It was decided in family council that we could venture to buy the lot and the two small frame houses upon it, in one of which we had lived, and the other, a four-roomed house, which till then had been occupied by my Uncle and Aunt Hogan, who had removed elsewhere. It was through the aid of my dear Aunt Aitken that we had been placed in the small house above the weaver's shop, and it was now our turn to be able to ask her to return to the house that formerly had been her own. In the same way after we had occupied the four-roomed house, Uncle Hogan having passed away, we were able to restore Aunt Hogan to her old home when we removed to Altoona. One hundred dollars cash was paid upon purchase, and the total price, as I remember, was seven hundred dollars. The struggle then was to make up the semi-annual payments of interest and as great an amount of the principal as we could save. It was not long before the debt was cleared off and we were property-holders, but before that was accomplished, the first sad break occurred in our family, in my father's death, October 2, 1855. Fortunately for the three remaining members life's duties were pressing. Sorrow and duty contended and we had to work. The expenses connected with his illness had to be saved and paid and we had not up to this time much store in reserve. [Footnote 19: "I remember well when I used to write out the monthly pay-roll and came to Mr. Scott's name for $125. I wondered what he did with it all. I was then getting thirty-five." (Andrew Carnegie in speech at Reunion of U.S. Military Telegraph Corps, March 28, 1907.)] And here comes in one of the sweet incidents of our early life in America. The principal member of our small Swedenborgian Society was Mr. David McCandless. He had taken some notice of my father and mother, but beyond a few passing words at church on Sundays, I do not remember that they had ever been brought in close contact. He knew Aunt Aitken well, however, and now sent for her to say that if my mother required any money assistance at this sad period he would be very pleased to advance whatever was necessary. He had heard much of my heroic mother and that was sufficient. One gets so many kind offers of assistance when assistance is no longer necessary, or when one is in a position which would probably enable him to repay a favor, that it is delightful to record an act of pure and disinterested benevolence. Here was a poor Scottish woman bereft of her husband, with her eldest son just getting a start and a second in his early teens, whose misfortunes appealed to this man, and who in the most delicate manner sought to mitigate them. Although my mother was able to decline the proffered aid, it is needless to say that Mr. McCandless obtained a place in our hearts sacred to himself. I am a firm believer in the doctrine that people deserving necessary assistance at critical periods in their career usually receive it. There are many splendid natures in the world--men and women who are not only willing, but anxious to stretch forth a helping hand to those they know to be worthy. As a rule, those who show willingness to help themselves need not fear about obtaining the help of others. Father's death threw upon me the management of affairs to a greater extent than ever. Mother kept on the binding of shoes; Tom went steadily to the public school; and I continued with Mr. Scott in the service of the railroad company. Just at this time Fortunatus knocked at our door. Mr. Scott asked me if I had five hundred dollars. If so, he said he wished to make an investment for me. Five hundred cents was much nearer my capital. I certainly had not fifty dollars saved for investment, but I was not going to miss the chance of becoming financially connected with my leader and great man. So I said boldly I thought I could manage that sum. He then told me that there were ten shares of Adams Express stock that he could buy, which had belonged to a station agent, Mr. Reynolds, of Wilkinsburg. Of course this was reported to the head of the family that evening, and she was not long in suggesting what might be done. When did she ever fail? We had then paid five hundred dollars upon the house, and in some way she thought this might be pledged as security for a loan. My mother took the steamer the next morning for East Liverpool, arriving at night, and through her brother there the money was secured. He was a justice of the peace, a well-known resident of that then small town, and had numerous sums in hand from farmers for investment. Our house was mortgaged and mother brought back the five hundred dollars which I handed over to Mr. Scott, who soon obtained for me the coveted ten shares in return. There was, unexpectedly, an additional hundred dollars to pay as a premium, but Mr. Scott kindly said I could pay that when convenient, and this of course was an easy matter to do. This was my first investment. In those good old days monthly dividends were more plentiful than now and Adams Express paid a monthly dividend. One morning a white envelope was lying upon my desk, addressed in a big John Hancock hand, to "Andrew Carnegie, Esquire." "Esquire" tickled the boys and me inordinately. At one corner was seen the round stamp of Adams Express Company. I opened the envelope. All it contained was a check for ten dollars upon the Gold Exchange Bank of New York. I shall remember that check as long as I live, and that John Hancock signature of "J.C. Babcock, Cashier." It gave me the first penny of revenue from capital--something that I had not worked for with the sweat of my brow. "Eureka!" I cried. "Here's the goose that lays the golden eggs." It was the custom of our party to spend Sunday afternoons in the woods. I kept the first check and showed it as we sat under the trees in a favorite grove we had found near Wood's Run. The effect produced upon my companions was overwhelming. None of them had imagined such an investment possible. We resolved to save and to watch for the next opportunity for investment in which all of us should share, and for years afterward we divided our trifling investments and worked together almost as partners. Up to this time my circle of acquaintances had not enlarged much. Mrs. Franciscus, wife of our freight agent, was very kind and on several occasions asked me to her house in Pittsburgh. She often spoke of the first time I rang the bell of the house in Third Street to deliver a message from Mr. Scott. She asked me to come in; I bashfully declined and it required coaxing upon her part to overcome my shyness. She was never able for years to induce me to partake of a meal in her house. I had great timidity about going into other people's houses, until late in life; but Mr. Scott would occasionally insist upon my going to his hotel and taking a meal with him, and these were great occasions for me. Mr. Franciscus's was the first considerable house, with the exception of Mr. Lombaert's at Altoona, I had ever entered, as far as I recollect. Every house was fashionable in my eyes that was upon any one of the principal streets, provided it had a hall entrance. I had never spent a night in a strange house in my life until Mr. Stokes of Greensburg, chief counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad, invited me to his beautiful home in the country to pass a Sunday. It was an odd thing for Mr. Stokes to do, for I could little interest a brilliant and educated man like him. The reason for my receiving such an honor was a communication I had written for the "Pittsburgh Journal." Even in my teens I was a scribbler for the press. To be an editor was one of my ambitions. Horace Greeley and the "Tribune" was my ideal of human triumph. Strange that there should have come a day when I could have bought the "Tribune"; but by that time the pearl had lost its luster. Our air castles are often within our grasp late in life, but then they charm not. The subject of my article was upon the attitude of the city toward the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. It was signed anonymously and I was surprised to find it got a prominent place in the columns of the "Journal," then owned and edited by Robert M. Riddle. I, as operator, received a telegram addressed to Mr. Scott and signed by Mr. Stokes, asking him to ascertain from Mr. Riddle who the author of that communication was. I knew that Mr. Riddle could not tell the author, because he did not know him; but at the same time I was afraid that if Mr. Scott called upon him he would hand him the manuscript, which Mr. Scott would certainly recognize at a glance. I therefore made a clean breast of it to Mr. Scott and told him I was the author. He seemed incredulous. He said he had read it that morning and wondered who had written it. His incredulous look did not pass me unnoticed. The pen was getting to be a weapon with me. Mr. Stokes's invitation to spend Sunday with him followed soon after, and the visit is one of the bright spots in my life. Henceforth we were great friends. The grandeur of Mr. Stokes's home impressed me, but the one feature of it that eclipsed all else was a marble mantel in his library. In the center of the arch, carved in the marble, was an open book with this inscription: "He that cannot reason is a fool, He that will not a bigot, He that dare not a slave." These noble words thrilled me. I said to myself, "Some day, some day, I'll have a library" (that was a look ahead) "and these words shall grace the mantel as here." And so they do in New York and Skibo to-day. Another Sunday which I spent at his home after an interval of several years was also noteworthy. I had then become the superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The South had seceded. I was all aflame for the flag. Mr. Stokes, being a leading Democrat, argued against the right of the North to use force for the preservation of the Union. He gave vent to sentiments which caused me to lose my self-control, and I exclaimed: "Mr. Stokes, we shall be hanging men like you in less than six weeks." I hear his laugh as I write, and his voice calling to his wife in the adjoining room: "Nancy, Nancy, listen to this young Scotch devil. He says they will be hanging men like me in less than six weeks." Strange things happened in those days. A short time after, that same Mr. Stokes was applying to me in Washington to help him to a major's commission in the volunteer forces. I was then in the Secretary of War's office, helping to manage the military railroads and telegraphs for the Government. This appointment he secured and ever after was Major Stokes, so that the man who doubted the right of the North to fight for the Union had himself drawn sword in the good cause. Men at first argued and theorized about Constitutional rights. It made all the difference in the world when the flag was fired upon. In a moment everything was ablaze--paper constitutions included. The Union and Old Glory! That was all the people cared for, but that was enough. The Constitution was intended to insure one flag, and as Colonel Ingersoll proclaimed: "There was not air enough on the American continent to float two." CHAPTER VII SUPERINTENDENT OF THE PENNSYLVANIA Mr. Scott was promoted to be the general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1856, taking Mr. Lombaert's place; and he took me, then in my twenty-third year, with him to Altoona. This breaking-up of associations in Pittsburgh was a sore trial, but nothing could be allowed to interfere for a moment with my business career. My mother was satisfied upon this point, great as the strain was upon her. Besides, "follow my leader" was due to so true a friend as Mr. Scott had been. His promotion to the superintendency gave rise to some jealousy; and besides that, he was confronted with a strike at the very beginning of his appointment. He had lost his wife in Pittsburgh a short time before and had his lonely hours. He was a stranger in Altoona, his new headquarters, and there was none but myself seemingly of whom he could make a companion. We lived for many weeks at the railway hotel together before he took up housekeeping and brought his children from Pittsburgh, and at his desire I occupied the same large bedroom with him. He seemed anxious always to have me near him. The strike became more and more threatening. I remember being wakened one night and told that the freight-train men had left their trains at Mifflin; that the line was blocked on this account and all traffic stopped. Mr. Scott was then sleeping soundly. It seemed to me a pity to disturb him, knowing how overworked and overanxious he was; but he awoke and I suggested that I should go up and attend to the matter. He seemed to murmur assent, not being more than half awake. So I went to the office and in his name argued the question with the men and promised them a hearing next day at Altoona. I succeeded in getting them to resume their duties and to start the traffic. Not only were the trainmen in a rebellious mood, but the men in the shops were rapidly organizing to join with the disaffected. This I learned in a curious manner. One night, as I was walking home in the dark, I became aware that a man was following me. By and by he came up to me and said: "I must not be seen with you, but you did me a favor once and I then resolved if ever I could serve you I would do it. I called at the office in Pittsburgh and asked for work as a blacksmith. You said there was no work then at Pittsburgh, but perhaps employment could be had at Altoona, and if I would wait a few minutes you would ask by telegraph. You took the trouble to do so, examined my recommendations, and gave me a pass and sent me here. I have a splendid job. My wife and family are here and I was never so well situated in my life. And now I want to tell you something for your good." I listened and he went on to say that a paper was being rapidly signed by the shopmen, pledging themselves to strike on Monday next. There was no time to be lost. I told Mr. Scott in the morning and he at once had printed notices posted in the shops that all men who had signed the paper, pledging themselves to strike, were dismissed and they should call at the office to be paid. A list of the names of the signers had come into our possession in the meantime, and this fact was announced. Consternation followed and the threatened strike was broken. I have had many incidents, such as that of the blacksmith, in my life. Slight attentions or a kind word to the humble often bring back reward as great as it is unlooked for. No kind action is ever lost. Even to this day I occasionally meet men whom I had forgotten, who recall some trifling attention I have been able to pay them, especially when in charge at Washington of government railways and telegraphs during the Civil War, when I could pass people within the lines--a father helped to reach a wounded or sick son at the front, or enabled to bring home his remains, or some similar service. I am indebted to these trifles for some of the happiest attentions and the most pleasing incidents of my life. And there is this about such actions: they are disinterested, and the reward is sweet in proportion to the humbleness of the individual whom you have obliged. It counts many times more to do a kindness to a poor working-man than to a millionaire, who may be able some day to repay the favor. How true Wordsworth's lines: "That best portion of a good man's life-- His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love." The chief happening, judged by its consequences, of the two years I spent with Mr. Scott at Altoona, arose from my being the principal witness in a suit against the company, which was being tried at Greensburg by the brilliant Major Stokes, my first host. It was feared that I was about to be subpoenaed by the plaintiff, and the Major, wishing a postponement of the case, asked Mr. Scott to send me out of the State as rapidly as possible. This was a happy change for me, as I was enabled to visit my two bosom companions, Miller and Wilson, then in the railway service at Crestline, Ohio. On my way thither, while sitting on the end seat of the rear car watching the line, a farmer-looking man approached me. He carried a small green bag in his hand. He said the brakeman had informed him I was connected with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He wished to show me the model of a car which he had invented for night traveling. He took a small model out of the bag, which showed a section of a sleeping-car. This was the celebrated T.T. Woodruff, the inventor of that now indispensable adjunct of civilization--the sleeping-car. Its importance flashed upon me. I asked him if he would come to Altoona if I sent for him, and I promised to lay the matter before Mr. Scott at once upon my return. I could not get that sleeping-car idea out of my mind, and was most anxious to return to Altoona that I might press my views upon Mr. Scott. When I did so, he thought I was taking time by the forelock, but was quite receptive and said I might telegraph for the patentee. He came and contracted to place two of his cars upon the line as soon as they could be built. After this Mr. Woodruff, greatly to my surprise, asked me if I would not join him in the new enterprise and offered me an eighth interest in the venture. I promptly accepted his offer, trusting to be able to make payments somehow or other. The two cars were to be paid for by monthly installments after delivery. When the time came for making the first payment, my portion was two hundred and seventeen and a half dollars. I boldly decided to apply to the local banker, Mr. Lloyd, for a loan of that sum. I explained the matter to him, and I remember that he put his great arm (he was six feet three or four) around me, saying: "Why, of course I will lend it. You are all right, Andy." And here I made my first note, and actually got a banker to take it. A proud moment that in a young man's career! The sleeping-cars were a great success and their monthly receipts paid the monthly installments. The first considerable sum I made was from this source. [To-day, July 19, 1909, as I re-read this, how glad I am that I have recently heard from Mr. Lloyd's married daughter telling me of her father's deep affection for me, thus making me very happy, indeed.] One important change in our life at Altoona, after my mother and brother arrived, was that, instead of continuing to live exclusively by ourselves, it was considered necessary that we should have a servant. It was with the greatest reluctance my mother could be brought to admit a stranger into the family circle. She had been everything and had done everything for her two boys. This was her life, and she resented with all a strong woman's jealousy the introduction of a stranger who was to be permitted to do anything whatever in the home. She had cooked and served her boys, washed their clothes and mended them, made their beds, cleaned their home. Who dare rob her of those motherly privileges! But nevertheless we could not escape the inevitable servant girl. One came, and others followed, and with these came also the destruction of much of that genuine family happiness which flows from exclusiveness. Being served by others is a poor substitute for a mother's labor of love. The ostentatious meal prepared by a strange cook whom one seldom sees, and served by hands paid for the task, lacks the sweetness of that which a mother's hands lay before you as the expression and proof of her devotion. Among the manifold blessings I have to be thankful for is that neither nurse nor governess was my companion in infancy. No wonder the children of the poor are distinguished for the warmest affection and the closest adherence to family ties and are characterized by a filial regard far stronger than that of those who are mistakenly called more fortunate in life. They have passed the impressionable years of childhood and youth in constant loving contact with father and mother, to each they are all in all, no third person coming between. The child that has in his father a teacher, companion, and counselor, and whose mother is to him a nurse, seamstress, governess, teacher, companion, heroine, and saint all in one, has a heritage to which the child of wealth remains a stranger. There comes a time, although the fond mother cannot see it, when a grown son has to put his arms around his saint and kissing her tenderly try to explain to her that it would be much better were she to let him help her in some ways; that, being out in the world among men and dealing with affairs, he sometimes sees changes which it would be desirable to make; that the mode of life delightful for young boys should be changed in some respects and the house made suitable for their friends to enter. Especially should the slaving mother live the life of ease hereafter, reading and visiting more and entertaining dear friends--in short, rising to her proper and deserved position as Her Ladyship. Of course the change was very hard upon my mother, but she finally recognized the necessity for it, probably realized for the first time that her eldest son was getting on. "Dear Mother," I pleaded, my arms still around her, "you have done everything for and have been everything to Tom and me, and now do let me do something for you; let us be partners and let us always think what is best for each other. The time has come for you to play the lady and some of these days you are to ride in your carriage; meanwhile do get that girl in to help you. Tom and I would like this." The victory was won, and my mother began to go out with us and visit her neighbors. She had not to learn self-possession nor good manners, these were innate; and as for education, knowledge, rare good sense, and kindliness, seldom was she to meet her equal. I wrote "never" instead of "seldom" and then struck it out. Nevertheless my private opinion is reserved. Life at Altoona was made more agreeable for me through Mr. Scott's niece, Miss Rebecca Stewart, who kept house for him. She played the part of elder sister to me to perfection, especially when Mr. Scott was called to Philadelphia or elsewhere. We were much together, often driving in the afternoons through the woods. The intimacy did not cease for many years, and re-reading some of her letters in 1906 I realized more than ever my indebtedness to her. She was not much beyond my own age, but always seemed a great deal older. Certainly she was more mature and quite capable of playing the elder sister's part. It was to her I looked up in those days as the perfect lady. Sorry am I our paths parted so widely in later years. Her daughter married the Earl of Sussex and her home in late years has been abroad. [July 19, 1909, Mrs. Carnegie and I found my elder-sister friend April last, now in widowhood, in Paris, her sister and also her daughter all well and happy. A great pleasure, indeed. There are no substitutes for the true friends of youth.] Mr. Scott remained at Altoona for about three years when deserved promotion came to him. In 1859 he was made vice-president of the company, with his office in Philadelphia. What was to become of me was a serious question. Would he take me with him or must I remain at Altoona with the new official? The thought was to me unbearable. To part with Mr. Scott was hard enough; to serve a new official in his place I did not believe possible. The sun rose and set upon his head so far as I was concerned. The thought of my promotion, except through him, never entered my mind. He returned from his interview with the president at Philadelphia and asked me to come into the private room in his house which communicated with the office. He told me it had been settled that he should remove to Philadelphia. Mr. Enoch Lewis, the division superintendent, was to be his successor. I listened with great interest as he approached the inevitable disclosure as to what he was going to do with me. He said finally: "Now about yourself. Do you think you could manage the Pittsburgh Division?" I was at an age when I thought I could manage anything. I knew nothing that I would not attempt, but it had never occurred to me that anybody else, much less Mr. Scott, would entertain the idea that I was as yet fit to do anything of the kind proposed. I was only twenty-four years old, but my model then was Lord John Russell, of whom it was said he would take the command of the Channel Fleet to-morrow. So would Wallace or Bruce. I told Mr. Scott I thought I could. "Well," he said, "Mr. Potts" (who was then superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division) "is to be promoted to the transportation department in Philadelphia and I recommended you to the president as his successor. He agreed to give you a trial. What salary do you think you should have?" "Salary," I said, quite offended; "what do I care for salary? I do not want the salary; I want the position. It is glory enough to go back to the Pittsburgh Division in your former place. You can make my salary just what you please and you need not give me any more than what I am getting now." That was sixty-five dollars a month. "You know," he said, "I received fifteen hundred dollars a year when I was there; and Mr. Potts is receiving eighteen hundred. I think it would be right to start you at fifteen hundred dollars, and after a while if you succeed you will get the eighteen hundred. Would that be satisfactory?" "Oh, please," I said, "don't speak to me of money!" It was not a case of mere hire and salary, and then and there my promotion was sealed. I was to have a department to myself, and instead of signing "T.A.S." orders between Pittsburgh and Altoona would now be signed "A.C." That was glory enough for me. The order appointing me superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division was issued December 1, 1859. Preparations for removing the family were made at once. The change was hailed with joy, for although our residence in Altoona had many advantages, especially as we had a large house with some ground about it in a pleasant part of the suburbs and therefore many of the pleasures of country life, all these did not weigh as a feather in the scale as against the return to old friends and associations in dirty, smoky Pittsburgh. My brother Tom had learned telegraphy during his residence in Altoona and he returned with me and became my secretary. The winter following my appointment was one of the most severe ever known. The line was poorly constructed, the equipment inefficient and totally inadequate for the business that was crowding upon it. The rails were laid upon huge blocks of stone, cast-iron chairs for holding the rails were used, and I have known as many as forty-seven of these to break in one night. No wonder the wrecks were frequent. The superintendent of a division in those days was expected to run trains by telegraph at night, to go out and remove all wrecks, and indeed to do everything. At one time for eight days I was constantly upon the line, day and night, at one wreck or obstruction after another. I was probably the most inconsiderate superintendent that ever was entrusted with the management of a great property, for, never knowing fatigue myself, being kept up by a sense of responsibility probably, I overworked the men and was not careful enough in considering the limits of human endurance. I have always been able to sleep at any time. Snatches of half an hour at intervals during the night in a dirty freight car were sufficient. The Civil War brought such extraordinary demands on the Pennsylvania line that I was at last compelled to organize a night force; but it was with difficulty I obtained the consent of my superiors to entrust the charge of the line at night to a train dispatcher. Indeed, I never did get their unequivocal authority to do so, but upon my own responsibility I appointed perhaps the first night train dispatcher that ever acted in America--at least he was the first upon the Pennsylvania system. Upon our return to Pittsburgh in 1860 we rented a house in Hancock Street, now Eighth Street, and resided there for a year or more. Any accurate description of Pittsburgh at that time would be set down as a piece of the grossest exaggeration. The smoke permeated and penetrated everything. If you placed your hand on the balustrade of the stair it came away black; if you washed face and hands they were as dirty as ever in an hour. The soot gathered in the hair and irritated the skin, and for a time after our return from the mountain atmosphere of Altoona, life was more or less miserable. We soon began to consider how we could get to the country, and fortunately at that time Mr. D.A. Stewart, then freight agent for the company, directed our attention to a house adjoining his residence at Homewood. We moved there at once and the telegraph was brought in, which enabled me to operate the division from the house when necessary. Here a new life was opened to us. There were country lanes and gardens in abundance. Residences had from five to twenty acres of land about them. The Homewood Estate was made up of many hundreds of acres, with beautiful woods and glens and a running brook. We, too, had a garden and a considerable extent of ground around our house. The happiest years of my mother's life were spent here among her flowers and chickens and the surroundings of country life. Her love of flowers was a passion. She was scarcely ever able to gather a flower. Indeed I remember she once reproached me for pulling up a weed, saying "it was something green." I have inherited this peculiarity and have often walked from the house to the gate intending to pull a flower for my button-hole and then left for town unable to find one I could destroy. With this change to the country came a whole host of new acquaintances. Many of the wealthy families of the district had their residences in this delightful suburb. It was, so to speak, the aristocratic quarter. To the entertainments at these great houses the young superintendent was invited. The young people were musical and we had musical evenings a plenty. I heard subjects discussed which I had never known before, and I made it a rule when I heard these to learn something about them at once. I was pleased every day to feel that I was learning something new. It was here that I first met the Vandevort brothers, Benjamin and John. The latter was my traveling-companion on various trips which I took later in life. "Dear Vandy" appears as my chum in "Round the World." Our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Stewart, became more and more dear to us, and the acquaintance we had before ripened into lasting friendship. One of my pleasures is that Mr. Stewart subsequently embarked in business with us and became a partner, as "Vandy" did also. Greatest of all the benefits of our new home, however, was making the acquaintance of the leading family of Western Pennsylvania, that of the Honorable Judge Wilkins. The Judge was then approaching his eightieth year, tall, slender, and handsome, in full possession of all his faculties, with a courtly grace of manner, and the most wonderful store of knowledge and reminiscence of any man I had yet been privileged to meet. His wife, the daughter of George W. Dallas, Vice-President of the United States, has ever been my type of gracious womanhood in age--the most beautiful, most charming venerable old lady I ever knew or saw. Her daughter, Miss Wilkins, with her sister, Mrs. Saunders, and her children resided in the stately mansion at Homewood, which was to the surrounding district what the baronial hall in Britain is or should be to its district--the center of all that was cultured, refined, and elevating. To me it was especially pleasing that I seemed to be a welcome guest there. Musical parties, charades, and theatricals in which Miss Wilkins took the leading parts furnished me with another means of self-improvement. The Judge himself was the first man of historical note whom I had ever known. I shall never forget the impression it made upon me when in the course of conversation, wishing to illustrate a remark, he said: "President Jackson once said to me," or, "I told the Duke of Wellington so and so." The Judge in his earlier life (1834) had been Minister to Russia under Jackson, and in the same easy way spoke of his interview with the Czar. It seemed to me that I was touching history itself. The house was a new atmosphere, and my intercourse with the family was a powerful stimulant to the desire for improvement of my own mind and manners. The only subject upon which there was always a decided, though silent, antagonism between the Wilkins family and myself was politics. I was an ardent Free-Soiler in days when to be an abolitionist was somewhat akin to being a republican in Britain. The Wilkinses were strong Democrats with leanings toward the South, being closely connected with leading Southern families. On one occasion at Homewood, on entering the drawing-room, I found the family excitedly conversing about a terrible incident that had recently occurred. "What do you think!" said Mrs. Wilkins to me; "Dallas" (her grandson) "writes me that he has been compelled by the commandant of West Point to sit next a negro! Did you ever hear the like of that? Is it not disgraceful? Negroes admitted to West Point!" "Oh!" I said, "Mrs. Wilkins, there is something even worse than that. I understand that some of them have been admitted to heaven!" There was a silence that could be felt. Then dear Mrs. Wilkins said gravely: "That is a different matter, Mr. Carnegie." By far the most precious gift ever received by me up to that time came about in this manner. Dear Mrs. Wilkins began knitting an afghan, and during the work many were the inquiries as to whom it was for. No, the dear queenly old lady would not tell; she kept her secret all the long months until, Christmas drawing near, the gift finished and carefully wrapped up, and her card with a few loving words enclosed, she instructed her daughter to address it to me. It was duly received in New York. Such a tribute from such a lady! Well, that afghan, though often shown to dear friends, has not been much used. It is sacred to me and remains among my precious possessions. I had been so fortunate as to meet Leila Addison while living in Pittsburgh, the talented daughter of Dr. Addison, who had died a short time before. I soon became acquainted with the family and record with grateful feelings the immense advantage which that acquaintance also brought to me. Here was another friendship formed with people who had all the advantages of the higher education. Carlyle had been Mrs. Addison's tutor for a time, for she was an Edinburgh lady. Her daughters had been educated abroad and spoke French, Spanish, and Italian as fluently as English. It was through intercourse with this family that I first realized the indescribable yet immeasurable gulf that separates the highly educated from people like myself. But "the wee drap o' Scotch bluid atween us" proved its potency as usual. Miss Addison became an ideal friend because she undertook to improve the rough diamond, if it were indeed a diamond at all. She was my best friend, because my severest critic. I began to pay strict attention to my language, and to the English classics, which I now read with great avidity. I began also to notice how much better it was to be gentle in tone and manner, polite and courteous to all--in short, better behaved. Up to this time I had been, perhaps, careless in dress and rather affected it. Great heavy boots, loose collar, and general roughness of attire were then peculiar to the West and in our circle considered manly. Anything that could be labeled foppish was looked upon with contempt. I remember the first gentleman I ever saw in the service of the railway company who wore kid gloves. He was the object of derision among us who aspired to be manly men. I was a great deal the better in all these respects after we moved to Homewood, owing to the Addisons. CHAPTER VIII CIVIL WAR PERIOD In 1861 the Civil War broke out and I was at once summoned to Washington by Mr. Scott, who had been appointed Assistant Secretary of War in charge of the Transportation Department. I was to act as his assistant in charge of the military railroads and telegraphs of the Government and to organize a force of railway men. It was one of the most important departments of all at the beginning of the war. The first regiments of Union troops passing through Baltimore had been attacked, and the railway line cut between Baltimore and Annapolis Junction, destroying communication with Washington. It was therefore necessary for me, with my corps of assistants, to take train at Philadelphia for Annapolis, a point from which a branch line extended to the Junction, joining the main line to Washington. Our first duty was to repair this branch and make it passable for heavy trains, a work of some days. General Butler and several regiments of troops arrived a few days after us, and we were able to transport his whole brigade to Washington. I took my place upon the first engine which started for the Capital, and proceeded very cautiously. Some distance from Washington I noticed that the telegraph wires had been pinned to the ground by wooden stakes. I stopped the engine and ran forward to release them, but I did not notice that the wires had been pulled to one side before staking. When released, in their spring upwards, they struck me in the face, knocked me over, and cut a gash in my cheek which bled profusely. In this condition I entered the city of Washington with the first troops, so that with the exception of one or two soldiers, wounded a few days previously in passing through the streets of Baltimore, I can justly claim that I "shed my blood for my country" among the first of its defenders. I gloried in being useful to the land that had done so much for me, and worked, I can truly say, night and day, to open communication to the South. I soon removed my headquarters to Alexandria,[20] Virginia, and was stationed there when the unfortunate battle of Bull Run was fought. We could not believe the reports that came to us, but it soon became evident that we must rush every engine and car to the front to bring back our defeated forces. The closest point then was Burke Station. I went out there and loaded up train after train of the poor wounded volunteers. The rebels were reported to be close upon us and we were finally compelled to close Burke Station, the operator and myself leaving on the last train for Alexandria where the effect of panic was evident upon every side. Some of our railway men were missing, but the number at the mess on the following morning showed that, compared with other branches of the service, we had cause for congratulation. A few conductors and engineers had obtained boats and crossed the Potomac, but the great body of the men remained, although the roar of the guns of the pursuing enemy was supposed to be heard in every sound during the night. Of our telegraphers not one was missing the next morning. [Footnote 20: "When Carnegie reached Washington his first task was to establish a ferry to Alexandria and to extend the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad track from the old depot in Washington, along Maryland Avenue to and across the Potomac, so that locomotives and cars might be crossed for use in Virginia. Long Bridge, over the Potomac, had to be rebuilt, and I recall the fact that under the direction of Carnegie and R.F. Morley the railroad between Washington and Alexandria was completed in the remarkably short period of seven days. All hands, from Carnegie down, worked day and night to accomplish the task." (Bates, _Lincoln in the Telegraph Office_, p. 22. New York, 1907.)] Soon after this I returned to Washington and made my headquarters in the War Building with Colonel Scott. As I had charge of the telegraph department, as well as the railways, this gave me an opportunity of seeing President Lincoln, Mr. Seward, Secretary Cameron, and others; and I was occasionally brought in personal contact with these men, which was to me a source of great interest. Mr. Lincoln would occasionally come to the office and sit at the desk awaiting replies to telegrams, or perhaps merely anxious for information. All the pictures of this extraordinary man are like him. He was so marked of feature that it was impossible for any one to paint him and not produce a likeness. He was certainly one of the most homely men I ever saw when his features were in repose; but when excited or telling a story, intellect shone through his eyes and illuminated his face to a degree which I have seldom or never seen in any other. His manners were perfect because natural; and he had a kind word for everybody, even the youngest boy in the office. His attentions were not graduated. They were the same to all, as deferential in talking to the messenger boy as to Secretary Seward. His charm lay in the total absence of manner. It was not so much, perhaps, what he said as the way in which he said it that never failed to win one. I have often regretted that I did not note down carefully at the time some of his curious sayings, for he said even common things in an original way. I never met a great man who so thoroughly made himself one with all men as Mr. Lincoln. As Secretary Hay so well says, "It is impossible to imagine any one a valet to Mr. Lincoln; he would have been his companion." He was the most perfect democrat, revealing in every word and act the equality of men. When Mason and Slidell in 1861 were taken from the British ship Trent there was intense anxiety upon the part of those who, like myself, knew what the right of asylum on her ships meant to Britain. It was certain war or else a prompt return of the prisoners. Secretary Cameron being absent when the Cabinet was summoned to consider the question, Mr. Scott was invited to attend as Assistant Secretary of War. I did my best to let him understand that upon this issue Britain would fight beyond question, and urged that he stand firm for surrender, especially since it had been the American doctrine that ships should be immune from search. Mr. Scott, knowing nothing of foreign affairs, was disposed to hold the captives, but upon his return from the meeting he told me that Seward had warned the Cabinet it meant war, just as I had said. Lincoln, too, was at first inclined to hold the prisoners, but was at last converted to Seward's policy. The Cabinet, however, had decided to postpone action until the morrow, when Cameron and other absentees would be present. Mr. Scott was requested by Seward to meet Cameron on arrival and get him right on the subject before going to the meeting, for he was expected to be in no surrendering mood. This was done and all went well next day. The general confusion which reigned at Washington at this time had to be seen to be understood. No description can convey my initial impression of it. The first time I saw General Scott, then Commander-in-Chief, he was being helped by two men across the pavement from his office into his carriage. He was an old, decrepit man, paralyzed not only in body, but in mind; and it was upon this noble relic of the past that the organization of the forces of the Republic depended. His chief commissary, General Taylor, was in some degree a counterpart of Scott. It was our business to arrange with these, and others scarcely less fit, for the opening of communications and for the transportation of men and supplies. They were seemingly one and all martinets who had passed the age of usefulness. Days would elapse before a decision could be obtained upon matters which required prompt action. There was scarcely a young active officer at the head of any important department--at least I cannot recall one. Long years of peace had fossilized the service. The same cause had produced like results, I understood, in the Navy Department, but I was not brought in personal contact with it. The navy was not important at the beginning; it was the army that counted. Nothing but defeat was to be looked for until the heads of the various departments were changed, and this could not be done in a day. The impatience of the country at the apparent delay in producing an effective weapon for the great task thrown upon the Government was no doubt natural, but the wonder to me is that order was so soon evolved from the chaos which prevailed in every branch of the service. As far as our operations were concerned we had one great advantage. Secretary Cameron authorized Mr. Scott (he had been made a Colonel) to do what he thought necessary without waiting for the slow movements of the officials under the Secretary of War. Of this authority unsparing use was made, and the important part played by the railway and telegraph department of the Government from the very beginning of the war is to be attributed to the fact that we had the cordial support of Secretary Cameron. He was then in the possession of all his faculties and grasped the elements of the problem far better than his generals and heads of departments. Popular clamor compelled Lincoln to change him at last, but those who were behind the scenes well knew that if other departments had been as well managed as was the War Department under Cameron, all things considered, much of disaster would have been avoided. Lochiel, as Cameron liked to be called, was a man of sentiment. In his ninetieth year he visited us in Scotland and, passing through one of our glens, sitting on the front seat of our four-in-hand coach, he reverently took off his hat and bareheaded rode through the glen, overcome by its grandeur. The conversation turned once upon the efforts which candidates for office must themselves put forth and the fallacy that office seeks the man, except in very rare emergencies. Apropos of this Lochiel told this story about Lincoln's second term: One day at Cameron's country home near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, he received a telegram saying that President Lincoln would like to see him. Accordingly he went to Washington. Lincoln began: "Cameron, the people about me are telling me that it is my patriotic duty to become a candidate for a second term, that I am the only man who can save my country, and so on; and do you know I'm just beginning to be fool enough to believe them a little. What do you say, and how could it be managed?" "Well, Mr. President, twenty-eight years ago President Jackson sent for me as you have now done and told me just the same story. His letter reached me in New Orleans and I traveled ten days to reach Washington. I told President Jackson I thought the best plan would be to have the Legislature of one of the States pass resolutions insisting that the pilot should not desert the ship during these stormy times, and so forth. If one State did this I thought others would follow. Mr. Jackson concurred and I went to Harrisburg, and had such a resolution prepared and passed. Other States followed as I expected and, as you know, he won a second term." "Well," said Lincoln, "could you do that now?" "No," said I, "I am too near to you, Mr. President; but if you desire I might get a friend to attend to it, I think." "Well," said President Lincoln, "I leave the matter with you." "I sent for Foster here" (who was his companion on the coach and our guest) "and asked him to look up the Jackson resolutions. We changed them a little to meet new conditions and passed them. The like result followed as in the case of President Jackson. Upon my next visit to Washington I went in the evening to the President's public reception. When I entered the crowded and spacious East Room, being like Lincoln very tall, the President recognized me over the mass of people and holding up both white-gloved hands which looked like two legs of mutton, called out: 'Two more in to-day, Cameron, two more.' That is, two additional States had passed the Jackson-Lincoln resolutions." Apart from the light this incident throws upon political life, it is rather remarkable that the same man should have been called upon by two presidents of the United States, twenty-eight years apart, under exactly similar circumstances and asked for advice, and that, the same expedient being employed, both men became candidates and both secured second terms. As was once explained upon a memorable occasion: "There's figuring in all them things." When in Washington I had not met General Grant, because he was in the West up to the time of my leaving, but on a journey to and from Washington he stopped at Pittsburgh to make the necessary arrangements for his removal to the East. I met him on the line upon both occasions and took him to dine with me in Pittsburgh. There were no dining-cars then. He was the most ordinary-looking man of high position I had ever met, and the last that one would select at first glance as a remarkable man. I remember that Secretary of War Stanton said that when he visited the armies in the West, General Grant and his staff entered his car; he looked at them, one after the other, as they entered and seeing General Grant, said to himself, "Well, I do not know which is General Grant, but there is one that cannot be." Yet this was he. [Reading this years after it was written, I laugh. It is pretty hard on the General, for I have been taken for him more than once.] In those days of the war much was talked about "strategy" and the plans of the various generals. I was amazed at General Grant's freedom in talking to me about such things. Of course he knew that I had been in the War Office, and was well known to Secretary Stanton,[21] and had some knowledge of what was going on; but my surprise can be imagined when he said to me: "Well, the President and Stanton want me to go East and take command there, and I have agreed to do it. I am just going West to make the necessary arrangements." I said, "I suspected as much." "I am going to put Sherman in charge," he said. "That will surprise the country," I said, "for I think the impression is that General Thomas should succeed." "Yes, I know that," he said, "but I know the men and Thomas will be the first to say that Sherman is the man for the work. There will be no trouble about that. The fact is the western end is pretty far down, and the next thing we must do is to push the eastern end down a little." [Footnote 21: Mr. Carnegie gave to Stanton's college, Kenyon, $80,000, and on April 26, 1906, delivered at the college an address on the great War Secretary. It has been published under the title _Edwin M. Stanton, an Address by Andrew Carnegie on Stanton Memorial Day at Kenyon College_. (New York, 1906.)] That was exactly what he did. And that was Grant's way of putting strategy into words. It was my privilege to become well acquainted with him in after years. If ever a man was without the slightest trace of affectation, Grant was that man. Even Lincoln did not surpass him in that: but Grant was a quiet, slow man while Lincoln was always alive and in motion. I never heard Grant use a long or grand word, or make any attempt at "manner," but the general impression that he was always reticent is a mistake. He was a surprisingly good talker sometimes and upon occasion liked to talk. His sentences were always short and to the point, and his observations upon things remarkably shrewd. When he had nothing to say he said nothing. I noticed that he was never tired of praising his subordinates in the war. He spoke of them as a fond father speaks of his children. The story is told that during the trials of war in the West, General Grant began to indulge too freely in liquor. His chief of staff, Rawlins, boldly ventured to tell him so. That this was the act of a true friend Grant fully recognized. "You do not mean that? I was wholly unconscious of it. I am surprised!" said the General. "Yes, I do mean it. It is even beginning to be a subject of comment among your officers." "Why did you not tell me before? I'll never drink a drop of liquor again." He never did. Time after time in later years, dining with the Grants in New York, I have seen the General turn down the wine-glasses at his side. That indomitable will of his enabled him to remain steadfast to his resolve, a rare case as far as my experience goes. Some have refrained for a time. In one noted case one of our partners refrained for three years, but alas, the old enemy at last recaptured its victim. Grant, when President, was accused of being pecuniarily benefited by certain appointments, or acts, of his administration, while his friends knew that he was so poor that he had been compelled to announce his intention of abandoning the customary state dinners, each one of which, he found, cost eight hundred dollars--a sum which he could not afford to pay out of his salary. The increase of the presidential salary from $25,000 to $50,000 a year enabled him, during his second term, to save a little, although he cared no more about money than about uniforms. At the end of his first term I know he had nothing. Yet I found, when in Europe, that the impression was widespread among the highest officials there that there was something in the charge that General Grant had benefited pecuniarily by appointments. We know in America how little weight to attach to these charges, but it would have been well for those who made them so recklessly to have considered what effect they would produce upon public opinion in other lands. The cause of democracy suffers more in Britain to-day from the generally received opinion that American politics are corrupt, and therefore that republicanism necessarily produces corruption, than from any other one cause. Yet, speaking with some knowledge of politics in both lands, I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that for every ounce of corruption of public men in the new land of republicanism there is one in the old land of monarchy, only the forms of corruption differ. Titles are the bribes in the monarchy, not dollars. Office is a common and proper reward in both. There is, however, this difference in favor of the monarchy; titles are given openly and are not considered by the recipients or the mass of the people as bribes. When I was called to Washington in 1861, it was supposed that the war would soon be over; but it was seen shortly afterwards that it was to be a question of years. Permanent officials in charge would be required. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company was unable to spare Mr. Scott, and Mr. Scott, in turn, decided that I must return to Pittsburgh, where my services were urgently needed, owing to the demands made upon the Pennsylvania by the Government. We therefore placed the department at Washington in the hands of others and returned to our respective positions. After my return from Washington reaction followed and I was taken with my first serious illness. I was completely broken down, and after a struggle to perform my duties was compelled to seek rest. One afternoon, when on the railway line in Virginia, I had experienced something like a sunstroke, which gave me considerable trouble. It passed off, however, but after that I found I could not stand heat and had to be careful to keep out of the sun--a hot day wilting me completely. [That is the reason why the cool Highland air in summer has been to me a panacea for many years. My physician has insisted that I must avoid our hot American summers.] Leave of absence was granted me by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and the long-sought opportunity to visit Scotland came. My mother, my bosom friend Tom Miller, and myself, sailed in the steamship Etna, June 28, 1862, I in my twenty-seventh year; and on landing in Liverpool we proceeded at once to Dunfermline. No change ever affected me so much as this return to my native land. I seemed to be in a dream. Every mile that brought us nearer to Scotland increased the intensity of my feelings. My mother was equally moved, and I remember, when her eyes first caught sight of the familiar yellow bush, she exclaimed: "Oh! there's the broom, the broom!" Her heart was so full she could not restrain her tears, and the more I tried to make light of it or to soothe her, the more she was overcome. For myself, I felt as if I could throw myself upon the sacred soil and kiss it.[22] [Footnote 22: "It's a God's mercy I was born a Scotchman, for I do not see how I could ever have been contented to be anything else. The little dour deevil, set in her own ways, and getting them, too, level-headed and shrewd, with an eye to the main chance always and yet so lovingly weak, so fond, so led away by song or story, so easily touched to fine issues, so leal, so true. Ah! you suit me, Scotia, and proud am I that I am your son." (Andrew Carnegie, _Our Coaching Trip_, p. 152. New York, 1882.)] In this mood we reached Dunfermline. Every object we passed was recognized at once, but everything seemed so small, compared with what I had imagined it, that I was completely puzzled. Finally, reaching Uncle Lauder's and getting into the old room where he had taught Dod and myself so many things, I exclaimed: "You are all here; everything is just as I left it, but you are now all playing with toys." The High Street, which I had considered not a bad Broadway, uncle's shop, which I had compared with some New York establishments, the little mounds about the town, to which we had run on Sundays to play, the distances, the height of the houses, all had shrunk. Here was a city of the Lilliputians. I could almost touch the eaves of the house in which I was born, and the sea--to walk to which on a Saturday had been considered quite a feat--was only three miles distant. The rocks at the seashore, among which I had gathered wilks (whelks) seemed to have vanished, and a tame flat shoal remained. The schoolhouse, around which had centered many of my schoolboy recollections--my only Alma Mater--and the playground, upon which mimic battles had been fought and races run, had shrunk into ridiculously small dimensions. The fine residences, Broomhall, Fordell, and especially the conservatories at Donibristle, fell one after the other into the petty and insignificant. What I felt on a later occasion on a visit to Japan, with its small toy houses, was something like a repetition of the impression my old home made upon me. Everything was there in miniature. Even the old well at the head of Moodie Street, where I began my early struggles, was changed from what I had pictured it. But one object remained all that I had dreamed of it. There was no disappointment in the glorious old Abbey and its Glen. It was big enough and grand enough, and the memorable carved letters on the top of the tower--"King Robert The Bruce"--filled my eye and my heart as fully as of old. Nor was the Abbey bell disappointing, when I heard it for the first time after my return. For this I was grateful. It gave me a rallying point, and around the old Abbey, with its Palace ruins and the Glen, other objects adjusted themselves in their true proportions after a time. My relatives were exceedingly kind, and the oldest of all, my dear old Auntie Charlotte, in a moment of exultation exclaimed: "Oh, you will just be coming back here some day and _keep a shop in the High Street_." To keep a shop in the High Street was her idea of triumph. Her son-in-law and daughter, both my full cousins, though unrelated to each other, had risen to this sublime height, and nothing was too great to predict for her promising nephew. There is an aristocracy even in shopkeeping, and the family of the green grocer of the High Street mingles not upon equal terms with him of Moodie Street. Auntie, who had often played my nurse, liked to dwell upon the fact that I was a screaming infant that had to be fed with two spoons, as I yelled whenever one left my mouth. Captain Jones, our superintendent of the steel works at a later day, described me as having been born "with two rows of teeth and holes punched for more," so insatiable was my appetite for new works and increased production. As I was the first child in our immediate family circle, there were plenty of now venerable relatives begging to be allowed to play nurse, my aunties among them. Many of my childhood pranks and words they told me in their old age. One of them that the aunties remembered struck me as rather precocious. I had been brought up upon wise saws and one that my father had taught me was soon given direct application. As a boy, returning from the seashore three miles distant, he had to carry me part of the way upon his back. Going up a steep hill in the gloaming he remarked upon the heavy load, hoping probably I would propose to walk a bit. The response, however, which he received was: "Ah, faither, never mind, patience and perseverance make the man, ye ken." He toiled on with his burden, but shaking with laughter. He was hoist with his own petard, but his burden grew lighter all the same. I am sure of this. My home, of course, was with my instructor, guide, and inspirer, Uncle Lauder--he who had done so much to make me romantic, patriotic, and poetical at eight. Now I was twenty-seven, but Uncle Lauder still remained Uncle Lauder. He had not shrunk, no one could fill his place. We had our walks and talks constantly and I was "Naig" again to him. He had never had any name for me but that and never did have. My dear, dear uncle, and more, much more than uncle to me.[23] [Footnote 23: "This uncle, who loved liberty because it is the heritage of brave souls, in the dark days of the American Civil War stood almost alone in his community for the cause which Lincoln represented." (Hamilton Wright Mabie in _Century Magazine_, vol. 64, p. 958.)] I was still dreaming and so excited that I could not sleep and had caught cold in the bargain. The natural result of this was a fever. I lay in uncle's house for six weeks, a part of that time in a critical condition. Scottish medicine was then as stern as Scottish theology (both are now much softened), and I was bled. My thin American blood was so depleted that when I was pronounced convalescent it was long before I could stand upon my feet. This illness put an end to my visit, but by the time I had reached America again, the ocean voyage had done me so much good I was able to resume work. I remember being deeply affected by the reception I met with when I returned to my division. The men of the eastern end had gathered together with a cannon and while the train passed I was greeted with a salvo. This was perhaps the first occasion upon which my subordinates had an opportunity of making me the subject of any demonstration, and their reception made a lasting impression. I knew how much I cared for them and it was pleasing to know that they reciprocated my feelings. Working-men always do reciprocate kindly feeling. If we truly care for others we need not be anxious about their feelings for us. Like draws to like. CHAPTER IX BRIDGE-BUILDING During the Civil War the price of iron went up to something like $130 per ton. Even at that figure it was not so much a question of money as of delivery. The railway lines of America were fast becoming dangerous for want of new rails, and this state of affairs led me to organize in 1864 a rail-making concern at Pittsburgh. There was no difficulty in obtaining partners and capital, and the Superior Rail Mill and Blast Furnaces were built. In like manner the demand for locomotives was very great, and with Mr. Thomas N. Miller[24] I organized in 1866 the Pittsburgh Locomotive Works, which has been a prosperous and creditable concern--locomotives made there having obtained an enviable reputation throughout the United States. It sounds like a fairy tale to-day to record that in 1906 the one-hundred-dollar shares of this company sold for three thousand dollars--that is, thirty dollars for one. Large annual dividends had been paid regularly and the company had been very successful--sufficient proof of the policy: "Make nothing but the very best." We never did. [Footnote 24: Mr. Carnegie had previous to this--as early as 1861--been associated with Mr. Miller in the Sun City Forge Company, doing a small iron business.] When at Altoona I had seen in the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's works the first small bridge built of iron. It proved a success. I saw that it would never do to depend further upon wooden bridges for permanent railway structures. An important bridge on the Pennsylvania Railroad had recently burned and the traffic had been obstructed for eight days. Iron was the thing. I proposed to H.J. Linville, who had designed the iron bridge, and to John L. Piper and his partner, Mr. Schiffler, who had charge of bridges on the Pennsylvania line, that they should come to Pittsburgh and I would organize a company to build iron bridges. It was the first company of its kind. I asked my friend, Mr. Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, to go with us in the venture, which he did. Each of us paid for a one fifth interest, or $1250. My share I borrowed from the bank. Looking back at it now the sum seemed very small, but "tall oaks from little acorns grow." In this way was organized in 1862 the firm of Piper and Schiffler which was merged into the Keystone Bridge Company in 1863--a name which I remember I was proud of having thought of as being most appropriate for a bridge-building concern in the State of Pennsylvania, the Keystone State. From this beginning iron bridges came generally into use in America, indeed, in the world at large so far as I know. My letters to iron manufacturers in Pittsburgh were sufficient to insure the new company credit. Small wooden shops were erected and several bridge structures were undertaken. Cast-iron was the principal material used, but so well were the bridges built that some made at that day and since strengthened for heavier traffic, still remain in use upon various lines. The question of bridging the Ohio River at Steubenville came up, and we were asked whether we would undertake to build a railway bridge with a span of three hundred feet over the channel. It seems ridiculous at the present day to think of the serious doubts entertained about our ability to do this; but it must be remembered this was before the days of steel and almost before the use of wrought-iron in America. The top cords and supports were all of cast-iron. I urged my partners to try it anyhow, and we finally closed a contract, but I remember well when President Jewett[25] of the railway company visited the works and cast his eyes upon the piles of heavy cast-iron lying about, which were parts of the forthcoming bridge, that he turned to me and said: "I don't believe these heavy castings can be made to stand up and carry themselves, much less carry a train across the Ohio River." [Footnote 25: Thomas L. Jewett, President of the Panhandle.] The Judge, however, lived to believe differently. The bridge remained until recently, though strengthened to carry heavier traffic. We expected to make quite a sum by this first important undertaking, but owing to the inflation of the currency, which occurred before the work was finished, our margin of profit was almost swallowed up. It is an evidence of the fairness of President Edgar Thomson, of the Pennsylvania, that, upon learning the facts of the case, he allowed an extra sum to secure us from loss. The subsequent position of affairs, he said, was not contemplated by either party when the contract was made. A great and a good man was Edgar Thomson, a close bargainer for the Pennsylvania Railroad, but ever mindful of the fact that the spirit of the law was above the letter. In Linville, Piper, and Schiffler, we had the best talent of that day--Linville an engineer, Piper a hustling, active mechanic, and Schiffler sure and steady. Colonel Piper was an exceptional man. I heard President Thomson of the Pennsylvania once say he would rather have him at a burnt bridge than all the engineering corps. There was one subject upon which the Colonel displayed great weakness (fortunately for us) and that was the horse. Whenever a business discussion became too warm, and the Colonel showed signs of temper, which was not seldom, it was a sure cure to introduce that subject. Everything else would pass from his mind; he became absorbed in the fascinating topic of horseflesh. If he had overworked himself, and we wished to get him to take a holiday, we sent him to Kentucky to look after a horse or two that one or the other of us was desirous of obtaining, and for the selection of which we would trust no one but himself. But his craze for horses sometimes brought him into serious difficulties. He made his appearance at the office one day with one half of his face as black as mud could make it, his clothes torn, and his hat missing, but still holding the whip in one hand. He explained that he had attempted to drive a fast Kentucky colt; one of the reins had broken and he had lost his "steerage-way," as he expressed it. He was a grand fellow, "Pipe" as we called him, and when he took a fancy to a person, as he did to me, he was for and with him always. In later days when I removed to New York he transferred his affections to my brother, whom he invariably called Thomas, instead of Tom. High as I stood in his favor, my brother afterwards stood higher. He fairly worshiped him, and anything that Tom said was law and gospel. He was exceedingly jealous of our other establishments, in which he was not directly interested, such as our mills which supplied the Keystone Works with iron. Many a dispute arose between the mill managers and the Colonel as to quality, price, and so forth. On one occasion he came to my brother to complain that a bargain which he had made for the supply of iron for a year had not been copied correctly. The prices were "net," and nothing had been said about "net" when the bargain was made. He wanted to know just what that word "net" meant. "Well, Colonel," said my brother, "it means that nothing more is to be added." "All right, Thomas," said the Colonel, entirely satisfied. There is much in the way one puts things. "Nothing to be deducted" might have caused a dispute. [Illustration: THOMAS MORRISON CARNEGIE] He was made furious one day by Bradstreet's volume which gives the standing of business concerns. Never having seen such a book before, he was naturally anxious to see what rating his concern had. When he read that the Keystone Bridge Works were "BC," which meant "Bad Credit," it was with difficulty he was restrained from going to see our lawyers to have a suit brought against the publishers. Tom, however, explained to him that the Keystone Bridge Works were in bad credit because they never borrowed anything, and he was pacified. No debt was one of the Colonel's hobbies. Once, when I was leaving for Europe, when many firms were hard up and some failing around us, he said to me: "The sheriff can't get us when you are gone if I don't sign any notes, can he?" "No," I said, "he can't." "All right, we'll be here when you come back." Talking of the Colonel reminds me of another unusual character with whom we were brought in contact in these bridge-building days. This was Captain Eads, of St. Louis,[26] an original genius _minus_ scientific knowledge to guide his erratic ideas of things mechanical. He was seemingly one of those who wished to have everything done upon his own original plans. That a thing had been done in one way before was sufficient to cause its rejection. When his plans for the St. Louis Bridge were presented to us, I handed them to the one man in the United States who knew the subject best--our Mr. Linville. He came to me in great concern, saying: "The bridge if built upon these plans will not stand up; it will not carry its own weight." "Well," I said, "Captain Eads will come to see you and in talking over matters explain this to him gently, get it into proper shape, lead him into the straight path and say nothing about it to others." [Footnote 26: Captain James B. Eads, afterward famous for his jetty system in the Mississippi River.] This was successfully accomplished; but in the construction of the bridge poor Piper was totally unable to comply with the extraordinary requirements of the Captain. At first he was so delighted with having received the largest contract that had yet been let that he was all graciousness to Captain Eads. It was not even "Captain" at first, but "'Colonel' Eads, how do you do? Delighted to see you." By and by matters became a little complicated. We noticed that the greeting became less cordial, but still it was "Good-morning, Captain Eads." This fell till we were surprised to hear "Pipe" talking of "Mr. Eads." Before the troubles were over, the "Colonel" had fallen to "Jim Eads," and to tell the truth, long before the work was out of the shops, "Jim" was now and then preceded by a big "D." A man may be possessed of great ability, and be a charming, interesting character, as Captain Eads undoubtedly was, and yet not be able to construct the first bridge of five hundred feet span over the Mississippi River,[27] without availing himself of the scientific knowledge and practical experience of others. [Footnote 27: The span was 515 feet, and at that time considered the finest metal arch in the world.] When the work was finished, I had the Colonel with me in St. Louis for some days protecting the bridge against a threatened attempt on the part of others to take possession of it before we obtained full payment. When the Colonel had taken up the planks at both ends, and organized a plan of relieving the men who stood guard, he became homesick and exceedingly anxious to return to Pittsburgh. He had determined to take the night train and I was at a loss to know how to keep him with me until I thought of his one vulnerable point. I told him, during the day, how anxious I was to obtain a pair of horses for my sister. I wished to make her a present of a span, and I had heard that St. Louis was a noted place for them. Had he seen anything superb? The bait took. He launched forth into a description of several spans of horses he had seen and stables he had visited. I asked him if he could possibly stay over and select the horses. I knew very well that he would wish to see them and drive them many times which would keep him busy. It happened just as I expected. He purchased a splendid pair, but then another difficulty occurred about transporting them to Pittsburgh. He would not trust them by rail and no suitable boat was to leave for several days. Providence was on my side evidently. Nothing on earth would induce that man to leave the city until he saw those horses fairly started and it was an even wager whether he would not insist upon going up on the steamer with them himself. We held the bridge. "Pipe" made a splendid Horatius. He was one of the best men and one of the most valuable partners I ever was favored with, and richly deserved the rewards which he did so much to secure. The Keystone Bridge Works have always been a source of satisfaction to me. Almost every concern that had undertaken to erect iron bridges in America had failed. Many of the structures themselves had fallen and some of the worst railway disasters in America had been caused in that way. Some of the bridges had given way under wind pressure but nothing has ever happened to a Keystone bridge, and some of them have stood where the wind was not tempered. There has been no luck about it. We used only the best material and enough of it, making our own iron and later our own steel. We were our own severest inspectors, and would build a safe structure or none at all. When asked to build a bridge which we knew to be of insufficient strength or of unscientific design, we resolutely declined. Any piece of work bearing the stamp of the Keystone Bridge Works (and there are few States in the Union where such are not to be found) we were prepared to underwrite. We were as proud of our bridges as Carlyle was of the bridge his father built across the Annan. "An honest brig," as the great son rightly said. This policy is the true secret of success. Uphill work it will be for a few years until your work is proven, but after that it is smooth sailing. Instead of objecting to inspectors they should be welcomed by all manufacturing establishments. A high standard of excellence is easily maintained, and men are educated in the effort to reach excellence. I have never known a concern to make a decided success that did not do good, honest work, and even in these days of the fiercest competition, when everything would seem to be matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality. The effect of attention to quality, upon every man in the service, from the president of the concern down to the humblest laborer, cannot be overestimated. And bearing on the same question, clean, fine workshops and tools, well-kept yards and surroundings are of much greater importance than is usually supposed. I was very much pleased to hear a remark, made by one of the prominent bankers who visited the Edgar Thomson Works during a Bankers Convention held at Pittsburgh. He was one of a party of some hundreds of delegates, and after they had passed through the works he said to our manager: "Somebody appears to belong to these works." He put his finger there upon one of the secrets of success. They did belong to somebody. The president of an important manufacturing work once boasted to me that their men had chased away the first inspector who had ventured to appear among them, and that they had never been troubled with another since. This was said as a matter of sincere congratulation, but I thought to myself: "This concern will never stand the strain of competition; it is bound to fail when hard times come." The result proved the correctness of my belief. The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost. I gave a great deal of personal attention for some years to the affairs of the Keystone Bridge Works, and when important contracts were involved often went myself to meet the parties. On one such occasion in 1868, I visited Dubuque, Iowa, with our engineer, Walter Katte. We were competing for the building of the most important railway bridge that had been built up to that time, a bridge across the wide Mississippi at Dubuque, to span which was considered a great undertaking. We found the river frozen and crossed it upon a sleigh drawn by four horses. That visit proved how much success turns upon trifles. We found we were not the lowest bidder. Our chief rival was a bridge-building concern in Chicago to which the board had decided to award the contract. I lingered and talked with some of the directors. They were delightfully ignorant of the merits of cast- and wrought-iron. We had always made the upper cord of the bridge of the latter, while our rivals' was made of cast-iron. This furnished my text. I pictured the result of a steamer striking against the one and against the other. In the case of the wrought-iron cord it would probably only bend; in the case of the cast-iron it would certainly break and down would come the bridge. One of the directors, the well-known Perry Smith, was fortunately able to enforce my argument, by stating to the board that what I said was undoubtedly the case about cast-iron. The other night he had run his buggy in the dark against a lamp-post which was of cast-iron and the lamp-post had broken to pieces. Am I to be censured if I had little difficulty here in recognizing something akin to the hand of Providence, with Perry Smith the manifest agent? "Ah, gentlemen," I said, "there is the point. A little more money and you could have had the indestructible wrought-iron and your bridge would stand against any steamboat. We never have built and we never will build a cheap bridge. Ours don't fall." There was a pause; then the president of the bridge company, Mr. Allison, the great Senator, asked if I would excuse them for a few moments. I retired. Soon they recalled me and offered the contract, provided we took the lower price, which was only a few thousand dollars less. I agreed to the concession. That cast-iron lamp-post so opportunely smashed gave us one of our most profitable contracts and, what is more, obtained for us the reputation of having taken the Dubuque bridge against all competitors. It also laid the foundation for me of a lifelong, unbroken friendship with one of America's best and most valuable public men, Senator Allison. The moral of that story lies on the surface. If you want a contract, be on the spot when it is let. A smashed lamp-post or something equally unthought of may secure the prize if the bidder be on hand. And if possible stay on hand until you can take the written contract home in your pocket. This we did at Dubuque, although it was suggested we could leave and it would be sent after us to execute. We preferred to remain, being anxious to see more of the charms of Dubuque. After building the Steubenville Bridge, it became a necessity for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company to build bridges across the Ohio River at Parkersburg and Wheeling, to prevent their great rival, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, from possessing a decided advantage. The days of ferryboats were then fast passing away. It was in connection with the contracts for these bridges that I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a man, then of great position, Mr. Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio. We were most anxious to secure both bridges and all the approaches to them, but I found Mr. Garrett decidedly of the opinion that we were quite unable to do so much work in the time specified. He wished to build the approaches and the short spans in his own shops, and asked me if we would permit him to use our patents. I replied that we would feel highly honored by the Baltimore and Ohio doing so. The stamp of approval of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad would be worth ten times the patent fees. He could use all, and everything, we had. There was no doubt as to the favorable impression that made upon the great railway magnate. He was much pleased and, to my utter surprise, took me into his private room and opened up a frank conversation upon matters in general. He touched especially upon his quarrels with the Pennsylvania Railroad people, with Mr. Thomson and Mr. Scott, the president and vice-president, whom he knew to be my special friends. This led me to say that I had passed through Philadelphia on my way to see him and had been asked by Mr. Scott where I was going. "I told him that I was going to visit you to obtain the contracts for your great bridges over the Ohio River. Mr. Scott said it was not often that I went on a fool's errand, but that I was certainly on one now; that Mr. Garrett would never think for a moment of giving me his contracts, for every one knew that I was, as a former employee, always friendly to the Pennsylvania Railroad. Well, I said, we shall build Mr. Garrett's bridges." Mr. Garrett promptly replied that when the interests of his company were at stake it was the best always that won. His engineers had reported that our plans were the best and that Scott and Thomson would see that he had only one rule--the interests of his company. Although he very well knew that I was a Pennsylvania Railroad man, yet he felt it his duty to award us the work. The negotiation was still unsatisfactory to me, because we were to get all the difficult part of the work--the great spans of which the risk was then considerable--while Mr. Garrett was to build all the small and profitable spans at his own shops upon our plans and patents. I ventured to ask whether he was dividing the work because he honestly believed we could not open his bridges for traffic as soon as his masonry would permit. He admitted he was. I told him that he need not have any fear upon that point. "Mr. Garrett," I said, "would you consider my personal bond a good security?" "Certainly," he said. "Well, now," I replied, "bind me! I know what I am doing. I will take the risk. How much of a bond do you want me to give you that your bridges will be opened for traffic at the specified time if you give us the entire contract, provided you get your masonry ready?" "Well, I would want a hundred thousand dollars from you, young man." "All right," I said, "prepare your bond. Give us the work. Our firm is not going to let me lose a hundred thousand dollars. You know that." "Yes," he said, "I believe if you are bound for a hundred thousand dollars your company will work day and night and I will get my bridges." This was the arrangement which gave us what were then the gigantic contracts of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. It is needless to say that I never had to pay that bond. My partners knew much better than Mr. Garrett the conditions of his work. The Ohio River was not to be trifled with, and long before his masonry was ready we had relieved ourselves from all responsibility upon the bond by placing the superstructure on the banks awaiting the completion of the substructure which he was still building. Mr. Garrett was very proud of his Scottish blood, and Burns having been once touched upon between us we became firm friends. He afterwards took me to his fine mansion in the country. He was one of the few Americans who then lived in the grand style of a country gentleman, with many hundreds of acres of beautiful land, park-like drives, a stud of thoroughbred horses, with cattle, sheep, and dogs, and a home that realized what one had read of the country life of a nobleman in England. At a later date he had fully determined that his railroad company should engage in the manufacture of steel rails and had applied for the right to use the Bessemer patents. This was a matter of great moment to us. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company was one of our best customers, and we were naturally anxious to prevent the building of steel-rail rolling mills at Cumberland. It would have been a losing enterprise for the Baltimore and Ohio, for I was sure it could buy its steel rails at a much cheaper rate than it could possibly make the small quantity needed for itself. I visited Mr. Garrett to talk the matter over with him. He was then much pleased with the foreign commerce and the lines of steamships which made Baltimore their port. He drove me, accompanied by several of his staff, to the wharves where he was to decide about their extension, and as the foreign goods were being discharged from the steamship side and placed in the railway cars, he turned to me and said: "Mr. Carnegie, you can now begin to appreciate the magnitude of our vast system and understand why it is necessary that we should make everything for ourselves, even our steel rails. We cannot depend upon private concerns to supply us with any of the principal articles we consume. We shall be a world to ourselves." "Well," I said, "Mr. Garrett, it is all very grand, but really your 'vast system' does not overwhelm me. I read your last annual report and saw that you collected last year for transporting the goods of others the sum of fourteen millions of dollars. The firms I control dug the material from the hills, made their own goods, and sold them to a much greater value than that. You are really a very small concern compared with Carnegie Brothers and Company." My railroad apprenticeship came in there to advantage. We heard no more of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company entering into competition with us. Mr. Garrett and I remained good friends to the end. He even presented me with a Scotch collie dog of his own rearing. That I had been a Pennsylvania Railroad man was drowned in the "wee drap o' Scotch bluid atween us." CHAPTER X THE IRON WORKS The Keystone Works have always been my pet as being the parent of all the other works. But they had not been long in existence before the advantage of wrought- over cast-iron became manifest. Accordingly, to insure uniform quality, and also to make certain shapes which were not then to be obtained, we determined to embark in the manufacture of iron. My brother and I became interested with Thomas N. Miller, Henry Phipps, and Andrew Kloman in a small iron mill. Miller was the first to embark with Kloman and he brought Phipps in, lending him eight hundred dollars to buy a one-sixth interest, in November, 1861. I must not fail to record that Mr. Miller was the pioneer of our iron manufacturing projects. We were all indebted to Tom, who still lives (July 20, 1911) and sheds upon us the sweetness and light of a most lovable nature, a friend who grows more precious as the years roll by. He has softened by age, and even his outbursts against theology as antagonistic to true religion are in his fine old age much less alarming. We are all prone to grow philosophic in age, and perhaps this is well. [In re-reading this--July 19, 1912--in our retreat upon the high moors at Aultnagar, I drop a tear for my bosom friend, dear Tom Miller, who died in Pittsburgh last winter. Mrs. Carnegie and I attended his funeral. Henceforth life lacks something, lacks much--my first partner in early years, my dearest friend in old age. May I go where he is, wherever that may be.] Andrew Kloman had a small steel-hammer in Allegheny City. As a superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad I had found that he made the best axles. He was a great mechanic--one who had discovered, what was then unknown in Pittsburgh, that whatever was worth doing with machinery was worth doing well. His German mind made him thorough. What he constructed cost enormously, but when once started it did the work it was intended to do from year's end to year's end. In those early days it was a question with axles generally whether they would run any specified time or break. There was no analysis of material, no scientific treatment of it. How much this German created! He was the first man to introduce the cold saw that cut cold iron the exact lengths. He invented upsetting machines to make bridge links, and also built the first "universal" mill in America. All these were erected at our works. When Captain Eads could not obtain the couplings for the St. Louis Bridge arches (the contractors failing to make them) and matters were at a standstill, Kloman told us that he could make them and why the others had failed. He succeeded in making them. Up to that date they were the largest semicircles that had ever been rolled. Our confidence in Mr. Kloman may be judged from the fact that when he said he could make them we unhesitatingly contracted to furnish them. I have already spoken of the intimacy between our family and that of the Phippses. In the early days my chief companion was the elder brother, John. Henry was several years my junior, but had not failed to attract my attention as a bright, clever lad. One day he asked his brother John to lend him a quarter of a dollar. John saw that he had important use for it and handed him the shining quarter without inquiry. Next morning an advertisement appeared in the "Pittsburgh Dispatch": "A willing boy wishes work." This was the use the energetic and willing Harry had made of his quarter, probably the first quarter he had ever spent at one time in his life. A response came from the well-known firm of Dilworth and Bidwell. They asked the "willing boy" to call. Harry went and obtained a position as errand boy, and as was then the custom, his first duty every morning was to sweep the office. He went to his parents and obtained their consent, and in this way the young lad launched himself upon the sea of business. There was no holding back a boy like that. It was the old story. He soon became indispensable to his employers, obtained a small interest in a collateral branch of their business; and then, ever on the alert, it was not many years before he attracted the attention of Mr. Miller, who made a small investment for him with Andrew Kloman. That finally resulted in the building of the iron mill in Twenty-Ninth Street. He had been a schoolmate and great crony of my brother Tom. As children they had played together, and throughout life, until my brother's death in 1886, these two formed, as it were, a partnership within a partnership. They invariably held equal interests in the various firms with which they were connected. What one did the other did. The errand boy is now one of the richest men in the United States and has begun to prove that he knows how to expend his surplus. Years ago he gave beautiful conservatories to the public parks of Allegheny and Pittsburgh. That he specified "that these should be open upon Sunday" shows that he is a man of his time. This clause in the gift created much excitement. Ministers denounced him from the pulpit and assemblies of the church passed resolutions declaring against the desecration of the Lord's Day. But the people rose, _en masse_, against this narrow-minded contention and the Council of the city accepted the gift with acclamation. The sound common sense of my partner was well expressed when he said in reply to a remonstrance by ministers: "It is all very well for you, gentlemen, who work one day in the week and are masters of your time the other six during which you can view the beauties of Nature--all very well for you--but I think it shameful that you should endeavor to shut out from the toiling masses all that is calculated to entertain and instruct them during the only day which you well know they have at their disposal." These same ministers have recently been quarreling in their convention at Pittsburgh upon the subject of instrumental music in churches. But while they are debating whether it is right to have organs in churches, intelligent people are opening museums, conservatories, and libraries upon the Sabbath; and unless the pulpit soon learns how to meet the real wants of the people in this life (where alone men's duties lie) much better than it is doing at present, these rival claimants for popular favor may soon empty their churches. Unfortunately Kloman and Phipps soon differed with Miller about the business and forced him out. Being convinced that Miller was unfairly treated, I united with him in building new works. These were the Cyclops Mills of 1864. After they were set running it became possible, and therefore advisable, to unite the old and the new works, and the Union Iron Mills were formed by their consolidation in 1867. I did not believe that Mr. Miller's reluctance to associate again with his former partners, Phipps and Kloman, could not be overcome, because they would not control the Union Works. Mr. Miller, my brother, and I would hold the controlling interest. But Mr. Miller proved obdurate and begged me to buy his interest, which I reluctantly did after all efforts had failed to induce him to let bygones be bygones. He was Irish, and the Irish blood when aroused is uncontrollable. Mr. Miller has since regretted (to me) his refusal of my earnest request, which would have enabled the pioneer of all of us to reap what was only his rightful reward--millionairedom for himself and his followers. We were young in manufacturing then and obtained for the Cyclops Mills what was considered at the time an enormous extent of land--seven acres. For some years we offered to lease a portion of the ground to others. It soon became a question whether we could continue the manufacture of iron within so small an area. Mr. Kloman succeeded in making iron beams and for many years our mill was far in advance of any other in that respect. We began at the new mill by making all shapes which were required, and especially such as no other concern would undertake, depending upon an increasing demand in our growing country for things that were only rarely needed at first. What others could not or would not do we would attempt, and this was a rule of our business which was strictly adhered to. Also we would make nothing except of excellent quality. We always accommodated our customers, even although at some expense to ourselves, and in cases of dispute we gave the other party the benefit of the doubt and settled. These were our rules. We had no lawsuits. As I became acquainted with the manufacture of iron I was greatly surprised to find that the cost of each of the various processes was unknown. Inquiries made of the leading manufacturers of Pittsburgh proved this. It was a lump business, and until stock was taken and the books balanced at the end of the year, the manufacturers were in total ignorance of results. I heard of men who thought their business at the end of the year would show a loss and had found a profit, and _vice-versa_. I felt as if we were moles burrowing in the dark, and this to me was intolerable. I insisted upon such a system of weighing and accounting being introduced throughout our works as would enable us to know what our cost was for each process and especially what each man was doing, who saved material, who wasted it, and who produced the best results. To arrive at this was a much more difficult task than one would imagine. Every manager in the mills was naturally against the new system. Years were required before an accurate system was obtained, but eventually, by the aid of many clerks and the introduction of weighing scales at various points in the mill, we began to know not only what every department was doing, but what each one of the many men working at the furnaces was doing, and thus to compare one with another. One of the chief sources of success in manufacturing is the introduction and strict maintenance of a perfect system of accounting so that responsibility for money or materials can be brought home to every man. Owners who, in the office, would not trust a clerk with five dollars without having a check upon him, were supplying tons of material daily to men in the mills without exacting an account of their stewardship by weighing what each returned in the finished form. The Siemens Gas Furnace had been used to some extent in Great Britain for heating steel and iron, but it was supposed to be too expensive. I well remember the criticisms made by older heads among the Pittsburgh manufacturers about the extravagant expenditure we were making upon these new-fangled furnaces. But in the heating of great masses of material, almost half the waste could sometimes be saved by using the new furnaces. The expenditure would have been justified, even if it had been doubled. Yet it was many years before we were followed in this new departure; and in some of those years the margin of profit was so small that the most of it was made up from the savings derived from the adoption of the improved furnaces. Our strict system of accounting enabled us to detect the great waste possible in heating large masses of iron. This improvement revealed to us a valuable man in a clerk, William Borntraeger, a distant relative of Mr. Kloman, who came from Germany. He surprised us one day by presenting a detailed statement showing results for a period, which seemed incredible. All the needed labor in preparing this statement he had performed at night unasked and unknown to us. The form adapted was uniquely original. Needless to say, William soon became superintendent of the works and later a partner, and the poor German lad died a millionaire. He well deserved his fortune. It was in 1862 that the great oil wells of Pennsylvania attracted attention. My friend Mr. William Coleman, whose daughter became, at a later date, my sister-in-law, was deeply interested in the discovery, and nothing would do but that I should take a trip with him to the oil regions. It was a most interesting excursion. There had been a rush to the oil fields and the influx was so great that it was impossible for all to obtain shelter. This, however, to the class of men who flocked thither, was but a slight drawback. A few hours sufficed to knock up a shanty, and it was surprising in how short a time they were able to surround themselves with many of the comforts of life. They were men above the average, men who had saved considerable sums and were able to venture something in the search for fortune. What surprised me was the good humor which prevailed everywhere. It was a vast picnic, full of amusing incidents. Everybody was in high glee; fortunes were supposedly within reach; everything was booming. On the tops of the derricks floated flags on which strange mottoes were displayed. I remember looking down toward the river and seeing two men working their treadles boring for oil upon the banks of the stream, and inscribed upon their flag was "Hell or China." They were going down, no matter how far. The adaptability of the American was never better displayed than in this region. Order was soon evolved out of chaos. When we visited the place not long after we were serenaded by a brass band the players of which were made up of the new inhabitants along the creek. It would be safe to wager that a thousand Americans in a new land would organize themselves, establish schools, churches, newspapers, and brass bands--in short, provide themselves with all the appliances of civilization--and go ahead developing their country before an equal number of British would have discovered who among them was the highest in hereditary rank and had the best claims to leadership owing to his grandfather. There is but one rule among Americans--the tools to those who can use them. To-day Oil Creek is a town of many thousand inhabitants, as is also Titusville at the other end of the creek. The district which began by furnishing a few barrels of oil every season, gathered with blankets from the surface of the creek by the Seneca Indians, has now several towns and refineries, with millions of dollars of capital. In those early days all the arrangements were of the crudest character. When the oil was obtained it was run into flat-bottomed boats which leaked badly. Water ran into the boats and the oil overflowed into the river. The creek was dammed at various places, and upon a stipulated day and hour the dams were opened and upon the flood the oil boats floated to the Allegheny River, and thence to Pittsburgh. In this way not only the creek, but the Allegheny River, became literally covered with oil. The loss involved in transportation to Pittsburgh was estimated at fully a third of the total quantity, and before the oil boats started it is safe to say that another third was lost by leakage. The oil gathered by the Indians in the early days was bottled in Pittsburgh and sold at high prices as medicine--a dollar for a small vial. It had general reputation as a sure cure for rheumatic tendencies. As it became plentiful and cheap its virtues vanished. What fools we mortals be! The most celebrated wells were upon the Storey farm. Upon these we obtained an option of purchase for forty thousand dollars. We bought them. Mr. Coleman, ever ready at suggestion, proposed to make a lake of oil by excavating a pool sufficient to hold a hundred thousand barrels (the waste to be made good every day by running streams of oil into it), and to hold it for the not far distant day when, as we then expected, the oil supply would cease. This was promptly acted upon, but after losing many thousands of barrels waiting for the expected day (which has not yet arrived) we abandoned the reserve. Coleman predicted that when the supply stopped, oil would bring ten dollars a barrel and therefore we would have a million dollars worth in the lake. We did not think then of Nature's storehouse below which still keeps on yielding many thousands of barrels per day without apparent exhaustion. This forty-thousand-dollar investment proved for us the best of all so far. The revenues from it came at the most opportune time.[28] The building of the new mill in Pittsburgh required not only all the capital we could gather, but the use of our credit, which I consider, looking backward, was remarkably good for young men. [Footnote 28: The wells on the Storey farm paid in one year a million dollars in cash and dividends, and the farm itself eventually became worth, on a stock basis, five million dollars.] Having become interested in this oil venture, I made several excursions to the district and also, in 1864, to an oil field in Ohio where a great well had been struck which yielded a peculiar quality of oil well fitted for lubricating purposes. My journey thither with Mr. Coleman and Mr. David Ritchie was one of the strangest experiences I ever had. We left the railway line some hundreds of miles from Pittsburgh and plunged through a sparsely inhabited district to the waters of Duck Creek to see the monster well. We bought it before leaving. It was upon our return that adventures began. The weather had been fine and the roads quite passable during our journey thither, but rain had set in during our stay. We started back in our wagon, but before going far fell into difficulties. The road had become a mass of soft, tenacious mud and our wagon labored fearfully. The rain fell in torrents, and it soon became evident that we were in for a night of it. Mr. Coleman lay at full length on one side of the wagon, and Mr. Ritchie on the other, and I, being then very thin, weighing not much more than a hundred pounds, was nicely sandwiched between the two portly gentlemen. Every now and then the wagon proceeded a few feet heaving up and down in the most outrageous manner, and finally sticking fast. In this fashion we passed the night. There was in front a seat across the wagon, under which we got our heads, and in spite of our condition the night was spent in uproarious merriment. By the next night we succeeded in reaching a country town in the worst possible plight. We saw the little frame church of the town lighted and heard the bell ringing. We had just reached our tavern when a committee appeared stating that they had been waiting for us and that the congregation was assembled. It appears that a noted exhorter had been expected who had no doubt been delayed as we had been. I was taken for the absentee minister and asked how soon I would be ready to accompany them to the meeting-house. I was almost prepared with my companions to carry out the joke (we were in for fun), but I found I was too exhausted with fatigue to attempt it. I had never before come so near occupying a pulpit. My investments now began to require so much of my personal attention that I resolved to leave the service of the railway company and devote myself exclusively to my own affairs. I had been honored a short time before this decision by being called by President Thomson to Philadelphia. He desired to promote me to the office of assistant general superintendent with headquarters at Altoona under Mr. Lewis. I declined, telling him that I had decided to give up the railroad service altogether, that I was determined to make a fortune and I saw no means of doing this honestly at any salary the railroad company could afford to give, and I would not do it by indirection. When I lay down at night I was going to get a verdict of approval from the highest of all tribunals, the judge within. I repeated this in my parting letter to President Thomson, who warmly congratulated me upon it in his letter of reply. I resigned my position March 28, 1865, and received from the men on the railway a gold watch. This and Mr. Thomson's letter I treasure among my most precious mementos. The following letter was written to the men on the Division: PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD COMPANY SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE, PITTSBURGH DIVISION PITTSBURGH, _March 28, 1865_ To the Officers and Employees of the Pittsburgh Division GENTLEMEN: I cannot allow my connection with you to cease without some expression of the deep regret felt at parting. Twelve years of pleasant intercourse have served to inspire feelings of personal regard for those who have so faithfully labored with me in the service of the Company. The coming change is painful only as I reflect that in consequence thereof I am not to be in the future, as in the past, intimately associated with you and with many others in the various departments, who have through business intercourse, become my personal friends. I assure you although the official relations hitherto existing between us must soon close, I can never fail to feel and evince the liveliest interest in the welfare of such as have been identified with the Pittsburgh Division in times past, and who are, I trust, for many years to come to contribute to the success of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and share in its justly deserved prosperity. Thanking you most sincerely for the uniform kindness shown toward me, for your zealous efforts made at all times to meet my wishes, and asking for my successor similar support at your hands, I bid you all farewell. Very respectfully (Signed) ANDREW CARNEGIE Thenceforth I never worked for a salary. A man must necessarily occupy a narrow field who is at the beck and call of others. Even if he becomes president of a great corporation he is hardly his own master, unless he holds control of the stock. The ablest presidents are hampered by boards of directors and shareholders, who can know but little of the business. But I am glad to say that among my best friends to-day are those with whom I labored in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In the year 1867, Mr. Phipps, Mr. J.W. Vandevort, and myself revisited Europe, traveling extensively through England and Scotland, and made the tour of the Continent. "Vandy" had become my closest companion. We had both been fired by reading Bayard Taylor's "Views Afoot." It was in the days of the oil excitement and shares were going up like rockets. One Sunday, lying in the grass, I said to "Vandy": "If you could make three thousand dollars would you spend it in a tour through Europe with me?" "Would a duck swim or an Irishman eat potatoes?" was his reply. The sum was soon made in oil stock by the investment of a few hundred dollars which "Vandy" had saved. This was the beginning of our excursion. We asked my partner, Harry Phipps, who was by this time quite a capitalist, to join the party. We visited most of the capitals of Europe, and in all the enthusiasm of youth climbed every spire, slept on mountain-tops, and carried our luggage in knapsacks upon our backs. We ended our journey upon Vesuvius, where we resolved some day to go around the world. This visit to Europe proved most instructive. Up to this time I had known nothing of painting or sculpture, but it was not long before I could classify the works of the great painters. One may not at the time justly appreciate the advantage he is receiving from examining the great masterpieces, but upon his return to America he will find himself unconsciously rejecting what before seemed truly beautiful, and judging productions which come before him by a new standard. That which is truly great has so impressed itself upon him that what is false or pretentious proves no longer attractive. My visit to Europe also gave me my first great treat in music. The Handel Anniversary was then being celebrated at the Crystal Palace in London, and I had never up to that time, nor have I often since, felt the power and majesty of music in such high degree. What I heard at the Crystal Palace and what I subsequently heard on the Continent in the cathedrals, and at the opera, certainly enlarged my appreciation of music. At Rome the Pope's choir and the celebrations in the churches at Christmas and Easter furnished, as it were, a grand climax to the whole. These visits to Europe were also of great service in a commercial sense. One has to get out of the swirl of the great Republic to form a just estimate of the velocity with which it spins. I felt that a manufacturing concern like ours could scarcely develop fast enough for the wants of the American people, but abroad nothing seemed to be going forward. If we excepted a few of the capitals of Europe, everything on the Continent seemed to be almost at a standstill, while the Republic represented throughout its entire extent such a scene as there must have been at the Tower of Babel, as pictured in the story-books--hundreds rushing to and fro, each more active than his neighbor, and all engaged in constructing the mighty edifice. It was Cousin "Dod" (Mr. George Lauder) to whom we were indebted for a new development in our mill operations--the first of its kind in America. He it was who took our Mr. Coleman to Wigan in England and explained the process of washing and coking the dross from coal mines. Mr. Coleman had constantly been telling us how grand it would be to utilize what was then being thrown away at our mines, and was indeed an expense to dispose of. Our Cousin "Dod" was a mechanical engineer, educated under Lord Kelvin at Glasgow University, and as he corroborated all that Mr. Coleman stated, in December, 1871, I undertook to advance the capital to build works along the line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Contracts for ten years were made with the leading coal companies for their dross and with the railway companies for transportation, and Mr. Lauder, who came to Pittsburgh and superintended the whole operation for years, began the construction of the first coal-washing machinery in America. He made a success of it--he never failed to do that in any mining or mechanical operation he undertook--and he soon cleared the cost of the works. No wonder that at a later date my partners desired to embrace the coke works in our general firm and thus capture not only these, but Lauder also. "Dod" had won his spurs. [Illustration: GEORGE LAUDER] The ovens were extended from time to time until we had five hundred of them, washing nearly fifteen hundred tons of coal daily. I confess I never pass these coal ovens at Larimer's Station without feeling that if he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a public benefactor and lays the race under obligation, those who produce superior coke from material that has been for all previous years thrown over the bank as worthless, have great cause for self-congratulation. It is fine to make something out of nothing; it is also something to be the first firm to do this upon our continent. We had another valuable partner in a second cousin of mine, a son of Cousin Morrison of Dunfermline. Walking through the shops one day, the superintendent asked me if I knew I had a relative there who was proving an exceptional mechanic. I replied in the negative and asked that I might speak with him on our way around. We met. I asked his name. "Morrison," was the reply, "son of Robert"--my cousin Bob. "Well, how did you come here?" "I thought we could better ourselves," he said. "Who have you with you?" "My wife," was the reply. "Why didn't you come first to see your relative who might have been able to introduce you here?" "Well, I didn't feel I needed help if I only got a chance." There spoke the true Morrison, taught to depend on himself, and independent as Lucifer. Not long afterwards I heard of his promotion to the superintendency of our newly acquired works at Duquesne, and from that position he steadily marched upward. He is to-day a blooming, but still sensible, millionaire. We are all proud of Tom Morrison. [A note received from him yesterday invites Mrs. Carnegie and myself to be his guests during our coming visit of a few days at the annual celebration of the Carnegie Institute.] I was always advising that our iron works should be extended and new developments made in connection with the manufacture of iron and steel, which I saw was only in its infancy. All apprehension of its future development was dispelled by the action of America with regard to the tariff upon foreign imports. It was clear to my mind that the Civil War had resulted in a fixed determination upon the part of the American people to build a nation within itself, independent of Europe in all things essential to its safety. America had been obliged to import all her steel of every form and most of the iron needed, Britain being the chief seller. The people demanded a home supply and Congress granted the manufacturers a tariff of twenty-eight per cent _ad valorem_ on steel rails--the tariff then being equal to about twenty-eight dollars per ton. Rails were selling at about a hundred dollars per ton, and other rates in proportion. Protection has played a great part in the development of manufacturing in the United States. Previous to the Civil War it was a party question, the South standing for free trade and regarding a tariff as favorable only to the North. The sympathy shown by the British Government for the Confederacy, culminating in the escape of the Alabama and other privateers to prey upon American commerce, aroused hostility against that Government, notwithstanding the majority of her common people favored the United States. The tariff became no longer a party question, but a national policy, approved by both parties. It had become a patriotic duty to develop vital resources. No less than ninety Northern Democrats in Congress, including the Speaker of the House, agreed upon that point. Capital no longer hesitated to embark in manufacturing, confident as it was that the nation would protect it as long as necessary. Years after the war, demands for a reduction of the tariff arose and it was my lot to be drawn into the controversy. It was often charged that bribery of Congressmen by manufacturers was common. So far as I know there was no foundation for this. Certainly the manufacturers never raised any sums beyond those needed to maintain the Iron and Steel Association, a matter of a few thousand dollars per year. They did, however, subscribe freely to a campaign when the issue was Protection _versus_ Free Trade. The duties upon steel were successively reduced, with my cordial support, until the twenty-eight dollars duty on rails became only one fourth or seven dollars per ton. [To-day (1911) the duty is only about one half of that, and even that should go in the next revision.] The effort of President Cleveland to pass a more drastic new tariff was interesting. It cut too deep in many places and its passage would have injured more than one manufacture. I was called to Washington, and tried to modify and, as I believe, improve, the Wilson Bill. Senator Gorman, Democratic leader of the Senate, Governor Flower of New York, and a number of the ablest Democrats were as sound protectionists in moderation as I was. Several of these were disposed to oppose the Wilson Bill as being unnecessarily severe and certain to cripple some of our domestic industries. Senator Gorman said to me he wished as little as I did to injure any home producer, and he thought his colleagues had confidence in and would be guided by me as to iron and steel rates, provided that large reductions were made and that the Republican Senators would stand unitedly for a bill of that character. I remember his words, "I can afford to fight the President and beat him, but I can't afford to fight him and be beaten." Governor Flower shared these views. There was little trouble in getting our party to agree to the large reductions I proposed. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Bill was adopted. Meeting Senator Gorman later, he explained that he had to give way on cotton ties to secure several Southern Senators. Cotton ties had to be free. So tariff legislation goes. I was not sufficiently prominent in manufacturing to take part in getting the tariff established immediately after the war, so it happened that my part has always been to favor reduction of duties, opposing extremes--the unreasonable protectionists who consider the higher the duties the better and declaim against any reduction, and the other extremists who denounce all duties and would adopt unrestrained free trade. We could now (1907) abolish all duties upon steel and iron without injury, essential as these duties were at the beginning. Europe has not much surplus production, so that should prices rise exorbitantly here only a small amount could be drawn from there and this would instantly raise prices in Europe, so that our home manufacturers could not be seriously affected. Free trade would only tend to prevent exorbitant prices here for a time when the demand was excessive. Home iron and steel manufacturers have nothing to fear from free trade. [I recently (1910) stated this in evidence before the Tariff Commission at Washington.] CHAPTER XI NEW YORK AS HEADQUARTERS Our business continued to expand and required frequent visits on my part to the East, especially to New York, which is as London to Britain--the headquarters of all really important enterprises in America. No large concern could very well get on without being represented there. My brother and Mr. Phipps had full grasp of the business at Pittsburgh. My field appeared to be to direct the general policy of the companies and negotiate the important contracts. My brother had been so fortunate as to marry Miss Lucy Coleman, daughter of one of our most valued partners and friends. Our family residence at Homewood was given over to him, and I was once more compelled to break old associations and leave Pittsburgh in 1867 to take up my residence in New York. The change was hard enough for me, but much harder for my mother; but she was still in the prime of life and we could be happy anywhere so long as we were together. Still she did feel the leaving of our home very much. We were perfect strangers in New York, and at first took up our quarters in the St. Nicholas Hotel, then in its glory. I opened an office in Broad Street. For some time the Pittsburgh friends who came to New York were our chief source of happiness, and the Pittsburgh papers seemed necessary to our existence. I made frequent visits there and my mother often accompanied me, so that our connection with the old home was still maintained. But after a time new friendships were formed and new interests awakened and New York began to be called home. When the proprietors of the St. Nicholas opened the Windsor Hotel uptown, we took up our residence there and up to the year 1887 that was our New York home. Mr. Hawk, the proprietor, became one of our valued friends and his nephew and namesake still remains so. Among the educative influences from which I derived great advantage in New York, none ranks higher than the Nineteenth Century Club organized by Mr. and Mrs. Courtlandt Palmer. The club met at their house once a month for the discussion of various topics and soon attracted many able men and women. It was to Madame Botta I owed my election to membership--a remarkable woman, wife of Professor Botta, whose drawing-room became more of a salon than any in the city, if indeed it were not the only one resembling a salon at that time. I was honored by an invitation one day to dine at the Bottas' and there met for the first time several distinguished people, among them one who became my lifelong friend and wise counselor, Andrew D. White, then president of Cornell University, afterwards Ambassador to Russia and Germany, and our chief delegate to the Hague Conference. Here in the Nineteenth Century Club was an arena, indeed. Able men and women discussed the leading topics of the day in due form, addressing the audience one after another. The gatherings soon became too large for a private room. The monthly meetings were then held in the American Art Galleries. I remember the first evening I took part as one of the speakers the subject was "The Aristocracy of the Dollar." Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson was the first speaker. This was my introduction to a New York audience. Thereafter I spoke now and then. It was excellent training, for one had to read and study for each appearance. I had lived long enough in Pittsburgh to acquire the manufacturing, as distinguished from the speculative, spirit. My knowledge of affairs, derived from my position as telegraph operator, had enabled me to know the few Pittsburgh men or firms which then had dealings upon the New York Stock Exchange, and I watched their careers with deep interest. To me their operations seemed simply a species of gambling. I did not then know that the credit of all these men or firms was seriously impaired by the knowledge (which it is almost impossible to conceal) that they were given to speculation. But the firms were then so few that I could have counted them on the fingers of one hand. The Oil and Stock Exchanges in Pittsburgh had not as yet been founded and brokers' offices with wires in connection with the stock exchanges of the East were unnecessary. Pittsburgh was emphatically a manufacturing town. I was surprised to find how very different was the state of affairs in New York. There were few even of the business men who had not their ventures in Wall Street to a greater or less extent. I was besieged with inquiries from all quarters in regard to the various railway enterprises with which I was connected. Offers were made to me by persons who were willing to furnish capital for investment and allow me to manage it--the supposition being that from the inside view which I was enabled to obtain I could invest for them successfully. Invitations were extended to me to join parties who intended quietly to buy up the control of certain properties. In fact the whole speculative field was laid out before me in its most seductive guise. All these allurements I declined. The most notable offer of this kind I ever received was one morning in the Windsor Hotel soon after my removal to New York. Jay Gould, then in the height of his career, approached me and said he had heard of me and he would purchase control of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and give me one half of all profits if I would agree to devote myself to its management. I thanked him and said that, although Mr. Scott and I had parted company in business matters, I would never raise my hand against him. Subsequently Mr. Scott told me he had heard I had been selected by New York interests to succeed him. I do not know how he had learned this, as I had never mentioned it. I was able to reassure him by saying that the only railroad company I would be president of would be one I owned. Strange what changes the whirligig of time brings in. It was my part one morning in 1900, some thirty years afterwards, to tell the son of Mr. Gould of his father's offer and to say to him: "Your father offered me control of the great Pennsylvania system. Now I offer his son in return the control of an international line from ocean to ocean." The son and I agreed upon the first step--that was the bringing of his Wabash line to Pittsburgh. This was successfully done under a contract given the Wabash of one third of the traffic of our steel company. We were about to take up the eastern extension from Pittsburgh to the Atlantic when Mr. Morgan approached me in March, 1901, through Mr. Schwab, and asked if I really wished to retire from business. I answered in the affirmative and that put an end to our railway operations. I have never bought or sold a share of stock speculatively in my life, except one small lot of Pennsylvania Railroad shares that I bought early in life for investment and for which I did not pay at the time because bankers offered to carry it for me at a low rate. I have adhered to the rule never to purchase what I did not pay for, and never to sell what I did not own. In those early days, however, I had several interests that were taken over in the course of business. They included some stocks and securities that were quoted on the New York Stock Exchange, and I found that when I opened my paper in the morning I was tempted to look first at the quotations of the stock market. As I had determined to sell all my interests in every outside concern and concentrate my attention upon our manufacturing concerns in Pittsburgh, I further resolved not even to own any stock that was bought and sold upon any stock exchange. With the exception of trifling amounts which came to me in various ways I have adhered strictly to this rule. Such a course should commend itself to every man in the manufacturing business and to all professional men. For the manufacturing man especially the rule would seem all-important. His mind must be kept calm and free if he is to decide wisely the problems which are continually coming before him. Nothing tells in the long run like good judgment, and no sound judgment can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the Stock Exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not. He cannot judge of relative values or get the true perspective of things. The molehill seems to him a mountain and the mountain a molehill, and he jumps at conclusions which he should arrive at by reason. His mind is upon the stock quotations and not upon the points that require calm thought. Speculation is a parasite feeding upon values, creating none. My first important enterprise after settling in New York was undertaking to build a bridge across the Mississippi at Keokuk.[29] Mr. Thomson, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and I contracted for the whole structure, foundation, masonry, and superstructure, taking bonds and stocks in payment. The undertaking was a splendid success in every respect, except financially. A panic threw the connecting railways into bankruptcy. They were unable to pay the stipulated sums. Rival systems built a bridge across the Mississippi at Burlington and a railway down the west side of the Mississippi to Keokuk. The handsome profits which we saw in prospect were never realized. Mr. Thomson and myself, however, escaped loss, although there was little margin left. [Footnote 29: It was an iron bridge 2300 feet in length with a 380-foot span.] The superstructure for this bridge was built at our Keystone Works in Pittsburgh. The undertaking required me to visit Keokuk occasionally, and there I made the acquaintance of clever and delightful people, among them General and Mrs. Reid, and Mr. and Mrs. Leighton. Visiting Keokuk with some English friends at a later date, the impression they received of society in the Far West, on what to them seemed the very outskirts of civilization, was surprising. A reception given to us one evening by General Reid brought together an assembly creditable to any town in Britain. More than one of the guests had distinguished himself during the war and had risen to prominence in the national councils. The reputation obtained in the building of the Keokuk bridge led to my being applied to by those who were in charge of the scheme for bridging the Mississippi at St. Louis, to which I have already referred. This was connected with my first large financial transaction. One day in 1869 the gentleman in charge of the enterprise, Mr. Macpherson (he was very Scotch), called at my New York office and said they were trying to raise capital to build the bridge. He wished to know if I could not enlist some of the Eastern railroad companies in the scheme. After careful examination of the project I made the contract for the construction of the bridge on behalf of the Keystone Bridge Works. I also obtained an option upon four million dollars of first mortgage bonds of the bridge company and set out for London in March, 1869, to negotiate their sale. During the voyage I prepared a prospectus which I had printed upon my arrival in London, and, having upon my previous visit made the acquaintance of Junius S. Morgan, the great banker, I called upon him one morning and opened negotiations. I left with him a copy of the prospectus, and upon calling next day was delighted to find that Mr. Morgan viewed the matter favorably. I sold him part of the bonds with the option to take the remainder; but when his lawyers were called in for advice a score of changes were required in the wording of the bonds. Mr. Morgan said to me that as I was going to Scotland I had better go now; I could write the parties in St. Louis and ascertain whether they would agree to the changes proposed. It would be time enough, he said, to close the matter upon my return three weeks hence. But I had no idea of allowing the fish to play so long, and informed him that I would have a telegram in the morning agreeing to all the changes. The Atlantic cable had been open for some time, but it is doubtful if it had yet carried so long a private cable as I sent that day. It was an easy matter to number the lines of the bond and then going carefully over them to state what changes, omissions, or additions were required in each line. I showed Mr. Morgan the message before sending it and he said: "Well, young man, if you succeed in that you deserve a red mark." When I entered the office next morning, I found on the desk that had been appropriated to my use in Mr. Morgan's private office the colored envelope which contained the answer. There it was: "Board meeting last night; changes all approved." "Now, Mr. Morgan," I said, "we can proceed, assuming that the bond is as your lawyers desire." The papers were soon closed. [Illustration: JUNIUS SPENCER MORGAN] While I was in the office Mr. Sampson, the financial editor of "The Times," came in. I had an interview with him, well knowing that a few words from him would go far in lifting the price of the bonds on the Exchange. American securities had recently been fiercely attacked, owing to the proceedings of Fisk and Gould in connection with the Erie Railway Company, and their control of the judges in New York, who seemed to do their bidding. I knew this would be handed out as an objection, and therefore I met it at once. I called Mr. Sampson's attention to the fact that the charter of the St. Louis Bridge Company was from the National Government. In case of necessity appeal lay directly to the Supreme Court of the United States, a body vying with their own high tribunals. He said he would be delighted to give prominence to this commendable feature. I described the bridge as a toll-gate on the continental highway and this appeared to please him. It was all plain and easy sailing, and when he left the office, Mr. Morgan clapped me on the shoulder and said: "Thank you, young man; you have raised the price of those bonds five per cent this morning." "All right, Mr. Morgan," I replied; "now show me how I can raise them five per cent more for you." The issue was a great success, and the money for the St. Louis Bridge was obtained. I had a considerable margin of profit upon the negotiation. This was my first financial negotiation with the bankers of Europe. Mr. Pullman told me a few days later that Mr. Morgan at a dinner party had told the telegraphic incident and predicted, "That young man will be heard from." After closing with Mr. Morgan, I visited my native town, Dunfermline, and at that time made the town a gift of public baths. It is notable largely because it was the first considerable gift I had ever made. Long before that I had, at my Uncle Lauder's suggestion, sent a subscription to the fund for the Wallace Monument on Stirling Heights overlooking Bannockburn. It was not much, but I was then in the telegraph office and it was considerable out of a revenue of thirty dollars per month with family expenses staring us in the face. Mother did not grudge it; on the contrary, she was a very proud woman that her son's name was seen on the list of contributors, and her son felt he was really beginning to be something of a man. Years afterward my mother and I visited Stirling, and there unveiled, in the Wallace Tower, a bust of Sir Walter Scott, which she had presented to the monument committee. We had then made great progress, at least financially, since the early subscription. But distribution had not yet begun.[30] So far with me it had been the age of accumulation. [Footnote 30: The ambitions of Mr. Carnegie at this time (1868) are set forth in the following memorandum made by him. It has only recently come to light: _St. Nicholas Hotel, New York, December, 1868_ Thirty-three and an income of $50,000 per annum! By this time two years I can so arrange all my business as to secure at least $50,000 per annum. Beyond this never earn--make no effort to increase fortune, but spend the surplus each year for benevolent purposes. Cast aside business forever, except for others. Settle in Oxford and get a thorough education, making the acquaintance of literary men--this will take three years' active work--pay especial attention to speaking in public. Settle then in London and purchase a controlling interest in some newspaper or live review and give the general management of it attention, taking a part in public matters, especially those connected with education and improvement of the poorer classes. Man must have an idol--the amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry--no idol more debasing than the worship of money. Whatever I engage in I must push inordinately; therefore should I be careful to choose that life which will be the most elevating in its character. To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery. I will resign business at thirty-five, but during the ensuing two years I wish to spend the afternoons in receiving instruction and in reading systematically.] While visiting the Continent of Europe in 1867 and deeply interested in what I saw, it must not be thought that my mind was not upon affairs at home. Frequent letters kept me advised of business matters. The question of railway communication with the Pacific had been brought to the front by the Civil War, and Congress had passed an act to encourage the construction of a line. The first sod had just been cut at Omaha and it was intended that the line should ultimately be pushed through to San Francisco. One day while in Rome it struck me that this might be done much sooner than was then anticipated. The nation, having made up its mind that its territory must be bound together, might be trusted to see that no time was lost in accomplishing it. I wrote my friend Mr. Scott, suggesting that we should obtain the contract to place sleeping-cars upon the great California line. His reply contained these words: "Well, young man, you do take time by the forelock." Nevertheless, upon my return to America. I pursued the idea. The sleeping-car business, in which I was interested, had gone on increasing so rapidly that it was impossible to obtain cars enough to supply the demand. This very fact led to the forming of the present Pullman Company. The Central Transportation Company was simply unable to cover the territory with sufficient rapidity, and Mr. Pullman beginning at the greatest of all railway centers in the world--Chicago--soon rivaled the parent concern. He had also seen that the Pacific Railroad would be the great sleeping-car line of the world, and I found him working for what I had started after. He was, indeed, a lion in the path. Again, one may learn, from an incident which I had from Mr. Pullman himself, by what trifles important matters are sometimes determined. The president of the Union Pacific Railway was passing through Chicago. Mr. Pullman called upon him and was shown into his room. Lying upon the table was a telegram addressed to Mr. Scott, saying, "Your proposition for sleeping-cars is accepted." Mr. Pullman read this involuntarily and before he had time to refrain. He could not help seeing it where it lay. When President Durrant entered the room he explained this to him and said: "I trust you will not decide this matter until I have made a proposition to you." Mr. Durrant promised to wait. A meeting of the board of directors of the Union Pacific Company was held soon after this in New York. Mr. Pullman and myself were in attendance, both striving to obtain the prize which neither he nor I undervalued. One evening we began to mount the broad staircase in the St. Nicholas Hotel at the same time. We had met before, but were not well acquainted. I said, however, as we walked up the stairs: "Good-evening, Mr. Pullman! Here we are together, and are we not making a nice couple of fools of ourselves?" He was not disposed to admit anything and said: "What do you mean?" I explained the situation to him. We were destroying by our rival propositions the very advantages we desired to obtain. "Well," he said, "what do you propose to do about it?" "Unite," I said. "Make a joint proposition to the Union Pacific, your party and mine, and organize a company." "What would you call it?" he asked. "The Pullman Palace Car Company," I replied. This suited him exactly; and it suited me equally well. "Come into my room and talk it over," said the great sleeping-car man. I did so, and the result was that we obtained the contract jointly. Our company was subsequently merged in the general Pullman Company and we took stock in that company for our Pacific interests. Until compelled to sell my shares during the subsequent financial panic of 1873 to protect our iron and steel interests, I was, I believe, the largest shareholder in the Pullman Company. This man Pullman and his career are so thoroughly American that a few words about him will not be out of place. Mr. Pullman was at first a working carpenter, but when Chicago had to be elevated he took a contract on his own account to move or elevate houses for a stipulated sum. Of course he was successful, and from this small beginning he became one of the principal and best-known contractors in that line. If a great hotel was to be raised ten feet without disturbing its hundreds of guests or interfering in any way with its business, Mr. Pullman was the man. He was one of those rare characters who can see the drift of things, and was always to be found, so to speak, swimming in the main current where movement was the fastest. He soon saw, as I did, that the sleeping-car was a positive necessity upon the American continent. He began to construct a few cars at Chicago and to obtain contracts upon the lines centering there. The Eastern concern was in no condition to cope with that of an extraordinary man like Mr. Pullman. I soon recognized this, and although the original patents were with the Eastern company and Mr. Woodruff himself, the original patentee, was a large shareholder, and although we might have obtained damages for infringement of patent after some years of litigation, yet the time lost before this could be done would have been sufficient to make Pullman's the great company of the country. I therefore earnestly advocated that we should unite with Mr. Pullman, as I had united with him before in the Union Pacific contract. As the personal relations between Mr. Pullman and some members of the Eastern company were unsatisfactory, it was deemed best that I should undertake the negotiations, being upon friendly footing with both parties. We soon agreed that the Pullman Company should absorb our company, the Central Transportation Company, and by this means Mr. Pullman, instead of being confined to the West, obtained control of the rights on the great Pennsylvania trunk line to the Atlantic seaboard. This placed his company beyond all possible rivals. Mr. Pullman was one of the ablest men of affairs I have ever known, and I am indebted to him, among other things, for one story which carried a moral. Mr. Pullman, like every other man, had his difficulties and disappointments, and did not hit the mark every time. No one does. Indeed, I do not know any one but himself who could have surmounted the difficulties surrounding the business of running sleeping-cars in a satisfactory manner and still retained some rights which the railway companies were bound to respect. Railway companies should, of course, operate their own sleeping-cars. On one occasion when we were comparing notes he told me that he always found comfort in this story. An old man in a Western county having suffered from all the ills that flesh is heir to, and a great many more than it usually encounters, and being commiserated by his neighbors, replied: "Yes, my friends, all that you say is true. I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them--nine tenths of them never happened." True indeed; most of the troubles of humanity are imaginary and should be laughed out of court. It is folly to cross a bridge until you come to it, or to bid the Devil good-morning until you meet him--perfect folly. All is well until the stroke falls, and even then nine times out of ten it is not so bad as anticipated. A wise man is the confirmed optimist. Success in these various negotiations had brought me into some notice in New York, and my next large operation was in connection with the Union Pacific Railway in 1871. One of its directors came to me saying that they must raise in some way a sum of six hundred thousand dollars (equal to many millions to-day) to carry them through a crisis; and some friends who knew me and were on the executive committee of that road had suggested that I might be able to obtain the money and at the same time get for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company virtual control of that important Western line. I believe Mr. Pullman came with the director, or perhaps it was Mr. Pullman himself who first came to me on the subject. I took up the matter, and it occurred to me that if the directors of the Union Pacific Railway would be willing to elect to its board of directors a few such men as the Pennsylvania Railroad would nominate, the traffic to be thus obtained for the Pennsylvania would justify that company in helping the Union Pacific. I went to Philadelphia and laid the subject before President Thomson. I suggested that if the Pennsylvania Railroad Company would trust me with securities upon which the Union Pacific could borrow money in New York, we could control the Union Pacific in the interests of the Pennsylvania. Among many marks of Mr. Thomson's confidence this was up to that time the greatest. He was much more conservative when handling the money of the railroad company than his own, but the prize offered was too great to be missed. Even if the six hundred thousand dollars had been lost, it would not have been a losing investment for his company, and there was little danger of this because we were ready to hand over to him the securities which we obtained in return for the loan to the Union Pacific. My interview with Mr. Thomson took place at his house in Philadelphia, and as I rose to go he laid his hand upon my shoulder, saying: "Remember, Andy, I look to you in this matter. It is you I trust, and I depend on your holding all the securities you obtain and seeing that the Pennsylvania Railroad is never in a position where it can lose a dollar." I accepted the responsibility, and the result was a triumphant success. The Union Pacific Company was exceedingly anxious that Mr. Thomson himself should take the presidency, but this he said was out of the question. He nominated Mr. Thomas A. Scott, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, for the position. Mr. Scott, Mr. Pullman, and myself were accordingly elected directors of the Union Pacific Railway Company in 1871. The securities obtained for the loan consisted of three millions of the shares of the Union Pacific, which were locked in my safe, with the option of taking them at a price. As was to be expected, the accession of the Pennsylvania Railroad party rendered the stock of the Union Pacific infinitely more valuable. The shares advanced enormously. At this time I undertook to negotiate bonds in London for a bridge to cross the Missouri at Omaha, and while I was absent upon this business Mr. Scott decided to sell our Union Pacific shares. I had left instructions with my secretary that Mr. Scott, as one of the partners in the venture, should have access to the vault, as it might be necessary in my absence that the securities should be within reach of some one; but the idea that these should be sold, or that our party should lose the splendid position we had acquired in connection with the Union Pacific, never entered my brain. I returned to find that, instead of being a trusted colleague of the Union Pacific directors, I was regarded as having used them for speculative purposes. No quartet of men ever had a finer opportunity for identifying themselves with a great work than we had; and never was an opportunity more recklessly thrown away. Mr. Pullman was ignorant of the matter and as indignant as myself, and I believe that he at once re-invested his profits in the shares of the Union Pacific. I felt that much as I wished to do this and to repudiate what had been done, it would be unbecoming and perhaps ungrateful in me to separate myself so distinctly from my first of friends, Mr. Scott. At the first opportunity we were ignominiously but deservedly expelled from the Union Pacific board. It was a bitter dose for a young man to swallow. And the transaction marked my first serious difference with a man who up to that time had the greatest influence with me, the kind and affectionate employer of my boyhood, Thomas A. Scott. Mr. Thomson regretted the matter, but, as he said, having paid no attention to it and having left the whole control of it in the hands of Mr. Scott and myself, he presumed that I had thought best to sell out. For a time I feared I had lost a valued friend in Levi P. Morton, of Morton, Bliss & Co., who was interested in Union Pacific, but at last he found out that I was innocent. The negotiations concerning two and a half millions of bonds for the construction of the Omaha Bridge were successful, and as these bonds had been purchased by persons connected with the Union Pacific before I had anything to do with the company, it was for them and not for the Union Pacific Company that the negotiations were conducted. This was not explained to me by the director who talked with me before I left for London. Unfortunately, when I returned to New York I found that the entire proceeds of the bonds, including my profit, had been appropriated by the parties to pay their own debts, and I was thus beaten out of a handsome sum, and had to credit to profit and loss my expenses and time. I had never before been cheated and found it out so positively and so clearly. I saw that I was still young and had a good deal to learn. Many men can be trusted, but a few need watching. CHAPTER XII BUSINESS NEGOTIATIONS Complete success attended a negotiation which I conducted about this time for Colonel William Phillips, president of the Allegheny Valley Railway at Pittsburgh. One day the Colonel entered my New York office and told me that he needed money badly, but that he could get no house in America to entertain the idea of purchasing five millions of bonds of his company although they were to be guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The old gentleman felt sure that he was being driven from pillar to post by the bankers because they had agreed among themselves to purchase the bonds only upon their own terms. He asked ninety cents on the dollar for them, but this the bankers considered preposterously high. Those were the days when Western railway bonds were often sold to the bankers at eighty cents on the dollar. Colonel Phillips said he had come to see whether I could not suggest some way out of his difficulty. He had pressing need for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and this Mr. Thomson, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, could not give him. The Allegheny bonds were seven per cents, but they were payable, not in gold, but in currency, in America. They were therefore wholly unsuited for the foreign market. But I knew that the Pennsylvania Railroad Company had a large amount of Philadelphia and Erie Railroad six per cent gold bonds in its treasury. It would be a most desirable exchange on its part, I thought, to give these bonds for the seven per cent Allegheny bonds which bore its guarantee. I telegraphed Mr. Thomson, asking if the Pennsylvania Railroad Company would take two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at interest and lend it to the Allegheny Railway Company. Mr. Thomson replied, "Certainly." Colonel Phillips was happy. He agreed, in consideration of my services, to give me a sixty-days option to take his five millions of bonds at the desired ninety cents on the dollar. I laid the matter before Mr. Thomson and suggested an exchange, which that company was only too glad to make, as it saved one per cent interest on the bonds. I sailed at once for London with the control of five millions of first mortgage Philadelphia and Erie Bonds, guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company--a magnificent security for which I wanted a high price. And here comes in one of the greatest of the hits and misses of my financial life. I wrote the Barings from Queenstown that I had for sale a security which even their house might unhesitatingly consider. On my arrival in London I found at the hotel a note from them requesting me to call. I did so the next morning, and before I had left their banking house I had closed an agreement by which they were to bring out this loan, and that until they sold the bonds at par, less their two and a half per cent commission, they would advance the Pennsylvania Railroad Company four millions of dollars at five per cent interest. The sale left me a clear profit of more than half a million dollars. The papers were ordered to be drawn up, but as I was leaving Mr. Russell Sturgis said they had just heard that Mr. Baring himself was coming up to town in the morning. They had arranged to hold a "court," and as it would be fitting to lay the transaction before him as a matter of courtesy they would postpone the signing of the papers until the morrow. If I would call at two o'clock the transaction would be closed. Never shall I forget the oppressed feeling which overcame me as I stepped out and proceeded to the telegraph office to wire President Thomson. Something told me that I ought not to do so. I would wait till to-morrow when I had the contract in my pocket. I walked from the banking house to the Langham Hotel--four long miles. When I reached there I found a messenger waiting breathless to hand me a sealed note from the Barings. Bismarck had locked up a hundred millions in Magdeburg. The financial world was panic-stricken, and the Barings begged to say that under the circumstances they could not propose to Mr. Baring to go on with the matter. There was as much chance that I should be struck by lightning on my way home as that an arrangement agreed to by the Barings should be broken. And yet it was. It was too great a blow to produce anything like irritation or indignation. I was meek enough to be quite resigned, and merely congratulated myself that I had not telegraphed Mr. Thomson. I decided not to return to the Barings, and although J.S. Morgan & Co. had been bringing out a great many American securities I subsequently sold the bonds to them at a reduced price as compared with that agreed to by the Barings. I thought it best not to go to Morgan & Co. at first, because I had understood from Colonel Phillips that the bonds had been unsuccessfully offered by him to their house in America and I supposed that the Morgans in London might consider themselves connected with the negotiations through their house in New York. But in all subsequent negotiations I made it a rule to give the first offer to Junius S. Morgan, who seldom permitted me to leave his banking house without taking what I had to offer. If he could not buy for his own house, he placed me in communication with a friendly house that did, he taking an interest in the issue. It is a great satisfaction to reflect that I never negotiated a security which did not to the end command a premium. Of course in this case I made a mistake in not returning to the Barings, giving them time and letting the panic subside, which it soon did. When one party to a bargain becomes excited, the other should keep cool and patient. As an incident of my financial operations I remember saying to Mr. Morgan one day: "Mr. Morgan, I will give you an idea and help you to carry it forward if you will give me one quarter of all the money you make by acting upon it." He laughingly said: "That seems fair, and as I have the option to act upon it, or not, certainly we ought to be willing to pay you a quarter of the profit." I called attention to the fact that the Allegheny Valley Railway bonds which I had exchanged for the Philadelphia and Erie bonds bore the guarantee of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and that that great company was always in need of money for essential extensions. A price might be offered for these bonds which might tempt the company to sell them, and that at the moment there appeared to be such a demand for American securities that no doubt they could be floated. I would write a prospectus which I thought would float the bonds. After examining the matter with his usual care he decided that he would act upon my suggestion. Mr. Thomson was then in Paris and I ran over there to see him. Knowing that the Pennsylvania Railroad had need for money I told him that I had recommended these securities to Mr. Morgan and if he would give me a price for them I would see if I could not sell them. He named a price which was then very high, but less than the price which these bonds have since reached. Mr. Morgan purchased part of them with the right to buy others, and in this way the whole nine or ten millions of Allegheny bonds were marketed and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company placed in funds. The sale of the bonds had not gone very far when the panic of 1873 was upon us. One of the sources of revenue which I then had was Mr. Pierpont Morgan. He said to me one day: "My father has cabled to ask whether you wish to sell out your interest in that idea you gave him." I said: "Yes, I do. In these days I will sell anything for money." "Well," he said, "what would you take?" I said I believed that a statement recently rendered to me showed that there were already fifty thousand dollars to my credit, and I would take sixty thousand. Next morning when I called Mr. Morgan handed me checks for seventy thousand dollars. "Mr. Carnegie," he said, "you were mistaken. You sold out for ten thousand dollars less than the statement showed to your credit. It now shows not fifty but sixty thousand to your credit, and the additional ten makes seventy." The payments were in two checks, one for sixty thousand dollars and the other for the additional ten thousand. I handed him back the ten-thousand-dollar check, saying: "Well, that is something worthy of you. Will you please accept these ten thousand with my best wishes?" "No, thank you," he said, "I cannot do that." Such acts, showing a nice sense of honorable understanding as against mere legal rights, are not so uncommon in business as the uninitiated might believe. And, after that, it is not to be wondered at if I determined that so far as lay in my power neither Morgan, father or son, nor their house, should suffer through me. They had in me henceforth a firm friend. [Illustration: JOHN PIERPONT MORGAN] A great business is seldom if ever built up, except on lines of the strictest integrity. A reputation for "cuteness" and sharp dealing is fatal in great affairs. Not the letter of the law, but the spirit, must be the rule. The standard of commercial morality is now very high. A mistake made by any one in favor of the firm is corrected as promptly as if the error were in favor of the other party. It is essential to permanent success that a house should obtain a reputation for being governed by what is fair rather than what is merely legal. A rule which we adopted and adhered to has given greater returns than one would believe possible, namely: always give the other party the benefit of the doubt. This, of course, does not apply to the speculative class. An entirely different atmosphere pervades that world. Men are only gamblers there. Stock gambling and honorable business are incompatible. In recent years it must be admitted that the old-fashioned "banker," like Junius S. Morgan of London, has become rare. Soon after being deposed as president of the Union Pacific, Mr. Scott[31] resolved upon the construction of the Texas Pacific Railway. He telegraphed me one day in New York to meet him at Philadelphia without fail. I met him there with several other friends, among them Mr. J.N. McCullough, vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at Pittsburgh. A large loan for the Texas Pacific had fallen due in London and its renewal was agreed to by Morgan & Co., provided I would join the other parties to the loan. I declined. I was then asked whether I would bring them all to ruin by refusing to stand by my friends. It was one of the most trying moments of my whole life. Yet I was not tempted for a moment to entertain the idea of involving myself. The question of what was my duty came first and prevented that. All my capital was in manufacturing and every dollar of it was required. I was the capitalist (then a modest one, indeed) of our concern. All depended upon me. My brother with his wife and family, Mr. Phipps and his family, Mr. Kloman and his family, all rose up before me and claimed protection. [Footnote 31: Colonel Thomas A. Scott left the Union Pacific in 1872. The same year he became president of the Texas Pacific, and in 1874 president of the Pennsylvania.] I told Mr. Scott that I had done my best to prevent him from beginning to construct a great railway before he had secured the necessary capital. I had insisted that thousands of miles of railway lines could not be constructed by means of temporary loans. Besides, I had paid two hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash for an interest in it, which he told me upon my return from Europe he had reserved for me, although I had never approved the scheme. But nothing in the world would ever induce me to be guilty of endorsing the paper of that construction company or of any other concern than our own firm. I knew that it would be impossible for me to pay the Morgan loan in sixty days, or even to pay my proportion of it. Besides, it was not that loan by itself, but the half-dozen other loans that would be required thereafter that had to be considered. This marked another step in the total business separation which had to come between Mr. Scott and myself. It gave more pain than all the financial trials to which I had been subjected up to that time. It was not long after this meeting that the disaster came and the country was startled by the failure of those whom it had regarded as its strongest men. I fear Mr. Scott's premature death[32] can measurably be attributed to the humiliation which he had to bear. He was a sensitive rather than a proud man, and his seemingly impending failure cut him to the quick. Mr. McManus and Mr. Baird, partners in the enterprise, also soon passed away. These two men were manufacturers like myself and in no position to engage in railway construction. [Footnote 32: Died May 21, 1881.] The business man has no rock more dangerous to encounter in his career than this very one of endorsing commercial paper. It can easily be avoided if he asks himself two questions: Have I surplus means for all possible requirements which will enable me to pay without inconvenience the utmost sum for which I am liable under this endorsement? Secondly: Am I willing to lose this sum for the friend for whom I endorse? If these two questions can be answered in the affirmative he may be permitted to oblige his friend, but not otherwise, if he be a wise man. And if he can answer the first question in the affirmative it will be well for him to consider whether it would not be better then and there to pay the entire sum for which his name is asked. I am sure it would be. A man's means are a trust to be sacredly held for his own creditors as long as he has debts and obligations. Notwithstanding my refusal to endorse the Morgan renewal, I was invited to accompany the parties to New York next morning in their special car for the purpose of consultation. This I was only too glad to do. Anthony Drexel was also called in to accompany us. During the journey Mr. McCullough remarked that he had been looking around the car and had made up his mind that there was only one sensible man in it; the rest had all been "fools." Here was "Andy" who had paid for his shares and did not owe a dollar or have any responsibility in the matter, and that was the position they all ought to have been in. Mr. Drexel said he would like me to explain how I had been able to steer clear of these unfortunate troubles. I answered: by strict adherence to what I believed to be my duty never to put my name to anything which I knew I could not pay at maturity; or, to recall the familiar saying of a Western friend, never to go in where you couldn't wade. This water was altogether too deep for me. Regard for this rule has kept not only myself but my partners out of trouble. Indeed, we had gone so far in our partnership agreement as to prevent ourselves from endorsing or committing ourselves in any way beyond trifling sums, except for the firm. This I also gave as a reason why I could not endorse. During the period which these events cover I had made repeated journeys to Europe to negotiate various securities, and in all I sold some thirty millions of dollars worth. This was at a time when the Atlantic cable had not yet made New York a part of London financially considered, and when London bankers would lend their balances to Paris, Vienna, or Berlin for a shadow of difference in the rate of interest rather than to the United States at a higher rate. The Republic was considered less safe than the Continent by these good people. My brother and Mr. Phipps conducted the iron business so successfully that I could leave for weeks at a time without anxiety. There was danger lest I should drift away from the manufacturing to the financial and banking business. My successes abroad brought me tempting opportunities, but my preference was always for manufacturing. I wished to make something tangible and sell it and I continued to invest my profits in extending the works at Pittsburgh. The small shops put up originally for the Keystone Bridge Company had been leased for other purposes and ten acres of ground had been secured in Lawrenceville on which new and extensive shops were erected. Repeated additions to the Union Iron Mills had made them the leading mills in the United States for all sorts of structural shapes. Business was promising and all the surplus earnings I was making in other fields were required to expand the iron business. I had become interested, with my friends of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in building some railways in the Western States, but gradually withdrew from all such enterprises and made up my mind to go entirely contrary to the adage not to put all one's eggs in one basket. I determined that the proper policy was "to put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket." I believe the true road to preëminent success in any line is to make yourself master in that line. I have no faith in the policy of scattering one's resources, and in my experience I have rarely if ever met a man who achieved preëminence in money-making--certainly never one in manufacturing--who was interested in many concerns. The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it. It is surprising how few men appreciate the enormous dividends derivable from investment in their own business. There is scarcely a manufacturer in the world who has not in his works some machinery that should be thrown out and replaced by improved appliances; or who does not for the want of additional machinery or new methods lose more than sufficient to pay the largest dividend obtainable by investment beyond his own domain. And yet most business men whom I have known invest in bank shares and in far-away enterprises, while the true gold mine lies right in their own factories. I have tried always to hold fast to this important fact. It has been with me a cardinal doctrine that I could manage my own capital better than any other person, much better than any board of directors. The losses men encounter during a business life which seriously embarrass them are rarely in their own business, but in enterprises of which the investor is not master. My advice to young men would be not only to concentrate their whole time and attention on the one business in life in which they engage, but to put every dollar of their capital into it. If there be any business that will not bear extension, the true policy is to invest the surplus in first-class securities which will yield a moderate but certain revenue if some other growing business cannot be found. As for myself my decision was taken early. I would concentrate upon the manufacture of iron and steel and be master in that. My visits to Britain gave me excellent opportunities to renew and make acquaintance with those prominent in the iron and steel business--Bessemer in the front, Sir Lothian Bell, Sir Bernard Samuelson, Sir Windsor Richards, Edward Martin, Bingley, Evans, and the whole host of captains in that industry. My election to the council, and finally to the presidency of the British Iron and Steel Institute soon followed, I being the first president who was not a British subject. That honor was highly appreciated, although at first declined, because I feared that I could not give sufficient time to its duties, owing to my residence in America. As we had been compelled to engage in the manufacture of wrought-iron in order to make bridges and other structures, so now we thought it desirable to manufacture our own pig iron. And this led to the erection of the Lucy Furnace in the year 1870--a venture which would have been postponed had we fully appreciated its magnitude. We heard from time to time the ominous predictions made by our older brethren in the manufacturing business with regard to the rapid growth and extension of our young concern, but we were not deterred. We thought we had sufficient capital and credit to justify the building of one blast furnace. The estimates made of its cost, however, did not cover more than half the expenditure. It was an experiment with us. Mr. Kloman knew nothing about blast-furnace operations. But even without exact knowledge no serious blunder was made. The yield of the Lucy Furnace (named after my bright sister-in-law) exceeded our most sanguine expectations and the then unprecedented output of a hundred tons per day was made from one blast furnace, for one week--an output that the world had never heard of before. We held the record and many visitors came to marvel at the marvel. It was not, however, all smooth sailing with our iron business. Years of panic came at intervals. We had passed safely through the fall in values following the war, when iron from nine cents per pound dropped to three. Many failures occurred and our financial manager had his time fully occupied in providing funds to meet emergencies. Among many wrecks our firm stood with credit unimpaired. But the manufacture of pig iron gave us more anxiety than any other department of our business so far. The greatest service rendered us in this branch of manufacturing was by Mr. Whitwell, of the celebrated Whitwell Brothers of England, whose blast-furnace stoves were so generally used. Mr. Whitwell was one of the best-known of the visitors who came to marvel at the Lucy Furnace, and I laid the difficulty we then were experiencing before him. He said immediately: "That comes from the angle of the bell being wrong." He explained how it should be changed. Our Mr. Kloman was slow to believe this, but I urged that a small glass-model furnace and two bells be made, one as the Lucy was and the other as Mr. Whitwell advised it should be. This was done, and upon my next visit experiments were made with each, the result being just as Mr. Whitwell had foretold. Our bell distributed the large pieces to the sides of the furnace, leaving the center a dense mass through which the blast could only partially penetrate. The Whitwell bell threw the pieces to the center leaving the circumference dense. This made all the difference in the world. The Lucy's troubles were over. What a kind, big, broad man was Mr. Whitwell, with no narrow jealousy, no withholding his knowledge! We had in some departments learned new things and were able to be of service to his firm in return. At all events, after that everything we had was open to the Whitwells. [To-day, as I write, I rejoice that one of the two still is with us and that our friendship is still warm. He was my predecessor in the presidency of the British Iron and Steel Institute.] CHAPTER XIII THE AGE OF STEEL Looking back to-day it seems incredible that only forty years ago (1870) chemistry in the United States was an almost unknown agent in connection with the manufacture of pig iron. It was the agency, above all others, most needful in the manufacture of iron and steel. The blast-furnace manager of that day was usually a rude bully, generally a foreigner, who in addition to his other acquirements was able to knock down a man now and then as a lesson to the other unruly spirits under him. He was supposed to diagnose the condition of the furnace by instinct, to possess some almost supernatural power of divination, like his congener in the country districts who was reputed to be able to locate an oil well or water supply by means of a hazel rod. He was a veritable quack doctor who applied whatever remedies occurred to him for the troubles of his patient. The Lucy Furnace was out of one trouble and into another, owing to the great variety of ores, limestone, and coke which were then supplied with little or no regard to their component parts. This state of affairs became intolerable to us. We finally decided to dispense with the rule-of-thumb-and-intuition manager, and to place a young man in charge of the furnace. We had a young shipping clerk, Henry M. Curry, who had distinguished himself, and it was resolved to make him manager. Mr. Phipps had the Lucy Furnace under his special charge. His daily visits to it saved us from failure there. Not that the furnace was not doing as well as other furnaces in the West as to money-making, but being so much larger than other furnaces its variations entailed much more serious results. I am afraid my partner had something to answer for in his Sunday morning visits to the Lucy Furnace when his good father and sister left the house for more devotional duties. But even if he had gone with them his real earnest prayer could not but have had reference at times to the precarious condition of the Lucy Furnace then absorbing his thoughts. The next step taken was to find a chemist as Mr. Curry's assistant and guide. We found the man in a learned German, Dr. Fricke, and great secrets did the doctor open up to us. Iron stone from mines that had a high reputation was now found to contain ten, fifteen, and even twenty per cent less iron than it had been credited with. Mines that hitherto had a poor reputation we found to be now yielding superior ore. The good was bad and the bad was good, and everything was topsy-turvy. Nine tenths of all the uncertainties of pig-iron making were dispelled under the burning sun of chemical knowledge. At a most critical period when it was necessary for the credit of the firm that the blast furnace should make its best product, it had been stopped because an exceedingly rich and pure ore had been substituted for an inferior ore--an ore which did not yield more than two thirds of the quantity of iron of the other. The furnace had met with disaster because too much lime had been used to flux this exceptionally pure ironstone. The very superiority of the materials had involved us in serious losses. What fools we had been! But then there was this consolation: we were not as great fools as our competitors. It was years after we had taken chemistry to guide us that it was said by the proprietors of some other furnaces that they could not afford to employ a chemist. Had they known the truth then, they would have known that they could not afford to be without one. Looking back it seems pardonable to record that we were the first to employ a chemist at blast furnaces--something our competitors pronounced extravagant. The Lucy Furnace became the most profitable branch of our business, because we had almost the entire monopoly of scientific management. Having discovered the secret, it was not long (1872) before we decided to erect an additional furnace. This was done with great economy as compared with our first experiment. The mines which had no reputation and the products of which many firms would not permit to be used in their blast furnaces found a purchaser in us. Those mines which were able to obtain an enormous price for their products, owing to a reputation for quality, we quietly ignored. A curious illustration of this was the celebrated Pilot Knob mine in Missouri. Its product was, so to speak, under a cloud. A small portion of it only could be used, it was said, without obstructing the furnace. Chemistry told us that it was low in phosphorus, but very high in silicon. There was no better ore and scarcely any as rich, if it were properly fluxed. We therefore bought heavily of this and received the thanks of the proprietors for rendering their property valuable. It is hardly believable that for several years we were able to dispose of the highly phosphoric cinder from the puddling furnaces at a higher price than we had to pay for the pure cinder from the heating furnaces of our competitors--a cinder which was richer in iron than the puddled cinder and much freer from phosphorus. Upon some occasion a blast furnace had attempted to smelt the flue cinder, and from its greater purity the furnace did not work well with a mixture intended for an impurer article; hence for years it was thrown over the banks of the river at Pittsburgh by our competitors as worthless. In some cases we were even able to exchange a poor article for a good one and obtain a bonus. But it is still more unbelievable that a prejudice, equally unfounded, existed against putting into the blast furnaces the roll-scale from the mills which was pure oxide of iron. This reminds me of my dear friend and fellow-Dunfermline townsman, Mr. Chisholm, of Cleveland. We had many pranks together. One day, when I was visiting his works at Cleveland, I saw men wheeling this valuable roll-scale into the yard. I asked Mr. Chisholm where they were going with it, and he said: "To throw it over the bank. Our managers have always complained that they had bad luck when they attempted to remelt it in the blast furnace." I said nothing, but upon my return to Pittsburgh I set about having a joke at his expense. We had then a young man in our service named Du Puy, whose father was known as the inventor of a direct process in iron-making with which he was then experimenting in Pittsburgh. I recommended our people to send Du Puy to Cleveland to contract for all the roll-scale of my friend's establishment. He did so, buying it for fifty cents per ton and having it shipped to him direct. This continued for some time. I expected always to hear of the joke being discovered. The premature death of Mr. Chisholm occurred before I could apprise him of it. His successors soon, however, followed our example. I had not failed to notice the growth of the Bessemer process. If this proved successful I knew that iron was destined to give place to steel; that the Iron Age would pass away and the Steel Age take its place. My friend, John A. Wright, president of the Freedom Iron Works at Lewiston, Pennsylvania, had visited England purposely to investigate the new process. He was one of our best and most experienced manufacturers, and his decision was so strongly in its favor that he induced his company to erect Bessemer works. He was quite right, but just a little in advance of his time. The capital required was greater than he estimated. More than this, it was not to be expected that a process which was even then in somewhat of an experimental stage in Britain could be transplanted to the new country and operated successfully from the start. The experiment was certain to be long and costly, and for this my friend had not made sufficient allowance. At a later date, when the process had become established in England, capitalists began to erect the present Pennsylvania Steel Works at Harrisburg. These also had to pass through an experimental stage and at a critical moment would probably have been wrecked but for the timely assistance of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. It required a broad and able man like President Thomson, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, to recommend to his board of directors that so large a sum as six hundred thousand dollars should be advanced to a manufacturing concern on his road, that steel rails might be secured for the line. The result fully justified his action. The question of a substitute for iron rails upon the Pennsylvania Railroad and other leading lines had become a very serious one. Upon certain curves at Pittsburgh, on the road connecting the Pennsylvania with the Fort Wayne, I had seen new iron rails placed every six weeks or two months. Before the Bessemer process was known I had called President Thomson's attention to the efforts of Mr. Dodds in England, who had carbonized the heads of iron rails with good results. I went to England and obtained control of the Dodds patents and recommended President Thomson to appropriate twenty thousand dollars for experiments at Pittsburgh, which he did. We built a furnace on our grounds at the upper mill and treated several hundred tons of rails for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and with remarkably good results as compared with iron rails. These were the first hard-headed rails used in America. We placed them on some of the sharpest curves and their superior service far more than compensated for the advance made by Mr. Thomson. Had the Bessemer process not been successfully developed, I verily believe that we should ultimately have been able to improve the Dodds process sufficiently to make its adoption general. But there was nothing to be compared with the solid steel article which the Bessemer process produced. Our friends of the Cambria Iron Company at Johnstown, near Pittsburgh--the principal manufacturers of rails in America--decided to erect a Bessemer plant. In England I had seen it demonstrated, at least to my satisfaction, that the process could be made a grand success without undue expenditure of capital or great risk. Mr. William Coleman, who was ever alive to new methods, arrived at the same conclusion. It was agreed we should enter upon the manufacture of steel rails at Pittsburgh. He became a partner and also my dear friend Mr. David McCandless, who had so kindly offered aid to my mother at my father's death. The latter was not forgotten. Mr. John Scott and Mr. David A. Stewart, and others joined me; Mr. Edgar Thomson and Mr. Thomas A. Scott, president and vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, also became stockholders, anxious to encourage the development of steel. The steel-rail company was organized January 1, 1873. The question of location was the first to engage our serious attention. I could not reconcile myself to any location that was proposed, and finally went to Pittsburgh to consult with my partners about it. The subject was constantly in my mind and in bed Sunday morning the site suddenly appeared to me. I rose and called to my brother: "Tom, you and Mr. Coleman are right about the location; right at Braddock's, between the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the river, is the best situation in America; and let's call the works after our dear friend Edgar Thomson. Let us go over to Mr. Coleman's and drive out to Braddock's." We did so that day, and the next morning Mr. Coleman was at work trying to secure the property. Mr. McKinney, the owner, had a high idea of the value of his farm. What we had expected to purchase for five or six hundred dollars an acre cost us two thousand. But since then we have been compelled to add to our original purchase at a cost of five thousand dollars per acre. There, on the very field of Braddock's defeat, we began the erection of our steel-rail mills. In excavating for the foundations many relics of the battle were found--bayonets, swords, and the like. It was there that the then provost of Dunfermline, Sir Arthur Halkett, and his son were slain. How did they come to be there will very naturally be asked. It must not be forgotten that, in those days, the provosts of the cities of Britain were members of the aristocracy--the great men of the district who condescended to enjoy the honor of the position without performing the duties. No one in trade was considered good enough for the provostship. We have remnants of this aristocratic notion throughout Britain to-day. There is scarcely any life assurance or railway company, or in some cases manufacturing company but must have at its head, to enjoy the honors of the presidency, some titled person totally ignorant of the duties of the position. So it was that Sir Arthur Halkett, as a gentleman, was Provost of Dunfermline, but by calling he followed the profession of arms and was killed on this spot. It was a coincidence that what had been the field of death to two native-born citizens of Dunfermline should be turned into an industrial hive by two others. Another curious fact has recently been discovered. Mr. John Morley's address, in 1904 on Founder's Day at the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, referred to the capture of Fort Duquesne by General Forbes and his writing Prime Minister Pitt that he had rechristened it "Pittsburgh" for him. This General Forbes was then Laird of Pittencrieff and was born in the Glen which I purchased in 1902 and presented to Dunfermline for a public park. So that two Dunfermline men have been Lairds of Pittencrieff whose chief work was in Pittsburgh. One named Pittsburgh and the other labored for its development. In naming the steel mills as we did the desire was to honor my friend Edgar Thomson, but when I asked permission to use his name his reply was significant. He said that as far as American steel rails were concerned, he did not feel that he wished to connect his name with them, for they had proved to be far from creditable. Uncertainty was, of course, inseparable from the experimental stage; but, when I assured him that it was now possible to make steel rails in America as good in every particular as the foreign article, and that we intended to obtain for our rails the reputation enjoyed by the Keystone bridges and the Kloman axles, he consented. He was very anxious to have us purchase land upon the Pennsylvania Railroad, as his first thought was always for that company. This would have given the Pennsylvania a monopoly of our traffic. When he visited Pittsburgh a few months later and Mr. Robert Pitcairn, my successor as superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania, pointed out to him the situation of the new works at Braddock's Station, which gave us not only a connection with his own line, but also with the rival Baltimore and Ohio line, and with a rival in one respect greater than either--the Ohio River--he said, with a twinkle of his eye to Robert, as Robert told me: "Andy should have located his works a few miles farther east." But Mr. Thomson knew the good and sufficient reasons which determined the selection of the unrivaled site. The works were well advanced when the financial panic of September, 1873, came upon us. I then entered upon the most anxious period of my business life. All was going well when one morning in our summer cottage, in the Allegheny Mountains at Cresson, a telegram came announcing the failure of Jay Cooke & Co. Almost every hour after brought news of some fresh disaster. House after house failed. The question every morning was which would go next. Every failure depleted the resources of other concerns. Loss after loss ensued, until a total paralysis of business set in. Every weak spot was discovered and houses that otherwise would have been strong were borne down largely because our country lacked a proper banking system. We had not much reason to be anxious about our debts. Not what we had to pay of our own debts could give us much trouble, but rather what we might have to pay for our debtors. It was not our bills payable but our bills receivable which required attention, for we soon had to begin meeting both. Even our own banks had to beg us not to draw upon our balances. One incident will shed some light upon the currency situation. One of our pay-days was approaching. One hundred thousand dollars in small notes were absolutely necessary, and to obtain these we paid a premium of twenty-four hundred dollars in New York and had them expressed to Pittsburgh. It was impossible to borrow money, even upon the best collaterals; but by selling securities, which I had in reserve, considerable sums were realized--the company undertaking to replace them later. It happened that some of the railway companies whose lines centered in Pittsburgh owed us large sums for material furnished--the Fort Wayne road being the largest debtor. I remember calling upon Mr. Thaw, the vice-president of the Fort Wayne, and telling him we must have our money. He replied: "You ought to have your money, but we are not paying anything these days that is not protestable." "Very good," I said, "your freight bills are in that category and we shall follow your excellent example. Now I am going to order that we do not pay you one dollar for freight." "Well, if you do that," he said, "we will stop your freight." I said we would risk that. The railway company could not proceed to that extremity. And as a matter of fact we ran for some time without paying the freight bills. It was simply impossible for the manufacturers of Pittsburgh to pay their accruing liabilities when their customers stopped payment. The banks were forced to renew maturing paper. They behaved splendidly to us, as they always have done, and we steered safely through. But in a critical period like this there was one thought uppermost with me, to gather more capital and keep it in our business so that come what would we should never again be called upon to endure such nights and days of racking anxiety. Speaking for myself in this great crisis, I was at first the most excited and anxious of the partners. I could scarcely control myself. But when I finally saw the strength of our financial position I became philosophically cool and found myself quite prepared, if necessary, to enter the directors' rooms of the various banks with which we dealt, and lay our entire position before their boards. I felt that this could result in nothing discreditable to us. No one interested in our business had lived extravagantly. Our manner of life had been the very reverse of this. No money had been withdrawn from the business to build costly homes, and, above all, not one of us had made speculative ventures upon the stock exchange, or invested in any other enterprises than those connected with the main business. Neither had we exchanged endorsements with others. Besides this we could show a prosperous business that was making money every year. I was thus enabled to laugh away the fears of my partners, but none of them rejoiced more than I did that the necessity for opening our lips to anybody about our finances did not arise. Mr. Coleman, good friend and true, with plentiful means and splendid credit, did not fail to volunteer to give us his endorsements. In this we stood alone; William Coleman's name, a tower of strength, was for us only. How the grand old man comes before me as I write. His patriotism knew no bounds. Once when visiting his mills, stopped for the Fourth of July, as they always were, he found a corps of men at work repairing the boilers. He called the manager to him and asked what this meant. He ordered all work suspended. "Work on the Fourth of July!" he exclaimed, "when there's plenty of Sundays for repairs!" He was furious. When the cyclone of 1873 struck us we at once began to reef sail in every quarter. Very reluctantly did we decide that the construction of the new steel works must cease for a time. Several prominent persons, who had invested in them, became unable to meet their payments and I was compelled to take over their interests, repaying the full cost to all. In that way control of the company came into my hands. The first outburst of the storm had affected the financial world connected with the Stock Exchange. It was some time before it reached the commercial and manufacturing world. But the situation grew worse and worse and finally led to the crash which involved my friends in the Texas Pacific enterprise, of which I have already spoken. This was to me the severest blow of all. People could, with difficulty, believe that occupying such intimate relations as I did with the Texas group, I could by any possibility have kept myself clear of their financial obligations. Mr. Schoenberger, president of the Exchange Bank at Pittsburgh, with which we conducted a large business, was in New York when the news reached him of the embarrassment of Mr. Scott and Mr. Thomson. He hastened to Pittsburgh, and at a meeting of his board next morning said it was simply impossible that I was not involved with them. He suggested that the bank should refuse to discount more of our bills receivable. He was alarmed to find that the amount of these bearing our endorsement and under discount, was so large. Prompt action on my part was necessary to prevent serious trouble. I took the first train for Pittsburgh, and was able to announce there to all concerned that, although I was a shareholder in the Texas enterprise, my interest was paid for. My name was not upon one dollar of their paper or of any other outstanding paper. I stood clear and clean without a financial obligation or property which I did not own and which was not fully paid for. My only obligations were those connected with our business; and I was prepared to pledge for it every dollar I owned, and to endorse every obligation the firm had outstanding. Up to this time I had the reputation in business of being a bold, fearless, and perhaps a somewhat reckless young man. Our operations had been extensive, our growth rapid and, although still young, I had been handling millions. My own career was thought by the elderly ones of Pittsburgh to have been rather more brilliant than substantial. I know of an experienced one who declared that if "Andrew Carnegie's brains did not carry him through his luck would." But I think nothing could be farther from the truth than the estimate thus suggested. I am sure that any competent judge would be surprised to find how little I ever risked for myself or my partners. When I did big things, some large corporation like the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was behind me and the responsible party. My supply of Scotch caution never has been small; but I was apparently something of a dare-devil now and then to the manufacturing fathers of Pittsburgh. They were old and I was young, which made all the difference. The fright which Pittsburgh financial institutions had with regard to myself and our enterprises rapidly gave place to perhaps somewhat unreasoning confidence. Our credit became unassailable, and thereafter in times of financial pressure the offerings of money to us increased rather than diminished, just as the deposits of the old Bank of Pittsburgh were never so great as when the deposits in other banks ran low. It was the only bank in America which redeemed its circulation in gold, disdaining to take refuge under the law and pay its obligations in greenbacks. It had few notes, and I doubt not the decision paid as an advertisement. In addition to the embarrassment of my friends Mr. Scott, Mr. Thomson, and others, there came upon us later an even severer trial in the discovery that our partner, Mr. Andrew Kloman, had been led by a party of speculative people into the Escanaba Iron Company. He was assured that the concern was to be made a stock company, but before this was done his colleagues had succeeded in creating an enormous amount of liabilities--about seven hundred thousand dollars. There was nothing but bankruptcy as a means of reinstating Mr. Kloman. This gave us more of a shock than all that had preceded, because Mr. Kloman, being a partner, had no right to invest in another iron company, or in any other company involving personal debt, without informing his partners. There is one imperative rule for men in business--no secrets from partners. Disregard of this rule involved not only Mr. Kloman himself, but our company, in peril, coming, as it did, atop of the difficulties of my Texas Pacific friends with whom I had been intimately associated. The question for a time was whether there was anything really sound. Where could we find bedrock upon which we could stand? Had Mr. Kloman been a business man it would have been impossible ever to allow him to be a partner with us again after this discovery. He was not such, however, but the ablest of practical mechanics with some business ability. Mr. Kloman's ambition had been to be in the office, where he was worse than useless, rather than in the mill devising and running new machinery, where he was without a peer. We had some difficulty in placing him in his proper position and keeping him there, which may have led him to seek an outlet elsewhere. He was perhaps flattered by men who were well known in the community; and in this case he was led by persons who knew how to reach him by extolling his wonderful business abilities in addition to his mechanical genius--abilities which his own partners, as already suggested, but faintly recognized. After Mr. Kloman had passed through the bankruptcy court and was again free, we offered him a ten per cent interest in our business, charging for it only the actual capital invested, with nothing whatever for good-will. This we were to carry for him until the profits paid for it. We were to charge interest only on the cost, and he was to assume no responsibility. The offer was accompanied by the condition that he should not enter into any other business or endorse for others, but give his whole time and attention to the mechanical and not the business management of the mills. Could he have been persuaded to accept this, he would have been a multimillionaire; but his pride, and more particularly that of his family, perhaps, would not permit this. He would go into business on his own account, and, notwithstanding the most urgent appeals on my part, and that of my colleagues, he persisted in the determination to start a new rival concern with his sons as business managers. The result was failure and premature death. How foolish we are not to recognize what we are best fitted for and can perform, not only with ease but with pleasure, as masters of the craft. More than one able man I have known has persisted in blundering in an office when he had great talent for the mill, and has worn himself out, oppressed with cares and anxieties, his life a continual round of misery, and the result at last failure. I never regretted parting with any man so much as Mr. Kloman. His was a good heart, a great mechanical brain, and had he been left to himself I believe he would have been glad to remain with us. Offers of capital from others--offers which failed when needed--turned his head, and the great mechanic soon proved the poor man of affairs.[33] [Footnote 33: Long after the circumstances here recited, Mr. Isidor Straus called upon Mr. Henry Phipps and asked him if two statements which had been publicly made about Mr. Carnegie and his partners in the steel company were true. Mr. Phipps replied they were not. Then said Mr. Straus: "Mr. Phipps, you owe it to yourself and also to Mr. Carnegie to say so publicly." This Mr. Phipps did in the _New York Herald_, January 30, 1904, in the following handsome manner and without Mr. Carnegie's knowledge: _Question:_ "In a recent publication mention was made of Mr. Carnegie's not having treated Mr. Miller, Mr. Kloman, and yourself properly during your early partnership, and at its termination. Can you tell me anything about this?" _Answer:_ "Mr. Miller has already spoken for himself in this matter, and I can say that the treatment received from Mr. Carnegie during our partnership, so far as I was concerned, was always fair and liberal. "My association with Mr. Kloman in business goes back forty-three years. Everything in connection with Mr. Carnegie's partnership with Mr. Kloman was of a pleasant nature. "At a much more recent date, when the firm of Carnegie, Kloman and Company was formed, the partners were Andrew Carnegie, Thomas M. Carnegie, Andrew Kloman, and myself. The Carnegies held the controlling interest. "After the partnership agreement was signed, Mr. Kloman said to me that the Carnegies, owning the larger interest, might be too enterprising in making improvements, which might lead us into serious trouble; and he thought that they should consent to an article in the partnership agreement requiring the consent of three partners to make effective any vote for improvements. I told him that we could not exact what he asked, as their larger interest assured them control, but I would speak to them. When the subject was broached, Mr. Carnegie promptly said that if he could not carry Mr. Kloman or myself with his brother in any improvements he would not wish them made. Other matters were arranged by courtesy during our partnership in the same manner." _Question:_ "What you have told me suggests the question, why did Mr. Kloman leave the firm?" _Answer:_ "During the great depression which followed the panic of 1873, Mr. Kloman, through an unfortunate partnership in the Escanaba Furnace Company, lost his means, and his interest in our firm had to be disposed of. We bought it at book value at a time when manufacturing properties were selling at ruinous prices, often as low as one third or one half their cost. "After the settlement had been made with the creditors of the Escanaba Company, Mr. Kloman was offered an interest by Mr. Carnegie of $100,000 in our firm, to be paid only from future profits. This Mr. Kloman declined, as he did not feel like taking an interest which formerly had been much larger. Mr. Carnegie gave him $40,000 from the firm to make a new start. This amount was invested in a rival concern, which soon closed. "I knew of no disagreement during this early period with Mr. Carnegie, and their relations continued pleasant as long as Mr. Kloman lived. Harmony always marked their intercourse, and they had the kindliest feeling one for the other."] CHAPTER XIV PARTNERS, BOOKS, AND TRAVEL When Mr. Kloman had severed his connection with us there was no hesitation in placing William Borntraeger in charge of the mills. It has always been with especial pleasure that I have pointed to the career of William. He came direct from Germany--a young man who could not speak English, but being distantly connected with Mr. Kloman was employed in the mills, at first in a minor capacity. He promptly learned English and became a shipping clerk at six dollars per week. He had not a particle of mechanical knowledge, and yet such was his unflagging zeal and industry for the interests of his employer that he soon became marked for being everywhere about the mill, knowing everything, and attending to everything. William was a character. He never got over his German idioms and his inverted English made his remarks very effective. Under his superintendence the Union Iron Mills became a most profitable branch of our business. He had overworked himself after a few years' application and we decided to give him a trip to Europe. He came to New York by way of Washington. When he called upon me in New York he expressed himself as more anxious to return to Pittsburgh than to revisit Germany. In ascending the Washington Monument he had seen the Carnegie beams in the stairway and also at other points in public buildings, and as he expressed it: "It yust make me so broud dat I want to go right back and see dat everyting is going right at de mill." Early hours in the morning and late in the dark hours at night William was in the mills. His life was there. He was among the first of the young men we admitted to partnership, and the poor German lad at his death was in receipt of an income, as I remember, of about $50,000 a year, every cent of which was deserved. Stories about him are many. At a dinner of our partners to celebrate the year's business, short speeches were in order from every one. William summed up his speech thus: "What we haf to do, shentlemens, is to get brices up and costs down and efery man _stand on his own bottom_." There was loud, prolonged, and repeated laughter. Captain Evans ("Fighting Bob") was at one time government inspector at our mills. He was a severe one. William was sorely troubled at times and finally offended the Captain, who complained of his behavior. We tried to get William to realize the importance of pleasing a government official. William's reply was: "But he gomes in and smokes my cigars" (bold Captain! William reveled in one-cent Wheeling tobies) "and then he goes and contems my iron. What does you tinks of a man like dat? But I apologize and dreat him right to-morrow." The Captain was assured William had agreed to make due amends, but he laughingly told us afterward that William's apology was: "Vell, Captain, I hope you vas all right dis morning. I haf noting against you, Captain," holding out his hand, which the Captain finally took and all was well. William once sold to our neighbor, the pioneer steel-maker of Pittsburgh, James Park, a large lot of old rails which we could not use. Mr. Park found them of a very bad quality. He made claims for damages and William was told that he must go with Mr. Phipps to meet Mr. Park and settle. Mr. Phipps went into Mr. Park's office, while William took a look around the works in search of the condemned material, which was nowhere to be seen. Well did William know where to look. He finally entered the office, and before Mr. Park had time to say a word William began: "Mr. Park, I vas glad to hear dat de old rails what I sell you don't suit for steel. I will buy dem all from you back, five dollars ton profit for you." Well did William know that they had all been used. Mr. Park was non-plussed, and the affair ended. William had triumphed. Upon one of my visits to Pittsburgh William told me he had something "particular" he wished to tell me--something he couldn't tell any one else. This was upon his return from the trip to Germany. There he had been asked to visit for a few days a former schoolfellow, who had risen to be a professor: "Well, Mr. Carnegie, his sister who kept his house was very kind to me, and ven I got to Hamburg I tought I sent her yust a little present. She write me a letter, then I write her a letter. She write me and I write her, and den I ask her would she marry me. She was very educated, but she write yes. Den I ask her to come to New York, and I meet her dere, but, Mr. Carnegie, dem people don't know noting about business and de mills. Her bruder write me dey want me to go dere again and marry her in Chairmany, and I can go away not again from de mills. I tought I yust ask you aboud it." "Of course you can go again. Quite right, William, you should go. I think the better of her people for feeling so. You go over at once and bring her home. I'll arrange it." Then, when parting, I said: "William, I suppose your sweetheart is a beautiful, tall, 'peaches-and-cream' kind of German young lady." "Vell, Mr. Carnegie, she is a leetle stout. If _I had the rolling of her I give her yust one more pass_." All William's illustrations were founded on mill practice. [I find myself bursting into fits of laughter this morning (June, 1912) as I re-read this story. But I did this also when reading that "Every man must stand on his own bottom."] Mr. Phipps had been head of the commercial department of the mills, but when our business was enlarged, he was required for the steel business. Another young man, William L. Abbott, took his place. Mr. Abbott's history is somewhat akin to Borntraeger's. He came to us as a clerk upon a small salary and was soon assigned to the front in charge of the business of the iron mills. He was no less successful than was William. He became a partner with an interest equal to William's, and finally was promoted to the presidency of the company. Mr. Curry had distinguished himself by this time in his management of the Lucy Furnaces, and he took his place among the partners, sharing equally with the others. There is no way of making a business successful that can vie with the policy of promoting those who render exceptional service. We finally converted the firm of Carnegie, McCandless & Co. into the Edgar Thomson Steel Company, and included my brother and Mr. Phipps, both of whom had declined at first to go into the steel business with their too enterprising senior. But when I showed them the earnings for the first year and told them if they did not get into steel they would find themselves in the wrong boat, they both reconsidered and came with us. It was fortunate for them as for us. My experience has been that no partnership of new men gathered promiscuously from various fields can prove a good working organization as at first constituted. Changes are required. Our Edgar Thomson Steel Company was no exception to this rule. Even before we began to make rails, Mr. Coleman became dissatisfied with the management of a railway official who had come to us with a great and deserved reputation for method and ability. I had, therefore, to take over Mr. Coleman's interest. It was not long, however, before we found that his judgment was correct. The new man had been a railway auditor, and was excellent in accounts, but it was unjust to expect him, or any other office man, to be able to step into manufacturing and be successful from the start. He had neither the knowledge nor the training for this new work. This does not mean that he was not a splendid auditor. It was our own blunder in expecting the impossible. The mills were at last about ready to begin[34] and an organization the auditor proposed was laid before me for approval. I found he had divided the works into two departments and had given control of one to Mr. Stevenson, a Scotsman who afterwards made a fine record as a manufacturer, and control of the other to a Mr. Jones. Nothing, I am certain, ever affected the success of the steel company more than the decision which I gave upon that proposal. Upon no account could two men be in the same works with equal authority. An army with two commanders-in-chief, a ship with two captains, could not fare more disastrously than a manufacturing concern with two men in command upon the same ground, even though in two different departments. I said: "This will not do. I do not know Mr. Stevenson, nor do I know Mr. Jones, but one or the other must be made captain and he alone must report to you." [Footnote 34: The steel-rail mills were ready and rails were rolled in 1874.] The decision fell upon Mr. Jones and in this way we obtained "The Captain," who afterward made his name famous wherever the manufacture of Bessemer steel is known. The Captain was then quite young, spare and active, bearing traces of his Welsh descent even in his stature, for he was quite short. He came to us as a two-dollar-a-day mechanic from the neighboring works at Johnstown. We soon saw that he was a character. Every movement told it. He had volunteered as a private during the Civil War and carried himself so finely that he became captain of a company which was never known to flinch. Much of the success of the Edgar Thomson Works belongs to this man. In later years he declined an interest in the firm which would have made him a millionaire. I told him one day that some of the young men who had been given an interest were now making much more than he was and we had voted to make him a partner. This entailed no financial responsibility, as we always provided that the cost of the interest given was payable only out of profits. "No," he said, "I don't want to have my thoughts running on business. I have enough trouble looking after these works. Just give me a h--l of a salary if you think I'm worth it." "All right, Captain, the salary of the President of the United States is yours." "That's the talk," said the little Welshman.[35] [Footnote 35: The story is told that when Mr. Carnegie was selecting his younger partners he one day sent for a young Scotsman, Alexander R. Peacock, and asked him rather abruptly: "Peacock, what would you give to be made a millionaire?" "A liberal discount for cash, sir," was the answer. He was a partner owning a two per cent interest when the Carnegie Steel Company was merged into the United States Steel Corporation.] Our competitors in steel were at first disposed to ignore us. Knowing the difficulties they had in starting their own steel works, they could not believe we would be ready to deliver rails for another year and declined to recognize us as competitors. The price of steel rails when we began was about seventy dollars per ton. We sent our agent through the country with instructions to take orders at the best prices he could obtain; and before our competitors knew it, we had obtained a large number--quite sufficient to justify us in making a start. So perfect was the machinery, so admirable the plans, so skillful were the men selected by Captain Jones, and so great a manager was he himself, that our success was phenomenal. I think I place a unique statement on record when I say that the result of the first month's operations left a margin of profit of $11,000. It is also remarkable that so perfect was our system of accounts that we knew the exact amount of the profit. We had learned from experience in our iron works what exact accounting meant. There is nothing more profitable than clerks to check up each transfer of material from one department to another in process of manufacture. The new venture in steel having started off so promisingly, I began to think of taking a holiday, and my long-cherished purpose of going around the world came to the front. Mr. J.W. Vandevort ("Vandy") and I accordingly set out in the autumn of 1878. I took with me several pads suitable for penciling and began to make a few notes day by day, not with any intention of publishing a book; but thinking, perhaps, I might print a few copies of my notes for private circulation. The sensation which one has when he first sees his remarks in the form of a printed book is great. When the package came from the printers I re-read the book trying to decide whether it was worth while to send copies to my friends. I came to the conclusion that upon the whole it was best to do so and await the verdict. The writer of a book designed for his friends has no reason to anticipate an unkind reception, but there is always some danger of its being damned with faint praise. The responses in my case, however, exceeded expectations, and were of such a character as to satisfy me that the writers really had enjoyed the book, or meant at least a part of what they said about it. Every author is prone to believe sweet words. Among the first that came were in a letter from Anthony Drexel, Philadelphia's great banker, complaining that I had robbed him of several hours of sleep. Having begun the book he could not lay it down and retired at two o'clock in the morning after finishing. Several similar letters were received. I remember Mr. Huntington, president of the Central Pacific Railway, meeting me one morning and saying he was going to pay me a great compliment. "What is it?" Tasked. "Oh, I read your book from end to end." "Well," I said, "that is not such a great compliment. Others of our mutual friends have done that." "Oh, yes, but probably none of your friends are like me. I have not read a book for years except my ledger and I did not intend to read yours, but when I began it I could not lay it down. My ledger is the only book I have gone through for five years." I was not disposed to credit all that my friends said, but others who had obtained the book from them were pleased with it and I lived for some months under intoxicating, but I trust not perilously pernicious, flattery. Several editions of the book were printed to meet the request for copies. Some notices of it and extracts got into the papers, and finally Charles Scribner's Sons asked to publish it for the market. So "Round the World"[36] came before the public and I was at last "an author." [Footnote 36: _Round the World_, by Andrew Carnegie. New York and London, 1884.] A new horizon was opened up to me by this voyage. It quite changed my intellectual outlook. Spencer and Darwin were then high in the zenith, and I had become deeply interested in their work. I began to view the various phases of human life from the standpoint of the evolutionist. In China I read Confucius; in India, Buddha and the sacred books of the Hindoos; among the Parsees, in Bombay, I studied Zoroaster. The result of my journey was to bring a certain mental peace. Where there had been chaos there was now order. My mind was at rest. I had a philosophy at last. The words of Christ "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," had a new meaning for me. Not in the past or in the future, but now and here is Heaven within us. All our duties lie in this world and in the present, and trying impatiently to peer into that which lies beyond is as vain as fruitless. All the remnants of theology in which I had been born and bred, all the impressions that Swedenborg had made upon me, now ceased to influence me or to occupy my thoughts. I found that no nation had all the truth in the revelation it regards as divine, and no tribe is so low as to be left without some truth; that every people has had its great teacher; Buddha for one; Confucius for another; Zoroaster for a third; Christ for a fourth. The teachings of all these I found ethically akin so that I could say with Matthew Arnold, one I was so proud to call friend: "Children of men! the unseen Power, whose eye For ever doth accompany mankind Hath looked on no religion scornfully That men did ever find. Which has not taught weak wills how much they can? Which has not fall'n in the dry heart like rain? Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man, _Thou must be born again_." "The Light of Asia," by Edwin Arnold, came out at this time and gave me greater delight than any similar poetical work I had recently read. I had just been in India and the book took me there again. My appreciation of it reached the author's ears and later having made his acquaintance in London, he presented me with the original manuscript of the book. It is one of my most precious treasures. Every person who can, even at a sacrifice, make the voyage around the world should do so. All other travel compared to it seems incomplete, gives us merely vague impressions of parts of the whole. When the circle has been completed, you feel on your return that you have seen (of course only in the mass) all there is to be seen. The parts fit into one symmetrical whole and you see humanity wherever it is placed working out a destiny tending to one definite end. The world traveler who gives careful study to the bibles of the various religions of the East will be well repaid. The conclusion reached will be that the inhabitants of each country consider their own religion the best of all. They rejoice that their lot has been cast where it is, and are disposed to pity the less fortunate condemned to live beyond their sacred limits. The masses of all nations are usually happy, each mass certain that: "East or West Home is best." Two illustrations of this from our "Round the World" trip may be noted: Visiting the tapioca workers in the woods near Singapore, we found them busily engaged, the children running about stark naked, the parents clothed in the usual loose rags. Our party attracted great attention. We asked our guide to tell the people that we came from a country where the water in such a pond as that before us would become solid at this season of the year and we could walk upon it and that sometimes it would be so hard horses and wagons crossed wide rivers on the ice. They wondered and asked why we didn't come and live among them. They really were very happy. Again: On the way to the North Cape we visited a reindeer camp of the Laplanders. A sailor from the ship was deputed to go with the party. I walked homeward with him, and as we approached the fiord looking down and over to the opposite shore we saw a few straggling huts and one two-story house under construction. What is that new building for? we asked. "That is to be the home of a man born in Tromso who has made a great deal of money and has now come back to spend his days there. He is very rich." "You told me you had travelled all over the world. You have seen London, New York, Calcutta, Melbourne, and other places. If you made a fortune like that man what place would you make your home in old age?" His eye glistened as he said: "Ah, there's no place like Tromso." This is in the arctic circle, six months of night, but he had been born in Tromso. Home, sweet, sweet home! Among the conditions of life or the laws of nature, some of which seem to us faulty, some apparently unjust and merciless, there are many that amaze us by their beauty and sweetness. Love of home, regardless of its character or location, certainly is one of these. And what a pleasure it is to find that, instead of the Supreme Being confining revelation to one race or nation, every race has the message best adapted for it in its present stage of development. The Unknown Power has neglected none. CHAPTER XV COACHING TRIP AND MARRIAGE The Freedom of my native town (Dunfermline) was conferred upon me July 12, 1877, the first Freedom and the greatest honor I ever received. I was overwhelmed. Only two signatures upon the roll came between mine and Sir Walter Scott's, who had been made a Burgess. My parents had seen him one day sketching Dunfermline Abbey and often told me about his appearance. My speech in reply to the Freedom was the subject of much concern. I spoke to my Uncle Bailie Morrison, telling him I just felt like saying so and so, as this really was in my heart. He was an orator himself and he spoke words of wisdom to me then. "Just say that, Andra; nothing like saying just what you really feel." It was a lesson in public speaking which I took to heart. There is one rule I might suggest for youthful orators. When you stand up before an audience reflect that there are before you only men and women. You should speak to them as you speak to other men and women in daily intercourse. If you are not trying to be something different from yourself, there is no more occasion for embarrassment than if you were talking in your office to a party of your own people--none whatever. It is trying to be other than one's self that unmans one. Be your own natural self and go ahead. I once asked Colonel Ingersoll, the most effective public speaker I ever heard, to what he attributed his power. "Avoid elocutionists like snakes," he said, "and be yourself." [Illustration: AN AMERICAN FOUR-IN-HAND IN BRITAIN] I spoke again at Dunfermline, July 27, 1881, when my mother laid the foundation stone there of the first free library building I ever gave. My father was one of five weavers who founded the earliest library in the town by opening their own books to their neighbors. Dunfermline named the building I gave "Carnegie Library." The architect asked for my coat of arms. I informed him I had none, but suggested that above the door there might be carved a rising sun shedding its rays with the motto: "Let there be light." This he adopted. We had come up to Dunfermline with a coaching party. When walking through England in the year 1867 with George Lauder and Harry Phipps I had formed the idea of coaching from Brighton to Inverness with a party of my dearest friends. The time had come for the long-promised trip, and in the spring of 1881 we sailed from New York, a party of eleven, to enjoy one of the happiest excursions of my life. It was one of the holidays from business that kept me young and happy--worth all the medicine in the world. All the notes I made of the coaching trip were a few lines a day in twopenny pass-books bought before we started. As with "Round the World," I thought that I might some day write a magazine article, or give some account of my excursion for those who accompanied me; but one wintry day I decided that it was scarcely worth while to go down to the New York office, three miles distant, and the question was how I should occupy the spare time. I thought of the coaching trip, and decided to write a few lines just to see how I should get on. The narrative flowed freely, and before the day was over I had written between three and four thousand words. I took up the pleasing task every stormy day when it was unnecessary for me to visit the office, and in exactly twenty sittings I had finished a book. I handed the notes to Scribner's people and asked them to print a few hundred copies for private circulation. The volume pleased my friends, as "Round the World" had done. Mr. Champlin one day told me that Mr. Scribner had read the book and would like very much to publish it for general circulation upon his own account, subject to a royalty. The vain author is easily persuaded that what he has done is meritorious, and I consented. [Every year this still nets me a small sum in royalties. And thirty years have gone by, 1912.] The letters I received upon the publication[37] of it were so numerous and some so gushing that my people saved them and they are now bound together in scrapbook form, to which additions are made from time to time. The number of invalids who have been pleased to write me, stating that the book had brightened their lives, has been gratifying. Its reception in Britain was cordial; the "Spectator" gave it a favorable review. But any merit that the book has comes, I am sure, from the total absence of effort on my part to make an impression. I wrote for my friends; and what one does easily, one does well. I reveled in the writing of the book, as I had in the journey itself. [Footnote 37: Published privately in 1882 under the title _Our Coaching Trip, Brighton to Inverness_. Published by the Scribners in 1883 under the title of _An American Four-in-Hand in Britain_.] The year 1886 ended in deep gloom for me. My life as a happy careless young man, with every want looked after, was over. I was left alone in the world. My mother and brother passed away in November, within a few days of each other, while I lay in bed under a severe attack of typhoid fever, unable to move and, perhaps fortunately, unable to feel the full weight of the catastrophe, being myself face to face with death. I was the first stricken, upon returning from a visit in the East to our cottage at Cresson Springs on top of the Alleghanies where my mother and I spent our happy summers. I had been quite unwell for a day or two before leaving New York. A physician being summoned, my trouble was pronounced typhoid fever. Professor Dennis was called from New York and he corroborated the diagnosis. An attendant physician and trained nurse were provided at once. Soon after my mother broke down and my brother in Pittsburgh also was reported ill. I was despaired of, I was so low, and then my whole nature seemed to change. I became reconciled, indulged in pleasing meditations, was without the slightest pain. My mother's and brother's serious condition had not been revealed to me, and when I was informed that both had left me forever it seemed only natural that I should follow them. We had never been separated; why should we be now? But it was decreed otherwise. I recovered slowly and the future began to occupy my thoughts. There was only one ray of hope and comfort in it. Toward that my thoughts always turned. For several years I had known Miss Louise Whitfield. Her mother permitted her to ride with me in the Central Park. We were both very fond of riding. Other young ladies were on my list. I had fine horses and often rode in the Park and around New York with one or the other of the circle. In the end the others all faded into ordinary beings. Miss Whitfield remained alone as the perfect one beyond any I had met. Finally I began to find and admit to myself that she stood the supreme test I had applied to several fair ones in my time. She alone did so of all I had ever known. I could recommend young men to apply this test before offering themselves. If they can honestly believe the following lines, as I did, then all is well: "Full many a lady I've eyed with best regard: for several virtues Have I liked several women, never any With so full soul, but some defect in her Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed, And put it to the foil; but you, O you, So perfect and so peerless are created Of every creature's best."[38] [Footnote 38: Ferdinand to Miranda in _The Tempest_.] In my soul I could echo those very words. To-day, after twenty years of life with her, if I could find stronger words I could truthfully use them. My advances met with indifferent success. She was not without other and younger admirers. My wealth and future plans were against me. I was rich and had everything and she felt she could be of little use or benefit to me. Her ideal was to be the real helpmeet of a young, struggling man to whom she could and would be indispensable, as her mother had been to her father. The care of her own family had largely fallen upon her after her father's death when she was twenty-one. She was now twenty-eight; her views of life were formed. At times she seemed more favorable and we corresponded. Once, however, she returned my letters saying she felt she must put aside all thought of accepting me. Professor and Mrs. Dennis took me from Cresson to their own home in New York, as soon as I could be removed, and I lay there some time under the former's personal supervision. Miss Whitfield called to see me, for I had written her the first words from Cresson I was able to write. She saw now that I needed her. I was left alone in the world. Now she could be in every sense the "helpmeet." Both her heart and head were now willing and the day was fixed. We were married in New York April 22, 1887, and sailed for our honeymoon which was passed on the Isle of Wight. [Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE (ABOUT 1878)] Her delight was intense in finding the wild flowers. She had read of Wandering Willie, Heartsease, Forget-me-nots, the Primrose, Wild Thyme, and the whole list of homely names that had been to her only names till now. Everything charmed her. Uncle Lauder and one of my cousins came down from Scotland and visited us, and then we soon followed to the residence at Kilgraston they had selected for us in which to spend the summer. Scotland captured her. There was no doubt about that. Her girlish reading had been of Scotland--Scott's novels and "Scottish Chiefs" being her favorites. She soon became more Scotch than I. All this was fulfilling my fondest dreams. We spent some days in Dunfermline and enjoyed them much. The haunts and incidents of my boyhood were visited and recited to her by all and sundry. She got nothing but flattering accounts of her husband which gave me a good start with her. I was presented with the Freedom of Edinburgh as we passed northward--Lord Rosebery making the speech. The crowd in Edinburgh was great. I addressed the working-men in the largest hall and received a present from them as did Mrs. Carnegie also--a brooch she values highly. She heard and saw the pipers in all their glory and begged there should be one at our home--a piper to walk around and waken us in the morning and also to play us in to dinner. American as she is to the core, and Connecticut Puritan at that, she declared that if condemned to live upon a lonely island and allowed to choose only one musical instrument, it would be the pipes. The piper was secured quickly enough. One called and presented credentials from Cluny McPherson. We engaged him and were preceded by him playing the pipes as we entered our Kilgraston house. We enjoyed Kilgraston, although Mrs. Carnegie still longed for a wilder and more Highland home. Matthew Arnold visited us, as did Mr. and Mrs. Blaine, Senator and Mrs. Eugene Hale, and many friends.[39] Mrs. Carnegie would have my relatives up from Dunfermline, especially the older uncles and aunties. She charmed every one. They expressed their surprise to me that she ever married me, but I told them I was equally surprised. The match had evidently been predestined. [Footnote 39: John Hay, writing to his friend Henry Adams under date of London, August 25, 1887, has the following to say about the party at Kilgraston: "After that we went to Andy Carnegie in Perthshire, who is keeping his honeymoon, having just married a pretty girl.... The house is thronged with visitors--sixteen when we came away--we merely stayed three days: the others were there for a fortnight. Among them were your friends Blaine and Hale of Maine. Carnegie likes it so well he is going to do it every summer and is looking at all the great estates in the County with a view of renting or purchasing. We went with him one day to Dupplin Castle, where I saw the most beautiful trees I ever beheld in my wandering life. The old Earl of ---- is miserably poor--not able to buy a bottle of seltzer--with an estate worth millions in the hands of his creditors, and sure to be sold one of these days to some enterprising Yankee or British Buttonmaker. I wish you or Carnegie would buy it. I would visit you frequently." (Thayer, _Life and Letters of John Hay_, vol. II, p. 74.)] We took our piper with us when we returned to New York, and also our housekeeper and some of the servants. Mrs. Nicoll remains with us still and is now, after twenty years' faithful service, as a member of the family. George Irvine, our butler, came to us a year later and is also as one of us. Maggie Anderson, one of the servants, is the same. They are devoted people, of high character and true loyalty.[40] [Footnote 40: "No man is a true gentleman who does not inspire the affection and devotion of his servants." (_Problems of To-day_, by Andrew Carnegie. New York, 1908, p. 59.)] The next year we were offered and took Cluny Castle. Our piper was just the man to tell us all about it. He had been born and bred there and perhaps influenced our selection of that residence where we spent several summers. On March 30, 1897, there came to us our daughter. As I first gazed upon her Mrs. Carnegie said, "Her name is Margaret after your mother. Now one request I have to make." "What is it, Lou?" "We must get a summer home since this little one has been given us. We cannot rent one and be obliged to go in and go out at a certain date. It should be our home." "Yes," I agreed. "I make only one condition." "What is that?" I asked. "It must be in the Highlands of Scotland." "Bless you," was my reply. "That suits me. You know I have to keep out of the sun's rays, and where can we do that so surely as among the heather? I'll be a committee of one to inquire and report." Skibo Castle was the result. It is now twenty years since Mrs. Carnegie entered and changed my life, a few months after the passing of my mother and only brother left me alone in the world. My life has been made so happy by her that I cannot imagine myself living without her guardianship. I thought I knew her when she stood Ferdinand's test,[41] but it was only the surface of her qualities I had seen and felt. Of their purity, holiness, wisdom, I had not sounded the depth. In every emergency of our active, changing, and in later years somewhat public life, in all her relations with others, including my family and her own, she has proved the diplomat and peace-maker. Peace and good-will attend her footsteps wherever her blessed influence extends. In the rare instances demanding heroic action it is she who first realizes this and plays the part. [Footnote 41: The reference is to the quotation from _The Tempest_ on page 214.] The Peace-Maker has never had a quarrel in all her life, not even with a schoolmate, and there does not live a soul upon the earth who has met her who has the slightest cause to complain of neglect. Not that she does not welcome the best and gently avoid the undesirable--none is more fastidious than she--but neither rank, wealth, nor social position affects her one iota. She is incapable of acting or speaking rudely; all is in perfect good taste. Still, she never lowers the standard. Her intimates are only of the best. She is always thinking how she can do good to those around her--planning for this one and that in case of need and making such judicious arrangements or presents as surprise those coöperating with her. I cannot imagine myself going through these twenty years without her. Nor can I endure the thought of living after her. In the course of nature I have not that to meet; but then the thought of what will be cast upon her, a woman left alone with so much requiring attention and needing a man to decide, gives me intense pain and I sometimes wish I had this to endure for her. But then she will have our blessed daughter in her life and perhaps that will keep her patient. Besides, Margaret needs her more than she does her father. [Illustration: MRS. ANDREW CARNEGIE] [Illustration: MARGARET CARNEGIE AT FIFTEEN] Why, oh, why, are we compelled to leave the heaven we have found on earth and go we know not where! For I can say with Jessica: "It is very meet The Lord Bassanio live an upright life; For, having such a blessing in his lady, He finds the joys of heaven here on earth." CHAPTER XVI MILLS AND THE MEN The one vital lesson in iron and steel that I learned in Britain was the necessity for owning raw materials and finishing the completed article ready for its purpose. Having solved the steel-rail problem at the Edgar Thomson Works, we soon proceeded to the next step. The difficulties and uncertainties of obtaining regular supplies of pig iron compelled us to begin the erection of blast furnaces. Three of these were built, one, however, being a reconstructed blast furnace purchased from the Escanaba Iron Company, with which Mr. Kloman had been connected. As is usual in such cases, the furnace cost us as much as a new one, and it never was as good. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as purchases of inferior plants. But although this purchase was a mistake, directly considered, it proved, at a subsequent date, a source of great profit because it gave us a furnace small enough for the manufacture of spiegel and, at a later date, of ferro-manganese. We were the second firm in the United States to manufacture our own spiegel, and the first, and for years the only, firm in America that made ferro-manganese. We had been dependent upon foreigners for a supply of this indispensable article, paying as high as eighty dollars a ton for it. The manager of our blast furnaces, Mr. Julian Kennedy, is entitled to the credit of suggesting that with the ores within reach we could make ferro-manganese in our small furnace. The experiment was worth trying and the result was a great success. We were able to supply the entire American demand and prices fell from eighty to fifty dollars per ton as a consequence. While testing the ores of Virginia we found that these were being quietly purchased by Europeans for ferro-manganese, the owners of the mine being led to believe that they were used for other purposes. Our Mr. Phipps at once set about purchasing that mine. He obtained an option from the owners, who had neither capital nor skill to work it efficiently. A high price was paid to them for their interests, and (with one of them, Mr. Davis, a very able young man) we became the owners, but not until a thorough investigation of the mine had proved that there was enough of manganese ore in sight to repay us. All this was done with speed; not a day was lost when the discovery was made. And here lies the great advantage of a partnership over a corporation. The president of the latter would have had to consult a board of directors and wait several weeks and perhaps months for their decision. By that time the mine would probably have become the property of others. We continued to develop our blast-furnace plant, every new one being a great improvement upon the preceding, until at last we thought we had arrived at a standard furnace. Minor improvements would no doubt be made, but so far as we could see we had a perfect plant and our capacity was then fifty thousand tons per month of pig iron. The blast-furnace department was no sooner added than another step was seen to be essential to our independence and success. The supply of superior coke was a fixed quantity--the Connellsville field being defined. We found that we could not get on without a supply of the fuel essential to the smelting of pig iron; and a very thorough investigation of the question led us to the conclusion that the Frick Coke Company had not only the best coal and coke property, but that it had in Mr. Frick himself a man with a positive genius for its management. He had proved his ability by starting as a poor railway clerk and succeeding. In 1882 we purchased one half of the stock of this company, and by subsequent purchases from other holders we became owners of the great bulk of the shares. There now remained to be acquired only the supply of iron stone. If we could obtain this we should be in the position occupied by only two or three of the European concerns. We thought at one time we had succeeded in discovering in Pennsylvania this last remaining link in the chain. We were misled, however, in our investment in the Tyrone region, and lost considerable sums as the result of our attempts to mine and use the ores of that section. They promised well at the edges of the mines, where the action of the weather for ages had washed away impurities and enriched the ore, but when we penetrated a small distance they proved too "lean" to work. Our chemist, Mr. Prousser, was then sent to a Pennsylvania furnace among the hills which we had leased, with instructions to analyze all the materials brought to him from the district, and to encourage people to bring him specimens of minerals. A striking example of the awe inspired by the chemist in those days was that only with great difficulty could he obtain a man or a boy to assist him in the laboratory. He was suspected of illicit intercourse with the Powers of Evil when he undertook to tell by his suspicious-looking apparatus what a stone contained. I believe that at last we had to send him a man from our office at Pittsburgh. One day he sent us a report of analyses of ore remarkable for the absence of phosphorus. It was really an ore suitable for making Bessemer steel. Such a discovery attracted our attention at once. The owner of the property was Moses Thompson, a rich farmer, proprietor of seven thousand acres of the most beautiful agricultural land in Center County, Pennsylvania. An appointment was made to meet him upon the ground from which the ore had been obtained. We found the mine had been worked for a charcoal blast furnace fifty or sixty years before, but it had not borne a good reputation then, the reason no doubt being that its product was so much purer than other ores that the same amount of flux used caused trouble in smelting. It was so good it was good for nothing in those days of old. We finally obtained the right to take the mine over at any time within six months, and we therefore began the work of examination, which every purchaser of mineral property should make most carefully. We ran lines across the hillside fifty feet apart, with cross-lines at distances of a hundred feet apart, and at each point of intersection we put a shaft down through the ore. I believe there were eighty such shafts in all and the ore was analyzed at every few feet of depth, so that before we paid over the hundred thousand dollars asked we knew exactly what there was of ore. The result hoped for was more than realized. Through the ability of my cousin and partner, Mr. Lauder, the cost of mining and washing was reduced to a low figure, and the Scotia ore made good all the losses we had incurred in the other mines, paid for itself, and left a profit besides. In this case, at least, we snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. We trod upon sure ground with the chemist as our guide. It will be seen that we were determined to get raw materials and were active in the pursuit. We had lost and won, but the escapes in business affairs are sometimes very narrow. Driving with Mr. Phipps from the mills one day we passed the National Trust Company office on Penn Street, Pittsburgh. I noticed the large gilt letters across the window, "Stockholders individually liable." That very morning in looking over a statement of our affairs I had noticed twenty shares "National Trust Company" on the list of assets. I said to Harry: "If this is the concern we own shares in, won't you please sell them before you return to the office this afternoon?" He saw no need for haste. It would be done in good time. "No, Harry, oblige me by doing it instantly." He did so and had it transferred. Fortunate, indeed, was this, for in a short time the bank failed with an enormous deficit. My cousin, Mr. Morris, was among the ruined shareholders. Many others met the same fate. Times were panicky, and had we been individually liable for all the debts of the National Trust Company our credit would inevitably have been seriously imperiled. It was a narrow escape. And with only twenty shares (two thousand dollars' worth of stock), taken to oblige friends who wished our name on their list of shareholders! The lesson was not lost. The sound rule in business is that you may give money freely when you have a surplus, but your name never--neither as endorser nor as member of a corporation with individual liability. A trifling investment of a few thousand dollars, a mere trifle--yes, but a trifle possessed of deadly explosive power. The rapid substitution of steel for iron in the immediate future had become obvious to us. Even in our Keystone Bridge Works, steel was being used more and more in place of iron. King Iron was about to be deposed by the new King Steel, and we were becoming more and more dependent upon it. We had about concluded in 1886 to build alongside of the Edgar Thomson Mills new works for the manufacture of miscellaneous shapes of steel when it was suggested to us that the five or six leading manufacturers of Pittsburgh, who had combined to build steel mills at Homestead, were willing to sell their mills to us. These works had been built originally by a syndicate of manufacturers, with the view of obtaining the necessary supplies of steel which they required in their various concerns, but the steel-rail business, being then in one of its booms, they had been tempted to change plans and construct a steel-rail mill. They had been able to make rails as long as prices remained high, but, as the mills had not been specially designed for this purpose, they were without the indispensable blast furnaces for the supply of pig iron, and had no coke lands for the supply of fuel. They were in no condition to compete with us. It was advantageous for us to purchase these works. I felt there was only one way we could deal with their owners, and that was to propose a consolidation with Carnegie Brothers & Co. We offered to do so on equal terms, every dollar they had invested to rank against our dollars. Upon this basis the negotiation was promptly concluded. We, however, gave to all parties the option to take cash, and most fortunately for us, all elected to do so except Mr. George Singer, who continued with us to his and our entire satisfaction. Mr. Singer told us afterwards that his associates had been greatly exercised as to how they could meet the proposition I was to lay before them. They were much afraid of being overreached but when I proposed equality all around, dollar for dollar, they were speechless. This purchase led to the reconstruction of all our firms. The new firm of Carnegie, Phipps & Co. was organized in 1886 to run the Homestead Mills. The firm of Wilson, Walker & Co. was embraced in the firm of Carnegie, Phipps & Co., Mr. Walker being elected chairman. My brother was chairman of Carnegie Brothers & Co. and at the head of all. A further extension of our business was the establishing of the Hartman Steel Works at Beaver Falls, designed to work into a hundred various forms the product of the Homestead Mills. So now we made almost everything in steel from a wire nail up to a twenty-inch steel girder, and it was then not thought probable that we should enter into any new field. It may be interesting here to note the progress of our works during the decade 1888 to 1897. In 1888 we had twenty millions of dollars invested; in 1897 more than double or over forty-five millions. The 600,000 tons of pig iron we made per annum in 1888 was trebled; we made nearly 2,000,000. Our product of iron and steel was in 1888, say, 2000 tons per day; it grew to exceed 6000 tons. Our coke works then embraced about 5000 ovens; they were trebled in number, and our capacity, then 6000 tons, became 18,000 tons per day. Our Frick Coke Company in 1897 had 42,000 acres of coal land, more than two thirds of the true Connellsville vein. Ten years hence increased production may be found to have been equally rapid. It may be accepted as an axiom that a manufacturing concern in a growing country like ours begins to decay when it stops extending. To make a ton of steel one and a half tons of iron stone has to be mined, transported by rail a hundred miles to the Lakes, carried by boat hundreds of miles, transferred to cars, transported by rail one hundred and fifty miles to Pittsburgh; one and a half tons of coal must be mined and manufactured into coke and carried fifty-odd miles by rail; and one ton of limestone mined and carried one hundred and fifty miles to Pittsburgh. How then could steel be manufactured and sold without loss at three pounds for two cents? This, I confess, seemed to me incredible, and little less than miraculous, but it was so. America is soon to change from being the dearest steel manufacturing country to the cheapest. Already the shipyards of Belfast are our customers. This is but the beginning. Under present conditions America can produce steel as cheaply as any other land, notwithstanding its higher-priced labor. There is no labor so cheap as the dearest in the mechanical field, provided it is free, contented, zealous, and reaping reward as it renders service. And here America leads. One great advantage which America will have in competing in the markets of the world is that her manufacturers will have the best home market. Upon this they can depend for a return upon capital, and the surplus product can be exported with advantage, even when the prices received for it do not more than cover actual cost, provided the exports be charged with their proportion of all expenses. The nation that has the best home market, especially if products are standardized, as ours are, can soon outsell the foreign producer. The phrase I used in Britain in this connection was: "The Law of the Surplus." It afterward came into general use in commercial discussions. CHAPTER XVII THE HOMESTEAD STRIKE While upon the subject of our manufacturing interests, I may record that on July 1, 1892, during my absence in the Highlands of Scotland, there occurred the one really serious quarrel with our workmen in our whole history. For twenty-six years I had been actively in charge of the relations between ourselves and our men, and it was the pride of my life to think how delightfully satisfactory these had been and were. I hope I fully deserved what my chief partner, Mr. Phipps, said in his letter to the "New York Herald," January 30, 1904, in reply to one who had declared I had remained abroad during the Homestead strike, instead of flying back to support my partners. It was to the effect that "I was always disposed to yield to the demands of the men, however unreasonable"; hence one or two of my partners did not wish me to return.[42] Taking no account of the reward that comes from feeling that you and your employees are friends and judging only from economical results, I believe that higher wages to men who respect their employers and are happy and contented are a good investment, yielding, indeed, big dividends. [Footnote 42: The full statement of Mr. Phipps is as follows: _Question:_ "It was stated that Mr. Carnegie acted in a cowardly manner in not returning to America from Scotland and being present when the strike was in progress at Homestead." _Answer:_ "When Mr. Carnegie heard of the trouble at Homestead he immediately wired that he would take the first ship for America, but his partners begged him not to appear, as they were of the opinion that the welfare of the Company required that he should not be in this country at the time. They knew of his extreme disposition to always grant the demands of labor, however unreasonable. "I have never known of any one interested in the business to make any complaint about Mr. Carnegie's absence at that time, but all the partners rejoiced that they were permitted to manage the affair in their own way." (Henry Phipps in the _New York Herald_, January 30, 1904.)] The manufacture of steel was revolutionized by the Bessemer open-hearth and basic inventions. The machinery hitherto employed had become obsolete, and our firm, recognizing this, spent several millions at Homestead reconstructing and enlarging the works. The new machinery made about sixty per cent more steel than the old. Two hundred and eighteen tonnage men (that is, men who were paid by the ton of steel produced) were working under a three years' contract, part of the last year being with the new machinery. Thus their earnings had increased almost sixty per cent before the end of the contract. The firm offered to divide this sixty per cent with them in the new scale to be made thereafter. That is to say, the earnings of the men would have been thirty per cent greater than under the old scale and the other thirty per cent would have gone to the firm to recompense it for its outlay. The work of the men would not have been much harder than it had been hitherto, as the improved machinery did the work. This was not only fair and liberal, it was generous, and under ordinary circumstances would have been accepted by the men with thanks. But the firm was then engaged in making armor for the United States Government, which we had declined twice to manufacture and which was urgently needed. It had also the contract to furnish material for the Chicago Exhibition. Some of the leaders of the men, knowing these conditions, insisted upon demanding the whole sixty per cent, thinking the firm would be compelled to give it. The firm could not agree, nor should it have agreed to such an attempt as this to take it by the throat and say, "Stand and deliver." It very rightly declined. Had I been at home nothing would have induced me to yield to this unfair attempt to extort. Up to this point all had been right enough. The policy I had pursued in cases of difference with our men was that of patiently waiting, reasoning with them, and showing them that their demands were unfair; but never attempting to employ new men in their places--never. The superintendent of Homestead, however, was assured by the three thousand men who were not concerned in the dispute that they could run the works, and were anxious to rid themselves of the two hundred and eighteen men who had banded themselves into a union and into which they had hitherto refused to admit those in other departments--only the "heaters" and "rollers" of steel being eligible. My partners were misled by this superintendent, who was himself misled. He had not had great experience in such affairs, having recently been promoted from a subordinate position. The unjust demands of the few union men, and the opinion of the three thousand non-union men that they were unjust, very naturally led him into thinking there would be no trouble and that the workmen would do as they had promised. There were many men among the three thousand who could take, and wished to take, the places of the two hundred and eighteen--at least so it was reported to me. It is easy to look back and say that the vital step of opening the works should never have been taken. All the firm had to do was to say to the men: "There is a labor dispute here and you must settle it between yourselves. The firm has made you a most liberal offer. The works will run when the dispute is adjusted, and not till then. Meanwhile your places remain open to you." Or, it might have been well if the superintendent had said to the three thousand men, "All right, if you will come and run the works without protection," thus throwing upon them the responsibility of protecting themselves--three thousand men as against two hundred and eighteen. Instead of this it was thought advisable (as an additional precaution by the state officials, I understand) to have the sheriff with guards to protect the thousands against the hundreds. The leaders of the latter were violent and aggressive men; they had guns and pistols, and, as was soon proved, were able to intimidate the thousands. I quote what I once laid down in writing as our rule: "My idea is that the Company should be known as determined to let the men at any works stop work; that it will confer freely with them and wait patiently until they decide to return to work, never thinking of trying new men--never." The best men as men, and the best workmen, are not walking the streets looking for work. Only the inferior class as a rule is idle. The kind of men we desired are rarely allowed to lose their jobs, even in dull times. It is impossible to get new men to run successfully the complicated machinery of a modern steel plant. The attempt to put in new men converted the thousands of old men who desired to work, into lukewarm supporters of our policy, for workmen can always be relied upon to resent the employment of new men. Who can blame them? If I had been at home, however, I might have been persuaded to open the works, as the superintendent desired, to test whether our old men would go to work as they had promised. But it should be noted that the works were not opened at first by my partners for new men. On the contrary, it was, as I was informed upon my return, at the wish of the thousands of our old men that they were opened. This is a vital point. My partners were in no way blamable for making the trial so recommended by the superintendent. Our rule never to employ new men, but to wait for the old to return, had not been violated so far. In regard to the second opening of the works, after the strikers had shot the sheriff's officers, it is also easy to look back and say, "How much better had the works been closed until the old men voted to return"; but the Governor of Pennsylvania, with eight thousand troops, had meanwhile taken charge of the situation. I was traveling in the Highlands of Scotland when the trouble arose, and did not hear of it until two days after. Nothing I have ever had to meet in all my life, before or since, wounded me so deeply. No pangs remain of any wound received in my business career save that of Homestead. It was so unnecessary. The men were outrageously wrong. The strikers, with the new machinery, would have made from four to nine dollars a day under the new scale--thirty per cent more than they were making with the old machinery. While in Scotland I received the following cable from the officers of the union of our workmen: "Kind master, tell us what you wish us to do and we shall do it for you." This was most touching, but, alas, too late. The mischief was done, the works were in the hands of the Governor; it was too late. I received, while abroad, numerous kind messages from friends conversant with the circumstances, who imagined my unhappiness. The following from Mr. Gladstone was greatly appreciated: MY DEAR MR. CARNEGIE, My wife has long ago offered her thanks, with my own, for your most kind congratulations. But I do not forget that you have been suffering yourself from anxieties, and have been exposed to imputations in connection with your gallant efforts to direct rich men into a course of action more enlightened than that which they usually follow. I wish I could relieve you from these imputations of journalists, too often rash, conceited or censorious, rancorous, ill-natured. I wish to do the little, the very little, that is in my power, which is simply to say how sure I am that no one who knows you will be prompted by the unfortunate occurrences across the water (of which manifestly we cannot know the exact merits) to qualify in the slightest degree either his confidence in your generous views or his admiration of the good and great work you have already done. Wealth is at present like a monster threatening to swallow up the moral life of man; you by precept and by example have been teaching him to disgorge. I for one thank you. Believe me Very faithfully yours (Signed) W.E. GLADSTONE I insert this as giving proof, if proof were needed, of Mr. Gladstone's large, sympathetic nature, alive and sensitive to everything transpiring of a nature to arouse sympathy--Neapolitans, Greeks, and Bulgarians one day, or a stricken friend the next. The general public, of course, did not know that I was in Scotland and knew nothing of the initial trouble at Homestead. Workmen had been killed at the Carnegie Works, of which I was the controlling owner. That was sufficient to make my name a by-word for years. But at last some satisfaction came. Senator Hanna was president of the National Civic Federation, a body composed of capitalists and workmen which exerted a benign influence over both employers and employed, and the Honorable Oscar Straus, who was then vice-president, invited me to dine at his house and meet the officials of the Federation. Before the date appointed Mark Hanna, its president, my lifelong friend and former agent at Cleveland, had suddenly passed away. I attended the dinner. At its close Mr. Straus arose and said that the question of a successor to Mr. Hanna had been considered, and he had to report that every labor organization heard from had favored me for the position. There were present several of the labor leaders who, one after another, arose and corroborated Mr. Straus. I do not remember so complete a surprise and, I shall confess, one so grateful to me. That I deserved well from labor I felt. I knew myself to be warmly sympathetic with the working-man, and also that I had the regard of our own workmen; but throughout the country it was naturally the reverse, owing to the Homestead riot. The Carnegie Works meant to the public Mr. Carnegie's war upon labor's just earnings. I arose to explain to the officials at the Straus dinner that I could not possibly accept the great honor, because I had to escape the heat of summer and the head of the Federation must be on hand at all seasons ready to grapple with an outbreak, should one occur. My embarrassment was great, but I managed to let all understand that this was felt to be the most welcome tribute I could have received--a balm to the hurt mind. I closed by saying that if elected to my lamented friend's place upon the Executive Committee I should esteem it an honor to serve. To this position I was elected by unanimous vote. I was thus relieved from the feeling that I was considered responsible by labor generally, for the Homestead riot and the killing of workmen. I owe this vindication to Mr. Oscar Straus, who had read my articles and speeches of early days upon labor questions, and who had quoted these frequently to workmen. The two labor leaders of the Amalgamated Union, White and Schaeffer from Pittsburgh, who were at this dinner, were also able and anxious to enlighten their fellow-workmen members of the Board as to my record with labor, and did not fail to do so. A mass meeting of the workmen and their wives was afterwards held in the Library Hall at Pittsburgh to greet me, and I addressed them from both my head and my heart. The one sentence I remember, and always shall, was to the effect that capital, labor, and employer were a three-legged stool, none before or after the others, all equally indispensable. Then came the cordial hand-shaking and all was well. Having thus rejoined hands and hearts with our employees and their wives, I felt that a great weight had been effectually lifted, but I had had a terrible experience although thousands of miles from the scene. An incident flowing from the Homestead trouble is told by my friend, Professor John C. Van Dyke, of Rutgers College. In the spring of 1900, I went up from Guaymas, on the Gulf of California, to the ranch of a friend at La Noria Verde, thinking to have a week's shooting in the mountains of Sonora. The ranch was far enough removed from civilization, and I had expected meeting there only a few Mexicans and many Yaqui Indians, but much to my surprise I found an English-speaking man, who proved to be an American. I did not have long to wait in order to find out what brought him there, for he was very lonesome and disposed to talk. His name was McLuckie, and up to 1892 he had been a skilled mechanic in the employ of the Carnegie Steel Works at Homestead. He was what was called a "top hand," received large wages, was married, and at that time had a home and considerable property. In addition, he had been honored by his fellow-townsmen and had been made burgomaster of Homestead. When the strike of 1892 came McLuckie naturally sided with the strikers, and in his capacity as burgomaster gave the order to arrest the Pinkerton detectives who had come to Homestead by steamer to protect the works and preserve order. He believed he was fully justified in doing this. As he explained it to me, the detectives were an armed force invading his bailiwick, and he had a right to arrest and disarm them. The order led to bloodshed, and the conflict was begun in real earnest. The story of the strike is, of course, well known to all. The strikers were finally defeated. As for McLuckie, he was indicted for murder, riot, treason, and I know not what other offenses. He was compelled to flee from the State, was wounded, starved, pursued by the officers of the law, and obliged to go into hiding until the storm blew over. Then he found that he was blacklisted by all the steel men in the United States and could not get employment anywhere. His money was gone, and, as a final blow, his wife died and his home was broken up. After many vicissitudes he resolved to go to Mexico, and at the time I met him he was trying to get employment in the mines about fifteen miles from La Noria Verde. But he was too good a mechanic for the Mexicans, who required in mining the cheapest kind of unskilled peon labor. He could get nothing to do and had no money. He was literally down to his last copper. Naturally, as he told the story of his misfortunes, I felt very sorry for him, especially as he was a most intelligent person and did no unnecessary whining about his troubles. I do not think I told him at the time that I knew Mr. Carnegie and had been with him at Cluny in Scotland shortly after the Homestead strike, nor that I knew from Mr. Carnegie the other side of the story. But McLuckie was rather careful not to blame Mr. Carnegie, saying to me several times that if "Andy" had been there the trouble would never have arisen. He seemed to think "the boys" could get on very well with "Andy" but not so well with some of his partners. I was at the ranch for a week and saw a good deal of McLuckie in the evenings. When I left there, I went directly to Tucson, Arizona, and from there I had occasion to write to Mr. Carnegie, and in the letter I told him about meeting with McLuckie. I added that I felt very sorry for the man and thought he had been treated rather badly. Mr. Carnegie answered at once, and on the margin of the letter wrote in lead pencil: "Give McLuckie all the money he wants, but don't mention my name." I wrote to McLuckie immediately, offering him what money he needed, mentioning no sum, but giving him to understand that it would be sufficient to put him on his feet again. He declined it. He said he would fight it out and make his own way, which was the right-enough American spirit. I could not help but admire it in him. As I remember now, I spoke about him later to a friend, Mr. J.A. Naugle, the general manager of the Sonora Railway. At any rate, McLuckie got a job with the railway at driving wells, and made a great success of it. A year later, or perhaps it was in the autumn of the same year, I again met him at Guaymas, where he was superintending some repairs on his machinery at the railway shops. He was much changed for the better, seemed happy, and to add to his contentment, had taken unto himself a Mexican wife. And now that his sky was cleared, I was anxious to tell him the truth about my offer that he might not think unjustly of those who had been compelled to fight him. So before I left him, I said, "McLuckie, I want you to know now that the money I offered you was not mine. That was Andrew Carnegie's money. It was his offer, made through me." McLuckie was fairly stunned, and all he could say was: "Well, that was damned white of Andy, wasn't it?" I would rather risk that verdict of McLuckie's as a passport to Paradise than all the theological dogmas invented by man. I knew McLuckie well as a good fellow. It was said his property in Homestead was worth thirty thousand dollars. He was under arrest for the shooting of the police officers because he was the burgomaster, and also the chairman of the Men's Committee of Homestead. He had to fly, leaving all behind him. After this story got into print, the following skit appeared in the newspapers because I had declared I'd rather have McLuckie's few words on my tombstone than any other inscription, for it indicated I had been kind to one of our workmen: "JUST BY THE WAY" SANDY ON ANDY Oh! hae ye heared what Andy's spiered to hae upo' his tomb, When a' his gowd is gie'n awa an' Death has sealed his doom! Nae Scriptur' line wi' tribute fine that dealers aye keep handy, But juist this irreleegious screed--"That's damned white of Andy!" The gude Scot laughs at epitaphs that are but meant to flatter, But never are was sae profane, an' that's nae laughin' matter. Yet, gin he gies his siller all awa, mon, he's a dandy, An' we'll admit his right to it, for "That's damned white of Andy!" There's not to be a "big, big D," an' then a dash thereafter, For Andy would na spoil the word by trying to make it safter; He's not the lad to juggle terms, or soothing speech to bandy. A blunt, straightforward mon is he--an' "That's damned white of Andy!" Sae when he's deid, we'll gie good heed, an' write it as he askit; We'll carve it on his headstone an' we'll stamp it on his casket: "Wha dees rich, dees disgraced," says he, an' sure's my name is Sandy, 'T wull be nae rich man that he'll dee--an' "That's damned white of Andy!"[43] [Footnote 43: Mr. Carnegie was very fond of this story because, being human, he was fond of applause and, being a Robert Burns radical, he preferred the applause of Labor to that of Rank. That one of his men thought he had acted "white" pleased him beyond measure. He stopped short with that tribute and never asked, never knew, why or how the story happened to be told. Perhaps this is the time and place to tell the story of the story. Sometime in 1901 over a dinner table in New York, I heard a statement regarding Mr. Carnegie that he never gave anything without the requirement that his name be attached to the gift. The remark came from a prominent man who should have known he was talking nonsense. It rather angered me. I denied the statement, saying that I, personally, had given away money for Mr. Carnegie that only he and I knew about, and that he had given many thousands in this way through others. By way of illustration I told the story about McLuckie. A Pittsburgh man at the table carried the story back to Pittsburgh, told it there, and it finally got into the newspapers. Of course the argument of the story, namely, that Mr. Carnegie sometimes gave without publicity, was lost sight of and only the refrain, "It was damned white of Andy," remained. Mr. Carnegie never knew that there was an argument. He liked the refrain. Some years afterward at Skibo (1906), when he was writing this Autobiography, he asked me if I would not write out the story for him. I did so. I am now glad of the chance to write an explanatory note about it.... _John C. Van Dyke._] CHAPTER XVIII PROBLEMS OF LABOR I should like to record here some of the labor disputes I have had to deal with, as these may point a moral to both capital and labor. The workers at the blast furnaces in our steel-rail works once sent in a "round-robin" stating that unless the firm gave them an advance of wages by Monday afternoon at four o'clock they would leave the furnaces. Now, the scale upon which these men had agreed to work did not lapse until the end of the year, several months off. I felt if men would break an agreement there was no use in making a second agreement with them, but nevertheless I took the night train from New York and was at the works early in the morning. I asked the superintendent to call together the three committees which governed the works--not only the blast-furnace committee that was alone involved, but the mill and the converting works committees as well. They appeared and, of course, were received by me with great courtesy, not because it was good policy to be courteous, but because I have always enjoyed meeting our men. I am bound to say that the more I know of working-men the higher I rate their virtues. But it is with them as Barrie says with women: "Dootless the Lord made a' things weel, but he left some michty queer kinks in women." They have their prejudices and "red rags," which have to be respected, for the main root of trouble is ignorance, not hostility. The committee sat in a semicircle before me, all with their hats off, of course, as mine was also; and really there was the appearance of a model assembly. Addressing the chairman of the mill committee, I said: "Mr. Mackay" (he was an old gentleman and wore spectacles), "have we an agreement with you covering the remainder of the year?" Taking the spectacles off slowly, and holding them in his hand, he said: "Yes, sir, you have, Mr. Carnegie, and you haven't got enough money to make us break it either." "There spoke the true American workman," I said. "I am proud of you." "Mr. Johnson" (who was chairman of the rail converters' committee), "have we a similar agreement with you?" Mr. Johnson was a small, spare man; he spoke very deliberately: "Mr. Carnegie, when an agreement is presented to me to sign, I read it carefully, and if it don't suit me, I don't sign it, and if it does suit me, I do sign it, and when I sign it I keep it." "There again speaks the self-respecting American workman," I said. Turning now to the chairman of the blast-furnaces committee, an Irishman named Kelly, I addressed the same question to him: "Mr. Kelly, have we an agreement with you covering the remainder of this year?" Mr. Kelly answered that he couldn't say exactly. There was a paper sent round and he signed it, but didn't read it over carefully, and didn't understand just what was in it. At this moment our superintendent, Captain Jones, excellent manager, but impulsive, exclaimed abruptly: "Now, Mr. Kelly, you know I read that over twice and discussed it with you!" "Order, order, Captain! Mr. Kelly is entitled to give his explanation. I sign many a paper that I do not read--documents our lawyers and partners present to me to sign. Mr. Kelly states that he signed this document under such circumstances and his statement must be received. But, Mr. Kelly, I have always found that the best way is to carry out the provisions of the agreement one signs carelessly and resolve to be more careful next time. Would it not be better for you to continue four months longer under this agreement, and then, when you sign the next one, see that you understand it?" There was no answer to this, and I arose and said: "Gentlemen of the Blast-Furnace Committee, you have threatened our firm that you will break your agreement and that you will leave these blast furnaces (which means disaster) unless you get a favorable answer to your threat by four o'clock to-day. It is not yet three, but your answer is ready. You may leave the blast furnaces. The grass will grow around them before we yield to your threat. The worst day that labor has ever seen in this world is that day in which it dishonors itself by breaking its agreement. You have your answer." The committee filed out slowly and there was silence among the partners. A stranger who was coming in on business met the committee in the passage and he reported: "As I came in, a man wearing spectacles pushed up alongside of an Irishman he called Kelly, and he said: 'You fellows might just as well understand it now as later. There's to be no d----d monkeying round these works.'" That meant business. Later we heard from one of our clerks what took place at the furnaces. Kelly and his committee marched down to them. Of course, the men were waiting and watching for the committee and a crowd had gathered. When the furnaces were reached, Kelly called out to them: "Get to work, you spalpeens, what are you doing here? Begorra, the little boss just hit from the shoulder. He won't fight, but he says he has sat down, and begorra, we all know he'll be a skeleton afore he rises. Get to work, ye spalpeens." The Irish and Scotch-Irish are queer, but the easiest and best fellows to get on with, if you only know how. That man Kelly was my stanch friend and admirer ever afterward, and he was before that one of our most violent men. My experience is that you can always rely upon the great body of working-men to do what is right, provided they have not taken up a position and promised their leaders to stand by them. But their loyalty to their leaders even when mistaken, is something to make us proud of them. Anything can be done with men who have this feeling of loyalty within them. They only need to be treated fairly. The way a strike was once broken at our steel-rail mills is interesting. Here again, I am sorry to say, one hundred and thirty-four men in one department had bound themselves under secret oath to demand increased wages at the end of the year, several months away. The new year proved very unfavorable for business, and other iron and steel manufacturers throughout the country had effected reductions in wages. Nevertheless, these men, having secretly sworn months previously that they would not work unless they got increased wages, thought themselves bound to insist upon their demands. We could not advance wages when our competitors were reducing them, and the works were stopped in consequence. Every department of the works was brought to a stand by these strikers. The blast furnaces were abandoned a day or two before the time agreed upon, and we were greatly troubled in consequence. I went to Pittsburgh and was surprised to find the furnaces had been banked, contrary to agreement. I was to meet the men in the morning upon arrival at Pittsburgh, but a message was sent to me from the works stating that the men had "left the furnaces and would meet me to-morrow." Here was a nice reception! My reply was: "No they won't. Tell them I shall not be here to-morrow. Anybody can stop work; the trick is to start it again. Some fine day these men will want the works started and will be looking around for somebody who can start them, and I will tell them then just what I do now: that the works will never start except upon a sliding scale based upon the prices we get for our products. That scale will last three years and it will not be submitted by the men. They have submitted many scales to us. It is our turn now, and we are going to submit a scale to them. "Now," I said to my partners, "I am going back to New York in the afternoon. Nothing more is to be done." A short time after my message was received by the men they asked if they could come in and see me that afternoon before I left. I answered: "Certainly!" They came in and I said to them: "Gentlemen, your chairman here, Mr. Bennett, assured you that I would make my appearance and settle with you in some way or other, as I always have settled. That is true. And he told you that I would not fight, which is also true. He is a true prophet. But he told you something else in which he was slightly mistaken. He said I _could_ not fight. Gentlemen," looking Mr. Bennett straight in the eye and closing and raising my fist, "he forgot that I was Scotch. But I will tell you something; I will never fight you. I know better than to fight labor. I will not fight, but I can beat any committee that was ever made at sitting down, and I have sat down. These works will never start until the men vote by a two-thirds majority to start them, and then, as I told you this morning, they will start on our sliding scale. I have nothing more to say." They retired. It was about two weeks afterwards that one of the house servants came to my library in New York with a card, and I found upon it the names of two of our workmen, and also the name of a reverend gentleman. The men said they were from the works at Pittsburgh and would like to see me. "Ask if either of these gentlemen belongs to the blast-furnace workers who banked the furnaces contrary to agreement." The man returned and said "No." I replied: "In that case go down and tell them that I shall be pleased to have them come up." Of course they were received with genuine warmth and cordiality and we sat and talked about New York, for some time, this being their first visit. "Mr. Carnegie, we really came to talk about the trouble at the works," the minister said at last. "Oh, indeed!" I answered. "Have the men voted?" "No," he said. My rejoinder was: "You will have to excuse me from entering upon that subject; I said I never would discuss it until they voted by a two-thirds majority to start the mills. Gentlemen, you have never seen New York. Let me take you out and show you Fifth Avenue and the Park, and we shall come back here to lunch at half-past one." This we did, talking about everything except the one thing that they wished to talk about. We had a good time, and I know they enjoyed their lunch. There is one great difference between the American working-man and the foreigner. The American is a man; he sits down at lunch with people as if he were (as he generally is) a gentleman born. It is splendid. They returned to Pittsburgh, not another word having been said about the works. But the men soon voted (there were very few votes against starting) and I went again to Pittsburgh. I laid before the committee the scale under which they were to work. It was a sliding scale based on the price of the product. Such a scale really makes capital and labor partners, sharing prosperous and disastrous times together. Of course it has a minimum, so that the men are always sure of living wages. As the men had seen these scales, it was unnecessary to go over them. The chairman said: "Mr. Carnegie, we will agree to everything. And now," he said hesitatingly, "we have one favor to ask of you, and we hope you will not refuse it." "Well, gentlemen, if it be reasonable I shall surely grant it." "Well, it is this: That you permit the officers of the union to sign these papers for the men." "Why, certainly, gentlemen! With the greatest pleasure! And then I have a small favor to ask of you, which I hope you will not refuse, as I have granted yours. Just to please me, after the officers have signed, let every workman sign also for himself. You see, Mr. Bennett, this scale lasts for three years, and some man, or body of men, might dispute whether your president of the union had authority to bind them for so long, but if we have his signature also, there cannot be any misunderstanding." There was a pause; then one man at his side whispered to Mr. Bennett (but I heard him perfectly): "By golly, the jig's up!" So it was, but it was not by direct attack, but by a flank movement. Had I not allowed the union officers to sign, they would have had a grievance and an excuse for war. As it was, having allowed them to do so, how could they refuse so simple a request as mine, that each free and independent American citizen should also sign for himself. My recollection is that as a matter of fact the officers of the union never signed, but they may have done so. Why should they, if every man's signature was required? Besides this, the workmen, knowing that the union could do nothing for them when the scale was adopted, neglected to pay dues and the union was deserted. We never heard of it again. [That was in 1889, now twenty-seven years ago. The scale has never been changed. The men would not change it if they could; it works for their benefit, as I told them it would.] Of all my services rendered to labor the introduction of the sliding scale is chief. It is the solution of the capital and labor problem, because it really makes them partners--alike in prosperity and adversity. There was a yearly scale in operation in the Pittsburgh district in the early years, but it is not a good plan because men and employers at once begin preparing for a struggle which is almost certain to come. It is far better for both employers and employed to set no date for an agreed-upon scale to end. It should be subject to six months' or a year's notice on either side, and in that way might and probably would run on for years. To show upon what trifles a contest between capital and labor may turn, let me tell of two instances which were amicably settled by mere incidents of seemingly little consequence. Once when I went out to meet a men's committee, which had in our opinion made unfair demands, I was informed that they were influenced by a man who secretly owned a drinking saloon, although working in the mills. He was a great bully. The sober, quiet workmen were afraid of him, and the drinking men were his debtors. He was the real instigator of the movement. We met in the usual friendly fashion. I was glad to see the men, many of whom I had long known and could call by name. When we sat down at the table the leader's seat was at one end and mine at the other. We therefore faced each other. After I had laid our proposition before the meeting, I saw the leader pick up his hat from the floor and slowly put it on his head, intimating that he was about to depart. Here was my chance. "Sir, you are in the presence of gentlemen! Please be so good as to take your hat off or leave the room!" My eyes were kept full upon him. There was a silence that could be felt. The great bully hesitated, but I knew whatever he did, he was beaten. If he left it was because he had treated the meeting discourteously by keeping his hat on, he was no gentleman; if he remained and took off his hat, he had been crushed by the rebuke. I didn't care which course he took. He had only two and either of them was fatal. He had delivered himself into my hands. He very slowly took off the hat and put it on the floor. Not a word did he speak thereafter in that conference. I was told afterward that he had to leave the place. The men rejoiced in the episode and a settlement was harmoniously effected. When the three years' scale was proposed to the men, a committee of sixteen was chosen by them to confer with us. Little progress was made at first, and I announced my engagements compelled me to return the next day to New York. Inquiry was made as to whether we would meet a committee of thirty-two, as the men wished others added to the committee--a sure sign of division in their ranks. Of course we agreed. The committee came from the works to meet me at the office in Pittsburgh. The proceedings were opened by one of our best men, Billy Edwards (I remember him well; he rose to high position afterwards), who thought that the total offered was fair, but that the scale was not equable. Some departments were all right, others were not fairly dealt with. Most of the men were naturally of this opinion, but when they came to indicate the underpaid, there was a difference, as was to be expected. No two men in the different departments could agree. Billy began: "Mr. Carnegie, we agree that the total sum per ton to be paid is fair, but we think it is not properly distributed among us. Now, Mr. Carnegie, you take my job--" "Order, order!" I cried. "None of that, Billy. Mr. Carnegie 'takes no man's job.' Taking another's job is an unpardonable offense among high-classed workmen." There was loud laughter, followed by applause, and then more laughter. I laughed with them. We had scored on Billy. Of course the dispute was soon settled. It is not solely, often it is not chiefly, a matter of dollars with workmen. Appreciation, kind treatment, a fair deal--these are often the potent forces with the American workmen. Employers can do so many desirable things for their men at little cost. At one meeting when I asked what we could do for them, I remember this same Billy Edwards rose and said that most of the men had to run in debt to the storekeepers because they were paid monthly. Well I remember his words: "I have a good woman for wife who manages well. We go into Pittsburgh every fourth Saturday afternoon and buy our supplies wholesale for the next month and save one third. Not many of your men can do this. Shopkeepers here charge so much. And another thing, they charge very high for coal. If you paid your men every two weeks, instead of monthly, it would be as good for the careful men as a raise in wages of ten per cent or more." "Mr. Edwards, that shall be done," I replied. It involved increased labor and a few more clerks, but that was a small matter. The remark about high prices charged set me to thinking why the men could not open a coöperative store. This was also arranged--the firm agreeing to pay the rent of the building, but insisting that the men themselves take the stock and manage it. Out of that came the Braddock's Coöperative Society, a valuable institution for many reasons, not the least of them that it taught the men that business had its difficulties. The coal trouble was cured effectively by our agreeing that the company sell all its men coal at the net cost price to us (about half of what had been charged by coal dealers, so I was told) and arranging to deliver it at the men's houses--the buyer paying only actual cost of cartage. There was another matter. We found that the men's savings caused them anxiety, for little faith have the prudent, saving men in banks and, unfortunately, our Government at that time did not follow the British in having post-office deposit banks. We offered to take the actual savings of each workman, up to two thousand dollars, and pay six per cent interest upon them, to encourage thrift. Their money was kept separate from the business, in a trust fund, and lent to such as wished to build homes for themselves. I consider this one of the best things that can be done for the saving workman. It was such concessions as these that proved the most profitable investments ever made by the company, even from an economical standpoint. It pays to go beyond the letter of the bond with your men. Two of my partners, as Mr. Phipps has put it, "knew my extreme disposition to always grant the demands of labor, however unreasonable," but looking back upon my failing in this respect, I wish it had been greater--much greater. No expenditure returned such dividends as the friendship of our workmen. We soon had a body of workmen, I truly believe, wholly unequaled--the best workmen and the best men ever drawn together. Quarrels and strikes became things of the past. Had the Homestead men been our own old men, instead of men we had to pick up, it is scarcely possible that the trouble there in 1892 could have arisen. The scale at the steel-rail mills, introduced in 1889, has been running up to the present time (1914), and I think there never has been a labor grievance at the works since. The men, as I have already stated, dissolved their old union because there was no use paying dues to a union when the men themselves had a three years' contract. Although their labor union is dissolved another and a better one has taken its place--a cordial union between the employers and their men, the best union of all for both parties. It is for the interest of the employer that his men shall make good earnings and have steady work. The sliding scale enables the company to meet the market; and sometimes to take orders and keep the works running, which is the main thing for the working-men. High wages are well enough, but they are not to be compared with steady employment. The Edgar Thomson Mills are, in my opinion, the ideal works in respect to the relations of capital and labor. I am told the men in our day, and even to this day (1914) prefer two to three turns, but three turns are sure to come. Labor's hours are to be shortened as we progress. Eight hours will be the rule--eight for work, eight for sleep, and eight for rest and recreation. There have been many incidents in my business life proving that labor troubles are not solely founded upon wages. I believe the best preventive of quarrels to be recognition of, and sincere interest in, the men, satisfying them that you really care for them and that you rejoice in their success. This I can sincerely say--that I always enjoyed my conferences with our workmen, which were not always in regard to wages, and that the better I knew the men the more I liked them. They have usually two virtues to the employer's one, and they are certainly more generous to each other. Labor is usually helpless against capital. The employer, perhaps, decides to shut up the shops; he ceases to make profits for a short time. There is no change in his habits, food, clothing, pleasures--no agonizing fear of want. Contrast this with his workman whose lessening means of subsistence torment him. He has few comforts, scarcely the necessities for his wife and children in health, and for the sick little ones no proper treatment. It is not capital we need to guard, but helpless labor. If I returned to business to-morrow, fear of labor troubles would not enter my mind, but tenderness for poor and sometimes misguided though well-meaning laborers would fill my heart and soften it; and thereby soften theirs. Upon my return to Pittsburgh in 1892, after the Homestead trouble, I went to the works and met many of the old men who had not been concerned in the riot. They expressed the opinion that if I had been at home the strike would never have happened. I told them that the company had offered generous terms and beyond its offer I should not have gone; that before their cable reached me in Scotland, the Governor of the State had appeared on the scene with troops and wished the law vindicated; that the question had then passed out of my partners' hands. I added: "You were badly advised. My partners' offer should have been accepted. It was very generous. I don't know that I would have offered so much." To this one of the rollers said to me: "Oh, Mr. Carnegie, it wasn't a question of dollars. The boys would have let you kick 'em, but they wouldn't let that other man stroke their hair." So much does sentiment count for in the practical affairs of life, even with the laboring classes. This is not generally believed by those who do not know them, but I am certain that disputes about wages do not account for one half the disagreements between capital and labor. There is lack of due appreciation and of kind treatment of employees upon the part of the employers. Suits had been entered against many of the strikers, but upon my return these were promptly dismissed. All the old men who remained, and had not been guilty of violence, were taken back. I had cabled from Scotland urging that Mr. Schwab be sent back to Homestead. He had been only recently promoted to the Edgar Thomson Works. He went back, and "Charlie," as he was affectionately called, soon restored order, peace, and harmony. Had he remained at the Homestead Works, in all probability no serious trouble would have arisen. "Charlie" liked his workmen and they liked him; but there still remained at Homestead an unsatisfactory element in the men who had previously been discarded from our various works for good reasons and had found employment at the new works before we purchased them. CHAPTER XIX THE "GOSPEL OF WEALTH" After my book, "The Gospel of Wealth,"[44] was published, it was inevitable that I should live up to its teachings by ceasing to struggle for more wealth. I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution. Our profits had reached forty millions of dollars per year and the prospect of increased earnings before us was amazing. Our successors, the United States Steel Corporation, soon after the purchase, netted sixty millions in one year. Had our company continued in business and adhered to our plans of extension, we figured that seventy millions in that year might have been earned. [Footnote 44: _The Gospel of Wealth_ (Century Company, New York, 1900) contains various magazine articles written between 1886 and 1899 and published in the _Youth's Companion_, the _Century Magazine_, the _North American Review_, the _Forum_, the _Contemporary Review_, the _Fortnightly Review_, the _Nineteenth Century_, and the _Scottish Leader_. Gladstone asked that the article in the _North American Review_ be printed in England. It was published in the _Pall Mall Budget_ and christened the "Gospel of Wealth." Gladstone, Cardinal Manning, Rev. Hugh Price, and Rev. Dr. Hermann Adler answered it, and Mr. Carnegie replied to them.] Steel had ascended the throne and was driving away all inferior material. It was clearly seen that there was a great future ahead; but so far as I was concerned I knew the task of distribution before me would tax me in my old age to the utmost. As usual, Shakespeare had placed his talismanic touch upon the thought and framed the sentence-- "So distribution should undo excess, And each man have enough." At this juncture--that is March, 1901--Mr. Schwab told me Mr. Morgan had said to him he should really like to know if I wished to retire from business; if so he thought he could arrange it. He also said he had consulted our partners and that they were disposed to sell, being attracted by the terms Mr. Morgan had offered. I told Mr. Schwab that if my partners were desirous to sell I would concur, and we finally sold. [Illustration: CHARLES M. SCHWAB] There had been so much deception by speculators buying old iron and steel mills and foisting them upon innocent purchasers at inflated values--hundred-dollar shares in some cases selling for a trifle--that I declined to take anything for the common stock. Had I done so, it would have given me just about one hundred millions more of five per cent bonds, which Mr. Morgan said afterwards I could have obtained. Such was the prosperity and such the money value of our steel business. Events proved I should have been quite justified in asking the additional sum named, for the common stock has paid five per cent continuously since.[45] But I had enough, as has been proved, to keep me busier than ever before, trying to distribute it. [Footnote 45: The Carnegie Steel Company was bought by Mr. Morgan at Mr. Carnegie's own price. There was some talk at the time of his holding out for a higher price than he received, but testifying before a committee of the House of Representatives in January, 1912, Mr. Carnegie said: "I considered what was fair: and that is the option Morgan got. Schwab went down and arranged it. I never saw Morgan on the subject or any man connected with him. Never a word passed between him and me. I gave my memorandum and Morgan saw it was eminently fair. I have been told many times since by insiders that I should have asked $100,000,000 more and could have got it easily. Once for all, I want to put a stop to all this talk about Mr. Carnegie 'forcing high prices for anything.'"] My first distribution was to the men in the mills. The following letters and papers will explain the gift: _New York, N.Y., March 12, 1901_ I make this first use of surplus wealth, four millions of first mortgage 5% Bonds, upon retiring from business, as an acknowledgment of the deep debt which I owe to the workmen who have contributed so greatly to my success. It is designed to relieve those who may suffer from accidents, and provide small pensions for those needing help in old age. In addition I give one million dollars of such bonds, the proceeds thereof to be used to maintain the libraries and halls I have built for our workmen. In return, the Homestead workmen presented the following address: _Munhall, Pa., Feb'y 23, 1903_ MR. ANDREW CARNEGIE New York, N.Y. DEAR SIR: We, the employees of the Homestead Steel Works, desire by this means to express to you through our Committee our great appreciation of your benevolence in establishing the "Andrew Carnegie Relief Fund," the first annual report of its operation having been placed before us during the past month. The interest which you have always shown in your workmen has won for you an appreciation which cannot be expressed by mere words. Of the many channels through which you have sought to do good, we believe that the "Andrew Carnegie Relief Fund" stands first. We have personal knowledge of cares lightened and of hope and strength renewed in homes where human prospects seemed dark and discouraging. Respectfully yours { HARRY F. ROSE, _Roller_ { JOHN BELL, JR., _Blacksmith_ Committee { J.A. HORTON, _Timekeeper_ { WALTER A. GREIG, _Electric Foreman_ { HARRY CUSACK, _Yardmaster_ The Lucy Furnace men presented me with a beautiful silver plate and inscribed upon it the following address: ANDREW CARNEGIE RELIEF FUND LUCY FURNACES _Whereas_, Mr. Andrew Carnegie, in his munificent philanthropy, has endowed the "Andrew Carnegie Relief Fund" for the benefit of employees of the Carnegie Company, Therefore be it _Resolved_, that the employees of the Lucy Furnaces, in special meeting assembled, do convey to Mr. Andrew Carnegie their sincere thanks for and appreciation of his unexcelled and bounteous endowment, and furthermore be it _Resolved_, that it is their earnest wish and prayer that his life may be long spared to enjoy the fruits of his works. { JAMES SCOTT, _Chairman_ { LOUIS A. HUTCHISON, _Secretary_ { JAMES DALY Committee { R.C. TAYLOR { JOHN V. WARD { FREDERICK VOELKER { JOHN M. VEIGH I sailed soon for Europe, and as usual some of my partners did not fail to accompany me to the steamer and bade me good-bye. But, oh! the difference to me! Say what we would, do what we would, the solemn change had come. This I could not fail to realize. The wrench was indeed severe and there was pain in the good-bye which was also a farewell. Upon my return to New York some months later, I felt myself entirely out of place, but was much cheered by seeing several of "the boys" on the pier to welcome me--the same dear friends, but so different. I had lost my partners, but not my friends. This was something; it was much. Still a vacancy was left. I had now to take up my self-appointed task of wisely disposing of surplus wealth. That would keep me deeply interested. One day my eyes happened to see a line in that most valuable paper, the "Scottish American," in which I had found many gems. This was the line: "The gods send thread for a web begun." It seemed almost as if it had been sent directly to me. This sank into my heart, and I resolved to begin at once my first web. True enough, the gods sent thread in the proper form. Dr. J.S. Billings, of the New York Public Libraries, came as their agent, and of dollars, five and a quarter millions went at one stroke for sixty-eight branch libraries, promised for New York City. Twenty more libraries for Brooklyn followed. My father, as I have stated, had been one of the five pioneers in Dunfermline who combined and gave access to their few books to their less fortunate neighbors. I had followed in his footsteps by giving my native town a library--its foundation stone laid by my mother--so that this public library was really my first gift. It was followed by giving a public library and hall to Allegheny City--our first home in America. President Harrison kindly accompanied me from Washington and opened these buildings. Soon after this, Pittsburgh asked for a library, which was given. This developed, in due course, into a group of buildings embracing a museum, a picture gallery, technical schools, and the Margaret Morrison School for Young Women. This group of buildings I opened to the public November 5, 1895. In Pittsburgh I had made my fortune and in the twenty-four millions already spent on this group,[46] she gets back only a small part of what she gave, and to which she is richly entitled. [Footnote 46: The total gifts to the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh amounted to about twenty-eight million dollars.] The second large gift was to found the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The 28th of January, 1902, I gave ten million dollars in five per cent bonds, to which there has been added sufficient to make the total cash value twenty-five millions of dollars, the additions being made upon record of results obtained. I naturally wished to consult President Roosevelt upon the matter, and if possible to induce the Secretary of State, Mr. John Hay, to serve as chairman, which he readily agreed to do. With him were associated as directors my old friend Abram S. Hewitt, Dr. Billings, William E. Dodge, Elihu Root, Colonel Higginson, D.O. Mills, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and others. When I showed President Roosevelt the list of the distinguished men who had agreed to serve, he remarked: "You could not duplicate it." He strongly favored the foundation, which was incorporated by an act of Congress April 28, 1904, as follows: To encourage in the broadest and most liberal manner investigations, research and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind; and, in particular, to conduct, endow and assist investigation in any department of science, literature or art, and to this end to coöperate with governments, universities, colleges, technical schools, learned societies, and individuals. [Illustration: THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTE AT PITTSBURGH] I was indebted to Dr. Billings as my guide, in selecting Dr. Daniel C. Gilman as the first President. He passed away some years later. Dr. Billings then recommended the present highly successful president, Dr. Robert S. Woodward. Long may he continue to guide the affairs of the Institution! The history of its achievements is so well known through its publications that details here are unnecessary. I may, however, refer to two of its undertakings that are somewhat unique. It is doing a world-wide service with the wood-and-bronze yacht, "Carnegie," which is voyaging around the world correcting the errors of the earlier surveys. Many of these ocean surveys have been found misleading, owing to variations of the compass. Bronze being non-magnetic, while iron and steel are highly so, previous observations have proved liable to error. A notable instance is that of the stranding of a Cunard steamship near the Azores. Captain Peters, of the "Carnegie," thought it advisable to test this case and found that the captain of the ill-fated steamer was sailing on the course laid down upon the admiralty map, and was not to blame. The original observation was wrong. The error caused by variation was promptly corrected. This is only one of numerous corrections reported to the nations who go down to the sea in ships. Their thanks are our ample reward. In the deed of gift I expressed the hope that our young Republic might some day be able to repay, at least in some degree, the great debt it owes to the older lands. Nothing gives me deeper satisfaction than the knowledge that it has to some extent already begun to do so. With the unique service rendered by the wandering "Carnegie," we may rank that of the fixed observatory upon Mount Wilson, California, at an altitude of 5886 feet. Professor Hale is in charge of it. He attended the gathering of leading astronomers in Rome one year, and such were his revelations there that these savants resolved their next meeting should be on top of Mount Wilson. And so it was. There is but one Mount Wilson. From a depth seventy-two feet down in the earth photographs have been taken of new stars. On the first of these plates many new worlds--I believe sixteen--were discovered. On the second I think it was sixty new worlds which had come into our ken, and on the third plate there were estimated to be more than a hundred--several of them said to be twenty times the size of our sun. Some of them were so distant as to require eight years for their light to reach us, which inclines us to bow our heads whispering to ourselves, "All we know is as nothing to the unknown." When the monster new glass, three times larger than any existing, is in operation, what revelations are to come! I am assured if a race inhabits the moon they will be clearly seen. The third delightful task was founding the Hero Fund, in which my whole heart was concerned. I had heard of a serious accident in a coal pit near Pittsburgh, and how the former superintendent, Mr. Taylor, although then engaged in other pursuits, had instantly driven to the scene, hoping to be of use in the crisis. Rallying volunteers, who responded eagerly, he led them down the pit to rescue those below. Alas, alas, he the heroic leader lost his own life. I could not get the thought of this out of my mind. My dear, dear friend, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, had sent me the following true and beautiful poem, and I re-read it the morning after the accident, and resolved then to establish the Hero Fund. IN THE TIME OF PEACE 'Twas said: "When roll of drum and battle's roar Shall cease upon the earth, O, then no more The deed--the race--of heroes in the land." But scarce that word was breathed when one small hand Lifted victorious o'er a giant wrong That had its victims crushed through ages long; Some woman set her pale and quivering face Firm as a rock against a man's disgrace; A little child suffered in silence lest His savage pain should wound a mother's breast; Some quiet scholar flung his gauntlet down And risked, in Truth's great name, the synod's frown; A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws, Did that which suddenly drew a world's applause; And one to the pest his lithe young body gave That he a thousand thousand lives might save. Hence arose the five-million-dollar fund to reward heroes, or to support the families of heroes, who perish in the effort to serve or save their fellows, and to supplement what employers or others do in contributing to the support of the families of those left destitute through accidents. This fund, established April 15, 1904, has proved from every point of view a decided success. I cherish a fatherly regard for it since no one suggested it to me. As far as I know, it never had been thought of; hence it is emphatically "my ain bairn." Later I extended it to my native land, Great Britain, with headquarters at Dunfermline--the Trustees of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust undertaking its administration, and splendidly have they succeeded. In due time it was extended to France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark. Regarding its workings in Germany, I received a letter from David Jayne Hill, our American Ambassador at Berlin, from which I quote: My main object in writing now is to tell you how pleased His Majesty is with the working of the German Hero Fund. He is enthusiastic about it and spoke in most complimentary terms of your discernment, as well as your generosity in founding it. He did not believe it would fill so important a place as it is doing. He told me of several cases that are really touching, and which would otherwise have been wholly unprovided for. One was that of a young man who saved a boy from drowning and just as they were about to lift him out of the water, after passing up the child into a boat, his heart failed, and he sank. He left a lovely young wife and a little boy. She has already been helped by the Hero Fund to establish a little business from which she can make a living, and the education of the boy, who is very bright, will be looked after. This is but one example. Valentini (Chief of the Civil Cabinet), who was somewhat skeptical at first regarding the need of such a fund, is now glowing with enthusiasm about it, and he tells me the whole Commission, which is composed of carefully chosen men, is earnestly devoted to the work of making the very best and wisest use of their means and has devoted much time to their decisions. They have corresponded with the English and French Commission, arranged to exchange reports, and made plans to keep in touch with one another in their work. They were deeply interested in the American report and have learned much from it. King Edward of Britain was deeply impressed by the provisions of the fund, and wrote me an autograph letter of appreciation of this and other gifts to my native land, which I deeply value, and hence insert. _Windsor Castle, November 21, 1908_ DEAR MR. CARNEGIE: I have for some time past been anxious to express to you my sense of your generosity for the great public objects which you have presented to this country, the land of your birth. Scarcely less admirable than the gifts themselves is the great care and thought you have taken in guarding against their misuse. I am anxious to tell you how warmly I recognize your most generous benefactions and the great services they are likely to confer upon the country. As a mark of recognition, I hope you will accept the portrait of myself which I am sending to you. Believe me, dear Mr. Carnegie, Sincerely yours EDWARD R. & I. Some of the newspapers in America were doubtful of the merits of the Hero Fund and the first annual report was criticized, but all this has passed away and the action of the fund is now warmly extolled. It has conquered, and long will it be before the trust is allowed to perish! The heroes of the barbarian past wounded or killed their fellows; the heroes of our civilized day serve or save theirs. Such the difference between physical and moral courage, between barbarism and civilization. Those who belong to the first class are soon to pass away, for we are finally to regard men who slay each other as we now do cannibals who eat each other; but those in the latter class will not die as long as man exists upon the earth, for such heroism as they display is god-like. The Hero Fund will prove chiefly a pension fund. Already it has many pensioners, heroes or the widows or children of heroes. A strange misconception arose at first about it. Many thought that its purpose was to stimulate heroic action, that heroes were to be induced to play their parts for the sake of reward. This never entered my mind. It is absurd. True heroes think not of reward. They are inspired and think only of their fellows endangered; never of themselves. The fund is intended to pension or provide in the most suitable manner for the hero should he be disabled, or for those dependent upon him should he perish in his attempt to save others. It has made a fine start and will grow in popularity year after year as its aims and services are better understood. To-day we have in America 1430 hero pensioners or their families on our list. I found the president for the Hero Fund in a Carnegie veteran, one of the original boys, Charlie Taylor. No salary for Charlie--not a cent would he ever take. He loves the work so much that I believe he would pay highly for permission to live with it. He is the right man in the right place. He has charge also, with Mr. Wilmot's able assistance, of the pensions for Carnegie workmen (Carnegie Relief Fund[47]); also the pensions for railway employees of my old division. Three relief funds and all of them benefiting others. [Footnote 47: This fund is now managed separately.] I got my revenge one day upon Charlie, who was always urging me to do for others. He is a graduate of Lehigh University and one of her most loyal sons. Lehigh wished a building and Charlie was her chief advocate. I said nothing, but wrote President Drinker offering the funds for the building conditioned upon my naming it. He agreed, and I called it "Taylor Hall." When Charlie discovered this, he came and protested that it would make him ridiculous, that he had only been a modest graduate, and was not entitled to have his name publicly honored, and so on. I enjoyed his plight immensely, waiting until he had finished, and then said that it would probably make him somewhat ridiculous if I insisted upon "Taylor Hall," but he ought to be willing to sacrifice himself somewhat for Lehigh. If he wasn't consumed with vanity he would not care much how his name was used if it helped his Alma Mater. Taylor was not much of a name anyhow. It was his insufferable vanity that made such a fuss. He should conquer it. He could make his decision. He could sacrifice the name of Taylor or sacrifice Lehigh, just as he liked, but: "No Taylor, no Hall." I had him! Visitors who may look upon that structure in after days and wonder who Taylor was may rest assured that he was a loyal son of Lehigh, a working, not merely a preaching, apostle of the gospel of service to his fellow-men, and one of the best men that ever lived. Such is our Lord High Commissioner of Pensions. CHAPTER XX EDUCATIONAL AND PENSION FUNDS The fifteen-million-dollar pension fund for aged university professors (The Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Learning), the fourth important gift, given in June, 1905, required the selection of twenty-five trustees from among the presidents of educational institutions in the United States. When twenty-four of these--President Harper, of Chicago University, being absent through illness--honored me by meeting at our house for organization, I obtained an important accession of those who were to become more intimate friends. Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip proved of great service at the start--his Washington experience being most valuable--and in our president, Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, we found the indispensable man. This fund is very near and dear to me--knowing, as I do, many who are soon to become beneficiaries, and convinced as I am of their worth and the value of the service already rendered by them. Of all professions, that of teaching is probably the most unfairly, yes, most meanly paid, though it should rank with the highest. Educated men, devoting their lives to teaching the young, receive mere pittances. When I first took my seat as a trustee of Cornell University, I was shocked to find how small were the salaries of the professors, as a rule ranking below the salaries of some of our clerks. To save for old age with these men is impossible. Hence the universities without pension funds are compelled to retain men who are no longer able, should no longer be required, to perform their duties. Of the usefulness of the fund no doubt can be entertained.[48] The first list of beneficiaries published was conclusive upon this point, containing as it did several names of world-wide reputation, so great had been their contributions to the stock of human knowledge. Many of these beneficiaries and their widows have written me most affecting letters. These I can never destroy, for if I ever have a fit of melancholy, I know the cure lies in re-reading these letters. [Footnote 48: The total amount of this fund in 1919 was $29,250,000.] My friend, Mr. Thomas Shaw (now Lord Shaw), of Dunfermline had written an article for one of the English reviews showing that many poor people in Scotland were unable to pay the fees required to give their children a university education, although some had deprived themselves of comforts in order to do so. After reading Mr. Shaw's article the idea came to me to give ten millions in five per cent bonds, one half of the £104,000 yearly revenue from it to be used to pay the fees of the deserving poor students and the other half to improve the universities. The first meeting of the trustees of this fund (The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland) was held in the Edinburgh office of the Secretary of State for Scotland in 1902, Lord Balfour of Burleigh presiding. It was a notable body of men--Prime Minister Balfour, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (afterwards Prime Minister), John Morley (now Viscount Morley), James Bryce (now Viscount Bryce), the Earl of Elgin, Lord Rosebery, Lord Reay, Mr. Shaw (now Lord Shaw), Dr. John Ross of Dunfermline, "the man-of-all-work" that makes for the happiness or instruction of his fellow-man, and others. I explained that I had asked them to act because I could not entrust funds to the faculties of the Scottish universities after reading the report of a recent commission. Mr. Balfour promptly exclaimed: "Not a penny, not a penny!" The Earl of Elgin, who had been a member of the commission, fully concurred. [Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE AND VISCOUNT BRYCE] The details of the proposed fund being read, the Earl of Elgin was not sure about accepting a trust which was not strict and specific. He wished to know just what his duties were. I had given a majority of the trustees the right to change the objects of beneficence and modes of applying funds, should they in after days decide that the purposes and modes prescribed for education in Scotland had become unsuitable or unnecessary for the advanced times. Balfour of Burleigh agreed with the Earl and so did Prime Minister Balfour, who said he had never heard of a testator before who was willing to give such powers. He questioned the propriety of doing so. "Well," I said, "Mr. Balfour, I have never known of a body of men capable of legislating for the generation ahead, and in some cases those who attempt to legislate even for their own generation are not thought to be eminently successful." There was a ripple of laughter in which the Prime Minister himself heartily joined, and he then said: "You are right, quite right; but you are, I think, the first great giver who has been wise enough to take this view." I had proposed that a majority should have the power, but Lord Balfour suggested not less than two thirds. This was accepted by the Earl of Elgin and approved by all. I am very sure it is a wise provision, as after days will prove. It is incorporated in all my large gifts, and I rest assured that this feature will in future times prove valuable. The Earl of Elgin, of Dunfermline, did not hesitate to become Chairman of this trust. When I told Premier Balfour that I hoped Elgin could be induced to assume this duty, he said promptly, "You could not get a better man in Great Britain." We are all entirely satisfied now upon that point. The query is: where could we get his equal? It is an odd coincidence that there are only four living men who have been made Burgesses and received the Freedom of Dunfermline, and all are connected with the trust for the Universities of Scotland, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Earl of Elgin, Dr. John Ross, and myself. But there is a lady in the circle to-day, the only one ever so greatly honored with the Freedom of Dunfermline, Mrs. Carnegie, whose devotion to the town, like my own, is intense. My election to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews in 1902 proved a very important event in my life. It admitted me to the university world, to which I had been a stranger. Few incidents in my life have so deeply impressed me as the first meeting of the faculty, when I took my seat in the old chair occupied successively by so many distinguished Lord Rectors during the nearly five hundred years which have elapsed since St. Andrews was founded. I read the collection of rectorial speeches as a preparation for the one I was soon to make. The most remarkable paragraph I met with in any of them was Dean Stanley's advice to the students to "go to Burns for your theology." That a high dignitary of the Church and a favorite of Queen Victoria should venture to say this to the students of John Knox's University is most suggestive as showing how even theology improves with the years. The best rules of conduct are in Burns. First there is: "Thine own reproach alone do fear." I took it as a motto early in life. And secondly: "The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip To haud the wretch in order; But where ye feel your honor grip, Let that aye be your border." John Stuart Mill's rectorial address to the St. Andrews students is remarkable. He evidently wished to give them of his best. The prominence he assigns to music as an aid to high living and pure refined enjoyment is notable. Such is my own experience. An invitation given to the principals of the four Scotch universities and their wives or daughters to spend a week at Skibo resulted in much joy to Mrs. Carnegie and myself. The first meeting was attended by the Earl of Elgin, chairman of the Trust for the Universities of Scotland, and Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Secretary for Scotland, and Lady Balfour. After that "Principals' Week" each year became an established custom. They as well as we became friends, and thereby, they all agree, great good results to the universities. A spirit of coöperation is stimulated. Taking my hand upon leaving after the first yearly visit, Principal Lang said: "It has taken the principals of the Scotch universities five hundred years to learn how to begin our sessions. Spending a week together is the solution." One of the memorable results of the gathering at Skibo in 1906 was that Miss Agnes Irwin, Dean of Radcliffe College, and great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, spent the principals' week with us and all were charmed with her. Franklin received his first doctor's degree from St. Andrews University, nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. The second centenary of his birth was finely celebrated in Philadelphia, and St. Andrews, with numerous other universities throughout the world, sent addresses. St. Andrews also sent a degree to the great-granddaughter. As Lord Rector, I was deputed to confer it and place the mantle upon her. This was done the first evening before a large audience, when more than two hundred addresses were presented. The audience was deeply impressed, as well it might be. St. Andrews University, the first to confer the degree upon the great-grandfather, conferred the same degree upon the great-grandchild one hundred and forty-seven years later (and this upon her own merits as Dean of Radcliffe College); sent it across the Atlantic to be bestowed by the hands of its Lord Rector, the first who was not a British subject, but who was born one as Franklin was, and who became an American citizen as Franklin did; the ceremony performed in Philadelphia where Franklin rests, in the presence of a brilliant assembly met to honor his memory. It was all very beautiful, and I esteemed myself favored, indeed, to be the medium of such a graceful and appropriate ceremony. Principal Donaldson of St. Andrews was surely inspired when he thought of it! My unanimous reëlection by the students of St. Andrews, without a contest for a second term, was deeply appreciated. And I liked the Rector's nights, when the students claim him for themselves, no member of the faculty being invited. We always had a good time. After the first one, Principal Donaldson gave me the verdict of the Secretary as rendered to him: "Rector So-and-So talked _to_ us, Rector Thus-and-So talked _at_ us, both from the platform; Mr. Carnegie sat down in our circle and talked _with_ us." The question of aid to our own higher educational institutions often intruded itself upon me, but my belief was that our chief universities, such as Harvard and Columbia, with five to ten thousand students,[49] were large enough; that further growth was undesirable; that the smaller institutions (the colleges especially) were in greater need of help and that it would be a better use of surplus wealth to aid them. Accordingly, I afterwards confined myself to these and am satisfied that this was wise. At a later date we found Mr. Rockefeller's splendid educational fund, The General Education Board, and ourselves were working in this fruitful field without consultation, with sometimes undesirable results. Mr. Rockefeller wished me to join his board and this I did. Coöperation was soon found to be much to our mutual advantage, and we now work in unison. [Footnote 49: Columbia University in 1920 numbered all told some 25,000 students in the various departments.] In giving to colleges quite a number of my friends have been honored as was my partner Charlie Taylor. Conway Hall at Dickinson College, was named for Moncure D. Conway, whose Autobiography, recently published, is pronounced "literature" by the "Athenæum." It says: "These two volumes lie on the table glistening like gems 'midst the piles of autobiographical rubbish by which they are surrounded." That is rather suggestive for one who is adding to the pile. The last chapter in Mr. Conway's Autobiography ends with the following paragraph: Implore Peace, O my reader, from whom I now part. Implore peace not of deified thunder clouds but of every man, woman, child thou shalt meet. Do not merely offer the prayer, "Give peace in our time," but do thy part to answer it! Then, at least, though the world be at strife, there shall be peace in thee. My friend has put his finger upon our deepest disgrace. It surely must soon be abolished between civilized nations. The Stanton Chair of Economics at Kenyon College, Ohio, was founded in memory of Edwin M. Stanton, who kindly greeted me as a boy in Pittsburgh when I delivered telegrams to him, and was ever cordial to me in Washington, when I was an assistant to Secretary Scott. The Hanna Chair in Western Reserve University, Cleveland; the John Hay Library at Brown University; the second Elihu Root Fund for Hamilton, the Mrs. Cleveland Library for Wellesley, gave me pleasure to christen after these friends. I hope more are to follow, commemorating those I have known, liked, and honored. I also wished a General Dodge Library and a Gayley Library to be erected from my gifts, but these friends had already obtained such honor from their respective Alma Maters. My first gift to Hamilton College was to be named the Elihu Root Foundation, but that ablest of all our Secretaries of State, and in the opinion of President Roosevelt, "the wisest man he ever knew," took care, it seems, not to mention the fact to the college authorities. When I reproached him with this dereliction, he laughingly replied: "Well, I promise not to cheat you the next gift you give us." And by a second gift this lapse was repaired after all, but I took care not to entrust the matter directly to him. The Root Fund of Hamilton[50] is now established beyond his power to destroy. Root is a great man, and, as the greatest only are he is, in his simplicity, sublime. President Roosevelt declared he would crawl on his hands and knees from the White House to the Capitol if this would insure Root's nomination to the presidency with a prospect of success. He was considered vulnerable because he had been counsel for corporations and was too little of the spouter and the demagogue, too much of the modest, retiring statesman to split the ears of the groundlings.[51] The party foolishly decided not to risk Root. [Footnote 50: It amounts to $250,000.] [Footnote 51: At the Meeting in Memory of the Life and Work of Andrew Carnegie held on April 25, 1920, in the Engineering Societies Building in New York, Mr. Root made an address in the course of which, speaking of Mr. Carnegie, he said: "He belonged to that great race of nation-builders who have made the development of America the wonder of the world.... He was the kindliest man I ever knew. Wealth had brought to him no hardening of the heart, nor made him forget the dreams of his youth. Kindly, affectionate, charitable in his judgments, unrestrained in his sympathies, noble in his impulses, I wish that all the people who think of him as a rich man giving away money he did not need could know of the hundreds of kindly things he did unknown to the world."] My connection with Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, which promote the elevation of the colored race we formerly kept in slavery, has been a source of satisfaction and pleasure, and to know Booker Washington is a rare privilege. We should all take our hats off to the man who not only raised himself from slavery, but helped raise millions of his race to a higher stage of civilization. Mr. Washington called upon me a few days after my gift of six hundred thousand dollars was made to Tuskegee and asked if he might be allowed to make one suggestion. I said: "Certainly." "You have kindly specified that a sum from that fund be set aside for the future support of myself and wife during our lives, and we are very grateful, but, Mr. Carnegie, the sum is far beyond our needs and will seem to my race a fortune. Some might feel that I was no longer a poor man giving my services without thought of saving money. Would you have any objection to changing that clause, striking out the sum, and substituting 'only suitable provision'? I'll trust the trustees. Mrs. Washington and myself need very little." I did so, and the deed now stands, but when Mr. Baldwin asked for the original letter to exchange it for the substitute, he told me that the noble soul objected. That document addressed to him was to be preserved forever, and handed down; but he would put it aside and let the substitute go on file. This is an indication of the character of the leader of his race. No truer, more self-sacrificing hero ever lived: a man compounded of all the virtues. It makes one better just to know such pure and noble souls--human nature in its highest types is already divine here on earth. If it be asked which man of our age, or even of the past ages, has risen from the lowest to the highest, the answer must be Booker Washington. He rose from slavery to the leadership of his people--a modern Moses and Joshua combined, leading his people both onward and upward. In connection with these institutions I came in contact with their officers and trustees--men like Principal Hollis B. Frissell of Hampton, Robert C. Ogden, George Foster Peabody, V. Everit Macy, George McAneny and William H. Baldwin--recently lost to us, alas!--men who labor for others. It was a blessing to know them intimately. The Cooper Union, the Mechanics and Tradesmen's Society, indeed every institution[52] in which I became interested, revealed many men and women devoting their time and thought, not to "miserable aims that end with self," but to high ideals which mean the relief and uplift of their less fortunate brethren. [Footnote 52: The universities, colleges, and educational institutions to which Mr. Carnegie gave either endowment funds or buildings number five hundred. All told his gifts to them amounted to $27,000,000.] My giving of organs to churches came very early in my career, I having presented to less than a hundred members of the Swedenborgian Church in Allegheny which my father favored, an organ, after declining to contribute to the building of a new church for so few. Applications from other churches soon began to pour in, from the grand Catholic Cathedral of Pittsburgh down to the small church in the country village, and I was kept busy. Every church seemed to need a better organ than it had, and as the full price for the new instrument was paid, what the old one brought was clear profit. Some ordered organs for very small churches which would almost split the rafters, as was the case with the first organ given the Swedenborgians; others had bought organs before applying but our check to cover the amount was welcome. Finally, however, a rigid system of giving was developed. A printed schedule requiring answers to many questions has now to be filled and returned before action is taken. The department is now perfectly systematized and works admirably because we graduate the gift according to the size of the church. Charges were made in the rigid Scottish Highlands that I was demoralizing Christian worship by giving organs to churches. The very strict Presbyterians there still denounce as wicked an attempt "to worship God with a kist fu' o' whistles," instead of using the human God-given voice. After that I decided that I should require a partner in my sin, and therefore asked each congregation to pay one half of the desired new organ. Upon this basis the organ department still operates and continues to do a thriving business, the demand for improved organs still being great. Besides, many new churches are required for increasing populations and for these organs are essential. I see no end to it. In requiring the congregation to pay one half the cost of better instruments, there is assurance of needed and reasonable expenditure. Believing from my own experience that it is salutary for the congregation to hear sacred music at intervals in the service and then slowly to disperse to the strains of the reverence-compelling organ after such sermons as often show us little of a Heavenly Father, I feel the money spent for organs is well spent. So we continue the organ department.[53] [Footnote 53: The "organ department" up to 1919 had given 7689 organs to as many different churches at a cost of over six million dollars.] Of all my work of a philanthropic character, my private pension fund gives me the highest and noblest return. No satisfaction equals that of feeling you have been permitted to place in comfortable circumstances, in their old age, people whom you have long known to be kind and good and in every way deserving, but who from no fault of their own, have not sufficient means to live respectably, free from solicitude as to their mere maintenance. Modest sums insure this freedom. It surprised me to find how numerous were those who needed some aid to make the difference between an old age of happiness and one of misery. Some such cases had arisen before my retirement from business, and I had sweet satisfaction from this source. Not one person have I ever placed upon the pension list[54] that did not fully deserve assistance. It is a real roll of honor and mutual affection. All are worthy. There is no publicity about it. No one knows who is embraced. Not a word is ever breathed to others. [Footnote 54: This amounted to over $250,000 a year.] This is my favorite and best answer to the question which will never down in my thoughts: "What good am I doing in the world to deserve all my mercies?" Well, the dear friends of the pension list give me a satisfactory reply, and this always comes to me in need. I have had far beyond my just share of life's blessings; therefore I never ask the Unknown for anything. We are in the presence of universal law and should bow our heads in silence and obey the Judge within, asking nothing, fearing nothing, just doing our duty right along, seeking no reward here or hereafter. It is, indeed, more blessed to give than to receive. These dear good friends would do for me and mine as I do for them were positions reversed. I am sure of this. Many precious acknowledgments have I received. Some venture to tell me they remember me every night in their prayers and ask for me every blessing. Often I cannot refrain from giving expression to my real feelings in return. "Pray, don't," I say. "Don't ask anything more for me. I've got far beyond my just share already. Any fair committee sitting upon my case would take away more than half the blessings already bestowed." These are not mere words, I feel their truth. The Railroad Pension Fund is of a similar nature. Many of the old boys of the Pittsburgh Division (or their widows) are taken care of by it. It began years ago and grew to its present proportions. It now benefits the worthy railroad men who served under me when I was superintendent on the Pennsylvania, or their widows, who need help. I was only a boy when I first went among these trainmen and got to know them by name. They were very kind to me. Most of the men beneficiaries of the fund I have known personally. They are dear friends. Although the four-million-dollar fund I gave for workmen in the mills (Steel Workers' Pensions) embraces hundreds that I never saw, there are still a sufficient number upon it that I do remember to give that fund also a strong hold upon me. CHAPTER XXI THE PEACE PALACE AND PITTENCRIEFF Peace, at least as between English-speaking peoples,[55] must have been early in my thoughts. In 1869, when Britain launched the monster Monarch, then the largest warship known, there was, for some now-forgotten reason, talk of how she could easily compel tribute from our American cities one after the other. Nothing could resist her. I cabled John Bright, then in the British Cabinet (the cable had recently been opened): "First and best service possible for Monarch, bringing home body Peabody."[56] [Footnote 55: "Let men say what they will, I say that as surely as the sun in the heavens once shone upon Britain and America united, so surely it is one morning to rise, shine upon, and greet again the Reunited States--the British-American Union." (Quoted in Alderson's _Andrew Carnegie, The Man and His Work_, p. 108. New York, 1909.)] [Footnote 56: George Peabody, the American merchant and philanthropist, who died in London in 1869.] No signature was given. Strange to say, this was done, and thus the Monarch became the messenger of peace, not of destruction. Many years afterwards I met Mr. Bright at a small dinner party in Birmingham and told him I was his young anonymous correspondent. He was surprised that no signature was attached and said his heart was in the act. I am sure it was. He is entitled to all credit. He was the friend of the Republic when she needed friends during the Civil War. He had always been my favorite living hero in public life as he had been my father's. Denounced as a wild radical at first, he kept steadily on until the nation came to his point of view. Always for peace he would have avoided the Crimean War, in which Britain backed the wrong horse, as Lord Salisbury afterwards acknowledged. It was a great privilege that the Bright family accorded me, as a friend, to place a replica of the Manchester Bright statue in Parliament, in the stead of a poor one removed. I became interested in the Peace Society of Great Britain upon one of my early visits and attended many of its meetings, and in later days I was especially drawn to the Parliamentary Union established by Mr. Cremer, the famous working-man's representative in Parliament. Few men living can be compared to Mr. Cremer. When he received the Nobel Prize of £8000 as the one who had done the most that year for peace, he promptly gave all but £1000, needed for pressing wants, to the Arbitration Committee. It was a noble sacrifice. What is money but dross to the true hero! Mr. Cremer is paid a few dollars a week by his trade to enable him to exist in London as their member of Parliament, and here was fortune thrown in his lap only to be devoted by him to the cause of peace. This is the heroic in its finest form. I had the great pleasure of presenting the Committee to President Cleveland at Washington in 1887, who received the members cordially and assured them of his hearty coöperation. From that day the abolition of war grew in importance with me until it finally overshadowed all other issues. The surprising action of the first Hague Conference gave me intense joy. Called primarily to consider disarmament (which proved a dream), it created the commanding reality of a permanent tribunal to settle international disputes. I saw in this the greatest step toward peace that humanity had ever taken, and taken as if by inspiration, without much previous discussion. No wonder the sublime idea captivated the conference. If Mr. Holls, whose death I so deeply deplored, were alive to-day and a delegate to the forthcoming second Conference with his chief, Andrew D. White, I feel that these two might possibly bring about the creation of the needed International Court for the abolition of war. He it was who started from The Hague at night for Germany, upon request of his chief, and saw the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Emperor and finally prevailed upon them to approve of the High Court, and not to withdraw their delegates as threatened--a service for which Mr. Holls deserves to be enrolled among the greatest servants of mankind. Alas, death came to him while still in his prime. The day that International Court is established will become one of the most memorable days in the world's history.[57] It will ring the knell of man killing man--the deepest and blackest of crimes. It should be celebrated in every land as I believe it will be some day, and that time, perchance, not so remote as expected. In that era not a few of those hitherto extolled as heroes will have found oblivion because they failed to promote peace and good-will instead of war. [Footnote 57: "I submit that the only measure required to-day for the maintenance of world peace is an agreement between three or four of the leading Civilized Powers (and as many more as desire to join--the more the better) pledged to coöperate against disturbers of world peace, should such arise." (Andrew Carnegie, in address at unveiling of a bust of William Randall Cremer at the Peace Palace of The Hague, August 29, 1913.)] When Andrew D. White and Mr. Holls, upon their return from The Hague, suggested that I offer the funds needed for a Temple of Peace at The Hague, I informed them that I never could be so presumptuous; that if the Government of the Netherlands informed me of its desire to have such a temple and hoped I would furnish the means, the request would be favorably considered. They demurred, saying this could hardly be expected from any Government. Then I said I could never act in the matter. Finally the Dutch Government did make application, through its Minister, Baron Gevers in Washington, and I rejoiced. Still, in writing him, I was careful to say that the drafts of his Government would be duly honored. I did not send the money. The Government drew upon me for it, and the draft for a million and a half is kept as a memento. It seems to me almost too much that any individual should be permitted to perform so noble a duty as that of providing means for this Temple of Peace--the most holy building in the world because it has the holiest end in view. I do not even except St. Peter's, or any building erected to the glory of God, whom, as Luther says, "we cannot serve or aid; He needs no help from us." This temple is to bring peace, which is so greatly needed among His erring creatures. "The highest worship of God is service to man." At least, I feel so with Luther and Franklin. When in 1907 friends came and asked me to accept the presidency of the Peace Society of New York, which they had determined to organize, I declined, alleging that I was kept very busy with many affairs, which was true; but my conscience troubled me afterwards for declining. If I were not willing to sacrifice myself for the cause of peace what should I sacrifice for? What was I good for? Fortunately, in a few days, the Reverend Lyman Abbott, the Reverend Mr. Lynch, and some other notable laborers for good causes called to urge my reconsideration. I divined their errand and frankly told them they need not speak. My conscience had been tormenting me for declining and I would accept the presidency and do my duty. After that came the great national gathering (the following April) when for the first time in the history of Peace Society meetings, there attended delegates from thirty-five of the states of the Union, besides many foreigners of distinction.[58] [Footnote 58: Mr. Carnegie does not mention the fact that in December, 1910, he gave to a board of trustees $10,000,000, the revenue of which was to be administered for "the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization." This is known as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Honorable Elihu Root is president of the board of trustees.] My first decoration then came unexpectedly. The French Government had made me Knight Commander of the Legion of Honor, and at the Peace Banquet in New York, over which I presided, Baron d'Estournelles de Constant appeared upon the stage and in a compelling speech invested me with the regalia amid the cheers of the company. It was a great honor, indeed, and appreciated by me because given for my services to the cause of International Peace. Such honors humble, they do not exalt; so let them come.[59] They serve also to remind me that I must strive harder than ever, and watch every act and word more closely, that I may reach just a little nearer the standard the givers--deluded souls--mistakenly assume in their speeches, that I have already attained. [Footnote 59: Mr. Carnegie received also the Grand Cross Order of Orange-Nassau from Holland, the Grand Cross Order of Danebrog from Denmark, a gold medal from twenty-one American Republics and had doctors' degrees from innumerable universities and colleges. He was also a member of many institutes, learned societies and clubs--over 190 in number.] * * * * * No gift I have made or can ever make can possibly approach that of Pittencrieff Glen, Dunfermline. It is saturated with childish sentiment--all of the purest and sweetest. I must tell that story: Among my earliest recollections are the struggles of Dunfermline to obtain the rights of the town to part of the Abbey grounds and the Palace ruins. My Grandfather Morrison began the campaign, or, at least, was one of those who did. The struggle was continued by my Uncles Lauder and Morrison, the latter honored by being charged with having incited and led a band of men to tear down a certain wall. The citizens won a victory in the highest court and the then Laird ordered that thereafter "no Morrison be admitted to the Glen." I, being a Morrison like my brother-cousin, Dod, was debarred. The Lairds of Pittencrieff for generations had been at variance with the inhabitants. The Glen is unique, as far as I know. It adjoins the Abbey and Palace grounds, and on the west and north it lies along two of the main streets of the town. Its area (between sixty and seventy acres) is finely sheltered, its high hills grandly wooded. It always meant paradise to the child of Dunfermline. It certainly did to me. When I heard of paradise, I translated the word into Pittencrieff Glen, believing it to be as near to paradise as anything I could think of. Happy were we if through an open lodge gate, or over the wall or under the iron grill over the burn, now and then we caught a glimpse inside. Almost every Sunday Uncle Lauder took "Dod" and "Naig" for a walk around the Abbey to a part that overlooked the Glen--the busy crows fluttering around in the big trees below. Its Laird was to us children the embodiment of rank and wealth. The Queen, we knew, lived in Windsor Castle, but she didn't own Pittencrieff, not she! Hunt of Pittencrieff wouldn't exchange with her or with any one. Of this we were sure, because certainly neither of us would. In all my childhood's--yes and in my early manhood's--air-castle building (which was not small), nothing comparable in grandeur approached Pittencrieff. My Uncle Lauder predicted many things for me when I became a man, but had he foretold that some day I should be rich enough, and so supremely fortunate as to become Laird of Pittencrieff, he might have turned my head. And then to be able to hand it over to Dunfermline as a public park--my paradise of childhood! Not for a crown would I barter that privilege. When Dr. Ross whispered to me that Colonel Hunt might be induced to sell, my ears cocked themselves instantly. He wished an extortionate price, the doctor thought, and I heard nothing further for some time. When indisposed in London in the autumn of 1902, my mind ran upon the subject, and I intended to wire Dr. Ross to come up and see me. One morning, Mrs. Carnegie came into my room and asked me to guess who had arrived and I guessed Dr. Ross. Sure enough, there he was. We talked over Pittencrieff. I suggested that if our mutual friend and fellow-townsman, Mr. Shaw in Edinburgh (Lord Shaw of Dunfermline) ever met Colonel Hunt's agents he could intimate that their client might some day regret not closing with me as another purchaser equally anxious to buy might not be met with, and I might change my mind or pass away. Mr. Shaw told the doctor when he mentioned this that he had an appointment to meet with Hunt's lawyer on other business the next morning and would certainly say so. I sailed shortly after for New York and received there one day a cable from Mr. Shaw stating that the Laird would accept forty-five thousand pounds. Should he close? I wired: "Yes, provided it is under Ross's conditions"; and on Christmas Eve, I received Shaw's reply: "Hail, Laird of Pittencrieff!" So I was the happy possessor of the grandest title on earth in my estimation. The King--well, he was only the King. He didn't own King Malcolm's tower nor St. Margaret's shrine, nor Pittencrieff Glen. Not he, poor man. I did, and I shall be glad to condescendingly show the King those treasures should he ever visit Dunfermline. As the possessor of the Park and the Glen I had a chance to find out what, if anything, money could do for the good of the masses of a community, if placed in the hands of a body of public-spirited citizens. Dr. Ross was taken into my confidence so far as Pittencrieff Park was concerned, and with his advice certain men intended for a body of trustees were agreed upon and invited to Skibo to organize. They imagined it was in regard to transferring the Park to the town; not even to Dr. Ross was any other subject mentioned. When they heard that half a million sterling in bonds, bearing five per cent interest, was also to go to them for the benefit of Dunfermline, they were surprised.[60] [Footnote 60: Additional gifts, made later, brought this gift up to $3,750,000.] It is twelve years since the Glen was handed over to the trustees and certainly no public park was ever dearer to a people. The children's yearly gala day, the flower shows and the daily use of the Park by the people are surprising. The Glen now attracts people from neighboring towns. In numerous ways the trustees have succeeded finely in the direction indicated in the trust deed, namely: To bring into the monotonous lives of the toiling masses of Dunfermline, more "of sweetness and light," to give to them--especially the young--some charm, some happiness, some elevating conditions of life which residence elsewhere would have denied, that the child of my native town, looking back in after years, however far from home it may have roamed, will feel that simply by virtue of being such, life has been made happier and better. If this be the fruit of your labors, you will have succeeded; if not, you will have failed. To this paragraph I owe the friendship of Earl Grey, formerly Governor-General of Canada. He wrote Dr. Ross: "I must know the man who wrote that document in the 'Times' this morning." We met in London and became instantly sympathetic. He is a great soul who passes instantly into the heart and stays there. Lord Grey is also to-day a member (trustee) of the ten-million-dollar fund for the United Kingdom.[61] [Footnote 61: Mr. Carnegie refers to the gift of ten million dollars to the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust merely in connection with Earl Grey. His references to his gifts are casual, in that he refers only to the ones in which he happens for the moment to be interested. Those he mentions are merely a part of the whole. He gave to the Church Peace Union over $2,000,000, to the United Engineering Society $1,500,000, to the International Bureau of American Republics $850,000, and to a score or more of research, hospital, and educational boards sums ranging from $100,000 to $500,000. He gave to various towns and cities over twenty-eight hundred library buildings at a cost of over $60,000,000. The largest of his gifts he does not mention at all. This was made in 1911 to the Carnegie Corporation of New York and was $125,000,000. The Corporation is the residuary legatee under Mr. Carnegie's will and it is not yet known what further sum may come to it through that instrument. The object of the Corporation, as defined by Mr. Carnegie himself in a letter to the trustees, is: "To promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding among the people of the United States by aiding technical schools, institutions of higher learning, libraries, scientific research, hero funds, useful publications and by such other agencies and means as shall from time to time be found appropriate therefor." The Carnegie benefactions, all told, amount to something over $350,000,000--surely a huge sum to have been brought together and then distributed by one man.] Thus, Pittencrieff Glen is the most soul-satisfying public gift I ever made, or ever can make. It is poetic justice that the grandson of Thomas Morrison, radical leader in his day, nephew of Bailie Morrison, his son and successor, and above all son of my sainted father and my most heroic mother, should arise and dispossess the lairds, should become the agent for conveying the Glen and Park to the people of Dunfermline forever. It is a true romance, which no air-castle can quite equal or fiction conceive. The hand of destiny seems to hover over it, and I hear something whispering: "Not altogether in vain have you lived--not altogether in vain." This is the crowning mercy of my career! I set it apart from all my other public gifts. Truly the whirligig of time brings in some strange revenges. It is now thirteen years since I ceased to accumulate wealth and began to distribute it. I could never have succeeded in either had I stopped with having enough to retire upon, but nothing to retire to. But there was the habit and the love of reading, writing and speaking upon occasion, and also the acquaintance and friendship of educated men which I had made before I gave up business. For some years after retiring I could not force myself to visit the works. This, alas, would recall so many who had gone before. Scarcely one of my early friends would remain to give me the hand-clasp of the days of old. Only one or two of these old men would call me "Andy." Do not let it be thought, however, that my younger partners were forgotten, or that they have not played a very important part in sustaining me in the effort of reconciling myself to the new conditions. Far otherwise! The most soothing influence of all was their prompt organization of the Carnegie Veteran Association, to expire only when the last member dies. Our yearly dinner together, in our own home in New York, is a source of the greatest pleasure,--so great that it lasts from one year to the other. Some of the Veterans travel far to be present, and what occurs between us constitutes one of the dearest joys of my life. I carry with me the affection of "my boys." I am certain I do. There is no possible mistake about that because my heart goes out to them. This I number among my many blessings and in many a brooding hour this fact comes to me, and I say to myself: "Rather this, minus fortune, than multi-millionairedom without it--yes, a thousand times, yes." Many friends, great and good men and women, Mrs. Carnegie and I are favored to know, but not one whit shall these ever change our joint love for the "boys." For to my infinite delight her heart goes out to them as does mine. She it was who christened our new New York home with the first Veteran dinner. "The partners first" was her word. It was no mere idle form when they elected Mrs. Carnegie the first honorary member, and our daughter the second. Their place in our hearts is secure. Although I was the senior, still we were "boys together." Perfect trust and common aims, not for self only, but for each other, and deep affection, moulded us into a brotherhood. We were friends first and partners afterwards. Forty-three out of forty-five partners are thus bound together for life. Another yearly event that brings forth many choice spirits is our Literary Dinner, at home, our dear friend Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the "Century," being the manager.[62] His devices and quotations from the writings of the guest of the year, placed upon the cards of the guests, are so appropriate, as to cause much hilarity. Then the speeches of the novitiates give zest to the occasion. John Morley was the guest of honor when with us in 1895 and a quotation from his works was upon the card at each plate. [Footnote 62: "Yesterday we had a busy day in Toronto. The grand event was a dinner at six o'clock where we all spoke, A.C. making a remarkable address.... I can't tell you how I am enjoying this. Not only seeing new places, but the talks with our own party. It is, indeed, a liberal education. A.C. is truly a 'great' man; that is, a man of enormous faculty and a great imagination. I don't remember any friend who has such a range of poetical quotation, unless it is Stedman. (Not so much _range_ as numerous quotations from Shakespeare, Burns, Byron, etc.) His views are truly large and prophetic. And, unless I am mistaken, he has a genuine ethical character. He is not perfect, but he is most interesting and remarkable; a true democrat; his benevolent actions having a root in principle and character. He is not accidentally the intimate friend of such high natures as Arnold and Morley." (_Letters of Richard Watson Gilder_, edited by his daughter Rosamond Gilder, p. 374. New York, 1916.)] One year Gilder appeared early in the evening of the dinner as he wished to seat the guests. This had been done, but he came to me saying it was well he had looked them over. He had found John Burroughs and Ernest Thompson Seton were side by side, and as they were then engaged in a heated controversy upon the habits of beasts and birds, in which both had gone too far in their criticisms, they were at dagger's points. Gilder said it would never do to seat them together. He had separated them. I said nothing, but slipped into the dining-room unobserved and replaced the cards as before. Gilder's surprise was great when he saw the men next each other, but the result was just as I had expected. A reconciliation took place and they parted good friends. Moral: If you wish to play peace-maker, seat adversaries next each other where they must begin by being civil. Burroughs and Seton both enjoyed the trap I set for them. True it is, we only hate those whom we do not know. It certainly is often the way to peace to invite your adversary to dinner and even beseech him to come, taking no refusal. Most quarrels become acute from the parties not seeing and communicating with each other and hearing too much of their disagreement from others. They do not fully understand the other's point of view and all that can be said for it. Wise is he who offers the hand of reconciliation should a difference with a friend arise. Unhappy he to the end of his days who refuses it. No possible gain atones for the loss of one who has been a friend even if that friend has become somewhat less dear to you than before. He is still one with whom you have been intimate, and as age comes on friends pass rapidly away and leave you. He is the happy man who feels there is not a human being to whom he does not wish happiness, long life, and deserved success, not one in whose path he would cast an obstacle nor to whom he would not do a service if in his power. All this he can feel without being called upon to retain as a friend one who has proved unworthy beyond question by dishonorable conduct. For such there should be nothing felt but pity, infinite pity. And pity for your own loss also, for true friendship can only feed and grow upon the virtues. "When love begins to sicken and decay It useth an enforced ceremony." The former geniality may be gone forever, but each can wish the other nothing but happiness. None of my friends hailed my retirement from business more warmly than Mark Twain. I received from him the following note, at a time when the newspapers were talking much about my wealth. DEAR SIR AND FRIEND: You seem to be prosperous these days. Could you lend an admirer a dollar and a half to buy a hymn-book with? God will bless you if you do; I feel it, I know it. So will I. If there should be other applications this one not to count. Yours MARK P.S. Don't send the hymn-book, send the money. I want to make the selection myself. M. When he was lying ill in New York I went to see him frequently, and we had great times together, for even lying in bed he was as bright as ever. One call was to say good-bye, before my sailing for Scotland. The Pension Fund for University Professors was announced in New York soon after I sailed. A letter about it from Mark, addressed to "Saint Andrew," reached me in Scotland, from which I quote the following: You can take my halo. If you had told me what you had done when at my bedside you would have got it there and then. It is pure tin and paid "the duty" when it came down. Those intimate with Mr. Clemens (Mark Twain) will certify that he was one of the charmers. Joe Jefferson is the only man who can be conceded his twin brother in manner and speech, their charm being of the same kind. "Uncle Remus" (Joel Chandler Harris) is another who has charm, and so has George W. Cable; yes, and Josh Billings also had it. Such people brighten the lives of their friends, regardless of themselves. They make sunshine wherever they go. In Rip Van Winkle's words: "All pretty much alike, dem fellers." Every one of them is unselfish and warm of heart. The public only knows one side of Mr. Clemens--the amusing part. Little does it suspect that he was a man of strong convictions upon political and social questions and a moralist of no mean order. For instance, upon the capture of Aguinaldo by deception, his pen was the most trenchant of all. Junius was weak in comparison. The gathering to celebrate his seventieth birthday was unique. The literary element was there in force, but Mark had not forgotten to ask to have placed near him the multi-millionaire, Mr. H.H. Rogers, one who had been his friend in need. Just like Mark. Without exception, the leading literary men dwelt in their speeches exclusively upon the guest's literary work. When my turn came, I referred to this and asked them to note that what our friend had done as a man would live as long as what he had written. Sir Walter Scott and he were linked indissolubly together. Our friend, like Scott, was ruined by the mistakes of partners, who had become hopelessly bankrupt. Two courses lay before him. One the smooth, easy, and short way--the legal path. Surrender all your property, go through bankruptcy, and start afresh. This was all he owed to creditors. The other path, long, thorny, and dreary, a life struggle, with everything sacrificed. There lay the two paths and this was his decision: "Not what I owe to my creditors, but what I owe to myself is the issue." There are times in most men's lives that test whether they be dross or pure gold. It is the decision made in the crisis which proves the man. Our friend entered the fiery furnace a man and emerged a hero. He paid his debts to the utmost farthing by lecturing around the world. "An amusing cuss, Mark Twain," is all very well as a popular verdict, but what of Mr. Clemens the man and the hero, for he is both and in the front rank, too, with Sir Walter. He had a heroine in his wife. She it was who sustained him and traveled the world round with him as his guardian angel, and enabled him to conquer as Sir Walter did. This he never failed to tell to his intimates. Never in my life did three words leave so keen a pang as those uttered upon my first call after Mrs. Clemens passed away. I fortunately found him alone and while my hand was still in his, and before one word had been spoken by either, there came from him, with a stronger pressure of my hand, these words: "A ruined home, a ruined home." The silence was unbroken. I write this years after, but still I hear the words again and my heart responds. One mercy, denied to our forefathers, comes to us of to-day. If the Judge within give us a verdict of acquittal as having lived this life well, we have no other Judge to fear. "To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Eternal punishment, because of a few years' shortcomings here on earth, would be the reverse of Godlike. Satan himself would recoil from it. CHAPTER XXII MATHEW ARNOLD AND OTHERS The most charming man, John Morley and I agree, that we ever knew was Matthew Arnold. He had, indeed, "a charm"--that is the only word which expresses the effect of his presence and his conversation. Even his look and grave silences charmed. [Illustration: _Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N.Y._ MATTHEW ARNOLD] He coached with us in 1880, I think, through Southern England--William Black and Edwin A. Abbey being of the party. Approaching a pretty village he asked me if the coach might stop there a few minutes. He explained that this was the resting-place of his godfather, Bishop Keble, and he should like to visit his grave. He continued: "Ah, dear, dear Keble! I caused him much sorrow by my views upon theological subjects, which caused me sorrow also, but notwithstanding he was deeply grieved, dear friend as he was, he traveled to Oxford and voted for me for Professor of English Poetry." We walked to the quiet churchyard together. Matthew Arnold in silent thought at the grave of Keble made upon me a lasting impression. Later the subject of his theological views was referred to. He said they had caused sorrow to his best friends. "Mr. Gladstone once gave expression to his deep disappointment, or to something like displeasure, saying I ought to have been a bishop. No doubt my writings prevented my promotion, as well as grieved my friends, but I could not help it. I had to express my views." I remember well the sadness of tone with which these last words were spoken, and how very slowly. They came as from the deep. He had his message to deliver. Steadily has the age advanced to receive it. His teachings pass almost uncensured to-day. If ever there was a seriously religious man it was Matthew Arnold. No irreverent word ever escaped his lips. In this he and Gladstone were equally above reproach, and yet he had in one short sentence slain the supernatural. "The case against miracles is closed. They do not happen." He and his daughter, now Mrs. Whitridge, were our guests when in New York in 1883, and also at our mountain home in the Alleghanies, so that I saw a great deal, but not enough, of him. My mother and myself drove him to the hall upon his first public appearance in New York. Never was there a finer audience gathered. The lecture was not a success, owing solely to his inability to speak well in public. He was not heard. When we returned home his first words were: "Well, what have you all to say? Tell me! Will I do as a lecturer?" I was so keenly interested in his success that I did not hesitate to tell him it would never do for him to go on unless he fitted himself for public speaking. He must get an elocutionist to give him lessons upon two or three points. I urged this so strongly that he consented to do so. After we all had our say, he turned to my mother, saying: "Now, dear Mrs. Carnegie, they have all given me their opinions, but I wish to know what you have to say about my first night as a lecturer in America." "Too ministerial, Mr. Arnold, too ministerial," was the reply slowly and softly delivered. And to the last Mr. Arnold would occasionally refer to that, saying he felt it hit the nail on the head. When he returned to New York from his Western tour, he had so much improved that his voice completely filled the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He had taken a few lessons from a professor of elocution in Boston, as advised, and all went well thereafter. He expressed a desire to hear the noted preacher, Mr. Beecher; and we started for Brooklyn one Sunday morning. Mr. Beecher had been apprized of our coming so that after the services he might remain to meet Mr. Arnold. When I presented Mr. Arnold he was greeted warmly. Mr. Beecher expressed his delight at meeting one in the flesh whom he had long known so well in the spirit, and, grasping his hand, he said: "There is nothing you have written, Mr. Arnold, which I have not carefully read at least once and a great deal many times, and always with profit, always with profit!" "Ah, then, I fear, Mr. Beecher," replied Arnold, "you may have found some references to yourself which would better have been omitted." "Oh, no, no, those did me the most good of all," said the smiling Beecher, and they both laughed. Mr. Beecher was never at a loss. After presenting Matthew Arnold to him, I had the pleasure of presenting the daughter of Colonel Ingersoll, saying, as I did so: "Mr. Beecher, this is the first time Miss Ingersoll has ever been in a Christian church." He held out both hands and grasped hers, and looking straight at her and speaking slowly, said: "Well, well, you are the most beautiful heathen I ever saw." Those who remember Miss Ingersoll in her youth will not differ greatly with Mr. Beecher. Then: "How's your father, Miss Ingersoll? I hope he's well. Many a time he and I have stood together on the platform, and wasn't it lucky for me we were on the same side!" Beecher was, indeed, a great, broad, generous man, who absorbed what was good wherever found. Spencer's philosophy, Arnold's insight tempered with sound sense, Ingersoll's staunch support of high political ends were powers for good in the Republic. Mr. Beecher was great enough to appreciate and hail as helpful friends all of these men. Arnold visited us in Scotland in 1887, and talking one day of sport he said he did not shoot, he could not kill anything that had wings and could soar in the clear blue sky; but, he added, he could not give up fishing--"the accessories are so delightful." He told of his happiness when a certain duke gave him a day's fishing twice or three times a year. I forget who the kind duke was, but there was something unsavory about him and mention was made of this. He was asked how he came to be upon intimate terms with such a man. "Ah!" he said, "a duke is always a personage with us, always a personage, independent of brains or conduct. We are all snobs. Hundreds of years have made us so, all snobs. We can't help it. It is in the blood." This was smilingly said, and I take it he made some mental reservations. He was no snob himself, but one who naturally "smiled at the claims of long descent," for generally the "descent" cannot be questioned. He was interested, however, in men of rank and wealth, and I remember when in New York he wished particularly to meet Mr. Vanderbilt. I ventured to say he would not find him different from other men. "No, but it is something to know the richest man in the world," he replied. "Certainly the man who makes his own wealth eclipses those who inherit rank from others." I asked him one day why he had never written critically upon Shakespeare and assigned him his place upon the throne among the poets. He said that thoughts of doing so had arisen, but reflection always satisfied him that he was incompetent to write upon, much less to criticize, Shakespeare. He believed it could not be successfully done. Shakespeare was above all, could be measured by no rules of criticism; and much as he should have liked to dwell upon his transcendent genius, he had always recoiled from touching the subject. I said that I was prepared for this, after his tribute which stands to-day unequaled, and I recalled his own lines from his sonnet: SHAKESPEARE Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask--Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty, Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea, Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the foil'd searching of mortality; And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know, Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure, Didst stand on earth unguess'd at--Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure, All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow, Find their sole voice in that victorious brow. I knew Mr. Shaw (Josh Billings) and wished Mr. Arnold, the apostle of sweetness and light, to meet that rough diamond--rough, but still a diamond. Fortunately one morning Josh came to see me in the Windsor Hotel, where we were then living, and referred to our guest, expressing his admiration for him. I replied: "You are going to dine with him to-night. The ladies are going out and Arnold and myself are to dine alone; you complete the trinity." To this he demurred, being a modest man, but I was inexorable. No excuse would be taken; he must come to oblige me. He did. I sat between them at dinner and enjoyed this meeting of extremes. Mr. Arnold became deeply interested in Mr. Shaw's way of putting things and liked his Western anecdotes, laughing more heartily than I had ever seen him do before. One incident after another was told from the experience of the lecturer, for Mr. Shaw had lectured for fifteen years in every place of ten thousand inhabitants or more in the United States. Mr. Arnold was desirous of hearing how the lecturer held his audiences. "Well," he said, "you mustn't keep them laughing too long, or they will think you are laughing at them. After giving the audience amusement you must become earnest and play the serious rôle. For instance, 'There are two things in this life for which no man is ever prepared. Who will tell me what these are?' Finally some one cries out 'Death.' 'Well, who gives me the other?' Many respond--wealth, happiness, strength, marriage, taxes. At last Josh begins, solemnly: 'None of you has given the second. There are two things on earth for which no man is ever prepared, and them's twins,' and the house shakes." Mr. Arnold did also. "Do you keep on inventing new stories?" was asked. "Yes, always. You can't lecture year after year unless you find new stories, and sometimes these fail to crack. I had one nut which I felt sure would crack and bring down the house, but try as I would it never did itself justice, all because I could not find the indispensable word, just one word. I was sitting before a roaring wood fire one night up in Michigan when the word came to me which I knew would crack like a whip. I tried it on the boys and it did. It lasted longer than any one word I used. I began: 'This is a highly critical age. People won't believe until they fully understand. Now there's Jonah and the whale. They want to know all about it, and it's my opinion that neither Jonah nor the whale fully understood it. And then they ask what Jonah was doing in the whale's--the whale's society.'" Mr. Shaw was walking down Broadway one day when accosted by a real Westerner, who said: "I think you are Josh Billings." "Well, sometimes I am called that." "I have five thousand dollars for you right here in my pocket-book." "Here's Delmonico's, come in and tell me all about it." After seating themselves, the stranger said he was part owner in a gold mine in California, and explained that there had been a dispute about its ownership and that the conference of partners broke up in quarreling. The stranger said he had left, threatening he would take the bull by the horns and begin legal proceedings. "The next morning I went to the meeting and told them I had turned over Josh Billings's almanac that morning and the lesson for the day was: 'When you take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; you can get a better hold and let go when you're a mind to.' We laughed and laughed and felt that was good sense. We took your advice, settled, and parted good friends. Some one moved that five thousand dollars be given Josh, and as I was coming East they appointed me treasurer and I promised to hand it over. There it is." The evening ended by Mr. Arnold saying: "Well, Mr. Shaw, if ever you come to lecture in England, I shall be glad to welcome and introduce you to your first audience. Any foolish man called a lord could do you more good than I by introducing you, but I should so much like to do it." Imagine Matthew Arnold, the apostle of sweetness and light, introducing Josh Billings, the foremost of jesters, to a select London audience. In after years he never failed to ask after "our leonine friend, Mr. Shaw." Meeting Josh at the Windsor one morning after the notable dinner I sat down with him in the rotunda and he pulled out a small memorandum book, saying as he did so: "Where's Arnold? I wonder what he would say to this. The 'Century' gives me $100 a week, I agreeing to send them any trifle that occurs to me. I try to give it something. Here's this from Uncle Zekiel, my weekly budget: 'Of course the critic is a greater man than the author. Any fellow who can point out the mistakes another fellow has made is a darned sight smarter fellow than the fellow who made them.'" I told Mr. Arnold a Chicago story, or rather a story about Chicago. A society lady of Boston visiting her schoolmate friend in Chicago, who was about to be married, was overwhelmed with attention. Asked by a noted citizen one evening what had charmed her most in Chicago, she graciously replied: "What surprises me most isn't the bustle of business, or your remarkable development materially, or your grand residences; it is the degree of culture and refinement I find here." The response promptly came: "Oh, we are just dizzy on cult out here, you bet." Mr. Arnold was not prepared to enjoy Chicago, which had impressed him as the headquarters of Philistinism. He was, however, surprised and gratified at meeting with so much "culture and refinement." Before he started he was curious to know what he should find most interesting. I laughingly said that he would probably first be taken to see the most wonderful sight there, which was said to be the slaughter houses, with new machines so perfected that the hog driven in at one end came out hams at the other before its squeal was out of one's ears. Then after a pause he asked reflectively: "But why should one go to slaughter houses, why should one hear hogs squeal?" I could give no reason, so the matter rested. Mr. Arnold's Old Testament favorite was certainly Isaiah: at least his frequent quotations from that great poet, as he called him, led one to this conclusion. I found in my tour around the world that the sacred books of other religions had been stripped of the dross that had necessarily accumulated around their legends. I remembered Mr. Arnold saying that the Scriptures should be so dealt with. The gems from Confucius and others which delight the world have been selected with much care and appear as "collects." The disciple has not the objectionable accretions of the ignorant past presented to him. The more one thinks over the matter, the stronger one's opinion becomes that the Christian will have to follow the Eastern example and winnow the wheat from the chaff--worse than chaff, sometimes the positively pernicious and even poisonous refuse. Burns, in the "Cotter's Saturday Night," pictures the good man taking down the big Bible for the evening service: "He wales a portion with judicious care." We should have those portions selected and use the selections only. In this, and much besides, the man whom I am so thankful for having known and am so favored as to call friend, has proved the true teacher in advance of his age, the greatest poetic teacher in the domain of "the future and its viewless things." I took Arnold down from our summer home at Cresson in the Alleghanies to see black, smoky Pittsburgh. In the path from the Edgar Thomson Steel Works to the railway station there are two flights of steps to the bridge across the railway, the second rather steep. When we had ascended about three quarters of it he suddenly stopped to gain breath. Leaning upon the rail and putting his hand upon his heart, he said to me: "Ah, this will some day do for me, as it did for my father." I did not know then of the weakness of his heart, but I never forgot this incident, and when not long after the sad news came of his sudden death, after exertion in England endeavoring to evade an obstacle, it came back to me with a great pang that our friend had foretold his fate. Our loss was great. To no man I have known could Burns's epitaph upon Tam Samson be more appropriately applied: "Tam Samson's weel-worn clay here lies: Ye canting zealots, spare him! If honest worth in heaven rise, Ye'll mend or ye win near him." The name of a dear man comes to me just here, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Boston, everybody's doctor, whose only ailment toward the end was being eighty years of age. He was a boy to the last. When Matthew Arnold died a few friends could not resist taking steps toward a suitable memorial to his memory. These friends quietly provided the necessary sum, as no public appeal could be thought of. No one could be permitted to contribute to such a fund except such as had a right to the privilege, for privilege it was felt to be. Double, triple the sum could readily have been obtained. I had the great satisfaction of being permitted to join the select few and to give the matter a little attention upon our side of the Atlantic. Of course I never thought of mentioning the matter to dear Dr. Holmes--not that he was not one of the elect, but that no author or professional man should be asked to contribute money to funds which, with rare exceptions, are best employed when used for themselves. One morning, however, I received a note from the doctor, saying that it had been whispered to him that there was such a movement on foot, and that I had been mentioned in connection with it, and if he were judged worthy to have his name upon the roll of honor, he would be gratified. Since he had heard of it he could not rest without writing to me, and he should like to hear in reply. That he was thought worthy goes without saying. This is the kind of memorial any man might wish. I venture to say that there was not one who contributed to it who was not grateful to the kind fates for giving him the opportunity. CHAPTER XXIII BRITISH POLITICAL LEADERS In London, Lord Rosebery, then in Gladstone's Cabinet and a rising statesman, was good enough to invite me to dine with him to meet Mr. Gladstone, and I am indebted to him for meeting the world's first citizen. This was, I think, in 1885, for my "Triumphant Democracy"[63] appeared in 1886, and I remember giving Mr. Gladstone, upon that occasion, some startling figures which I had prepared for it. [Footnote 63: _Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years' March of the Republic._ London and New York, 1886.] I never did what I thought right in a social matter with greater self-denial, than when later the first invitation came from Mr. Gladstone to dine with him. I was engaged to dine elsewhere and sorely tempted to plead that an invitation from the real ruler of Great Britain should be considered as much of a command as that of the ornamental dignitary. But I kept my engagement and missed the man I most wished to meet. The privilege came later, fortunately, when subsequent visits to him at Hawarden were made. Lord Rosebery opened the first library I ever gave, that of Dunfermline, and he has recently (1905) opened the latest given by me--one away over in Stornoway. When he last visited New York I drove him along the Riverside Drive, and he declared that no city in the world possessed such an attraction. He was a man of brilliant parts, but his resolutions were "Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Had he been born to labor and entered the House of Commons in youth, instead of being dropped without effort into the gilded upper chamber, he might have acquired in the rough-and-tumble of life the tougher skin, for he was highly sensitive and lacked tenacity of purpose essential to command in political life. He was a charming speaker--a eulogist with the lightest touch and the most graceful style upon certain themes of any speaker of his day. [Since these lines were written he has become, perhaps, the foremost eulogist of our race. He has achieved a high place. All honor to him!] One morning I called by appointment upon him. After greetings he took up an envelope which I saw as I entered had been carefully laid on his desk, and handed it to me, saying: "I wish you to dismiss your secretary." "That is a big order, Your Lordship. He is indispensable, and a Scotsman," I replied. "What is the matter with him?" "This isn't your handwriting; it is his. What do you think of a man who spells Rosebery with two _r's_?" I said if I were sensitive on that point life would not be endurable for me. "I receive many letters daily when at home and I am sure that twenty to thirty per cent of them mis-spell my name, ranging from 'Karnaghie' to 'Carnagay.'" But he was in earnest. Just such little matters gave him great annoyance. Men of action should learn to laugh at and enjoy these small things, or they themselves may become "small." A charming personality withal, but shy, sensitive, capricious, and reserved, qualities which a few years in the Commons would probably have modified. When he was, as a Liberal, surprising the House of Lords and creating some stir, I ventured to let off a little of my own democracy upon him. "Stand for Parliament boldly. Throw off your hereditary rank, declaring you scorn to accept a privilege which is not the right of every citizen. Thus make yourself the real leader of the people, which you never can be while a peer. You are young, brilliant, captivating, with the gift of charming speech. No question of your being Prime Minister if you take the plunge." To my surprise, although apparently interested, he said very quietly: "But the House of Commons couldn't admit me as a peer." "That's what I should hope. If I were in your place, and rejected, I would stand again for the next vacancy and force the issue. Insist that one having renounced his hereditary privileges becomes elevated to citizenship and is eligible for any position to which he is elected. Victory is certain. That's playing the part of a Cromwell. Democracy worships a precedent-breaker or a precedent-maker." We dropped the subject. Telling Morley of this afterward, I shall never forget his comment: "My friend, Cromwell doesn't reside at Number 38 Berkeley Square." Slowly, solemnly spoken, but conclusive. Fine fellow, Rosebery, only he was handicapped by being born a peer. On the other hand, Morley, rising from the ranks, his father a surgeon hard-pressed to keep his son at college, is still "Honest John," unaffected in the slightest degree by the so-called elevation to the peerage and the Legion of Honor, both given for merit. The same with "Bob" Reid, M.P., who became Earl Loreburn and Lord High Chancellor, Lord Haldane, his successor as Chancellor; Asquith, Prime Minister, Lloyd George, and others. Not even the rulers of our Republic to-day are more democratic or more thorough men of the people. When the world's foremost citizen passed away, the question was, Who is to succeed Gladstone; who can succeed him? The younger members of the Cabinet agreed to leave the decision to Morley. Harcourt or Campbell-Bannerman? There was only one impediment in the path of the former, but that was fatal--inability to control his temper. The issue had unfortunately aroused him to such outbursts as really unfitted him for leadership, and so the man of calm, sober, unclouded judgment was considered indispensable. I was warmly attached to Harcourt, who in turn was a devoted admirer of our Republic, as became the husband of Motley's daughter. Our census and our printed reports, which I took care that he should receive, interested him deeply. Of course, the elevation of the representative of my native town of Dunfermline (Campbell-Bannerman)[64] gave me unalloyed pleasure, the more so since in returning thanks from the Town House to the people assembled he used these words: "I owe my election to my Chairman, Bailie Morrison." [Footnote 64: Campbell-Bannerman was chosen leader of the Liberal Party in December, 1898.] The Bailie, Dunfermline's leading radical, was my uncle. We were radical families in those days and are so still, both Carnegies and Morrisons, and intense admirers of the Great Republic, like that one who extolled Washington and his colleagues as "men who knew and dared proclaim the royalty of man"--a proclamation worth while. There is nothing more certain than that the English-speaking race in orderly, lawful development will soon establish the golden rule of citizenship through evolution, never revolution: "The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that." This feeling already prevails in all the British colonies. The dear old Motherland hen has ducks for chickens which give her much anxiety breasting the waves, while she, alarmed, screams wildly from the shore; but she will learn to swim also by and by. In the autumn of 1905 Mrs. Carnegie and I attended the ceremony of giving the Freedom of Dunfermline to our friend, Dr. John Ross, chairman of the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, foremost and most zealous worker for the good of the town. Provost Macbeth in his speech informed the audience that the honor was seldom conferred, that there were only three living burgesses--one their member of Parliament, H. Campbell-Bannerman, then Prime Minister; the Earl of Elgin of Dunfermline, ex-Viceroy of India, then Colonial Secretary; and the third myself. This seemed great company for me, so entirely out of the running was I as regards official station. The Earl of Elgin is the descendant of The Bruce. Their family vault is in Dunfermline Abbey, where his great ancestor lies under the Abbey bell. It has been noted how Secretary Stanton selected General Grant as the one man in the party who could not possibly be the commander. One would be very apt to make a similar mistake about the Earl. When the Scottish Universities were to be reformed the Earl was second on the committee. When the Conservative Government formed its Committee upon the Boer War, the Earl, a Liberal, was appointed chairman. When the decision of the House of Lords brought dire confusion upon the United Free Church of Scotland, Lord Elgin was called upon as the Chairman of Committee to settle the matter. Parliament embodied his report in a bill, and again he was placed at the head to apply it. When trustees for the Universities of Scotland Fund were to be selected, I told Prime Minister Balfour I thought the Earl of Elgin as a Dunfermline magnate could be induced to take the chairmanship. He said I could not get a better man in Great Britain. So it has proved. John Morley said to me one day afterwards, but before he had, as a member of the Dunfermline Trust, experience of the chairman: "I used to think Elgin about the most problematical public man in high position I had ever met, but I now know him one of the ablest. Deeds, not words; judgment, not talk." Such the descendant of The Bruce to-day, the embodiment of modest worth and wisdom combined. Once started upon a Freedom-getting career, there seemed no end to these honors.[65] With headquarters in London in 1906, I received six Freedoms in six consecutive days, and two the week following, going out by morning train and returning in the evening. It might be thought that the ceremony would become monotonous, but this was not so, the conditions being different in each case. I met remarkable men in the mayors and provosts and the leading citizens connected with municipal affairs, and each community had its own individual stamp and its problems, successes, and failures. There was generally one greatly desired improvement overshadowing all other questions engrossing the attention of the people. Each was a little world in itself. The City Council is a Cabinet in miniature and the Mayor the Prime Minister. Domestic politics keep the people agog. Foreign relations are not wanting. There are inter-city questions with neighboring communities, joint water or gas or electrical undertakings of mighty import, conferences deciding for or against alliances or separations. [Footnote 65: Mr. Carnegie had received no less than fifty-four Freedoms of cities in Great Britain and Ireland. This was a record--Mr. Gladstone coming second with seventeen.] In no department is the contrast greater between the old world and the new than in municipal government. In the former the families reside for generations in the place of birth with increasing devotion to the town and all its surroundings. A father achieving the mayorship stimulates the son to aspire to it. That invaluable asset, city pride, is created, culminating in romantic attachment to native places. Councilorships are sought that each in his day and generation may be of some service to the town. To the best citizens this is a creditable object of ambition. Few, indeed, look beyond it--membership in Parliament being practically reserved for men of fortune, involving as it does residence in London without compensation. This latter, however, is soon to be changed and Britain follow the universal practice of paying legislators for service rendered. [In 1908; since realized; four hundred pounds is now paid.] After this she will probably follow the rest of the world by having Parliament meet in the daytime, its members fresh and ready for the day's work, instead of giving all day to professional work and then with exhausted brains undertaking the work of governing the country after dinner. Cavendish, the authority on whist, being asked if a man could possibly finesse a knave, second round, third player, replied, after reflecting, "Yes, he might _after dinner_." The best people are on the councils of British towns, incorruptible, public-spirited men, proud of and devoted to their homes. In the United States progress is being made in this direction, but we are here still far behind Britain. Nevertheless, people tend to settle permanently in places as the country becomes thickly populated. We shall develop the local patriot who is anxious to leave the place of his birth a little better than he found it. It is only one generation since the provostship of Scotch towns was generally reserved for one of the local landlords belonging to the upper classes. That "the Briton dearly loves a lord" is still true, but the love is rapidly disappearing. In Eastbourne, Kings-Lynn, Salisbury, Ilkeston, and many other ancient towns, I found the mayor had risen from the ranks, and had generally worked with his hands. The majority of the council were also of this type. All gave their time gratuitously. It was a source of much pleasure to me to know the provosts and leaders in council of so many towns in Scotland and England, not forgetting Ireland where my Freedom tour was equally attractive. Nothing could excel the reception accorded me in Cork, Waterford, and Limerick. It was surprising to see the welcome on flags expressed in the same Gaelic words, _Cead mille failthe_ (meaning "a hundred thousand welcomes") as used by the tenants of Skibo. Nothing could have given me such insight into local public life and patriotism in Britain as Freedom-taking, which otherwise might have become irksome. I felt myself so much at home among the city chiefs that the embarrassment of flags and crowds and people at the windows along our route was easily met as part of the duty of the day, and even the address of the chief magistrate usually furnished new phases of life upon which I could dwell. The lady mayoresses were delightful in all their pride and glory. My conclusion is that the United Kingdom is better served by the leading citizens of her municipalities, elected by popular vote, than any other country far and away can possibly be; and that all is sound to the core in that important branch of government. Parliament itself could readily be constituted of a delegation of members from the town councils without impairing its efficiency. Perhaps when the sufficient payment of members is established, many of these will be found at Westminster and that to the advantage of the Kingdom. CHAPTER XXIV GLADSTONE AND MORLEY Mr. Gladstone paid my "American Four-in-Hand in Britain" quite a compliment when Mrs. Carnegie and I were his guests at Hawarden in April, 1892. He suggested one day that I should spend the morning with him in his new library, while he arranged his books (which no one except himself was ever allowed to touch), and we could converse. In prowling about the shelves I found a unique volume and called out to my host, then on top of a library ladder far from me handling heavy volumes: "Mr. Gladstone, I find here a book 'Dunfermline Worthies,' by a friend of my father's. I knew some of the worthies when a child." "Yes," he replied, "and if you will pass your hand three or four books to the left I think you will find another book by a Dunfermline man." I did so and saw my book "An American Four-in-Hand in Britain." Ere I had done so, however, I heard that organ voice orating in full swing from the top of the ladder: "What Mecca is to the Mohammedan, Benares to the Hindoo, Jerusalem to the Christian, all that Dunfermline is to me." My ears heard the voice some moments before my brain realized that these were my own words called forth by the first glimpse caught of Dunfermline as we approached it from the south.[66] [Footnote 66: The whole paragraph is as follows: "How beautiful is Dunfermline seen from the Ferry Hills, its grand old Abbey towering over all, seeming to hallow the city, and to lend a charm and dignity to the lowliest tenement! Nor is there in all broad Scotland, nor in many places elsewhere that I know of, a more varied and delightful view than that obtained from the Park upon a fine day. What Benares is to the Hindoo, Mecca to the Mohammedan, Jerusalem to the Christian, all that Dunfermline is to me." (_An American Four-in-Hand in Britain_, p. 282.)] "How on earth did you come to get this book?" I asked. "I had not the honor of knowing you when it was written and could not have sent you a copy." "No!" he replied, "I had not then the pleasure of your acquaintance, but some one, I think Rosebery, told me of the book and I sent for it and read it with delight. That tribute to Dunfermline struck me as so extraordinary it lingered with me. I could never forget it." This incident occurred eight years after the "American Four-in-Hand" was written, and adds another to the many proofs of Mr. Gladstone's wonderful memory. Perhaps as a vain author I may be pardoned for confessing my grateful appreciation of his no less wonderful judgment. [Illustration: _Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N.Y._ WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE] The politician who figures publicly as "reader of the lesson" on Sundays, is apt to be regarded suspiciously. I confess that until I had known Mr. Gladstone well, I had found the thought arising now and then that the wary old gentleman might feel at least that these appearances cost him no votes. But all this vanished as I learned his true character. He was devout and sincere if ever man was. Yes, even when he records in his diary (referred to by Morley in his "Life of Gladstone") that, while addressing the House of Commons on the budget for several hours with great acceptance, he was "conscious of being sustained by the Divine Power above." Try as one may, who can deny that to one of such abounding faith this belief in the support of the Unknown Power must really have proved a sustaining influence, although it may shock others to think that any mortal being could be so bold as to imagine that the Creator of the Universe would concern himself about Mr. Gladstone's budget, prepared for a little speck of this little speck of earth? It seems almost sacrilegious, yet to Mr. Gladstone we know it was the reverse--a religious belief such as has no doubt often enabled men to accomplish wonders as direct agents of God and doing His work. On the night of the Queen's Jubilee in June, 1887, Mr. Blaine and I were to dine at Lord Wolverton's in Piccadilly, to meet Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone--Mr. Blaine's first introduction to him. We started in a cab from the Metropole Hotel in good time, but the crowds were so dense that the cab had to be abandoned in the middle of St. James's Street. Reaching the pavement, Mr. Blaine following, I found a policeman and explained to him who my companion was, where we were going, and asked him if he could not undertake to get us there. He did so, pushing his way through the masses with all the authority of his office and we followed. But it was nine o'clock before we reached Lord Wolverton's. We separated after eleven. Mr. Gladstone explained that he and Mrs. Gladstone had been able to reach the house by coming through Hyde Park and around the back way. They expected to get back to their residence, then in Carlton Terrace, in the same way. Mr. Blaine and I thought we should enjoy the streets and take our chances of getting back to the hotel by pushing through the crowds. We were doing this successfully and were moving slowly with the current past the Reform Club when I heard a word or two spoken by a voice close to the building on my right. I said to Mr. Blaine: "That is Mr. Gladstone's voice." He said: "It is impossible. We have just left him returning to his residence." "I don't care; I recognize voices better than faces, and I am sure that is Gladstone's." Finally I prevailed upon him to return a few steps. We got close to the side of the house and moved back. I came to a muffled figure and whispered: "What does 'Gravity' out of its bed at midnight?" Mr. Gladstone was discovered. I told him I recognized his voice whispering to his companion. "And so," I said, "the real ruler comes out to see the illuminations prepared for the nominal ruler!" He replied: "Young man, I think it is time you were in bed." We remained a few minutes with him, he being careful not to remove from his head and face the cloak that covered them. It was then past midnight and he was eighty, but, boylike, after he got Mrs. Gladstone safely home he had determined to see the show. The conversation at the dinner between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Blaine turned upon the differences in Parliamentary procedure between Britain and America. During the evening Mr. Gladstone cross-examined Mr. Blaine very thoroughly upon the mode of procedure of the House of Representatives of which Mr. Blaine had been the Speaker. I saw the "previous question," and summary rules with us for restricting needless debate made a deep impression upon Mr. Gladstone. At intervals the conversation took a wider range. Mr. Gladstone was interested in more subjects than perhaps any other man in Britain. When I was last with him in Scotland, at Mr. Armistead's, his mind was as clear and vigorous as ever, his interest in affairs equally strong. The topic which then interested him most, and about which he plied me with questions, was the tall steel buildings in our country, of which he had been reading. What puzzled him was how it could be that the masonry of a fifth floor or sixth story was often finished before the third or fourth. This I explained, much to his satisfaction. In getting to the bottom of things he was indefatigable. Mr. Morley (although a lord he still remains as an author plain John Morley) became one of our British friends quite early as editor of the "Fortnightly Review," which published my first contribution to a British periodical.[67] The friendship has widened and deepened in our old age until we mutually confess we are very close friends to each other.[68] We usually exchange short notes (sometimes long ones) on Sunday afternoons as the spirit moves us. We are not alike; far from it. We are drawn together because opposites are mutually beneficial to each other. I am optimistic; all my ducks being swans. He is pessimistic, looking out soberly, even darkly, upon the real dangers ahead, and sometimes imagining vain things. He is inclined to see "an officer in every bush." The world seems bright to me, and earth is often a real heaven--so happy I am and so thankful to the kind fates. Morley is seldom if ever wild about anything; his judgment is always deliberate and his eyes are ever seeing the spots on the sun. [Footnote 67: _An American Four-in-Hand in Britain._] [Footnote 68: "Mr. Carnegie had proved his originality, fullness of mind, and bold strength of character, as much or more in the distribution of wealth as he had shown skill and foresight in its acquisition. We had become known to one another more than twenty years before through Matthew Arnold. His extraordinary freshness of spirit easily carried Arnold, Herbert Spencer, myself, and afterwards many others, high over an occasional crudity or haste in judgment such as befalls the best of us in ardent hours. People with a genius for picking up pins made as much as they liked of this: it was wiser to do justice to his spacious feel for the great objects of the world--for knowledge and its spread, invention, light, improvement of social relations, equal chances to the talents, the passion for peace. These are glorious things; a touch of exaggeration in expression is easy to set right.... A man of high and wide and well-earned mark in his generation." (John, Viscount Morley, in _Recollections_, vol. II, pp. 110, 112. New York, 1919.)] [Illustration: _Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N.Y._ VISCOUNT MORLEY OF BLACKBURN] I told him the story of the pessimist whom nothing ever pleased, and the optimist whom nothing ever displeased, being congratulated by the angels upon their having obtained entrance to heaven. The pessimist replied: "Yes, very good place, but somehow or other this halo don't fit my head exactly." The optimist retorted by telling the story of a man being carried down to purgatory and the Devil laying his victim up against a bank while he got a drink at a spring--temperature very high. An old friend accosted him: "Well, Jim, how's this? No remedy possible; you're a gone coon sure." The reply came: "Hush, it might be worse." "How's that, when you are being carried down to the bottomless pit?" "Hush"--pointing to his Satanic Majesty--"he might take a notion to make me carry him." Morley, like myself, was very fond of music and reveled in the morning hour during which the organ was being played at Skibo. He was attracted by the oratorios as also Arthur Balfour. I remember they got tickets together for an oratorio at the Crystal Palace. Both are sane but philosophic, and not very far apart as philosophers, I understand; but some recent productions of Balfour send him far afield speculatively--a field which Morley never attempts. He keeps his foot on the firm ground and only treads where the way is cleared. No danger of his being "lost in the woods" while searching for the path. Morley's most astonishing announcement of recent days was in his address to the editors of the world, assembled in London. He informed them in effect that a few lines from Burns had done more to form and maintain the present improved political and social conditions of the people than all the millions of editorials ever written. This followed a remark that there were now and then a few written or spoken words which were in themselves events; they accomplished what they described. Tom Paine's "Rights of Man" was mentioned as such. Upon his arrival at Skibo after this address we talked it over. I referred to his tribute to Burns and his six lines, and he replied that he didn't need to tell me what lines these were. "No," I said, "I know them by heart." In a subsequent address, unveiling a statue of Burns in the park at Montrose, I repeated the lines I supposed he referred to, and he approved them. He and I, strange to say, had received the Freedom of Montrose together years before, so we are fellow-freemen. At last I induced Morley to visit us in America, and he made a tour through a great part of our country in 1904. We tried to have him meet distinguished men like himself. One day Senator Elihu Root called at my request and Morley had a long interview with him. After the Senator left Morley remarked to me that he had enjoyed his companion greatly, as being the most satisfactory American statesman he had yet met. He was not mistaken. For sound judgment and wide knowledge of our public affairs Elihu Root has no superior. Morley left us to pay a visit to President Roosevelt at the White House, and spent several fruitful days in company with that extraordinary man. Later, Morley's remark was: "Well, I've seen two wonders in America, Roosevelt and Niagara." That was clever and true to life--a great pair of roaring, tumbling, dashing and splashing wonders, knowing no rest, but both doing their appointed work, such as it is. Morley was the best person to have the Acton library and my gift of it to him came about in this way. When Mr. Gladstone told me the position Lord Acton was in, I agreed, at his suggestion, to buy Acton's library and allow it to remain for his use during life. Unfortunately, he did not live long to enjoy it--only a few years--and then I had the library upon my hands. I decided that Morley could make the best use of it for himself and would certainly leave it eventually to the proper institution. I began to tell him that I owned it when he interrupted me, saying: "Well, I must tell you I have known this from the day you bought it. Mr. Gladstone couldn't keep the secret, being so overjoyed that Lord Acton had it secure for life." Here were he and I in close intimacy, and yet never had one mentioned the situation to the other; but it was a surprise to me that Morley was not surprised. This incident proved the closeness of the bond between Gladstone and Morley--the only man he could not resist sharing his happiness with regarding earthly affairs. Yet on theological subjects they were far apart where Acton and Gladstone were akin. The year after I gave the fund for the Scottish universities Morley went to Balmoral as minister in attendance upon His Majesty, and wired that he must see me before we sailed. We met and he informed me His Majesty was deeply impressed with the gift to the universities and the others I had made to my native land, and wished him to ascertain whether there was anything in his power to bestow which I would appreciate. I asked: "What did you say?" Morley replied: "I do not think so." I said: "You are quite right, except that if His Majesty would write me a note expressing his satisfaction with what I had done, as he has to you, this would be deeply appreciated and handed down to my descendants as something they would all be proud of." This was done. The King's autograph note I have already transcribed elsewhere in these pages. That Skibo has proved the best of all health resorts for Morley is indeed fortunate, for he comes to us several times each summer and is one of the family, Lady Morley accompanying him. He is as fond of the yacht as I am myself, and, fortunately again, it is the best medicine for both of us. Morley is, and must always remain, "Honest John." No prevarication with him, no nonsense, firm as a rock upon all questions and in all emergencies; yet always looking around, fore and aft, right and left, with a big heart not often revealed in all its tenderness, but at rare intervals and upon fit occasion leaving no doubt of its presence and power. And after that silence. [Illustration: MR. CARNEGIE WITH VISCOUNT MORLEY] [Illustration: THE CARNEGIE FAMILY AT SKIBO] Chamberlain and Morley were fast friends as advanced radicals, and I often met and conferred with them when in Britain. When the Home Rule issue was raised, much interest was aroused in Britain over our American Federal system. I was appealed to freely and delivered public addresses in several cities, explaining and extolling our union, many in one, the freest government of the parts producing the strongest government of the whole. I sent Mr. Chamberlain Miss Anna L. Dawes's "How We Are Governed," at his request for information, and had conversations with Morley, Gladstone, and many others upon the subject. I had to write Mr. Morley that I did not approve of the first Home Rule Bill for reasons which I gave. When I met Mr. Gladstone he expressed his regret at this and a full talk ensued. I objected to the exclusion of the Irish members from Parliament as being a practical separation. I said we should never have allowed the Southern States to cease sending representatives to Washington. "What would you have done if they refused?" he asked. "Employed all the resources of civilization--first, stopped the mails," I replied. He paused and repeated: "Stop the mails." He felt the paralysis this involved and was silent, and changed the subject. In answer to questions as to what I should do, I always pointed out that America had many legislatures, but only one Congress. Britain should follow her example, one Parliament and local legislatures (not parliaments) for Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. These should be made states like New York and Virginia. But as Britain has no Supreme Court, as we have, to decide upon laws passed, not only by state legislatures but by Congress, the judicial being the final authority and not the political, Britain should have Parliament as the one national final authority over Irish measures. Therefore, the acts of the local legislature of Ireland should lie for three months' continuous session upon the table of the House of Commons, subject to adverse action of the House, but becoming operative unless disapproved. The provision would be a dead letter unless improper legislation were enacted, but if there were improper legislation, then it would be salutary. The clause, I said, was needed to assure timid people that no secession could arise. Urging this view upon Mr. Morley afterwards, he told me this had been proposed to Parnell, but rejected. Mr. Gladstone might then have said: "Very well, this provision is not needed for myself and others who think with me, but it is needed to enable us to carry Britain with us. I am now unable to take up the question. The responsibility is yours." One morning at Hawarden Mrs. Gladstone said: "William tells me he has such extraordinary conversations with you." These he had, no doubt. He had not often, if ever, heard the breezy talk of a genuine republican and did not understand my inability to conceive of different hereditary ranks. It seemed strange to me that men should deliberately abandon the name given them by their parents, and that name the parents' name. Especially amusing were the new titles which required the old hereditary nobles much effort to refrain from smiling at as they greeted the newly made peer who had perhaps bought his title for ten thousand pounds, more or less, given to the party fund. Mr. Blaine was with us in London and I told Mr. Gladstone he had expressed to me his wonder and pain at seeing him in his old age hat in hand, cold day as it was, at a garden party doing homage to titled nobodies. Union of Church and State was touched upon, and also my "Look Ahead," which foretells the reunion of our race owing to the inability of the British Islands to expand. I had held that the disestablishment of the English Church was inevitable, because among other reasons it was an anomaly. No other part of the race had it. All religions were fostered, none favored, in every other English-speaking state. Mr. Gladstone asked: "How long do you give our Established Church to live?" My reply was I could not fix a date; he had had more experience than I in disestablishing churches. He nodded and smiled. When I had enlarged upon a certain relative decrease of population in Britain that must come as compared with other countries of larger area, he asked: "What future do you forecast for her?" I referred to Greece among ancient nations and said that it was, perhaps, not accident that Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Burns, Scott, Stevenson, Bacon, Cromwell, Wallace, Bruce, Hume, Watt, Spencer, Darwin, and other celebrities had arisen here. Genius did not depend upon material resources. Long after Britain could not figure prominently as an industrial nation, not by her decline, but through the greater growth of others, she might in my opinion become the modern Greece and achieve among nations moral ascendancy. He caught at the words, repeating them musingly: "Moral ascendancy, moral ascendancy, I like that, I like that." I had never before so thoroughly enjoyed a conference with a man. I visited him again at Hawarden, but my last visit to him was at Lord Randall's at Cannes the winter of 1897 when he was suffering keenly. He had still the old charm and was especially attentive to my sister-in-law, Lucy, who saw him then for the first time and was deeply impressed. As we drove off, she murmured, "A sick eagle! A sick eagle!" Nothing could better describe this wan and worn leader of men as he appeared to me that day. He was not only a great, but a truly good man, stirred by the purest impulses, a high, imperious soul always looking upward. He had, indeed, earned the title: "Foremost Citizen of the World." In Britain, in 1881, I had entered into business relations with Samuel Storey, M.P., a very able man, a stern radical, and a genuine republican. We purchased several British newspapers and began a campaign of political progress upon radical lines. Passmore Edwards and some others joined us, but the result was not encouraging. Harmony did not prevail among my British friends and finally I decided to withdraw, which I was fortunately able to do without loss.[69] [Footnote 69: Mr. Carnegie acquired no less than eighteen British newspapers with the idea of promoting radical views. The political results were disappointing, but with his genius for making money the pecuniary results were more than satisfactory.] My third literary venture, "Triumphant Democracy,"[70] had its origin in realizing how little the best-informed foreigner, or even Briton, knew of America, and how distorted that little was. It was prodigious what these eminent Englishmen did not then know about the Republic. My first talk with Mr. Gladstone in 1882 can never be forgotten. When I had occasion to say that the majority of the English-speaking race was now republican and it was a minority of monarchists who were upon the defensive, he said: "Why, how is that?" "Well, Mr. Gladstone," I said, "the Republic holds sway over a larger number of English-speaking people than the population of Great Britain and all her colonies even if the English-speaking colonies were numbered twice over." "Ah! how is that? What is your population?" "Sixty-six millions, and yours is not much more than half." "Ah, yes, surprising!" [Footnote 70: _Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years' March of the Republic._ London, 1886; New York, 1888.] With regard to the wealth of the nations, it was equally surprising for him to learn that the census of 1880 proved the hundred-year-old Republic could purchase Great Britain and Ireland and all their realized capital and investments and then pay off Britain's debt, and yet not exhaust her fortune. But the most startling statement of all was that which I was able to make when the question of Free Trade was touched upon. I pointed out that America was now the greatest manufacturing nation in the world. [At a later date I remember Lord Chancellor Haldane fell into the same error, calling Britain the greatest manufacturing country in the world, and thanked me for putting him right.] I quoted Mulhall's figures: British manufactures in 1880, eight hundred and sixteen millions sterling; American manufactures eleven hundred and twenty-six millions sterling.[71] His one word was: "Incredible!" [Footnote 71: The estimated value of manufactures in Great Britain in 1900 was five billions of dollars as compared to thirteen billions for the United States. In 1914 the United States had gone to over twenty-four billions.] Other startling statements followed and he asked: "Why does not some writer take up this subject and present the facts in a simple and direct form to the world?" I was then, as a matter of fact, gathering material for "Triumphant Democracy," in which I intended to perform the very service which he indicated, as I informed him. "Round the World" and the "American Four-in-Hand" gave me not the slightest effort but the preparation of "Triumphant Democracy," which I began in 1882, was altogether another matter. It required steady, laborious work. Figures had to be examined and arranged, but as I went forward the study became fascinating. For some months I seemed to have my head filled with statistics. The hours passed away unheeded. It was evening when I supposed it was midday. The second serious illness of my life dates from the strain brought upon me by this work, for I had to attend to business as well. I shall think twice before I trust myself again with anything so fascinating as figures. CHAPTER XXV HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS DISCIPLE Herbert Spencer, with his friend Mr. Lott and myself, were fellow travelers on the Servia from Liverpool to New York in 1882. I bore a note of introduction to him from Mr. Morley, but I had met the philosopher in London before that. I was one of his disciples. As an older traveler, I took Mr. Lott and him in charge. We sat at the same table during the voyage. One day the conversation fell upon the impression made upon us by great men at first meeting. Did they, or did they not, prove to be as we had imagined them? Each gave his experience. Mine was that nothing could be more different than the being imagined and that being beheld in the flesh. "Oh!" said Mr. Spencer, "in my case, for instance, was this so?" "Yes," I replied, "you more than any. I had imagined my teacher, the great calm philosopher brooding, Buddha-like, over all things, unmoved; never did I dream of seeing him excited over the question of Cheshire or Cheddar cheese." The day before he had peevishly pushed away the former when presented by the steward, exclaiming "Cheddar, Cheddar, not Cheshire; I said _Cheddar_." There was a roar in which none joined more heartily than the sage himself. He refers to this incident of the voyage in his Autobiography.[72] [Footnote 72: _An Autobiography_, by Herbert Spencer, vol. I, p. 424. New York, 1904.] Spencer liked stories and was a good laugher. American stories seemed to please him more than others, and of those I was able to tell him not a few, which were usually followed by explosive laughter. He was anxious to learn about our Western Territories, which were then attracting attention in Europe, and a story I told him about Texas struck him as amusing. When a returning disappointed emigrant from that State was asked about the then barren country, he said: "Stranger, all that I have to say about Texas is that if I owned Texas and h--l, I would sell Texas." What a change from those early days! Texas has now over four millions of population and is said to have the soil to produce more cotton than the whole world did in 1882. The walk up to the house, when I had the philosopher out at Pittsburgh, reminded me of another American story of the visitor who started to come up the garden walk. When he opened the gate a big dog from the house rushed down upon him. He retreated and closed the garden gate just in time, the host calling out: "He won't touch you, you know barking dogs never bite." "Yes," exclaimed the visitor, tremblingly, "I know that and you know it, but does the dog know it?" One day my eldest nephew was seen to open the door quietly and peep in where we were seated. His mother afterwards asked him why he had done so and the boy of eleven replied: "Mamma, I wanted to see the man who wrote in a book that there was no use studying grammar." Spencer was greatly pleased when he heard the story and often referred to it. He had faith in that nephew. [Illustration: HERBERT SPENCER AT SEVENTY-EIGHT] Speaking to him one day about his having signed a remonstrance against a tunnel between Calais and Dover as having surprised me, he explained that for himself he was as anxious to have the tunnel as any one and that he did not believe in any of the objections raised against it, but signed the remonstrance because he knew his countrymen were such fools that the military and naval element in Britain could stampede the masses, frighten them, and stimulate militarism. An increased army and navy would then be demanded. He referred to a scare which had once arisen and involved the outlay of many millions in fortifications which had proved useless. One day we were sitting in our rooms in the Grand Hotel looking out over Trafalgar Square. The Life Guards passed and the following took place: "Mr. Spencer, I never see men dressed up like Merry Andrews without being saddened and indignant that in the nineteenth century the most civilized race, as we consider ourselves, still finds men willing to adopt as a profession--until lately the only profession for gentlemen--the study of the surest means of killing other men." Mr. Spencer said: "I feel just so myself, but I will tell you how I curb my indignation. Whenever I feel it rising I am calmed by this story of Emerson's: He had been hooted and hustled from the platform in Faneuil Hall for daring to speak against slavery. He describes himself walking home in violent anger, until opening his garden gate and looking up through the branches of the tall elms that grew between the gate and his modest home, he saw the stars shining through. They said to him: 'What, so hot, my little sir?'" I laughed and he laughed, and I thanked him for that story. Not seldom I have to repeat to myself, "What, so hot, my little sir?" and it suffices. Mr. Spencer's visit to America had its climax in the banquet given for him at Delmonico's. I drove him to it and saw the great man there in a funk. He could think of nothing but the address he was to deliver.[73] I believe he had rarely before spoken in public. His great fear was that he should be unable to say anything that would be of advantage to the American people, who had been the first to appreciate his works. He may have attended many banquets, but never one comprised of more distinguished people than this one. It was a remarkable gathering. The tributes paid Spencer by the ablest men were unique. The climax was reached when Henry Ward Beecher, concluding his address, turned round and addressed Mr. Spencer in these words: "To my father and my mother I owe my physical being; to you, sir, I owe my intellectual being. At a critical moment you provided the safe paths through the bogs and morasses; you were my teacher." [Footnote 73: "An occasion, on which more, perhaps, than any other in my life, I ought to have been in good condition, bodily and mentally, came when I was in a condition worse than I had been for six and twenty years. 'Wretched night; no sleep at all; kept in my room all day' says my diary, and I entertained 'great fear I should collapse.' When the hour came for making my appearance at Delmonico's, where the dinner was given, I got my friends to secrete me in an anteroom until the last moment, so that I might avoid all excitements of introductions and congratulations; and as Mr. Evarts, who presided, handed me on the dais, I begged him to limit his conversation with me as much as possible, and to expect very meagre responses. The event proved that, trying though the tax was, there did not result the disaster I feared; and when Mr. Evarts had duly uttered the compliments of the occasion, I was able to get through my prepared speech without difficulty, though not with much effect." (Spencer's _Autobiography_, vol. II, p. 478.)] These words were spoken in slow, solemn tones. I do not remember ever having noticed more depth of feeling; evidently they came from a grateful debtor. Mr. Spencer was touched by the words. They gave rise to considerable remark, and shortly afterwards Mr. Beecher preached a course of sermons, giving his views upon Evolution. The conclusion of the series was anxiously looked for, because his acknowledgment of debt to Spencer as his teacher had created alarm in church circles. In the concluding article, as in his speech, if I remember rightly, Mr. Beecher said that, although he believed in evolution (Darwinism) up to a certain point, yet when man had reached his highest human level his Creator then invested him (and man alone of all living things) with the Holy Spirit, thereby bringing him into the circle of the godlike. Thus he answered his critics. Mr. Spencer took intense interest in mechanical devices. When he visited our works with me the new appliances impressed him, and in after years he sometimes referred to these and said his estimate of American invention and push had been fully realized. He was naturally pleased with the deference and attention paid him in America. I seldom if ever visited England without going to see him, even after he had removed to Brighton that he might live looking out upon the sea, which appealed to and soothed him. I never met a man who seemed to weigh so carefully every action, every word--even the pettiest--and so completely to find guidance through his own conscience. He was no scoffer in religious matters. In the domain of theology, however, he had little regard for decorum. It was to him a very faulty system hindering true growth, and the idea of rewards and punishments struck him as an appeal to very low natures indeed. Still he never went to such lengths as Tennyson did upon an occasion when some of the old ideas were under discussion. Knowles[74] told me that Tennyson lost control of himself. Knowles said he was greatly disappointed with the son's life of the poet as giving no true picture of his father in his revolt against stern theology. [Footnote 74: James Knowles, founder of _Nineteenth Century_.] Spencer was always the calm philosopher. I believe that from childhood to old age--when the race was run--he never was guilty of an immoral act or did an injustice to any human being. He was certainly one of the most conscientious men in all his doings that ever was born. Few men have wished to know another man more strongly than I to know Herbert Spencer, for seldom has one been more deeply indebted than I to him and to Darwin. Reaction against the theology of past days comes to many who have been surrounded in youth by church people entirely satisfied that the truth and faith indispensable to future happiness were derived only through strictest Calvinistic creeds. The thoughtful youth is naturally carried along and disposed to concur in this. He cannot but think, up to a certain period of development, that what is believed by the best and the highest educated around him--those to whom he looks for example and instruction--must be true. He resists doubt as inspired by the Evil One seeking his soul, and sure to get it unless faith comes to the rescue. Unfortunately he soon finds that faith is not exactly at his beck and call. Original sin he thinks must be at the root of this inability to see as he wishes to see, to believe as he wishes to believe. It seems clear to him that already he is little better than one of the lost. Of the elect he surely cannot be, for these must be ministers, elders, and strictly orthodox men. The young man is soon in chronic rebellion, trying to assume godliness with the others, acquiescing outwardly in the creed and all its teachings, and yet at heart totally unable to reconcile his outward accordance with his inward doubt. If there be intellect and virtue in the man but one result is possible; that is, Carlyle's position after his terrible struggle when after weeks of torment he came forth: "If it be incredible, in God's name, then, let it be discredited." With that the load of doubt and fear fell from him forever. When I, along with three or four of my boon companions, was in this stage of doubt about theology, including the supernatural element, and indeed the whole scheme of salvation through vicarious atonement and all the fabric built upon it, I came fortunately upon Darwin's and Spencer's works "The Data of Ethics," "First Principles," "Social Statics," "The Descent of Man." Reaching the pages which explain how man has absorbed such mental foods as were favorable to him, retaining what was salutary, rejecting what was deleterious, I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. "All is well since all grows better" became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward. Humanity is an organism, inherently rejecting all that is deleterious, that is, wrong, and absorbing after trial what is beneficial, that is, right. If so disposed, the Architect of the Universe, we must assume, might have made the world and man perfect, free from evil and from pain, as angels in heaven are thought to be; but although this was not done, man has been given the power of advancement rather than of retrogression. The Old and New Testaments remain, like other sacred writings of other lands, of value as records of the past and for such good lessons as they inculcate. Like the ancient writers of the Bible our thoughts should rest upon this life and our duties here. "To perform the duties of this world well, troubling not about another, is the prime wisdom," says Confucius, great sage and teacher. The next world and its duties we shall consider when we are placed in it. I am as a speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe. I shrink back. One truth I see. Franklin was right. "The highest worship of God is service to Man." All this, however, does not prevent everlasting hope of immortality. It would be no greater miracle to be born to a future life than to have been born to live in this present life. The one has been created, why not the other? Therefore there is reason to hope for immortality. Let us hope.[75] [Footnote 75: "A.C. is really a tremendous personality--dramatic, wilful, generous, whimsical, at times almost cruel in pressing his own conviction upon others, and then again tender, affectionate, emotional, always imaginative, unusual and wide-visioned in his views. He is well worth Boswellizing, but I am urging him to be 'his own Boswell.'... He is inconsistent in many ways, but with a passion for lofty views; the brotherhood of man, peace among nations, religious purity--I mean the purification of religion from gross superstition--the substitution for a Westminster-Catechism God, of a Righteous, a Just God." (_Letters of Richard Watson Gilder_, p. 375.)] CHAPTER XXVI BLAINE AND HARRISON While one is known by the company he keeps, it is equally true that one is known by the stories he tells. Mr. Blaine was one of the best story-tellers I ever met. His was a bright sunny nature with a witty, pointed story for every occasion. Mr. Blaine's address at Yorktown (I had accompanied him there) was greatly admired. It directed special attention to the cordial friendship which had grown up between the two branches of the English-speaking race, and ended with the hope that the prevailing peace and good-will between the two nations would exist for many centuries to come. When he read this to me, I remember that the word "many" jarred, and I said: "Mr. Secretary, might I suggest the change of one word? I don't like 'many'; why not 'all' the centuries to come?" "Good, that is perfect!" And so it was given in the address: "for _all_ the centuries to come." We had a beautiful night returning from Yorktown, and, sitting in the stern of the ship in the moonlight, the military band playing forward, we spoke of the effect of music. Mr. Blaine said that his favorite just then was the "Sweet By and By," which he had heard played last by the same band at President Garfield's funeral, and he thought upon that occasion he was more deeply moved by sweet sounds than he had ever been in his life. He requested that it should be the last piece played that night. Both he and Gladstone were fond of simple music. They could enjoy Beethoven and the classic masters, but Wagner was as yet a sealed book to them. In answer to my inquiry as to the most successful speech he ever heard in Congress, he replied it was that of the German, ex-Governor Ritter of Pennsylvania. The first bill appropriating money for inland _fresh_ waters was under consideration. The house was divided. Strict constructionists held this to be unconstitutional; only harbors upon the salt sea were under the Federal Government. The contest was keen and the result doubtful, when to the astonishment of the House, Governor Ritter slowly arose for the first time. Silence at once reigned. What was the old German ex-Governor going to say--he who had never said anything at all? Only this: "Mr. Speaker, I don't know much particulars about de constitution, but I know dis; I wouldn't gif a d----d cent for a constitution dat didn't wash in fresh water as well as in salt." The House burst into an uproar of uncontrollable laughter, and the bill passed. So came about this new departure and one of the most beneficent ways of spending government money, and of employing army and navy engineers. Little of the money spent by the Government yields so great a return. So expands our flexible constitution to meet the new wants of an expanding population. Let who will make the constitution if we of to-day are permitted to interpret it. [Illustration: _Photograph from Underwood & Underwood, N.Y._ JAMES G. BLAINE] Mr. Blaine's best story, if one can be selected from so many that were excellent, I think was the following: In the days of slavery and the underground railroads, there lived on the banks of the Ohio River near Gallipolis, a noted Democrat named Judge French, who said to some anti-slavery friends that he should like them to bring to his office the first runaway negro that crossed the river, bound northward by the underground. He couldn't understand why they wished to run away. This was done, and the following conversation took place: _Judge:_ "So you have run away from Kentucky. Bad master, I suppose?" _Slave:_ "Oh, no, Judge; very good, kind massa." _Judge:_ "He worked you too hard?" _Slave:_ "No, sah, never overworked myself all my life." _Judge, hesitatingly:_ "He did not give you enough to eat?" _Slave:_ "Not enough to eat down in Kaintuck? Oh, Lor', plenty to eat." _Judge:_ "He did not clothe you well?" _Slave:_ "Good enough clothes for me, Judge." _Judge:_ "You hadn't a comfortable home?" _Slave:_ "Oh, Lor', makes me cry to think of my pretty little cabin down dar in old Kaintuck." _Judge, after a pause:_ "You had a good, kind master, you were not overworked, plenty to eat, good clothes, fine home. I don't see why the devil you wished to run away." _Slave:_ "Well, Judge, I lef de situation down dar open. You kin go rite down and git it." The Judge had seen a great light. "Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves, howe'er contented, never know." That the colored people in such numbers risked all for liberty is the best possible proof that they will steadily approach and finally reach the full stature of citizenship in the Republic. I never saw Mr. Blaine so happy as while with us at Cluny. He was a boy again and we were a rollicking party together. He had never fished with a fly. I took him out on Loch Laggan and he began awkwardly, as all do, but he soon caught the swing. I shall never forget his first capture: "My friend, you have taught me a new pleasure in life. There are a hundred fishing lochs in Maine, and I'll spend my holidays in future upon them trout-fishing." At Cluny there is no night in June and we danced on the lawn in the bright twilight until late. Mrs. Blaine, Miss Dodge, Mr. Blaine, and other guests were trying to do the Scotch reel, and "whooping" like Highlanders. We were gay revelers during those two weeks. One night afterwards, at a dinner in our home in New York, chiefly made up of our Cluny visitors, Mr. Blaine told the company that he had discovered at Cluny what a real holiday was. "It is when the merest trifles become the most serious events of life." President Harrison's nomination for the presidency in 1888 came to Mr. Blaine while on a coaching trip with us. Mr. and Mrs. Blaine, Miss Margaret Blaine, Senator and Mrs. Hale, Miss Dodge, and Walter Damrosch were on the coach with us from London to Cluny Castle. In approaching Linlithgow from Edinburgh, we found the provost and magistrates in their gorgeous robes at the hotel to receive us. I was with them when Mr. Blaine came into the room with a cablegram in his hand which he showed to me, asking what it meant. It read: "Use cipher." It was from Senator Elkins at the Chicago Convention. Mr. Blaine had cabled the previous day, declining to accept the nomination for the presidency unless Secretary Sherman of Ohio agreed, and Senator Elkins no doubt wished to be certain that he was in correspondence with Mr. Blaine and not with some interloper. I said to Mr. Blaine that the Senator had called to see me before sailing, and suggested we should have cipher words for the prominent candidates. I gave him a few and kept a copy upon a slip, which I put in my pocket-book. I looked and fortunately found it. Blaine was "Victor"; Harrison, "Trump"; Phelps of New Jersey, "Star"; and so on. I wired "Trump" and "Star."[76] This was in the evening. [Footnote 76: "A code had been agreed upon between his friends in the United States and himself, and when a deadlock or a long contest seemed inevitable, the following dispatch was sent from Mr. Carnegie's estate in Scotland, where Blaine was staying, to a prominent Republican leader: "'June 25. Too late victor immovable take trump and star.' WHIP. Interpreted, it reads: 'Too late. Blaine immovable. Take Harrison and Phelps. CARNEGIE.'" (_James G. Blaine_, by Edward Stanwood, p. 308. Boston, 1905.)] We retired for the night, and next day the whole party was paraded by the city authorities in their robes up the main street to the palace grounds which were finely decorated with flags. Speeches of welcome were made and replied to. Mr. Blaine was called upon by the people, and responded in a short address. Just then a cablegram was handed to him: "Harrison and Morton nominated." Phelps had declined. So passed forever Mr. Blaine's chance of holding the highest of all political offices--the elected of the majority of the English-speaking race. But he was once fairly elected to the presidency and done out of New York State, as was at last clearly proven, the perpetrators having been punished for an attempted repetition of the same fraud at a subsequent election. Mr. Blaine, as Secretary of State in Harrison's Cabinet, was a decided success and the Pan-American Congress his most brilliant triumph. My only political appointment came at this time and was that of a United States delegate to the Congress. It gave me a most interesting view of the South American Republics and their various problems. We sat down together, representatives of all the republics but Brazil. One morning the announcement was made that a new constitution had been ratified. Brazil had become a member of the sisterhood, making seventeen republics in all--now twenty-one. There was great applause and cordial greeting of the representatives of Brazil thus suddenly elevated. I found the South American representatives rather suspicious of their big brother's intentions. A sensitive spirit of independence was manifest, which it became our duty to recognize. In this I think we succeeded, but it will behoove subsequent governments to scrupulously respect the national feeling of our Southern neighbors. It is not control, but friendly coöperation upon terms of perfect equality we should seek. I sat next to Manuel Quintana who afterwards became President of Argentina. He took a deep interest in the proceedings, and one day became rather critical upon a trifling issue, which led to an excited colloquy between him and Chairman Blaine. I believe it had its origin in a false translation from one language to another. I rose, slipped behind the chairman on the platform, whispering to him as I passed that if an adjournment was moved I was certain the differences could be adjusted. He nodded assent. I returned to my seat and moved adjournment, and during the interval all was satisfactorily arranged. Passing the delegates, as we were about to leave the hall, an incident occurred which comes back to me as I write. A delegate threw one arm around me and with the other hand patting me on the breast, exclaimed: "Mr. Carnegie, you have more here than here"--pointing to his pocket. Our Southern brethren are so lovingly demonstrative. Warm climes and warm hearts. In 1891 President Harrison went with me from Washington to Pittsburgh, as I have already stated, to open the Carnegie Hall and Library, which I had presented to Allegheny City. We traveled over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad by daylight, and enjoyed the trip, the president being especially pleased with the scenery. Reaching Pittsburgh at dark, the flaming coke ovens and dense pillars of smoke and fire amazed him. The well-known description of Pittsburgh, seen from the hilltops, as "H--l with the lid off," seemed to him most appropriate. He was the first President who ever visited Pittsburgh. President Harrison, his grandfather, had, however, passed from steamboat to canal-boat there, on his way to Washington after election. The opening ceremony was largely attended owing to the presence of the President and all passed off well. Next morning the President wished to see our steel works, and he was escorted there, receiving a cordial welcome from the workmen. I called up each successive manager of department as we passed and presented him. Finally, when Mr. Schwab was presented, the President turned to me and said, "How is this, Mr. Carnegie? You present only boys to me." "Yes, Mr. President, but do you notice what kind of boys they are?" "Yes, hustlers, every one of them," was his comment. He was right. No such young men could have been found for such work elsewhere in this world. They had been promoted to partnership without cost or risk. If the profits did not pay for their shares, no responsibility remained upon the young men. A giving thus to "partners" is very different from paying wages to "employees" in corporations. The President's visit, not to Pittsburgh, but to Allegheny over the river, had one beneficial result. Members of the City Council of Pittsburgh reminded me that I had first offered Pittsburgh money for a library and hall, which it declined, and that then Allegheny City had asked if I would give them to her, which I did. The President visiting Allegheny to open the library and hall there, and the ignoring of Pittsburgh, was too much. Her authorities came to me again the morning after the Allegheny City opening, asking if I would renew my offer to Pittsburgh. If so, the city would accept and agree to expend upon maintenance a larger percentage than I had previously asked. I was only too happy to do this and, instead of two hundred and fifty thousand, I offered a million dollars. My ideas had expanded. Thus was started the Carnegie Institute. Pittsburgh's leading citizens are spending freely upon artistic things. This center of manufacturing has had its permanent orchestra for some years--Boston and Chicago being the only other cities in America that can boast of one. A naturalist club and a school of painting have sprung up. The success of Library, Art Gallery, Museum, and Music Hall--a noble quartet in an immense building--is one of the chief satisfactions of my life. This is my monument, because here I lived my early life and made my start, and I am to-day in heart a devoted son of dear old smoky Pittsburgh. Herbert Spencer heard, while with us in Pittsburgh, some account of the rejection of my first offer of a library to Pittsburgh. When the second offer was made, he wrote me that he did not understand how I could renew it; he never could have done so; they did not deserve it. I wrote the philosopher that if I had made the first offer to Pittsburgh that I might receive her thanks and gratitude, I deserved the personal arrows shot at me and the accusations made that only my own glorification and a monument to my memory were sought. I should then probably have felt as he did. But, as it was the good of the people of Pittsburgh I had in view, among whom I had made my fortune, the unfounded suspicions of some natures only quickened my desire to work their good by planting in their midst a potent influence for higher things. This the Institute, thank the kind fates, has done. Pittsburgh has played her part nobly. CHAPTER XXVII WASHINGTON DIPLOMACY President Harrison had been a soldier and as President was a little disposed to fight. His attitude gave some of his friends concern. He was opposed to arbitrating the Behring Sea question when Lord Salisbury, at the dictation of Canada, had to repudiate the Blaine agreement for its settlement, and was disposed to proceed to extreme measures. But calmer counsels prevailed. He was determined also to uphold the Force Bill against the South. When the quarrel arose with Chili, there was a time when it seemed almost impossible to keep the President from taking action which would have resulted in war. He had great personal provocation because the Chilian authorities had been most indiscreet in their statements in regard to his action. I went to Washington to see whether I could not do something toward reconciling the belligerents, because, having been a member of the first Pan-American Conference, I had become acquainted with the representatives from our southern sister-republics and was on good terms with them. As luck would have it, I was just entering the Shoreham Hotel when I saw Senator Henderson of Missouri, who had been my fellow-delegate to the Conference. He stopped and greeted me, and looking across the street he said: "There's the President beckoning to you." I crossed the street. "Hello, Carnegie, when did you arrive?" "Just arrived, Mr. President; I was entering the hotel." "What are you here for?" "To have a talk with you." "Well, come along and talk as we walk." The President took my arm and we promenaded the streets of Washington in the dusk for more than an hour, during which time the discussion was lively. I told him that he had appointed me a delegate to the Pan-American Conference, that he had assured the South-American delegates when they parted that he had given a military review in their honor to show them, not that we had an army, but rather that we had none and needed none, that we were the big brother in the family of republics, and that all disputes, if any arose, would be settled by peaceful arbitration. I was therefore surprised and grieved to find that he was now apparently taking a different course, threatening to resort to war in a paltry dispute with little Chili. "You're a New Yorker and think of nothing but business and dollars. That is the way with New Yorkers; they care nothing for the dignity and honor of the Republic," said his Excellency. "Mr. President, I am one of the men in the United States who would profit most by war; it might throw millions into my pockets as the largest manufacturer of steel." "Well, that is probably true in your case; I had forgotten." "Mr. President, if I were going to fight, I would take some one of my size." "Well, would you let any nation insult and dishonor you because of its size?" "Mr. President, no man can dishonor me except myself. Honor wounds must be self-inflicted." "You see our sailors were attacked on shore and two of them killed, and you would stand that?" he asked. "Mr. President, I do not think the United States dishonored every time a row among drunken sailors takes place; besides, these were not American sailors at all; they were foreigners, as you see by their names. I would be disposed to cashier the captain of that ship for allowing the sailors to go on shore when there was rioting in the town and the public peace had been already disturbed." The discussion continued until we had finally reached the door of the White House in the dark. The President told me he had an engagement to dine out that night, but invited me to dine with him the next evening, when, as he said, there would be only the family and we could talk. "I am greatly honored and shall be with you to-morrow evening," I said. And so we parted. The next morning I went over to see Mr. Blaine, then Secretary of State. He rose from his seat and held out both hands. "Oh, why weren't you dining with us last night? When the President told Mrs. Blaine that you were in town, she said: 'Just think, Mr. Carnegie is in town and I had a vacant seat here he could have occupied.'" "Well, Mr. Blaine, I think it is rather fortunate that I have not seen you," I replied; and I then told him what had occurred with the President. "Yes," he said, "it really was fortunate. The President might have thought you and I were in collusion." Senator Elkins, of West Virginia, a bosom friend of Mr. Blaine, and also a very good friend of the President, happened to come in, and he said he had seen the President, who told him that he had had a talk with me upon the Chilian affair last evening and that I had come down hot upon the subject. "Well, Mr. President," said Senator Elkins, "it is not probable that Mr. Carnegie would speak as plainly to you as he would to me. He feels very keenly, but he would naturally be somewhat reserved in talking to you." The President replied: "I didn't see the slightest indication of reserve, I assure you." The matter was adjusted, thanks to the peace policy characteristic of Mr. Blaine. More than once he kept the United States out of foreign trouble as I personally knew. The reputation that he had of being an aggressive American really enabled that great man to make concessions which, made by another, might not have been readily accepted by the people. I had a long and friendly talk with the President that evening at dinner, but he was not looking at all well. I ventured to say to him he needed a rest. By all means he should get away. He said he had intended going off on a revenue cutter for a few days, but Judge Bradley of the Supreme Court had died and he must find a worthy successor. I said there was one I could not recommend because we had fished together and were such intimate friends that we could not judge each other disinterestedly, but he might inquire about him--Mr. Shiras, of Pittsburgh. He did so and appointed him. Mr. Shiras received the strong support of the best elements everywhere. Neither my recommendation, nor that of any one else, would have weighed with President Harrison one particle in making the appointment if he had not found Mr. Shiras the very man he wanted. In the Behring Sea dispute the President was incensed at Lord Salisbury's repudiation of the stipulations for settling the question which had been agreed to. The President had determined to reject the counter-proposition to submit it to arbitration. Mr. Blaine was with the President in this and naturally indignant that his plan, which Salisbury had extolled through his Ambassador, had been discarded. I found both of them in no compromising mood. The President was much the more excited of the two, however. Talking it over with Mr. Blaine alone, I explained to him that Salisbury was powerless. Against Canada's protest he could not force acceptance of the stipulations to which he had hastily agreed. There was another element. He had a dispute with Newfoundland on hand, which the latter was insisting must be settled to her advantage. No Government in Britain could add Canadian dissatisfaction to that of Newfoundland. Salisbury had done the best he could. After a while Blaine was convinced of this and succeeded in bringing the President into line. The Behring Sea troubles brought about some rather amusing situations. One day Sir John Macdonald, Canadian Premier, and his party reached Washington and asked Mr. Blaine to arrange an interview with the President upon this subject. Mr. Blaine replied that he would see the President and inform Sir John the next morning. "Of course," said Mr. Blaine, telling me the story in Washington just after the incident occurred, "I knew very well that the President could not meet Sir John and his friends officially, and when they called I told them so." Sir John said that Canada was independent, "as sovereign as the State of New York was in the Union." Mr. Blaine replied he was afraid that if he ever obtained an interview as Premier of Canada with the State authorities of New York he would soon hear something on the subject from Washington; and so would the New York State authorities. It was because the President and Mr. Blaine were convinced that the British Government at home could not fulfill the stipulations agreed upon that they accepted Salisbury's proposal for arbitration, believing he had done his best. That was a very sore disappointment to Mr. Blaine. He had suggested that Britain and America should each place two small vessels on Behring Sea with equal rights to board or arrest fishing vessels under either flag--in fact, a joint police force. To give Salisbury due credit, he cabled the British Ambassador, Sir Julian Pauncefote, to congratulate Mr. Blaine upon this "brilliant suggestion." It would have given equal rights to each and under either or both flags for the first time in history--a just and brotherly compact. Sir Julian had shown this cable to Mr. Blaine. I mention this here to suggest that able and willing statesmen, anxious to coöperate, are sometimes unable to do so. Mr. Blaine was indeed a great statesman, a man of wide views, sound judgment, and always for peace. Upon war with Chili, upon the Force Bill, and the Behring Sea question, he was calm, wise, and peace-pursuing. Especially was he favorable to drawing closer and closer to our own English-speaking race. For France he had gratitude unbounded for the part she had played in our Revolutionary War, but this did not cause him to lose his head. One night at dinner in London Mr. Blaine was at close quarters for a moment. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty came up. A leading statesman present said that the impression they had was that Mr. Blaine had always been inimical to the Mother country. Mr. Blaine disclaimed this, and justly so, as far as I knew his sentiments. His correspondence upon the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was instanced. Mr. Blaine replied: "When I became Secretary of State and had to take up that subject I was surprised to find that your Secretary for Foreign Affairs was always informing us what Her Majesty 'expected,' while our Secretary of State was telling you what our President 'ventured to hope.' When I received a dispatch telling us what Her Majesty expected, I replied, telling you what our President 'expected.'" "Well, you admit you changed the character of the correspondence?" was shot at him. Quick as a flash came the response: "Not more than conditions had changed. The United States had passed the stage of 'venturing to hope' with any power that 'expects.' I only followed your example, and should ever Her Majesty 'venture to hope,' the President will always be found doing the same. I am afraid that as long as you 'expect' the United States will also 'expect' in return." One night there was a dinner, where Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and Sir Charles Tennant, President of the Scotland Steel Company, were guests. During the evening the former said that his friend Carnegie was a good fellow and they all delighted to see him succeeding, but he didn't know why the United States should give him protection worth a million sterling per year or more, for condescending to manufacture steel rails. "Well," said Mr. Blaine, "we don't look at it in that light. I am interested in railroads, and we formerly used to pay you for steel rails ninety dollars per ton for every ton we got--nothing less. Now, just before I sailed from home our people made a large contract with our friend Carnegie at thirty dollars per ton. I am somewhat under the impression that if Carnegie and others had not risked their capital in developing their manufacture on our side of the Atlantic, we would still be paying you ninety dollars per ton to-day." Here Sir Charles broke in: "You may be sure you would. Ninety dollars was our agreed-upon price for you foreigners." Mr. Blaine smilingly remarked: "Mr. Chamberlain, I don't think you have made a very good case against our friend Carnegie." "No," he replied; "how could I, with Sir Charles giving me away like that?"--and there was general laughter. Blaine was a rare raconteur and his talk had this great merit: never did I hear him tell a story or speak a word unsuitable for any, even the most fastidious company to hear. He was as quick as a steel trap, a delightful companion, and he would have made an excellent and yet safe President. I found him truly conservative, and strong for peace upon all international questions. [Illustration: SKIBO CASTLE] CHAPTER XXVIII HAY AND McKINLEY John Hay was our frequent guest in England and Scotland, and was on the eve of coming to us at Skibo in 1898 when called home by President McKinley to become Secretary of State. Few have made such a record in that office. He inspired men with absolute confidence in his sincerity, and his aspirations were always high. War he detested, and meant what he said when he pronounced it "the most ferocious and yet the most futile folly of man." The Philippines annexation was a burning question when I met him and Henry White (Secretary of Legation and later Ambassador to France) in London, on my way to New York. It gratified me to find our views were similar upon that proposed serious departure from our traditional policy of avoiding distant and disconnected possessions and keeping our empire within the continent, especially keeping it out of the vortex of militarism. Hay, White, and I clasped hands together in Hay's office in London, and agreed upon this. Before that he had written me the following note: _London, August 22, 1898_ MY DEAR CARNEGIE: I thank you for the Skibo grouse and also for your kind letter. It is a solemn and absorbing thing to hear so many kind and unmerited words as I have heard and read this last week. It seems to me another man they are talking about, while I am expected to do the work. I wish a little of the kindness could be saved till I leave office finally. I have read with the keenest interest your article in the "North American."[77] I am not allowed to say in my present fix how much I agree with you. The only question on my mind is how far it is now _possible_ for us to withdraw from the Philippines. I am rather thankful it is not given to me to solve that momentous question.[78] [Footnote 77: The reference is to an article by Mr. Carnegie in the _North American Review_, August, 1898, entitled: "Distant Possessions--The Parting of the Ways."] [Footnote 78: Published in Thayer, _Life and Letters of John Hay_, vol. II, p. 175. Boston and New York, 1915.] It was a strange fate that placed upon him the very task he had congratulated himself was never to be his. He stood alone at first as friendly to China in the Boxer troubles and succeeded in securing for her fair terms of peace. His regard for Britain, as part of our own race, was deep, and here the President was thoroughly with him, and grateful beyond measure to Britain for standing against other European powers disposed to favor Spain in the Cuban War. The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty concerning the Panama Canal seemed to many of us unsatisfactory. Senator Elkins told me my objections, given in the "New York Tribune," reached him the day he was to speak upon it, and were useful. Visiting Washington soon after the article appeared, I went with Senator Hanna to the White House early in the morning and found the President much exercised over the Senate's amendment to the treaty. I had no doubt of Britain's prompt acquiescence in the Senate's requirements, and said so. Anything in reason she would give, since it was we who had to furnish the funds for the work from which she would be, next to ourselves, the greatest gainer. Senator Hanna asked if I had seen "John," as he and President McKinley always called Mr. Hay. I said I had not. Then he asked me to go over and cheer him up, for he was disconsolate about the amendments. I did so. I pointed out to Mr. Hay that the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty had been amended by the Senate and scarcely any one knew this now and no one cared. The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty would be executed as amended and no one would care a fig whether it was in its original form or not. He doubted this and thought Britain would be indisposed to recede. A short time after this, dining with him, he said I had proved a true prophet and all was well. Of course it was. Britain had practically told us she wished the canal built and would act in any way desired. The canal is now as it should be--that is, all American, with no international complications possible. It was perhaps not worth building at that time, but it was better to spend three or four hundred millions upon it than in building sea monsters of destruction to fight imaginary foes. One may be a loss and there an end; the other might be a source of war, for "Oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Make deeds ill done." Mr. Hay's _bête noire_ was the Senate. Upon this, and this only, was he disregardful of the proprieties. When it presumed to alter one word, substituting "treaty" for "agreement," which occurred in one place only in the proposed Arbitration Treaty of 1905, he became unduly excited. I believe this was owing in great degree to poor health, for it was clear by that time to intimate friends that his health was seriously impaired. The last time I saw him was at lunch at his house, when the Arbitration Treaty, as amended by the Senate, was under the consideration of President Roosevelt. The arbitrationists, headed by ex-Secretary of State Foster, urged the President's acceptance of the amended treaty. We thought he was favorable to this, but from my subsequent talk with Secretary Hay, I saw that the President's agreeing would be keenly felt. I should not be surprised if Roosevelt's rejection of the treaty was resolved upon chiefly to soothe his dear friend John Hay in his illness. I am sure I felt that I could be brought to do, only with the greatest difficulty, anything that would annoy that noble soul. But upon this point Hay was obdurate; no surrender to the Senate. Leaving his house I said to Mrs. Carnegie that I doubted if ever we should meet our friend again. We never did. The Carnegie Institution of Washington, of which Hay was the chairman and a trustee from the start, received his endorsement and close attention, and much were we indebted to him for wise counsel. As a statesman he made his reputation in shorter time and with a surer touch than any one I know of. And it may be doubted if any public man ever had more deeply attached friends. One of his notes I have long kept. It would have been the most flattering of any to my literary vanity but for my knowledge of his most lovable nature and undue warmth for his friends. The world is poorer to me to-day as I write, since he has left it. The Spanish War was the result of a wave of passion started by the reports of the horrors of the Cuban Revolution. President McKinley tried hard to avoid it. When the Spanish Minister left Washington, the French Ambassador became Spain's agent, and peaceful negotiations were continued. Spain offered autonomy for Cuba. The President replied that he did not know exactly what "autonomy" meant. What he wished for Cuba was the rights that Canada possessed. He understood these. A cable was shown to the President by the French Minister stating that Spain granted this and he, dear man, supposed all was settled. So it was, apparently. Speaker Reed usually came to see me Sunday mornings when in New York, and it was immediately after my return from Europe that year that he called and said he had never lost control of the House before. For one moment he thought of leaving the chair and going on the floor to address the House and try to quiet it. In vain it was explained that the President had received from Spain the guarantee of self-government for Cuba. Alas! it was too late, too late! "What is Spain doing over here, anyhow?" was the imperious inquiry of Congress. A sufficient number of Republicans had agreed to vote with the Democrats in Congress for war. A whirlwind of passion swept over the House, intensified, no doubt, by the unfortunate explosion of the warship Maine in Havana Harbor, supposed by some to be Spanish work. The supposition gave Spain far too much credit for skill and activity. War was declared--the Senate being shocked by Senator Proctor's statement of the concentration camps he had seen in Cuba. The country responded to the cry, "What is Spain doing over here anyhow?" President McKinley and his peace policy were left high and dry, and nothing remained for him but to go with the country. The Government then announced that war was not undertaken for territorial aggrandizement, and Cuba was promised independence--a promise faithfully kept. We should not fail to remember this, for it is the one cheering feature of the war. The possession of the Philippines left a stain. They were not only territorial acquisition; they were dragged from reluctant Spain and twenty million dollars paid for them. The Filipinos had been our allies in fighting Spain. The Cabinet, under the lead of the President, had agreed that only a coaling station in the Philippines should be asked for, and it is said such were the instructions given by cable at first to the Peace Commissioners at Paris. President McKinley then made a tour through the West and, of course, was cheered when he spoke of the flag and Dewey's victory. He returned, impressed with the idea that withdrawal would be unpopular, and reversed his former policy. I was told by one of his Cabinet that every member was opposed to the reversal. A senator told me Judge Day, one of the Peace Commissioners, wrote a remonstrance from Paris, which if ever published, would rank next to Washington's Farewell Address, so fine was it. At this stage an important member of the Cabinet, my friend Cornelius N. Bliss, called and asked me to visit Washington and see the President on the subject. He said: "You have influence with him. None of us have been able to move him since he returned from the West." I went to Washington and had an interview with him. But he was obdurate. Withdrawal would create a revolution at home, he said. Finally, by persuading his secretaries that he had to bend to the blast, and always holding that it would be only a temporary occupation and that a way out would be found, the Cabinet yielded. He sent for President Schurman, of Cornell University, who had opposed annexation and made him chairman of the committee to visit the Filipinos; and later for Judge Taft, who had been prominent against such a violation of American policy, to go as Governor. When the Judge stated that it seemed strange to send for one, who had publicly denounced annexation, the President said that was the very reason why he wished him for the place. This was all very well, but to refrain from annexing and to relinquish territory once purchased are different propositions. This was soon seen. Mr. Bryan had it in his power at one time to defeat in the Senate this feature of the Treaty of Peace with Spain. I went to Washington to try to effect this, and remained there until the vote was taken. I was told that when Mr. Bryan was in Washington he had advised his friends that it would be good party policy to allow the treaty to pass. This would discredit the Republican Party before the people; that "paying twenty millions for a revolution" would defeat any party. There were seven staunch Bryan men anxious to vote against Philippine annexation. Mr. Bryan had called to see me in New York upon the subject, because my opposition to the purchase had been so pronounced, and I now wired him at Omaha explaining the situation and begging him to wire me that his friends could use their own judgment. His reply was what I have stated--better have the Republicans pass it and let it then go before the people. I thought it unworthy of him to subordinate such an issue, fraught with deplorable consequences, to mere party politics. It required the casting vote of the Speaker to carry the measure. One word from Mr. Bryan would have saved the country from the disaster. I could not be cordial to him for years afterwards. He had seemed to me a man who was willing to sacrifice his country and his personal convictions for party advantage. When I called upon President McKinley immediately after the vote, I condoled with him upon being dependent for support upon his leading opponent. I explained just how his victory had been won and suggested that he should send his grateful acknowledgments to Mr. Bryan. A Colonial possession thousands of miles away was a novel problem to President McKinley, and indeed to all American statesmen. Nothing did they know of the troubles and dangers it would involve. Here the Republic made its first grievous international mistake--a mistake which dragged it into the vortex of international militarism and a great navy. What a change has come over statesmen since! At supper with President Roosevelt at the White House a few weeks ago (1907), he said: "If you wish to see the two men in the United States who are the most anxious to get out of the Philippines, here they are," pointing to Secretary Taft and himself. "Then why don't you?" I responded. "The American people would be glad indeed." But both the President and Judge Taft believed our duty required us to prepare the Islands for self-government first. This is the policy of "Don't go into the water until you learn to swim." But the plunge has to be and will be taken some day. It was urged that if we did not occupy the Philippines, Germany would. It never occurred to the urgers that this would mean Britain agreeing that Germany should establish a naval base at Macao, a short sail from Britain's naval base in the East. Britain would as soon permit her to establish a base at Kingston, Ireland, eighty miles from Liverpool. I was surprised to hear men--men like Judge Taft, although he was opposed at first to the annexation--give this reason when we were discussing the question after the fatal step had been taken. But we know little of foreign relations. We have hitherto been a consolidated country. It will be a sad day if we ever become anything otherwise. CHAPTER XXIX MEETING THE GERMAN EMPEROR My first Rectorial Address to the students of St. Andrews University attracted the attention of the German Emperor, who sent word to me in New York by Herr Ballin that he had read every word of it. He also sent me by him a copy of his address upon his eldest son's consecration. Invitations to meet him followed; but it was not until June, 1907, that I could leave, owing to other engagements. Mrs. Carnegie and I went to Kiel. Mr. Tower, our American Ambassador to Germany, and Mrs. Tower met us there and were very kind in their attentions. Through them we met many of the distinguished public men during our three days' stay there. The first morning, Mr. Tower took me to register on the Emperor's yacht. I had no expectation of seeing the Emperor, but he happened to come on deck, and seeing Mr. Tower he asked what had brought him on the yacht so early. Mr. Tower explained he had brought me over to register, and that Mr. Carnegie was on board. He asked: "Why not present him now? I wish to see him." I was talking to the admirals who were assembling for a conference, and did not see Mr. Tower and the Emperor approaching from behind. A touch on my shoulder and I turned around. "Mr. Carnegie, the Emperor." It was a moment before I realized that the Emperor was before me. I raised both hands, and exclaimed: "This has happened just as I could have wished, with no ceremony, and the Man of Destiny dropped from the clouds." Then I continued: "Your Majesty, I have traveled two nights to accept your generous invitation, and never did so before to meet a crowned head." Then the Emperor, smiling--and such a captivating smile: "Oh! yes, yes, I have read your books. You do not like kings." "No, Your Majesty, I do not like kings, but I do like a man behind a king when I find him." "Ah! there is one king you like, I know, a Scottish king, Robert the Bruce. He was my hero in my youth. I was brought up on him." "Yes, Your Majesty, so was I, and he lies buried in Dunfermline Abbey, in my native town. When a boy, I used to walk often around the towering square monument on the Abbey--one word on each block in big stone letters 'King Robert the Bruce'--with all the fervor of a Catholic counting his beads. But Bruce was much more than a king, Your Majesty, he was the leader of his people. And not the first; Wallace the man of the people comes first. Your Majesty, I now own King Malcolm's tower in Dunfermline[79]--he from whom you derive your precious heritage of Scottish blood. Perhaps you know the fine old ballad, 'Sir Patrick Spens.' [Footnote 79: In the deed of trust conveying Pittencrieff Park and Glen to Dunfermline an unspecified reservation of property was made. The "with certain exceptions" related to King Malcolm's Tower. For reasons best known to himself Mr. Carnegie retained the ownership of this relic of the past.] "'The King sits in Dunfermline tower Drinking the bluid red wine.' I should like to escort you some day to the tower of your Scottish ancestor, that you may do homage to his memory." He exclaimed: "That would be very fine. The Scotch are much quicker and cleverer than the Germans. The Germans are too slow." "Your Majesty, where anything Scotch is concerned, I must decline to accept you as an impartial judge." He laughed and waved adieu, calling out: "You are to dine with me this evening"--and excusing himself went to greet the arriving admirals. About sixty were present at the dinner and we had a pleasant time, indeed. His Majesty, opposite whom I sat, was good enough to raise his glass and invite me to drink with him. After he had done so with Mr. Tower, our Ambassador, who sat at his right, he asked across the table--heard by those near--whether I had told Prince von Bülow, next whom I sat, that his (the Emperor's) hero, Bruce, rested in my native town of Dunfermline, and his ancestor's tower in Pittencrieff Glen, was in my possession. "No," I replied; "with Your Majesty I am led into such frivolities, but my intercourse with your Lord High Chancellor, I assure you, will always be of a serious import." We dined with Mrs. Goelet upon her yacht, one evening, and His Majesty being present, I told him President Roosevelt had said recently to me that he wished custom permitted him to leave the country so he could run over and see him (the Emperor). He thought a substantial talk would result in something good being accomplished. I believed that also. The Emperor agreed and said he wished greatly to see him and hoped he would some day come to Germany. I suggested that he (the Emperor) was free from constitutional barriers and could sail over and see the President. "Ah, but my country needs me here! How can I leave?" I replied: "Before leaving home one year, when I went to our mills to bid the officials good-bye and expressed regret at leaving them all hard at work, sweltering in the hot sun, but that I found I had now every year to rest and yet no matter how tired I might be one half-hour on the bow of the steamer, cutting the Atlantic waves, gave me perfect relief, my clever manager, Captain Jones, retorted: 'And, oh, Lord! think of the relief we all get.' It might be the same with your people, Your Majesty." He laughed heartily over and over again. It opened a new train of thought. He repeated his desire to meet President Roosevelt, and I said: "Well, Your Majesty, when you two do get together, I think I shall have to be with you. You and he, I fear, might get into mischief." He laughed and said: "Oh, I see! You wish to drive us together. Well, I agree if you make Roosevelt first horse, I shall follow." "Ah, no, Your Majesty, I know horse-flesh better than to attempt to drive two such gay colts tandem. You never get proper purchase on the first horse. I must yoke you both in the shafts, neck and neck, so I can hold you in." I never met a man who enjoyed stories more keenly than the Emperor. He is fine company, and I believe an earnest man, anxious for the peace and progress of the world. Suffice it to say he insists that he is, and always has been, for peace. [1907.] He cherishes the fact that he has reigned for twenty-four years and has never shed human blood. He considers that the German navy is too small to affect the British and was never intended to be a rival. Nevertheless, it is in my opinion very unwise, because unnecessary, to enlarge it. Prince von Bülow holds these sentiments and I believe the peace of the world has little to fear from Germany. Her interests are all favorable to peace, industrial development being her aim; and in this desirable field she is certainly making great strides. I sent the Emperor by his Ambassador, Baron von Sternberg, the book, "The Roosevelt Policy,"[80] to which I had written an introduction that pleased the President, and I rejoice in having received from him a fine bronze of himself with a valued letter. He is not only an Emperor, but something much higher--a man anxious to improve existing conditions, untiring in his efforts to promote temperance, prevent dueling, and, I believe, to secure International Peace. [Footnote 80: _The Roosevelt Policy: Speeches, Letters and State Papers relating to Corporate Wealth and closely Allied Topics._ New York, 1908.] I have for some time been haunted with the feeling that the Emperor was indeed a Man of Destiny. My interviews with him have strengthened that feeling. I have great hopes of him in the future doing something really great and good. He may yet have a part to play that will give him a place among the immortals. He has ruled Germany in peace for twenty-seven years, but something beyond even this record is due from one who has the power to establish peace among civilized nations through positive action. Maintaining peace in his own land is not sufficient from one whose invitation to other leading civilized nations to combine and establish arbitration of all international disputes would be gladly responded to. Whether he is to pass into history as only the preserver of internal peace at home or is to rise to his appointed mission as the Apostle of Peace among leading civilized nations, the future has still to reveal. The year before last (1912) I stood before him in the grand palace in Berlin and presented the American address of congratulation upon his peaceful reign of twenty-five years, his hand unstained by human blood. As I approached to hand to him the casket containing the address, he recognized me and with outstretched arms, exclaimed: "Carnegie, twenty-five years of peace, and we hope for many more." I could not help responding: "And in this noblest of all missions you are our chief ally." He had hitherto sat silent and motionless, taking the successive addresses from one officer and handing them to another to be placed upon the table. The chief subject under discussion had been World Peace, which he could have, and in my opinion, would have secured, had he not been surrounded by the military caste which inevitably gathers about one born to the throne--a caste which usually becomes as permanent as the potentate himself, and which has so far in Germany proved its power of control whenever the war issue has been presented. Until militarism is subordinated, there can be no World Peace. * * * * * As I read this to-day [1914], what a change! The world convulsed by war as never before! Men slaying each other like wild beasts! I dare not relinquish all hope. In recent days I see another ruler coming forward upon the world stage, who may prove himself the immortal one. The man who vindicated his country's honor in the Panama Canal toll dispute is now President. He has the indomitable will of genius, and true hope which we are told, "Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings." Nothing is impossible to genius! Watch President Wilson! He has Scotch blood in his veins. [Here the manuscript ends abruptly.] [Illustration: ANDREW CARNEGIE AT SKIBO (1914)] BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX BIBLIOGRAPHY MR. CARNEGIE's chief publications are as follows: _An American Four-in-Hand in Britain._ New York, 1884. _Round the World._ New York, 1884. _Triumphant Democracy, or Fifty Years' March of the Republic._ New York, 1886. _The Gospel of Wealth and Other Timely Essays._ New York, 1900. _The Empire of Business._ New York, 1903. _James Watt._ New York, 1905. _Problems of To-day. Wealth--Labor--Socialism._ New York, 1908. He was a contributor to English and American magazines and newspapers, and many of the articles as well as many of his speeches have been published in pamphlet form. Among the latter are the addresses on Edwin M. Stanton, Ezra Cornell, William Chambers, his pleas for international peace, his numerous dedicatory and founders day addresses. A fuller list of these publications is given in Margaret Barclay Wilson's _A Carnegie Anthology_, privately printed in New York, 1915. A great many articles have been written about Mr. Carnegie, but the chief sources of information are: ALDERSON (BERNARD). _Andrew Carnegie. The Man and His Work._ New York, 1905. BERGLUND (ABRAHAM). _The United States Steel Corporation._ New York, 1907. CARNEGIE (ANDREW). _How I served My Apprenticeship as a Business Man._ Reprint from _Youth's Companion_. April 23, 1896. COTTER (ARUNDEL). _Authentic History of the United States Steel Corporation._ New York, 1916. HUBBARD (ELBERT). _Andrew Carnegie_. New York, 1909. (Amusing, but inaccurate.) MACKIE (J.B.). _Andrew Carnegie. His Dunfermline Ties and Benefactions._ Dunfermline, n.d. _Manual of the Public Benefactions of Andrew Carnegie._ Published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Washington, 1919. _Memorial Addresses on the Life and Work of Andrew Carnegie._ New York, 1920. _Memorial Service in Honor of Andrew Carnegie on his Birthday, Tuesday, November 25, 1919._ Carnegie Music Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. _Pittencrieff Glen: Its Antiquities, History and Legends._ Dunfermline, 1903. POYNTON (JOHN A.). _A Millionaire's Mail Bag._ New York, 1915. (Mr. Poynton was Mr. Carnegie's secretary.) PRITCHETT (HENRY S.). _Andrew Carnegie._ Anniversary Address before Carnegie Institute, November 24, 1915. SCHWAB (CHARLES M.). _Andrew Carnegie. His Methods with His Men._ Address at Memorial Service, Carnegie Music Hall, Pittsburgh, November 25, 1919. WILSON (MARGARET BARCLAY). _A Carnegie Anthology._ Privately printed. New York, 1915. INDEX Abbey, Edwin A., 298. Abbott, Rev. Lyman, 285. Abbott, William L., becomes partner of Mr. Carnegie, 201. Accounting system, importance of, 135, 136, 204. Acton, Lord, library bought by Mr. Carnegie, 325. Adams, Edwin, tragedian, 49. Adams Express Company, investment in, 79. Addison, Leila, friend and critic of young Carnegie, 97. Aitken, Aunt, 8, 22, 30, 50, 51, 77, 78. Alderson, Barnard, _Andrew Carnegie_, quoted, 282 _n._ Allegheny City, the Carnegies in, 30, 31, 34; public library and hall, 259. Allegheny Valley Railway, bonds marketed by Mr. Carnegie, 167-71. Allison, Senator W.B., 124, 125. Altoona, beginnings of, 66. _American Four-in-Hand in Britain, An_, Mr. Carnegie's first book, 6; quoted, 27, 318 _n._; published, 212, 322. Anderson, Col. James, and his library, 45-47. Arnold, Edwin, gives Mr. Carnegie the MS. of _The Light of Asia_, 207. Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 206, 207, 302; visits Mr. Carnegie, 216, 299, 301; a charming man, 298; seriously religious, 299; as a lecturer, 299, 300; and Henry Ward Beecher, 300; on Shakespeare, 302; and Josh Billings, 303-05; in Chicago, 305, 306; memorial to, 308. Baldwin, William H., 277. Balfour, Prime Minister, 269-71; as a philosopher, 323, 324. Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, and Trust for the Universities of Scotland, 269, 270, 272. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Mr. Carnegie's relations with, 125-29. Baring Brother, dealings with, 168, 169. Barryman, Robert, an ideal Tom Bowling, 28, 29. Bates, David Homer, quoted, 45, 46, 100. Beecher, Henry Ward, and Matthew Arnold, 300; and Robert G. Ingersoll, 300, 301; on Herbert Spencer, 336, 337. Behring Sea question, 350, 353-55. Bessemer steel process, revolutionized steel manufacture, 184, 185, 229. Billings, Dr. J.S., of the New York Public Libraries, 259; director of the Carnegie Institution, 260. Billings, Josh, 295; and Matthew Arnold, 303-05; anecdotes, 304, 305. Bismarck, Prince, disturbs the financial world, 169. Black, William, 298. Blaine, James G., visits Mr. Carnegie, 216; and Mr. Gladstone, 320, 321, 328; a good story-teller, 341-43, 357; his Yorktown address, 341; at Cluny Castle, 344; misses the Presidency, 345; as Secretary of State, 345, 352-56; at the Pan-American Congress, 346. Bliss, Cornelius N., 363. Borntraeger, William, 136; put in charge of the Union Iron Mills, 198; anecdotes of, 199-201. Botta, Professor and Madame, 150. Braddock's Coöperative Society, 250. Bridge-building, of iron, 115-29; at Steubenville, 116, 117; at Keokuk, Iowa, 154; at St. Louis, 155. Bright, John, 11; and George Peabody, 282. British Iron and Steel Institute, 178, 180. Brooks, David, manager of the Pittsburgh telegraph office, 36-38, 57-59. Brown University, John Hay Library at, 275. Bruce, King Robert, 18, 367. Bryan, William J., and the treaty with Spain, 364. Bull Run, battle of, 100. Bülow, Prince von, 368, 370. Burns, Robert, quoted, 3, 13, 33, 307, 313; Dean Stanley on, 271; rules of conduct, 271, 272. Burroughs, John, and Ernest Thompson Seton, 293. Butler, Gen. B.F., 99. Cable, George W., 295. Calvinism, revolt from, 22, 23, 74, 75. Cambria Iron Company, 186. Cameron, Simon, in Lincoln's Cabinet, 102, 103; a man of sentiment, 104; anecdote of, 104, 105. Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 313; and Trust for the Universities of Scotland, 269, 271; Prime Minister, 312, 313. Carnegie, Andrew, grandfather of A.C., 2, 3. Carnegie, Andrew, birth, 2; ancestry, 2-6; fortunate in his birthplace, 6-8; childhood in Dunfermline, 7-18; a violent young republican, 10-12; goes to school, 13-15, 21; early usefulness to his parents, 14; learns history from his Uncle Lauder, 15, 16; intensely Scottish, 16, 18; trained in recitation, 20; power to memorize, 21; animal pets, 23; early evidence of organizing power, 24, 43; leaves Dunfermline, 25; sails for America, 28; on the Erie Canal, 29, 30; in Allegheny City, 30; becomes a bobbin boy, 34; works in a bobbin factory, 35, 36; telegraph messenger, 37-44; first real start in life, 38, 39; first communication to the press, 45; cultivates taste for literature, 46, 47; love for Shakespeare stimulated, 48, 49; Swedenborgian influence, 50; taste for music aroused, 51; first wage raise, 55; learns to telegraph, 57, 58, 61; becomes a telegraph operator, 59. _Railroad experience:_ Clerk and operator for Thomas A. Scott, division superintendent of Pennsylvania Railroad, 63; loses pay-rolls, 67; an anti-slavery partisan, 68, 96; employs women as telegraph operators, 69; takes unauthorized responsibility, 71, 72; in temporary charge of division, 73; theological discussions, 74-76; first investment, 79; transferred to Altoona, 84; invests in building of sleeping-cars, 87; made division superintendent on the Pennsylvania Railroad, 91; returns to Pittsburgh, 92; gets a house at Homewood, 94; Civil War service, 99-109; gift to Kenyon College, 106; first serious illness, 109; first return to Scotland, 110-13; organizes rail-making and locomotive works, 115; also a company to build iron bridges, 116-18; bridge-building, 119-29; begins making iron, 130-34; introduces cost accounting system, 135, 136, 204; becomes interested in oil wells, 136-39; mistaken for a noted exhorter, 140; leaves the railroad company, 140, 141. _Period of acquisition:_ Travels extensively in Europe, 142, 143; deepening appreciation of art and music, 143; builds coke works, 144, 145; attitude toward protective tariff, 146-48; opens an office in New York, 149; joins the Nineteenth Century Club, 150; opposed to speculation, 151-54; builds bridge at Keokuk, 154; and another at St. Louis, 155-57; dealings with the Morgans, 155-57, 169-73; gives public baths to Dunfermline, 157; his ambitions at thirty-three, 157, 158; rivalry with Pullman, 159; proposes forming Pullman Palace Car Company, 160; helps the Union Pacific Railway through a crisis, 162, 163; becomes a director of that company, 164; but is forced out, 165; friction with Mr. Scott, 165, 174; floats bonds of the Allegheny Valley Railway, 167-71; negotiations with Baring Brothers, 168, 169; some business rules, 172-75, 194, 224, 231; concentrates on manufacturing, 176, 177; president of the British Iron and Steel Institute, 178; begins making pig iron, 178, 179; proves the value of chemistry at a blast furnace, 181-83; making steel rails, 184-89; in the panic of 1873, 189-93; parts with Mr. Kloman, 194-97; some of his partners, 198-203; goes around the world, 204-09; his philosophy of life, 206, 207; Dunfermline confers the freedom of the town, 210; coaching in Great Britain, 211, 212; dangerously ill, 212, 213; death of his mother and brother, 212, 213; courtship, 213, 214; marriage, 215; presented with the freedom of Edinburgh, 215; birth of his daughter, 217; buys Skibo Castle, 217; manufactures spiegel and ferro-manganese, 220, 221; buys mines, 221-23; acquires the Frick Coke Company, 222; buys the Homestead steel mills, 225; progress between 1888 and 1897, 226; the Homestead strike, 228-33; succeeds Mark Hanna on executive committee of the National Civic Federation, 234; incident of Burgomaster McLuckie, 235-39; some labor disputes, 240-54; dealing with a mill committee, 241, 242; breaking a strike, 243-46; a sliding scale of wages, 244-47; beating a bully, 248; settling differences by conference, 249, 250, 252; workmen's savings, 251. _Period of distribution:_ Carnegie Steel Company sells out to United States Steel Corporation, 255, 256; Andrew Carnegie Relief Fund established for men in the mills, 256, 257, 281; libraries built, 259; Carnegie Institution founded, 259-61; hero funds established for several countries, 262-67; pension fund for aged professors, 268-71; trustee of Cornell University, 268; Lord Rector of St. Andrews, 271-73; aid to American colleges, 274, 275, 277 _n._; connection with Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes, 276, 277; gives organs to many churches, 278, 279; private pension fund, 279, 280; Railroad Pension Fund, 280; early interested in peace movements, 282, 283; on a League of Nations, 284 _n._; provides funds for Temple of Peace at The Hague, 284, 285; president of the Peace Society of New York, 285, 286; decorated by several governments, 286; buys Pittencrieff Glen and gives it to Dunfermline, 286-90; friendship with Earl Grey, 290; other trusts established, 290 _n._; dinners of the Carnegie Veteran Association, 291, 292; the Literary Dinner, 292, 293; relations with Mark Twain, 294-97; with Matthew Arnold, 298-308; with Josh Billings, 302-05; first meets Mr. Gladstone, 309, 330, 331; estimate of Lord Rosebery, 309-11; his own name often misspelled, 310; attachment to Harcourt and Campbell-Bannerman, 312; and the Earl of Elgin, 313, 314; his Freedom-getting career, 314, 316; opinion on British municipal government, 314-17; visits Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden, 318, 319, 328, 329; incident of the Queen's Jubilee, 320, 321; relations with J.G. Blaine, 320, 321, 328, 341-46; friendship with John Morley, 322-28; estimate of Elihu Root, 324; buys Lord Acton's library, 325; on Irish Home Rule, 327; attempts newspaper campaign of political progress, 330; writes _Triumphant Democracy_, 330-32; a disciple of Herbert Spencer, 333-40; delegate to the Pan-American Congress, 346, 350; entertains President Harrison, 347, 348; founds Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh, 348; influence in the Chilian quarrel, 350-52; suggests Mr. Shiras for the Supreme Court, 353; on the Behring Sea dispute, 354, 355; opinion of Mr. Blaine, 355, 357; relations with John Hay, 358-61; and with President McKinley, 359, 363; on annexation of the Philippines, 362-65; criticism of W.J. Bryan, 364; impressions of the German emperor, 366-71; hopeful of President Wilson, 371, 372. Carnegie, Louise Whitfield, wife of A.C., 215-19; charmed by Scotland, 215; her enjoyment of the pipers, 216; the Peace-Maker, 218; honored with freedom of Dunfermline, 271; first honorary member of Carnegie Veteran Association, 292. Carnegie, Margaret Morrison, mother of A.C., 6, 12; reticent on religious subjects, 22, 50; a wonderful woman, 31, 32, 38, 88-90; gives bust of Sir Walter Scott to Stirling, 157; lays corner stone of Carnegie Library in Dunfermline, 211; death of, 212, 213; advice to Matthew Arnold, 299. Carnegie, Margaret, daughter of A.C., born, 217. Carnegie, Thomas Morrison, brother of A.C., 25; a favorite of Col. Piper, 118, 119; interested in iron-making, 130; friendship with Henry Phipps, 132; marries Lucy Coleman, 149; death of, 212, 213. Carnegie, William, father of A.C., 2; a damask weaver, 8, 12, 13, 25, 30; a radical republican, 11; liberal in theology, 22, 23; works in a cotton factory in Allegheny City, 34; one of the founders of a library in Dunfermline, 48; a sweet singer, 52; shy and reserved, 62; one of the most lovable of men, 63; death of, 63, 77. "Carnegie," the wood-and-bronze yacht, 260, 261. Carnegie Brothers & Co., 129, 225, 226. Carnegie Corporation of New York, 290 _n._ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 286 _n._ Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Learning, 268. Carnegie Hero Fund, 262-66. Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh, 259, 348. Carnegie Institution, 259, 260. Carnegie, Kloman & Co., 196, 197. Carnegie, McCandless & Co., 201. Carnegie, Phipps & Co., 226. Carnegie Relief Fund, for Carnegie workmen, 266. Carnegie Steel Company, 256. Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, trustees of, 269; duties of, 270, 271. Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 290 _n._ Carnegie Veteran Association, 291, 292. "Cavendish" (Henry Jones), anecdote of, 315. Central Transportation Company, 159, 161. Chamberlain, Joseph, 326, 327, 356. Chemistry, value of, in iron manufacture, 181, 182, 223. Chicago, "dizzy on cult," 305, 306. Chili, quarrel with, 350-53. Chisholm, Mr., Cleveland iron manufacturer, 184. Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 355, 356, 360. Clemens, Samuel L., _see_ Twain, Mark. Cleveland, Frances, Library at Wellesley College, 275. Cleveland, President, 283; and tariff revision, 147. Cluny Castle, Scotland, 217; Mr. Blaine at, 344. Coal-washing, introduced into America by George Lauder, 144. Cobbett, William, 4. Coke, manufacture of, 144, 145, 221. Coleman, Lucy, afterwards Mrs. Thomas Carnegie, 149. Coleman, William, interested in oil wells, 136-40; and in coke, 144; manufacturer of steel rails, 186; anecdote of, 192; sells out to Mr. Carnegie, 202. Columbia University, 274 _n._ Confucius, quoted, 50, 52, 340. Constant, Baron d'Estournelles de, 286. Conway, Moncure D., Autobiography quoted, 274. Coöperative store, 250. Corn Law agitation, the, 8. Cornell University, salaries of professors, 268. Cowley, William, 46. Cremer, William Randall, receives Nobel Prize for promotion of peace, 283, 284 _n._ Cresson Springs, Mr. Carnegie's summer home in the Alleghanies, 213, 307. Cromwell, Oliver, 15. Crystal Palace, London, 143. Curry, Henry M., 181; becomes a partner of Mr. Carnegie, 201. Cyclops Mills, 133, 134. Damask trade in Scotland, 2, 8, 12, 13. Dawes, Anna L., _How we are Governed_, 327. Dennis, Prof. F.S., 213, 214. Dickinson College, Conway Hall at, 274. Disestablishment of the English Church, 329. Dodds process, the, for carbonizing the heads of iron rails, 186. Dodge, William E., 260. Donaldson, Principal, of St. Andrews University, 273. Douglas, Euphemia (Mrs. Sloane), 29. Drexel, Anthony, 175, 205. Dunfermline, birthplace of Mr. Carnegie, 2, 6; a radical town, 10; libraries in, 48; revisited, 110-12, 157; gives Mr. Carnegie the freedom of the town, 210; Carnegie Library in, 211; confers freedom of the town on Mrs. Carnegie, 271. Dunfermline Abbey, 6, 7, 17, 18, 26, 27, 111. Durrant, President, of the Union Pacific Railway, 159. Eads, Capt. James B., 119, 120. Edgar Thomson Steel Company, 188, 189, 201, 202. Education, compulsory, 34. Edwards, "Billy," 249, 250. Edwards, Passmore, 330. Elgin, Earl of, and Trust for the Universities of Scotland, 269-72, 313, 314. Elkins, Sen. Stephen B., and Mr. Blaine, 344, 345, 352, 359. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, anecdote of, 335. Endorsing notes, 173, 174. Erie Canal, the, 29, 30. Escanaba Iron Company, 194-97, 220. Evans, Captain ("Fighting Bob"), as government inspector, 199. Evarts, William M., 336 _n._ Fahnestock, Mr., Pittsburgh financier, 41. Farmer, President, of Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad Co., 5. Ferguson, Ella (Mrs. Henderson), 25. Ferro-manganese, manufacture of, 220. Fleming, Marjory, 20. Flower, Governor Roswell P., and the tariff, 147, 148. Forbes, Gen. John, Laird of Pittencrieff, 188. Franciscus, Mr., freight agent at Pittsburgh, 72. Franciscus, Mrs., 80. Franklin, Benjamin, and St. Andrews University, 272; quoted, 340. Frick, Henry C., 222. Frick Coke Company, 222, 226. Fricke, Dr., chemist at the Lucy Furnace, 182. Frissell, Hollis B., of Hampton Institute, 277. Garrett, John W., President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 125-29. General Education Board, 274. Germany, and the Philippines, 365; Emperor William, 366-71. Gilder, Richard Watson, poem by, 262, 263; manager of the Literary Dinner, 292, 293; on Mr. Carnegie, 293 _n._, 340 _n._ Gilman, Daniel C., first president of the Carnegie Institution, 260. Gladstone, W.E., letter from, 233; and Matthew Arnold, 298; Mr. Carnegie and, 309, 327-31; his library, 318; devout and sincere, 319; anecdote of, 320; and J.G. Blaine, 321; and John Morley, 325. Glass, John P., 54, 55. God, each stage of civilization creates its own, 75. Gorman, Senator Arthur P., and the tariff, 147, 148. _Gospel of Wealth, The_, published, 255. Gould, Jay, 152. Grant, Gen. U.S., and Secretary Stanton, 106; some characteristics of, 107; unjustly suspected, 108. Greeley, Horace, 68, 81. Grey, Earl, trustee of Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 290 and _n._ Hague Conference, 283, 284. Haldane, Lord Chancellor, error as to British manufactures, 331. Hale, Eugene, visits Mr. Carnegie, 216. Hale, Prof. George E., of the Mount Wilson Observatory, 261. Halkett, Sir Arthur, killed at Braddock's defeat, 187, 188. Hamilton College, Elihu Root Foundation at, 275. Hampton Institute, 276. Hanna, Senator Mark, 233, 234, 359; Chair in Western Reserve University named for, 275. Harcourt, Sir William Vernon, 312. Harris, Joel Chandler, 295. Harrison, President Benjamin, opens Carnegie Hall at Allegheny City, 259, 347; his nomination, 344, 345; dispute with Chili, 350-53; the Behring Sea question, 350, 353-55. Hartman Steel Works, 226. Hawk, Mr., of the Windsor Hotel, New York, 150. Hay, Secretary John, comment on Lincoln, 101, 102; visits Mr. Carnegie, 216; chairman of directors of Carnegie Institution, 260; Library, at Brown University, 275; as Secretary of State, 358; the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, 359; the Senate his _bête noire_, 360, 361. Hay, John, of Allegheny City, 34-37. Head-ication versus Hand-ication, 4. Henderson, Ebenezer, 5. Henderson, Ella Ferguson, 25, 55. Hero Fund, 262-66. Hewitt, Abram S., 260. Higginson, Maj. F.L., 260. Higginson, Col. Thomas Wentworth, 150. Hill, David Jayne, on the German Hero Fund, 263, 264. Hogan, Maria, 70. Hogan, Uncle, 36, 77. Holls, G.F.W., and the Hague Conference, 284. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, and the Matthew Arnold memorial, 307, 308. Homestead Steel Mills, consolidated with Carnegie Brothers & Co., 225, 226; strike at, 228-39; address of workmen to Mr. Carnegie, 257. Hughes, Courtney, 58. Huntington, Collis P., 205. Ignorance, the main root of industrial trouble, 240. _In the Time of Peace_, by Richard Watson Gilder, 262, 263. Ingersoll, Col. Robert G., 210, 300. Integrity, importance of, in business, 172. Ireland, Mr. Carnegie's freedom tour in, 314 _n._, 316. Irish Home Rule, 327. Irwin, Agnes, receives doctor's degree from St. Andrews University, 272, 273. Isle of Wight, 215. Jackson, Andrew, and Simon Cameron, 104, 105. Jewett, Thomas L., President of the Panhandle Railroad, 117. Jones, Henry ("Cavendish"), anecdote of, 315. Jones, ---- ("The Captain"), 202, 204, 241, 242, 369; prefers large salary to partnership, 203. _Just by the Way_, poem on Mr. Carnegie, 238. Kaiser Wilhelm, and Mr. Carnegie, 366-71. Katte, Walter, 123. Keble, Bishop, godfather of Matthew Arnold, 298. Kelly, Mr., chairman of blast-furnaces committee, 241-43. Kennedy, Julian, 220. Kenyon College, gift to, 106; Stanton Chair of Economics, 275. Keokuk, Iowa, 154. Keystone Bridge Works, 116, 122-28, 176. Keystone Iron Works, 130. Kilgraston, Scotland, 215, 216. Kind action never lost, 85, 86. King Edward VII, letter from, 264, 265, 326. Kloman, Andrew, partner with Mr. Carnegie, 130, 178, 179; a great mechanic, 131, 134; in bankruptcy, 194-96. Knowledge, sure to prove useful, 60. Knowles, James, on Tennyson, 337, 338. Koethen, Mr., choir leader, 51. Labor, some problems of, 240-54. Lang, Principal, 272. Lauder, George, uncle of A.C., 12, 28, 113, 287; teaches him history, 15-17; and recitation, 20. Lauder, George, cousin of A.C., 8, 17; develops coal-washing machinery, 144, 223. Lauder Technical College, 9, 15. Lehigh University, Mr. Carnegie gives Taylor Hall, 266. Lewis, Enoch, 91. Libraries, founded by Mr. Carnegie, 47, 48, 259. Library, public, usefulness of, 47. Lincoln, Abraham, some characteristics of, 101; second nomination sought, 104, 105. Linville, H.J., partner of Mr. Carnegie, 116, 120. Literature, value of a taste for, 46. Lloyd, Mr., banker at Altoona, 87. Lombaert, Mr., general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 63, 66, 67, 73. Lucy Furnace, the, erected, 178; in charge of Henry Phipps, 181; enlarged, 183; gift from the workmen in, 257, 258. Lynch, Rev. Frederick, 285. Mabie, Hamilton Wright, quoted, 113. McAneny, George, 277. McCandless, David, 78, 186. McCargo, David, 42, 49, 69. McCullough, J.N., 173, 175. MacIntosh, Mr., Scottish furniture manufacturer, 24. McKinley, President William, 358; and the Panama Canal, 359; and the Spanish War, 361-65. McLuckie, Burgomaster, and Mr. Carnegie, 235-37. McMillan, Rev. Mr., Presbyterian minister, 74-76. Macdonald, Sir John, and the Behring Sea troubles, 354, 355. Mackie, J.B., quoted, 3, 9. Macy, V. Everit, 277. Martin, Robert, Mr. Carnegie's only schoolmaster, 13-15, 21. Mason and Slidell, 102. Mellon, Judge, of Pittsburgh, 1. Memorizing, benefit of, 21, 39. Mill, John Stuart, as rector of St. Andrews, 272. Miller, Thomas N., 45, 46, 110; on the doctrine of predestination, 75; partner with Mr. Carnegie, 115, 130, 133; death of, 130; sells his interest, 133, 134. Mills, D.O., 260. Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, 260. Morgan, J. Pierpont, 171, 172, 256. Morgan, Junius S., 155, 156, 170. Morgan, J.S., & Co., negotiations with, 169-72. Morland, W.C., 42. Morley, John, and Mr. Carnegie, 21, 22, 293; address at Carnegie Institute, 188; on Lord Rosebery, 311; on the Earl of Elgin, 314; on Mr. Carnegie, 322 _n._; pessimistic, 322, 323; visits America, 324, 325; and Elihu Root, 324; and Theodore Roosevelt, 325; and Lord Acton's library, 325; and Joseph Chamberlain, 326, 327. Morley, R.F., 100 _n._ Morris, Leander, cousin of Mr. Carnegie, 51. Morrison, Bailie, uncle of Mr. Carnegie, 4-6, 9, 11, 210, 287, 312. Morrison, Margaret, _see_ Carnegie, Margaret. Morrison, Thomas, maternal grandfather of Mr. Carnegie, 4-6, 287. Morrison, Thomas, second cousin of Mr. Carnegie, 145. Morton, Levi P., 165. Mount Wilson Observatory, 261, 262. Municipal government, British and American, 314-16. "Naig," Mr. Carnegie's nickname, 17. National Civic Federation, 234. National Trust Company, Pittsburgh, 224. Naugle, J.A., 237. New York, first impressions of, 28; business headquarters of America, 149. Nineteenth Century Club, New York, 150. Ocean surveys, 261. Ogden, Robert C., 277. Oil wells, 136-39. Oliver, Hon. H.W., 42, 49. Omaha Bridge, 164, 165. Optimism, 3, 162; optimist and pessimist, 323. Organs, in churches, 278, 279. _Our Coaching Trip_, quoted, 48, 110; privately published, 212. Palmer, Courtlandt, 150. Panama Canal, 359, 360, 372. Pan-American Congress, 345, 346. Panic of 1873, the, 171, 172, 189-93. Park, James, pioneer steel-maker of Pittsburgh, 199, 200. Parliament, membership and meetings, 315. Partnership better than corporation, 221. Patiemuir College, 2. Pauncefote, Sir Julian, and Mr. Blaine, 355; the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, 359, 360. Peabody, George, his body brought home on the warship Monarch, 282. Peabody, George Foster, 277. Peace, Mr. Carnegie's work for, 282-86; Palace, at The Hague, 284, 285. Peace Society of New York, 285, 286. Peacock, Alexander R., partner of Mr. Carnegie, 203. Pennsylvania Railroad Company, builds first iron bridge, 115-17; aids Union Pacific Railway, 163, 164; aids Allegheny Valley Railway, 167-71; aids Pennsylvania Steel Works, 185. _See also_ Carnegie, Andrew, _Railroad experience_. Pennsylvania Steel Works, the, 185. Pessimist and optimist, story of, 323. Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, 167-70. Philippines, the, annexation of, 358, 362-65. Phillips, Col. William, 167, 168, 169. Phipps, Henry, 31, 130; advertises for work, 131, 132; crony and partner of Thomas Carnegie, 132; controversy over opening conservatories on Sunday, 132, 133; European tour, 142; in charge of the Lucy Furnace, 181, 182; statement about Mr. Carnegie and his partners, 196, 197; goes into the steel business, 201. Phipps, John, 46; killed, 76. Pig iron, manufacture of, 178, 179; importance of chemistry in, 181-84. Pilot Knob mine, 183. Piper, Col. John L., partner of Mr. Carnegie, 116, 117; had a craze for horses, 118, 121; attachment to Thomas Carnegie, 118, 119; relations with James B. Eads, 120. Pitcairn, Robert, division superintendent, Pennsylvania Railroad, 42, 44, 49, 66, 189. Pittencrieff Glen, bought and given to Dunfermline, 286-89, 291. Pittsburgh, in 1850, 39-41; some of its leading men, 41; in 1860, 93; later development, 348. Pittsburgh, Bank of, 194. Pittsburgh Locomotive Works, 115. Pittsburgh Theater, 46, 48, 49. Political corruption, 109. Predestination, doctrine of, 75. Principals' Week, 272. Pritchett, Dr. Henry S., president of the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Learning, 268. Private pension fund, 279, 280. _Problems of To-day_, quoted, 40, 217. Protective tariffs, 146-48. Prousser, Mr., chemist, 222. Public speaking, 210. Pullman, George M., 157, 159; forms Pullman Palace Car Company, 160, 161; anecdote of, 162; becomes a director of the Union Pacific, 164. Quality, the most important factor in success, 115, 122, 123. Queen's Jubilee, the (June, 1887), 320, 321. Quintana, Manuel, President of Argentina, 346. Railroad Pension Fund, 280. Rawlins, Gen. John A., and General Grant, 107, 108. Recitation, value of, in education, 20. Reed, Speaker Thomas B., 362. Reid, James D., and Mr. Carnegie, 59 and _n._ Reid, General, of Keokuk, 154. Republican Party, first national meeting, 68. Riddle, Robert M., 81. Ritchie, David, 139, 140. Ritter, Governor, of Pennsylvania, anecdote of, 342. Robinson, General, first white child born west of the Ohio River, 40. Rockefeller, John D., 274. Rogers, Henry H., 296. Rolland School, 13. Roosevelt, Theodore, 260; and Elihu Root, 275; John Morley on, 325; rejects the Arbitration Treaty, 360, 361; and the Philippines, 365. Root, Elihu, 260, 286 _n._; fund named for, at Hamilton College, 275; "ablest of all our Secretaries of State," 275; on Mr. Carnegie, 276; and John Morley, 324. Rosebery, Lord, presents Mr. Carnegie with the freedom of Edinburgh, 215; relations with, 309, 310; handicapped by being born a peer, 310, 311. Ross, Dr. John, 269, 271; aids in buying Pittencrieff Glen, 288, 289; receives freedom of Dunfermline, 313. _Round the World_, 205, 206, 208. Sabbath observance, 52, 53, 133. St. Andrews University, Mr. Carnegie elected Lord Rector, 271, 273; confers doctor's degree on Benjamin Franklin and on his great-granddaughter, 272, 273. St. Louis Bridge, 155-57. Salisbury, Lord, and the Behring Sea troubles, 353-55. Sampson, ----, financial editor of the London _Times_, 156. Schiffler, Mr., a partner of Mr. Carnegie in building iron bridges, 116, 117. Schoenberger, Mr., president of the Exchange Bank, Pittsburgh, 192, 193. Schurman, President Jacob G., 363. Schwab, Charles M., 152, 254-56. Scott, John, 186. Scott, Thomas A., 63, 70-74, 77; helps Carnegie to his first investment, 79; made general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 84; breaks a strike, 84, 85; made vice-president of the Company, 90; Assistant Secretary of War, 99, 102; colonel, 103; returns to the railroad, 109; tries to get contract for sleeping-cars on the Union Pacific, 158, 159; becomes president of that road, 164; first serious difference with Carnegie, 165; president of the Texas Pacific Railroad, and then of the Pennsylvania road, 172; financially embarrassed, 173, 192; break with Carnegie and premature death, 174. Scott, Sir Walter, and Marjory Fleming, 20; bust of, at Stirling, 157; made a burgess of Dunfermline, 210. Scott, Gen. Winfield, 102, 103. Seneca Indians, early gatherers of oil, 138. Sentiment, in the practical affairs of life, 253. Seton, Ernest Thompson, and John Burroughs, 293. Seward, William Henry, 102. Shakespeare, quoted, 10, 214, 219, 255, 294, 297; Mr. Carnegie's interest in, 48, 49. Shaw, Henry W., _see_ Billings, Josh. Shaw, Thomas (Lord Shaw), of Dunfermline, 269, 288, 289. Sherman, Gen. W.T., 107. Shiras, George, Jr., appointed to the Supreme Court, 353. Siemens gas furnace, 136. Singer, George, 225. Skibo Castle, Scotland, 217, 272, 326. Sleeping-car, invention of, 87; on the Union Pacific Railway, 158-61. Sliding scale of wages, solution of the capital and labor problem, 246, 247, 252. Sloane, Mr. and Mrs., 29. Smith, J.B., friend of John Bright, 11, 12. Smith, Perry, anecdote of, 124. Snobs, English, 301. Spanish War, the, 361-65. Speculation, 151, 153. Spencer, Herbert, Mr. Carnegie's relations with, 333-37; a good laugher, 333, 334; opposed to militarism, 335; banquet to, at Delmonico's, 336; very conscientious, 337, 338; his philosophy, 339; on the gift of Carnegie Institute, 348, 349. Spens, Sir Patrick, ballad of, 7, 367. Spiegel, manufacture of, 220. Stanley, Dean A.P., on Burns's theology, 271. Stanton, Edwin M., 41, 275. Stanwood, Edward, _James G. Blaine_ quoted, 345 _n._ Steel, the age of, 181-97; King, 224, 225. Steel Workers' Pension Fund, 281. Steubenville, bridge at, over the Ohio River, 116, 117. Stewart, D.A., freight agent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 94, 95; joins Mr. Carnegie in manufacture of steel rails, 186. Stewart, Rebecca, niece of Thomas A. Scott, 90. Stokes, Major, chief counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 81-83, 86. Storey, Samuel, M.P., 330. Storey farm, oil wells on, 138, 139 _n._ Straus, Isidor, 196. Straus, Oscar S., and the National Civic Federation, 234, 235. Strikes: on the Pennsylvania Railroad, 84, 85; at Homestead, 228-39; at the steel-rail works, 240, 243. Sturgis, Russell, 168. Success, true road to, 176, 177. Sun City Forge Company, 115 _n._ Superior Rail Mill and Blast Furnaces, 115. Surplus, the law of the, 227. Swedenborgianism, 22, 50, 51. _Sweet By and By, The_, 341, 342. Taft, William H., and the Philippines, 363, 365. Tariff, protective, 146-48. Taylor, Charles, president of the Hero Fund, 266, 267. Taylor, Joseph, 58. Taylor Hall at Lehigh University, 266. Teaching, a meanly paid profession, 268. Temple of Peace, at The Hague, 284, 285. Tennant, Sir Charles, President of the Scotland Steel Company, 356, 357. Texas, story about, 334. Texas Pacific Railway, 172 _n._, 173. Thaw, William, vice-president of the Fort Wayne Railroad, 190. Thayer, William Roscoe, _Life and Letters of John Hay_, quoted, 216, 358, 359. Thomas, Gen. George H., 107. Thompson, Moses, 223. Thomson, John Edgar, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, 72; an evidence of his fairness, 117; offers Mr. Carnegie promotion, 140; shows confidence in him, 163; steel mills named for, 188, 189; financially embarrassed, 192. Tower, Charlemagne, Ambassador to Germany, 366, 368. Trent affair, the, 102. Trifles, importance of, 36, 124, 159, 248. _Triumphant Democracy_, published, 309; origin, 330-32. Troubles, most of them imaginary, 162. Tuskegee Institute, 276. Twain, Mark, letter from, 294, 295; man and hero, 296; devotion to his wife, 297. Union Iron Mills, 133, 134, 176; very profitable, 198. Union Pacific Railway, sleeping-cars on, 159-61; Mr. Carnegie's connection with, 162-65. "Unitawrian," prejudice against, 12. Vanderlip, Frank A., 268. Vandevort, Benjamin, 95. Vandevort, John W., 95; Mr. Carnegie's closest companion, 142; accompanies him around the world, 204. Van Dyke, Prof. John C., on the Homestead strike, 235-37, 239. Wagner, Mr., Carnegie's interest in, 49, 50. Walker, Baillie, 3. Wallace, William, 16, 17, 367. War, breeds war, 16; must be abolished, 274, 283, 284; "ferocious and futile folly," 358. Washington, Booker T., declines gift to himself, 276, 277. Waterways, inland, improvement of, 342. Webster Literary Society, 61. Wellesley College, Cleveland Library at, 275. Western Reserve University, Hanna Chair at, 275. White, Andrew D., 23, 150; and the Hague Conference, 284. White, Henry, 358. Whitfield, Louise, 213, 214. _See also_, Carnegie, Mrs. Andrew. Whitwell Brothers, 179. Wilkins, Judge William, 95, 96. William IV, German Emperor, 366-71. Wilmot, Mr., of the Carnegie Relief Fund, 266. Wilson, James R., 46. Wilson, Woodrow, 371, 372. Wilson, Walker & Co., 226. Women as telegraph operators, 69, 70. Woodruff, T.T., inventor of the sleeping-car, 87, 161. Woodward, Dr. Robert S., president of the Carnegie Institution, 260. Wordsworth, William, quoted, 86. Workmen's savings, 251. World peace, 369-71. Wright, John A., president of the Freedom Iron Works, 185. 
7213	----	Charles Franks, and the DP Team MY LIFE AND WORK By Henry Ford In Collaboration With Samuel Crowther CONTENTS INTRODUCTION--WHAT IS THE IDEA? I. THE BEGINNING II. WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT BUSINESS III. STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS IV. THE SECRET OF MANUFACTURING AND SERVING V. GETTING INTO PRODUCTION VI. MACHINES AND MEN VII. THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE. VIII. WAGES IX. WHY NOT ALWAYS HAVE GOOD BUSINESS? X. HOW CHEAPLY CAN THINGS BE MADE? XI. MONEY AND GOODS XII. MONEY--MASTER OR SERVANT? XIII. WHY BE POOR? XIV. THE TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING XV. WHY CHARITY? XVI. THE RAILROADS XVII. THINGS IN GENERAL XVIII. DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY XIX. WHAT WE MAY EXPECT. INDEX INTRODUCTION WHAT IS THE IDEA? We have only started on our development of our country--we have not as yet, with all our talk of wonderful progress, done more than scratch the surface. The progress has been wonderful enough--but when we compare what we have done with what there is to do, then our past accomplishments are as nothing. When we consider that more power is used merely in ploughing the soil than is used in all the industrial establishments of the country put together, an inkling comes of how much opportunity there is ahead. And now, with so many countries of the world in ferment and with so much unrest every where, is an excellent time to suggest something of the things that may be done in the light of what has been done. When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and industry there comes up a picture of a cold, metallic sort of world in which great factories will drive away the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the green fields. And that then we shall have a world composed of metal machines and human machines. With all of that I do not agree. I think that unless we know more about machines and their use, unless we better understand the mechanical portion of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees, and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields. I think that we have already done too much toward banishing the pleasant things from life by thinking that there is some opposition between living and providing the means of living. We waste so much time and energy that we have little left over in which to enjoy ourselves. Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live. They are but means to an end. For instance, I do not consider the machines which bear my name simply as machines. If that was all there was to it I would do something else. I take them as concrete evidence of the working out of a theory of business, which I hope is something more than a theory of business--a theory that looks toward making this world a better place in which to live. The fact that the commercial success of the Ford Motor Company has been most unusual is important only because it serves to demonstrate, in a way which no one can fail to understand, that the theory to date is right. Considered solely in this light I can criticize the prevailing system of industry and the organization of money and society from the standpoint of one who has not been beaten by them. As things are now organized, I could, were I thinking only selfishly, ask for no change. If I merely want money the present system is all right; it gives money in plenty to me. But I am thinking of service. The present system does not permit of the best service because it encourages every kind of waste--it keeps many men from getting the full return from service. And it is going nowhere. It is all a matter of better planning and adjustment. I have no quarrel with the general attitude of scoffing at new ideas. It is better to be skeptical of all new ideas and to insist upon being shown rather than to rush around in a continuous brainstorm after every new idea. Skepticism, if by that we mean cautiousness, is the balance wheel of civilization. Most of the present acute troubles of the world arise out of taking on new ideas without first carefully investigating to discover if they are good ideas. An idea is not necessarily good because it is old, or necessarily bad because it is new, but if an old idea works, then the weight of the evidence is all in its favor. Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost any one can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product. I am now most interested in fully demonstrating that the ideas we have put into practice are capable of the largest application--that they have nothing peculiarly to do with motor cars or tractors but form something in the nature of a universal code. I am quite certain that it is the natural code and I want to demonstrate it so thoroughly that it will be accepted, not as a new idea, but as a natural code. The natural thing to do is to work--to recognize that prosperity and happiness can be obtained only through honest effort. Human ills flow largely from attempting to escape from this natural course. I have no suggestion which goes beyond accepting in its fullest this principle of nature. I take it for granted that we must work. All that we have done comes as the result of a certain insistence that since we must work it is better to work intelligently and forehandedly; that the better we do our work the better off we shall be. All of which I conceive to be merely elemental common sense. I am not a reformer. I think there is entirely too much attempt at reforming in the world and that we pay too much attention to reformers. We have two kinds of reformers. Both are nuisances. The man who calls himself a reformer wants to smash things. He is the sort of man who would tear up a whole shirt because the collar button did not fit the buttonhole. It would never occur to him to enlarge the buttonhole. This sort of reformer never under any circumstances knows what he is doing. Experience and reform do not go together. A reformer cannot keep his zeal at white heat in the presence of a fact. He must discard all facts. Since 1914 a great many persons have received brand-new intellectual outfits. Many are beginning to think for the first time. They opened their eyes and realized that they were in the world. Then, with a thrill of independence, they realized that they could look at the world critically. They did so and found it faulty. The intoxication of assuming the masterful position of a critic of the social system--which it is every man's right to assume--is unbalancing at first. The very young critic is very much unbalanced. He is strongly in favor of wiping out the old order and starting a new one. They actually managed to start a new world in Russia. It is there that the work of the world makers can best be studied. We learn from Russia that it is the minority and not the majority who determine destructive action. We learn also that while men may decree social laws in conflict with natural laws, Nature vetoes those laws more ruthlessly than did the Czars. Nature has vetoed the whole Soviet Republic. For it sought to deny nature. It denied above all else the right to the fruits of labour. Some people say, "Russia will have to go to work," but that does not describe the case. The fact is that poor Russia is at work, but her work counts for nothing. It is not free work. In the United States a workman works eight hours a day; in Russia, he works twelve to fourteen. In the United States, if a workman wishes to lay off a day or a week, and is able to afford it, there is nothing to prevent him. In Russia, under Sovietism, the workman goes to work whether he wants to or not. The freedom of the citizen has disappeared in the discipline of a prison-like monotony in which all are treated alike. That is slavery. Freedom is the right to work a decent length of time and to get a decent living for doing so; to be able to arrange the little personal details of one's own life. It is the aggregate of these and many other items of freedom which makes up the great idealistic Freedom. The minor forms of Freedom lubricate the everyday life of all of us. Russia could not get along without intelligence and experience. As soon as she began to run her factories by committees, they went to rack and ruin; there was more debate than production. As soon as they threw out the skilled man, thousands of tons of precious materials were spoiled. The fanatics talked the people into starvation. The Soviets are now offering the engineers, the administrators, the foremen and superintendents, whom at first they drove out, large sums of money if only they will come back. Bolshevism is now crying for the brains and experience which it yesterday treated so ruthlessly. All that "reform" did to Russia was to block production. There is in this country a sinister element that desires to creep in between the men who work with their hands and the men who think and plan for the men who work with their hands. The same influence that drove the brains, experience, and ability out of Russia is busily engaged in raising prejudice here. We must not suffer the stranger, the destroyer, the hater of happy humanity, to divide our people. In unity is American strength--and freedom. On the other hand, we have a different kind of reformer who never calls himself one. He is singularly like the radical reformer. The radical has had no experience and does not want it. The other class of reformer has had plenty of experience but it does him no good. I refer to the reactionary--who will be surprised to find himself put in exactly the same class as the Bolshevist. He wants to go back to some previous condition, not because it was the best condition, but because he thinks he knows about that condition. The one crowd wants to smash up the whole world in order to make a better one. The other holds the world as so good that it might well be let stand as it is--and decay. The second notion arises as does the first--out of not using the eyes to see with. It is perfectly possible to smash this world, but it is not possible to build a new one. It is possible to prevent the world from going forward, but it is not possible then to prevent it from going back--from decaying. It is foolish to expect that, if everything be overturned, everyone will thereby get three meals a day. Or, should everything be petrified, that thereby six per cent, interest may be paid. The trouble is that reformers and reactionaries alike get away from the realities--from the primary functions. One of the counsels of caution is to be very certain that we do not mistake a reactionary turn for a return of common sense. We have passed through a period of fireworks of every description, and the making of a great many idealistic maps of progress. We did not get anywhere. It was a convention, not a march. Lovely things were said, but when we got home we found the furnace out. Reactionaries have frequently taken advantage of the recoil from such a period, and they have promised "the good old times"--which usually means the bad old abuses--and because they are perfectly void of vision they are sometimes regarded as "practical men." Their return to power is often hailed as the return of common sense. The primary functions are agriculture, manufacture, and transportation. Community life is impossible without them. They hold the world together. Raising things, making things, and earning things are as primitive as human need and yet as modern as anything can be. They are of the essence of physical life. When they cease, community life ceases. Things do get out of shape in this present world under the present system, but we may hope for a betterment if the foundations stand sure. The great delusion is that one may change the foundation--usurp the part of destiny in the social process. The foundations of society are the men and means to _grow_ things, to _make_ things, and to _carry_ things. As long as agriculture, manufacture, and transportation survive, the world can survive any economic or social change. As we serve our jobs we serve the world. There is plenty of work to do. Business is merely work. Speculation in things already produced--that is not business. It is just more or less respectable graft. But it cannot be legislated out of existence. Laws can do very little. Law never does anything constructive. It can never be more than a policeman, and so it is a waste of time to look to our state capitals or to Washington to do that which law was not designed to do. As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow. We have had enough of looking to Washington and we have had enough of legislators--not so much, however, in this as in other countries--promising laws to do that which laws cannot do. When you get a whole country--as did ours--thinking that Washington is a sort of heaven and behind its clouds dwell omniscience and omnipotence, you are educating that country into a dependent state of mind which augurs ill for the future. Our help does not come from Washington, but from ourselves; our help may, however, go to Washington as a sort of central distribution point where all our efforts are coordinated for the general good. We may help the Government; the Government cannot help us. The slogan of "less government in business and more business in government" is a very good one, not mainly on account of business or government, but on account of the people. Business is not the reason why the United States was founded. The Declaration of Independence is not a business charter, nor is the Constitution of the United States a commercial schedule. The United States--its land, people, government, and business--are but methods by which the life of the people is made worth while. The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, immoral, and inhuman. We cannot live without business and we cannot live without government. Business and government are necessary as servants, like water and grain; as masters they overturn the natural order. The welfare of the country is squarely up to us as individuals. That is where it should be and that is where it is safest. Governments can promise something for nothing but they cannot deliver. They can juggle the currencies as they did in Europe (and as bankers the world over do, as long as they can get the benefit of the juggling) with a patter of solemn nonsense. But it is work and work alone that can continue to deliver the goods--and that, down in his heart, is what every man knows. There is little chance of an intelligent people, such as ours, ruining the fundamental processes of economic life. Most men know they cannot get something for nothing. Most men feel--even if they do not know--that money is not wealth. The ordinary theories which promise everything to everybody, and demand nothing from anybody, are promptly denied by the instincts of the ordinary man, even when he does not find reasons against them. He _knows_ they are wrong. That is enough. The present order, always clumsy, often stupid, and in many ways imperfect, has this advantage over any other--it works. Doubtless our order will merge by degrees into another, and the new one will also work--but not so much by reason of what it is as by reason of what men will bring into it. The reason why Bolshevism did not work, and cannot work, is not economic. It does not matter whether industry is privately managed or socially controlled; it does not matter whether you call the workers' share "wages" or "dividends"; it does not matter whether you regimentalize the people as to food, clothing, and shelter, or whether you allow them to eat, dress, and live as they like. Those are mere matters of detail. The incapacity of the Bolshevist leaders is indicated by the fuss they made over such details. Bolshevism failed because it was both unnatural and immoral. Our system stands. Is it wrong? Of course it is wrong, at a thousand points! Is it clumsy? Of course it is clumsy. By all right and reason it ought to break down. But it does not--because it is instinct with certain economic and moral fundamentals. The economic fundamental is labour. Labour is the human element which makes the fruitful seasons of the earth useful to men. It is men's labour that makes the harvest what it is. That is the economic fundamental: every one of us is working with material which we did not and could not create, but which was presented to us by Nature. The moral fundamental is man's right in his labour. This is variously stated. It is sometimes called "the right of property." It is sometimes masked in the command, "Thou shalt not steal." It is the other man's right in his property that makes stealing a crime. When a man has earned his bread, he has a right to that bread. If another steals it, he does more than steal bread; he invades a sacred human right. If we cannot produce we cannot have--but some say if we produce it is only for the capitalists. Capitalists who become such because they provide better means of production are of the foundation of society. They have really nothing of their own. They merely manage property for the benefit of others. Capitalists who become such through trading in money are a temporarily necessary evil. They may not be evil at all if their money goes to production. If their money goes to complicating distribution--to raising barriers between the producer and the consumer--then they are evil capitalists and they will pass away when money is better adjusted to work; and money will become better adjusted to work when it is fully realized that through work and work alone may health, wealth, and happiness inevitably be secured. There is no reason why a man who is willing to work should not be able to work and to receive the full value of his work. There is equally no reason why a man who can but will not work should not receive the full value of his services to the community. He should most certainly be permitted to take away from the community an equivalent of what he contributes to it. If he contributes nothing he should take away nothing. He should have the freedom of starvation. We are not getting anywhere when we insist that every man ought to have more than he deserves to have--just because some do get more than they deserve to have. There can be no greater absurdity and no greater disservice to humanity in general than to insist that all men are equal. Most certainly all men are not equal, and any democratic conception which strives to make men equal is only an effort to block progress. Men cannot be of equal service. The men of larger ability are less numerous than the men of smaller ability; it is possible for a mass of the smaller men to pull the larger ones down--but in so doing they pull themselves down. It is the larger men who give the leadership to the community and enable the smaller men to live with less effort. The conception of democracy which names a leveling-down of ability makes for waste. No two things in nature are alike. We build our cars absolutely interchangeable. All parts are as nearly alike as chemical analysis, the finest machinery, and the finest workmanship can make them. No fitting of any kind is required, and it would certainly seem that two Fords standing side by side, looking exactly alike and made so exactly alike that any part could be taken out of one and put into the other, would be alike. But they are not. They will have different road habits. We have men who have driven hundreds, and in some cases thousands of Fords and they say that no two ever act precisely the same--that, if they should drive a new car for an hour or even less and then the car were mixed with a bunch of other new ones, also each driven for a single hour and under the same conditions, that although they could not recognize the car they had been driving merely by looking at it, they could do so by driving it. I have been speaking in general terms. Let us be more concrete. A man ought to be able to live on a scale commensurate with the service that he renders. This is rather a good time to talk about this point, for we have recently been through a period when the rendering of service was the last thing that most people thought of. We were getting to a place where no one cared about costs or service. Orders came without effort. Whereas once it was the customer who favored the merchant by dealing with him, conditions changed until it was the merchant who favored the customer by selling to him. That is bad for business. Monopoly is bad for business. Profiteering is bad for business. The lack of necessity to hustle is bad for business. Business is never as healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching for what it gets. Things were coming too easily. There was a let-down of the principle that an honest relation ought to obtain between values and prices. The public no longer had to be "catered to." There was even a "public be damned" attitude in many places. It was intensely bad for business. Some men called that abnormal condition "prosperity." It was not prosperity-- it was just a needless money chase. Money chasing is not business. It is very easy, unless one keeps a plan thoroughly in mind, to get burdened with money and then, in an effort to make more money, to forget all about selling to the people what they want. Business on a money-making basis is most insecure. It is a touch-and-go affair, moving irregularly and rarely over a term of years amounting to much. It is the function of business to produce for consumption and not for money or speculation. Producing for consumption implies that the quality of the article produced will be high and that the price will be low--that the article be one which serves the people and not merely the producer. If the money feature is twisted out of its proper perspective, then the production will be twisted to serve the producer. The producer depends for his prosperity upon serving the people. He may get by for a while serving himself, but if he does, it will be purely accidental, and when the people wake up to the fact that they are not being served, the end of that producer is in sight. During the boom period the larger effort of production was to serve itself and hence, the moment the people woke up, many producers went to smash. They said that they had entered into a "period of depression." Really they had not. They were simply trying to pit nonsense against sense which is something that cannot successfully be done. Being greedy for money is the surest way not to get it, but when one serves for the sake of service--for the satisfaction of doing that which one believes to be right--then money abundantly takes care of itself. Money comes naturally as the result of service. And it is absolutely necessary to have money. But we do not want to forget that the end of money is not ease but the opportunity to perform more service. In my mind nothing is more abhorrent than a life of ease. None of us has any right to ease. There is no place in civilization for the idler. Any scheme looking to abolishing money is only making affairs more complex, for we must have a measure. That our present system of money is a satisfactory basis for exchange is a matter of grave doubt. That is a question which I shall talk of in a subsequent chapter. The gist of my objection to the present monetary system is that it tends to become a thing of itself and to block instead of facilitate production. My effort is in the direction of simplicity. People in general have so little and it costs so much to buy even the barest necessities (let alone that share of the luxuries to which I think everyone is entitled) because nearly everything that we make is much more complex than it needs to be. Our clothing, our food, our household furnishings--all could be much simpler than they now are and at the same time be better looking. Things in past ages were made in certain ways and makers since then have just followed. I do not mean that we should adopt freak styles. There is no necessity for that Clothing need not be a bag with a hole cut in it. That might be easy to make but it would be inconvenient to wear. A blanket does not require much tailoring, but none of us could get much work done if we went around Indian-fashion in blankets. Real simplicity means that which gives the very best service and is the most convenient in use. The trouble with drastic reforms is they always insist that a man be made over in order to use certain designed articles. I think that dress reform for women--which seems to mean ugly clothes--must always originate with plain women who want to make everyone else look plain. That is not the right process. Start with an article that suits and then study to find some way of eliminating the entirely useless parts. This applies to everything--a shoe, a dress, a house, a piece of machinery, a railroad, a steamship, an airplane. As we cut out useless parts and simplify necessary ones we also cut down the cost of making. This is simple logic, but oddly enough the ordinary process starts with a cheapening of the manufacturing instead of with a simplifying of the article. The start ought to be with the article. First we ought to find whether it is as well made as it should be--does it give the best possible service? Then--are the materials the best or merely the most expensive? Then--can its complexity and weight be cut down? And so on. There is no more sense in having extra weight in an article than there is in the cockade on a coachman's hat. In fact, there is not as much. For the cockade may help the coachman to identify his hat while the extra weight means only a waste of strength. I cannot imagine where the delusion that weight means strength came from. It is all well enough in a pile-driver, but why move a heavy weight if we are not going to hit anything with it? In transportation why put extra weight in a machine? Why not add it to the load that the machine is designed to carry? Fat men cannot run as fast as thin men but we build most of our vehicles as though dead-weight fat increased speed! A deal of poverty grows out of the carriage of excess weight. Some day we shall discover how further to eliminate weight. Take wood, for example. For certain purposes wood is now the best substance we know, but wood is extremely wasteful. The wood in a Ford car contains thirty pounds of water. There must be some way of doing better than that. There must be some method by which we can gain the same strength and elasticity without having to lug useless weight. And so through a thousand processes. The farmer makes too complex an affair out of his daily work. I believe that the average farmer puts to a really useful purpose only about 5 per cent of the energy that he spends. If any one ever equipped a factory in the style, say, the average farm is fitted out, the place would be cluttered with men. The worst factory in Europe is hardly as bad as the average farm barn. Power is utilized to the least possible degree. Not only is everything done by hand, but seldom is a thought given to logical arrangement. A farmer doing his chores will walk up and down a rickety ladder a dozen times. He will carry water for years instead of putting in a few lengths of pipe. His whole idea, when there is extra work to do, is to hire extra men. He thinks of putting money into improvements as an expense. Farm products at their lowest prices are dearer than they ought to be. Farm profits at their highest are lower than they ought to be. It is waste motion--waste effort--that makes farm prices high and profits low. On my own farm at Dearborn we do everything by machinery. We have eliminated a great number of wastes, but we have not as yet touched on real economy. We have not yet been able to put in five or ten years of intense night-and-day study to discover what really ought to be done. We have left more undone than we have done. Yet at no time--no matter what the value of crops--have we failed to turn a first-class profit. We are not farmers--we are industrialists on the farm. The moment the farmer considers himself as an industrialist, with a horror of waste either in material or in men, then we are going to have farm products so low-priced that all will have enough to eat, and the profits will be so satisfactory that farming will be considered as among the least hazardous and most profitable of occupations. Lack of knowledge of what is going on and lack of knowledge of what the job really is and the best way of doing it are the reasons why farming is thought not to pay. Nothing could pay the way farming is conducted. The farmer follows luck and his forefathers. He does not know how economically to produce, and he does not know how to market. A manufacturer who knew how neither to produce nor to market would not long stay in business. That the farmer can stay on shows how wonderfully profitable farming can be. The way to attain low-priced, high-volume production in the factory or on the farm--and low-priced, high-volume production means plenty for everyone--is quite simple. The trouble is that the general tendency is to complicate very simple affairs. Take, for an instance, an "improvement." When we talk about improvements usually we have in mind some change in a product. An "improved" product is one that has been changed. That is not my idea. I do not believe in starting to make until I have discovered the best possible thing. This, of course, does not mean that a product should never be changed, but I think that it will be found more economical in the end not even to try to produce an article until you have fully satisfied yourself that utility, design, and material are the best. If your researches do not give you that confidence, then keep right on searching until you find confidence. The place to start manufacturing is with the article. The factory, the organization, the selling, and the financial plans will shape themselves to the article. You will have a cutting, edge on your business chisel and in the end you will save time. Rushing into manufacturing without being certain of the product is the unrecognized cause of many business failures. People seem to think that the big thing is the factory or the store or the financial backing or the management. The big thing is the product, and any hurry in getting into fabrication before designs are completed is just so much waste time. I spent twelve years before I had a Model T--which is what is known to-day as the Ford car--that suited me. We did not attempt to go into real production until we had a real product. That product has not been essentially changed. We are constantly experimenting with new ideas. If you travel the roads in the neighbourhood of Dearborn you can find all sorts of models of Ford cars. They are experimental cars--they are not new models. I do not believe in letting any good idea get by me, but I will not quickly decide whether an idea is good or bad. If an idea seems good or seems even to have possibilities, I believe in doing whatever is necessary to test out the idea from every angle. But testing out the idea is something very different from making a change in the car. Where most manufacturers find themselves quicker to make a change in the product than in the method of manufacturing--we follow exactly the opposite course. Our big changes have been in methods of manufacturing. They never stand still. I believe that there is hardly a single operation in the making of our car that is the same as when we made our first car of the present model. That is why we make them so cheaply. The few changes that have been made in the car have been in the direction of convenience in use or where we found that a change in design might give added strength. The materials in the car change as we learn more and more about materials. Also we do not want to be held up in production or have the expense of production increased by any possible shortage in a particular material, so we have for most parts worked out substitute materials. Vanadium steel, for instance, is our principal steel. With it we can get the greatest strength with the least weight, but it would not be good business to let our whole future depend upon being able to get vanadium steel. We have worked out a substitute. All our steels are special, but for every one of them we have at least one, and sometimes several, fully proved and tested substitutes. And so on through all of our materials and likewise with our parts. In the beginning we made very few of our parts and none of our motors. Now we make all our motors and most of our parts because we find it cheaper to do so. But also we aim to make some of every part so that we cannot be caught in any market emergency or be crippled by some outside manufacturer being unable to fill his orders. The prices on glass were run up outrageously high during the war; we are among the largest users of glass in the country. Now we are putting up our own glass factory. If we had devoted all of this energy to making changes in the product we should be nowhere; but by not changing the product we are able to give our energy to the improvement of the making. The principal part of a chisel is the cutting edge. If there is a single principle on which our business rests it is that. It makes no difference how finely made a chisel is or what splendid steel it has in it or how well it is forged--if it has no cutting edge it is not a chisel. It is just a piece of metal. All of which being translated means that it is what a thing does--not what it is supposed to do--that matters. What is the use of putting a tremendous force behind a blunt chisel if a light blow on a sharp chisel will do the work? The chisel is there to cut, not to be hammered. The hammering is only incidental to the job. So if we want to work why not concentrate on the work and do it in the quickest possible fashion? The cutting edge of merchandising is the point where the product touches the consumer. An unsatisfactory product is one that has a dull cutting edge. A lot of waste effort is needed to put it through. The cutting edge of a factory is the man and the machine on the job. If the man is not right the machine cannot be; if the machine is not right the man cannot be. For any one to be required to use more force than is absolutely necessary for the job in hand is waste. The essence of my idea then is that waste and greed block the delivery of true service. Both waste and greed are unnecessary. Waste is due largely to not understanding what one does, or being careless in doing of it. Greed is merely a species of nearsightedness. I have striven toward manufacturing with a minimum of waste, both of materials and of human effort, and then toward distribution at a minimum of profit, depending for the total profit upon the volume of distribution. In the process of manufacturing I want to distribute the maximum of wage--that is, the maximum of buying power. Since also this makes for a minimum cost and we sell at a minimum profit, we can distribute a product in consonance with buying power. Thus everyone who is connected with us--either as a manager, worker, or purchaser--is the better for our existence. The institution that we have erected is performing a service. That is the only reason I have for talking about it. The principles of that service are these: 1. An absence of fear of the future and of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress. 2. A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another man--criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition of one's fellow man--to rule by force instead of by intelligence. 3. The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted business enterprise cannot fail to return a profit, but profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It cannot be the basis--it must be the result of service. 4. Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and giving it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing, tend only to clog this progression. How all of this arose, how it has worked out, and how it applies generally are the subjects of these chapters. CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF BUSINESS On May 31, 1921, the Ford Motor Company turned out Car No. 5,000,000. It is out in my museum along with the gasoline buggy that I began work on thirty years before and which first ran satisfactorily along in the spring of 1893. I was running it when the bobolinks came to Dearborn and they always come on April 2nd. There is all the difference in the world in the appearance of the two vehicles and almost as much difference in construction and materials, but in fundamentals the two are curiously alike--except that the old buggy has on it a few wrinkles that we have not yet quite adopted in our modern car. For that first car or buggy, even though it had but two cylinders, would make twenty miles an hour and run sixty miles on the three gallons of gas the little tank held and is as good to-day as the day it was built. The development in methods of manufacture and in materials has been greater than the development in basic design. The whole design has been refined; the present Ford car, which is the "Model T," has four cylinders and a self starter--it is in every way a more convenient and an easier riding car. It is simpler than the first car. But almost every point in it may be found also in the first car. The changes have been brought about through experience in the making and not through any change in the basic principle--which I take to be an important fact demonstrating that, given a good idea to start with, it is better to concentrate on perfecting it than to hunt around for a new idea. One idea at a time is about as much as any one can handle. It was life on the farm that drove me into devising ways and means to better transportation. I was born on July 30, 1863, on a farm at Dearborn, Michigan, and my earliest recollection is that, considering the results, there was too much work on the place. That is the way I still feel about farming. There is a legend that my parents were very poor and that the early days were hard ones. Certainly they were not rich, but neither were they poor. As Michigan farmers went, we were prosperous. The house in which I was born is still standing, and it and the farm are part of my present holding. There was too much hard hand labour on our own and all other farms of the time. Even when very young I suspected that much might somehow be done in a better way. That is what took me into mechanics--although my mother always said that I was born a mechanic. I had a kind of workshop with odds and ends of metal for tools before I had anything else. In those days we did not have the toys of to-day; what we had were home made. My toys were all tools--they still are! And every fragment of machinery was a treasure. The biggest event of those early years was meeting with a road engine about eight miles out of Detroit one day when we were driving to town. I was then twelve years old. The second biggest event was getting a watch--which happened in the same year. I remember that engine as though I had seen it only yesterday, for it was the first vehicle other than horse-drawn that I had ever seen. It was intended primarily for driving threshing machines and sawmills and was simply a portable engine and boiler mounted on wheels with a water tank and coal cart trailing behind. I had seen plenty of these engines hauled around by horses, but this one had a chain that made a connection between the engine and the rear wheels of the wagon-like frame on which the boiler was mounted. The engine was placed over the boiler and one man standing on the platform behind the boiler shoveled coal, managed the throttle, and did the steering. It had been made by Nichols, Shepard & Company of Battle Creek. I found that out at once. The engine had stopped to let us pass with our horses and I was off the wagon and talking to the engineer before my father, who was driving, knew what I was up to. The engineer was very glad to explain the whole affair. He was proud of it. He showed me how the chain was disconnected from the propelling wheel and a belt put on to drive other machinery. He told me that the engine made two hundred revolutions a minute and that the chain pinion could be shifted to let the wagon stop while the engine was still running. This last is a feature which, although in different fashion, is incorporated into modern automobiles. It was not important with steam engines, which are easily stopped and started, but it became very important with the gasoline engine. It was that engine which took me into automotive transportation. I tried to make models of it, and some years later I did make one that ran very well, but from the time I saw that road engine as a boy of twelve right forward to to-day, my great interest has been in making a machine that would travel the roads. Driving to town I always had a pocket full of trinkets--nuts, washers, and odds and ends of machinery. Often I took a broken watch and tried to put it together. When I was thirteen I managed for the first time to put a watch together so that it would keep time. By the time I was fifteen I could do almost anything in watch repairing--although my tools were of the crudest. There is an immense amount to be learned simply by tinkering with things. It is not possible to learn from books how everything is made--and a real mechanic ought to know how nearly everything is made. Machines are to a mechanic what books are to a writer. He gets ideas from them, and if he has any brains he will apply those ideas. From the beginning I never could work up much interest in the labour of farming. I wanted to have something to do with machinery. My father was not entirely in sympathy with my bent toward mechanics. He thought that I ought to be a farmer. When I left school at seventeen and became an apprentice in the machine shop of the Drydock Engine Works I was all but given up for lost. I passed my apprenticeship without trouble--that is, I was qualified to be a machinist long before my three-year term had expired--and having a liking for fine work and a leaning toward watches I worked nights at repairing in a jewelry shop. At one period of those early days I think that I must have had fully three hundred watches. I thought that I could build a serviceable watch for around thirty cents and nearly started in the business. But I did not because I figured out that watches were not universal necessities, and therefore people generally would not buy them. Just how I reached that surprising conclusion I am unable to state. I did not like the ordinary jewelry and watch making work excepting where the job was hard to do. Even then I wanted to make something in quantity. It was just about the time when the standard railroad time was being arranged. We had formerly been on sun time and for quite a while, just as in our present daylight-saving days, the railroad time differed from the local time. That bothered me a good deal and so I succeeded in making a watch that kept both times. It had two dials and it was quite a curiosity in the neighbourhood. In 1879--that is, about four years after I first saw that Nichols-Shepard machine--I managed to get a chance to run one and when my apprenticeship was over I worked with a local representative of the Westinghouse Company of Schenectady as an expert in the setting up and repair of their road engines. The engine they put out was much the same as the Nichols-Shepard engine excepting that the engine was up in front, the boiler in the rear, and the power was applied to the back wheels by a belt. They could make twelve miles an hour on the road even though the self-propelling feature was only an incident of the construction. They were sometimes used as tractors to pull heavy loads and, if the owner also happened to be in the threshing-machine business, he hitched his threshing machine and other paraphernalia to the engine in moving from farm to farm. What bothered me was the weight and the cost. They weighed a couple of tons and were far too expensive to be owned by other than a farmer with a great deal of land. They were mostly employed by people who went into threshing as a business or who had sawmills or some other line that required portable power. Even before that time I had the idea of making some kind of a light steam car that would take the place of horses--more especially, however, as a tractor to attend to the excessively hard labour of ploughing. It occurred to me, as I remember somewhat vaguely, that precisely the same idea might be applied to a carriage or a wagon on the road. A horseless carriage was a common idea. People had been talking about carriages without horses for many years back--in fact, ever since the steam engine was invented--but the idea of the carriage at first did not seem so practical to me as the idea of an engine to do the harder farm work, and of all the work on the farm ploughing was the hardest. Our roads were poor and we had not the habit of getting around. One of the most remarkable features of the automobile on the farm is the way that it has broadened the farmer's life. We simply took for granted that unless the errand were urgent we would not go to town, and I think we rarely made more than a trip a week. In bad weather we did not go even that often. Being a full-fledged machinist and with a very fair workshop on the farm it was not difficult for me to build a steam wagon or tractor. In the building of it came the idea that perhaps it might be made for road use. I felt perfectly certain that horses, considering all the bother of attending them and the expense of feeding, did not earn their keep. The obvious thing to do was to design and build a steam engine that would be light enough to run an ordinary wagon or to pull a plough. I thought it more important first to develop the tractor. To lift farm drudgery off flesh and blood and lay it on steel and motors has been my most constant ambition. It was circumstances that took me first into the actual manufacture of road cars. I found eventually that people were more interested in something that would travel on the road than in something that would do the work on the farms. In fact, I doubt that the light farm tractor could have been introduced on the farm had not the farmer had his eyes opened slowly but surely by the automobile. But that is getting ahead of the story. I thought the farmer would be more interested in the tractor. I built a steam car that ran. It had a kerosene-heated boiler and it developed plenty of power and a neat control--which is so easy with a steam throttle. But the boiler was dangerous. To get the requisite power without too big and heavy a power plant required that the engine work under high pressure; sitting on a high-pressure steam boiler is not altogether pleasant. To make it even reasonably safe required an excess of weight that nullified the economy of the high pressure. For two years I kept experimenting with various sorts of boilers--the engine and control problems were simple enough--and then I definitely abandoned the whole idea of running a road vehicle by steam. I knew that in England they had what amounted to locomotives running on the roads hauling lines of trailers and also there was no difficulty in designing a big steam tractor for use on a large farm. But ours were not then English roads; they would have stalled or racked to pieces the strongest and heaviest road tractor. And anyway the manufacturing of a big tractor which only a few wealthy farmers could buy did not seem to me worth while. But I did not give up the idea of a horseless carriage. The work with the Westinghouse representative only served to confirm the opinion I had formed that steam was not suitable for light vehicles. That is why I stayed only a year with that company. There was nothing more that the big steam tractors and engines could teach me and I did not want to waste time on something that would lead nowhere. A few years before--it was while I was an apprentice--I read in the _World of Science_, an English publication, of the "silent gas engine" which was then coming out in England. I think it was the Otto engine. It ran with illuminating gas, had a single large cylinder, and the power impulses being thus intermittent required an extremely heavy fly-wheel. As far as weight was concerned it gave nothing like the power per pound of metal that a steam engine gave, and the use of illuminating gas seemed to dismiss it as even a possibility for road use. It was interesting to me only as all machinery was interesting. I followed in the English and American magazines which we got in the shop the development of the engine and most particularly the hints of the possible replacement of the illuminating gas fuel by a gas formed by the vaporization of gasoline. The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market. They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people--they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. The gas engine interested me and I followed its progress, but only from curiosity, until about 1885 or 1886 when, the steam engine being discarded as the motive power for the carriage that I intended some day to build, I had to look around for another sort of motive power. In 1885 I repaired an Otto engine at the Eagle Iron Works in Detroit. No one in town knew anything about them. There was a rumour that I did and, although I had never before been in contact with one, I undertook and carried through the job. That gave me a chance to study the new engine at first hand and in 1887 I built one on the Otto four-cycle model just to see if I understood the principles. "Four cycle" means that the piston traverses the cylinder four times to get one power impulse. The first stroke draws in the gas, the second compresses it, the third is the explosion or power stroke, while the fourth stroke exhausts the waste gas. The little model worked well enough; it had a one-inch bore and a three-inch stroke, operated with gasoline, and while it did not develop much power, it was slightly lighter in proportion than the engines being offered commercially. I gave it away later to a young man who wanted it for something or other and whose name I have forgotten; it was eventually destroyed. That was the beginning of the work with the internal combustion engine. I was then on the farm to which I had returned, more because I wanted to experiment than because I wanted to farm, and, now being an all-around machinist, I had a first-class workshop to replace the toy shop of earlier days. My father offered me forty acres of timber land, provided I gave up being a machinist. I agreed in a provisional way, for cutting the timber gave me a chance to get married. I fitted out a sawmill and a portable engine and started to cut out and saw up the timber on the tract. Some of the first of that lumber went into a cottage on my new farm and in it we began our married life. It was not a big house--thirty-one feet square and only a story and a half high--but it was a comfortable place. I added to it my workshop, and when I was not cutting timber I was working on the gas engines--learning what they were and how they acted. I read everything I could find, but the greatest knowledge came from the work. A gas engine is a mysterious sort of thing--it will not always go the way it should. You can imagine how those first engines acted! It was in 1890 that I began on a double-cylinder engine. It was quite impractical to consider the single cylinder for transportation purposes--the fly-wheel had to be entirely too heavy. Between making the first four-cycle engine of the Otto type and the start on a double cylinder I had made a great many experimental engines out of tubing. I fairly knew my way about. The double cylinder I thought could be applied to a road vehicle and my original idea was to put it on a bicycle with a direct connection to the crankshaft and allowing for the rear wheel of the bicycle to act as the balance wheel. The speed was going to be varied only by the throttle. I never carried out this plan because it soon became apparent that the engine, gasoline tank, and the various necessary controls would be entirely too heavy for a bicycle. The plan of the two opposed cylinders was that, while one would be delivering power the other would be exhausting. This naturally would not require so heavy a fly-wheel to even the application of power. The work started in my shop on the farm. Then I was offered a job with the Detroit Electric Company as an engineer and machinist at forty-five dollars a month. I took it because that was more money than the farm was bringing me and I had decided to get away from farm life anyway. The timber had all been cut. We rented a house on Bagley Avenue, Detroit. The workshop came along and I set it up in a brick shed at the back of the house. During the first several months I was in the night shift at the electric-light plant--which gave me very little time for experimenting--but after that I was in the day shift and every night and all of every Saturday night I worked on the new motor. I cannot say that it was hard work. No work with interest is ever hard. I always am certain of results. They always come if you work hard enough. But it was a very great thing to have my wife even more confident than I was. She has always been that way. I had to work from the ground up--that is, although I knew that a number of people were working on horseless carriages, I could not know what they were doing. The hardest problems to overcome were in the making and breaking of the spark and in the avoidance of excess weight. For the transmission, the steering gear, and the general construction, I could draw on my experience with the steam tractors. In 1892 I completed my first motor car, but it was not until the spring of the following year that it ran to my satisfaction. This first car had something of the appearance of a buggy. There were two cylinders with a two-and-a-half-inch bore and a six-inch stroke set side by side and over the rear axle. I made them out of the exhaust pipe of a steam engine that I had bought. They developed about four horsepower. The power was transmitted from the motor to the countershaft by a belt and from the countershaft to the rear wheel by a chain. The car would hold two people, the seat being suspended on posts and the body on elliptical springs. There were two speeds--one of ten and the other of twenty miles per hour--obtained by shifting the belt, which was done by a clutch lever in front of the driving seat. Thrown forward, the lever put in the high speed; thrown back, the low speed; with the lever upright the engine could run free. To start the car it was necessary to turn the motor over by hand with the clutch free. To stop the car one simply released the clutch and applied the foot brake. There was no reverse, and speeds other than those of the belt were obtained by the throttle. I bought the iron work for the frame of the carriage and also the seat and the springs. The wheels were twenty-eight-inch wire bicycle wheels with rubber tires. The balance wheel I had cast from a pattern that I made and all of the more delicate mechanism I made myself. One of the features that I discovered necessary was a compensating gear that permitted the same power to be applied to each of the rear wheels when turning corners. The machine altogether weighed about five hundred pounds. A tank under the seat held three gallons of gasoline which was fed to the motor through a small pipe and a mixing valve. The ignition was by electric spark. The original machine was air-cooled--or to be more accurate, the motor simply was not cooled at all. I found that on a run of an hour or more the motor heated up, and so I very shortly put a water jacket around the cylinders and piped it to a tank in the rear of the car over the cylinders. Nearly all of these various features had been planned in advance. That is the way I have always worked. I draw a plan and work out every detail on the plan before starting to build. For otherwise one will waste a great deal of time in makeshifts as the work goes on and the finished article will not have coherence. It will not be rightly proportioned. Many inventors fail because they do not distinguish between planning and experimenting. The largest building difficulties that I had were in obtaining the proper materials. The next were with tools. There had to be some adjustments and changes in details of the design, but what held me up most was that I had neither the time nor the money to search for the best material for each part. But in the spring of 1893 the machine was running to my partial satisfaction and giving an opportunity further to test out the design and material on the road. CHAPTER II WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT BUSINESS My "gasoline buggy" was the first and for a long time the only automobile in Detroit. It was considered to be something of a nuisance, for it made a racket and it scared horses. Also it blocked traffic. For if I stopped my machine anywhere in town a crowd was around it before I could start up again. If I left it alone even for a minute some inquisitive person always tried to run it. Finally, I had to carry a chain and chain it to a lamp post whenever I left it anywhere. And then there was trouble with the police. I do not know quite why, for my impression is that there were no speed-limit laws in those days. Anyway, I had to get a special permit from the mayor and thus for a time enjoyed the distinction of being the only licensed chauffeur in America. I ran that machine about one thousand miles through 1895 and 1896 and then sold it to Charles Ainsley of Detroit for two hundred dollars. That was my first sale. I had built the car not to sell but only to experiment with. I wanted to start another car. Ainsley wanted to buy. I could use the money and we had no trouble in agreeing upon a price. It was not at all my idea to make cars in any such petty fashion. I was looking ahead to production, but before that could come I had to have something to produce. It does not pay to hurry. I started a second car in 1896; it was much like the first but a little lighter. It also had the belt drive which I did not give up until some time later; the belts were all right excepting in hot weather. That is why I later adopted gears. I learned a great deal from that car. Others in this country and abroad were building cars by that time, and in 1895 I heard that a Benz car from Germany was on exhibition in Macy's store in New York. I traveled down to look at it but it had no features that seemed worth while. It also had the belt drive, but it was much heavier than my car. I was working for lightness; the foreign makers have never seemed to appreciate what light weight means. I built three cars in all in my home shop and all of them ran for years in Detroit. I still have the first car; I bought it back a few years later from a man to whom Mr. Ainsley had sold it. I paid one hundred dollars for it. During all this time I kept my position with the electric company and gradually advanced to chief engineer at a salary of one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. But my gas-engine experiments were no more popular with the president of the company than my first mechanical leanings were with my father. It was not that my employer objected to experiments--only to experiments with a gas engine. I can still hear him say: "Electricity, yes, that's the coming thing. But gas--no." He had ample grounds for his skepticism--to use the mildest terms. Practically no one had the remotest notion of the future of the internal combustion engine, while we were just on the edge of the great electrical development. As with every comparatively new idea, electricity was expected to do much more than we even now have any indication that it can do. I did not see the use of experimenting with electricity for my purposes. A road car could not run on a trolley even if trolley wires had been less expensive; no storage battery was in sight of a weight that was practical. An electrical car had of necessity to be limited in radius and to contain a large amount of motive machinery in proportion to the power exerted. That is not to say that I held or now hold electricity cheaply; we have not yet begun to use electricity. But it has its place, and the internal combustion engine has its place. Neither can substitute for the other--which is exceedingly fortunate. I have the dynamo that I first had charge of at the Detroit Edison Company. When I started our Canadian plant I bought it from an office building to which it had been sold by the electric company, had it revamped a little, and for several years it gave excellent service in the Canadian plant. When we had to build a new power plant, owing to the increase in business, I had the old motor taken out to my museum--a room out at Dearborn that holds a great number of my mechanical treasures. The Edison Company offered me the general superintendency of the company but only on condition that I would give up my gas engine and devote myself to something really useful. I had to choose between my job and my automobile. I chose the automobile, or rather I gave up the job--there was really nothing in the way of a choice. For already I knew that the car was bound to be a success. I quit my job on August 15, 1899, and went into the automobile business. It might be thought something of a step, for I had no personal funds. What money was left over from living was all used in experimenting. But my wife agreed that the automobile could not be given up--that we had to make or break. There was no "demand" for automobiles--there never is for a new article. They were accepted in much the fashion as was more recently the airplane. At first the "horseless carriage" was considered merely a freak notion and many wise people explained with particularity why it could never be more than a toy. No man of money even thought of it as a commercial possibility. I cannot imagine why each new means of transportation meets with such opposition. There are even those to-day who shake their heads and talk about the luxury of the automobile and only grudgingly admit that perhaps the motor truck is of some use. But in the beginning there was hardly any one who sensed that the automobile could be a large factor in industry. The most optimistic hoped only for a development akin to that of the bicycle. When it was found that an automobile really could go and several makers started to put out cars, the immediate query was as to which would go fastest. It was a curious but natural development--that racing idea. I never thought anything of racing, but the public refused to consider the automobile in any light other than as a fast toy. Therefore later we had to race. The industry was held back by this initial racing slant, for the attention of the makers was diverted to making fast rather than good cars. It was a business for speculators. A group of men of speculative turn of mind organized, as soon as I left the electric company, the Detroit Automobile Company to exploit my car. I was the chief engineer and held a small amount of the stock. For three years we continued making cars more or less on the model of my first car. We sold very few of them; I could get no support at all toward making better cars to be sold to the public at large. The whole thought was to make to order and to get the largest price possible for each car. The main idea seemed to be to get the money. And being without authority other than my engineering position gave me, I found that the new company was not a vehicle for realizing my ideas but merely a money-making concern--that did not make much money. In March, 1902, I resigned, determined never again to put myself under orders. The Detroit Automobile Company later became the Cadillac Company under the ownership of the Lelands, who came in subsequently. I rented a shop--a one-story brick shed--at 81 Park Place to continue my experiments and to find out what business really was. I thought that it must be something different from what it had proved to be in my first adventure. The year from 1902 until the formation of the Ford Motor Company was practically one of investigation. In my little one-room brick shop I worked on the development of a four-cylinder motor and on the outside I tried to find out what business really was and whether it needed to be quite so selfish a scramble for money as it seemed to be from my first short experience. From the period of the first car, which I have described, until the formation of my present company I built in all about twenty-five cars, of which nineteen or twenty were built with the Detroit Automobile Company. The automobile had passed from the initial stage where the fact that it could run at all was enough, to the stage where it had to show speed. Alexander Winton of Cleveland, the founder of the Winton car, was then the track champion of the country and willing to meet all comers. I designed a two-cylinder enclosed engine of a more compact type than I had before used, fitted it into a skeleton chassis, found that I could make speed, and arranged a race with Winton. We met on the Grosse Point track at Detroit. I beat him. That was my first race, and it brought advertising of the only kind that people cared to read. The public thought nothing of a car unless it made speed--unless it beat other racing cars. My ambition to build the fastest car in the world led me to plan a four-cylinder motor. But of that more later. The most surprising feature of business as it was conducted was the large attention given to finance and the small attention to service. That seemed to me to be reversing the natural process which is that the money should come as the result of work and not before the work. The second feature was the general indifference to better methods of manufacture as long as whatever was done got by and took the money. In other words, an article apparently was not built with reference to how greatly it could serve the public but with reference solely to how much money could be had for it--and that without any particular care whether the customer was satisfied. To sell him was enough. A dissatisfied customer was regarded not as a man whose trust had been violated, but either as a nuisance or as a possible source of more money in fixing up the work which ought to have been done correctly in the first place. For instance, in automobiles there was not much concern as to what happened to the car once it had been sold. How much gasoline it used per mile was of no great moment; how much service it actually gave did not matter; and if it broke down and had to have parts replaced, then that was just hard luck for the owner. It was considered good business to sell parts at the highest possible price on the theory that, since the man had already bought the car, he simply had to have the part and would be willing to pay for it. The automobile business was not on what I would call an honest basis, to say nothing of being, from a manufacturing standpoint, on a scientific basis, but it was no worse than business in general. That was the period, it may be remembered, in which many corporations were being floated and financed. The bankers, who before then had confined themselves to the railroads, got into industry. My idea was then and still is that if a man did his work well, the price he would get for that work, the profits and all financial matters, would care for themselves and that a business ought to start small and build itself up and out of its earnings. If there are no earnings then that is a signal to the owner that he is wasting his time and does not belong in that business. I have never found it necessary to change those ideas, but I discovered that this simple formula of doing good work and getting paid for it was supposed to be slow for modern business. The plan at that time most in favor was to start off with the largest possible capitalization and then sell all the stock and all the bonds that could be sold. Whatever money happened to be left over after all the stock and bond-selling expenses and promoters, charges and all that, went grudgingly into the foundation of the business. A good business was not one that did good work and earned a fair profit. A good business was one that would give the opportunity for the floating of a large amount of stocks and bonds at high prices. It was the stocks and bonds, not the work, that mattered. I could not see how a new business or an old business could be expected to be able to charge into its product a great big bond interest and then sell the product at a fair price. I have never been able to see that. I have never been able to understand on what theory the original investment of money can be charged against a business. Those men in business who call themselves financiers say that money is "worth" 6 per cent, or 5 per cent, or some other per cent, and that if a business has one hundred thousand dollars invested in it, the man who made the investment is entitled to charge an interest payment on the money, because, if instead of putting that money into the business he had put it into a savings bank or into certain securities, he could have a certain fixed return. Therefore they say that a proper charge against the operating expenses of a business is the interest on this money. This idea is at the root of many business failures and most service failures. Money is not worth a particular amount. As money it is not worth anything, for it will do nothing of itself. The only use of money is to buy tools to work with or the product of tools. Therefore money is worth what it will help you to produce or buy and no more. If a man thinks that his money will earn 5 per cent, or 6 per cent, he ought to place it where he can get that return, but money placed in a business is not a charge on the business--or, rather, should not be. It ceases to be money and becomes, or should become, an engine of production, and it is therefore worth what it produces--and not a fixed sum according to some scale that has no bearing upon the particular business in which the money has been placed. Any return should come after it has produced, not before. Business men believed that you could do anything by "financing" it. If it did not go through on the first financing then the idea was to "refinance." The process of "refinancing" was simply the game of sending good money after bad. In the majority of cases the need of refinancing arises from bad management, and the effect of refinancing is simply to pay the poor managers to keep up their bad management a little longer. It is merely a postponement of the day of judgment. This makeshift of refinancing is a device of speculative financiers. Their money is no good to them unless they can connect it up with a place where real work is being done, and that they cannot do unless, somehow, that place is poorly managed. Thus, the speculative financiers delude themselves that they are putting their money out to use. They are not; they are putting it out to waste. I determined absolutely that never would I join a company in which finance came before the work or in which bankers or financiers had a part. And further that, if there were no way to get started in the kind of business that I thought could be managed in the interest of the public, then I simply would not get started at all. For my own short experience, together with what I saw going on around me, was quite enough proof that business as a mere money-making game was not worth giving much thought to and was distinctly no place for a man who wanted to accomplish anything. Also it did not seem to me to be the way to make money. I have yet to have it demonstrated that it is the way. For the only foundation of real business is service. A manufacturer is not through with his customer when a sale is completed. He has then only started with his customer. In the case of an automobile the sale of the machine is only something in the nature of an introduction. If the machine does not give service, then it is better for the manufacturer if he never had the introduction, for he will have the worst of all advertisements--a dissatisfied customer. There was something more than a tendency in the early days of the automobile to regard the selling of a machine as the real accomplishment and that thereafter it did not matter what happened to the buyer. That is the shortsighted salesman-on-commission attitude. If a salesman is paid only for what he sells, it is not to be expected that he is going to exert any great effort on a customer out of whom no more commission is to be made. And it is right on this point that we later made the largest selling argument for the Ford. The price and the quality of the car would undoubtedly have made a market, and a large market. We went beyond that. A man who bought one of our cars was in my opinion entitled to continuous use of that car, and therefore if he had a breakdown of any kind it was our duty to see that his machine was put into shape again at the earliest possible moment. In the success of the Ford car the early provision of service was an outstanding element. Most of the expensive cars of that period were ill provided with service stations. If your car broke down you had to depend on the local repair man--when you were entitled to depend upon the manufacturer. If the local repair man were a forehanded sort of a person, keeping on hand a good stock of parts (although on many of the cars the parts were not interchangeable), the owner was lucky. But if the repair man were a shiftless person, with an adequate knowledge of automobiles and an inordinate desire to make a good thing out of every car that came into his place for repairs, then even a slight breakdown meant weeks of laying up and a whopping big repair bill that had to be paid before the car could be taken away. The repair men were for a time the largest menace to the automobile industry. Even as late as 1910 and 1911 the owner of an automobile was regarded as essentially a rich man whose money ought to be taken away from him. We met that situation squarely and at the very beginning. We would not have our distribution blocked by stupid, greedy men. That is getting some years ahead of the story, but it is control by finance that breaks up service because it looks to the immediate dollar. If the first consideration is to earn a certain amount of money, then, unless by some stroke of luck matters are going especially well and there is a surplus over for service so that the operating men may have a chance, future business has to be sacrificed for the dollar of to-day. And also I noticed a tendency among many men in business to feel that their lot was hard--they worked against a day when they might retire and live on an income--get out of the strife. Life to them was a battle to be ended as soon as possible. That was another point I could not understand, for as I reasoned, life is not a battle except with our own tendency to sag with the downpull of "getting settled." If to petrify is success all one has to do is to humour the lazy side of the mind but if to grow is success, then one must wake up anew every morning and keep awake all day. I saw great businesses become but the ghost of a name because someone thought they could be managed just as they were always managed, and though the management may have been most excellent in its day, its excellence consisted in its alertness to its day, and not in slavish following of its yesterdays. Life, as I see it, is not a location, but a journey. Even the man who most feels himself "settled" is not settled--he is probably sagging back. Everything is in flux, and was meant to be. Life flows. We may live at the same number of the street, but it is never the same man who lives there. And out of the delusion that life is a battle that may be lost by a false move grows, I have noticed, a great love for regularity. Men fall into the half-alive habit. Seldom does the cobbler take up with the new-fangled way of soling shoes, and seldom does the artisan willingly take up with new methods in his trade. Habit conduces to a certain inertia, and any disturbance of it affects the mind like trouble. It will be recalled that when a study was made of shop methods, so that the workmen might be taught to produce with less useless motion and fatigue, it was most opposed by the workmen themselves. Though they suspected that it was simply a game to get more out of them, what most irked them was that it interfered with the well-worn grooves in which they had become accustomed to move. Business men go down with their businesses because they like the old way so well they cannot bring themselves to change. One sees them all about--men who do not know that yesterday is past, and who woke up this morning with their last year's ideas. It could almost be written down as a formula that when a man begins to think that he has at last found his method he had better begin a most searching examination of himself to see whether some part of his brain has not gone to sleep. There is a subtle danger in a man thinking that he is "fixed" for life. It indicates that the next jolt of the wheel of progress is going to fling him off. There is also the great fear of being thought a fool. So many men are afraid of being considered fools. I grant that public opinion is a powerful police influence for those who need it. Perhaps it is true that the majority of men need the restraint of public opinion. Public opinion may keep a man better than he would otherwise be--if not better morally, at least better as far as his social desirability is concerned. But it is not a bad thing to be a fool for righteousness' sake. The best of it is that such fools usually live long enough to prove that they were not fools--or the work they have begun lives long enough to prove they were not foolish. The money influence--the pressing to make a profit on an "investment"--and its consequent neglect of or skimping of work and hence of service showed itself to me in many ways. It seemed to be at the bottom of most troubles. It was the cause of low wages--for without well-directed work high wages cannot be paid. And if the whole attention is not given to the work it cannot be well directed. Most men want to be free to work; under the system in use they could not be free to work. During my first experience I was not free--I could not give full play to my ideas. Everything had to be planned to make money; the last consideration was the work. And the most curious part of it all was the insistence that it was the money and not the work that counted. It did not seem to strike any one as illogical that money should be put ahead of work--even though everyone had to admit that the profit had to come from the work. The desire seemed to be to find a short cut to money and to pass over the obvious short cut--which is through the work. Take competition; I found that competition was supposed to be a menace and that a good manager circumvented his competitors by getting a monopoly through artificial means. The idea was that there were only a certain number of people who could buy and that it was necessary to get their trade ahead of someone else. Some will remember that later many of the automobile manufacturers entered into an association under the Selden Patent just so that it might be legally possible to control the price and the output of automobiles. They had the same idea that so many trades unions have--the ridiculous notion that more profit can be had doing less work than more. The plan, I believe, is a very antiquated one. I could not see then and am still unable to see that there is not always enough for the man who does his work; time spent in fighting competition is wasted; it had better be spent in doing the work. There are always enough people ready and anxious to buy, provided you supply what they want and at the proper price--and this applies to personal services as well as to goods. During this time of reflection I was far from idle. We were going ahead with a four-cylinder motor and the building of a pair of big racing cars. I had plenty of time, for I never left my business. I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night. It is nice to plan to do one's work in office hours, to take up the work in the morning, to drop it in the evening--and not have a care until the next morning. It is perfectly possible to do that if one is so constituted as to be willing through all of his life to accept direction, to be an employee, possibly a responsible employee, but not a director or manager of anything. A manual labourer must have a limit on his hours, otherwise he will wear himself out. If he intends to remain always a manual labourer, then he should forget about his work when the whistle blows, but if he intends to go forward and do anything, the whistle is only a signal to start thinking over the day's work in order to discover how it might be done better. The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed. I cannot pretend to say, because I do not know, whether the man who works always, who never leaves his business, who is absolutely intent upon getting ahead, and who therefore does get ahead--is happier than the man who keeps office hours, both for his brain and his hands. It is not necessary for any one to decide the question. A ten-horsepower engine will not pull as much as a twenty. The man who keeps brain office hours limits his horsepower. If he is satisfied to pull only the load that he has, well and good, that is his affair--but he must not complain if another who has increased his horsepower pulls more than he does. Leisure and work bring different results. If a man wants leisure and gets it--then he has no cause to complain. But he cannot have both leisure and the results of work. Concretely, what I most realized about business in that year--and I have been learning more each year without finding it necessary to change my first conclusions--is this: (1) That finance is given a place ahead of work and therefore tends to kill the work and destroy the fundamental of service. (2) That thinking first of money instead of work brings on fear of failure and this fear blocks every avenue of business--it makes a man afraid of competition, of changing his methods, or of doing anything which might change his condition. (3) That the way is clear for any one who thinks first of service--of doing the work in the best possible way. CHAPTER III STARTING THE REAL BUSINESS In the little brick shop at 81 Park Place I had ample opportunity to work out the design and some of the methods of manufacture of a new car. Even if it were possible to organize the exact kind of corporation that I wanted--one in which doing the work well and suiting the public would be controlling factors--it became apparent that I never could produce a thoroughly good motor car that might be sold at a low price under the existing cut-and-try manufacturing methods. Everybody knows that it is always possible to do a thing better the second time. I do not know why manufacturing should not at that time have generally recognized this as a basic fact--unless it might be that the manufacturers were in such a hurry to obtain something to sell that they did not take time for adequate preparation. Making "to order" instead of making in volume is, I suppose, a habit, a tradition, that has descended from the old handicraft days. Ask a hundred people how they want a particular article made. About eighty will not know; they will leave it to you. Fifteen will think that they must say something, while five will really have preferences and reasons. The ninety-five, made up of those who do not know and admit it and the fifteen who do not know but do not admit it, constitute the real market for any product. The five who want something special may or may not be able to pay the price for special work. If they have the price, they can get the work, but they constitute a special and limited market. Of the ninety-five perhaps ten or fifteen will pay a price for quality. Of those remaining, a number will buy solely on price and without regard to quality. Their numbers are thinning with each day. Buyers are learning how to buy. The majority will consider quality and buy the biggest dollar's worth of quality. If, therefore, you discover what will give this 95 per cent. of people the best all-round service and then arrange to manufacture at the very highest quality and sell at the very lowest price, you will be meeting a demand which is so large that it may be called universal. This is not standardizing. The use of the word "standardizing" is very apt to lead one into trouble, for it implies a certain freezing of design and method and usually works out so that the manufacturer selects whatever article he can the most easily make and sell at the highest profit. The public is not considered either in the design or in the price. The thought behind most standardization is to be able to make a larger profit. The result is that with the economies which are inevitable if you make only one thing, a larger and larger profit is continually being had by the manufacturer. His output also becomes larger--his facilities produce more--and before he knows it his markets are overflowing with goods which will not sell. These goods would sell if the manufacturer would take a lower price for them. There is always buying power present--but that buying power will not always respond to reductions in price. If an article has been sold at too high a price and then, because of stagnant business, the price is suddenly cut, the response is sometimes most disappointing. And for a very good reason. The public is wary. It thinks that the price-cut is a fake and it sits around waiting for a real cut. We saw much of that last year. If, on the contrary, the economies of making are transferred at once to the price and if it is well known that such is the policy of the manufacturer, the public will have confidence in him and will respond. They will trust him to give honest value. So standardization may seem bad business unless it carries with it the plan of constantly reducing the price at which the article is sold. And the price has to be reduced (this is very important) because of the manufacturing economies that have come about and not because the falling demand by the public indicates that it is not satisfied with the price. The public should always be wondering how it is possible to give so much for the money. Standardization (to use the word as I understand it) is not just taking one's best selling article and concentrating on it. It is planning day and night and probably for years, first on something which will best suit the public and then on how it should be made. The exact processes of manufacturing will develop of themselves. Then, if we shift the manufacturing from the profit to the service basis, we shall have a real business in which the profits will be all that any one could desire. All of this seems self-evident to me. It is the logical basis of any business that wants to serve 95 per cent. of the community. It is the logical way in which the community can serve itself. I cannot comprehend why all business does not go on this basis. All that has to be done in order to adopt it is to overcome the habit of grabbing at the nearest dollar as though it were the only dollar in the world. The habit has already to an extent been overcome. All the large and successful retail stores in this country are on the one-price basis. The only further step required is to throw overboard the idea of pricing on what the traffic will bear and instead go to the common-sense basis of pricing on what it costs to manufacture and then reducing the cost of manufacture. If the design of the product has been sufficiently studied, then changes in it will come very slowly. But changes in manufacturing processes will come very rapidly and wholly naturally. That has been our experience in everything we have undertaken. How naturally it has all come about, I shall later outline. The point that I wish to impress here is that it is impossible to get a product on which one may concentrate unless an unlimited amount of study is given beforehand. It is not just an afternoon's work. These ideas were forming with me during this year of experimenting. Most of the experimenting went into the building of racing cars. The idea in those days was that a first-class car ought to be a racer. I never really thought much of racing, but following the bicycle idea, the manufacturers had the notion that winning a race on a track told the public something about the merits of an automobile--although I can hardly imagine any test that would tell less. But, as the others were doing it, I, too, had to do it. In 1903, with Tom Cooper, I built two cars solely for speed. They were quite alike. One we named the "999" and the other the "Arrow." If an automobile were going to be known for speed, then I was going to make an automobile that would be known wherever speed was known. These were. I put in four great big cylinders giving 80 H.P.--which up to that time had been unheard of. The roar of those cylinders alone was enough to half kill a man. There was only one seat. One life to a car was enough. I tried out the cars. Cooper tried out the cars. We let them out at full speed. I cannot quite describe the sensation. Going over Niagara Falls would have been but a pastime after a ride in one of them. I did not want to take the responsibility of racing the "999" which we put up first, neither did Cooper. Cooper said he knew a man who lived on speed, that nothing could go too fast for him. He wired to Salt Lake City and on came a professional bicycle rider named Barney Oldfield. He had never driven a motor car, but he liked the idea of trying it. He said he would try anything once. It took us only a week to teach him how to drive. The man did not know what fear was. All that he had to learn was how to control the monster. Controlling the fastest car of to-day was nothing as compared to controlling that car. The steering wheel had not yet been thought of. All the previous cars that I had built simply had tillers. On this one I put a two-handed tiller, for holding the car in line required all the strength of a strong man. The race for which we were working was at three miles on the Grosse Point track. We kept our cars as a dark horse. We left the predictions to the others. The tracks then were not scientifically banked. It was not known how much speed a motor car could develop. No one knew better than Oldfield what the turns meant and as he took his seat, while I was cranking the car for the start, he remarked cheerily: "Well, this chariot may kill me, but they will say afterward that I was going like hell when she took me over the bank." And he did go.... He never dared to look around. He did not shut off on the curves. He simply let that car go--and go it did. He was about half a mile ahead of the next man at the end of the race! The "999" did what it was intended to do: It advertised the fact that I could build a fast motorcar. A week after the race I formed the Ford Motor Company. I was vice-president, designer, master mechanic, superintendent, and general manager. The capitalization of the company was one hundred thousand dollars, and of this I owned 25 1/2 per cent. The total amount subscribed in cash was about twenty-eight thousand dollars--which is the only money that the company has ever received for the capital fund from other than operations. In the beginning I thought that it was possible, notwithstanding my former experience, to go forward with a company in which I owned less than the controlling share. I very shortly found I had to have control and therefore in 1906, with funds that I had earned in the company, I bought enough stock to bring my holdings up to 51 per cent, and a little later bought enough more to give me 58-1/2 per cent. The new equipment and the whole progress of the company have always been financed out of earnings. In 1919 my son Edsel purchased the remaining 41-1/2 per cent of the stock because certain of the minority stockholders disagreed with my policies. For these shares he paid at the rate of $12,500 for each $100 par and in all paid about seventy-five millions. The original company and its equipment, as may be gathered, were not elaborate. We rented Strelow's carpenter shop on Mack Avenue. In making my designs I had also worked out the methods of making, but, since at that time we could not afford to buy machinery, the entire car was made according to my designs, but by various manufacturers, and about all we did, even in the way of assembling, was to put on the wheels, the tires, and the body. That would really be the most economical method of manufacturing if only one could be certain that all of the various parts would be made on the manufacturing plan that I have above outlined. The most economical manufacturing of the future will be that in which the whole of an article is not made under one roof--unless, of course, it be a very simple article. The modern--or better, the future--method is to have each part made where it may best be made and then assemble the parts into a complete unit at the points of consumption. That is the method we are now following and expect to extend. It would make no difference whether one company or one individual owned all the factories fabricating the component parts of a single product, or whether such part were made in our independently owned factory, _if only all adopted the same service methods_. If we can buy as good a part as we can make ourselves and the supply is ample and the price right, we do not attempt to make it ourselves--or, at any rate, to make more than an emergency supply. In fact, it might be better to have the ownership widely scattered. I had been experimenting principally upon the cutting down of weight. Excess weight kills any self-propelled vehicle. There are a lot of fool ideas about weight. It is queer, when you come to think of it, how some fool terms get into current use. There is the phrase "heavyweight" as applied to a man's mental apparatus! What does it mean? No one wants to be fat and heavy of body--then why of head? For some clumsy reason we have come to confuse strength with weight. The crude methods of early building undoubtedly had much to do with this. The old ox-cart weighed a ton--and it had so much weight that it was weak! To carry a few tons of humanity from New York to Chicago, the railroad builds a train that weighs many hundred tons, and the result is an absolute loss of real strength and the extravagant waste of untold millions in the form of power. The law of diminishing returns begins to operate at the point where strength becomes weight. Weight may be desirable in a steam roller but nowhere else. Strength has nothing to do with weight. The mentality of the man who does things in the world is agile, light, and strong. The most beautiful things in the world are those from which all excess weight has been eliminated. Strength is never just weight--either in men or things. Whenever any one suggests to me that I might increase weight or add a part, I look into decreasing weight and eliminating a part! The car that I designed was lighter than any car that had yet been made. It would have been lighter if I had known how to make it so--later I got the materials to make the lighter car. In our first year we built "Model A," selling the runabout for eight hundred and fifty dollars and the tonneau for one hundred dollars more. This model had a two-cylinder opposed motor developing eight horsepower. It had a chain drive, a seventy-two inch wheel base--which was supposed to be long--and a fuel capacity of five gallons. We made and sold 1,708 cars in the first year. That is how well the public responded. Every one of these "Model A's" has a history. Take No. 420. Colonel D. C. Collier of California bought it in 1904. He used it for a couple of years, sold it, and bought a new Ford. No. 420 changed hands frequently until 1907 when it was bought by one Edmund Jacobs living near Ramona in the heart of the mountains. He drove it for several years in the roughest kind of work. Then he bought a new Ford and sold his old one. By 1915 No. 420 had passed into the hands of a man named Cantello who took out the motor, hitched it to a water pump, rigged up shafts on the chassis and now, while the motor chugs away at the pumping of water, the chassis drawn by a burro acts as a buggy. The moral, of course, is that you can dissect a Ford but you cannot kill it. In our first advertisement we said: Our purpose is to construct and market an automobile specially designed for everyday wear and tear--business, professional, and family use; an automobile which will attain to a sufficient speed to satisfy the average person without acquiring any of those breakneck velocities which are so universally condemned; a machine which will be admired by man, woman, and child alike for its compactness, its simplicity, its safety, its all-around convenience, and--last but not least--its exceedingly reasonable price, which places it within the reach of many thousands who could not think of paying the comparatively fabulous prices asked for most machines. And these are the points we emphasized: Good material. Simplicity--most of the cars at that time required considerable skill in their management. The engine. The ignition--which was furnished by two sets of six dry cell batteries. The automatic oiling. The simplicity and the ease of control of the transmission, which was of the planetary type. The workmanship. We did not make the pleasure appeal. We never have. In its first advertising we showed that a motor car was a utility. We said: We often hear quoted the old proverb, "Time is money"--and yet how few business and professional men act as if they really believed its truth. Men who are constantly complaining of shortage of time and lamenting the fewness of days in the week--men to whom every five minutes wasted means a dollar thrown away--men to whom five minutes' delay sometimes means the loss of many dollars--will yet depend on the haphazard, uncomfortable, and limited means of transportation afforded by street cars, etc., when the investment of an exceedingly moderate sum in the purchase of a perfected, efficient, high-grade automobile would cut out anxiety and unpunctuality and provide a luxurious means of travel ever at your beck and call. Always ready, always sure. Built to save you time and consequent money. Built to take you anywhere you want to go and bring you back again on time. Built to add to your reputation for punctuality; to keep your customers good-humoured and in a buying mood. Built for business or pleasure--just as you say. Built also for the good of your health--to carry you "jarlessly" over any kind of half decent roads, to refresh your brain with the luxury of much "out-doorness" and your lungs with the "tonic of tonics"--the right kind of atmosphere. It is your say, too, when it comes to speed. You can--if you choose--loiter lingeringly through shady avenues or you can press down on the foot-lever until all the scenery looks alike to you and you have to keep your eyes skinned to count the milestones as they pass. I am giving the gist of this advertisement to show that, from the beginning, we were looking to providing service--we never bothered with a "sporting car." The business went along almost as by magic. The cars gained a reputation for standing up. They were tough, they were simple, and they were well made. I was working on my design for a universal single model but I had not settled the designs nor had we the money to build and equip the proper kind of plant for manufacturing. I had not the money to discover the very best and lightest materials. We still had to accept the materials that the market offered--we got the best to be had but we had no facilities for the scientific investigation of materials or for original research. My associates were not convinced that it was possible to restrict our cars to a single model. The automobile trade was following the old bicycle trade, in which every manufacturer thought it necessary to bring out a new model each year and to make it so unlike all previous models that those who had bought the former models would want to get rid of the old and buy the new. That was supposed to be good business. It is the same idea that women submit to in their clothing and hats. That is not service--it seeks only to provide something new, not something better. It is extraordinary how firmly rooted is the notion that business--continuous selling--depends not on satisfying the customer once and for all, but on first getting his money for one article and then persuading him he ought to buy a new and different one. The plan which I then had in the back of my head but to which we were not then sufficiently advanced to give expression, was that, when a model was settled upon then every improvement on that model should be interchangeable with the old model, so that a car should never get out of date. It is my ambition to have every piece of machinery, or other non-consumable product that I turn out, so strong and so well made that no one ought ever to have to buy a second one. A good machine of any kind ought to last as long as a good watch. In the second year we scattered our energies among three models. We made a four-cylinder touring car, "Model B," which sold for two thousand dollars; "Model C," which was a slightly improved "Model A" and sold at fifty dollars more than the former price; and "Model F," a touring car which sold for a thousand dollars. That is, we scattered our energy and increased prices--and therefore we sold fewer cars than in the first year. The sales were 1,695 cars. That "Model B"--the first four-cylinder car for general road use--had to be advertised. Winning a race or making a record was then the best kind of advertising. So I fixed up the "Arrow," the twin of the old "999"--in fact practically remade it--and a week before the New York Automobile show I drove it myself over a surveyed mile straightaway on the ice. I shall never forget that race. The ice seemed smooth enough, so smooth that if I had called off the trial we should have secured an immense amount of the wrong kind of advertising, but instead of being smooth, that ice was seamed with fissures which I knew were going to mean trouble the moment I got up speed. But there was nothing to do but go through with the trial, and I let the old "Arrow" out. At every fissure the car leaped into the air. I never knew how it was coming down. When I wasn't in the air, I was skidding, but somehow I stayed top side up and on the course, making a record that went all over the world! That put "Model B" on the map--but not enough on to overcome the price advances. No stunt and no advertising will sell an article for any length of time. Business is not a game. The moral is coming. Our little wooden shop had, with the business we were doing, become totally inadequate, and in 1906 we took out of our working capital sufficient funds to build a three-story plant at the corner of Piquette and Beaubien streets--which for the first time gave us real manufacturing facilities. We began to make and to assemble quite a number of the parts, although still we were principally an assembling shop. In 1905-1906 we made only two models--one the four-cylinder car at $2,000 and another touring car at $1,000, both being the models of the previous year--and our sales dropped to 1,599 cars. Some said it was because we had not brought out new models. I thought it was because our cars were too expensive--they did not appeal to the 95 per cent. I changed the policy in the next year--having first acquired stock control. For 1906-1907 we entirely left off making touring cars and made three models of runabouts and roadsters, none of which differed materially from the other in manufacturing process or in component parts, but were somewhat different in appearance. The big thing was that the cheapest car sold for $600 and the most expensive for only $750, and right there came the complete demonstration of what price meant. We sold 8,423 cars--nearly five times as many as in our biggest previous year. Our banner week was that of May 15, 1908, when we assembled 311 cars in six working days. It almost swamped our facilities. The foreman had a tallyboard on which he chalked up each car as it was finished and turned over to the testers. The tallyboard was hardly equal to the task. On one day in the following June we assembled an even one hundred cars. In the next year we departed from the programme that had been so successful and I designed a big car--fifty horsepower, six cylinder--that would burn up the roads. We continued making our small cars, but the 1907 panic and the diversion to the more expensive model cut down the sales to 6,398 cars. We had been through an experimenting period of five years. The cars were beginning to be sold in Europe. The business, as an automobile business then went, was considered extraordinarily prosperous. We had plenty of money. Since the first year we have practically always had plenty of money. We sold for cash, we did not borrow money, and we sold directly to the purchaser. We had no bad debts and we kept within ourselves on every move. I have always kept well within my resources. I have never found it necessary to strain them, because, inevitably, if you give attention to work and service, the resources will increase more rapidly than you can devise ways and means of disposing of them. We were careful in the selection of our salesmen. At first there was great difficulty in getting good salesmen because the automobile trade was not supposed to be stable. It was supposed to be dealing in a luxury--in pleasure vehicles. We eventually appointed agents, selecting the very best men we could find, and then paying to them a salary larger than they could possibly earn in business for themselves. In the beginning we had not paid much in the way of salaries. We were feeling our way, but when we knew what our way was, we adopted the policy of paying the very highest reward for service and then insisting upon getting the highest service. Among the requirements for an agent we laid down the following: (1) A progressive, up-to-date man keenly alive to the possibilities of business. (2) A suitable place of business clean and dignified in appearance. (3) A stock of parts sufficient to make prompt replacements and keep in active service every Ford car in his territory. (4) An adequately equipped repair shop which has in it the right machinery for every necessary repair and adjustment. (5) Mechanics who are thoroughly familiar with the construction and operation of Ford cars. (6) A comprehensive bookkeeping system and a follow-up sales system, so that it may be instantly apparent what is the financial status of the various departments of his business, the condition and size of his stock, the present owners of cars, and the future prospects. (7) Absolute cleanliness throughout every department. There must be no unwashed windows, dusty furniture, dirty floors. (8) A suitable display sign. (9) The adoption of policies which will ensure absolutely square dealing and the highest character of business ethics. And this is the general instruction that was issued: A dealer or a salesman ought to have the name of every possible automobile buyer in his territory, including all those who have never given the matter a thought. He should then personally solicit by visitation if possible--by correspondence at the least--every man on that list and then making necessary memoranda, know the automobile situation as related to every resident so solicited. If your territory is too large to permit this, you have too much territory. The way was not easy. We were harried by a big suit brought against the company to try to force us into line with an association of automobile manufacturers, who were operating under the false principle that there was only a limited market for automobiles and that a monopoly of that market was essential. This was the famous Selden Patent suit. At times the support of our defense severely strained our resources. Mr. Selden, who has but recently died, had little to do with the suit. It was the association which sought a monopoly under the patent. The situation was this: George B. Selden, a patent attorney, filed an application as far back as 1879 for a patent the object of which was stated to be "The production of a safe, simple, and cheap road locomotive, light in weight, easy to control, possessed of sufficient power to overcome an ordinary inclination." This application was kept alive in the Patent Office, by methods which are perfectly legal, until 1895, when the patent was granted. In 1879, when the application was filed, the automobile was practically unknown to the general public, but by the time the patent was issued everybody was familiar with self-propelled vehicles, and most of the men, including myself, who had been for years working on motor propulsion, were surprised to learn that what we had made practicable was covered by an application of years before, although the applicant had kept his idea merely as an idea. He had done nothing to put it into practice. The specific claims under the patent were divided into six groups and I think that not a single one of them was a really new idea even in 1879 when the application was filed. The Patent Office allowed a combination and issued a so-called "combination patent" deciding that the combination (a) of a carriage with its body machinery and steering wheel, with the (b) propelling mechanism clutch and gear, and finally (c) the engine, made a valid patent. With all of that we were not concerned. I believed that my engine had nothing whatsoever in common with what Selden had in mind. The powerful combination of manufacturers who called themselves the "licensed manufacturers" because they operated under licenses from the patentee, brought suit against us as soon as we began to be a factor in motor production. The suit dragged on. It was intended to scare us out of business. We took volumes of testimony, and the blow came on September 15, 1909, when Judge Hough rendered an opinion in the United States District Court finding against us. Immediately that Licensed Association began to advertise, warning prospective purchasers against our cars. They had done the same thing in 1903 at the start of the suit, when it was thought that we could be put out of business. I had implicit confidence that eventually we should win our suit. I simply knew that we were right, but it was a considerable blow to get the first decision against us, for we believed that many buyers--even though no injunction was issued against us--would be frightened away from buying because of the threats of court action against individual owners. The idea was spread that if the suit finally went against me, every man who owned a Ford car would be prosecuted. Some of my more enthusiastic opponents, I understand, gave it out privately that there would be criminal as well as civil suits and that a man buying a Ford car might as well be buying a ticket to jail. We answered with an advertisement for which we took four pages in the principal newspapers all over the country. We set out our case--we set out our confidence in victory--and in conclusion said: In conclusion we beg to state if there are any prospective automobile buyers who are at all intimidated by the claims made by our adversaries that we will give them, in addition to the protection of the Ford Motor Company with its some $6,000,000.00 of assets, an individual bond backed by a Company of more than $6,000,000.00 more of assets, so that each and every individual owner of a Ford car will be protected until at least $12,000,000.00 of assets have been wiped out by those who desire to control and monopolize this wonderful industry. The bond is yours for the asking, so do not allow yourself to be sold inferior cars at extravagant prices because of any statement made by this "Divine" body. N. B.--This fight is not being waged by the Ford Motor Company without the advice and counsel of the ablest patent attorneys of the East and West. We thought that the bond would give assurance to the buyers--that they needed confidence. They did not. We sold more than eighteen thousand cars--nearly double the output of the previous year--and I think about fifty buyers asked for bonds--perhaps it was less than that. As a matter of fact, probably nothing so well advertised the Ford car and the Ford Motor Company as did this suit. It appeared that we were the under dog and we had the public's sympathy. The association had seventy million dollars--we at the beginning had not half that number of thousands. I never had a doubt as to the outcome, but nevertheless it was a sword hanging over our heads that we could as well do without. Prosecuting that suit was probably one of the most shortsighted acts that any group of American business men has ever combined to commit. Taken in all its sidelights, it forms the best possible example of joining unwittingly to kill a trade. I regard it as most fortunate for the automobile makers of the country that we eventually won, and the association ceased to be a serious factor in the business. By 1908, however, in spite of this suit, we had come to a point where it was possible to announce and put into fabrication the kind of car that I wanted to build. CHAPTER IV THE SECRET OF MANUFACTURING AND SERVING Now I am not outlining the career of the Ford Motor Company for any personal reason. I am not saying: "Go thou and do likewise." What I am trying to emphasize is that the ordinary way of doing business is not the best way. I am coming to the point of my entire departure from the ordinary methods. From this point dates the extraordinary success of the company. We had been fairly following the custom of the trade. Our automobile was less complex than any other. We had no outside money in the concern. But aside from these two points we did not differ materially from the other automobile companies, excepting that we had been somewhat more successful and had rigidly pursued the policy of taking all cash discounts, putting our profits back into the business, and maintaining a large cash balance. We entered cars in all of the races. We advertised and we pushed our sales. Outside of the simplicity of the construction of the car, our main difference in design was that we made no provision for the purely "pleasure car." We were just as much a pleasure car as any other car on the market, but we gave no attention to purely luxury features. We would do special work for a buyer, and I suppose that we would have made a special car at a price. We were a prosperous company. We might easily have sat down and said: "Now we have arrived. Let us hold what we have got." Indeed, there was some disposition to take this stand. Some of the stockholders were seriously alarmed when our production reached one hundred cars a day. They wanted to do something to stop me from ruining the company, and when I replied to the effect that one hundred cars a day was only a trifle and that I hoped before long to make a thousand a day, they were inexpressibly shocked and I understand seriously contemplated court action. If I had followed the general opinion of my associates I should have kept the business about as it was, put our funds into a fine administration building, tried to make bargains with such competitors as seemed too active, made new designs from time to time to catch the fancy of the public, and generally have passed on into the position of a quiet, respectable citizen with a quiet, respectable business. The temptation to stop and hang on to what one has is quite natural. I can entirely sympathize with the desire to quit a life of activity and retire to a life of ease. I have never felt the urge myself but I can comprehend what it is--although I think that a man who retires ought entirely to get out of a business. There is a disposition to retire and retain control. It was, however, no part of my plan to do anything of that sort. I regarded our progress merely as an invitation to do more--as an indication that we had reached a place where we might begin to perform a real service. I had been planning every day through these years toward a universal car. The public had given its reactions to the various models. The cars in service, the racing, and the road tests gave excellent guides as to the changes that ought to be made, and even by 1905 I had fairly in mind the specifications of the kind of car I wanted to build. But I lacked the material to give strength without weight. I came across that material almost by accident. In 1905 I was at a motor race at Palm Beach. There was a big smash-up and a French car was wrecked. We had entered our "Model K"--the high-powered six. I thought the foreign cars had smaller and better parts than we knew anything about. After the wreck I picked up a little valve strip stem. It was very light and very strong. I asked what it was made of. Nobody knew. I gave the stem to my assistant. "Find out all about this," I told him. "That is the kind of material we ought to have in our cars." He found eventually that it was a French steel and that there was vanadium in it. We tried every steel maker in America--not one could make vanadium steel. I sent to England for a man who understood how to make the steel commercially. The next thing was to get a plant to turn it out. That was another problem. Vanadium requires 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The ordinary furnace could not go beyond 2,700 degrees. I found a small steel company in Canton, Ohio. I offered to guarantee them against loss if they would run a heat for us. They agreed. The first heat was a failure. Very little vanadium remained in the steel. I had them try again, and the second time the steel came through. Until then we had been forced to be satisfied with steel running between 60,000 and 70,000 pounds tensile strength. With vanadium, the strength went up to 170,000 pounds. Having vanadium in hand I pulled apart our models and tested in detail to determine what kind of steel was best for every part--whether we wanted a hard steel, a tough steel, or an elastic steel. We, for the first time I think, in the history of any large construction, determined scientifically the exact quality of the steel. As a result we then selected twenty different types of steel for the various steel parts. About ten of these were vanadium. Vanadium was used wherever strength and lightness were required. Of course they are not all the same kind of vanadium steel. The other elements vary according to whether the part is to stand hard wear or whether it needs spring--in short, according to what it needs. Before these experiments I believe that not more than four different grades of steel had ever been used in automobile construction. By further experimenting, especially in the direction of heat treating, we have been able still further to increase the strength of the steel and therefore to reduce the weight of the car. In 1910 the French Department of Commerce and Industry took one of our steering spindle connecting rod yokes--selecting it as a vital unit--and tried it against a similar part from what they considered the best French car, and in every test our steel proved the stronger. The vanadium steel disposed of much of the weight. The other requisites of a universal car I had already worked out and many of them were in practice. The design had to balance. Men die because a part gives out. Machines wreck themselves because some parts are weaker than others. Therefore, a part of the problem in designing a universal car was to have as nearly as possible all parts of equal strength considering their purpose--to put a motor in a one-horse shay. Also it had to be fool proof. This was difficult because a gasoline motor is essentially a delicate instrument and there is a wonderful opportunity for any one who has a mind that way to mess it up. I adopted this slogan: "When one of my cars breaks down I know I am to blame." From the day the first motor car appeared on the streets it had to me appeared to be a necessity. It was this knowledge and assurance that led me to build to the one end--a car that would meet the wants of the multitudes. All my efforts were then and still are turned to the production of one car--one model. And, year following year, the pressure was, and still is, to improve and refine and make better, with an increasing reduction in price. The universal car had to have these attributes: (1) Quality in material to give service in use. Vanadium steel is the strongest, toughest, and most lasting of steels. It forms the foundation and super-structure of the cars. It is the highest quality steel in this respect in the world, regardless of price. (2) Simplicity in operation--because the masses are not mechanics. (3) Power in sufficient quantity. (4) Absolute reliability--because of the varied uses to which the cars would be put and the variety of roads over which they would travel. (5) Lightness. With the Ford there are only 7.95 pounds to be carried by each cubic inch of piston displacement. This is one of the reasons why Ford cars are "always going," wherever and whenever you see them--through sand and mud, through slush, snow, and water, up hills, across fields and roadless plains. (6) Control--to hold its speed always in hand, calmly and safely meeting every emergency and contingency either in the crowded streets of the city or on dangerous roads. The planetary transmission of the Ford gave this control and anybody could work it. That is the "why" of the saying: "Anybody can drive a Ford." It can turn around almost anywhere. (7) The more a motor car weighs, naturally the more fuel and lubricants are used in the driving; the lighter the weight, the lighter the expense of operation. The light weight of the Ford car in its early years was used as an argument against it. Now that is all changed. The design which I settled upon was called "Model T." The important feature of the new model--which, if it were accepted, as I thought it would be, I intended to make the only model and then start into real production--was its simplicity. There were but four constructional units in the car--the power plant, the frame, the front axle, and the rear axle. All of these were easily accessible and they were designed so that no special skill would be required for their repair or replacement. I believed then, although I said very little about it because of the novelty of the idea, that it ought to be possible to have parts so simple and so inexpensive that the menace of expensive hand repair work would be entirely eliminated. The parts could be made so cheaply that it would be less expensive to buy new ones than to have old ones repaired. They could be carried in hardware shops just as nails or bolts are carried. I thought that it was up to me as the designer to make the car so completely simple that no one could fail to understand it. That works both ways and applies to everything. The less complex an article, the easier it is to make, the cheaper it may be sold, and therefore the greater number may be sold. It is not necessary to go into the technical details of the construction but perhaps this is as good a place as any to review the various models, because "Model T" was the last of the models and the policy which it brought about took this business out of the ordinary line of business. Application of the same idea would take any business out of the ordinary run. I designed eight models in all before "Model T." They were: "Model A," "Model B," "Model C," "Model F," "Model N," "Model R," "Model S," and "Model K." Of these, Models "A," "C," and "F" had two-cylinder opposed horizontal motors. In "Model A" the motor was at the rear of the driver's seat. In all of the other models it was in a hood in front. Models "B," "N," "R," and "S" had motors of the four-cylinder vertical type. "Model K" had six cylinders. "Model A" developed eight horsepower. "Model B" developed twenty-four horsepower with a 4-1/2-inch cylinder and a 5-inch stroke. The highest horsepower was in "Model K," the six-cylinder car, which developed forty horsepower. The largest cylinders were those of "Model B." The smallest were in Models "N," "R," and "S" which were 3-3/4 inches in diameter with a 3-3/8-inch stroke. "Model T" has a 3-3/4-inch cylinder with a 4-inch stroke. The ignition was by dry batteries in all excepting "Model B," which had storage batteries, and in "Model K" which had both battery and magneto. In the present model, the magneto is a part of the power plant and is built in. The clutch in the first four models was of the cone type; in the last four and in the present model, of the multiple disc type. The transmission in all of the cars has been planetary. "Model A" had a chain drive. "Model B" had a shaft drive. The next two models had chain drives. Since then all of the cars have had shaft drives. "Model A" had a 72-inch wheel base. Model "B," which was an extremely good car, had 92 inches. "Model K" had 120 inches. "Model C" had 78 inches. The others had 84 inches, and the present car has 100 inches. In the first five models all of the equipment was extra. The next three were sold with a partial equipment. The present car is sold with full equipment. Model "A" weighed 1,250 pounds. The lightest cars were Models "N" and "R." They weighed 1,050 pounds, but they were both runabouts. The heaviest car was the six-cylinder, which weighed 2,000 pounds. The present car weighs 1,200 lbs. The "Model T" had practically no features which were not contained in some one or other of the previous models. Every detail had been fully tested in practice. There was no guessing as to whether or not it would be a successful model. It had to be. There was no way it could escape being so, for it had not been made in a day. It contained all that I was then able to put into a motor car plus the material, which for the first time I was able to obtain. We put out "Model T" for the season 1908-1909. The company was then five years old. The original factory space had been .28 acre. We had employed an average of 311 people in the first year, built 1,708 cars, and had one branch house. In 1908, the factory space had increased to 2.65 acres and we owned the building. The average number of employees had increased to 1,908. We built 6,181 cars and had fourteen branch houses. It was a prosperous business. During the season 1908-1909 we continued to make Models "R" and "S," four-cylinder runabouts and roadsters, the models that had previously been so successful, and which sold at $700 and $750. But "Model T" swept them right out. We sold 10,607 cars--a larger number than any manufacturer had ever sold. The price for the touring car was $850. On the same chassis we mounted a town car at $1,000, a roadster at $825, a coupe at $950, and a landaulet at $950. This season demonstrated conclusively to me that it was time to put the new policy in force. The salesmen, before I had announced the policy, were spurred by the great sales to think that even greater sales might be had if only we had more models. It is strange how, just as soon as an article becomes successful, somebody starts to think that it would be more successful if only it were different. There is a tendency to keep monkeying with styles and to spoil a good thing by changing it. The salesmen were insistent on increasing the line. They listened to the 5 per cent., the special customers who could say what they wanted, and forgot all about the 95 per cent. who just bought without making any fuss. No business can improve unless it pays the closest possible attention to complaints and suggestions. If there is any defect in service then that must be instantly and rigorously investigated, but when the suggestion is only as to style, one has to make sure whether it is not merely a personal whim that is being voiced. Salesmen always want to cater to whims instead of acquiring sufficient knowledge of their product to be able to explain to the customer with the whim that what they have will satisfy his every requirement--that is, of course, provided what they have does satisfy these requirements. Therefore in 1909 I announced one morning, without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to be "Model T," and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked: "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." I cannot say that any one agreed with me. The selling people could not of course see the advantages that a single model would bring about in production. More than that, they did not particularly care. They thought that our production was good enough as it was and there was a very decided opinion that lowering the sales price would hurt sales, that the people who wanted quality would be driven away and that there would be none to replace them. There was very little conception of the motor industry. A motor car was still regarded as something in the way of a luxury. The manufacturers did a good deal to spread this idea. Some clever persons invented the name "pleasure car" and the advertising emphasized the pleasure features. The sales people had ground for their objections and particularly when I made the following announcement: "I will build a motor car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one--and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces." This announcement was received not without pleasure. The general comment was: "If Ford does that he will be out of business in six months." The impression was that a good car could not be built at a low price, and that, anyhow, there was no use in building a low-priced car because only wealthy people were in the market for cars. The 1908-1909 sales of more than ten thousand cars had convinced me that we needed a new factory. We already had a big modern factory--the Piquette Street plant. It was as good as, perhaps a little better than, any automobile factory in the country. But I did not see how it was going to care for the sales and production that were inevitable. So I bought sixty acres at Highland Park, which was then considered away out in the country from Detroit. The amount of ground bought and the plans for a bigger factory than the world has ever seen were opposed. The question was already being asked: "How soon will Ford blow up?" Nobody knows how many thousand times it has been asked since. It is asked only because of the failure to grasp that a principle rather than an individual is at work, and the principle is so simple that it seems mysterious. For 1909-1910, in order to pay for the new land and buildings, I slightly raised the prices. This is perfectly justifiable and results in a benefit, not an injury, to the purchaser. I did exactly the same thing a few years ago--or rather, in that case I did not lower the price as is my annual custom, in order to build the River Rouge plant. The extra money might in each case have been had by borrowing, but then we should have had a continuing charge upon the business and all subsequent cars would have had to bear this charge. The price of all the models was increased $100, with the exception of the roadster, which was increased only $75 and of the landaulet and town car, which were increased $150 and $200 respectively. We sold 18,664 cars, and then for 1910-1911, with the new facilities, I cut the touring car from $950 to $780 and we sold 34,528 cars. That is the beginning of the steady reduction in the price of the cars in the face of ever-increasing cost of materials and ever-higher wages. Contrast the year 1908 with the year 1911. The factory space increased from 2.65 to 32 acres. The average number of employees from 1,908 to 4,110, and the cars built from a little over six thousand to nearly thirty-five thousand. You will note that men were not employed in proportion to the output. We were, almost overnight it seems, in great production. How did all this come about? Simply through the application of an inevitable principle. By the application of intelligently directed power and machinery. In a little dark shop on a side street an old man had laboured for years making axe handles. Out of seasoned hickory he fashioned them, with the help of a draw shave, a chisel, and a supply of sandpaper. Carefully was each handle weighed and balanced. No two of them were alike. The curve must exactly fit the hand and must conform to the grain of the wood. From dawn until dark the old man laboured. His average product was eight handles a week, for which he received a dollar and a half each. And often some of these were unsaleable--because the balance was not true. To-day you can buy a better axe handle, made by machinery, for a few cents. And you need not worry about the balance. They are all alike--and every one is perfect. Modern methods applied in a big way have not only brought the cost of axe handles down to a fraction of their former cost--but they have immensely improved the product. It was the application of these same methods to the making of the Ford car that at the very start lowered the price and heightened the quality. We just developed an idea. The nucleus of a business may be an idea. That is, an inventor or a thoughtful workman works out a new and better way to serve some established human need; the idea commends itself, and people want to avail themselves of it. In this way a single individual may prove, through his idea or discovery, the nucleus of a business. But the creation of the body and bulk of that business is shared by everyone who has anything to do with it. No manufacturer can say: "I built this business"--if he has required the help of thousands of men in building it. It is a joint production. Everyone employed in it has contributed something to it. By working and producing they make it possible for the purchasing world to keep coming to that business for the type of service it provides, and thus they help establish a custom, a trade, a habit which supplies them with a livelihood. That is the way our company grew and just how I shall start explaining in the next chapter. In the meantime, the company had become world-wide. We had branches in London and in Australia. We were shipping to every part of the world, and in England particularly we were beginning to be as well known as in America. The introduction of the car in England was somewhat difficult on account of the failure of the American bicycle. Because the American bicycle had not been suited to English uses it was taken for granted and made a point of by the distributors that no American vehicle could appeal to the British market. Two "Model A's" found their way to England in 1903. The newspapers refused to notice them. The automobile agents refused to take the slightest interest. It was rumoured that the principal components of its manufacture were string and hoop wire and that a buyer would be lucky if it held together for a fortnight! In the first year about a dozen cars in all were used; the second was only a little better. And I may say as to the reliability of that "Model A" that most of them after nearly twenty years are still in some kind of service in England. In 1905 our agent entered a "Model C" in the Scottish Reliability Trials. In those days reliability runs were more popular in England than motor races. Perhaps there was no inkling that after all an automobile was not merely a toy. The Scottish Trials was over eight hundred miles of hilly, heavy roads. The Ford came through with only one involuntary stop against it. That started the Ford sales in England. In that same year Ford taxicabs were placed in London for the first time. In the next several years the sales began to pick up. The cars went into every endurance and reliability test and won every one of them. The Brighton dealer had ten Fords driven over the South Downs for two days in a kind of steeplechase and every one of them came through. As a result six hundred cars were sold that year. In 1911 Henry Alexander drove a "Model T" to the top of Ben Nevis, 4,600 feet. That year 14,060 cars were sold in England, and it has never since been necessary to stage any kind of a stunt. We eventually opened our own factory at Manchester; at first it was purely an assembling plant. But as the years have gone by we have progressively made more and more of the car. CHAPTER V GETTING INTO PRODUCTION If a device would save in time just 10 per cent. or increase results 10 per cent., then its absence is always a 10 per cent. tax. If the time of a person is worth fifty cents an hour, a 10 per cent. saving is worth five cents an hour. If the owner of a skyscraper could increase his income 10 per cent., he would willingly pay half the increase just to know how. The reason why he owns a skyscraper is that science has proved that certain materials, used in a given way, can save space and increase rental incomes. A building thirty stories high needs no more ground space than one five stories high. Getting along with the old-style architecture costs the five-story man the income of twenty-five floors. Save ten steps a day for each of twelve thousand employees and you will have saved fifty miles of wasted motion and misspent energy. Those are the principles on which the production of my plant was built up. They all come practically as of course. In the beginning we tried to get machinists. As the necessity for production increased it became apparent not only that enough machinists were not to be had, but also that skilled men were not necessary in production, and out of this grew a principle that I later want to present in full. It is self-evident that a majority of the people in the world are not mentally--even if they are physically--capable of making a good living. That is, they are not capable of furnishing with their own hands a sufficient quantity of the goods which this world needs to be able to exchange their unaided product for the goods which they need. I have heard it said, in fact I believe it is quite a current thought, that we have taken skill out of work. We have not. We have put in skill. We have put a higher skill into planning, management, and tool building, and the results of that skill are enjoyed by the man who is not skilled. This I shall later enlarge on. We have to recognize the unevenness in human mental equipments. If every job in our place required skill the place would never have existed. Sufficiently skilled men to the number needed could not have been trained in a hundred years. A million men working by hand could not even approximate our present daily output. No one could manage a million men. But more important than that, the product of the unaided hands of those million men could not be sold at a price in consonance with buying power. And even if it were possible to imagine such an aggregation and imagine its management and correlation, just think of the area that it would have to occupy! How many of the men would be engaged, not in producing, but in merely carrying from place to place what the other men had produced? I cannot see how under such conditions the men could possibly be paid more than ten or twenty cents a day--for of course it is not the employer who pays wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages and it is the management that arranges the production so that the product may pay the wages. The more economical methods of production did not begin all at once. They began gradually--just as we began gradually to make our own parts. "Model T" was the first motor that we made ourselves. The great economies began in assembling and then extended to other sections so that, while to-day we have skilled mechanics in plenty, they do not produce automobiles--they make it easy for others to produce them. Our skilled men are the tool makers, the experimental workmen, the machinists, and the pattern makers. They are as good as any men in the world--so good, indeed, that they should not be wasted in doing that which the machines they contrive can do better. The rank and file of men come to us unskilled; they learn their jobs within a few hours or a few days. If they do not learn within that time they will never be of any use to us. These men are, many of them, foreigners, and all that is required before they are taken on is that they should be potentially able to do enough work to pay the overhead charges on the floor space they occupy. They do not have to be able-bodied men. We have jobs that require great physical strength--although they are rapidly lessening; we have other jobs that require no strength whatsoever--jobs which, as far as strength is concerned, might be attended to by a child of three. It is not possible, without going deeply into technical processes, to present the whole development of manufacturing, step by step, in the order in which each thing came about. I do not know that this could be done, because something has been happening nearly every day and nobody can keep track. Take at random a number of the changes. From them it is possible not only to gain some idea of what will happen when this world is put on a production basis, but also to see how much more we pay for things than we ought to, and how much lower wages are than they ought to be, and what a vast field remains to be explored. The Ford Company is only a little way along on the journey. A Ford car contains about five thousand parts--that is counting screws, nuts, and all. Some of the parts are fairly bulky and others are almost the size of watch parts. In our first assembling we simply started to put a car together at a spot on the floor and workmen brought to it the parts as they were needed in exactly the same way that one builds a house. When we started to make parts it was natural to create a single department of the factory to make that part, but usually one workman performed all of the operations necessary on a small part. The rapid press of production made it necessary to devise plans of production that would avoid having the workers falling over one another. The undirected worker spends more of his time walking about for materials and tools than he does in working; he gets small pay because pedestrianism is not a highly paid line. The first step forward in assembly came when we began taking the work to the men instead of the men to the work. We now have two general principles in all operations--that a man shall never have to take more than one step, if possibly it can be avoided, and that no man need ever stoop over. The principles of assembly are these: (1) Place the tools and the men in the sequence of the operation so that each component part shall travel the least possible distance while in the process of finishing. (2) Use work slides or some other form of carrier so that when a workman completes his operation, he drops the part always in the same place--which place must always be the most convenient place to his hand--and if possible have gravity carry the part to the next workman for his operation. (3) Use sliding assembling lines by which the parts to be assembled are delivered at convenient distances. The net result of the application of these principles is the reduction of the necessity for thought on the part of the worker and the reduction of his movements to a minimum. He does as nearly as possible only one thing with only one movement. The assembling of the chassis is, from the point of view of the non-mechanical mind, our most interesting and perhaps best known operation, and at one time it was an exceedingly important operation. We now ship out the parts for assembly at the point of distribution. Along about April 1, 1913, we first tried the experiment of an assembly line. We tried it on assembling the flywheel magneto. We try everything in a little way first--we will rip out anything once we discover a better way, but we have to know absolutely that the new way is going to be better than the old before we do anything drastic. I believe that this was the first moving line ever installed. The idea came in a general way from the overhead trolley that the Chicago packers use in dressing beef. We had previously assembled the fly-wheel magneto in the usual method. With one workman doing a complete job he could turn out from thirty-five to forty pieces in a nine-hour day, or about twenty minutes to an assembly. What he did alone was then spread into twenty-nine operations; that cut down the assembly time to thirteen minutes, ten seconds. Then we raised the height of the line eight inches--this was in 1914--and cut the time to seven minutes. Further experimenting with the speed that the work should move at cut the time down to five minutes. In short, the result is this: by the aid of scientific study one man is now able to do somewhat more than four did only a comparatively few years ago. That line established the efficiency of the method and we now use it everywhere. The assembling of the motor, formerly done by one man, is now divided into eighty-four operations--those men do the work that three times their number formerly did. In a short time we tried out the plan on the chassis. About the best we had done in stationary chassis assembling was an average of twelve hours and twenty-eight minutes per chassis. We tried the experiment of drawing the chassis with a rope and windlass down a line two hundred fifty feet long. Six assemblers traveled with the chassis and picked up the parts from piles placed along the line. This rough experiment reduced the time to five hours fifty minutes per chassis. In the early part of 1914 we elevated the assembly line. We had adopted the policy of "man-high" work; we had one line twenty-six and three quarter inches and another twenty-four and one half inches from the floor--to suit squads of different heights. The waist-high arrangement and a further subdivision of work so that each man had fewer movements cut down the labour time per chassis to one hour thirty-three minutes. Only the chassis was then assembled in the line. The body was placed on in "John R. Street"--the famous street that runs through our Highland Park factories. Now the line assembles the whole car. It must not be imagined, however, that all this worked out as quickly as it sounds. The speed of the moving work had to be carefully tried out; in the fly-wheel magneto we first had a speed of sixty inches per minute. That was too fast. Then we tried eighteen inches per minute. That was too slow. Finally we settled on forty-four inches per minute. The idea is that a man must not be hurried in his work--he must have every second necessary but not a single unnecessary second. We have worked out speeds for each assembly, for the success of the chassis assembly caused us gradually to overhaul our entire method of manufacturing and to put all assembling in mechanically driven lines. The chassis assembling line, for instance, goes at a pace of six feet per minute; the front axle assembly line goes at one hundred eighty-nine inches per minute. In the chassis assembling are forty-five separate operations or stations. The first men fasten four mud-guard brackets to the chassis frame; the motor arrives on the tenth operation and so on in detail. Some men do only one or two small operations, others do more. The man who places a part does not fasten it--the part may not be fully in place until after several operations later. The man who puts in a bolt does not put on the nut; the man who puts on the nut does not tighten it. On operation number thirty-four the budding motor gets its gasoline; it has previously received lubrication; on operation number forty-four the radiator is filled with water, and on operation number forty-five the car drives out onto John R. Street. Essentially the same ideas have been applied to the assembling of the motor. In October, 1913, it required nine hours and fifty-four minutes of labour time to assemble one motor; six months later, by the moving assembly method, this time had been reduced to five hours and fifty-six minutes. Every piece of work in the shops moves; it may move on hooks on overhead chains going to assembly in the exact order in which the parts are required; it may travel on a moving platform, or it may go by gravity, but the point is that there is no lifting or trucking of anything other than materials. Materials are brought in on small trucks or trailers operated by cut-down Ford chassis, which are sufficiently mobile and quick to get in and out of any aisle where they may be required to go. No workman has anything to do with moving or lifting anything. That is all in a separate department--the department of transportation. We started assembling a motor car in a single factory. Then as we began to make parts, we began to departmentalize so that each department would do only one thing. As the factory is now organized each department makes only a single part or assembles a part. A department is a little factory in itself. The part comes into it as raw material or as a casting, goes through the sequence of machines and heat treatments, or whatever may be required, and leaves that department finished. It was only because of transport ease that the departments were grouped together when we started to manufacture. I did not know that such minute divisions would be possible; but as our production grew and departments multiplied, we actually changed from making automobiles to making parts. Then we found that we had made another new discovery, which was that by no means all of the parts had to be made in one factory. It was not really a discovery--it was something in the nature of going around in a circle to my first manufacturing when I bought the motors and probably ninety per cent. of the parts. When we began to make our own parts we practically took for granted that they all had to be made in the one factory--that there was some special virtue in having a single roof over the manufacture of the entire car. We have now developed away from this. If we build any more large factories, it will be only because the making of a single part must be in such tremendous volume as to require a large unit. I hope that in the course of time the big Highland Park plant will be doing only one or two things. The casting has already been taken away from it and has gone to the River Rouge plant. So now we are on our way back to where we started from--excepting that, instead of buying our parts on the outside, we are beginning to make them in our own factories on the outside. This is a development which holds exceptional consequences, for it means, as I shall enlarge in a later chapter, that highly standardized, highly subdivided industry need no longer become concentrated in large plants with all the inconveniences of transportation and housing that hamper large plants. A thousand or five hundred men ought to be enough in a single factory; then there would be no problem of transporting them to work or away from work and there would be no slums or any of the other unnatural ways of living incident to the overcrowding that must take place if the workmen are to live within reasonable distances of a very large plant. Highland Park now has five hundred departments. Down at our Piquette plant we had only eighteen departments, and formerly at Highland Park we had only one hundred and fifty departments. This illustrates how far we are going in the manufacture of parts. Hardly a week passes without some improvement being made somewhere in machine or process, and sometimes this is made in defiance of what is called "the best shop practice." I recall that a machine manufacturer was once called into conference on the building of a special machine. The specifications called for an output of two hundred per hour. "This is a mistake," said the manufacturer, "you mean two hundred a day--no machine can be forced to two hundred an hour." The company officer sent for the man who had designed the machine and they called his attention to the specification. He said: "Yes, what about it?" "It can't be done," said the manufacturer positively, "no machine built will do that--it is out of the question." "Out of the question!" exclaimed the engineer, "if you will come down to the main floor you will see one doing it; we built one to see if it could be done and now we want more like it." The factory keeps no record of experiments. The foremen and superintendents remember what has been done. If a certain method has formerly been tried and failed, somebody will remember it--but I am not particularly anxious for the men to remember what someone else has tried to do in the past, for then we might quickly accumulate far too many things that could not be done. That is one of the troubles with extensive records. If you keep on recording all of your failures you will shortly have a list showing that there is nothing left for you to try--whereas it by no means follows because one man has failed in a certain method that another man will not succeed. They told us we could not cast gray iron by our endless chain method and I believe there is a record of failures. But we are doing it. The man who carried through our work either did not know or paid no attention to the previous figures. Likewise we were told that it was out of the question to pour the hot iron directly from the blast furnace into mould. The usual method is to run the iron into pigs, let them season for a time, and then remelt them for casting. But at the River Rouge plant we are casting directly from cupolas that are filled from the blast furnaces. Then, too, a record of failures--particularly if it is a dignified and well-authenticated record--deters a young man from trying. We get some of our best results from letting fools rush in where angels fear to tread. None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert--because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible. I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible. The right kind of experience, the right kind of technical training, ought to enlarge the mind and reduce the number of impossibilities. It unfortunately does nothing of the kind. Most technical training and the average of that which we call experience, provide a record of previous failures and, instead of these failures being taken for what they are worth, they are taken as absolute bars to progress. If some man, calling himself an authority, says that this or that cannot be done, then a horde of unthinking followers start the chorus: "It can't be done." Take castings. Castings has always been a wasteful process and is so old that it has accumulated many traditions which make improvements extraordinarily difficult to bring about. I believe one authority on moulding declared--before we started our experiments--that any man who said he could reduce costs within half a year wrote himself down as a fraud. Our foundry used to be much like other foundries. When we cast the first "Model T" cylinders in 1910, everything in the place was done by hand; shovels and wheelbarrows abounded. The work was then either skilled or unskilled; we had moulders and we had labourers. Now we have about five per cent. of thoroughly skilled moulders and core setters, but the remaining 95 per cent. are unskilled, or to put it more accurately, must be skilled in exactly one operation which the most stupid man can learn within two days. The moulding is all done by machinery. Each part which we have to cast has a unit or units of its own--according to the number required in the plan of production. The machinery of the unit is adapted to the single casting; thus the men in the unit each perform a single operation that is always the same. A unit consists of an overhead railway to which at intervals are hung little platforms for the moulds. Without going into technical details, let me say the making of the moulds and the cores, and the packing of the cores, are done with the work in motion on the platforms. The metal is poured at another point as the work moves, and by the time the mould in which the metal has been poured reaches the terminal, it is cool enough to start on its automatic way to cleaning, machining, and assembling. And the platform is moving around for a new load. Take the development of the piston-rod assembly. Even under the old plan, this operation took only three minutes and did not seem to be one to bother about. There were two benches and twenty-eight men in all; they assembled one hundred seventy-five pistons and rods in a nine-hour day--which means just five seconds over three minutes each. There was no inspection, and many of the piston and rod assemblies came back from the motor assembling line as defective. It is a very simple operation. The workman pushed the pin out of the piston, oiled the pin, slipped the rod in place, put the pin through the rod and piston, tightened one screw, and opened another screw. That was the whole operation. The foreman, examining the operation, could not discover why it should take as much as three minutes. He analyzed the motions with a stop-watch. He found that four hours out of a nine-hour day were spent in walking. The assembler did not go off anywhere, but he had to shift his feet to gather in his materials and to push away his finished piece. In the whole task, each man performed six operations. The foreman devised a new plan; he split the operation into three divisions, put a slide on the bench and three men on each side of it, and an inspector at the end. Instead of one man performing the whole operation, one man then performed only one third of the operation--he performed only as much as he could do without shifting his feet. They cut down the squad from twenty-eight to fourteen men. The former record for twenty-eight men was one hundred seventy-five assemblies a day. Now seven men turn out twenty-six hundred assemblies in eight hours. It is not necessary to calculate the savings there! Painting the rear axle assembly once gave some trouble. It used to be dipped by hand into a tank of enamel. This required several handlings and the services of two men. Now one man takes care of it all on a special machine, designed and built in the factory. The man now merely hangs the assembly on a moving chain which carries it up over the enamel tank, two levers then thrust thimbles over the ends of the ladle shaft, the paint tank rises six feet, immerses the axle, returns to position, and the axle goes on to the drying oven. The whole cycle of operations now takes just thirteen seconds. The radiator is a complex affair and soldering it used to be a matter of skill. There are ninety-five tubes in a radiator. Fitting and soldering these tubes in place is by hand a long operation, requiring both skill and patience. Now it is all done by a machine which will make twelve hundred radiator cores in eight hours; then they are soldered in place by being carried through a furnace by a conveyor. No tinsmith work and so no skill are required. We used to rivet the crank-case arms to the crank-case, using pneumatic hammers which were supposed to be the latest development. It took six men to hold the hammers and six men to hold the casings, and the din was terrific. Now an automatic press operated by one man, who does nothing else, gets through five times as much work in a day as those twelve men did. In the Piquette plant the cylinder casting traveled four thousand feet in the course of finishing; now it travels only slightly over three hundred feet. There is no manual handling of material. There is not a single hand operation. If a machine can be made automatic, it is made automatic. Not a single operation is ever considered as being done in the best or cheapest way. At that, only about ten per cent. of our tools are special; the others are regular machines adjusted to the particular job. And they are placed almost side by side. We put more machinery per square foot of floor space than any other factory in the world--every foot of space not used carries an overhead expense. We want none of that waste. Yet there is all the room needed--no man has too much room and no man has too little room. Dividing and subdividing operations, keeping the work in motion--those are the keynotes of production. But also it is to be remembered that all the parts are designed so that they can be most easily made. And the saving? Although the comparison is not quite fair, it is startling. If at our present rate of production we employed the same number of men per car that we did when we began in 1903--and those men were only for assembly--we should to-day require a force of more than two hundred thousand. We have less than fifty thousand men on automobile production at our highest point of around four thousand cars a day! CHAPTER VI MACHINES AND MEN That which one has to fight hardest against in bringing together a large number of people to do work is excess organization and consequent red tape. To my mind there is no bent of mind more dangerous than that which is sometimes described as the "genius for organization." This usually results in the birth of a great big chart showing, after the fashion of a family tree, how authority ramifies. The tree is heavy with nice round berries, each of which bears the name of a man or of an office. Every man has a title and certain duties which are strictly limited by the circumference of his berry. If a straw boss wants to say something to the general superintendent, his message has to go through the sub-foreman, the foreman, the department head, and all the assistant superintendents, before, in the course of time, it reaches the general superintendent. Probably by that time what he wanted to talk about is already history. It takes about six weeks for the message of a man living in a berry on the lower left-hand corner of the chart to reach the president or chairman of the board, and if it ever does reach one of these august officials, it has by that time gathered to itself about a pound of criticisms, suggestions, and comments. Very few things are ever taken under "official consideration" until long after the time when they actually ought to have been done. The buck is passed to and fro and all responsibility is dodged by individuals--following the lazy notion that two heads are better than one. Now a business, in my way of thinking, is not a machine. It is a collection of people who are brought together to do work and not to write letters to one another. It is not necessary for any one department to know what any other department is doing. If a man is doing his work he will not have time to take up any other work. It is the business of those who plan the entire work to see that all of the departments are working properly toward the same end. It is not necessary to have meetings to establish good feeling between individuals or departments. It is not necessary for people to love each other in order to work together. Too much good fellowship may indeed be a very bad thing, for it may lead to one man trying to cover up the faults of another. That is bad for both men. When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we are at play we ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two. The sole object ought to be to get the work done and to get paid for it. When the work is done, then the play can come, but not before. And so the Ford factories and enterprises have no organization, no specific duties attaching to any position, no line of succession or of authority, very few titles, and no conferences. We have only the clerical help that is absolutely required; we have no elaborate records of any kind, and consequently no red tape. We make the individual responsibility complete. The workman is absolutely responsible for his work. The straw boss is responsible for the workmen under him. The foreman is responsible for his group. The department head is responsible for the department. The general superintendent is responsible for the whole factory. Every man has to know what is going on in his sphere. I say "general superintendent." There is no such formal title. One man is in charge of the factory and has been for years. He has two men with him, who, without in any way having their duties defined, have taken particular sections of the work to themselves. With them are about half a dozen other men in the nature of assistants, but without specific duties. They have all made jobs for themselves--but there are no limits to their jobs. They just work in where they best fit. One man chases stock and shortages. Another has grabbed inspection, and so on. This may seem haphazard, but it is not. A group of men, wholly intent upon getting work done, have no difficulty in seeing that the work is done. They do not get into trouble about the limits of authority, because they are not thinking of titles. If they had offices and all that, they would shortly be giving up their time to office work and to wondering why did they not have a better office than some other fellow. Because there are no titles and no limits of authority, there is no question of red tape or going over a man's head. Any workman can go to anybody, and so established has become this custom, that a foreman does not get sore if a workman goes over him and directly to the head of the factory. The workman rarely ever does so, because a foreman knows as well as he knows his own name that if he has been unjust it will be very quickly found out, and he shall no longer be a foreman. One of the things that we will not tolerate is injustice of any kind. The moment a man starts to swell with authority he is discovered, and he goes out, or goes back to a machine. A large amount of labour unrest comes from the unjust exercise of authority by those in subordinate positions, and I am afraid that in far too many manufacturing institutions it is really not possible for a workman to get a square deal. The work and the work alone controls us. That is one of the reasons why we have no titles. Most men can swing a job, but they are floored by a title. The effect of a title is very peculiar. It has been used too much as a sign of emancipation from work. It is almost equivalent to a badge bearing the legend: "This man has nothing to do but regard himself as important and all others as inferior." Not only is a title often injurious to the wearer, but it has its effect on others as well. There is perhaps no greater single source of personal dissatisfaction among men than the fact that the title-bearers are not always the real leaders. Everybody acknowledges a real leader--a man who is fit to plan and command. And when you find a real leader who bears a title, you will have to inquire of someone else what his title is. He doesn't boast about it. Titles in business have been greatly overdone and business has suffered. One of the bad features is the division of responsibility according to titles, which goes so far as to amount to a removal altogether of responsibility. Where responsibility is broken up into many small bits and divided among many departments, each department under its own titular head, who in turn is surrounded by a group bearing their nice sub-titles, it is difficult to find any one who really feels responsible. Everyone knows what "passing the buck" means. The game must have originated in industrial organizations where the departments simply shove responsibility along. The health of every organization depends on every member--whatever his place--feeling that everything that happens to come to his notice relating to the welfare of the business is his own job. Railroads have gone to the devil under the eyes of departments that say: "Oh, that doesn't come under our department. Department X, 100 miles away, has that in charge." There used to be a lot of advice given to officials not to hide behind their titles. The very necessity for the advice showed a condition that needed more than advice to correct it. And the correction is just this--abolish the titles. A few may be legally necessary; a few may be useful in directing the public how to do business with the concern, but for the rest the best rule is simple: "Get rid of them." As a matter of fact, the record of business in general just now is such as to detract very much from the value of titles. No one would boast of being president of a bankrupt bank. Business on the whole has not been so skillfully steered as to leave much margin for pride in the steersmen. The men who bear titles now and are worth anything are forgetting their titles and are down in the foundation of business looking for the weak spots. They are back again in the places from which they rose--trying to reconstruct from the bottom up. And when a man is really at work, he needs no title. His work honours him. All of our people come into the factory or the offices through the employment departments. As I have said, we do not hire experts--neither do we hire men on past experiences or for any position other than the lowest. Since we do not take a man on his past history, we do not refuse him because of his past history. I never met a man who was thoroughly bad. There is always some good in him--if he gets a chance. That is the reason we do not care in the least about a man's antecedents--we do not hire a man's history, we hire the man. If he has been in jail, that is no reason to say that he will be in jail again. I think, on the contrary, he is, if given a chance, very likely to make a special effort to keep out of jail. Our employment office does not bar a man for anything he has previously done--he is equally acceptable whether he has been in Sing Sing or at Harvard and we do not even inquire from which place he has graduated. All that he needs is the desire to work. If he does not desire to work, it is very unlikely that he will apply for a position, for it is pretty well understood that a man in the Ford plant works. We do not, to repeat, care what a man has been. If he has gone to college he ought to be able to go ahead faster, but he has to start at the bottom and prove his ability. Every man's future rests solely with himself. There is far too much loose talk about men being unable to obtain recognition. With us every man is fairly certain to get the exact recognition he deserves. Of course, there are certain factors in the desire for recognition which must be reckoned with. The whole modern industrial system has warped the desire so out of shape that it is now almost an obsession. There was a time when a man's personal advancement depended entirely and immediately upon his work, and not upon any one's favor; but nowadays it often depends far too much upon the individual's good fortune in catching some influential eye. That is what we have successfully fought against. Men will work with the idea of catching somebody's eye; they will work with the idea that if they fail to get credit for what they have done, they might as well have done it badly or not have done it at all. Thus the work sometimes becomes a secondary consideration. The job in hand--the article in hand, the special kind of service in hand--turns out to be not the principal job. The main work becomes personal advancement--a platform from which to catch somebody's eye. This habit of making the work secondary and the recognition primary is unfair to the work. It makes recognition and credit the real job. And this also has an unfortunate effect on the worker. It encourages a peculiar kind of ambition which is neither lovely nor productive. It produces the kind of man who imagines that by "standing in with the boss" he will get ahead. Every shop knows this kind of man. And the worst of it is there are some things in the present industrial system which make it appear that the game really pays. Foremen are only human. It is natural that they should be flattered by being made to believe that they hold the weal or woe of workmen in their hands. It is natural, also, that being open to flattery, their self-seeking subordinates should flatter them still more to obtain and profit by their favor. That is why I want as little as possible of the personal element. It is particularly easy for any man who never knows it all to go forward to a higher position with us. Some men will work hard but they do not possess the capacity to think and especially to think quickly. Such men get as far as their ability deserves. A man may, by his industry, deserve advancement, but it cannot be possibly given him unless he also has a certain element of leadership. This is not a dream world we are living in. I think that every man in the shaking-down process of our factory eventually lands about where he belongs. We are never satisfied with the way that everything is done in any part of the organization; we always think it ought to be done better and that eventually it will be done better. The spirit of crowding forces the man who has the qualities for a higher place eventually to get it. He perhaps would not get the place if at any time the organization--which is a word I do not like to use--became fixed, so that there would be routine steps and dead men's shoes. But we have so few titles that a man who ought to be doing something better than he is doing, very soon gets to doing it--he is not restrained by the fact that there is no position ahead of him "open"--for there are no "positions." We have no cut-and-dried places--our best men make their places. This is easy enough to do, for there is always work, and when you think of getting the work done instead of finding a title to fit a man who wants to be promoted, then there is no difficulty about promotion. The promotion itself is not formal; the man simply finds himself doing something other than what he was doing and getting more money. All of our people have thus come up from the bottom. The head of the factory started as a machinist. The man in charge of the big River Rouge plant began as a patternmaker. Another man overseeing one of the principal departments started as a sweeper. There is not a single man anywhere in the factory who did not simply come in off the street. Everything that we have developed has been done by men who have qualified themselves with us. We fortunately did not inherit any traditions and we are not founding any. If we have a tradition it is this: Everything can always be done better than it is being done. That pressing always to do work better and faster solves nearly every factory problem. A department gets its standing on its rate of production. The rate of production and the cost of production are distinct elements. The foremen and superintendents would only be wasting time were they to keep a check on the costs in their departments. There are certain costs--such as the rate of wages, the overhead, the price of materials, and the like, which they could not in any way control, so they do not bother about them. What they can control is the rate of production in their own departments. The rating of a department is gained by dividing the number of parts produced by the number of hands working. Every foreman checks his own department daily--he carries the figures always with him. The superintendent has a tabulation of all the scores; if there is something wrong in a department the output score shows it at once, the superintendent makes inquiries and the foreman looks alive. A considerable part of the incentive to better methods is directly traceable to this simple rule-of-thumb method of rating production. The foreman need not be a cost accountant--he is no better a foreman for being one. His charges are the machines and the human beings in his department. When they are working at their best he has performed his service. The rate of his production is his guide. There is no reason for him to scatter his energies over collateral subjects. This rating system simply forces a foreman to forget personalities--to forget everything other than the work in hand. If he should select the people he likes instead of the people who can best do the work, his department record will quickly show up that fact. There is no difficulty in picking out men. They pick themselves out because--although one hears a great deal about the lack of opportunity for advancement--the average workman is more interested in a steady job than he is in advancement. Scarcely more than five per cent, of those who work for wages, while they have the desire to receive more money, have also the willingness to accept the additional responsibility and the additional work which goes with the higher places. Only about twenty-five per cent. are even willing to be straw bosses, and most of them take that position because it carries with it more pay than working on a machine. Men of a more mechanical turn of mind, but with no desire for responsibility, go into the tool-making departments where they receive considerably more pay than in production proper. But the vast majority of men want to stay put. They want to be led. They want to have everything done for them and to have no responsibility. Therefore, in spite of the great mass of men, the difficulty is not to discover men to advance, but men who are willing to be advanced. The accepted theory is that all people are anxious for advancement, and a great many pretty plans have been built up from that. I can only say that we do not find that to be the case. The Americans in our employ do want to go ahead, but they by no means do always want to go clear through to the top. The foreigners, generally speaking, are content to stay as straw bosses. Why all of this is, I do not know. I am giving the facts. As I have said, everyone in the place reserves an open mind as to the way in which every job is being done. If there is any fixed theory--any fixed rule--it is that no job is being done well enough. The whole factory management is always open to suggestion, and we have an informal suggestion system by which any workman can communicate any idea that comes to him and get action on it. The saving of a cent per piece may be distinctly worth while. A saving of one cent on a part at our present rate of production represents twelve thousand dollars a year. One cent saved on each part would amount to millions a year. Therefore, in comparing savings, the calculations are carried out to the thousandth part of a cent. If the new way suggested shows a saving and the cost of making the change will pay for itself within a reasonable time--say within three months--the change is made practically as of course. These changes are by no means limited to improvements which will increase production or decrease cost. A great many--perhaps most of them--are in the line of making the work easier. We do not want any hard, man-killing work about the place, and there is now very little of it. And usually it so works out that adopting the way which is easier on the men also decreases the cost. There is most intimate connection between decency and good business. We also investigate down to the last decimal whether it is cheaper to make or to buy a part. The suggestions come from everywhere. The Polish workmen seem to be the cleverest of all of the foreigners in making them. One, who could not speak English, indicated that if the tool in his machine were set at a different angle it might wear longer. As it was it lasted only four or five cuts. He was right, and a lot of money was saved in grinding. Another Pole, running a drill press, rigged up a little fixture to save handling the part after drilling. That was adopted generally and a considerable saving resulted. The men often try out little attachments of their own because, concentrating on one thing, they can, if they have a mind that way, usually devise some improvement. The cleanliness of a man's machine also--although cleaning a machine is no part of his duty--is usually an indication of his intelligence. Here are some of the suggestions: A proposal that castings be taken from the foundry to the machine shop on an overhead conveyor saved seventy men in the transport division. There used to be seventeen men--and this was when production was smaller--taking the burrs off gears, and it was a hard, nasty job. A man roughly sketched a special machine. His idea was worked out and the machine built. Now four men have several times the output of the seventeen men--and have no hard work at all to do. Changing from a solid to a welded rod in one part of the chassis effected an immediate saving of about one half million a year on a smaller than the present-day production. Making certain tubes out of flat sheets instead of drawing them in the usual way effected another enormous saving. The old method of making a certain gear comprised four operations and 12 per cent. of the steel went into scrap. We use most of our scrap and eventually we will use it all, but that is no reason for not cutting down on scrap--the mere fact that all waste is not a dead loss is no excuse for permitting waste. One of the workmen devised a very simple new method for making this gear in which the scrap was only one per cent. Again, the camshaft has to have heat treatment in order to make the surface hard; the cam shafts always came out of the heat-treat oven somewhat warped, and even back in 1918, we employed 37 men just to straighten the shafts. Several of our men experimented for about a year and finally worked out a new form of oven in which the shafts could not warp. In 1921, with the production much larger than in 1918, we employed only eight men in the whole operation. And then there is the pressing to take away the necessity for skill in any job done by any one. The old-time tool hardener was an expert. He had to judge the heating temperatures. It was a hit-or-miss operation. The wonder is that he hit so often. The heat treatment in the hardening of steel is highly important--providing one knows exactly the right heat to apply. That cannot be known by rule-of-thumb. It has to be measured. We introduced a system by which the man at the furnace has nothing at all to do with the heat. He does not see the pyrometer--the instrument which registers the temperature. Coloured electric lights give him his signals. None of our machines is ever built haphazardly. The idea is investigated in detail before a move is made. Sometimes wooden models are constructed or again the parts are drawn to full size on a blackboard. We are not bound by precedent but we leave nothing to luck, and we have yet to build a machine that will not do the work for which it was designed. About ninety per cent. of all experiments have been successful. Whatever expertness in fabrication that has developed has been due to men. I think that if men are unhampered and they know that they are serving, they will always put all of mind and will into even the most trivial of tasks. CHAPTER VII THE TERROR OF THE MACHINE Repetitive labour--the doing of one thing over and over again and always in the same way--is a terrifying prospect to a certain kind of mind. It is terrifying to me. I could not possibly do the same thing day in and day out, but to other minds, perhaps I might say to the majority of minds, repetitive operations hold no terrors. In fact, to some types of mind thought is absolutely appalling. To them the ideal job is one where the creative instinct need not be expressed. The jobs where it is necessary to put in mind as well as muscle have very few takers--we always need men who like a job because it is difficult. The average worker, I am sorry to say, wants a job in which he does not have to put forth much physical exertion--above all, he wants a job in which he does not have to think. Those who have what might be called the creative type of mind and who thoroughly abhor monotony are apt to imagine that all other minds are similarly restless and therefore to extend quite unwanted sympathy to the labouring man who day in and day out performs almost exactly the same operation. When you come right down to it, most jobs are repetitive. A business man has a routine that he follows with great exactness; the work of a bank president is nearly all routine; the work of under officers and clerks in a bank is purely routine. Indeed, for most purposes and most people, it is necessary to establish something in the way of a routine and to make most motions purely repetitive--otherwise the individual will not get enough done to be able to live off his own exertions. There is no reason why any one with a creative mind should be at a monotonous job, for everywhere the need for creative men is pressing. There will never be a dearth of places for skilled people, but we have to recognize that the will to be skilled is not general. And even if the will be present, then the courage to go through with the training is absent. One cannot become skilled by mere wishing. There are far too many assumptions about what human nature ought to be and not enough research into what it is. Take the assumption that creative work can be undertaken only in the realm of vision. We speak of creative "artists" in music, painting, and the other arts. We seemingly limit the creative functions to productions that may be hung on gallery walls, or played in concert halls, or otherwise displayed where idle and fastidious people gather to admire each other's culture. But if a man wants a field for vital creative work, let him come where he is dealing with higher laws than those of sound, or line, or colour; let him come where he may deal with the laws of personality. We want artists in industrial relationship. We want masters in industrial method--both from the standpoint of the producer and the product. We want those who can mould the political, social, industrial, and moral mass into a sound and shapely whole. We have limited the creative faculty too much and have used it for too trivial ends. We want men who can create the working design for all that is right and good and desirable in our life. Good intentions plus well-thought-out working designs can be put into practice and can be made to succeed. It is possible to increase the well-being of the workingman--not by having him do less work, but by aiding him to do more. If the world will give its attention and interest and energy to the making of plans that will profit the other fellow as he is, then such plans can be established on a practical working basis. Such plans will endure--and they will be far the most profitable both in human and financial values. What this generation needs is a deep faith, a profound conviction in the practicability of righteousness, justice, and humanity in industry. If we cannot have these qualities, then we were better off without industry. Indeed, if we cannot get those qualities, the days of industry are numbered. But we can get them. We are getting them. If a man cannot earn his keep without the aid of machinery, is it benefiting him to withhold that machinery because attendance upon it may be monotonous? And let him starve? Or is it better to put him in the way of a good living? Is a man the happier for starving? If he is the happier for using a machine to less than its capacity, is he happier for producing less than he might and consequently getting less than his share of the world's goods in exchange? I have not been able to discover that repetitive labour injures a man in any way. I have been told by parlour experts that repetitive labour is soul--as well as body--destroying, but that has not been the result of our investigations. There was one case of a man who all day long did little but step on a treadle release. He thought that the motion was making him one-sided; the medical examination did not show that he had been affected but, of course, he was changed to another job that used a different set of muscles. In a few weeks he asked for his old job again. It would seem reasonable to imagine that going through the same set of motions daily for eight hours would produce an abnormal body, but we have never had a case of it. We shift men whenever they ask to be shifted and we should like regularly to change them--that would be entirely feasible if only the men would have it that way. They do not like changes which they do not themselves suggest. Some of the operations are undoubtedly monotonous--so monotonous that it seems scarcely possible that any man would care to continue long at the same job. Probably the most monotonous task in the whole factory is one in which a man picks up a gear with a steel hook, shakes it in a vat of oil, then turns it into a basket. The motion never varies. The gears come to him always in exactly the same place, he gives each one the same number of shakes, and he drops it into a basket which is always in the same place. No muscular energy is required, no intelligence is required. He does little more than wave his hands gently to and fro--the steel rod is so light. Yet the man on that job has been doing it for eight solid years. He has saved and invested his money until now he has about forty thousand dollars--and he stubbornly resists every attempt to force him into a better job! The most thorough research has not brought out a single case of a man's mind being twisted or deadened by the work. The kind of mind that does not like repetitive work does not have to stay in it. The work in each department is classified according to its desirability and skill into Classes "A," "B," and "C," each class having anywhere from ten to thirty different operations. A man comes directly from the employment office to "Class C." As he gets better he goes into "Class B," and so on into "Class A," and out of "Class A" into tool making or some supervisory capacity. It is up to him to place himself. If he stays in production it is because he likes it. In a previous chapter I noted that no one applying for work is refused on account of physical condition. This policy went into effect on January 12, 1914, at the time of setting the minimum wage at five dollars a day and the working day at eight hours. It carried with it the further condition that no one should be discharged on account of physical condition, except, of course, in the case of contagious disease. I think that if an industrial institution is to fill its whole role, it ought to be possible for a cross-section of its employees to show about the same proportions as a cross-section of a society in general. We have always with us the maimed and the halt. There is a most generous disposition to regard all of these people who are physically incapacitated for labour as a charge on society and to support them by charity. There are cases where I imagine that the support must be by charity--as, for instance, an idiot. But those cases are extraordinarily rare, and we have found it possible, among the great number of different tasks that must be performed somewhere in the company, to find an opening for almost any one and on the basis of production. The blind man or cripple can, in the particular place to which he is assigned, perform just as much work and receive exactly the same pay as a wholly able-bodied man would. We do not prefer cripples--but we have demonstrated that they can earn full wages. It would be quite outside the spirit of what we are trying to do, to take on men because they were crippled, pay them a lower wage, and be content with a lower output. That might be directly helping the men but it would not be helping them in the best way. The best way is always the way by which they can be put on a productive par with able-bodied men. I believe that there is very little occasion for charity in this world--that is, charity in the sense of making gifts. Most certainly business and charity cannot be combined; the purpose of a factory is to produce, and it ill serves the community in general unless it does produce to the utmost of its capacity. We are too ready to assume without investigation that the full possession of faculties is a condition requisite to the best performance of all jobs. To discover just what was the real situation, I had all of the different jobs in the factory classified to the kind of machine and work--whether the physical labour involved was light, medium, or heavy; whether it were a wet or a dry job, and if not, with what kind of fluid; whether it were clean or dirty; near an oven or a furnace; the condition of the air; whether one or both hands had to be used; whether the employee stood or sat down at his work; whether it was noisy or quiet; whether it required accuracy; whether the light was natural or artificial; the number of pieces that had to be handled per hour; the weight of the material handled; and the description of the strain upon the worker. It turned out at the time of the inquiry that there were then 7,882 different jobs in the factory. Of these, 949 were classified as heavy work requiring strong, able-bodied, and practically physically perfect men; 3,338 required men of ordinary physical development and strength. The remaining 3,595 jobs were disclosed as requiring no physical exertion and could be performed by the slightest, weakest sort of men. In fact, most of them could be satisfactorily filled by women or older children. The lightest jobs were again classified to discover how many of them required the use of full faculties, and we found that 670 could be filled by legless men, 2,637 by one-legged men, 2 by armless men, 715 by one-armed men, and 10 by blind men. Therefore, out of 7,882 kinds of jobs, 4,034--although some of them required strength--did not require full physical capacity. That is, developed industry can provide wage work for a higher average of standard men than are ordinarily included in any normal community. If the jobs in any one industry or, say, any one factory, were analyzed as ours have been analyzed, the proportion might be very different, yet I am quite sure that if work is sufficiently subdivided--subdivided to the point of highest economy--there will be no dearth of places in which the physically incapacitated can do a man's job and get a man's wage. It is economically most wasteful to accept crippled men as charges and then to teach them trivial tasks like the weaving of baskets or some other form of unremunerative hand labour, in the hope, not of aiding them to make a living, but of preventing despondency. When a man is taken on by the Employment Department, the theory is to put him into a job suited to his condition. If he is already at work and he does not seem able to perform the work, or if he does not like his work, he is given a transfer card, which he takes up to the transfer department, and after an examination he is tried out in some other work more suited to his condition or disposition. Those who are below the ordinary physical standards are just as good workers, rightly placed, as those who are above. For instance, a blind man was assigned to the stock department to count bolts and nuts for shipment to branch establishments. Two other able-bodied men were already employed on this work. In two days the foreman sent a note to the transfer department releasing the able-bodied men because the blind man was able to do not only his own work but also the work that had formerly been done by the sound men. This salvage can be carried further. It is usually taken for granted that when a man is injured he is simply out of the running and should be paid an allowance. But there is always a period of convalescence, especially in fracture cases, where the man is strong enough to work, and, indeed, by that time usually anxious to work, for the largest possible accident allowance can never be as great as a man's wage. If it were, then a business would simply have an additional tax put upon it, and that tax would show up in the cost of the product. There would be less buying of the product and therefore less work for somebody. That is an inevitable sequence that must always be borne in mind. We have experimented with bedridden men--men who were able to sit up. We put black oilcloth covers or aprons over the beds and set the men to work screwing nuts on small bolts. This is a job that has to be done by hand and on which fifteen or twenty men are kept busy in the Magneto Department. The men in the hospital could do it just as well as the men in the shop and they were able to receive their regular wages. In fact, their production was about 20 per cent., I believe, above the usual shop production. No man had to do the work unless he wanted to. But they all wanted to. It kept time from hanging on their hands. They slept and ate better and recovered more rapidly. No particular consideration has to be given to deaf-and-dumb employees. They do their work one hundred per cent. The tubercular employees--and there are usually about a thousand of them--mostly work in the material salvage department. Those cases which are considered contagious work together in an especially constructed shed. The work of all of them is largely out of doors. At the time of the last analysis of employed, there were 9,563 sub-standard men. Of these, 123 had crippled or amputated arms, forearms, or hands. One had both hands off. There were 4 totally blind men, 207 blind in one eye, 253 with one eye nearly blind, 37 deaf and dumb, 60 epileptics, 4 with both legs or feet missing, 234 with one foot or leg missing. The others had minor impediments. The length of time required to become proficient in the various occupations is about as follows: 43 per cent. of all the jobs require not over one day of training; 36 per cent. require from one day to one week; 6 per cent. require from one to two weeks; 14 per cent. require from one month to one year; one per cent. require from one to six years. The last jobs require great skill--as in tool making and die sinking. The discipline throughout the plant is rigid. There are no petty rules, and no rules the justice of which can reasonably be disputed. The injustice of arbitrary discharge is avoided by confining the right of discharge to the employment manager, and he rarely exercises it. The year 1919 is the last on which statistics were kept. In that year 30,155 changes occurred. Of those 10,334 were absent more than ten days without notice and therefore dropped. Because they refused the job assigned or, without giving cause, demanded a transfer, 3,702 were let go. A refusal to learn English in the school provided accounted for 38 more; 108 enlisted; about 3,000 were transferred to other plants. Going home, going into farming or business accounted for about the same number. Eighty-two women were discharged because their husbands were working--we do not employ married women whose husbands have jobs. Out of the whole lot only 80 were flatly discharged and the causes were: Misrepresentation, 56; by order of Educational Department, 20; and undesirable, 4. We expect the men to do what they are told. The organization is so highly specialized and one part is so dependent upon another that we could not for a moment consider allowing men to have their own way. Without the most rigid discipline we would have the utmost confusion. I think it should not be otherwise in industry. The men are there to get the greatest possible amount of work done and to receive the highest possible pay. If each man were permitted to act in his own way, production would suffer and therefore pay would suffer. Any one who does not like to work in our way may always leave. The company's conduct toward the men is meant to be exact and impartial. It is naturally to the interest both of the foremen and of the department heads that the releases from their departments should be few. The workman has a full chance to tell his story if he has been unjustly treated--he has full recourse. Of course, it is inevitable that injustices occur. Men are not always fair with their fellow workmen. Defective human nature obstructs our good intentions now and then. The foreman does not always get the idea, or misapplies it--but the company's intentions are as I have stated, and we use every means to have them understood. It is necessary to be most insistent in the matter of absences. A man may not come or go as he pleases; he may always apply for leave to the foreman, but if he leaves without notice, then, on his return, the reasons for his absence are carefully investigated and are sometimes referred to the Medical Department. If his reasons are good, he is permitted to resume work. If they are not good he may be discharged. In hiring a man the only data taken concerns his name, his address, his age, whether he is married or single, the number of his dependents, whether he has ever worked for the Ford Motor Company, and the condition of his sight and his hearing. No questions are asked concerning what the man has previously done, but we have what we call the "Better Advantage Notice," by which a man who has had a trade before he came to us files a notice with the employment department stating what the trade was. In this way, when we need specialists of any kind, we can get them right out of production. This is also one of the avenues by which tool makers and moulders quickly reach the higher positions. I once wanted a Swiss watch maker. The cards turned one up--he was running a drill press. The Heat Treat department wanted a skilled firebrick layer. He also was found on a drill press--he is now a general inspector. There is not much personal contact--the men do their work and go home--a factory is not a drawing room. But we try to have justice and, while there may be little in the way of hand shaking--we have no professional hand shakers--also we try to prevent opportunity for petty personalities. We have so many departments that the place is almost a world in itself--every kind of man can find a place somewhere in it. Take fighting between men. Men will fight, and usually fighting is a cause for discharge on the spot. We find that does not help the fighters--it merely gets them out of our sight. So the foremen have become rather ingenious in devising punishments that will not take anything away from the man's family and which require no time at all to administer. One point that is absolutely essential to high capacity, as well as to humane production, is a clean, well-lighted and well-ventilated factory. Our machines are placed very close together--every foot of floor space in the factory carries, of course, the same overhead charge. The consumer must pay the extra overhead and the extra transportation involved in having machines even six inches farther apart than they have to be. We measure on each job the exact amount of room that a man needs; he must not be cramped--that would be waste. But if he and his machine occupy more space than is required, that also is waste. This brings our machines closer together than in probably any other factory in the world. To a stranger they may seem piled right on top of one another, but they are scientifically arranged, not only in the sequence of operations, but to give every man and every machine every square inch that he requires and, if possible, not a square inch, and certainly not a square foot, more than he requires. Our factory buildings are not intended to be used as parks. The close placing requires a maximum of safeguards and ventilation. Machine safeguarding is a subject all of itself. We do not consider any machine--no matter how efficiently it may turn out its work--as a proper machine unless it is absolutely safe. We have no machines that we consider unsafe, but even at that a few accidents will happen. Every accident, no matter how trivial, is traced back by a skilled man employed solely for that purpose, and a study is made of the machine to make that same accident in the future impossible. When we put up the older buildings, we did not understand so much about ventilation as we do to-day. In all the later buildings, the supporting columns are made hollow and through them the bad air is pumped out and the good air introduced. A nearly even temperature is kept everywhere the year round and, during daylight, there is nowhere the necessity for artificial light. Something like seven hundred men are detailed exclusively to keeping the shops clean, the windows washed, and all of the paint fresh. The dark corners which invite expectoration are painted white. One cannot have morale without cleanliness. We tolerate makeshift cleanliness no more than makeshift methods. No reason exists why factory work should be dangerous. If a man has worked too hard or through too long hours he gets into a mental state that invites accidents. Part of the work of preventing accidents is to avoid this mental state; part is to prevent carelessness, and part is to make machinery absolutely fool-proof. The principal causes of accidents as they are grouped by the experts are: (1) Defective structures; (2) defective machines; (3) insufficient room; (4) absence of safeguards; (5) unclean conditions; (6) bad lights; (7) bad air; (8) unsuitable clothing; (9) carelessness; (10) ignorance; (11) mental condition; (12) lack of cooperation. The questions of defective structures, defective machinery, insufficient room, unclean conditions, bad light, bad air, the wrong mental condition, and the lack of cooperation are easily disposed of. None of the men work too hard. The wages settle nine tenths of the mental problems and construction gets rid of the others. We have then to guard against unsuitable clothing, carelessness, and ignorance, and to make everything we have fool-proof. This is more difficult where we have belts. In all of our new construction, each machine has its individual electric motor, but in the older construction we had to use belts. Every belt is guarded. Over the automatic conveyors are placed bridges so that no man has to cross at a dangerous point. Wherever there is a possibility of flying metal, the workman is required to wear goggles and the chances are further reduced by surrounding the machine with netting. Around hot furnaces we have railings. There is nowhere an open part of a machine in which clothing can be caught. All the aisles are kept clear. The starting switches of draw presses are protected by big red tags which have to be removed before the switch can be turned--this prevents the machine being started thoughtlessly. Workmen will wear unsuitable clothing--ties that may be caught in a pulley, flowing sleeves, and all manner of unsuitable articles. The bosses have to watch for that, and they catch most of the offenders. New machines are tested in every way before they are permitted to be installed. As a result we have practically no serious accidents. Industry needs not exact a human toll. CHAPTER VIII WAGES There is nothing to running a business by custom--to saying: "I pay the going rate of wages." The same man would not so easily say: "I have nothing better or cheaper to sell than any one has." No manufacturer in his right mind would contend that buying only the cheapest materials is the way to make certain of manufacturing the best article. Then why do we hear so much talk about the "liquidation of labour" and the benefits that will flow to the country from cutting wages--which means only the cutting of buying power and the curtailing of the home market? What good is industry if it be so unskillfully managed as not to return a living to everyone concerned? No question is more important than that of wages--most of the people of the country live on wages. The scale of their living--the rate of their wages--determines the prosperity of the country. Throughout all the Ford industries we now have a minimum wage of six dollars a day; we used to have a minimum of five dollars; before that we paid whatever it was necessary to pay. It would be bad morals to go back to the old market rate of paying--but also it would be the worst sort of bad business. First get at the relationships. It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet what else is he? Whenever a man finds the management of a business too much for his own time or strength, he calls in assistants to share the management with him. Why, then, if a man finds the production part of a business too much for his own two hands should he deny the title of "partner" to those who come in and help him produce? Every business that employs more than one man is a kind of partnership. The moment a man calls for assistance in his business--even though the assistant be but a boy--that moment he has taken a partner. He may himself be sole owner of the resources of the business and sole director of its operations, but only while he remains sole manager and sole producer can he claim complete independence. No man is independent as long as he has to depend on another man to help him. It is a reciprocal relation--the boss is the partner of his worker, the worker is partner of his boss. And such being the case, it is useless for one group or the other to assume that it is the one indispensable unit. Both are indispensable. The one can become unduly assertive only at the expense of the other--and eventually at its own expense as well. It is utterly foolish for Capital or for Labour to think of themselves as groups. They are partners. When they pull and haul against each other--they simply injure the organization in which they are partners and from which both draw support. It ought to be the employer's ambition, as leader, to pay better wages than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman's ambition to make this possible. Of course there are men in all shops who seem to believe that if they do their best, it will be only for the employer's benefit--and not at all for their own. It is a pity that such a feeling should exist. But it does exist and perhaps it has some justification. If an employer urges men to do their best, and the men learn after a while that their best does not bring any reward, then they naturally drop back into "getting by." But if they see the fruits of hard work in their pay envelope--proof that harder work means higher pay--then also they begin to learn that they are a part of the business, and that its success depends on them and their success depends on it. "What ought the employer to pay?"--"What ought the employee to receive?" These are but minor questions. The basic question is "What can the business stand?" Certainly no business can stand outgo that exceeds its income. When you pump water out of a well at a faster rate than the water flows in, the well goes dry. And when the well runs dry, those who depend on it go thirsty. And if, perchance, they imagine they can pump one well dry and then jump to some other well, it is only a matter of time when all the wells will be dry. There is now a widespread demand for more justly divided rewards, but it must be recognized that there are limits to rewards. The business itself sets the limits. You cannot distribute $150,000 out of a business that brings in only $100,000. The business limits the wages, but does anything limit the business? The business limits itself by following bad precedents. If men, instead of saying "the employer ought to do thus-and-so," would say, "the business ought to be so stimulated and managed that it can do thus-and-so," they would get somewhere. Because only the business can pay wages. Certainly the employer cannot, unless the business warrants. But if that business does warrant higher wages and the employer refuses, what is to be done? As a rule a business means the livelihood of too many men, to be tampered with. It is criminal to assassinate a business to which large numbers of men have given their labours and to which they have learned to look as their field of usefulness and their source of livelihood. Killing the business by a strike or a lockout does not help. The employer can gain nothing by looking over the employees and asking himself, "How little can I get them to take?" Nor the employee by glaring back and asking, "How much can I force him to give?" Eventually both will have to turn to the business and ask, "How can this industry be made safe and profitable, so that it will be able to provide a sure and comfortable living for all of us?" But by no means all employers or all employees will think straight. The habit of acting shortsightedly is a hard one to break. What can be done? Nothing. No rules or laws will effect the changes. But enlightened self-interest will. It takes a little while for enlightenment to spread. But spread it must, for the concern in which both employer and employees work to the same end of service is bound to forge ahead in business. What do we mean by high wages, anyway? We mean a higher wage than was paid ten months or ten years ago. We do not mean a higher wage than ought to be paid. Our high wages of to-day may be low wages ten years from now. If it is right for the manager of a business to try to make it pay larger dividends, it is quite as right that he should try to make it pay higher wages. But it is not the manager of the business who pays the high wages. Of course, if he can and will not, then the blame is on him. But he alone can never make high wages possible. High wages cannot be paid unless the workmen earn them. Their labour is the productive factor. It is not the only productive factor--poor management can waste labour and material and nullify the efforts of labour. Labour can nullify the results of good management. But in a partnership of skilled management and honest labour, it is the workman who makes high wages possible. He invests his energy and skill, and if he makes an honest, wholehearted investment, high wages ought to be his reward. Not only has he earned them, but he has had a big part in creating them. It ought to be clear, however, that the high wage begins down in the shop. If it is not created there it cannot get into pay envelopes. There will never be a system invented which will do away with the necessity of work. Nature has seen to that. Idle hands and minds were never intended for any one of us. Work is our sanity, our self-respect, our salvation. So far from being a curse, work is the greatest blessing. Exact social justice flows only out of honest work. The man who contributes much should take away much. Therefore no element of charity is present in the paying of wages. The kind of workman who gives the business the best that is in him is the best kind of workman a business can have. And he cannot be expected to do this indefinitely without proper recognition of his contribution. The man who comes to the day's job feeling that no matter how much he may give, it will not yield him enough of a return to keep him beyond want, is not in shape to do his day's work. He is anxious and worried, and it all reacts to the detriment of his work. But if a man feels that his day's work is not only supplying his basic need, but is also giving him a margin of comfort and enabling him to give his boys and girls their opportunity and his wife some pleasure in life, then his job looks good to him and he is free to give it of his best. This is a good thing for him and a good thing for the business. The man who does not get a certain satisfaction out of his day's work is losing the best part of his pay. For the day's work is a great thing--a very great thing! It is at the very foundation of the world; it is the basis of our self-respect. And the employer ought constantly to put in a harder day's work than any of his men. The employer who is seriously trying to do his duty in the world must be a hard worker. He cannot say, "I have so many thousand men working for me." The fact of the matter is that so many thousand men have him working for them--and the better they work the busier they keep him disposing of their products. Wages and salaries are in fixed amounts, and this must be so, in order to have a basis to figure on. Wages and salaries are a sort of profit-sharing fixed in advance, but it often happens that when the business of the year is closed, it is discovered that more can be paid. And then more ought to be paid. When we are all in the business working together, we all ought to have some share in the profits--by way of a good wage, or salary, or added compensation. And that is beginning now quite generally to be recognized. There is now a definite demand that the human side of business be elevated to a position of equal importance with the material side. And that is going to come about. It is just a question whether it is going to be brought about wisely--in a way that will conserve the material side which now sustains us, or unwisely and in such a way as shall take from us all the benefit of the work of the past years. Business represents our national livelihood, it reflects our economic progress, and gives us our place among other nations. We do not want to jeopardize that. What we want is a better recognition of the human element in business. And surely it can be achieved without dislocation, without loss to any one, indeed with an increase of benefit to every human being. And the secret of it all is in a recognition of human partnership. Until each man is absolutely sufficient unto himself, needing the services of no other human being in any capacity whatever, we shall never get beyond the need of partnership. Such are the fundamental truths of wages. They are partnership distributions. When can a wage be considered adequate? How much of a living is reasonably to be expected from work? Have you ever considered what a wage does or ought to do? To say that it should pay the cost of living is to say almost nothing. The cost of living depends largely upon the efficiency of production and transportation; and the efficiency of these is the sum of the efficiencies of the management and the workers. Good work, well managed, ought to result in high wages and low living costs. If we attempt to regulate wages on living costs, we get nowhere. The cost of living is a result and we cannot expect to keep a result constant if we keep altering the factors which produce the result. When we try to regulate wages according to the cost of living, we are imitating a dog chasing his tail. And, anyhow, who is competent to say just what kind of living we shall base the costs on? Let us broaden our view and see what a wage is to the workmen--and what it ought to be. The wage carries all the worker's obligations outside the shop; it carries all that is necessary in the way of service and management inside the shop. The day's productive work is the most valuable mine of wealth that has ever been opened. Certainly it ought to bear not less than all the worker's outside obligations. And certainly it ought to be made to take care of the worker's sunset days when labour is no longer possible to him--and should be no longer necessary. And if it is made to do even these, industry will have to be adjusted to a schedule of production, distribution, and reward, which will stop the leaks into the pockets of men who do not assist in production. In order to create a system which shall be as independent of the good-will of benevolent employers as of the ill-will of selfish ones, we shall have to find a basis in the actual facts of life itself. It costs just as much physical strength to turn out a day's work when wheat is $1 a bushel, as when wheat is $2.50 a bushel. Eggs may be 12 cents a dozen or 90 cents a dozen. What difference does it make in the units of energy a man uses in a productive day's work? If only the man himself were concerned, the cost of his maintenance and the profit he ought to have would be a simple matter. But he is not just an individual. He is a citizen, contributing to the welfare of the nation. He is a householder. He is perhaps a father with children who must be reared to usefulness on what he is able to earn. We must reckon with all these facts. How are you going to figure the contribution of the home to the day's work? You pay the man for his work, but how much does that work owe to his home? How much to his position as a citizen? How much to his position as a father? The man does the work in the shop, but his wife does the work in the home. The shop must pay them both. On what system of figuring is the home going to find its place on the cost sheets of the day's work? Is the man's own livelihood to be regarded as the "cost"? And is his ability to have a home and family the "profit"? Is the profit on a day's work to be computed on a cash basis only, measured by the amount a man has left over after his own and his family's wants are all supplied? Or are all these relationships to be considered strictly under head of cost, and the profit to be computed entirely outside of them? That is, after having supported himself and family, clothed them, housed them, educated them, given them the privileges incident to their standard of living, ought there to be provision made for still something more in the way of savings profit? And are all properly chargeable to the day's work? I think they are. Otherwise, we have the hideous prospect of little children and their mothers being forced out to work. These are questions which call for accurate observation and computation. Perhaps there is no one item connected with our economic life that would surprise us more than a knowledge of just what burdens the day's work. It is perhaps possible accurately to determine--albeit with considerable interference with the day's work itself--how much energy the day's work takes out of a man. But it is not at all possible accurately to determine how much it will require to put back that energy into him against the next day's demands. Nor is it possible to determine how much of that expended energy he will never be able to get back at all. Economics has never yet devised a sinking fund for the replacement of the strength of a worker. It is possible to set up a kind of sinking fund in the form of old-age pensions. But pensions do not attend to the profit which each day's labour ought to yield in order to take care of all of life's overhead, of all physical losses, and of the inevitable deterioration of the manual worker. The best wages that have up to date ever been paid are not nearly as high as they ought to be. Business is not yet sufficiently well organized and its objectives are not yet sufficiently clear to make it possible to pay more than a fraction of the wages that ought to be paid. That is part of the work we have before us. It does not help toward a solution to talk about abolishing the wage system and substituting communal ownership. The wage system is the only one that we have, under which contributions to production can be rewarded according to their worth. Take away the wage measure and we shall have universal injustice. Perfect the system and we may have universal justice. I have learned through the years a good deal about wages. I believe in the first place that, all other considerations aside, our own sales depend in a measure upon the wages we pay. If we can distribute high wages, then that money is going to be spent and it will serve to make storekeepers and distributors and manufacturers and workers in other lines more prosperous and their prosperity will be reflected in our sales. Country-wide high wages spell country-wide prosperity, provided, however, the higher wages are paid for higher production. Paying high wages and lowering production is starting down the incline toward dull business. It took us some time to get our bearings on wages, and it was not until we had gone thoroughly into production on "Model T," that it was possible to figure out what wages ought to be. Before then we had had some profit sharing. We had at the end of each year, for some years past, divided a percentage of our earnings with the employees. For instance, as long ago as 1909 we distributed eighty thousand dollars on the basis of years of service. A one-year man received 5 per cent. of his year's wages; a two-year man, 7-1/2 per cent., and a three-year man, 10 per cent. The objection to that plan was that it had no direct connection with the day's work. A man did not get his share until long after his work was done and then it came to him almost in the way of a present. It is always unfortunate to have wages tinged with charity. And then, too, the wages were not scientifically adjusted to the jobs. The man in job "A" might get one rate and the man in job "B" a higher rate, while as a matter of fact job "A" might require more skill or exertion than job "B." A great deal of inequity creeps into wage rates unless both the employer and the employee know that the rate paid has been arrived at by something better than a guess. Therefore, starting about 1913 we had time studies made of all the thousands of operations in the shops. By a time study it is possible theoretically to determine what a man's output should be. Then, making large allowances, it is further possible to get at a satisfactory standard output for a day, and, taking into consideration the skill, to arrive at a rate which will express with fair accuracy the amount of skill and exertion that goes into a job--and how much is to be expected from the man in the job in return for the wage. Without scientific study the employer does not know why he is paying a wage and the worker does not know why he is getting it. On the time figures all of the jobs in our factory were standardized and rates set. We do not have piece work. Some of the men are paid by the day and some are paid by the hour, but in practically every case there is a required standard output below which a man is not expected to fall. Were it otherwise, neither the workman nor ourselves would know whether or not wages were being earned. There must be a fixed day's work before a real wage can be paid. Watchmen are paid for presence. Workmen are paid for work. Having these facts in hand we announced and put into operation in January, 1914, a kind of profit-sharing plan in which the minimum wage for any class of work and under certain conditions was five dollars a day. At the same time we reduced the working day to eight hours--it had been nine--and the week to forty-eight hours. This was entirely a voluntary act. All of our wage rates have been voluntary. It was to our way of thinking an act of social justice, and in the last analysis we did it for our own satisfaction of mind. There is a pleasure in feeling that you have made others happy--that you have lessened in some degree the burdens of your fellow-men--that you have provided a margin out of which may be had pleasure and saving. Good-will is one of the few really important assets of life. A determined man can win almost anything that he goes after, but unless, in his getting, he gains good will he has not profited much. There was, however, no charity in any way involved. That was not generally understood. Many employers thought we were just making the announcement because we were prosperous and wanted advertising and they condemned us because we were upsetting standards--violating the custom of paying a man the smallest amount he would take. There is nothing to such standards and customs. They have to be wiped out. Some day they will be. Otherwise, we cannot abolish poverty. We made the change not merely because we wanted to pay higher wages and thought we could pay them. We wanted to pay these wages so that the business would be on a lasting foundation. We were not distributing anything--we were building for the future. A low wage business is always insecure. Probably few industrial announcements have created a more world-wide comment than did this one, and hardly any one got the facts quite right. Workmen quite generally believed that they were going to get five dollars a day, regardless of what work they did. The facts were somewhat different from the general impression. The plan was to distribute profits, but instead of waiting until the profits had been earned--to approximate them in advance and to add them, under certain conditions, to the wages of those persons who had been in the employ of the company for six months or more. It was classified participation among three classes of employees: (1) Married men living with and taking good care of their families. (2) Single men over twenty-two years of age who are of proved thrifty habits. (3) Young men under twenty-two years of age, and women who are the sole support of some next of kin. A man was first to be paid his just wages--which were then on an average of about fifteen per cent. above the usual market wage. He was then eligible to a certain profit. His wages plus his profit were calculated to give a minimum daily income of five dollars. The profit sharing rate was divided on an hour basis and was credited to the hourly wage rate, so as to give those receiving the lowest hourly rate the largest proportion of profits. It was paid every two weeks with the wages. For example, a man who received thirty-four cents an hour had a profit rate of twenty-eight and one half cents an hour--which would give him a daily income of five dollars. A man receiving fifty-four cents an hour would have a profit rate of twenty-one cents an hour--which would give him a daily income of six dollars. It was a sort of prosperity-sharing plan. But on conditions. The man and his home had to come up to certain standards of cleanliness and citizenship. Nothing paternal was intended!--a certain amount of paternalism did develop, and that is one reason why the whole plan and the social welfare department were readjusted. But in the beginning the idea was that there should be a very definite incentive to better living and that the very best incentive was a money premium on proper living. A man who is living aright will do his work aright. And then, too, we wanted to avoid the possibility of lowering the standard of work through an increased wage. It was demonstrated in war time that too quickly increasing a man's pay sometimes increases only his cupidity and therefore decreases his earning power. If, in the beginning, we had simply put the increase in the pay envelopes, then very likely the work standards would have broken down. The pay of about half the men was doubled in the new plan; it might have been taken as "easy money." The thought of easy money breaks down work. There is a danger in too rapidly raising the pay of any man--whether he previously received one dollar or one hundred dollars a day. In fact, if the salary of a hundred-dollar-a-day man were increased overnight to three hundred dollars a day he would probably make a bigger fool of himself than the working man whose pay is increased from one dollar to three dollars an hour. The man with the larger amount of money has larger opportunity to make a fool of himself. In this first plan the standards insisted upon were not petty--although sometimes they may have been administered in a petty fashion. We had about fifty investigators in the Social Department; the standard of common sense among them was very high indeed, but it is impossible to assemble fifty men equally endowed with common sense. They erred at times--one always hears about the errors. It was expected that in order to receive the bonus married men should live with and take proper care of their families. We had to break up the evil custom among many of the foreign workers of taking in boarders--of regarding their homes as something to make money out of rather than as a place to live in. Boys under eighteen received a bonus if they supported the next of kin. Single men who lived wholesomely shared. The best evidence that the plan was essentially beneficial is the record. When the plan went into effect, 60 per cent. of the workers immediately qualified to share; at the end of six months 78 per cent. were sharing, and at the end of one year 87 per cent. Within a year and one half only a fraction of one per cent. failed to share. The large wage had other results. In 1914, when the first plan went into effect, we had 14,000 employees and it had been necessary to hire at the rate of about 53,000 a year in order to keep a constant force of 14,000. In 1915 we had to hire only 6,508 men and the majority of these new men were taken on because of the growth of the business. With the old turnover of labour and our present force we should have to hire at the rate of nearly 200,000 men a year--which would be pretty nearly an impossible proposition. Even with the minimum of instruction that is required to master almost any job in our place, we cannot take on a new staff each morning, or each week, or each month; for, although a man may qualify for acceptable work at an acceptable rate of speed within two or three days, he will be able to do more after a year's experience than he did at the beginning. The matter of labour turnover has not since bothered us; it is rather hard to give exact figures because when we are not running to capacity, we rotate some of the men in order to distribute the work among greatest number. This makes it hard to distinguish between the voluntary and involuntary exits. To-day we keep no figures; we now think so little of our turnover that we do not bother to keep records. As far as we know the turnover is somewhere between 3 per cent. and 6 per cent. a month. We have made changes in the system, but we have not deviated from this principle: If you expect a man to give his time and energy, fix his wages so that he will have no financial worries. It pays. Our profits, after paying good wages and a bonus--which bonus used to run around ten millions a year before we changed the system--show that paying good wages is the most profitable way of doing business. There were objections to the bonus-on-conduct method of paying wages. It tended toward paternalism. Paternalism has no place in industry. Welfare work that consists in prying into employees' private concerns is out of date. Men need counsel and men need help, oftentimes special help; and all this ought to be rendered for decency's sake. But the broad workable plan of investment and participation will do more to solidify industry and strengthen organization than will any social work on the outside. Without changing the principle we have changed the method of payment. CHAPTER IX WHY NOT ALWAYS HAVE GOOD BUSINESS? The employer has to live by the year. The workman has to live by the year. But both of them, as a rule, work by the week. They get an order or a job when they can and at the price they can. During what is called a prosperous time, orders and jobs are plentiful. During a "dull" season they are scarce. Business is always either feasting or fasting and is always either "good" or "bad." Although there is never a time when everyone has too much of this world's goods--when everyone is too comfortable or too happy--there come periods when we have the astounding spectacle of a world hungry for goods and an industrial machine hungry for work and the two--the demand and the means of satisfying it--held apart by a money barrier. Both manufacturing and employment are in-and-out affairs. Instead of a steady progression we go ahead by fits and starts--now going too fast, now stopping altogether. When a great many people want to buy, there is said to be a shortage of goods. When nobody wants to buy, there is said to be an overproduction of goods. I know that we have always had a shortage of goods, but I do not believe we have ever had an overproduction. We may have, at a particular time, too much of the wrong kind of goods. That is not overproduction--that is merely headless production. We may also have great stocks of goods at too high prices. That is not overproduction--it is either bad manufacturing or bad financing. Is business good or bad according to the dictates of fate? Must we accept the conditions as inevitable? Business is good or bad as we make it so. The only reason for growing crops, for mining, or for manufacturing, is that people may eat, keep warm, have clothing to wear, and articles to use. There is no other possible reason, yet that reason is forced into the background and instead we have operations carried on, not to the end of service, but to the end of making money--and this because we have evolved a system of money that instead of being a convenient medium of exchange, is at times a barrier to exchange. Of this more later. We suffer frequent periods of so-called bad luck only because we manage so badly. If we had a vast crop failure, I can imagine the country going hungry, but I cannot conceive how it is that we tolerate hunger and poverty, when they grow solely out of bad management, and especially out of the bad management that is implicit in an unreasoned financial structure. Of course the war upset affairs in this country. It upset the whole world. There would have been no war had management been better. But the war alone is not to blame. The war showed up a great number of the defects of the financial system, but more than anything else it showed how insecure is business supported only by a money foundation. I do not know whether bad business is the result of bad financial methods or whether the wrong motive in business created bad financial methods, but I do know that, while it would be wholly undesirable to try to overturn the present financial system, it is wholly desirable to reshape business on the basis of service. Then a better financial system will have to come. The present system will drop out because it will have no reason for being. The process will have to be a gradual one. The start toward the stabilization of his own affairs may be made by any one. One cannot achieve perfect results acting alone, but as the example begins to sink in there will be followers, and thus in the course of time we can hope to put inflated business and its fellow, depressed business, into a class with small-pox--that is, into the class of preventable diseases. It is perfectly possible, with the reorganization of business and finance that is bound to come about, to take the ill effect of seasons, if not the seasons, out of industry, and also the periodic depressions. Farming is already in process of reorganization. When industry and farming are fully reorganized they will be complementary; they belong together, not apart. As an indication, take our valve plant. We established it eighteen miles out in the country so that the workers could also be farmers. By the use of machinery farming need not consume more than a fraction of the time it now consumes; the time nature requires to produce is much larger than that required for the human contribution of seeding, cultivating, and harvesting; in many industries where the parts are not bulky it does not make much difference where they are made. By the aid of water power they can well be made out in farming country. Thus we can, to a much larger degree than is commonly known, have farmer-industrialists who both farm and work under the most scientific and healthful conditions. That arrangement will care for some seasonal industries; others can arrange a succession of products according to the seasons and the equipment, and still others can, with more careful management, iron out their seasons. A complete study of any specific problem will show the way. The periodic depressions are more serious because they seem so vast as to be uncontrollable. Until the whole reorganization is brought about, they cannot be wholly controlled, but each man in business can easily do something for himself and while benefiting his own organization in a very material way, also help others. The Ford production has not reflected good times or bad times; it has kept right on regardless of conditions excepting from 1917 to 1919, when the factory was turned over to war work. The year 1912-1913 was supposed to be a dull one; although now some call it "normal"; we all but doubled our sales; 1913-1914 was dull; we increased our sales by more than a third. The year 1920-1921 is supposed to have been one of the most depressed in history; we sold a million and a quarter cars, or about five times as many as in 1913-1914--the "normal year." There is no particular secret in it. It is, as is everything else in our business, the inevitable result of the application of a principle which can be applied to any business. We now have a minimum wage of six dollars a day paid without reservation. The people are sufficiently used to high wages to make supervision unnecessary. The minimum wage is paid just as soon as a worker has qualified in his production--which is a matter that depends upon his own desire to work. We have put our estimate of profits into the wage and are now paying higher wages than during the boom times after the war. But we are, as always, paying them on the basis of work. And that the men do work is evidenced by the fact that although six dollars a day is the minimum wage, about 60 per cent. of the workers receive above the minimum. The six dollars is not a flat but a minimum wage. Consider first the fundamentals of prosperity. Progress is not made by pulling off a series of stunts. Each step has to be regulated. A man cannot expect to progress without thinking. Take prosperity. A truly prosperous time is when the largest number of people are getting all they can legitimately eat and wear, and are in every sense of the word comfortable. It is the degree of the comfort of the people at large--not the size of the manufacturer's bank balance--that evidences prosperity. The function of the manufacturer is to contribute to this comfort. He is an instrument of society and he can serve society only as he manages his enterprises so as to turn over to the public an increasingly better product at an ever-decreasing price, and at the same time to pay to all those who have a hand in his business an ever-increasing wage, based upon the work they do. In this way and in this way alone can a manufacturer or any one in business justify his existence. We are not much concerned with the statistics and the theories of the economists on the recurring cycles of prosperity and depression. They call the periods when prices are high "prosperous." A really prosperous period is not to be judged on the prices that manufacturers are quoting for articles. We are not concerned with combinations of words. If the prices of goods are above the incomes of the people, then get the prices down to the incomes. Ordinarily, business is conceived as starting with a manufacturing process and ending with a consumer. If that consumer does not want to buy what the manufacturer has to sell him and has not the money to buy it, then the manufacturer blames the consumer and says that business is bad, and thus, hitching the cart before the horse, he goes on his way lamenting. Isn't that nonsense? Does the manufacturer exist for the consumer or does the consumer exist for the manufacturer? If the consumer will not--says he cannot--buy what the manufacturer has to offer, is that the fault of the manufacturer or the consumer? Or is nobody at fault? If nobody is at fault then the manufacturer must go out of business. But what business ever started with the manufacturer and ended with the consumer? Where does the money to make the wheels go round come from? From the consumer, of course. And success in manufacture is based solely upon an ability to serve that consumer to his liking. He may be served by quality or he may be served by price. He is best served by the highest quality at the lowest price, and any man who can give to the consumer the highest quality at the lowest price is bound to be a leader in business, whatever the kind of an article he makes. There is no getting away from this. Then why flounder around waiting for good business? Get the costs down by better management. Get the prices down to the buying power. Cutting wages is the easiest and most slovenly way to handle the situation, not to speak of its being an inhuman way. It is, in effect, throwing upon labour the incompetency of the managers of the business. If we only knew it, every depression is a challenge to every manufacturer to put more brains into his business--to overcome by management what other people try to overcome by wage reduction. To tamper with wages before all else is changed, is to evade the real issue. And if the real issue is tackled first, no reduction of wages may be necessary. That has been my experience. The immediate practical point is that, in the process of adjustment, someone will have to take a loss. And who can take a loss except those who have something which they can afford to lose? But the expression, "take a loss," is rather misleading. Really no loss is taken at all. It is only a giving up of a certain part of the past profits in order to gain more in the future. I was talking not long since with a hardware merchant in a small town. He said: "I expect to take a loss of $10,000 on my stock. But of course, you know, it isn't really like losing that much. We hardware men have had pretty good times. Most of my stock was bought at high prices, but I have already sold several stocks and had the benefit of them. Besides, the ten thousand dollars which I say I will lose are not the same kind of dollars that I used to have. They are, in a way, speculative dollars. They are not the good dollars that bought 100 cents' worth. So, though my loss may sound big, it is not big. And at the same time I am making it possible for the people in my town to go on building their houses without being discouraged by the size of the hardware item." He is a wise merchant. He would rather take less profit and keep business moving than keep his stock at high prices and bar the progress of his community. A man like that is an asset to a town. He has a clear head. He is better able to swing the adjustment through his inventory than through cutting down the wages of his delivery men--through cutting down their ability to buy. He did not sit around holding on to his prices and waiting for something to turn up. He realized what seems to have been quite generally forgotten--that it is part of proprietorship every now and again to lose money. We had to take our loss. Our sales eventually fell off as all other sales fell off. We had a large inventory and, taking the materials and parts in that inventory at their cost price, we could not turn out a car at a price lower than we were asking, but that was a price which on the turn of business was higher than people could or wanted to pay. We closed down to get our bearings. We were faced with making a cut of $17,000,000 in the inventory or taking a much larger loss than that by not doing business. So there was no choice at all. That is always the choice that a man in business has. He can take the direct loss on his books and go ahead and do business or he can stop doing business and take the loss of idleness. The loss of not doing business is commonly a loss greater than the actual money involved, for during the period of idleness fear will consume initiative and, if the shutdown is long enough, there will be no energy left over to start up with again. There is no use waiting around for business to improve. If a manufacturer wants to perform his function, he must get his price down to what people will pay. There is always, no matter what the condition, a price that people can and will pay for a necessity, and always, if the will is there, that price can be met. It cannot be met by lowering quality or by shortsighted economy, which results only in a dissatisfied working force. It cannot be met by fussing or buzzing around. It can be met only by increasing the efficiency of production and, viewed in this fashion, each business depression, so-called, ought to be regarded as a challenge to the brains of the business community. Concentrating on prices instead of on service is a sure indication of the kind of business man who can give no justification for his existence as a proprietor. This is only another way of saying that sales should be made on the natural basis of real value, which is the cost of transmuting human energy into articles of trade and commerce. But that simple formula is not considered business-like. It is not complex enough. We have "business" which takes the most honest of all human activities and makes them subject to the speculative shrewdness of men who can produce false shortages of food and other commodities, and thus excite in society anxiety of demand. We have false stimulation and then false numbness. Economic justice is being constantly and quite often innocently violated. You may say that it is the economic condition which makes mankind what it is; or you may say that it is mankind that makes the economic condition what it is. You will find many claiming that it is the economic system which makes men what they are. They blame our industrial system for all the faults which we behold in mankind generally. And you will find other men who say that man creates his own conditions; that if the economic, industrial, or social system is bad, it is but a reflection of what man himself is. What is wrong in our industrial system is a reflection of what is wrong in man himself. Manufacturers hesitate to admit that the mistakes of the present industrial methods are, in part at least, their own mistakes, systematized and extended. But take the question outside of a man's immediate concerns, and he sees the point readily enough. No doubt, with a less faulty human nature a less faulty social system would have grown up. Or, if human nature were worse than it is, a worse system would have grown up--though probably a worse system would not have lasted as long as the present one has. But few will claim that mankind deliberately set out to create a faulty social system. Granting without reserve that all faults of the social system are in man himself, it does not follow that he deliberately organized his imperfections and established them. We shall have to charge a great deal up to ignorance. We shall have to charge a great deal up to innocence. Take the beginnings of our present industrial system. There was no indication of how it would grow. Every new advance was hailed with joy. No one ever thought of "capital" and "labour" as hostile interests. No one ever dreamed that the very fact of success would bring insidious dangers with it. And yet with growth every imperfection latent in the system came out. A man's business grew to such proportions that he had to have more helpers than he knew by their first names; but that fact was not regretted; it was rather hailed with joy. And yet it has since led to an impersonal system wherein the workman has become something less than a person--a mere part of the system. No one believes, of course, that this dehumanizing process was deliberately invented. It just grew. It was latent in the whole early system, but no one saw it and no one could foresee it. Only prodigious and unheard-of development could bring it to light. Take the industrial idea; what is it? The true industrial idea is not to make money. The industrial idea is to express a serviceable idea, to duplicate a useful idea, by as many thousands as there are people who need it. To produce, produce; to get a system that will reduce production to a fine art; to put production on such a basis as will provide means for expansion and the building of still more shops, the production of still more thousands of useful things--that is the real industrial idea. The negation of the industrial idea is the effort to make a profit out of speculation instead of out of work. There are short-sighted men who cannot see that business is bigger than any one man's interests. Business is a process of give and take, live and let live. It is cooperation among many forces and interests. Whenever you find a man who believes that business is a river whose beneficial flow ought to stop as soon as it reaches him you find a man who thinks he can keep business alive by stopping its circulation. He would produce wealth by this stopping of the production of wealth. The principles of service cannot fail to cure bad business. Which leads us into the practical application of the principles of service and finance. CHAPTER X HOW CHEAPLY CAN THINGS BE MADE? No one will deny that if prices are sufficiently low, buyers will always be found, no matter what are supposed to be the business conditions. That is one of the elemental facts of business. Sometimes raw materials will not move, no matter how low the price. We have seen something of that during the last year, but that is because the manufacturers and the distributors were trying to dispose of high-cost stocks before making new engagements. The markets were stagnant, but not "saturated" with goods. What is called a "saturated" market is only one in which the prices are above the purchasing power. Unduly high prices are always a sign of unsound business, because they are always due to some abnormal condition. A healthy patient has a normal temperature; a healthy market has normal prices. High prices come about commonly by reason of speculation following the report of a shortage. Although there is never a shortage in everything, a shortage in just a few important commodities, or even in one, serves to start speculation. Or again, goods may not be short at all. An inflation of currency or credit will cause a quick bulge in apparent buying power and the consequent opportunity to speculate. There may be a combination of actual shortages and a currency inflation--as frequently happens during war. But in any condition of unduly high prices, no matter what the real cause, the people pay the high prices because they think there is going to be a shortage. They may buy bread ahead of their own needs, so as not to be left later in the lurch, or they may buy in the hope of reselling at a profit. When there was talk of a sugar shortage, housewives who had never in their lives bought more than ten pounds of sugar at once tried to get stocks of one hundred or two hundred pounds, and while they were doing this, speculators were buying sugar to store in warehouses. Nearly all our war shortages were caused by speculation or buying ahead of need. No matter how short the supply of an article is supposed to be, no matter if the Government takes control and seizes every ounce of that article, a man who is willing to pay the money can always get whatever supply he is willing to pay for. No one ever knows actually how great or how small is the national stock of any commodity. The very best figures are not more than guesses; estimates of the world's stock of a commodity are still wilder. We may think we know how much of a commodity is produced on a certain day or in a certain month, but that does not tell us how much will be produced the next day or the next month. Likewise we do not know how much is consumed. By spending a great deal of money we might, in the course of time, get at fairly accurate figures on how much of a particular commodity was consumed over a period, but by the time those figures were compiled they would be utterly useless except for historical purposes, because in the next period the consumption might be double or half as much. People do not stay put. That is the trouble with all the framers of Socialistic and Communistic, and of all other plans for the ideal regulation of society. They all presume that people will stay put. The reactionary has the same idea. He insists that everyone ought to stay put. Nobody does, and for that I am thankful. Consumption varies according to the price and the quality, and nobody knows or can figure out what future consumption will amount to, because every time a price is lowered a new stratum of buying power is reached. Everyone knows that, but many refuse to recognize it by their acts. When a storekeeper buys goods at a wrong price and finds they will not move, he reduces the price by degrees until they do move. If he is wise, instead of nibbling at the price and encouraging in his customers the hope of even lower prices, he takes a great big bite out of the price and gets the stuff out of his place. Everyone takes a loss on some proposition of sales. The common hope is that after the loss there may be a big profit to make up for the loss. That is usually a delusion. The profit out of which the loss has to be taken must be found in the business preceding the cut. Any one who was foolish enough to regard the high profits of the boom period as permanent profits got into financial trouble when the drop came. However, there is a belief, and a very strong one, that business consists of a series of profits and losses, and good business is one in which the profits exceed the losses. Therefore some men reason that the best price to sell at is the highest price which may be had. That is supposed to be good business practice. Is it? We have not found it so. We have found in buying materials that it is not worth while to buy for other than immediate needs. We buy only enough to fit into the plan of production, taking into consideration the state of transportation at the time. If transportation were perfect and an even flow of materials could be assured, it would not be necessary to carry any stock whatsoever. The carloads of raw materials would arrive on schedule and in the planned order and amounts, and go from the railway cars into production. That would save a great deal of money, for it would give a very rapid turnover and thus decrease the amount of money tied up in materials. With bad transportation one has to carry larger stocks. At the time of revaluing the inventory in 1921 the stock was unduly high because transportation had been so bad. But we learned long ago never to buy ahead for speculative purposes. When prices are going up it is considered good business to buy far ahead, and when prices are up to buy as little as possible. It needs no argument to demonstrate that, if you buy materials at ten cents a pound and the material goes later to twenty cents a pound you will have a distinct advantage over the man who is compelled to buy at twenty cents. But we have found that thus buying ahead does not pay. It is entering into a guessing contest. It is not business. If a man buys a large stock at ten cents, he is in a fine position as long as the other man is paying twenty cents. Then he later gets a chance to buy more of the material at twenty cents, and it seems to be a good buy because everything points to the price going to thirty cents. Having great satisfaction in his previous judgment, on which he made money, he of course makes the new purchase. Then the price drops and he is just where he started. We have carefully figured, over the years, that buying ahead of requirements does not pay--that the gains on one purchase will be offset by the losses on another, and in the end we have gone to a great deal of trouble without any corresponding benefit. Therefore in our buying we simply get the best price we can for the quantity that we require. We do not buy less if the price be high and we do not buy more if the price be low. We carefully avoid bargain lots in excess of requirements. It was not easy to reach that decision. But in the end speculation will kill any manufacturer. Give him a couple of good purchases on which he makes money and before long he will be thinking more about making money out of buying and selling than out of his legitimate business, and he will smash. The only way to keep out of trouble is to buy what one needs--no more and no less. That course removes one hazard from business. This buying experience is given at length because it explains our selling policy. Instead of giving attention to competitors or to demand, our prices are based on an estimate of what the largest possible number of people will want to pay, or can pay, for what we have to sell. And what has resulted from that policy is best evidenced by comparing the price of the touring car and the production. YEAR PRICE PRODUCTION 1909-10 $950 18,664 cars 1910-11 $780 34,528 " 1911-12 $690 78,440 " 1912-13 $600 168,220 " 1913-14 $550 248,307 " 1914-15 $490 308,213 " 1915-16 $440 533,921 " 1916-17 $360 785,432 " 1917-18 $450 706,584 " 1918-19 $525 533,706 " (The above two years were war years and the factory was in war work). 1919-20 $575 to $440 996,660 " 1920-21 $440 to $355 1,250,000 " The high prices of 1921 were, considering the financial inflation, not really high. At the time of writing the price is $497. These prices are actually lower than they appear to be, because improvements in quality are being steadily made. We study every car in order to discover if it has features that might be developed and adapted. If any one has anything better than we have we want to know it, and for that reason we buy one of every new car that comes out. Usually the car is used for a while, put through a road test, taken apart, and studied as to how and of what everything is made. Scattered about Dearborn there is probably one of nearly every make of car on earth. Every little while when we buy a new car it gets into the newspapers and somebody remarks that Ford doesn't use the Ford. Last year we ordered a big Lanchester--which is supposed to be the best car in England. It lay in our Long Island factory for several months and then I decided to drive it to Detroit. There were several of us and we had a little caravan--the Lanchester, a Packard, and a Ford or two. I happened to be riding in the Lanchester passing through a New York town and when the reporters came up they wanted to know right away why I was not riding in a Ford. "Well, you see, it is this way," I answered. "I am on a vacation now; I am in no hurry, we do not care much when we get home. That is the reason I am not in the Ford." You know, we also have a line of "Ford stories"! Our policy is to reduce the price, extend the operations, and improve the article. You will notice that the reduction of price comes first. We have never considered any costs as fixed. Therefore we first reduce the price to a point where we believe more sales will result. Then we go ahead and try to make the price. We do not bother about the costs. The new price forces the costs down. The more usual way is to take the costs and then determine the price, and although that method may be scientific in the narrow sense, it is not scientific in the broad sense, because what earthly use is it to know the cost if it tells you you cannot manufacture at a price at which the article can be sold? But more to the point is the fact that, although one may calculate what a cost is, and of course all of our costs are carefully calculated, no one knows what a cost ought to be. One of the ways of discovering what a cost ought to be is to name a price so low as to force everybody in the place to the highest point of efficiency. The low price makes everybody dig for profits. We make more discoveries concerning manufacturing and selling under this forced method than by any method of leisurely investigation. The payment of high wages fortunately contributes to the low costs because the men become steadily more efficient on account of being relieved of outside worries. The payment of five dollars a day for an eight-hour day was one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made, and the six-dollar day wage is cheaper than the five. How far this will go, we do not know. We have always made a profit at the prices we have fixed and, just as we have no idea how high wages will go, we also have no idea how low prices will go, but there is no particular use in bothering on that point. The tractor, for instance, was first sold for $750, then at $850, then at $625, and the other day we cut it 37 per cent, to $395. The tractor is not made in connection with the automobiles. No plant is large enough to make two articles. A shop has to be devoted to exactly one product in order to get the real economies. For most purposes a man with a machine is better than a man without a machine. By the ordering of design of product and of manufacturing process we are able to provide that kind of a machine which most multiplies the power of the hand, and therefore we give to that man a larger role of service, which means that he is entitled to a larger share of comfort. Keeping that principle in mind we can attack waste with a definite objective. We will not put into our establishment anything that is useless. We will not put up elaborate buildings as monuments to our success. The interest on the investment and the cost of their upkeep only serve to add uselessly to the cost of what is produced--so these monuments of success are apt to end as tombs. A great administration building may be necessary. In me it arouses a suspicion that perhaps there is too much administration. We have never found a need for elaborate administration and would prefer to be advertised by our product than by where we make our product. The standardization that effects large economies for the consumer results in profits of such gross magnitude to the producer that he can scarcely know what to do with his money. But his effort must be sincere, painstaking, and fearless. Cutting out a half-a-dozen models is not standardizing. It may be, and usually is, only the limiting of business, for if one is selling on the ordinary basis of profit--that is, on the basis of taking as much money away from the consumer as he will give up--then surely the consumer ought to have a wide range of choice. Standardization, then, is the final stage of the process. We start with consumer, work back through the design, and finally arrive at manufacturing. The manufacturing becomes a means to the end of service. It is important to bear this order in mind. As yet, the order is not thoroughly understood. The price relation is not understood. The notion persists that prices ought to be kept up. On the contrary, good business--large consumption--depends on their going down. And here is another point. The service must be the best you can give. It is considered good manufacturing practice, and not bad ethics, occasionally to change designs so that old models will become obsolete and new ones will have to be bought either because repair parts for the old cannot be had, or because the new model offers a new sales argument which can be used to persuade a consumer to scrap what he has and buy something new. We have been told that this is good business, that it is clever business, that the object of business ought to be to get people to buy frequently and that it is bad business to try to make anything that will last forever, because when once a man is sold he will not buy again. Our principle of business is precisely to the contrary. We cannot conceive how to serve the consumer unless we make for him something that, as far as we can provide, will last forever. We want to construct some kind of a machine that will last forever. It does not please us to have a buyer's car wear out or become obsolete. We want the man who buys one of our products never to have to buy another. We never make an improvement that renders any previous model obsolete. The parts of a specific model are not only interchangeable with all other cars of that model, but they are interchangeable with similar parts on all the cars that we have turned out. You can take a car of ten years ago and, buying to-day's parts, make it with very little expense into a car of to-day. Having these objectives the costs always come down under pressure. And since we have the firm policy of steady price reduction, there is always pressure. Sometimes it is just harder! Take a few more instances of saving. The sweepings net six hundred thousand dollars a year. Experiments are constantly going on in the utilization of scrap. In one of the stamping operations six-inch circles of sheet metal are cut out. These formerly went into scrap. The waste worried the men. They worked to find uses for the discs. They found that the plates were just the right size and shape to stamp into radiator caps but the metal was not thick enough. They tried a double thickness of plates, with the result that they made a cap which tests proved to be stronger than one made out of a single sheet of metal. We get 150,000 of those discs a day. We have now found a use for about 20,000 a day and expect to find further uses for the remainder. We saved about ten dollars each by making transmissions instead of buying them. We experimented with bolts and produced a special bolt made on what is called an "upsetting machine" with a rolled thread that was stronger than any bolt we could buy, although in its making was used only about one third of the material that the outside manufacturers used. The saving on one style of bolt alone amounted to half a million dollars a year. We used to assemble our cars at Detroit, and although by special packing we managed to get five or six into a freight car, we needed many hundreds of freight cars a day. Trains were moving in and out all the time. Once a thousand freight cars were packed in a single day. A certain amount of congestion was inevitable. It is very expensive to knock down machines and crate them so that they cannot be injured in transit--to say nothing of the transportation charges. Now, we assemble only three or four hundred cars a day at Detroit--just enough for local needs. We now ship the parts to our assembling stations all over the United States and in fact pretty much all over the world, and the machines are put together there. Wherever it is possible for a branch to make a part more cheaply than we can make it in Detroit and ship it to them, then the branch makes the part. The plant at Manchester, England, is making nearly an entire car. The tractor plant at Cork, Ireland, is making almost a complete tractor. This is an enormous saving of expense and is only an indication of what may be done throughout industry generally, when each part of a composite article is made at the exact point where it may be made most economically. We are constantly experimenting with every material that enters into the car. We cut most of our own lumber from our own forests. We are experimenting in the manufacture of artificial leather because we use about forty thousand yards of artificial leather a day. A penny here and a penny there runs into large amounts in the course of a year. The greatest development of all, however, is the River Rouge plant, which, when it is running to its full capacity, will cut deeply and in many directions into the price of everything we make. The whole tractor plant is now there. This plant is located on the river on the outskirts of Detroit and the property covers six hundred and sixty-five acres--enough for future development. It has a large slip and a turning basin capable of accommodating any lake steamship; a short-cut canal and some dredging will give a direct lake connection by way of the Detroit River. We use a great deal of coal. This coal comes directly from our mines over the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railway, which we control, to the Highland Park plant and the River Rouge plant. Part of it goes for steam purposes. Another part goes to the by-product coke ovens which we have established at the River Rouge plant. Coke moves on from the ovens by mechanical transmission to the blast furnaces. The low volatile gases from the blast furnaces are piped to the power plant boilers where they are joined by the sawdust and the shavings from the body plant--the making of all our bodies has been shifted to this plant--and in addition the coke "breeze" (the dust in the making of coke) is now also being utilized for stoking. The steam power plant is thus fired almost exclusively from what would otherwise be waste products. Immense steam turbines directly coupled with dynamos transform this power into electricity, and all of the machinery in the tractor and the body plants is run by individual motors from this electricity. In the course of time it is expected that there will be sufficient electricity to run practically the whole Highland Park plant, and we shall then have cut out our coal bill. Among the by-products of the coke ovens is a gas. It is piped both to the Rouge and Highland Park plants where it is used for heat-treat purposes, for the enamelling ovens, for the car ovens, and the like. We formerly had to buy this gas. The ammonium sulphate is used for fertilizer. The benzol is a motor fuel. The small sizes of coke, not suitable for the blast furnaces, are sold to the employees--delivered free into their homes at much less than the ordinary market price. The large-sized coke goes to the blast furnaces. There is no manual handling. We run the melted iron directly from the blast furnaces into great ladles. These ladles travel into the shops and the iron is poured directly into the moulds without another heating. We thus not only get a uniform quality of iron according to our own specifications and directly under our control, but we save a melting of pig iron and in fact cut out a whole process in manufacturing as well as making available all our own scrap. What all this will amount to in point of savings we do not know--that is, we do not know how great will be the saving, because the plant has not been running long enough to give more than an indication of what is ahead, and we save in so many directions--in transportation, in the generation of our power, in the generation of gas, in the expense in casting, and then over and above that is the revenue from the by-products and from the smaller sizes of coke. The investment to accomplish these objects to date amounts to something over forty million dollars. How far we shall thus reach back to sources depends entirely on circumstances. Nobody anywhere can really do more than guess about the future costs of production. It is wiser to recognize that the future holds more than the past--that every day holds within it an improvement on the methods of the day before. But how about production? If every necessary of life were produced so cheaply and in such quantities, would not the world shortly be surfeited with goods? Will there not come a point when, regardless of price, people simply will not want anything more than what they already have? And if in the process of manufacturing fewer and fewer men are used, what is going to become of these men--how are they going to find jobs and live? Take the second point first. We mentioned many machines and many methods that displaced great numbers of men and then someone asks: "Yes, that is a very fine idea from the standpoint of the proprietor, but how about these poor fellows whose jobs are taken away from them?" The question is entirely reasonable, but it is a little curious that it should be asked. For when were men ever really put out of work by the bettering of industrial processes? The stage-coach drivers lost their jobs with the coming of the railways. Should we have prohibited the railways and kept the stage-coach drivers? Were there more men working with the stage-coaches than are working on the railways? Should we have prevented the taxicab because its coming took the bread out of the mouths of the horse-cab drivers? How does the number of taxicabs compare with the number of horse-cabs when the latter were in their prime? The coming of shoe machinery closed most of the shops of those who made shoes by hand. When shoes were made by hand, only the very well-to-do could own more than a single pair of shoes, and most working people went barefooted in summer. Now, hardly any one has only one pair of shoes, and shoe making is a great industry. No, every time you can so arrange that one man will do the work of two, you so add to the wealth of the country that there will be a new and better job for the man who is displaced. If whole industries changed overnight, then disposing of the surplus men would be a problem, but these changes do not occur as rapidly as that. They come gradually. In our own experience a new place always opens for a man as soon as better processes have taken his old job. And what happens in my shops happens everywhere in industry. There are many times more men to-day employed in the steel industries than there were in the days when every operation was by hand. It has to be so. It always is so and always will be so. And if any man cannot see it, it is because he will not look beyond his own nose. Now as to saturation. We are continually asked: "When will you get to the point of overproduction? When will there be more cars than people to use them?" We believe it is possible some day to reach the point where all goods are produced so cheaply and in such quantities that overproduction will be a reality. But as far as we are concerned, we do not look forward to that condition with fear--we look forward to it with great satisfaction. Nothing could be more splendid than a world in which everybody has all that he wants. Our fear is that this condition will be too long postponed. As to our own products, that condition is very far away. We do not know how many motor cars a family will desire to use of the particular kind that we make. We know that, as the price has come down, the farmer, who at first used one car (and it must be remembered that it is not so very long ago that the farm market for motor cars was absolutely unknown--the limit of sales was at that time fixed by all the wise statistical sharps at somewhere near the number of millionaires in the country) now often uses two, and also he buys a truck. Perhaps, instead of sending workmen out to scattered jobs in a single car, it will be cheaper to send each worker out in a car of his own. That is happening with salesmen. The public finds its own consumptive needs with unerring accuracy, and since we no longer make motor cars or tractors, but merely the parts which when assembled become motor cars and tractors, the facilities as now provided would hardly be sufficient to provide replacements for ten million cars. And it would be quite the same with any business. We do not have to bother about overproduction for some years to come, provided the prices are right. It is the refusal of people to buy on account of price that really stimulates real business. Then if we want to do business we have to get the prices down without hurting the quality. Thus price reduction forces us to learn improved and less wasteful methods of production. One big part of the discovery of what is "normal" in industry depends on managerial genius discovering better ways of doing things. If a man reduces his selling price to a point where he is making no profit or incurring a loss, then he simply is forced to discover how to make as good an article by a better method--making his new method produce the profit, and not producing a profit out of reduced wages or increased prices to the public. It is not good management to take profits out of the workers or the buyers; make management produce the profits. Don't cheapen the product; don't cheapen the wage; don't overcharge the public. Put brains into the method, and more brains, and still more brains--do things better than ever before; and by this means all parties to business are served and benefited. And all of this can always be done. CHAPTER XI MONEY AND GOODS The primary object of a manufacturing business is to produce, and if that objective is always kept, finance becomes a wholly secondary matter that has largely to do with bookkeeping. My own financial operations have been very simple. I started with the policy of buying and selling for cash, keeping a large fund of cash always on hand, taking full advantage of all discounts, and collecting interest on bank balances. I regard a bank principally as a place in which it is safe and convenient to keep money. The minutes we spend on a competitor's business we lose on our own. The minutes we spend in becoming expert in finance we lose in production. The place to finance a manufacturing business is the shop, and not the bank. I would not say that a man in business needs to know nothing at all about finance, but he is better off knowing too little than too much, for if he becomes too expert he will get into the way of thinking that he can borrow money instead of earning it and then he will borrow more money to pay back what he has borrowed, and instead of being a business man he will be a note juggler, trying to keep in the air a regular flock of bonds and notes. If he is a really expert juggler, he may keep going quite a long time in this fashion, but some day he is bound to make a miss and the whole collection will come tumbling down around him. Manufacturing is not to be confused with banking, and I think that there is a tendency for too many business men to mix up in banking and for too many bankers to mix up in business. The tendency is to distort the true purposes of both business and banking and that hurts both of them. The money has to come out of the shop, not out of the bank, and I have found that the shop will answer every possible requirement, and in one case, when it was believed that the company was rather seriously in need of funds, the shop when called on raised a larger sum than any bank in this country could loan. We have been thrown into finance mostly in the way of denial. Some years back we had to keep standing a denial that the Ford Motor Company was owned by the Standard Oil Company and with that denial, for convenience's sake, we coupled a denial that we were connected with any other concern or that we intended to sell cars by mail. Last year the best-liked rumour was that we were down in Wall Street hunting for money. I did not bother to deny that. It takes too much time to deny everything. Instead, we demonstrated that we did not need any money. Since then I have heard nothing more about being financed by Wall Street. We are not against borrowing money and we are not against bankers. We are against trying to make borrowed money take the place of work. We are against the kind of banker who regards a business as a melon to be cut. The thing is to keep money and borrowing and finance generally in their proper place, and in order to do that one has to consider exactly for what the money is needed and how it is going to be paid off. Money is only a tool in business. It is just a part of the machinery. You might as well borrow 100,000 lathes as $100,000 if the trouble is inside your business. More lathes will not cure it; neither will more money. Only heavier doses of brains and thought and wise courage can cure. A business that misuses what it has will continue to misuse what it can get. The point is--cure the misuse. When that is done, the business will begin to make its own money, just as a repaired human body begins to make sufficient pure blood. Borrowing may easily become an excuse for not boring into the trouble. Borrowing may easily become a sop for laziness and pride. Some business men are too lazy to get into overalls and go down to see what is the matter. Or they are too proud to permit the thought that anything they have originated could go wrong. But the laws of business are like the law of gravity, and the man who opposes them feels their power. Borrowing for expansion is one thing; borrowing to make up for mismanagement and waste is quite another. You do not want money for the latter--for the reason that money cannot do the job. Waste is corrected by economy; mismanagement is corrected by brains. Neither of these correctives has anything to do with money. Indeed, money under certain circumstances is their enemy. And many a business man thanks his stars for the pinch which showed him that his best capital was in his own brains and not in bank loans. Borrowing under certain circumstances is just like a drunkard taking another drink to cure the effect of the last one. It does not do what it is expected to do. It simply increases the difficulty. Tightening up the loose places in a business is much more profitable than any amount of new capital at 7 per cent. The internal ailments of business are the ones that require most attention. "Business" in the sense of trading with the people is largely a matter of filling the wants of the people. If you make what they need, and sell it at a price which makes possession a help and not a hardship, then you will do business as long as there is business to do. People buy what helps them just as naturally as they drink water. But the process of making the article will require constant care. Machinery wears out and needs to be restored. Men grow uppish, lazy, or careless. A business is men and machines united in the production of a commodity, and both the man and the machines need repairs and replacements. Sometimes it is the men "higher up" who most need revamping--and they themselves are always the last to recognize it. When a business becomes congested with bad methods; when a business becomes ill through lack of attention to one or more of its functions; when executives sit comfortably back in their chairs as if the plans they inaugurated are going to keep them going forever; when business becomes a mere plantation on which to live, and not a big work which one has to do--then you may expect trouble. You will wake up some fine morning and find yourself doing more business than you have ever done before--and getting less out of it. You find yourself short of money. You can borrow money. And you can do it, oh, so easily. People will crowd money on you. It is the most subtle temptation the young business man has. But if you do borrow money you are simply giving a stimulant to whatever may be wrong. You feed the disease. Is a man more wise with borrowed money than he is with his own? Not as a usual thing. To borrow under such conditions is to mortgage a declining property. The time for a business man to borrow money, if ever, is when he does not need it. That is, when he does not need it as a substitute for the things he ought himself to do. If a man's business is in excellent condition and in need of expansion, it is comparatively safe to borrow. But if a business is in need of money through mismanagement, then the thing to do is to get into the business and correct the trouble from the inside--not poultice it with loans from the outside. My financial policy is the result of my sales policy. I hold that it is better to sell a large number of articles at a small profit than to sell a few at a large profit. This enables a larger number of people to buy and it gives a larger number of men employment at good wages. It permits the planning of production, the elimination of dull seasons, and the waste of carrying an idle plant. Thus results a suitable, continuous business, and if you will think it over, you will discover that most so-called urgent financing is made necessary because of a lack of planned, continuous business. Reducing prices is taken by the short-sighted to be the same as reducing the income of a business. It is very difficult to deal with that sort of a mind because it is so totally lacking in even the background knowledge of what business is. For instance, I was once asked, when contemplating a reduction of eighty dollars a car, whether on a production of five hundred thousand cars this would not reduce the income of the company by forty million dollars. Of course if one sold only five hundred thousand cars at the new price, the income would be reduced forty million dollars--which is an interesting mathematical calculation that has nothing whatsoever to do with business, because unless you reduce the price of an article the sales do not continuously increase and therefore the business has no stability. If a business is not increasing, it is bound to be decreasing, and a decreasing business always needs a lot of financing. Old-time business went on the doctrine that prices should always be kept up to the highest point at which people will buy. Really modern business has to take the opposite view. Bankers and lawyers can rarely appreciate this fact. They confuse inertia with stability. It is perfectly beyond their comprehension that the price should ever voluntarily be reduced. That is why putting the usual type of banker or lawyer into the management of a business is courting disaster. Reducing prices increases the volume and disposes of finance, provided one regards the inevitable profit as a trust fund with which to conduct more and better business. Our profit, because of the rapidity of the turnover in the business and the great volume of sales, has, no matter what the price at which the product was sold, always been large. We have had a small profit per article but a large aggregate profit. The profit is not constant. After cutting the prices, the profits for a time run low, but then the inevitable economies begin to get in their work and the profits go high again. But they are not distributed as dividends. I have always insisted on the payment of small dividends and the company has to-day no stockholders who wanted a different policy. I regard business profits above a small percentage as belonging more to the business than to the stockholders. The stockholders, to my way of thinking, ought to be only those who are active in the business and who will regard the company as an instrument of service rather than as a machine for making money. If large profits are made--and working to serve forces them to be large--then they should be in part turned back into the business so that it may be still better fitted to serve, and in part passed on to the purchaser. During one year our profits were so much larger than we expected them to be that we voluntarily returned fifty dollars to each purchaser of a car. We felt that unwittingly we had overcharged the purchaser by that much. My price policy and hence my financial policy came up in a suit brought against the company several years ago to compel the payment of larger dividends. On the witness stand I gave the policy then in force and which is still in force. It is this: In the first place, I hold that it is better to sell a large number of cars at a reasonably small margin than to sell fewer cars at a large margin of profit. I hold this because it enables a large number of people to buy and enjoy the use of a car and because it gives a larger number of men employment at good wages. Those are aims I have in life. But I would not be counted a success; I would be, in fact, a flat failure if I could not accomplish that and at the same time make a fair amount of profit for myself and the men associated with me in business. This policy I hold is good business policy because it works--because with each succeeding year we have been able to put our car within the reach of greater and greater numbers, give employment to more and more men, and, at the same time, through the volume of business, increase our own profits beyond anything we had hoped for or even dreamed of when we started. Bear in mind, every time you reduce the price of the car without reducing the quality, you increase the possible number of purchasers. There are many men who will pay $360 for a car who would not pay $440. We had in round numbers 500,000 buyers of cars on the $440 basis, and I figure that on the $360 basis we can increase the sales to possibly 800,000 cars for the year--less profit on each car, but more cars, more employment of labour, and in the end we shall get all the total profit we ought to make. And let me say right here, that I do not believe that we should make such an awful profit on our cars. A reasonable profit is right, but not too much. So it has been my policy to force the price of the car down as fast as production would permit, and give the benefits to users and labourers--with resulting surprisingly enormous benefits to ourselves. This policy does not agree with the general opinion that a business is to be managed to the end that the stockholders can take out the largest possible amount of cash. Therefore I do not want stockholders in the ordinary sense of the term--they do not help forward the ability to serve. My ambition is to employ more and more men and to spread, in so far as I am able, the benefits of the industrial system that we are working to found; we want to help build lives and homes. This requires that the largest share of the profits be put back into productive enterprise. Hence we have no place for the non-working stockholders. The working stockholder is more anxious to increase his opportunity to serve than to bank dividends. If it at any time became a question between lowering wages or abolishing dividends, I would abolish dividends. That time is not apt to come, for, as I have pointed out, there is no economy in low wages. It is bad financial policy to reduce wages because it also reduces buying power. If one believes that leadership brings responsibility, then a part of that responsibility is in seeing that those whom one leads shall have an adequate opportunity to earn a living. Finance concerns not merely the profit or solvency of a company; it also comprehends the amount of money that the company turns back to the community through wages. There is no charity in this. There is no charity in proper wages. It is simply that no company can be said to be stable which is not so well managed that it can afford a man an opportunity to do a great deal of work and therefore to earn a good wage. There is something sacred about wages--they represent homes and families and domestic destinies. People ought to tread very carefully when approaching wages. On the cost sheet, wages are mere figures; out in the world, wages are bread boxes and coal bins, babies' cradles and children's education--family comforts and contentment. On the other hand, there is something just as sacred about capital which is used to provide the means by which work can be made productive. Nobody is helped if our industries are sucked dry of their life-blood. There is something just as sacred about a shop that employs thousands of men as there is about a home. The shop is the mainstay of all the finer things which the home represents. If we want the home to be happy, we must contrive to keep the shop busy. The whole justification of the profits made by the shop is that they are used to make doubly secure the homes dependent on that shop, and to create more jobs for other men. If profits go to swell a personal fortune, that is one thing; if they go to provide a sounder basis for business, better working conditions, better wages, more extended employment--that is quite another thing. Capital thus employed should not be carelessly tampered with. It is for the service of all, though it may be under the direction of one. Profits belong in three places: they belong to the business--to keep it steady, progressive, and sound. They belong to the men who helped produce them. And they belong also, in part, to the public. A successful business is profitable to all three of these interests--planner, producer, and purchaser. People whose profits are excessive when measured by any sound standard should be the first to cut prices. But they never are. They pass all their extra costs down the line until the whole burden is borne by the consumer; and besides doing that, they charge the consumer a percentage on the increased charges. Their whole business philosophy is: "Get while the getting is good." They are the speculators, the exploiters, the no-good element that is always injuring legitimate business. There is nothing to be expected from them. They have no vision. They cannot see beyond their own cash registers. These people can talk more easily about a 10 or 20 per cent. cut in wages than they can about a 10 or 20 per cent. cut in profits. But a business man, surveying the whole community in all its interests and wishing to serve that community, ought to be able to make his contribution to stability. It has been our policy always to keep on hand a large amount of cash--the cash balance in recent years has usually been in excess of fifty million dollars. This is deposited in banks all over the country, we do not borrow but we have established lines of credit, so that if we so cared we might raise a very large amount of money by bank borrowing. But keeping the cash reserve makes borrowing unnecessary--our provision is only to be prepared to meet an emergency. I have no prejudice against proper borrowing. It is merely that I do not want to run the danger of having the control of the business and hence the particular idea of service to which I am devoted taken into other hands. A considerable part of finance is in the overcoming of seasonal operation. The flow of money ought to be nearly continuous. One must work steadily in order to work profitably. Shutting down involves great waste. It brings the waste of unemployment of men, the waste of unemployment of equipment, and the waste of restricted future sales through the higher prices of interrupted production. That has been one of the problems we had to meet. We could not manufacture cars to stock during the winter months when purchases are less than in spring or summer. Where or how could any one store half a million cars? And if stored, how could they be shipped in the rush season? And who would find the money to carry such a stock of cars even if they could be stored? Seasonal work is hard on the working force. Good mechanics will not accept jobs that are good for only part of the year. To work in full force twelve months of the year guarantees workmen of ability, builds up a permanent manufacturing organization, and continually improves the product--the men in the factory, through uninterrupted service, become more familiar with the operations. The factory must build, the sales department must sell, and the dealer must buy cars all the year through, if each would enjoy the maximum profit to be derived from the business. If the retail buyer will not consider purchasing except in "seasons," a campaign of education needs to be waged, proving the all-the-year-around value of a car rather than the limited-season value. And while the educating is being done, the manufacturer must build, and the dealer must buy, in anticipation of business. We were the first to meet the problem in the automobile business. The selling of Ford cars is a merchandising proposition. In the days when every car was built to order and 50 cars a month a big output, it was reasonable to wait for the sale before ordering. The manufacturer waited for the order before building. We very shortly found that we could not do business on order. The factory could not be built large enough--even were it desirable--to make between March and August all the cars that were ordered during those months. Therefore, years ago began the campaign of education to demonstrate that a Ford was not a summer luxury but a year-round necessity. Coupled with that came the education of the dealer into the knowledge that even if he could not sell so many cars in winter as in summer it would pay him to stock in winter for the summer and thus be able to make instant delivery. Both plans have worked out; in most parts of the country cars are used almost as much in winter as in summer. It has been found that they will run in snow, ice, or mud--in anything. Hence the winter sales are constantly growing larger and the seasonal demand is in part lifted from the dealer. And he finds it profitable to buy ahead in anticipation of needs. Thus we have no seasons in the plant; the production, up until the last couple of years, has been continuous excepting for the annual shut downs for inventory. We have had an interruption during the period of extreme depression but it was an interruption made necessary in the process of readjusting ourselves to the market conditions. In order to attain continuous production and hence a continuous turning over of money we have had to plan our operations with extreme care. The plan of production is worked out very carefully each month between the sales and production departments, with the object of producing enough cars so that those in transit will take care of the orders in hand. Formerly, when we assembled and shipped cars, this was of the highest importance because we had no place in which to store finished cars. Now we ship parts instead of cars and assemble only those required for the Detroit district. That makes the planning no less important, for if the production stream and the order stream are not approximately equal we should be either jammed with unsold parts or behind in our orders. When you are turning out the parts to make 4,000 cars a day, just a very little carelessness in overestimating orders will pile up a finished inventory running into the millions. That makes the balancing of operations an exceedingly delicate matter. In order to earn the proper profit on our narrow margin we must have a rapid turnover. We make cars to sell, not to store, and a month's unsold production would turn into a sum the interest on which alone would be enormous. The production is planned a year ahead and the number of cars to be made in each month of the year is scheduled, for of course it is a big problem to have the raw materials and such parts as we still buy from the outside flowing in consonance with production. We can no more afford to carry large stocks of finished than we can of raw material. Everything has to move in and move out. And we have had some narrow escapes. Some years ago the plant of the Diamond Manufacturing Company burned down. They were making radiator parts for us and the brass parts--tubings and castings. We had to move quickly or take a big loss. We got together the heads of all our departments, the pattern-makers and the draughtsmen. They worked from twenty-four to forty-eight hours on a stretch. They made new patterns; the Diamond Company leased a plant and got some machinery in by express. We furnished the other equipment for them and in twenty days they were shipping again. We had enough stock on hand to carry us over, say, for seven or eight days, but that fire prevented us shipping cars for ten or fifteen days. Except for our having stock ahead it would have held us up for twenty days--and our expenses would have gone right on. To repeat. The place in which to finance is the shop. It has never failed us, and once, when it was thought that we were hard up for money, it served rather conclusively to demonstrate how much better finance can be conducted from the inside than from the outside. CHAPTER XII MONEY--MASTER OR SERVANT? In December, 1920, business the country over was marking time. More automobile plants were closed than were open and quite a number of those which were closed were completely in the charge of bankers. Rumours of bad financial condition were afloat concerning nearly every industrial company, and I became interested when the reports persisted that the Ford Motor Company not only needed money but could not get it. I have become accustomed to all kinds of rumours about our company--so much so, that nowadays I rarely deny any sort of rumour. But these reports differed from all previous ones. They were so exact and circumstantial. I learned that I had overcome my prejudice against borrowing and that I might be found almost any day down in Wall Street, hat in hand, asking for money. And rumour went even further and said that no one would give me money and that I might have to break up and go out of business. It is true that we did have a problem. In 1919 we had borrowed $70,000,000 on notes to buy the full stock interest in the Ford Motor Company. On this we had $33,000,000 left to pay. We had $18,000,000 in income taxes due or shortly to become due to the Government, and also we intended to pay our usual bonus for the year to the workmen, which amounted to $7,000,000. Altogether, between January 1st and April 18, 1921, we had payments ahead totaling $58,000,000. We had only $20,000,000 in bank. Our balance sheet was more or less common knowledge and I suppose it was taken for granted that we could not raise the $38,000,000 needed without borrowing. For that is quite a large sum of money. Without the aid of Wall Street such a sum could not easily and quickly be raised. We were perfectly good for the money. Two years before we had borrowed $70,000,000. And since our whole property was unencumbered and we had no commercial debts, the matter of lending a large sum to us would not ordinarily have been a matter of moment. In fact, it would have been good banking business. However, I began to see that our need for money was being industriously circulated as an evidence of impending failure. Then I began to suspect that, although the rumours came in news dispatches from all over the country, they might perhaps be traced to a single source. This belief was further strengthened when we were informed that a very fat financial editor was at Battle Creek sending out bulletins concerning the acuteness of our financial condition. Therefore, I took care not to deny a single rumour. We had made our financial plans and they did not include borrowing money. I cannot too greatly emphasize that the very worst time to borrow money is when the banking people think that you need money. In the last chapter I outlined our financial principles. We simply applied those principles. We planned a thorough house-cleaning. Go back a bit and see what the conditions were. Along in the early part of 1920 came the first indications that the feverish speculative business engendered by the war was not going to continue. A few concerns that had sprung out of the war and had no real reason for existence failed. People slowed down in their buying. Our own sales kept right along, but we knew that sooner or later they would drop off. I thought seriously of cutting prices, but the costs of manufacturing everywhere were out of control. Labour gave less and less in return for high wages. The suppliers of raw material refused even to think of coming back to earth. The very plain warnings of the storm went quite unheeded. In June our own sales began to be affected. They grew less and less each month from June on until September. We had to do something to bring our product within the purchasing power of the public, and not only that, we had to do something drastic enough to demonstrate to the public that we were actually playing the game and not just shamming. Therefore in September we cut the price of the touring car from $575 to $440. We cut the price far below the cost of production, for we were still making from stock bought at boom prices. The cut created a considerable sensation. We received a deal of criticism. It was said that we were disturbing conditions. That is exactly what we were trying to do. We wanted to do our part in bringing prices from an artificial to a natural level. I am firmly of the opinion that if at this time or earlier manufacturers and distributors had all made drastic cuts in their prices and had put through thorough house-cleanings we should not have so long a business depression. Hanging on in the hope of getting higher prices simply delayed adjustment. Nobody got the higher prices they hoped for, and if the losses had been taken all at once, not only would the productive and the buying powers of the country have become harmonized, but we should have been saved this long period of general idleness. Hanging on in the hope of higher prices merely made the losses greater, because those who hung on had to pay interest on their high-priced stocks and also lost the profits they might have made by working on a sensible basis. Unemployment cut down wage distribution and thus the buyer and the seller became more and more separated. There was a lot of flurried talk of arranging to give vast credits to Europe--the idea being that thereby the high-priced stocks might be palmed off. Of course the proposals were not put in any such crude fashion, and I think that quite a lot of people sincerely believed that if large credits were extended abroad even without a hope of the payment of either principal or interest, American business would somehow be benefited. It is true that if these credits were taken by American banks, those who had high-priced stocks might have gotten rid of them at a profit, but the banks would have acquired so much frozen credit that they would have more nearly resembled ice houses than banks. I suppose it is natural to hang on to the possibility of profits until the very last moment, but it is not good business. Our own sales, after the cut, increased, but soon they began to fall off again. We were not sufficiently within the purchasing power of the country to make buying easy. Retail prices generally had not touched bottom. The public distrusted all prices. We laid our plans for another cut and we kept our production around one hundred thousand cars a month. This production was not justified by our sales but we wanted to have as much as possible of our raw material transformed into finished product before we shut down. We knew that we would have to shut down in order to take an inventory and clean house. We wanted to open with another big cut and to have cars on hand to supply the demand. Then the new cars could be built out of material bought at lower prices. We determined that we were going to get lower prices. We shut down in December with the intention of opening again in about two weeks. We found so much to do that actually we did not open for nearly six weeks. The moment that we shut down the rumours concerning our financial condition became more and more active. I know that a great many people hoped that we should have to go out after money--for, were we seeking money, then we should have to come to terms. We did not ask for money. We did not want money. We had one offer of money. An officer of a New York bank called on me with a financial plan which included a large loan and in which also was an arrangement by which a representative of the bankers would act as treasurer and take charge of the finance of the company. Those people meant well enough, I am quite sure. We did not want to borrow money but it so happened that at the moment we were without a treasurer. To that extent the bankers had envisaged our condition correctly. I asked my son Edsel to be treasurer as well as president of the company. That fixed us up as to a treasurer, so there was really nothing at all that the bankers could do for us. Then we began our house-cleaning. During the war we had gone into many kinds of war work and had thus been forced to depart from our principle of a single product. This had caused many new departments to be added. The office force had expanded and much of the wastefulness of scattered production had crept in. War work is rush work and is wasteful work. We began throwing out everything that did not contribute to the production of cars. The only immediate payment scheduled was the purely voluntary one of a seven-million-dollar bonus to our workmen. There was no obligation to pay, but we wanted to pay on the first of January. That we paid out of our cash on hand. Throughout the country we have thirty-five branches. These are all assembling plants, but in twenty-two of them parts are also manufactured. They had stopped the making of parts but they went on assembling cars. At the time of shutting down we had practically no cars in Detroit. We had shipped out all the parts, and during January the Detroit dealers actually had to go as far a field as Chicago and Columbus to get cars for local needs. The branches shipped to each dealer, under his yearly quota, enough cars to cover about a month's sales. The dealers worked hard on sales. During the latter part of January we called in a skeleton organization of about ten thousand men, mostly foremen, sub-foremen, and straw bosses, and we started Highland Park into production. We collected our foreign accounts and sold our by-products. Then we were ready for full production. And gradually into full production we went--on a profitable basis. The house-cleaning swept out the waste that had both made the prices high and absorbed the profit. We sold off the useless stuff. Before we had employed fifteen men per car per day. Afterward we employed nine per car per day. This did not mean that six out of fifteen men lost their jobs. They only ceased being unproductive. We made that cut by applying the rule that everything and everybody must produce or get out. We cut our office forces in halves and offered the office workers better jobs in the shops. Most of them took the jobs. We abolished every order blank and every form of statistics that did not directly aid in the production of a car. We had been collecting tons of statistics because they were interesting. But statistics will not construct automobiles--so out they went. We took out 60 per cent. of our telephone extensions. Only a comparatively few men in any organization need telephones. We formerly had a foreman for every five men; now we have a foreman for every twenty men. The other foremen are working on machines. We cut the overhead charge from $146 a car to $93 a car, and when you realize what this means on more than four thousand cars a day you will have an idea how, not by economy, not by wage-cutting, but by the elimination of waste, it is possible to make an "impossible" price. Most important of all, we found out how to use less money in our business by speeding up the turnover. And in increasing the turnover rate, one of the most important factors was the Detroit, Toledo, & Ironton Railroad--which we purchased. The railroad took a large place in the scheme of economy. To the road itself I have given another chapter. We discovered, after a little experimenting, that freight service could be improved sufficiently to reduce the cycle of manufacture from twenty-two to fourteen days. That is, raw material could be bought, manufactured, and the finished product put into the hands of the distributor in (roughly) 33 per cent. less time than before. We had been carrying an inventory of around $60,000,000 to insure uninterrupted production. Cutting down the time one third released $20,000,000, or $1,200,000 a year in interest. Counting the finished inventory, we saved approximately $8,000,000 more--that is, we were able to release $28,000,000 in capital and save the interest on that sum. On January 1st we had $20,000,000. On April 1st we had $87,300,000, or $27,300,000 more than we needed to wipe out all our indebtedness. That is what boring into the business did for us! This amount came to us in these items: Cash on hand, January $20,000,000 Stock on hand turned into cash, January 1 to April 1 24,700,000 Speeding up transit of goods released 28,000,000 Collected from agents in foreign countries 3,000,000 Sale of by-products 3,700,000 Sale of Liberty Bonds 7,900,000 TOTAL $87,300,000 Now I have told about all this not in the way of an exploit, but to point out how a business may find resources within itself instead of borrowing, and also to start a little thinking as to whether the form of our money may not put a premium on borrowing and thus give far too great a place in life to the bankers. We could have borrowed $40,000,000--more had we wanted to. Suppose we had borrowed, what would have happened? Should we have been better fitted to go on with our business? Or worse fitted? If we had borrowed we should not have been under the necessity of finding methods to cheapen production. Had we been able to obtain the money at 6 per cent. flat--and we should in commissions and the like have had to pay more than that--the interest charge alone on a yearly production of 500,000 cars would have amounted to about four dollars a car. Therefore we should now be without the benefit of better production and loaded with a heavy debt. Our cars would probably cost about one hundred dollars more than they do; hence we should have a smaller production, for we could not have so many buyers; we should employ fewer men, and in short, should not be able to serve to the utmost. You will note that the financiers proposed to cure by lending money and not by bettering methods. They did not suggest putting in an engineer; they wanted to put in a treasurer. And that is the danger of having bankers in business. They think solely in terms of money. They think of a factory as making money, not goods. They want to watch the money, not the efficiency of production. They cannot comprehend that a business never stands still, it must go forward or go back. They regard a reduction in prices as a throwing away of profit instead of as a building of business. Bankers play far too great a part in the conduct of industry. Most business men will privately admit that fact. They will seldom publicly admit it because they are afraid of their bankers. It required less skill to make a fortune dealing in money than dealing in production. The average successful banker is by no means so intelligent and resourceful a man as is the average successful business man. Yet the banker through his control of credit practically controls the average business man. There has been a great reaching out by bankers in the last fifteen or twenty years--and especially since the war--and the Federal Reserve System for a time put into their hands an almost limitless supply of credit. The banker is, as I have noted, by training and because of his position, totally unsuited to the conduct of industry. If, therefore, the controllers of credit have lately acquired this very large power, is it not to be taken as a sign that there is something wrong with the financial system that gives to finance instead of to service the predominant power in industry? It was not the industrial acumen of the bankers that brought them into the management of industry. Everyone will admit that. They were pushed there, willy-nilly, by the system itself. Therefore, I personally want to discover whether we are operating under the best financial system. Now, let me say at once that my objection to bankers has nothing to do with personalities. I am not against bankers as such. We stand very much in need of thoughtful men, skilled in finance. The world cannot go on without banking facilities. We have to have money. We have to have credit. Otherwise the fruits of production could not be exchanged. We have to have capital. Without it there could be no production. But whether we have based our banking and our credit on the right foundation is quite another matter. It is no part of my thought to attack our financial system. I am not in the position of one who has been beaten by the system and wants revenge. It does not make the least difference to me personally what bankers do because we have been able to manage our affairs without outside financial aid. My inquiry is prompted by no personal motive whatsoever. I only want to know whether the greatest good is being rendered to the greatest number. No financial system is good which favors one class of producers over another. We want to discover whether it is not possible to take away power which is not based on wealth creation. Any sort of class legislation is pernicious. I think that the country's production has become so changed in its methods that gold is not the best medium with which it may be measured, and that the gold standard as a control of credit gives, as it is now (and I believe inevitably) administered, class advantage. The ultimate check on credit is the amount of gold in the country, regardless of the amount of wealth in the country. I am not prepared to dogmatize on the subject of money or credit. As far as money and credit are concerned, no one as yet knows enough about them to dogmatize. The whole question will have to be settled as all other questions of real importance have to be settled, and that is by cautious, well-founded experiment. And I am not inclined to go beyond cautious experiments. We have to proceed step by step and very carefully. The question is not political, it is economic, and I am perfectly certain that helping the people to think on the question is wholly advantageous. They will not act without adequate knowledge, and thus cause disaster, if a sincere effort is made to provide them with knowledge. The money question has first place in multitudes of minds of all degrees or power. But a glance at most of the cure-all systems shows how contradictory they are. The majority of them make the assumption of honesty among mankind, to begin with, and that, of course, is a prime defect. Even our present system would work splendidly if all men were honest. As a matter of fact, the whole money question is 95 per cent. human nature; and your successful system must check human nature, not depend upon it. The people are thinking about the money question; and if the money masters have any information which they think the people ought to have to prevent them going astray, now is the time to give it. The days are fast slipping away when the fear of credit curtailment will avail, or when wordy slogans will affright. The people are naturally conservative. They are more conservative than the financiers. Those who believe that the people are so easily led that they would permit printing presses to run off money like milk tickets do not understand them. It is the innate conservation of the people that has kept our money good in spite of the fantastic tricks which the financiers play--and which they cover up with high technical terms. The people are on the side of sound money. They are so unalterably on the side of sound money that it is a serious question how they would regard the system under which they live, if they once knew what the initiated can do with it. The present money system is not going to be changed by speech-making or political sensationalism or economic experiment. It is going to change under the pressure of conditions--conditions that we cannot control and pressure that we cannot control. These conditions are now with us; that pressure is now upon us. The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few. Money, after all, is extremely simple. It is a part of our transportation system. It is a simple and direct method of conveying goods from one person to another. Money is in itself most admirable. It is essential. It is not intrinsically evil. It is one of the most useful devices in social life. And when it does what it was intended to do, it is all help and no hindrance. But money should always be money. A foot is always twelve inches, but when is a dollar a dollar? If ton weights changed in the coal yard, and peck measures changed in the grocery, and yard sticks were to-day 42 inches and to-morrow 33 inches (by some occult process called "exchange") the people would mighty soon remedy that. When a dollar is not always a dollar, when the 100-cent dollar becomes the 65-cent dollar, and then the 50-cent dollar, and then the 47-cent dollar, as the good old American gold and silver dollars did, what is the use of yelling about "cheap money," "depreciated money"? A dollar that stays 100 cents is as necessary as a pound that stays 16 ounces and a yard that stays 36 inches. The bankers who do straight banking should regard themselves as naturally the first men to probe and understand our monetary system--instead of being content with the mastery of local banking-house methods; and if they would deprive the gamblers in bank balances of the name of "banker" and oust them once for all from the place of influence which that name gives them, banking would be restored and established as the public service it ought to be, and the iniquities of the present monetary system and financial devices would be lifted from the shoulders of the people. There is an "if" here, of course. But it is not insurmountable. Affairs are coming to a jam as it is, and if those who possess technical facility do not engage to remedy the case, those who lack that facility may attempt it. Nothing is more foolish than for any class to assume that progress is an attack upon it. Progress is only a call made upon it to lend its experience for the general advancement. It is only those who are unwise who will attempt to obstruct progress and thereby become its victims. All of us are here together, all of us must go forward together; it is perfectly silly for any man or class to take umbrage at the stirring of progress. If financiers feel that progress is only the restlessness of weak-minded persons, if they regard all suggestions of betterment as a personal slap, then they are taking the part which proves more than anything else could their unfitness to continue in their leadership. If the present faulty system is more profitable to a financier than a more perfect system would be, and if that financier values his few remaining years of personal profits more highly than he would value the honour of making a contribution to the life of the world by helping to erect a better system, then there is no way of preventing a clash of interests. But it is fair to say to the selfish financial interests that, if their fight is waged to perpetuate a system just because it profits them, then their fight is already lost. Why should finance fear? The world will still be here. Men will do business with one another. There will be money and there will be need of masters of the mechanism of money. Nothing is going to depart but the knots and tangles. There will be some readjustments, of course. Banks will no longer be the masters of industry. They will be the servants of industry. Business will control money instead of money controlling business. The ruinous interest system will be greatly modified. Banking will not be a risk, but a service. Banks will begin to do much more for the people than they do now, and instead of being the most expensive businesses in the world to manage, and the most highly profitable in the matter of dividends, they will become less costly, and the profits of their operation will go to the community which they serve. Two facts of the old order are fundamental. First: that within the nation itself the tendency of financial control is toward its largest centralized banking institutions--either a government bank or a closely allied group of private financiers. There is always in every nation a definite control of credit by private or semi-public interests. Second: in the world as a whole the same centralizing tendency is operative. An American credit is under control of New York interests, as before the war world credit was controlled in London--the British pound sterling was the standard of exchange for the world's trade. Two methods of reform are open to us, one beginning at the bottom and one beginning at the top. The latter is the more orderly way, the former is being tried in Russia. If our reform should begin at the top it will require a social vision and an altruistic fervour of a sincerity and intensity which is wholly inconsistent with selfish shrewdness. The wealth of the world neither consists in nor is adequately represented by the money of the world. Gold itself is not a valuable commodity. It is no more wealth than hat checks are hats. But it can be so manipulated, as the sign of wealth, as to give its owners or controllers the whip-hand over the credit which producers of real wealth require. Dealing in money, the commodity of exchange, is a very lucrative business. When money itself becomes an article of commerce to be bought and sold before real wealth can be moved or exchanged, the usurers and speculators are thereby permitted to lay a tax on production. The hold which controllers of money are able to maintain on productive forces is seen to be more powerful when it is remembered that, although money is supposed to represent the real wealth of the world, there is always much more wealth than there is money, and real wealth is often compelled to wait upon money, thus leading to that most paradoxical situation--a world filled with wealth but suffering want. These facts are not merely fiscal, to be cast into figures and left there. They are instinct with human destiny and they bleed. The poverty of the world is seldom caused by lack of goods but by a "money stringency." Commercial competition between nations, which leads to international rivalry and ill-will, which in their turn breed wars-- these are some of the human significations of these facts. Thus poverty and war, two great preventable evils, grow on a single stem. Let us see if a beginning toward a better method cannot be made. CHAPTER XIII WHY BE POOR? Poverty springs from a number of sources, the more important of which are controllable. So does special privilege. I think it is entirely feasible to abolish both poverty and special privilege--and there can be no question but that their abolition is desirable. Both are unnatural, but it is work, not law, to which we must look for results. By poverty I mean the lack of reasonably sufficient food, housing, and clothing for an individual or a family. There will have to be differences in the grades of sustenance. Men are not equal in mentality or in physique. Any plan which starts with the assumption that men are or ought to be equal is unnatural and therefore unworkable. There can be no feasible or desirable process of leveling down. Such a course only promotes poverty by making it universal instead of exceptional. Forcing the efficient producer to become inefficient does not make the inefficient producer more efficient. Poverty can be done away with only by plenty, and we have now gone far enough along in the science of production to be able to see, as a natural development, the day when production and distribution will be so scientific that all may have according to ability and industry. The extreme Socialists went wide of the mark in their reasoning that industry would inevitably crush the worker. Modern industry is gradually lifting the worker and the world. We only need to know more about planning and methods. The best results can and will be brought about by individual initiative and ingenuity--by intelligent individual leadership. The government, because it is essentially negative, cannot give positive aid to any really constructive programme. It can give negative aid--by removing obstructions to progress and by ceasing to be a burden upon the community. The underlying causes of poverty, as I can see them, are essentially due to the bad adjustment between production and distribution, in both industry and agriculture--between the source of power and its application. The wastes due to lack of adjustment are stupendous. All of these wastes must fall before intelligent leadership consecrated to service. So long as leadership thinks more of money than it does of service, the wastes will continue. Waste is prevented by far-sighted not by short-sighted men. Short-sighted men think first of money. They cannot see waste. They think of service as altruistic instead of as the most practical thing in the world. They cannot get far enough away from the little things to see the big things--to see the biggest thing of all, which is that opportunist production from a purely money standpoint is the least profitable. Service can be based upon altruism, but that sort of service is not usually the best. The sentimental trips up the practical. It is not that the industrial enterprises are unable fairly to distribute a share of the wealth which they create. It is simply that the waste is so great that there is not a sufficient share for everyone engaged, notwithstanding the fact that the product is usually sold at so high a price as to restrict its fullest consumption. Take some of the wastes. Take the wastes of power. The Mississippi Valley is without coal. Through its centre pour many millions of potential horsepower--the Mississippi River. But if the people by its banks want power or heat they buy coal that has been hauled hundreds of miles and consequently has to be sold at far above its worth as heat or power. Or if they cannot afford to buy this expensive coal, they go out and cut down trees, thereby depriving themselves of one of the great conservers of water power. Until recently they never thought of the power at hand which, at next to nothing beyond the initial cost, could heat, light, cook, and work for the huge population which that valley is destined to support. The cure of poverty is not in personal economy but in better production. The "thrift" and "economy" ideas have been overworked. The word "economy" represents a fear. The great and tragic fact of waste is impressed on a mind by some circumstance, usually of a most materialistic kind. There comes a violent reaction against extravagance--the mind catches hold of the idea of "economy." But it only flies from a greater to a lesser evil; it does not make the full journey from error to truth. Economy is the rule of half-alive minds. There can be no doubt that it is better than waste; neither can there be any doubt that it is not as good as use. People who pride themselves on their economy take it as a virtue. But what is more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know "economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow themselves to give to anything. They shrivel--body and soul. Economy is waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there are two kinds of waste--that of the prodigal who throws his substance away in riotous living, and that of the sluggard who allows his substance to rot from non-use. The rigid economizer is in danger of being classed with the sluggard. Extravagance is usually a reaction from suppression of expenditure. Economy is likely to be a reaction from extravagance. Everything was given us to use. There is no evil from which we suffer that did not come about through misuse. The worst sin we can commit against the things of our common life is to misuse them. "Misuse" is the wider term. We like to say "waste," but waste is only one phase of misuse. All waste is misuse; all misuse is waste. It is possible even to overemphasize the saving habit. It is proper and desirable that everyone have a margin; it is really wasteful not to have one--if you can have one. But it can be overdone. We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has a value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child out into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save. Most men who are laboriously saving a few dollars would do better to invest those few dollars--first in themselves, and then in some useful work. Eventually they would have more to save. Young men ought to invest rather than save. They ought to invest in themselves to increase creative value; after they have taken themselves to the peak of usefulness, then will be time enough to think of laying aside, as a fixed policy, a certain substantial share of income. You are not "saving" when you prevent yourself from becoming more productive. You are really taking away from your ultimate capital; you are reducing the value of one of nature's investments. The principle of use is the true guide. Use is positive, active, life-giving. Use is alive. Use adds to the sum of good. Personal want may be avoided without changing the general condition. Wage increases, price increases, profit increases, other kinds of increases designed to bring more money here or money there, are only attempts of this or that class to get out of the fire--regardless of what may happen to everyone else. There is a foolish belief that if only the money can be gotten, somehow the storm can be weathered. Labour believes that if it can get more wages, it can weather the storm. Capital thinks that if it can get more profits, it can weather the storm. There is a pathetic faith in what money can do. Money is very useful in normal times, but money has no more value than the people put into it by production, and it can be so misused. It can be so superstitiously worshipped as a substitute for real wealth as to destroy its value altogether. The idea persists that there exists an essential conflict between industry and the farm. There is no such conflict. It is nonsense to say that because the cities are overcrowded everybody ought to go back to the farm. If everybody did so farming would soon decline as a satisfactory occupation. It is not more sensible for everyone to flock to the manufacturing towns. If the farms be deserted, of what use are manufacturers? A reciprocity can exist between farming and manufacturing. The manufacturer can give the farmer what he needs to be a good farmer, and the farmer and other producers of raw materials can give the manufacturer what he needs to be a good manufacturer. Then with transportation as a messenger, we shall have a stable and a sound system built on service. If we live in smaller communities where the tension of living is not so high, and where the products of the fields and gardens can be had without the interference of so many profiteers, there will be little poverty or unrest. Look at this whole matter of seasonal work. Take building as an example of a seasonal trade. What a waste of power it is to allow builders to hibernate through the winter, waiting for the building season to come around! And what an equal waste of skill it is to force experienced artisans who have gone into factories to escape the loss of the winter season to stay in the factory jobs through the building season because they are afraid they may not get their factory places back in the winter. What a waste this all-year system has been! If the farmer could get away from the shop to till his farm in the planting, growing, and harvesting seasons (they are only a small part of the year, after all), and if the builder could get away from the shop to ply his useful trade in its season, how much better they would be, and how much more smoothly the world would proceed. Suppose we all moved outdoors every spring and summer and lived the wholesome life of the outdoors for three or four months! We could not have "slack times." The farm has its dull season. That is the time for the farmer to come into the factory and help produce the things he needs to till the farm. The factory also has its dull season. That is the time for the workmen to go out to the land to help produce food. Thus we might take the slack out of work and restore the balance between the artificial and the natural. But not the least benefit would be the more balanced view of life we should thus obtain. The mixing of the arts is not only beneficial in a material way, but it makes for breadth of mind and fairness of judgment. A great deal of our unrest to-day is the result of narrow, prejudiced judgment. If our work were more diversified, if we saw more sides of life, if we saw how necessary was one factor to another, we should be more balanced. Every man is better for a period of work under the open sky. It is not at all impossible. What is desirable and right is never impossible. It would only mean a little teamwork--a little less attention to greedy ambition and a little more attention to life. Those who are rich find it desirable to go away for three or four months a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort. The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that way even if they could. But they would provide the team-work necessary for an outdoor, seasonal employment. It is hardly possible to doubt that much of the unrest we see about us is the result of unnatural modes of life. Men who do the same thing continuously the year around and are shut away from the health of the sun and the spaciousness of the great out of doors are hardly to be blamed if they see matters in a distorted light. And that applies equally to the capitalist and the worker. What is there in life that should hamper normal and wholesome modes of living? And what is there in industry incompatible with all the arts receiving in their turn the attention of those qualified to serve in them? It may be objected that if the forces of industry were withdrawn from the shops every summer it would impede production. But we must look at the matter from a universal point of view. We must consider the increased energy of the industrial forces after three or four months in outdoor work. We must also consider the effect on the cost of living which would result from a general return to the fields. We have, as I indicated in a previous chapter, been working toward this combination of farm and factory and with entirely satisfactory results. At Northville, not far from Detroit, we have a little factory making valves. It is a little factory, but it makes a great many valves. Both the management and the mechanism of the plant are comparatively simple because it makes but one thing. We do not have to search for skilled employees. The skill is in the machine. The people of the countryside can work in the plant part of the time and on the farm part of the time, for mechanical farming is not very laborious. The plant power is derived from water. Another plant on a somewhat larger scale is in building at Flat Rock, about fifteen miles from Detroit. We have dammed the river. The dam also serves as a bridge for the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway, which was in need of a new bridge at that point, and a road for the public--all in one construction. We are going to make our glass at this point. The damming of the river gives sufficient water for the floating to us of most of our raw material. It also gives us our power through a hydroelectric plant. And, being well out in the midst of the farming country, there can be no possibility of crowding or any of the ills incident to too great a concentration of population. The men will have plots of ground or farms as well as their jobs in the factory, and these can be scattered over fifteen or twenty miles surrounding--for of course nowadays the workingman can come to the shop in an automobile. There we shall have the combination of agriculture and industrialism and the entire absence of all the evils of concentration. The belief that an industrial country has to concentrate its industries is not, in my opinion, well-founded. That is only a stage in industrial development. As we learn more about manufacturing and learn to make articles with interchangeable parts, then those parts can be made under the best possible conditions. And these best possible conditions, as far as the employees are concerned, are also the best possible conditions from the manufacturing standpoint. One could not put a great plant on a little stream. One can put a small plant on a little stream, and the combination of little plants, each making a single part, will make the whole cheaper than a vast factory would. There are exceptions, as where casting has to be done. In such case, as at River Rouge, we want to combine the making of the metal and the casting of it and also we want to use all of the waste power. This requires a large investment and a considerable force of men in one place. But such combinations are the exception rather than the rule, and there would not be enough of them seriously to interfere with the process of breaking down the concentration of industry. Industry will decentralize. There is no city that would be rebuilt as it is, were it destroyed--which fact is in itself a confession of our real estimate of our cities. The city had a place to fill, a work to do. Doubtless the country places would not have approximated their livableness had it not been for the cities. By crowding together, men have learned some secrets. They would never have learned them alone in the country. Sanitation, lighting, social organization--all these are products of men's experience in the city. But also every social ailment from which we to-day suffer originated and centres in the big cities. You will find the smaller communities living along in unison with the seasons, having neither extreme poverty nor wealth--none of the violent plagues of upheave and unrest which afflict our great populations. There is something about a city of a million people which is untamed and threatening. Thirty miles away, happy and contented villages read of the ravings of the city! A great city is really a helpless mass. Everything it uses is carried to it. Stop transport and the city stops. It lives off the shelves of stores. The shelves produce nothing. The city cannot feed, clothe, warm, or house itself. City conditions of work and living are so artificial that instincts sometimes rebel against their unnaturalness. And finally, the overhead expense of living or doing business in the great cities is becoming so large as to be unbearable. It places so great a tax upon life that there is no surplus over to live on. The politicians have found it easy to borrow money and they have borrowed to the limit. Within the last decade the expense of running every city in the country has tremendously increased. A good part of that expense is for interest upon money borrowed; the money has gone either into non-productive brick, stone, and mortar, or into necessities of city life, such as water supplies and sewage systems at far above a reasonable cost. The cost of maintaining these works, the cost of keeping in order great masses of people and traffic is greater than the advantages derived from community life. The modern city has been prodigal, it is to-day bankrupt, and to-morrow it will cease to be. The provision of a great amount of cheap and convenient power--not all at once, but as it may be used--will do more than anything else to bring about the balancing of life and the cutting of the waste which breeds poverty. There is no single source of power. It may be that generating electricity by a steam plant at the mine mouth will be the most economical method for one community. Hydro-electric power may be best for another community. But certainly in every community there ought to be a central station to furnish cheap power--it ought to be held as essential as a railway or a water supply. And we could have every great source of power harnessed and working for the common good were it not that the expense of obtaining capital stands in the way. I think that we shall have to revise some of our notions about capital. Capital that a business makes for itself, that is employed to expand the workman's opportunity and increase his comfort and prosperity, and that is used to give more and more men work, at the same time reducing the cost of service to the public--that sort of capital, even though it be under single control, is not a menace to humanity. It is a working surplus held in trust and daily use for the benefit of all. The holder of such capital can scarcely regard it as a personal reward. No man can view such a surplus as his own, for he did not create it alone. It is the joint product of his whole organization. The owner's idea may have released all the energy and direction, but certainly it did not supply all the energy and direction. Every workman was a partner in the creation. No business can possibly be considered only with reference to to-day and to the individuals engaged in it. It must have the means to carry on. The best wages ought to be paid. A proper living ought to be assured every participant in the business--no matter what his part. But, for the sake of that business's ability to support those who work in it, a surplus has to be held somewhere. The truly honest manufacturer holds his surplus profits in that trust. Ultimately it does not matter where this surplus be held nor who controls it; it is its use that matters. Capital that is not constantly creating more and better jobs is more useless than sand. Capital that is not constantly making conditions of daily labour better and the reward of daily labour more just, is not fulfilling its highest function. The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more service for the betterment of life. Unless we in our industries are helping to solve the social problem, we are not doing our principal work. We are not fully serving. CHAPTER XIV THE TRACTOR AND POWER FARMING It is not generally known that our tractor, which we call the "Fordson," was put into production about a year before we had intended, because of the Allies' war-time food emergency, and that all of our early production (aside, of course, from the trial and experimental machines) went directly to England. We sent in all five thousand tractors across the sea in the critical 1917-18 period when the submarines were busiest. Every one of them arrived safely, and officers of the British Government have been good enough to say that without their aid England could scarcely have met its food crisis. It was these tractors, run mostly by women, that ploughed up the old estates and golf courses and let all England be planted and cultivated without taking away from the fighting man power or crippling the forces in the munitions factories. It came about in this way: The English food administration, about the time that we entered the war in 1917, saw that, with the German submarines torpedoing a freighter almost every day, the already low supply of shipping was going to be totally inadequate to carry the American troops across the seas, to carry the essential munitions for these troops and the Allies, to carry the food for the fighting forces, and at the same time carry enough food for the home population of England. It was then that they began shipping out of England the wives and families of the colonials and made plans for the growing of crops at home. The situation was a grave one. There were not enough draft animals in all England to plough and cultivate land to raise crops in sufficient volume to make even a dent in the food imports. Power farming was scarcely known, for the English farms were not, before the war, big enough to warrant the purchase of heavy, expensive farm machinery, and especially with agricultural labour so cheap and plentiful. Various concerns in England made tractors, but they were heavy affairs and mostly run by steam. There were not enough of them to go around. More could not easily be made, for all the factories were working on munitions, and even if they had been made they were too big and clumsy for the average field and in addition required the management of engineers. We had put together several tractors at our Manchester plant for demonstration purposes. They had been made in the United States and merely assembled in England. The Board of Agriculture requested the Royal Agricultural Society to make a test of these tractors and report. This is what they reported: At the request of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, we have examined two Ford tractors, rated at 25 h. p., at work ploughing: First, cross-ploughing a fallow of strong land in a dirty condition, and subsequently in a field of lighter land which had seeded itself down into rough grass, and which afforded every opportunity of testing the motor on the level and on a steep hill. In the first trial, a 2-furrow Oliver plough was used, ploughing on an average 5 inches deep with a 16-inch wide furrow; a 3-furrow Cockshutt plough was also used at the same depth with the breast pitched 10 inches. In the second trial, the 3-furrow plough was used, ploughing an average of 6 inches deep. In both cases the motor did its work with ease, and on a measured acre the time occupied was 1 hour 30 minutes, with a consumption of 2 gallons of paraffin per acre. These results we consider very satisfactory. The ploughs were not quite suitable to the land, and the tractors, consequently, were working at some disadvantage. The total weight of the tractor fully loaded with fuel and water, as weighed by us, was 23 1/4 cwts. The tractor is light for its power, and, consequently, light on the land, is easily handled, turns in a small circle, and leaves a very narrow headland. The motor is quickly started up from cold on a small supply of petrol. After these trials we proceeded to Messrs. Ford's works at Trafford Park, Manchester, where one of the motors had been sent to be dismantled and inspected in detail. We find the design of ample strength, and the work of first-rate quality. We consider the driving-wheels rather light, and we understand that a new and stronger pattern is to be supplied in future. The tractor is designed purely for working on the land, and the wheels, which are fitted with spuds, should be provided with some protection to enable them to travel on the road when moving from farm to farm. Bearing the above points in mind, we recommend, under existing circumstances, that steps be taken to construct immediately as many of these tractors as possible. The report was signed by Prof. W. E. Dalby and F. S. Courtney, engineering; R. N. Greaves, engineering and agriculture; Robert W. Hobbs and Henry Overman, agriculture; Gilbert Greenall, honorary directors, and John E. Cross, steward. Almost immediately after the filing of that report we received the following wire: Have not received anything definite concerning shipment necessary steel and plant for Cork factory. Under best circumstances however Cork factory production could not be available before next spring. The need for food production in England is imperative and large quantity of tractors must be available at earliest possible date for purpose breaking up existing grass land and ploughing for Fall wheat. Am requested by high authorities to appeal to Mr. Ford for help. Would you be willing to send Sorensen and others with drawings of everything necessary, loaning them to British Government so that parts can be manufactured over here and assembled in Government factories under Sorensen's guidance? Can assure you positively this suggestion is made in national interest and if carried out will be done by the Government for the people with no manufacturing or capitalist interest invested and no profit being made by any interests whatever. The matter is very urgent. Impossible to ship anything adequate from America because many thousand tractors must be provided. Ford Tractor considered best and only suitable design. Consequently national necessity entirely dependent Mr. Ford's design. My work prevents me coming America to present the proposal personally. Urge favorable consideration and immediate decision because every day is of vital importance. You may rely on manufacturing facility for production here under strictest impartial Government control. Would welcome Sorensen and any and every other assistance and guidance you can furnish from America. Cable reply, Perry, Care of Harding "Prodome," London. PRODOME. I understand that its sending was directed by the British Cabinet. We at once cabled our entire willingness to lend the drawings, the benefit of what experience we had to date, and whatever men might be necessary to get production under way, and on the next ship sent Charles E. Sorensen with full drawings. Mr. Sorensen had opened the Manchester plant and was familiar with English conditions. He was in charge of the manufacture of tractors in this country. Mr. Sorensen started at work with the British officials to the end of having the parts made and assembled in England. Many of the materials which we used were special and could not be obtained in England. All of their factories equipped for doing casting and machine work were filled with munition orders. It proved to be exceedingly difficult for the Ministry to get tenders of any kind. Then came June and a series of destructive air raids on London. There was a crisis. Something had to be done, and finally, after passing to and fro among half the factories of England, our men succeeded in getting the tenders lodged with the Ministry. Lord Milner exhibited these tenders to Mr. Sorensen. Taking the best of them the price per tractor came to about $1,500 without any guarantee of delivery. "That price is out of all reason," said Mr. Sorensen, "These should not cost more than $700 apiece." "Can you make five thousand at that price?" asked Lord Milner. "Yes," answered Mr. Sorensen. "How long will it take you to deliver them?" "We will start shipping within sixty days." They signed a contract on the spot, which, among other things, provided for an advance payment of 25 per cent. of the total sum. Mr. Sorensen cabled us what he had done and took the next boat home. The 25 five per cent. payment was, by the way, not touched by us until after the entire contract was completed: we deposited it in a kind of trust fund. The tractor works was not ready to go into production. The Highland Park plant might have been adapted, but every machine in it was going day and night on essential war work. There was only one thing to do. We ran up an emergency extension to our plant at Dearborn, equipped it with machinery that was ordered by telegraph and mostly came by express, and in less than sixty days the first tractors were on the docks in New York in the hands of the British authorities. They delayed in getting cargo space, but on December 6, 1917, we received this cable: London, December 5, 1917. SORENSEN, Fordson, F. R. Dearborn. First tractors arrived, when will Smith and others leave? Cable. PERRY. The entire shipment of five thousand tractors went through within three months and that is why the tractors were being used in England long before they were really known in the United States. The planning of the tractor really antedated that of the motor car. Out on the farm my first experiments were with tractors, and it will be remembered that I was employed for some time by a manufacturer of steam tractors--the big heavy road and thresher engines. But I did not see any future for the large tractors. They were too expensive for the small farm, required too much skill to operate, and were much too heavy as compared with the pull they exerted. And anyway, the public was more interested in being carried than in being pulled; the horseless carriage made a greater appeal to the imagination. And so it was that I practically dropped work upon a tractor until the automobile was in production. With the automobile on the farms, the tractor became a necessity. For then the farmers had been introduced to power. The farmer does not stand so much in need of new tools as of power to run the tools that he has. I have followed many a weary mile behind a plough and I know all the drudgery of it. What a waste it is for a human being to spend hours and days behind a slowly moving team of horses when in the same time a tractor could do six times as much work! It is no wonder that, doing everything slowly and by hand, the average farmer has not been able to earn more than a bare living while farm products are never as plentiful and cheap as they ought to be. As in the automobile, we wanted power--not weight. The weight idea was firmly fixed in the minds of tractor makers. It was thought that excess weight meant excess pulling power--that the machine could not grip unless it were heavy. And this in spite of the fact that a cat has not much weight and is a pretty good climber. I have already set out my ideas on weight. The only kind of tractor that I thought worth working on was one that would be light, strong, and so simple that any one could run it. Also it had to be so cheap that any one could buy it. With these ends in view, we worked for nearly fifteen years on a design and spent some millions of dollars in experiments. We followed exactly the same course as with the automobile. Each part had to be as strong as it was possible to make it, the parts had to be few in number, and the whole had to admit of quantity production. We had some thought that perhaps the automobile engine might be used and we conducted a few experiments with it. But finally we became convinced that the kind of tractor we wanted and the automobile had practically nothing in common. It was the intention from the beginning that the tractor should be made as a separate undertaking from the automobile and in a distinct plant. No plant is big enough to make two articles. The automobile is designed to carry; the tractor is designed to pull--to climb. And that difference in function made all the difference in the world in construction. The hard problem was to get bearings that would stand up against the heavy pull. We finally got them and a construction which seems to give the best average performance under all conditions. We fixed upon a four-cylinder engine that is started by gasoline but runs thereafter on kerosene. The lightest weight that we could attain with strength was 2,425 pounds. The grip is in the lugs on the driving wheels--as in the claws of the cat. In addition to its strictly pulling functions, the tractor, to be of the greatest service, had also to be designed for work as a stationary engine so that when it was not out on the road or in the fields it might be hitched up with a belt to run machinery. In short, it had to be a compact, versatile power plant. And that it has been. It has not only ploughed, harrowed, cultivated, and reaped, but it has also threshed, run grist mills, saw mills, and various other sorts of mills, pulled stumps, ploughed snow, and done about everything that a plant of moderate power could do from sheep-shearing to printing a newspaper. It has been fitted with heavy tires to haul on roads, with sledge runners for the woods and ice, and with rimmed wheels to run on rails. When the shops in Detroit were shut down by coal shortage, we got out the _Dearborn Independent_ by sending a tractor to the electro-typing factory--stationing the tractor in the alley, sending up a belt four stories, and making the plates by tractor power. Its use in ninety-five distinct lines of service has been called to our attention, and probably we know only a fraction of the uses. The mechanism of the tractor is even more simple than that of the automobile and it is manufactured in exactly the same fashion. Until the present year, the production has been held back by the lack of a suitable factory. The first tractors had been made in the plant at Dearborn which is now used as an experimental station. That was not large enough to affect the economies of large-scale production and it could not well be enlarged because the design was to make the tractors at the River Rouge plant, and that, until this year, was not in full operation. Now that plant is completed for the making of tractors. The work flows exactly as with the automobiles. Each part is a separate departmental undertaking and each part as it is finished joins the conveyor system which leads it to its proper initial assembly and eventually into the final assembly. Everything moves and there is no skilled work. The capacity of the present plant is one million tractors a year. That is the number we expect to make--for the world needs inexpensive, general-utility power plants more now than ever before--and also it now knows enough about machinery to want such plants. The first tractors, as I have said, went to England. They were first offered in the United States in 1918 at $750. In the next year, with the higher costs, the price had to be made $885; in the middle of the year it was possible again to make the introductory price of $750. In 1920 we charged $790; in the next year we were sufficiently familiar with the production to begin cutting. The price came down to $625 and then in 1922 with the River Rouge plant functioning we were able to cut to $395. All of which shows what getting into scientific production will do to a price. Just as I have no idea how cheaply the Ford automobile can eventually be made, I have no idea how cheaply the tractor can eventually be made. It is important that it shall be cheap. Otherwise power will not go to all the farms. And they must all of them have power. Within a few years a farm depending solely on horse and hand power will be as much of a curiosity as a factory run by a treadmill. The farmer must either take up power or go out of business. The cost figures make this inevitable. During the war the Government made a test of a Fordson tractor to see how its costs compared with doing the work with horses. The figures on the tractor were taken at the high price plus freight. The depreciation and repair items are not so great as the report sets them forth, and even if they were, the prices are cut in halves which would therefore cut the depreciation and repair charge in halves. These are the figures: COST, FORDSON, $880. WEARING LIFE, 4,800 HOURS AT 4/5 ACRES PER HOUR, 3,840 ACRES 3,840 acres at $880; depreciation per acre .221 Repairs for 3,840 acres, $100; per acre .026 Fuel cost, kerosene at 19 cents; 2 gal. per acre .38 1 gal. oil per 8 acres; per acre .075 Driver, $2 per day, 8 acres; per acre .25 --- Cost of ploughing with Fordson; per acre. .95 8 HORSES COST, $1,200. WORKING LIFE, 5,000 HOURS AT 4/5 ACRE PER HOUR, 4,000 ACRES 4,000 acres at $1,200, depreciation of horses, per acre. . . . 30 Feed per horse, 40 cents (100 working days) per acre . . . . . 40 Feed per horse, 10 cents a day (265 idle days) per acre. . . 2.65 Two drivers, two gang ploughs, at $2 each per day, per acre. . 50 ---- Cost of ploughing with horses; per acre. . . . . . . . . . . 1.46 At present costs, an acre would run about 40 cents only two cents representing depreciation and repairs. But this does not take account of the time element. The ploughing is done in about one fourth the time, with only the physical energy used to steer the tractor. Ploughing has become a matter of motoring across a field. Farming in the old style is rapidly fading into a picturesque memory. This does not mean that work is going to remove from the farm. Work cannot be removed from any life that is productive. But power-farming does mean this--drudgery is going to be removed from the farm. Power-farming is simply taking the burden from flesh and blood and putting it on steel. We are in the opening years of power-farming. The motor car wrought a revolution in modern farm life, not because it was a vehicle, but because it had power. Farming ought to be something more than a rural occupation. It ought to be the business of raising food. And when it does become a business the actual work of farming the average sort of farm can be done in twenty-four days a year. The other days can be given over to other kinds of business. Farming is too seasonal an occupation to engage all of a man's time. As a food business, farming will justify itself as a business if it raises food in sufficient quantity and distributes it under such conditions as will enable every family to have enough food for its reasonable needs. There could not be a food trust if we were to raise such overwhelming quantities of all kinds of food as to make manipulation and exploitation impossible. The farmer who limits his planting plays into the hands of the speculators. And then, perhaps, we shall witness a revival of the small flour-milling business. It was an evil day when the village flour mill disappeared. Cooperative farming will become so developed that we shall see associations of farmers with their own packing houses in which their own hogs will be turned into ham and bacon, and with their own flour mills in which their grain will be turned into commercial foodstuffs. Why a steer raised in Texas should be brought to Chicago and then served in Boston is a question that cannot be answered as long as all the steers the city needs could be raised near Boston. The centralization of food manufacturing industries, entailing enormous costs for transportation and organization, is too wasteful long to continue in a developed community. We shall have as great a development in farming during the next twenty years as we have had in manufacturing during the last twenty. CHAPTER XV WHY CHARITY? Why should there by any necessity for almsgiving in a civilized community? It is not the charitable mind to which I object. Heaven forbid that we should ever grow cold toward a fellow creature in need. Human sympathy is too fine for the cool, calculating attitude to take its place. One can name very few great advances that did not have human sympathy behind them. It is in order to help people that every notable service is undertaken. The trouble is that we have been using this great, fine motive force for ends too small. If human sympathy prompts us to feed the hungry, why should it not give the larger desire--to make hunger in our midst impossible? If we have sympathy enough for people to help them out of their troubles, surely we ought to have sympathy enough to keep them out. It is easy to give; it is harder to make giving unnecessary. To make the giving unnecessary we must look beyond the individual to the cause of his misery--not hesitating, of course, to relieve him in the meantime, but not stopping with mere temporary relief. The difficulty seems to be in getting to look beyond to the causes. More people can be moved to help a poor family than can be moved to give their minds toward the removal of poverty altogether. I have no patience with professional charity, or with any sort of commercialized humanitarianism. The moment human helpfulness is systematized, organized, commercialized, and professionalized, the heart of it is extinguished, and it becomes a cold and clammy thing. Real human helpfulness is never card-catalogued or advertised. There are more orphan children being cared for in the private homes of people who love them than in the institutions. There are more old people being sheltered by friends than you can find in the old people's homes. There is more aid by loans from family to family than by the loan societies. That is, human society on a humane basis looks out for itself. It is a grave question how far we ought to countenance the commercialization of the natural instinct of charity. Professional charity is not only cold but it hurts more than it helps. It degrades the recipients and drugs their self-respect. Akin to it is sentimental idealism. The idea went abroad not so many years ago that "service" was something that we should expect to have done for us. Untold numbers of people became the recipients of well-meant "social service." Whole sections of our population were coddled into a state of expectant, child-like helplessness. There grew up a regular profession of doing things for people, which gave an outlet for a laudable desire for service, but which contributed nothing whatever to the self-reliance of the people nor to the correction of the conditions out of which the supposed need for such service grew. Worse than this encouragement of childish wistfulness, instead of training for self-reliance and self-sufficiency, was the creation of a feeling of resentment which nearly always overtakes the objects of charity. People often complain of the "ingratitude" of those whom they help. Nothing is more natural. In the first place, precious little of our so-called charity is ever real charity, offered out of a heart full of interest and sympathy. In the second place, no person ever relishes being in a position where he is forced to take favors. Such "social work" creates a strained relation--the recipient of bounty feels that he has been belittled in the taking, and it is a question whether the giver should not also feel that he has been belittled in the giving. Charity never led to a settled state of affairs. The charitable system that does not aim to make itself unnecessary is not performing service. It is simply making a job for itself and is an added item to the record of non-production. Charity becomes unnecessary as those who seem to be unable to earn livings are taken out of the non-productive class and put into the productive. In a previous chapter I have set out how experiments in our shops have demonstrated that in sufficiently subdivided industry there are places which can be filled by the maimed, the halt, and the blind. Scientific industry need not be a monster devouring all who come near it. When it is, then it is not fulfilling its place in life. In and out of industry there must be jobs that take the full strength of a powerful man; there are other jobs, and plenty of them, that require more skill than the artisans of the Middle Ages ever had. The minute subdivision of industry permits a strong man or a skilled man always to use his strength or skill. In the old hand industry, a skilled man spent a good part of his time at unskilled work. That was a waste. But since in those days every task required both skilled and unskilled labour to be performed by the one man, there was little room for either the man who was too stupid ever to be skilled or the man who did not have the opportunity to learn a trade. No mechanic working with only his hands can earn more than a bare sustenance. He cannot have a surplus. It has been taken for granted that, coming into old age, a mechanic must be supported by his children or, if he has no children, that he will be a public charge. All of that is quite unnecessary. The subdivision of industry opens places that can be filled by practically any one. There are more places in subdivision industry that can be filled by blind men than there are blind men. There are more places that can be filled by cripples than there are cripples. And in each of these places the man who short-sightedly might be considered as an object of charity can earn just as adequate a living as the keenest and most able-bodied. It is waste to put an able-bodied man in a job that might be just as well cared for by a cripple. It is a frightful waste to put the blind at weaving baskets. It is waste to have convicts breaking stone or picking hemp or doing any sort of petty, useless task. A well-conducted jail should not only be self-supporting, but a man in jail ought to be able to support his family or, if he has no family, he should be able to accumulate a sum of money sufficient to put him on his feet when he gets out of jail. I am not advocating convict labour or the farming out of men practically as slaves. Such a plan is too detestable for words. We have greatly overdone the prison business, anyway; we begin at the wrong end. But as long as we have prisons they can be fitted into the general scheme of production so neatly that a prison may become a productive unit working for the relief of the public and the benefit of the prisoners. I know that there are laws--foolish laws passed by unthinking men--that restrict the industrial activities of prisons. Those laws were passed mostly at the behest of what is called Labour. They are not for the benefit of the workingman. Increasing the charges upon a community does not benefit any one in the community. If the idea of service be kept in mind, then there is always in every community more work to do than there are men who can do it. Industry organized for service removes the need for philanthropy. Philanthropy, no matter how noble its motive, does not make for self-reliance. We must have self-reliance. A community is the better for being discontented, for being dissatisfied with what it has. I do not mean the petty, daily, nagging, gnawing sort of discontent, but a broad, courageous sort of discontent which believes that everything which is done can and ought to be eventually done better. Industry organized for service--and the workingman as well as the leader must serve--can pay wages sufficiently large to permit every family to be both self-reliant and self-supporting. A philanthropy that spends its time and money in helping the world to do more for itself is far better than the sort which merely gives and thus encourages idleness. Philanthropy, like everything else, ought to be productive, and I believe that it can be. I have personally been experimenting with a trade school and a hospital to discover if such institutions, which are commonly regarded as benevolent, cannot be made to stand on their own feet. I have found that they can be. I am not in sympathy with the trade school as it is commonly organized--the boys get only a smattering of knowledge and they do not learn how to use that knowledge. The trade school should not be a cross between a technical college and a school; it should be a means of teaching boys to be productive. If they are put at useless tasks--at making articles and then throwing them away--they cannot have the interest or acquire the knowledge which is their right. And during the period of schooling the boy is not productive; the schools--unless by charity--make no provision for the support of the boy. Many boys need support; they must work at the first thing which comes to hand. They have no chance to pick and choose. When the boy thus enters life untrained, he but adds to the already great scarcity of competent labour. Modern industry requires a degree of ability and skill which neither early quitting of school nor long continuance at school provides. It is true that, in order to retain the interest of the boy and train him in handicraft, manual training departments have been introduced in the more progressive school systems, but even these are confessedly makeshifts because they only cater to, without satisfying, the normal boy's creative instincts. To meet this condition--to fulfill the boy's educational possibilities and at the same time begin his industrial training along constructive lines--the Henry Ford Trade School was incorporated in 1916. We do not use the word philanthropy in connection with this effort. It grew out of a desire to aid the boy whose circumstances compelled him to leave school early. This desire to aid fitted in conveniently with the necessity of providing trained tool-makers in the shops. From the beginning we have held to three cardinal principles: first, that the boy was to be kept a boy and not changed into a premature working-man; second, that the academic training was to go hand in hand with the industrial instruction; third, that the boy was to be given a sense of pride and responsibility in his work by being trained on articles which were to be used. He works on objects of recognized industrial worth. The school is incorporated as a private school and is open to boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. It is organized on the basis of scholarships and each boy is awarded an annual cash scholarship of four hundred dollars at his entrance. This is gradually increased to a maximum of six hundred dollars if his record is satisfactory. A record of the class and shop work is kept and also of the industry the boy displays in each. It is the marks in industry which are used in making subsequent adjustments of his scholarship. In addition to his scholarship each boy is given a small amount each month which must be deposited in his savings account. This thrift fund must be left in the bank as long as the boy remains in the school unless he is given permission by the authorities to use it for an emergency. One by one the problems of managing the school are being solved and better ways of accomplishing its objects are being discovered. At the beginning it was the custom to give the boy one third of the day in class work and two thirds in shop work. This daily adjustment was found to be a hindrance to progress, and now the boy takes his training in blocks of weeks--one week in the class and two weeks in the shop. Classes are continuous, the various groups taking their weeks in turn. The best instructors obtainable are on the staff, and the text-book is the Ford plant. It offers more resources for practical education than most universities. The arithmetic lessons come in concrete shop problems. No longer is the boy's mind tortured with the mysterious A who can row four miles while B is rowing two. The actual processes and actual conditions are exhibited to him--he is taught to observe. Cities are no longer black specks on maps and continents are not just pages of a book. The shop shipments to Singapore, the shop receipts of material from Africa and South America are shown to him, and the world becomes an inhabited planet instead of a coloured globe on the teacher's desk. In physics and chemistry the industrial plant provides a laboratory in which theory becomes practice and the lesson becomes actual experience. Suppose the action of a pump is being taught. The teacher explains the parts and their functions, answers questions, and then they all troop away to the engine rooms to see a great pump. The school has a regular factory workshop with the finest equipment. The boys work up from one machine to the next. They work solely on parts or articles needed by the company, but our needs are so vast that this list comprehends nearly everything. The inspected work is purchased by the Ford Motor Company, and, of course, the work that does not pass inspection is a loss to the school. The boys who have progressed furthest do fine micrometer work, and they do every operation with a clear understanding of the purposes and principles involved. They repair their own machines; they learn how to take care of themselves around machinery; they study pattern-making and in clean, well-lighted rooms with their instructors they lay the foundation for successful careers. When they graduate, places are always open for them in the shops at good wages. The social and moral well-being of the boys is given an unobtrusive care. The supervision is not of authority but of friendly interest. The home conditions of every boy are pretty well known, and his tendencies are observed. And no attempt is made to coddle him. No attempt is made to render him namby-pamby. One day when two boys came to the point of a fight, they were not lectured on the wickedness of fighting. They were counseled to make up their differences in a better way, but when, boy-like, they preferred the more primitive mode of settlement, they were given gloves and made to fight it out in a corner of the shop. The only prohibition laid upon them was that they were to finish it there, and not to be caught fighting outside the shop. The result was a short encounter and--friendship. They are handled as boys; their better boyish instincts are encouraged; and when one sees them in the shops and classes one cannot easily miss the light of dawning mastery in their eyes. They have a sense of "belonging." They feel they are doing something worth while. They learn readily and eagerly because they are learning the things which every active boy wants to learn and about which he is constantly asking questions that none of his home-folks can answer. Beginning with six boys the school now has two hundred and is possessed of so practical a system that it may expand to seven hundred. It began with a deficit, but as it is one of my basic ideas that anything worth while in itself can be made self-sustaining, it has so developed its processes that it is now paying its way. We have been able to let the boy have his boyhood. These boys learn to be workmen but they do not forget how to be boys. That is of the first importance. They earn from 19 to 35 cents an hour--which is more than they could earn as boys in the sort of job open to a youngster. They can better help support their families by staying in school than by going out to work. When they are through, they have a good general education, the beginning of a technical education, and they are so skilled as workmen that they can earn wages which will give them the liberty to continue their education if they like. If they do not want more education, they have at least the skill to command high wages anywhere. They do not have to go into our factories; most of them do because they do not know where better jobs are to be had--we want all our jobs to be good for the men who take them. But there is no string tied to the boys. They have earned their own way and are under obligations to no one. There is no charity. The place pays for itself. The Ford Hospital is being worked out on somewhat similar lines, but because of the interruption of the war--when it was given to the Government and became General Hospital No. 36, housing some fifteen hundred patients--the work has not yet advanced to the point of absolutely definite results. I did not deliberately set out to build this hospital. It began in 1914 as the Detroit General Hospital and was designed to be erected by popular subscription. With others, I made a subscription, and the building began. Long before the first buildings were done, the funds became exhausted and I was asked to make another subscription. I refused because I thought that the managers should have known how much the building was going to cost before they started. And that sort of a beginning did not give great confidence as to how the place would be managed after it was finished. However, I did offer to take the whole hospital, paying back all the subscriptions that had been made. This was accomplished, and we were going forward with the work when, on August 1, 1918, the whole institution was turned over to the Government. It was returned to us in October, 1919, and on the tenth day of November of the same year the first private patient was admitted. The hospital is on West Grand Boulevard in Detroit and the plot embraces twenty acres, so that there will be ample room for expansion. It is our thought to extend the facilities as they justify themselves. The original design of the hospital has been quite abandoned and we have endeavoured to work out a new kind of hospital, both in design and management. There are plenty of hospitals for the rich. There are plenty of hospitals for the poor. There are no hospitals for those who can afford to pay only a moderate amount and yet desire to pay without a feeling that they are recipients of charity. It has been taken for granted that a hospital cannot both serve and be self-supporting--that it has to be either an institution kept going by private contributions or pass into the class of private sanitariums managed for profit. This hospital is designed to be self-supporting--to give a maximum of service at a minimum of cost and without the slightest colouring of charity. In the new buildings that we have erected there are no wards. All of the rooms are private and each one is provided with a bath. The rooms--which are in groups of twenty-four--are all identical in size, in fittings, and in furnishings. There is no choice of rooms. It is planned that there shall be no choice of anything within the hospital. Every patient is on an equal footing with every other patient. It is not at all certain whether hospitals as they are now managed exist for patients or for doctors. I am not unmindful of the large amount of time which a capable physician or surgeon gives to charity, but also I am not convinced that the fees of surgeons should be regulated according to the wealth of the patient, and I am entirely convinced that what is known as "professional etiquette" is a curse to mankind and to the development of medicine. Diagnosis is not very much developed. I should not care to be among the proprietors of a hospital in which every step had not been taken to insure that the patients were being treated for what actually was the matter with them, instead of for something that one doctor had decided they had. Professional etiquette makes it very difficult for a wrong diagnosis to be corrected. The consulting physician, unless he be a man of great tact, will not change a diagnosis or a treatment unless the physician who has called him in is in thorough agreement, and then if a change be made, it is usually without the knowledge of the patient. There seems to be a notion that a patient, and especially when in a hospital, becomes the property of the doctor. A conscientious practitioner does not exploit the patient. A less conscientious one does. Many physicians seem to regard the sustaining of their own diagnoses as of as great moment as the recovery of the patient. It has been an aim of our hospital to cut away from all of these practices and to put the interest of the patient first. Therefore, it is what is known as a "closed" hospital. All of the physicians and all of the nurses are employed by the year and they can have no practice outside of the hospital. Including the interns, twenty-one physicians and surgeons are on the staff. These men have been selected with great care and they are paid salaries that amount to at least as much as they would ordinarily earn in successful private practice. They have, none of them, any financial interest whatsoever in any patient, and a patient may not be treated by a doctor from the outside. We gladly acknowledge the place and the use of the family physician. We do not seek to supplant him. We take the case where he leaves off, and return the patient as quickly as possible. Our system makes it undesirable for us to keep patients longer than necessary--we do not need that kind of business. And we will share with the family physician our knowledge of the case, but while the patient is in the hospital we assume full responsibility. It is "closed" to outside physicians' practice, though it is not closed to our cooperation with any family physician who desires it. The admission of a patient is interesting. The incoming patient is first examined by the senior physician and then is routed for examination through three, four, or whatever number of doctors seems necessary. This routing takes place regardless of what the patient came to the hospital for, because, as we are gradually learning, it is the complete health rather than a single ailment which is important. Each of the doctors makes a complete examination, and each sends in his written findings to the head physician without any opportunity whatsoever to consult with any of the other examining physicians. At least three, and sometimes six or seven, absolutely complete and absolutely independent diagnoses are thus in the hands of the head of the hospital. They constitute a complete record of the case. These precautions are taken in order to insure, within the limits of present-day knowledge, a correct diagnosis. At the present time, there are about six hundred beds available. Every patient pays according to a fixed schedule that includes the hospital room, board, medical and surgical attendance, and nursing. There are no extras. There are no private nurses. If a case requires more attention than the nurses assigned to the wing can give, then another nurse is put on, but without any additional expense to the patient. This, however, is rarely necessary because the patients are grouped according to the amount of nursing that they will need. There may be one nurse for two patients, or one nurse for five patients, as the type of cases may require. No one nurse ever has more than seven patients to care for, and because of the arrangements it is easily possible for a nurse to care for seven patients who are not desperately ill. In the ordinary hospital the nurses must make many useless steps. More of their time is spent in walking than in caring for the patient. This hospital is designed to save steps. Each floor is complete in itself, and just as in the factories we have tried to eliminate the necessity for waste motion, so have we also tried to eliminate waste motion in the hospital. The charge to patients for a room, nursing, and medical attendance is $4.50 a day. This will be lowered as the size of the hospital increases. The charge for a major operation is $125. The charge for minor operations is according to a fixed scale. All of the charges are tentative. The hospital has a cost system just like a factory. The charges will be regulated to make ends just meet. There seems to be no good reason why the experiment should not be successful. Its success is purely a matter of management and mathematics. The same kind of management which permits a factory to give the fullest service will permit a hospital to give the fullest service, and at a price so low as to be within the reach of everyone. The only difference between hospital and factory accounting is that I do not expect the hospital to return a profit; we do expect it to cover depreciation. The investment in this hospital to date is about $9,000,000. If we can get away from charity, the funds that now go into charitable enterprises can be turned to furthering production--to making goods cheaply and in great plenty. And then we shall not only be removing the burden of taxes from the community and freeing men but also we can be adding to the general wealth. We leave for private interest too many things we ought to do for ourselves as a collective interest. We need more constructive thinking in public service. We need a kind of "universal training" in economic facts. The over-reaching ambitions of speculative capital, as well as the unreasonable demands of irresponsible labour, are due to ignorance of the economic basis of life. Nobody can get more out of life than life can produce--yet nearly everybody thinks he can. Speculative capital wants more; labour wants more; the source of raw material wants more; and the purchasing public wants more. A family knows that it cannot live beyond its income; even the children know that. But the public never seems to learn that it cannot live beyond its income--have more than it produces. In clearing out the need for charity we must keep in mind not only the economic facts of existence, but also that lack of knowledge of these facts encourages fear. Banish fear and we can have self-reliance. Charity is not present where self-reliance dwells. Fear is the offspring of a reliance placed on something outside--on a foreman's good-will, perhaps, on a shop's prosperity, on a market's steadiness. That is just another way of saying that fear is the portion of the man who acknowledges his career to be in the keeping of earthly circumstances. Fear is the result of the body assuming ascendancy over the soul. The habit of failure is purely mental and is the mother of fear. This habit gets itself fixed on men because they lack vision. They start out to do something that reaches from A to Z. At A they fail, at B they stumble, and at C they meet with what seems to be an insuperable difficulty. They then cry "Beaten" and throw the whole task down. They have not even given themselves a chance really to fail; they have not given their vision a chance to be proved or disproved. They have simply let themselves be beaten by the natural difficulties that attend every kind of effort. More men are beaten than fail. It is not wisdom they need or money, or brilliance, or "pull," but just plain gristle and bone. This rude, simple, primitive power which we call "stick-to-it-iveness" is the uncrowned king of the world of endeavour. People are utterly wrong in their slant upon things. They see the successes that men have made and somehow they appear to be easy. But that is a world away from the facts. It is failure that is easy. Success is always hard. A man can fail in ease; he can succeed only by paying out all that he has and is. It is this which makes success so pitiable a thing if it be in lines that are not useful and uplifting. If a man is in constant fear of the industrial situation he ought to change his life so as not to be dependent upon it. There is always the land, and fewer people are on the land now than ever before. If a man lives in fear of an employer's favor changing toward him, he ought to extricate himself from dependence on any employer. He can become his own boss. It may be that he will be a poorer boss than the one he leaves, and that his returns will be much less, but at least he will have rid himself of the shadow of his pet fear, and that is worth a great deal in money and position. Better still is for the man to come through himself and exceed himself by getting rid of his fears in the midst of the circumstances where his daily lot is cast. Become a freeman in the place where you first surrendered your freedom. Win your battle where you lost it. And you will come to see that, although there was much outside of you that was not right, there was more inside of you that was not right. Thus you will learn that the wrong inside of you spoils even the right that is outside of you. A man is still the superior being of the earth. Whatever happens, he is still a man. Business may slacken tomorrow--he is still a man. He goes through the changes of circumstances, as he goes through the variations of temperature--still a man. If he can only get this thought reborn in him, it opens new wells and mines in his own being. There is no security outside of himself. There is no wealth outside of himself. The elimination of fear is the bringing in of security and supply. Let every American become steeled against coddling. Americans ought to resent coddling. It is a drug. Stand up and stand out; let weaklings take charity. CHAPTER XVI THE RAILROADS Nothing in this country furnishes a better example of how a business may be turned from its function of service than do the railroads. We have a railroad problem, and much learned thought and discussion have been devoted to the solution of that problem. Everyone is dissatisfied with the railways. The public is dissatisfied because both the passenger and freight rates are too high. The railroad employees are dissatisfied because they say their wages are too low and their hours too long. The owners of the railways are dissatisfied because it is claimed that no adequate return is realized upon the money invested. All of the contacts of a properly managed undertaking ought to be satisfactory. If the public, the employees, and the owners do not find themselves better off because of the undertaking, then there must be something very wrong indeed with the manner in which the undertaking is carried through. I am entirely without any disposition to pose as a railroad authority. There may be railroad authorities, but if the service as rendered by the American railroad to-day is the result of accumulated railway knowledge, then I cannot say that my respect for the usefulness of that knowledge is at all profound. I have not the slightest doubt in the world that the active managers of the railways, the men who really do the work, are entirely capable of conducting the railways of the country to the satisfaction of every one, and I have equally no doubt that these active managers have, by force of a chain of circumstances, all but ceased to manage. And right there is the source of most of the trouble. The men who know railroading have not been allowed to manage railroads. In a previous chapter on finance were set forth the dangers attendant upon the indiscriminate borrowing of money. It is inevitable that any one who can borrow freely to cover errors of management will borrow rather than correct the errors. Our railway managers have been practically forced to borrow, for since the very inception of the railways they have not been free agents. The guiding hand of the railway has been, not the railroad man, but the banker. When railroad credit was high, more money was to be made out of floating bond issues and speculating in the securities than out of service to the public. A very small fraction of the money earned by the railways has gone back into the rehabilitation of the properties. When by skilled management the net revenue became large enough to pay a considerable dividend upon the stock, then that dividend was used first by the speculators on the inside and controlling the railroad fiscal policy to boom the stock and unload their holdings, and then to float a bond issue on the strength of the credit gained through the earnings. When the earnings dropped or were artificially depressed, then the speculators bought back the stock and in the course of time staged another advance and unloading. There is scarcely a railroad in the United States that has not been through one or more receiverships, due to the fact that the financial interests piled on load after load of securities until the structures grew topheavy and fell over. Then they got in on the receiverships, made money at the expense of gullible security holders, and started the same old pyramiding game all over again. The natural ally of the banker is the lawyer. Such games as have been played on the railroads have needed expert legal advice. Lawyers, like bankers, know absolutely nothing about business. They imagine that a business is properly conducted if it keeps within the law or if the law can be altered or interpreted to suit the purpose in hand. They live on rules. The bankers took finance out of the hands of the managers. They put in lawyers to see that the railroads violated the law only in legal fashion, and thus grew up immense legal departments. Instead of operating under the rules of common sense and according to circumstances, every railroad had to operate on the advice of counsel. Rules spread through every part of the organization. Then came the avalanche of state and federal regulations, until to-day we find the railways hog-tied in a mass of rules and regulations. With the lawyers and the financiers on the inside and various state commissions on the outside, the railway manager has little chance. That is the trouble with the railways. Business cannot be conducted by law. We have had the opportunity of demonstrating to ourselves what a freedom from the banker-legal mortmain means, in our experience with the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway. We bought the railway because its right of way interfered with some of our improvements on the River Rouge. We did not buy it as an investment, or as an adjunct to our industries, or because of its strategic position. The extraordinarily good situation of the railway seems to have become universally apparent only since we bought it. That, however, is beside the point. We bought the railway because it interfered with our plans. Then we had to do something with it. The only thing to do was to run it as a productive enterprise, applying to it exactly the same principles as are applied in every department of our industries. We have as yet made no special efforts of any kind and the railway has not been set up as a demonstration of how every railway should be run. It is true that applying the rule of maximum service at minimum cost has caused the income of the road to exceed the outgo--which, for that road, represents a most unusual condition. It has been represented that the changes we have made--and remember they have been made simply as part of the day's work--are peculiarly revolutionary and quite without application to railway management in general. Personally, it would seem to me that our little line does not differ much from the big lines. In our own work we have always found that, if our principles were right, the area over which they were applied did not matter. The principles that we use in the big Highland Park plant seem to work equally well in every plant that we establish. It has never made any difference with us whether we multiplied what we were doing by five or five hundred. Size is only a matter of the multiplication table, anyway. The Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway was organized some twenty-odd years ago and has been reorganized every few years since then. The last reorganization was in 1914. The war and the federal control of the railways interrupted the cycle of reorganization. The road owns 343 miles of track, has 52 miles of branches, and 45 miles of trackage rights over other roads. It goes from Detroit almost due south to Ironton on the Ohio River, thus tapping the West Virginia coal deposits. It crosses most of the large trunk lines and it is a road which, from a general business standpoint, ought to pay. It has paid. It seems to have paid the bankers. In 1913 the net capitalization per mile of road was $105,000. In the next receivership this was cut down to $47,000 per mile. I do not know how much money in all has been raised on the strength of the road. I do know that in the reorganization of 1914 the bondholders were assessed and forced to turn into the treasury nearly five million dollars--which is the amount that we paid for the entire road. We paid sixty cents on the dollar for the outstanding mortgage bonds, although the ruling price just before the time of purchase was between thirty and forty cents on the dollar. We paid a dollar a share for the common stock and five dollars a share for the preferred stock--which seemed to be a fair price considering that no interest had ever been paid upon the bonds and a dividend on the stock was a most remote possibility. The rolling stock of the road consisted of about seventy locomotives, twenty-seven passenger cars, and around twenty-eight hundred freight cars. All of the rolling stock was in extremely bad condition and a good part of it would not run at all. All of the buildings were dirty, unpainted, and generally run down. The roadbed was something more than a streak of rust and something less than a railway. The repair shops were over-manned and under-machined. Practically everything connected with operation was conducted with a maximum of waste. There was, however, an exceedingly ample executive and administration department, and of course a legal department. The legal department alone cost in one month nearly $18,000. We took over the road in March, 1921. We began to apply industrial principles. There had been an executive office in Detroit. We closed that up and put the administration into the charge of one man and gave him half of the flat-topped desk out in the freight office. The legal department went with the executive offices. There is no reason for so much litigation in connection with railroading. Our people quickly settled all the mass of outstanding claims, some of which had been hanging on for years. As new claims arise, they are settled at once and on the facts, so that the legal expense seldom exceeds $200 a month. All of the unnecessary accounting and red tape were thrown out and the payroll of the road was reduced from 2,700 to 1,650 men. Following our general policy, all titles and offices other than those required by law were abolished. The ordinary railway organization is rigid; a message has to go up through a certain line of authority and no man is expected to do anything without explicit orders from his superior. One morning I went out to the road very early and found a wrecking train with steam up, a crew aboard and all ready to start. It had been "awaiting orders" for half an hour. We went down and cleared the wreck before the orders came through; that was before the idea of personal responsibility had soaked in. It was a little hard to break the "orders" habit; the men at first were afraid to take responsibility. But as we went on, they seemed to like the plan more and more and now no man limits his duties. A man is paid for a day's work of eight hours and he is expected to work during those eight hours. If he is an engineer and finishes a run in four hours then he works at whatever else may be in demand for the next four hours. If a man works more than eight hours he is not paid for overtime--he deducts his overtime from the next working day or saves it up and gets a whole day off with pay. Our eight-hour day is a day of eight hours and not a basis for computing pay. The minimum wage is six dollars a day. There are no extra men. We have cut down in the offices, in the shops, and on the roads. In one shop 20 men are now doing more work than 59 did before. Not long ago one of our track gangs, consisting of a foreman and 15 men, was working beside a parallel road on which was a gang of 40 men doing exactly the same sort of track repairing and ballasting. In five days our gang did two telegraph poles more than the competing gang! The road is being rehabilitated; nearly the whole track has been reballasted and many miles of new rails have been laid. The locomotives and rolling stock are being overhauled in our own shops and at a very slight expense. We found that the supplies bought previously were of poor quality or unfitted for the use; we are saving money on supplies by buying better qualities and seeing that nothing is wasted. The men seem entirely willing to cooperate in saving. They do not discard that which might be used. We ask a man, "What can you get out of an engine?" and he answers with an economy record. And we are not pouring in great amounts of money. Everything is being done out of earnings. That is our policy. The trains must go through and on time. The time of freight movements has been cut down about two thirds. A car on a siding is not just a car on a siding. It is a great big question mark. Someone has to know why it is there. It used to take 8 or 9 days to get freight through to Philadelphia or New York; now it takes three and a half days. The organization is serving. All sorts of explanations are put forward, of why a deficit was turned into a surplus. I am told that it is all due to diverting the freight of the Ford industries. If we had diverted all of our business to this road, that would not explain why we manage at so much lower an operating cost than before. We are routing as much as we can of our own business over the road, but only because we there get the best service. For years past we had been trying to send freight over this road because it was conveniently located, but we had never been able to use it to any extent because of the delayed deliveries. We could not count on a shipment to within five or six weeks; that tied up too much money and also broke into our production schedule. There was no reason why the road should not have had a schedule; but it did not. The delays became legal matters to be taken up in due legal course; that is not the way of business. We think that a delay is a criticism of our work and is something at once to be investigated. That is business. The railroads in general have broken down, and if the former conduct of the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton is any criterion of management in general there is no reason in the world why they should not have broken down. Too many railroads are run, not from the offices of practical men, but from banking offices, and the principles of procedure, the whole outlook, are financial--not transportational, but financial. There has been a breakdown simply because more attention has been paid to railroads as factors in the stock market than as servants of the people. Outworn ideas have been retained, development has been practically stopped, and railroad men with vision have not been set free to grow. Will a billion dollars solve that sort of trouble? No, a billion dollars will only make the difficulty one billion dollars worse. The purpose of the billion is simply to continue the present methods of railroad management, and it is because of the present methods that we have any railroad difficulties at all. The mistaken and foolish things we did years ago are just overtaking us. At the beginning of railway transportation in the United States, the people had to be taught its use, just as they had to be taught the use of the telephone. Also, the new railroads had to make business in order to keep themselves solvent. And because railway financing began in one of the rottenest periods of our business history, a number of practices were established as precedents which have influenced railway work ever since. One of the first things the railways did was to throttle all other methods of transportation. There was the beginning of a splendid canal system in this country and a great movement for canalization was at its height. The railroad companies bought out the canal companies and let the canals fill up and choke with weeds and refuse. All over the Eastern and in parts of the Middle Western states are the remains of this network of internal waterways. They are being restored now as rapidly as possible; they are being linked together; various commissions, public and private, have seen the vision of a complete system of waterways serving all parts of the country, and thanks to their efforts, persistence, and faith, progress is being made. But there was another. This was the system of making the haul as long as possible. Any one who is familiar with the exposures which resulted in the formation of the Interstate Commerce Commission knows what is meant by this. There was a period when rail transport was not regarded as the servant of the traveling, manufacturing, and commercial publics. Business was treated as if it existed for the benefit of the railways. During this period of folly, it was not good railroading to get goods from their shipping point to their destination by the most direct line possible, but to keep them on the road as long as possible, send them around the longest way, give as many connecting lines as possible a piece of the profit, and let the public stand the resulting loss of time and money. That was once counted good railroading. It has not entirely passed out of practice to-day. One of the great changes in our economic life to which this railroad policy contributed was the centralization of certain activities, not because centralization was necessary, nor because it contributed to the well-being of the people, but because, among other things, it made double business for the railroads. Take two staples--meat and grain. If you look at the maps which the packing houses put out, and see where the cattle are drawn from; and then if you consider that the cattle, when converted into food, are hauled again by the same railways right back to the place where they came from, you will get some sidelight on the transportation problem and the price of meat. Take also grain. Every reader of advertisements knows where the great flour mills of the country are located. And they probably know also that these great mills are not located in the sections where the grain of the United States is raised. There are staggering quantities of grain, thousands of trainloads, hauled uselessly long distances, and then in the form of flour hauled back again long distances to the states and sections where the grain was raised--a burdening of the railroads which is of no benefit to the communities where the grain originated, nor to any one else except the monopolistic mills and the railroads. The railroads can always do a big business without helping the business of the country at all; they can always be engaged in just such useless hauling. On meat and grain and perhaps on cotton, too, the transportation burden could be reduced by more than half, by the preparation of the product for use before it is shipped. If a coal community mined coal in Pennsylvania, and then sent it by railway to Michigan or Wisconsin to be screened, and then hauled it back again to Pennsylvania for use, it would not be much sillier than the hauling of Texas beef alive to Chicago, there to be killed, and then shipped back dead to Texas; or the hauling of Kansas grain to Minnesota, there to be ground in the mills and hauled back again as flour. It is good business for the railroads, but it is bad business for business. One angle of the transportation problem to which too few men are paying attention is this useless hauling of material. If the problem were tackled from the point of ridding the railroads of their useless hauls, we might discover that we are in better shape than we think to take care of the legitimate transportation business of the country. In commodities like coal it is necessary that they be hauled from where they are to where they are needed. The same is true of the raw materials of industry--they must be hauled from the place where nature has stored them to the place where there are people ready to work them. And as these raw materials are not often found assembled in one section, a considerable amount of transportation to a central assembling place is necessary. The coal comes from one section, the copper from another, the iron from another, the wood from another--they must all be brought together. But wherever it is possible a policy of decentralization ought to be adopted. We need, instead of mammoth flour mills, a multitude of smaller mills distributed through all the sections where grain is grown. Wherever it is possible, the section that produces the raw material ought to produce also the finished product. Grain should be ground to flour where it is grown. A hog-growing country should not export hogs, but pork, hams, and bacon. The cotton mills ought to be near the cotton fields. This is not a revolutionary idea. In a sense it is a reactionary one. It does not suggest anything new; it suggests something that is very old. This is the way the country did things before we fell into the habit of carting everything around a few thousand miles and adding the cartage to the consumer's bill. Our communities ought to be more complete in themselves. They ought not to be unnecessarily dependent on railway transportation. Out of what they produce they should supply their own needs and ship the surplus. And how can they do this unless they have the means of taking their raw materials, like grain and cattle, and changing them into finished products? If private enterprise does not yield these means, the cooperation of farmers can. The chief injustice sustained by the farmer to-day is that, being the greatest producer, he is prevented from being also the greatest merchandiser, because he is compelled to sell to those who put his products into merchantable form. If he could change his grain into flour, his cattle into beef, and his hogs into hams and bacon, not only would he receive the fuller profit of his product, but he would render his near-by communities more independent of railway exigencies, and thereby improve the transportation system by relieving it of the burden of his unfinished product. The thing is not only reasonable and practicable, but it is becoming absolutely necessary. More than that, it is being done in many places. But it will not register its full effect on the transportation situation and upon the cost of living until it is done more widely and in more kinds of materials. It is one of nature's compensations to withdraw prosperity from the business which does not serve. We have found that on the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton we could, following our universal policy, reduce our rates and get more business. We made some cuts, but the Interstate Commerce Commission refused to allow them! Under such conditions why discuss the railroads as a business? Or as a service? CHAPTER XVII THINGS IN GENERAL No man exceeds Thomas A. Edison in broad vision and understanding. I met him first many years ago when I was with the Detroit Edison Company--probably about 1887 or thereabouts. The electrical men held a convention at Atlantic City, and Edison, as the leader in electrical science, made an address. I was then working on my gasoline engine, and most people, including all of my associates in the electrical company, had taken pains to tell me that time spent on a gasoline engine was time wasted--that the power of the future was to be electricity. These criticisms had not made any impression on me. I was working ahead with all my might. But being in the same room with Edison suggested to me that it would be a good idea to find out if the master of electricity thought it was going to be the only power in the future. So, after Mr. Edison had finished his address, I managed to catch him alone for a moment. I told him what I was working on. At once he was interested. He is interested in every search for new knowledge. And then I asked him if he thought that there was a future for the internal combustion engine. He answered something in this fashion: Yes, there is a big future for any light-weight engine that can develop a high horsepower and be self-contained. No one kind of motive power is ever going to do all the work of the country. We do not know what electricity can do, but I take for granted that it cannot do everything. Keep on with your engine. If you can get what you are after, I can see a great future. That is characteristic of Edison. He was the central figure in the electrical industry, which was then young and enthusiastic. The rank and file of the electrical men could see nothing ahead but electricity, but their leader could see with crystal clearness that no one power could do all the work of the country. I suppose that is why he was the leader. Such was my first meeting with Edison. I did not see him again until many years after--until our motor had been developed and was in production. He remembered perfectly our first meeting. Since then we have seen each other often. He is one of my closest friends, and we together have swapped many an idea. His knowledge is almost universal. He is interested in every conceivable subject and he recognizes no limitations. He believes that all things are possible. At the same time he keeps his feet on the ground. He goes forward step by step. He regards "impossible" as a description for that which we have not at the moment the knowledge to achieve. He knows that as we amass knowledge we build the power to overcome the impossible. That is the rational way of doing the "impossible." The irrational way is to make the attempt without the toil of accumulating knowledge. Mr. Edison is only approaching the height of his power. He is the man who is going to show us what chemistry really can do. For he is a real scientist who regards the knowledge for which he is always searching as a tool to shape the progress of the world. He is not the type of scientist who merely stores up knowledge and turns his head into a museum. Edison is easily the world's greatest scientist. I am not sure that he is not also the world's worst business man. He knows almost nothing of business. John Burroughs was another of those who honoured me with their friendship. I, too, like birds. I like the outdoors. I like to walk across country and jump fences. We have five hundred bird houses on the farm. We call them our bird hotels, and one of them, the Hotel Pontchartrain--a martin house--has seventy-six apartments. All winter long we have wire baskets of food hanging about on the trees and then there is a big basin in which the water is kept from freezing by an electric heater. Summer and winter, food, drink, and shelter are on hand for the birds. We have hatched pheasants and quail in incubators and then turned them over to electric brooders. We have all kinds of bird houses and nests. The sparrows, who are great abusers of hospitality, insist that their nests be immovable--that they do not sway in the wind; the wrens like swaying nests. So we mounted a number of wren boxes on strips of spring steel so that they would sway in the wind. The wrens liked the idea and the sparrows did not, so we have been able to have the wrens nest in peace. In summer we leave cherries on the trees and strawberries open in the beds, and I think that we have not only more but also more different kinds of bird callers than anywhere else in the northern states. John Burroughs said he thought we had, and one day when he was staying at our place he came across a bird that he had never seen before. About ten years ago we imported a great number of birds from abroad--yellow-hammers, chaffinches, green finches, red pales, twites, bullfinches, jays, linnets, larks--some five hundred of them. They stayed around a while, but where they are now I do not know. I shall not import any more. Birds are entitled to live where they want to live. Birds are the best of companions. We need them for their beauty and their companionship, and also we need them for the strictly economic reason that they destroy harmful insects. The only time I ever used the Ford organization to influence legislation was on behalf of the birds, and I think the end justified the means. The Weeks-McLean Bird Bill, providing for bird sanctuaries for our migratory birds, had been hanging in Congress with every likelihood of dying a natural death. Its immediate sponsors could not arouse much interest among the Congressmen. Birds do not vote. We got behind that bill and we asked each of our six thousand dealers to wire to his representative in Congress. It began to become apparent that birds might have votes; the bill went through. Our organization has never been used for any political purpose and never will be. We assume that our people have a right to their own preferences. To get back to John Burroughs. Of course I knew who he was and I had read nearly everything he had written, but I had never thought of meeting him until some years ago when he developed a grudge against modern progress. He detested money and especially he detested the power which money gives to vulgar people to despoil the lovely countryside. He grew to dislike the industry out of which money is made. He disliked the noise of factories and railways. He criticized industrial progress, and he declared that the automobile was going to kill the appreciation of nature. I fundamentally disagreed with him. I thought that his emotions had taken him on the wrong tack and so I sent him an automobile with the request that he try it out and discover for himself whether it would not help him to know nature better. That automobile--and it took him some time to learn how to manage it himself--completely changed his point of view. He found that it helped him to see more, and from the time of getting it, he made nearly all of his bird-hunting expeditions behind the steering wheel. He learned that instead of having to confine himself to a few miles around Slabsides, the whole countryside was open to him. Out of that automobile grew our friendship, and it was a fine one. No man could help being the better for knowing John Burroughs. He was not a professional naturalist, nor did he make sentiment do for hard research. It is easy to grow sentimental out of doors; it is hard to pursue the truth about a bird as one would pursue a mechanical principle. But John Burroughs did that, and as a result the observations he set down were very largely accurate. He was impatient with men who were not accurate in their observations of natural life. John Burroughs first loved nature for its own sake; it was not merely his stock of material as a professional writer. He loved it before he wrote about it. Late in life he turned philosopher. His philosophy was not so much a philosophy of nature as it was a natural philosophy--the long, serene thoughts of a man who had lived in the tranquil spirit of the trees. He was not pagan; he was not pantheist; but he did not much divide between nature and human nature, nor between human nature and divine. John Burroughs lived a wholesome life. He was fortunate to have as his home the farm on which he was born. Through long years his surroundings were those which made for quietness of mind. He loved the woods and he made dusty-minded city people love them, too--he helped them see what he saw. He did not make much beyond a living. He could have done so, perhaps, but that was not his aim. Like another American naturalist, his occupation could have been described as inspector of birds' nests and hillside paths. Of course, that does not pay in dollars and cents. When he had passed the three score and ten he changed his views on industry. Perhaps I had something to do with that. He came to see that the whole world could not live by hunting birds' nests. At one time in his life, he had a grudge against all modern progress, especially where it was associated with the burning of coal and the noise of traffic. Perhaps that was as near to literary affectation as he ever came. Wordsworth disliked railways too, and Thoreau said that he could see more of the country by walking. Perhaps it was influences such as these which bent John Burroughs for a time against industrial progress. But only for a time. He came to see that it was fortunate for him that others' tastes ran in other channels, just as it was fortunate for the world that his taste ran in its own channel. There has been no observable development in the method of making birds' nests since the beginning of recorded observation, but that was hardly a reason why human beings should not prefer modern sanitary homes to cave dwellings. This was a part of John Burroughs's sanity--he was not afraid to change his views. He was a lover of Nature, not her dupe. In the course of time he came to value and approve modern devices, and though this by itself is an interesting fact, it is not so interesting as the fact that he made this change after he was seventy years old. John Burroughs was never too old to change. He kept growing to the last. The man who is too set to change is dead already. The funeral is a mere detail. If he talked more of one person than another, it was Emerson. Not only did he know Emerson by heart as an author, but he knew him by heart as a spirit. He taught me to know Emerson. He had so saturated himself with Emerson that at one time he thought as he did and even fell into his mode of expression. But afterward he found his own way--which for him was better. There was no sadness in John Burroughs's death. When the grain lies brown and ripe under the harvest sun, and the harvesters are busy binding it into sheaves, there is no sadness for the grain. It has ripened and has fulfilled its term, and so had John Burroughs. With him it was full ripeness and harvest, not decay. He worked almost to the end. His plans ran beyond the end. They buried him amid the scenes he loved, and it was his eighty-fourth birthday. Those scenes will be preserved as he loved them. John Burroughs, Edison, and I with Harvey S. Firestone made several vagabond trips together. We went in motor caravans and slept under canvas. Once we gypsied through the Adirondacks and again through the Alleghenies, heading southward. The trips were good fun--except that they began to attract too much attention. * * * * * To-day I am more opposed to war than ever I was, and I think the people of the world know--even if the politicians do not--that war never settles anything. It was war that made the orderly and profitable processes of the world what they are to-day--a loose, disjointed mass. Of course, some men get rich out of war; others get poor. But the men who get rich are not those who fought or who really helped behind the lines. No patriot makes money out of war. No man with true patriotism could make money out of war--out of the sacrifice of other men's lives. Until the soldier makes money by fighting, until mothers make money by giving their sons to death--not until then should any citizen make money out of providing his country with the means to preserve its life. If wars are to continue, it will be harder and harder for the upright business man to regard war as a legitimate means of high and speedy profits. War fortunes are losing caste every day. Even greed will some day hesitate before the overwhelming unpopularity and opposition which will meet the war profiteer. Business should be on the side of peace, because peace is business's best asset. And, by the way, was inventive genius ever so sterile as it was during the war? An impartial investigation of the last war, of what preceded it and what has come out of it, would show beyond a doubt that there is in the world a group of men with vast powers of control, that prefers to remain unknown, that does not seek office or any of the tokens of power, that belongs to no nation whatever but is international--a force that uses every government, every widespread business organization, every agency of publicity, every resource of national psychology, to throw the world into a panic for the sake of getting still more power over the world. An old gambling trick used to be for the gambler to cry "Police!" when a lot of money was on the table, and, in the panic that followed, to seize the money and run off with it. There is a power within the world which cries "War!" and in the confusion of the nations, the unrestrained sacrifice which people make for safety and peace runs off with the spoils of the panic. The point to keep in mind is that, though we won the military contest, the world has not yet quite succeeded in winning a complete victory over the promoters of war. We ought not to forget that wars are a purely manufactured evil and are made according to a definite technique. A campaign for war is made upon as definite lines as a campaign for any other purpose. First, the people are worked upon. By clever tales the people's suspicions are aroused toward the nation against whom war is desired. Make the nation suspicious; make the other nation suspicious. All you need for this is a few agents with some cleverness and no conscience and a press whose interest is locked up with the interests that will be benefited by war. Then the "overt act" will soon appear. It is no trick at all to get an "overt act" once you work the hatred of two nations up to the proper pitch. There were men in every country who were glad to see the World War begin and sorry to see it stop. Hundreds of American fortunes date from the Civil War; thousands of new fortunes date from the World War. Nobody can deny that war is a profitable business for those who like that kind of money. War is an orgy of money, just as it is an orgy of blood. And we should not so easily be led into war if we considered what it is that makes a nation really great. It is not the amount of trade that makes a nation great. The creation of private fortunes, like the creation of an autocracy, does not make any country great. Nor does the mere change of an agricultural population into a factory population. A country becomes great when, by the wise development of its resources and the skill of its people, property is widely and fairly distributed. Foreign trade is full of delusions. We ought to wish for every nation as large a degree of self-support as possible. Instead of wishing to keep them dependent on us for what we manufacture, we should wish them to learn to manufacture themselves and build up a solidly founded civilization. When every nation learns to produce the things which it can produce, we shall be able to get down to a basis of serving each other along those special lines in which there can be no competition. The North Temperate Zone will never be able to compete with the tropics in the special products of the tropics. Our country will never be a competitor with the Orient in the production of tea, nor with the South in the production of rubber. A large proportion of our foreign trade is based on the backwardness of our foreign customers. Selfishness is a motive that would preserve that backwardness. Humanity is a motive that would help the backward nations to a self-supporting basis. Take Mexico, for example. We have heard a great deal about the "development" of Mexico. Exploitation is the word that ought instead to be used. When its rich natural resources are exploited for the increase of the private fortunes of foreign capitalists, that is not development, it is ravishment. You can never develop Mexico until you develop the Mexican. And yet how much of the "development" of Mexico by foreign exploiters ever took account of the development of its people? The Mexican peon has been regarded as mere fuel for the foreign money-makers. Foreign trade has been his degradation. Short-sighted people are afraid of such counsel. They say: "What would become of our foreign trade?" When the natives of Africa begin raising their own cotton and the natives of Russia begin making their own farming implements and the natives of China begin supplying their own wants, it will make a difference, to be sure, but does any thoughtful man imagine that the world can long continue on the present basis of a few nations supplying the needs of the world? We must think in terms of what the world will be when civilization becomes general, when all the peoples have learned to help themselves. When a country goes mad about foreign trade it usually depends on other countries for its raw material, turns its population into factory fodder, creates a private rich class, and lets its own immediate interest lie neglected. Here in the United States we have enough work to do developing our own country to relieve us of the necessity of looking for foreign trade for a long time. We have agriculture enough to feed us while we are doing it, and money enough to carry the job through. Is there anything more stupid than the United States standing idle because Japan or France or any other country has not sent us an order when there is a hundred-year job awaiting us in developing our own country? Commerce began in service. Men carried off their surplus to people who had none. The country that raised corn carried it to the country that could raise no corn. The lumber country brought wood to the treeless plain. The vine country brought fruit to cold northern climes. The pasture country brought meat to the grassless region. It was all service. When all the peoples of the world become developed in the art of self-support, commerce will get back to that basis. Business will once more become service. There will be no competition, because the basis of competition will have vanished. The varied peoples will develop skills which will be in the nature of monopolies and not competitive. From the beginning, the races have exhibited distinct strains of genius: this one for government; another for colonization; another for the sea; another for art and music; another for agriculture; another for business, and so on. Lincoln said that this nation could not survive half-slave and half-free. The human race cannot forever exist half-exploiter and half-exploited. Until we become buyers and sellers alike, producers and consumers alike, keeping the balance not for profit but for service, we are going to have topsy-turvy conditions. France has something to give the world of which no competition can cheat her. So has Italy. So has Russia. So have the countries of South America. So has Japan. So has Britain. So has the United States. The sooner we get back to a basis of natural specialties and drop this free-for-all system of grab, the sooner we shall be sure of international self-respect--and international peace. Trying to take the trade of the world can promote war. It cannot promote prosperity. Some day even the international bankers will learn this. I have never been able to discover any honourable reasons for the beginning of the World War. It seems to have grown out of a very complicated situation created largely by those who thought they could profit by war. I believed, on the information that was given to me in 1916, that some of the nations were anxious for peace and would welcome a demonstration for peace. It was in the hope that this was true that I financed the expedition to Stockholm in what has since been called the "Peace Ship." I do not regret the attempt. The mere fact that it failed is not, to me, conclusive proof that it was not worth trying. We learn more from our failures than from our successes. What I learned on that trip was worth the time and the money expended. I do not now know whether the information as conveyed to me was true or false. I do not care. But I think everyone will agree that if it had been possible to end the war in 1916 the world would be better off than it is to-day. For the victors wasted themselves in winning, and the vanquished in resisting. Nobody got an advantage, honourable or dishonourable, out of that war. I had hoped, finally, when the United States entered the war, that it might be a war to end wars, but now I know that wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard. When our country entered the war, it became the duty of every citizen to do his utmost toward seeing through to the end that which we had undertaken. I believe that it is the duty of the man who opposes war to oppose going to war up until the time of its actual declaration. My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or non-resistant principles. It may be that the present state of civilization is such that certain international questions cannot be discussed; it may be that they have to be fought out. But the fighting never settles the question. It only gets the participants around to a frame of mind where they will agree to discuss what they were fighting about. Once we were in the war, every facility of the Ford industries was put at the disposal of the Government. We had, up to the time of the declaration of war, absolutely refused to take war orders from the foreign belligerents. It is entirely out of keeping with the principles of our business to disturb the routine of our production unless in an emergency. It is at variance with our human principles to aid either side in a war in which our country was not involved. These principles had no application, once the United States entered the war. From April, 1917, until November, 1918, our factory worked practically exclusively for the Government. Of course we made cars and parts and special delivery trucks and ambulances as a part of our general production, but we also made many other articles that were more or less new to us. We made 2 1/2-ton and 6-ton trucks. We made Liberty motors in great quantities, aero cylinders, 1.55 Mm. and 4.7 Mm. caissons. We made listening devices, steel helmets (both at Highland Park and Philadelphia), and Eagle Boats, and we did a large amount of experimental work on armour plate, compensators, and body armour. For the Eagle Boats we put up a special plant on the River Rouge site. These boats were designed to combat the submarines. They were 204 feet long, made of steel, and one of the conditions precedent to their building was that their construction should not interfere with any other line of war production and also that they be delivered quickly. The design was worked out by the Navy Department. On December 22, 1917, I offered to build the boats for the Navy. The discussion terminated on January 15, 1918, when the Navy Department awarded the contract to the Ford Company. On July 11th, the first completed boat was launched. We made both the hulls and the engines, and not a forging or a rolled beam entered into the construction of other than the engine. We stamped the hulls entirely out of sheet steel. They were built indoors. In four months we ran up a building at the River Rouge a third of a mile long, 350 feet wide, and 100 feet high, covering more than thirteen acres. These boats were not built by marine engineers. They were built simply by applying our production principles to a new product. With the Armistice, we at once dropped the war and went back to peace. * * * * * An able man is a man who can do things, and his ability to do things is dependent on what he has in him. What he has in him depends on what he started with and what he has done to increase and discipline it. An educated man is not one whose memory is trained to carry a few dates in history--he is one who can accomplish things. A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired. Thinking is the hardest work any one can do--which is probably the reason why we have so few thinkers. There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity. You cannot learn in any school what the world is going to do next year, but you can learn some of the things which the world has tried to do in former years, and where it failed and where it succeeded. If education consisted in warning the young student away from some of the false theories on which men have tried to build, so that he may be saved the loss of the time in finding out by bitter experience, its good would be unquestioned. An education which consists of signposts indicating the failure and the fallacies of the past doubtless would be very useful. It is not education just to possess the theories of a lot of professors. Speculation is very interesting, and sometimes profitable, but it is not education. To be learned in science to-day is merely to be aware of a hundred theories that have not been proved. And not to know what those theories are is to be "uneducated," "ignorant," and so forth. If knowledge of guesses is learning, then one may become learned by the simple expedient of making his own guesses. And by the same token he can dub the rest of the world "ignorant" because it does not know what his guesses are. But the best that education can do for a man is to put him in possession of his powers, give him control of the tools with which destiny has endowed him, and teach him how to think. The college renders its best service as an intellectual gymnasium, in which mental muscle is developed and the student strengthened to do what he can. To say, however, that mental gymnastics can be had only in college is not true, as every educator knows. A man's real education begins after he has left school. True education is gained through the discipline of life. There are many kinds of knowledge, and it depends on what crowd you happen to be in, or how the fashions of the day happen to run, which kind of knowledge, is most respected at the moment. There are fashions in knowledge, just as there are in everything else. When some of us were lads, knowledge used to be limited to the Bible. There were certain men in the neighbourhood who knew the Book thoroughly, and they were looked up to and respected. Biblical knowledge was highly valued then. But nowadays it is doubtful whether deep acquaintance with the Bible would be sufficient to win a man a name for learning. Knowledge, to my mind, is something that in the past somebody knew and left in a form which enables all who will to obtain it. If a man is born with normal human faculties, if he is equipped with enough ability to use the tools which we call "letters" in reading or writing, there is no knowledge within the possession of the race that he cannot have--if he wants it! The only reason why every man does not know everything that the human mind has ever learned is that no one has ever yet found it worth while to know that much. Men satisfy their minds more by finding out things for themselves than by heaping together the things which somebody else has found out. You can go out and gather knowledge all your life, and with all your gathering you will not catch up even with your own times. You may fill your head with all the "facts" of all the ages, and your head may be just an overloaded fact-box when you get through. The point is this: Great piles of knowledge in the head are not the same as mental activity. A man may be very learned and very useless. And then again, a man may be unlearned and very useful. The object of education is not to fill a man's mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking. And it often happens that a man can think better if he is not hampered by the knowledge of the past. It is a very human tendency to think that what mankind does not yet know no one can learn. And yet it must be perfectly clear to everyone that the past learning of mankind cannot be allowed to hinder our future learning. Mankind has not gone so very far when you measure its progress against the knowledge that is yet to be gained--the secrets that are yet to be learned. One good way to hinder progress is to fill a man's head with all the learning of the past; it makes him feel that because his head is full, there is nothing more to learn. Merely gathering knowledge may become the most useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the world? That is the educational test. If a man can hold up his own end, he counts for one. If he can help ten or a hundred or a thousand other men hold up their ends, he counts for more. He may be quite rusty on many things that inhabit the realm of print, but he is a learned man just the same. When a man is master of his own sphere, whatever it may be, he has won his degree--he has entered the realm of wisdom. * * * * * The work which we describe as Studies in the Jewish Question, and which is variously described by antagonists as "the Jewish campaign," "the attack on the Jews," "the anti-Semitic pogrom," and so forth, needs no explanation to those who have followed it. Its motives and purposes must be judged by the work itself. It is offered as a contribution to a question which deeply affects the country, a question which is racial at its source, and which concerns influences and ideals rather than persons. Our statements must be judged by candid readers who are intelligent enough to lay our words alongside life as they are able to observe it. If our word and their observation agree, the case is made. It is perfectly silly to begin to damn us before it has been shown that our statements are baseless or reckless. The first item to be considered is the truth of what we have set forth. And that is precisely the item which our critics choose to evade. Readers of our articles will see at once that we are not actuated by any kind of prejudice, except it may be a prejudice in favor of the principles which have made our civilization. There had been observed in this country certain streams of influence which were causing a marked deterioration in our literature, amusements, and social conduct; business was departing from its old-time substantial soundness; a general letting down of standards was felt everywhere. It was not the robust coarseness of the white man, the rude indelicacy, say, of Shakespeare's characters, but a nasty Orientalism which has insidiously affected every channel of expression--and to such an extent that it was time to challenge it. The fact that these influences are all traceable to one racial source is a fact to be reckoned with, not by us only, but by the intelligent people of the race in question. It is entirely creditable to them that steps have been taken by them to remove their protection from the more flagrant violators of American hospitality, but there is still room to discard outworn ideas of racial superiority maintained by economic or intellectually subversive warfare upon Christian society. Our work does not pretend to say the last word on the Jew in America. It says only the word which describes his obvious present impress on the country. When that impress is changed, the report of it can be changed. For the present, then, the question is wholly in the Jews' hands. If they are as wise as they claim to be, they will labour to make Jews American, instead of labouring to make America Jewish. The genius of the United States of America is Christian in the broadest sense, and its destiny is to remain Christian. This carries no sectarian meaning with it, but relates to a basic principle which differs from other principles in that it provides for liberty with morality, and pledges society to a code of relations based on fundamental Christian conceptions of human rights and duties. As for prejudice or hatred against persons, that is neither American nor Christian. Our opposition is only to ideas, false ideas, which are sapping the moral stamina of the people. These ideas proceed from easily identified sources, they are promulgated by easily discoverable methods; and they are controlled by mere exposure. We have simply used the method of exposure. When people learn to identify the source and nature of the influence swirling around them, it is sufficient. Let the American people once understand that it is not natural degeneracy, but calculated subversion that afflicts us, and they are safe. The explanation is the cure. This work was taken up without personal motives. When it reached a stage where we believed the American people could grasp the key, we let it rest for the time. Our enemies say that we began it for revenge and that we laid it down in fear. Time will show that our critics are merely dealing in evasion because they dare not tackle the main question. Time will also show that we are better friends to the Jews' best interests than are those who praise them to their faces and criticize them behind their backs. CHAPTER XVIII DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy," and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy. I wonder if they want to set up some kind of a despotism or if they want to have somebody do for them what they ought to do for themselves. I am for the kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according to his ability. I think if we give more attention to serving our fellows we shall have less concern with the empty forms of government and more concern with the things to be done. Thinking of service, we shall not bother about good feeling in industry or life; we shall not bother about masses and classes, or closed and open shops, and such matters as have nothing at all to do with the real business of living. We can get down to facts. We stand in need of facts. It is a shock when the mind awakens to the fact that not all of humanity is human--that whole groups of people do not regard others with humane feelings. Great efforts have been made to have this appear as the attitude of a class, but it is really the attitude of all "classes," in so far as they are swayed by the false notion of "classes." Before, when it was the constant effort of propaganda to make the people believe that it was only the "rich" who were without humane feelings, the opinion became general that among the "poor" the humane virtues flourished. But the "rich" and the "poor" are both very small minorities, and you cannot classify society under such heads. There are not enough "rich" and there are not enough "poor" to serve the purpose of such classification. Rich men have become poor without changing their natures, and poor men have become rich, and the problem has not been affected by it. Between the rich and the poor is the great mass of the people who are neither rich nor poor. A society made up exclusively of millionaires would not be different from our present society; some of the millionaires would have to raise wheat and bake bread and make machinery and run trains--else they would all starve to death. Someone must do the work. Really we have no fixed classes. We have men who will work and men who will not. Most of the "classes" that one reads about are purely fictional. Take certain capitalist papers. You will be amazed by some of the statements about the labouring class. We who have been and still are a part of the labouring class know that the statements are untrue. Take certain of the labour papers. You are equally amazed by some of the statements they make about "capitalists." And yet on both sides there is a grain of truth. The man who is a capitalist and nothing else, who gambles with the fruits of other men's labours, deserves all that is said against him. He is in precisely the same class as the cheap gambler who cheats workingmen out of their wages. The statements we read about the labouring class in the capitalistic press are seldom written by managers of great industries, but by a class of writers who are writing what they think will please their employers. They write what they imagine will please. Examine the labour press and you will find another class of writers who similarly seek to tickle the prejudices which they conceive the labouring man to have. Both kinds of writers are mere propagandists. And propaganda that does not spread facts is self-destructive. And it should be. You cannot preach patriotism to men for the purpose of getting them to stand still while you rob them--and get away with that kind of preaching very long. You cannot preach the duty of working hard and producing plentifully, and make that a screen for an additional profit to yourself. And neither can the worker conceal the lack of a day's work by a phrase. Undoubtedly the employing class possesses facts which the employed ought to have in order to construct sound opinions and pass fair judgments. Undoubtedly the employed possess facts which are equally important to the employer. It is extremely doubtful, however, if either side has all the facts. And this is where propaganda, even if it were possible for it to be entirely successful, is defective. It is not desirable that one set of ideas be "put over" on a class holding another set of ideas. What we really need is to get all the ideas together and construct from them. Take, for instance, this whole matter of union labour and the right to strike. The only strong group of union men in the country is the group that draws salaries from the unions. Some of them are very rich. Some of them are interested in influencing the affairs of our large institutions of finance. Others are so extreme in their so-called socialism that they border on Bolshevism and anarchism--their union salaries liberating them from the necessity of work so that they can devote their energies to subversive propaganda. All of them enjoy a certain prestige and power which, in the natural course of competition, they could not otherwise have won. If the official personnel of the labour unions were as strong, as honest, as decent, and as plainly wise as the bulk of the men who make up the membership, the whole movement would have taken on a different complexion these last few years. But this official personnel, in the main--there are notable exceptions--has not devoted itself to an alliance with the naturally strong qualities of the workingman; it has rather devoted itself to playing upon his weaknesses, principally upon the weaknesses of that newly arrived portion of the population which does not yet know what Americanism is, and which never will know if left to the tutelage of their local union leaders. The workingmen, except those few who have been inoculated with the fallacious doctrine of "the class war" and who have accepted the philosophy that progress consists in fomenting discord in industry ("When you get your $12 a day, don't stop at that. Agitate for $14. When you get your eight hours a day, don't be a fool and grow contented; agitate for six hours. Start something! Always start something!"), have the plain sense which enables them to recognize that with principles accepted and observed, conditions change. The union leaders have never seen that. They wish conditions to remain as they are, conditions of injustice, provocation, strikes, bad feeling, and crippled national life. Else where would be the need for union officers? Every strike is a new argument for them; they point to it and say, "You see! You still need us." The only true labour leader is the one who leads labour to work and to wages, and not the leader who leads labour to strikes, sabotage, and starvation. The union of labour which is coming to the fore in this country is the union of all whose interests are interdependent--whose interests are altogether dependent on the usefulness and efficiency of the service they render. There is a change coming. When the union of "union leaders" disappears, with it will go the union of blind bosses--bosses who never did a decent thing for their employees until they were compelled. If the blind boss was a disease, the selfish union leader was the antidote. When the union leader became the disease, the blind boss became the antidote. Both are misfits, both are out of place in well-organized society. And they are both disappearing together. It is the blind boss whose voice is heard to-day saying, "Now is the time to smash labour, we've got them on the run." That voice is going down to silence with the voice that preaches "class war." The producers--from the men at the drawing board to the men on the moulding floor--have gotten together in a real union, and they will handle their own affairs henceforth. The exploitation of dissatisfaction is an established business to-day. Its object is not to settle anything, nor to get anything done, but to keep dissatisfaction in existence. And the instruments used to do this are a whole set of false theories and promises which can never be fulfilled as long as the earth remains what it is. I am not opposed to labour organization. I am not opposed to any sort of organization that makes for progress. It is organizing to limit production--whether by employers or by workers--that matters. The workingman himself must be on guard against some very dangerous notions--dangerous to himself and to the welfare of the country. It is sometimes said that the less a worker does, the more jobs he creates for other men. This fallacy assumes that idleness is creative. Idleness never created a job. It creates only burdens. The industrious man never runs his fellow worker out of a job; indeed, it is the industrious man who is the partner of the industrious manager--who creates more and more business and therefore more and more jobs. It is a great pity that the idea should ever have gone abroad among sensible men that by "soldiering" on the job they help someone else. A moment's thought will show the weakness of such an idea. The healthy business, the business that is always making more and more opportunities for men to earn an honourable and ample living, is the business in which every man does a day's work of which he is proud. And the country that stands most securely is the country in which men work honestly and do not play tricks with the means of production. We cannot play fast and loose with economic laws, because if we do they handle us in very hard ways. The fact that a piece of work is now being done by nine men which used to be done by ten men does not mean that the tenth man is unemployed. He is merely not employed on that work, and the public is not carrying the burden of his support by paying more than it ought on that work--for after all, it is the public that pays! An industrial concern which is wide enough awake to reorganize for efficiency, and honest enough with the public to charge it necessary costs and no more, is usually such an enterprising concern that it has plenty of jobs at which to employ the tenth man. It is bound to grow, and growth means jobs. A well-managed concern is always seeking to lower the labour cost to the public; and it is certain to employ more men than the concern which loafs along and makes the public pay the cost of its mismanagement. The tenth man was an unnecessary cost. The ultimate consumer was paying him. But the fact that he was unnecessary on that particular job does not mean that he is unnecessary in the work of the world, or even in the work of his particular shop. The public pays for all mismanagement. More than half the trouble with the world to-day is the "soldiering" and dilution and cheapness and inefficiency for which the people are paying their good money. Wherever two men are being paid for what one can do, the people are paying double what they ought. And it is a fact that only a little while ago in the United States, man for man, we were not producing what we did for several years previous to the war. A day's work means more than merely being "on duty" at the shop for the required number of hours. It means giving an equivalent in service for the wage drawn. And when that equivalent is tampered with either way--when the man gives more than he receives, or receives more than he gives--it is not long before serious dislocation will be manifest. Extend that condition throughout the country, and you have a complete upset of business. All that industrial difficulty means is the destruction of basic equivalents in the shop. Management must share the blame with labour. Management has been lazy, too. Management has found it easier to hire an additional five hundred men than to so improve its methods that one hundred men of the old force could be released to other work. The public was paying, and business was booming, and management didn't care a pin. It was no different in the office from what it was in the shop. The law of equivalents was broken just as much by managers as by workmen. Practically nothing of importance is secured by mere demand. That is why strikes always fail--even though they may seem to succeed. A strike which brings higher wages or shorter hours and passes on the burden to the community is really unsuccessful. It only makes the industry less able to serve--and decreases the number of jobs that it can support. This is not to say that no strike is justified--it may draw attention to an evil. Men can strike with justice--that they will thereby get justice is another question. The strike for proper conditions and just rewards is justifiable. The pity is that men should be compelled to use the strike to get what is theirs by right. No American ought to be compelled to strike for his rights. He ought to receive them naturally, easily, as a matter of course. These justifiable strikes are usually the employer's fault. Some employers are not fit for their jobs. The employment of men--the direction of their energies, the arranging of their rewards in honest ratio to their production and to the prosperity of the business--is no small job. An employer may be unfit for his job, just as a man at the lathe may be unfit. Justifiable strikes are a sign that the boss needs another job--one that he can handle. The unfit employer causes more trouble than the unfit employee. You can change the latter to another more suitable job. But the former must usually be left to the law of compensation. The justified strike, then, is one that need never have been called if the employer had done his work. There is a second kind of strike--the strike with a concealed design. In this kind of strike the workingmen are made the tools of some manipulator who seeks his own ends through them. To illustrate: Here is a great industry whose success is due to having met a public need with efficient and skillful production. It has a record for justice. Such an industry presents a great temptation to speculators. If they can only gain control of it they can reap rich benefit from all the honest effort that has been put into it. They can destroy its beneficiary wage and profit-sharing, squeeze every last dollar out of the public, the product, and the workingman, and reduce it to the plight of other business concerns which are run on low principles. The motive may be the personal greed of the speculators or they may want to change the policy of a business because its example is embarrassing to other employers who do not want to do what is right. The industry cannot be touched from within, because its men have no reason to strike. So another method is adopted. The business may keep many outside shops busy supplying it with material. If these outside shops can be tied up, then that great industry may be crippled. So strikes are fomented in the outside industries. Every attempt is made to curtail the factory's source of supplies. If the workingmen in the outside shops knew what the game was, they would refuse to play it, but they don't know; they serve as the tools of designing capitalists without knowing it. There is one point, however, that ought to rouse the suspicions of workingmen engaged in this kind of strike. If the strike cannot get itself settled, no matter what either side offers to do, it is almost positive proof that there is a third party interested in having the strike continue. That hidden influence does not want a settlement on any terms. If such a strike is won by the strikers, is the lot of the workingman improved? After throwing the industry into the hands of outside speculators, are the workmen given any better treatment or wages? There is a third kind of strike--the strike that is provoked by the money interests for the purpose of giving labour a bad name. The American workman has always had a reputation for sound judgment. He has not allowed himself to be led away by every shouter who promised to create the millennium out of thin air. He has had a mind of his own and has used it. He has always recognized the fundamental truth that the absence of reason was never made good by the presence of violence. In his way the American workingman has won a certain prestige with his own people and throughout the world. Public opinion has been inclined to regard with respect his opinions and desires. But there seems to be a determined effort to fasten the Bolshevik stain on American Labour by inciting it to such impossible attitudes and such wholly unheard-of actions as shall change public sentiment from respect to criticism. Merely avoiding strikes, however, does not promote industry. We may say to the workingman: "You have a grievance, but the strike is no remedy--it only makes the situation worse whether you win or lose." Then the workingman may admit this to be true and refrain from striking. Does that settle anything? No! If the worker abandons strikes as an unworthy means of bringing about desirable conditions, it simply means that employers must get busy on their own initiative and correct defective conditions. The experience of the Ford industries with the workingman has been entirely satisfactory, both in the United States and abroad. We have no antagonism to unions, but we participate in no arrangements with either employee or employer organizations. The wages paid are always higher than any reasonable union could think of demanding and the hours of work are always shorter. There is nothing that a union membership could do for our people. Some of them may belong to unions, probably the majority do not. We do not know and make no attempt to find out, for it is a matter of not the slightest concern to us. We respect the unions, sympathize with their good aims and denounce their bad ones. In turn I think that they give us respect, for there has never been any authoritative attempt to come between the men and the management in our plants. Of course radical agitators have tried to stir up trouble now and again, but the men have mostly regarded them simply as human oddities and their interest in them has been the same sort of interest that they would have in a four-legged man. In England we did meet the trades union question squarely in our Manchester plant. The workmen of Manchester are mostly unionized, and the usual English union restrictions upon output prevail. We took over a body plant in which were a number of union carpenters. At once the union officers asked to see our executives and arrange terms. We deal only with our own employees and never with outside representatives, so our people refused to see the union officials. Thereupon they called the carpenters out on strike. The carpenters would not strike and were expelled from the union. Then the expelled men brought suit against the union for their share of the benefit fund. I do not know how the litigation turned out, but that was the end of interference by trades union officers with our operations in England. We make no attempt to coddle the people who work with us. It is absolutely a give-and-take relation. During the period in which we largely increased wages we did have a considerable supervisory force. The home life of the men was investigated and an effort was made to find out what they did with their wages. Perhaps at the time it was necessary; it gave us valuable information. But it would not do at all as a permanent affair and it has been abandoned. We do not believe in the "glad hand," or the professionalized "personal touch," or "human element." It is too late in the day for that sort of thing. Men want something more than a worthy sentiment. Social conditions are not made out of words. They are the net result of the daily relations between man and man. The best social spirit is evidenced by some act which costs the management something and which benefits all. That is the only way to prove good intentions and win respect. Propaganda, bulletins, lectures--they are nothing. It is the right act sincerely done that counts. A great business is really too big to be human. It grows so large as to supplant the personality of the man. In a big business the employer, like the employee, is lost in the mass. Together they have created a great productive organization which sends out articles that the world buys and pays for in return money that provides a livelihood for everyone in the business. The business itself becomes the big thing. There is something sacred about a big business which provides a living for hundreds and thousands of families. When one looks about at the babies coming into the world, at the boys and girls going to school, at the young workingmen who, on the strength of their jobs, are marrying and setting up for themselves, at the thousands of homes that are being paid for on installments out of the earnings of men--when one looks at a great productive organization that is enabling all these things to be done, then the continuance of that business becomes a holy trust. It becomes greater and more important than the individuals. The employer is but a man like his employees and is subject to all the limitations of humanity. He is justified in holding his job only as he can fill it. If he can steer the business straight, if his men can trust him to run his end of the work properly and without endangering their security, then he is filling his place. Otherwise he is no more fit for his position than would be an infant. The employer, like everyone else, is to be judged solely by his ability. He may be but a name to the men--a name on a signboard. But there is the business--it is more than a name. It produces the living--and a living is a pretty tangible thing. The business is a reality. It does things. It is a going concern. The evidence of its fitness is that the pay envelopes keep coming. You can hardly have too much harmony in business. But you can go too far in picking men because they harmonize. You can have so much harmony that there will not be enough of the thrust and counterthrust which is life--enough of the competition which means effort and progress. It is one thing for an organization to be working harmoniously toward one object, but it is another thing for an organization to work harmoniously with each individual unit of itself. Some organizations use up so much energy and time maintaining a feeling of harmony that they have no force left to work for the object for which the organization was created. The organization is secondary to the object. The only harmonious organization that is worth anything is an organization in which all the members are bent on the one main purpose--to get along toward the objective. A common purpose, honestly believed in, sincerely desired--that is the great harmonizing principle. I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that he must always have "an atmosphere of good feeling" around him before he can do his work. There are such men. And in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance on "feeling," they are failures. Not only are they business failures; they are character failures also; it is as if their bones never attained a sufficient degree of hardness to enable them to stand on their own feet. There is altogether too much reliance on good feeling in our business organizations. People have too great a fondness for working with the people they like. In the end it spoils a good many valuable qualities. Do not misunderstand me; when I use the term "good feeling" I mean that habit of making one's personal likes and dislikes the sole standard of judgment. Suppose you do not like a man. Is that anything against him? It may be something against you. What have your likes or dislikes to do with the facts? Every man of common sense knows that there are men whom he dislikes, who are really more capable than he is himself. And taking all this out of the shop and into the broader fields, it is not necessary for the rich to love the poor or the poor to love the rich. It is not necessary for the employer to love the employee or for the employee to love the employer. What is necessary is that each should try to do justice to the other according to his deserts. That is real democracy and not the question of who ought to own the bricks and the mortar and the furnaces and the mills. And democracy has nothing to do with the question, "Who ought to be boss?" That is very much like asking: "Who ought to be the tenor in the quartet?" Obviously, the man who can sing tenor. You could not have deposed Caruso. Suppose some theory of musical democracy had consigned Caruso to the musical proletariat. Would that have reared another tenor to take his place? Or would Caruso's gifts have still remained his own? CHAPTER XIX WHAT WE MAY EXPECT We are--unless I do not read the signs aright--in the midst of a change. It is going on all about us, slowly and scarcely observed, but with a firm surety. We are gradually learning to relate cause and effect. A great deal of that which we call disturbance--a great deal of the upset in what have seemed to be established institutions--is really but the surface indication of something approaching a regeneration. The public point of view is changing, and we really need only a somewhat different point of view to make the very bad system of the past into a very good system of the future. We are displacing that peculiar virtue which used to be admired as hard-headedness, and which was really only wooden-headedness, with intelligence, and also we are getting rid of mushy sentimentalism. The first confused hardness with progress; the second confused softness with progress. We are getting a better view of the realities and are beginning to know that we have already in the world all things needful for the fullest kind of a life and that we shall use them better once we learn what they are and what they mean. Whatever is wrong--and we all know that much is wrong--can be righted by a clear definition of the wrongness. We have been looking so much at one another, at what one has and another lacks, that we have made a personal affair out of something that is too big for personalities. To be sure, human nature enters largely into our economic problems. Selfishness exists, and doubtless it colours all the competitive activities of life. If selfishness were the characteristic of any one class it might be easily dealt with, but it is in human fibre everywhere. And greed exists. And envy exists. And jealousy exists. But as the struggle for mere existence grows less--and it is less than it used to be, although the sense of uncertainty may have increased--we have an opportunity to release some of the finer motives. We think less of the frills of civilization as we grow used to them. Progress, as the world has thus far known it, is accompanied by a great increase in the things of life. There is more gear, more wrought material, in the average American backyard than in the whole domain of an African king. The average American boy has more paraphernalia around him than a whole Eskimo community. The utensils of kitchen, dining room, bedroom, and coal cellar make a list that would have staggered the most luxurious potentate of five hundred years ago. The increase in the impedimenta of life only marks a stage. We are like the Indian who comes into town with all his money and buys everything he sees. There is no adequate realization of the large proportion of the labour and material of industry that is used in furnishing the world with its trumpery and trinkets, which are made only to be sold, and are bought merely to be owned--that perform no service in the world and are at last mere rubbish as at first they were mere waste. Humanity is advancing out of its trinket-making stage, and industry is coming down to meet the world's needs, and thus we may expect further advancement toward that life which many now see, but which the present "good enough" stage hinders our attaining. And we are growing out of this worship of material possessions. It is no longer a distinction to be rich. As a matter of fact, to be rich is no longer a common ambition. People do not care for money as money, as they once did. Certainly they do not stand in awe of it, nor of him who possesses it. What we accumulate by way of useless surplus does us no honour. It takes only a moment's thought to see that as far as individual personal advantage is concerned, vast accumulations of money mean nothing. A human being is a human being and is nourished by the same amount and quality of food, is warmed by the same weight of clothing, whether he be rich or poor. And no one can inhabit more than one room at a time. But if one has visions of service, if one has vast plans which no ordinary resources could possibly realize, if one has a life ambition to make the industrial desert bloom like the rose, and the work-a-day life suddenly blossom into fresh and enthusiastic human motives of higher character and efficiency, then one sees in large sums of money what the farmer sees in his seed corn--the beginning of new and richer harvests whose benefits can no more be selfishly confined than can the sun's rays. There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world's ills will be cured. They are both on the wrong track. They might as well try to corner all the checkers or all the dominoes of the world under the delusion that they are thereby cornering great quantities of skill. Some of the most successful money-makers of our times have never added one pennyworth to the wealth of men. Does a card player add to the wealth of the world? If we all created wealth up to the limits, the easy limits, of our creative capacity, then it would simply be a case of there being enough for everybody, and everybody getting enough. Any real scarcity of the necessaries of life in the world--not a fictitious scarcity caused by the lack of clinking metallic disks in one's purse--is due only to lack of production. And lack of production is due only too often to lack of knowledge of how and what to produce. * * * * * This much we must believe as a starting point: That the earth produces, or is capable of producing, enough to give decent sustenance to everyone--not of food alone, but of everything else we need. For everything is produced from the earth. That it is possible for labour, production, distribution, and reward to be so organized as to make certain that those who contribute shall receive shares determined by an exact justice. That regardless of the frailties of human nature, our economic system can be so adjusted that selfishness, although perhaps not abolished, can be robbed of power to work serious economic injustice. * * * * * The business of life is easy or hard according to the skill or the lack of skill displayed in production and distribution. It has been thought that business existed for profit. That is wrong. Business exists for service. It is a profession, and must have recognized professional ethics, to violate which declasses a man. Business needs more of the professional spirit. The professional spirit seeks professional integrity, from pride, not from compulsion. The professional spirit detects its own violations and penalizes them. Business will some day become clean. A machine that stops every little while is an imperfect machine, and its imperfection is within itself. A body that falls sick every little while is a diseased body, and its disease is within itself. So with business. Its faults, many of them purely the faults of the moral constitution of business, clog its progress and make it sick every little while. Some day the ethics of business will be universally recognized, and in that day business will be seen to be the oldest and most useful of all the professions. * * * * * All that the Ford industries have done--all that I have done--is to endeavour to evidence by works that service comes before profit and that the sort of business which makes the world better for its presence is a noble profession. Often it has come to me that what is regarded as the somewhat remarkable progression of our enterprises--I will not say "success," for that word is an epitaph, and we are just starting--is due to some accident; and that the methods which we have used, while well enough in their way, fit only the making of our particular products and would not do at all in any other line of business or indeed for any products or personalities other than our own. It used to be taken for granted that our theories and our methods were fundamentally unsound. That is because they were not understood. Events have killed that kind of comment, but there remains a wholly sincere belief that what we have done could not be done by any other company--that we have been touched by a wand, that neither we nor any one else could make shoes, or hats, or sewing machines, or watches, or typewriters, or any other necessity after the manner in which we make automobiles and tractors. And that if only we ventured into other fields we should right quickly discover our errors. I do not agree with any of this. Nothing has come out of the air. The foregoing pages should prove that. We have nothing that others might not have. We have had no good fortune except that which always attends any one who puts his best into his work. There was nothing that could be called "favorable" about our beginning. We began with almost nothing. What we have, we earned, and we earned it by unremitting labour and faith in a principle. We took what was a luxury and turned it into a necessity and without trick or subterfuge. When we began to make our present motor car the country had few good roads, gasoline was scarce, and the idea was firmly implanted in the public mind that an automobile was at the best a rich man's toy. Our only advantage was lack of precedent. We began to manufacture according to a creed--a creed which was at that time unknown in business. The new is always thought odd, and some of us are so constituted that we can never get over thinking that anything which is new must be odd and probably queer. The mechanical working out of our creed is constantly changing. We are continually finding new and better ways of putting it into practice, but we have not found it necessary to alter the principles, and I cannot imagine how it might ever be necessary to alter them, because I hold that they are absolutely universal and must lead to a better and wider life for all. If I did not think so I would not keep working--for the money that I make is inconsequent. Money is useful only as it serves to forward by practical example the principle that business is justified only as it serves, that it must always give more to the community than it takes away, and that unless everybody benefits by the existence of a business then that business should not exist. I have proved this with automobiles and tractors. I intend to prove it with railways and public-service corporations--not for my personal satisfaction and not for the money that may be earned. (It is perfectly impossible, applying these principles, to avoid making a much larger profit than if profit were the main object.) I want to prove it so that all of us may have more, and that all of us may live better by increasing the service rendered by all businesses. Poverty cannot be abolished by formula; it can be abolished only by hard and intelligent work. We are, in effect, an experimental station to prove a principle. That we do make money is only further proof that we are right. For that is a species of argument that establishes itself without words. In the first chapter was set forth the creed. Let me repeat it in the light of the work that has been done under it--for it is at the basis of all our work: (1) An absence of fear of the future or of veneration for the past. One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress. (2) A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another man--criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition of one's fellow-men, to rule by force instead of by intelligence. (3) The putting of service before profit. Without a profit, business cannot extend. There is nothing inherently wrong about making a profit. Well-conducted business enterprises cannot fail to return a profit but profit must and inevitably will come as a reward for good service. It cannot be the basis--it must be the result of service. (4) Manufacturing is not buying low and selling high. It is the process of buying materials fairly and, with the smallest possible addition of cost, transforming those materials into a consumable product and distributing it to the consumer. Gambling, speculating, and sharp dealing tend only to clog this progression. * * * * * We must have production, but it is the spirit behind it that counts most. That kind of production which is a service inevitably follows a real desire to be of service. The various wholly artificial rules set up for finance and industry and which pass as "laws" break down with such frequency as to prove that they are not even good guesses. The basis of all economic reasoning is the earth and its products. To make the yield of the earth, in all its forms, large enough and dependable enough to serve as the basis for real life--the life which is more than eating and sleeping--is the highest service. That is the real foundation for an economic system. We can make things--the problem of production has been solved brilliantly. We can make any number of different sort of things by the millions. The material mode of our life is splendidly provided for. There are enough processes and improvements now pigeonholed and awaiting application to bring the physical side of life to almost millennial completeness. But we are too wrapped up in the things we are doing--we are not enough concerned with the reasons why we do them. Our whole competitive system, our whole creative expression, all the play of our faculties seem to be centred around material production and its by-products of success and wealth. There is, for instance, a feeling that personal or group benefit can be had at the expense of other persons or groups. There is nothing to be gained by crushing any one. If the farmer's bloc should crush the manufacturers would the farmers be better off? If the manufacturer's bloc should crush the farmers, would the manufacturers be better off? Could Capital gain by crushing Labour? Or Labour by crushing Capital? Or does a man in business gain by crushing a competitor? No, destructive competition benefits no one. The kind of competition which results in the defeat of the many and the overlordship of the ruthless few must go. Destructive competition lacks the qualities out of which progress comes. Progress comes from a generous form of rivalry. Bad competition is personal. It works for the aggrandizement of some individual or group. It is a sort of warfare. It is inspired by a desire to "get" someone. It is wholly selfish. That is to say, its motive is not pride in the product, nor a desire to excel in service, nor yet a wholesome ambition to approach to scientific methods of production. It is moved simply by the desire to crowd out others and monopolize the market for the sake of the money returns. That being accomplished, it always substitutes a product of inferior quality. * * * * * Freeing ourselves from the petty sort of destructive competition frees us from many set notions. We are too closely tied to old methods and single, one-way uses. We need more mobility. We have been using certain things just one way, we have been sending certain goods through only one channel--and when that use is slack, or that channel is stopped, business stops, too, and all the sorry consequences of "depression" set in. Take corn, for example. There are millions upon millions of bushels of corn stored in the United States with no visible outlet. A certain amount of corn is used as food for man and beast, but not all of it. In pre-Prohibition days a certain amount of corn went into the making of liquor, which was not a very good use for good corn. But through a long course of years corn followed those two channels, and when one of them stopped the stocks of corn began to pile up. It is the money fiction that usually retards the movement of stocks, but even if money were plentiful we could not possibly consume the stores of food which we sometimes possess. If foodstuffs become too plentiful to be consumed as food, why not find other uses for them? Why use corn only for hogs and distilleries? Why sit down and bemoan the terrible disaster that has befallen the corn market? Is there no use for corn besides the making of pork or the making of whisky? Surely there must be. There should be so many uses for corn that only the important uses could ever be fully served; there ought always be enough channels open to permit corn to be used without waste. Once upon a time the farmers burned corn as fuel--corn was plentiful and coal was scarce. That was a crude way to dispose of corn, but it contained the germ of an idea. There is fuel in corn; oil and fuel alcohol are obtainable from corn, and it is high time that someone was opening up this new use so that the stored-up corn crops may be moved. Why have only one string to our bow? Why not two? If one breaks, there is the other. If the hog business slackens, why should not the farmer turn his corn into tractor fuel? We need more diversity all round. The four-track system everywhere would not be a bad idea. We have a single-track money system. It is a mighty fine system for those who own it. It is a perfect system for the interest-collecting, credit-controlling financiers who literally own the commodity called Money and who literally own the machinery by which money is made and used. Let them keep their system if they like it. But the people are finding out that it is a poor system for what we call "hard times" because it ties up the line and stops traffic. If there are special protections for the interests, there ought also to be special protections for the plain people. Diversity of outlet, of use, and of financial enablement, are the strongest defenses we can have against economic emergencies. It is likewise with Labour. There surely ought to be flying squadrons of young men who would be available for emergency conditions in harvest field, mine, shop, or railroad. If the fires of a hundred industries threaten to go out for lack of coal, and one million men are menaced by unemployment, it would seem both good business and good humanity for a sufficient number of men to volunteer for the mines and the railroads. There is always something to be done in this world, and only ourselves to do it. The whole world may be idle, and in the factory sense there may be "nothing to do." There may be nothing to do in this place or that, but there is always something to do. It is this fact which should urge us to such an organization of ourselves that this "something to be done" may get done, and unemployment reduced to a minimum. * * * * * Every advance begins in a small way and with the individual. The mass can be no better than the sum of the individuals. Advancement begins within the man himself; when he advances from half-interest to strength of purpose; when he advances from hesitancy to decisive directness; when he advances from immaturity to maturity of judgment; when he advances from apprenticeship to mastery; when he advances from a mere _dilettante_ at labour to a worker who finds a genuine joy in work; when he advances from an eye-server to one who can be entrusted to do his work without oversight and without prodding--why, then the world advances! The advance is not easy. We live in flabby times when men are being taught that everything ought to be easy. Work that amounts to anything will never be easy. And the higher you go in the scale of responsibility, the harder becomes the job. Ease has its place, of course. Every man who works ought to have sufficient leisure. The man who works hard should have his easy chair, his comfortable fireside, his pleasant surroundings. These are his by right. But no one deserves ease until after his work is done. It will never be possible to put upholstered ease into work. Some work is needlessly hard. It can be lightened by proper management. Every device ought to be employed to leave a man free to do a man's work. Flesh and blood should not be made to bear burdens that steel can bear. But even when the best is done, work still remains work, and any man who puts himself into his job will feel that it is work. And there cannot be much picking and choosing. The appointed task may be less than was expected. A man's real work is not always what he would have chosen to do. A man's real work is what he is chosen to do. Just now there are more menial jobs than there will be in the future; and as long as there are menial jobs, someone will have to do them; but there is no reason why a man should be penalized because his job is menial. There is one thing that can be said about menial jobs that cannot be said about a great many so-called more responsible jobs, and that is, they are useful and they are respectable and they are honest. The time has come when drudgery must be taken out of labour. It is not work that men object to, but the element of drudgery. We must drive out drudgery wherever we find it. We shall never be wholly civilized until we remove the treadmill from the daily job. Invention is doing this in some degree now. We have succeeded to a very great extent in relieving men of the heavier and more onerous jobs that used to sap their strength, but even when lightening the heavier labour we have not yet succeeded in removing monotony. That is another field that beckons us--the abolition of monotony, and in trying to accomplish that we shall doubtless discover other changes that will have to be made in our system. * * * * * The opportunity to work is now greater than ever it was. The opportunity to advance is greater. It is true that the young man who enters industry to-day enters a very different system from that in which the young man of twenty-five years ago began his career. The system has been tightened up; there is less play or friction in it; fewer matters are left to the haphazard will of the individual; the modern worker finds himself part of an organization which apparently leaves him little initiative. Yet, with all this, it is not true that "men are mere machines." It is not true that opportunity has been lost in organization. If the young man will liberate himself from these ideas and regard the system as it is, he will find that what he thought was a barrier is really an aid. Factory organization is not a device to prevent the expansion of ability, but a device to reduce the waste and losses due to mediocrity. It is not a device to hinder the ambitious, clear-headed man from doing his best, but a device to prevent the don't-care sort of individual from doing his worst. That is to say, when laziness, carelessness, slothfulness, and lack-interest are allowed to have their own way, everybody suffers. The factory cannot prosper and therefore cannot pay living wages. When an organization makes it necessary for the don't-care class to do better than they naturally would, it is for their benefit--they are better physically, mentally, and financially. What wages should we be able to pay if we trusted a large don't-care class to their own methods and gait of production? If the factory system which brought mediocrity up to a higher standard operated also to keep ability down to a lower standard--it would be a very bad system, a very bad system indeed. But a system, even a perfect one, must have able individuals to operate it. No system operates itself. And the modern system needs more brains for its operation than did the old. More brains are needed to-day than ever before, although perhaps they are not needed in the same place as they once were. It is just like power: formerly every machine was run by foot power; the power was right at the machine. But nowadays we have moved the power back--concentrated it in the power-house. Thus also we have made it unnecessary for the highest types of mental ability to be engaged in every operation in the factory. The better brains are in the mental power-plant. Every business that is growing is at the same time creating new places for capable men. It cannot help but do so. This does not mean that new openings come every day and in groups. Not at all. They come only after hard work; it is the fellow who can stand the gaff of routine and still keep himself alive and alert who finally gets into direction. It is not sensational brilliance that one seeks in business, but sound, substantial dependability. Big enterprises of necessity move slowly and cautiously. The young man with ambition ought to take a long look ahead and leave an ample margin of time for things to happen. * * * * * A great many things are going to change. We shall learn to be masters rather than servants of Nature. With all our fancied skill we still depend largely on natural resources and think that they cannot be displaced. We dig coal and ore and cut down trees. We use the coal and the ore and they are gone; the trees cannot be replaced within a lifetime. We shall some day harness the heat that is all about us and no longer depend on coal--we may now create heat through electricity generated by water power. We shall improve on that method. As chemistry advances I feel quite certain that a method will be found to transform growing things into substances that will endure better than the metals--we have scarcely touched the uses of cotton. Better wood can be made than is grown. The spirit of true service will create for us. We have only each of us to do our parts sincerely. * * * * * Everything is possible ... "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." THE BOOK ENDS INDEX Absentees discharged, Accidents, safeguarding against; causes of Advancement, personal Advertisement, first, of Ford Motor Co. Agents, Agriculture, a primary function Ainsley, Charles Alexander, Henry, drives Ford car to top of Ben Nevis, 4,600 feet, in 1911 Antecedents, a man's, of no interest in hiring at Ford factory Assembly of a Ford car; first experiment in a moving assembly line, April 1, 1913; results of the experiment Automobile, public's first attitude toward Automobile business, bad methods of; in its beginnings Bankers play too great a part in business; in railroads Banking, Bedridden men at work, Benz car on exhibition at Macy's in 1885, Birds, Mr. Ford's fondness for Blind men can work, Bolshevism, Bonuses--_See_ "Profit-Sharing" Borrowing money; what it would have meant to Ford Motor Co. in 1920 British Board of Agriculture, British Cabinet and Fordson tractors, Burroughs, John Business, monopoly and profiteering bad for; function of Buying for immediate needs only, Cadillac Company, Capital, Capitalist newspapers, Capitalists, Cash balance, large Charity, professional City life, "Classes" mostly fictional, Classification of work at Ford plants, Cleanliness of factory, Coal used in Ford plants from Ford mines, Coke ovens at River Rouge plant, Collier, Colonel D. C. Competition, Consumption varies according to price and quality, Convict labour, Cooper, Tom Cooperative farming, Cork, Ireland, Fordson tractor plant Corn, potential uses of Costs of production, records of; prices force down; high wages contribute to low Country, living in Courtney, F. S. Creative work, Creed, industrial, Mr. Ford's Cripples can work, Cross, John E. Dalby, Prof. W. E., Deaf and dumb men at work, _Dearborn Independent_, Dearborn plant, Democracy, Detroit Automobile Co., Detroit General Hospital, now Ford Hospital, Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railway, purchased by Ford Motor Co., in March, 1921, Development, opportunity for, in U. S., Diamond Manufacturing Co. fire, Discipline at Ford plants, "Dividends, abolish, rather than lower wages," Dividends, small, Ford policy of, Doctors, Dollar, the fluctuating, Drudgery, Eagle Boats, Economy, Edison, Thomas A., Educated man, an; definition of, Education, Mr. Ford's ideas on, Educational Department, Electricity generated at Ford plants, "Employees, all, are really partners," Employment Department, Equal, all men are not, Experience, lack of, no bar to employment, Experiments, no record of, kept at Ford factories, "Experts," no, at Ford plants, Factory, Ford, growth of, Factory organization, function of, Failure, habit of, Farming, lack of knowledge in, no conflict between, and industry, future development in, Farming with tractors, Fear, Federal Reserve System, Fighting, a cause for immediate discharge, Finance, Financial crisis in 1921, how Ford Motor Co. met, Financial system at present inadequate, Firestone, Harvey S., Flat Rock plant, Floor space for workers, Flour-milling, Foodstuffs, potential uses of, Ford car-- the first, No. 5,000,000, the second, introduction of, in England in 1903, about 5,000 parts in, sales and production--_See_ "Sales" Ford, Henry-- Born at Dearborn, Mich., July 30, 1863, mechanically inclined, leaves school at seventeen, becomes apprentice at Drydock Engine Works, watch repairer, works with local representative of Westinghouse Co. as expert in setting up and repairing road engines, builds a steam tractor in his workshop, reads of the "silent gas engine" in the _World of Science_, in 1887 builds one on the Otto four-cycle model, father gives him forty acres of timber land, marriage, in 1890 begins work on double-cylinder engine, leaves farm and works as engineer and machinist with the Detroit Electric Co., rents house in Detroit and sets up workshop in back yard, in 1892 completes first motor car, first road test in 1893, builds second motor car, quits job with Electric Co. August 15, 1899, and goes into automobile business, organization of Detroit Automobile Co., resigns from, in 1902, rents shop to continue experiments at 81 Park Place, Detroit, beats Alexander Winton in race, early reflections on business, in 1903 builds, with Tom Cooper, two cars, the "999" and the "Arrow" for speed, forms the Ford Motor Co., buys controlling share in 1906, builds "Model A," builds "Model B" and "Model C," makes a record in race over ice in the "Arrow," builds first real manufacturing plant, in May, 1908, assembles 311 cars in six workings days, in June, 1908, assembles one hundred cars in one day, in 1909, decides to manufacture only "Model T," painted black, buys sixty acres of land for plant at Highland Park, outside of Detroit, how he met the financial crises of 1921, buys Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Ry., March, 1921, "Ford doesn't use the Ford," Ford, Edsel, Ford Hospital, Ford Motor Co., organized 1903, Henry Ford buys controlling share in 1906, how it met financial crisis in 1921, thirty-five branches of, in U. S. "Ford, you can dissect it, but you cannot kill it," Fordson tractor, prices, genesis and development of, cost of farming with, 5,000 sent to England in 1917-18, Foreign trade, Gas from coke ovens at River Rouge plant utilized, "Gold is not wealth," "Good feeling" in working not essential, though desirable, Government, the function of, Greaves, R. N., Greed vs. service, Greenhall, Gilbert, Grosse Point track, "Habit conduces to a certain inertia," Highland Park plant, Hobbs, Robert W., Hospital, Ford, Hough, Judge, renders decision against Ford Motor Co. in Selden Patent suit, Hours of labour per day reduced from nine to eight in January, 1914, "Human, a great business is too big to be," Human element in business, Ideas, old and new, Improvements in products, Interstate Commerce Commission, Inventory, cutting down, by improved freight service, Investment, interest on, not properly chargeable to operating expenses, Jacobs, Edmund, "Jail, men in, ought to be able to support their families," Jewish question, studies in the, Jobs, menial, "John R. Street," Labour, the economic fundamental, and Capital, potential uses of, Labour leaders, Labour newspapers, Labour turnover, "Lawyers, like bankers, know absolutely nothing about business," Legislation, the function of, Licensed Association, "Life is not a location, but a journey," Light for working, Loss, taking a; in times of business depression, Manchester, Eng., Ford plant at, strike at, Machinery, its place in life, Manufacture, a primary function, Medical Department, Mexico, Milner, Lord, Models-- "A," "B," "C," "F," "K," "N," "R," "S," "T," changing, not a Ford policy, Money, chasing, present system of, what it is worth, invested in a business not chargeable to it, fluctuating value of, is not wealth, Monopoly, bad for business, Monotonous work, Motion, waste, eliminating, Northville, Mich., plant, combination farm and factory, Oldfteld, Barney, Opportunity for young men of today, Organization, excess, and red tape, Overman, Henry, Otto engine, Overhead charge per car, cut from $146 to $93, Parts, about 5,000, in a Ford car, Paternalism has no place in industry, "Peace Ship" Philanthropy, Physical incapacity not necessarily a hindrance to working, Physicians, Piquette plant, Poverty, Power-farming, Price policy, Mr. Ford's, Producer depends upon service, Production, principles of Ford plant, plan of, worked out carefully, (For production of Ford cars, _see_ "Sales" and table of production on p. 145) Professional charity, Profiteering, bad for business, Profit-sharing, Property, the right of, Profit, small per article, large aggregate, Profits belong to planner, producer, and purchaser, Price raising, reducing, "Prices, If, of goods are above the incomes of the people, then get the prices down to the incomes," "Prices, unduly high, always a sign of unsound business," Prices of Ford touring cars since 1909, Prison laws, "Prisoners ought to be able to support their families," Railroads, active managers have ceased to manage, suffering from bankers and lawyers, folly of long hauls, Reactionaries, Red tape, "Refinancing," Reformers, Repetitive labour, "Rich, It is no longer a distinction to be," Right of property, River Rouge plant, Routine work, Royal Agricultural Society, Rumours in 1920 that Ford Motor Co. was in a bad financial condition, Russia, under Sovietism, Safeguarding machines, "Sales depend upon wages," Sales of Ford cars in 1903-4, 1,708 cars, in 1904-5, 1,695 cars, in 1905-6, 1,599 cars, in 1906-7, 8,423 cars, in 1907-8, 6,398 cars, in 1908-9, 10,607 cars, in 1909-10, 18,664 cars, in 1910-11, 84,528 cars, see also table of production since 1909, Saturation, point of, Saving habit, Schools, trade, Henry Ford Trade School, Scottish Reliability Trials, test of Ford car in Scrap, utilization of, Seasonal unemployment, Selden, George B., Selden Patent, famous suit against Ford Motor Co., in 1909, Service, principles of, "the foundation of real business," "comes before profit," Simplicity, philosophy of, Social Department, Sorensen, Charles E., Standard Oil Co., Standardization, Statistics abolished in 1920, Steel, vanadium, Strelow's carpenter shop, Strike, the right to, Strikes, why, fail, Suggestions from employees, Surgeons' fees, Sweepings, saving, nets $6,000 a year, Titles, no, to jobs at Ford factory, Tractor--_See_ "Fordson" Trade, foreign, Trade schools, Henry Ford Trade School Training, little, required for jobs at Ford plants, Transportation, a primary function, Turnover of goods, Union labour, Universal car, essential attributes of, Vanadium steel, Ventilation of factory, Wages, minimum of $6 a day at all Ford plants, are partnership distributions, fallacy of regulating, on basis of cost of, living, sales depend upon, minimum of $5 a day introduced in January, 1914, danger in rapidly raising, cutting, a slovenly way to meet business depression, high, contribute to low cost, abolish dividends rather than lower, War, opposition to, Ford industries in the, Waste, vs. service, eliminating, Weeks-McLean Bird Bill, Weight, excess, in an automobile, Welfare work--_See_ "Social Department," "Medical Department," and "Educational Department." Winton, Alexander, Women, married, whose husbands have jobs, not employed at Ford plants, Work, its place in life, the right to