Carnegie (32 page)

On 1 August Germany declared war on Russia, France mobilised and the German government demanded a passage for its armies through Belgium to attack France; all-out war with France was declared on 3 August. Early the next day German troops entered Belgium, and Great Britain sent an ultimatum demanding that Germany respect Belgian territory and neutrality. The ultimatum was ignored and at midnight Britain declared war on Germany.

Carnegie heard the news of the outbreak of the First World War from an old family friend, the Revd Robert L. Ritchie, parish minister of Creich, who had received a confidential tipoff from London. Carnegie was stunned: how could the Kaiser, whom he deemed a peacemaker, come to this? ‘All my air-castles have fallen about me like a house of cards,’ he told Ritchie.
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Could America do anything to stop the war? On 6 August the US cruiser
Tennessee
sailed from New York with $5 million in gold to help US citizens trapped in Europe, and on 19 August President Woodrow Wilson urged the American people to be ‘neutral in fact as well as in name’.

On the day Britain declared war on Germany Carnegie’s friend John Morley – then Lord President of the Council – wrote to him to say that he had resigned from the Liberal administration of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith. A few days after the letter was received, Morley joined the guests at Skibo, where Carnegie’s tenants and employees were already being called up for war service. Carnegie cooperated fully with the authorities and Skibo’s ‘horses, wagons, traps . . . and . . . beautiful trees’ were surrendered to the war effort.
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One more event took place at Skibo on the day war broke out: Carnegie finished his autobiography. It came to an abrupt end with the words:

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 honour 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.
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During April 1917 the United States Congress accepted President Woodrow Wilson’s challenge to ‘make the world safe for democracy’ and declared entry into the war.

At Skibo the war dominated conversation; Carnegie was sad that Morley’s resignation had brought his political career to an end, but he fully agreed with the decision to go to war. He even refused to join pacifist protesters against the war.
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Before the Carnegies returned to America on the
Mauretania
in mid-September 1914, Carnegie made public his feelings about the Kaiser. In it he sadly misjudged the character and motivation of Queen Victoria’s petulant grandson:

The German Emperor has not yet been proved guilty. I believe he has been more sinned against than sinning. Rulers are not seldom overruled and, at best, are unable to supervise wisely all the varying conditions of international quarrels. History alone will record the truth. Meanwhile the Emperor, who alone of all ruling potentates has preserved his country’s peace for twenty-six years, is at least entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
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His words were taken as ‘pro-German’ and earned Carnegie some opprobrium, not least in his home town of Dunfermline.

How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God.

Luke, 18:24

T
he voyage to America was not without its tensions. Louise’s recurrent seasickness was not helped by thoughts of German sea raiders and the possibility of the
Mauretania
suffering the fate of the British cruiser HMS
Amphion
, sunk just a few weeks earlier; the loss of the
Titanic
on the night of 14/15 April 1912 only heightened the tension as look-outs nervously scanned the seas for icebergs. Once back in America the Carnegies fell into their usual routine, now though age required more leisurely pursuits – social visits, walks, reading and a little golf, if only a putt or two on the lawns of the New York house. In his study Carnegie still carried on sifting through mailbags full of requests for donations and gifts. Even so he was finding it difficult to disburse his wealth as he wished; he asked his secretary how much he had left, and the sum of $150 million was revealed.
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Occasionally he ventured a view on what was happening in Europe’s theatre of war, still supporting Kaiser Wilhelm II as a reluctant pawn in the hands of the German military cadre. Carnegie also gave thought at this time to the structure of his will. Back in 1911, when the Carnegie Corporation was set on course, both Louise and daughter Margaret had agreed to relinquish all claims to the vast Carnegie fortune, so his thoughts were on others.

As he grew older – he was 79 in 1914 – Carnegie became more and more interested in his confidential list of pensioners. Separate from his great endowments and the Carnegie Corporation, this was composed of a roster of men and women selected by Carnegie to receive annual payments. Carnegie’s assistants in this matter were charged with making careful assessments of all pensioners and worthy folk: ‘My pension list is my chief joy and I want no bad names on it.’
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Many folk totally unknown to and not recognised by the public, but who had figured somewhere in the Carnegie story (however vaguely), received small pensions of up to $100 monthly, while many from politics, academe, the arts and museums – who had been stripped of their ability to earn through disability and age – received regular funds.
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To this list were added the names of Dunfermline folk, from erstwhile schoolfellows, neighbours and those down on their luck (if they remained ostensibly sober!). In this matter of local selection Carnegie depended upon his Dunfermline lawyer Sir John Ross. One recipient brought great joy to Carnegie. Since before the centenary of poet Robert Burns’s death in 1896, Carnegie had been a loyal sponsor of Burns events; for years it had been a requirement for Carnegie libraries to display a bust of the poet. Now the list of pensioners included a great-granddaughter of Robert Burns.
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Jean Armour Burns Brown resided at Dumfries and folk always said she bore an uncanny likeness to her forebear – she often dressed up as him on celebratory occasions. By the time Carnegie’s pension list was complete there were about 500 pensioners sharing some $250,000 per annum.
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Carnegie’s last public ‘performance’ was his appearance at the Industrial Commission of February 1915. This commission was set up by President Woodrow Wilson to examine the social status of American working folk, their earnings, and their involvement in trade unions, strikes and so on. Carnegie was called to appear on the subject of the distribution of ‘charity’ funds to workers and the role of trustees; this was really to winkle out any possibility of corruption. Carnegie addressed the commission and assembled public – some none too friendly – with his usual public charm. His theme was ‘My chief business is to do as much good as I can in the world; I have retired from all other business.’
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Whether this was relevant to the commission or not was of no concern to Carnegie.

His skills as a communicator grabbed his audience; although Frank P. Walsh, the chairman and examiner at the commission, repeatedly tried to keep Carnegie to the point, the white-haired septuagenarian presented himself neither as a ‘robber baron’ (to the assorted grim-faced socialists present) nor as a ‘heartless ogre’ (to the nascent feminists whose hats bobbed above the crowd), but instead entertained his listeners with a résumé of his life and philosophy. Then came a selection of questions from Walsh. Yes, Carnegie agreed to collective bargaining (he had loved his men to call him ‘Andy’); yes, he would be delighted if the public were interested in and took part in his charitable foundations. To him such foundations were a vital part of worker development and happiness. He left the stage exhausted but delighted; he had got his message across, his audience was won over.

As February 1915 came to a close Carnegie succumbed to a heavy cold; when it developed into influenza he was bedbound for a fortnight. When he was well enough to rise, the energetic, keen and vibrant Andrew Carnegie was gone and he was enfeebled to the point that his usual routines were abandoned. He saw only close friends, wrote few letters and seldom went out. Nevertheless, whenever he could Carnegie propounded his views that President Wilson should act as arbitrator in Europe. So he was delighted when Wilson planned to send his personal adviser Colonel Edward M. House on a peace mission. Still convinced of the Kaiser’s ‘earnest desire for World Peace’, he wrote to him emphasising the advantages of American neutrality and encouraging him to support a neutrality treaty. The Kaiser was keen enough to keep the Americans out of the war, but the many American deaths caused when the British liner
Lusitania
was sunk without warning off the Irish coast on 7 May 1915 scuppered Carnegie’s dearest hopes for the Senate to ratify any neutrality treaty with Germany.

Despite his advancing age and his depression about the war, Carnegie kept up an interest in what was happening in war-torn Europe. On 7 November 1916 Woodrow Wilson was re-elected President and on 7 December David Lloyd George – who had resigned from Asquith’s government because he thought the war was being mishandled – became British Prime Minister of a coalition government.

The war raged on and in April 1917 America entered the war, the sinking of their merchant ships having made it inevitable. US troops were in France by June. The involvement saddened Carnegie, although he accepted the inevitability of it all. By 6 November 1918 the Germans were in general retreat. Carnegie’s ‘reluctant tool’ the Kaiser was stripped of his power, his nation now being ruled by its Reichstag, and on 9 November 1918 he was forced to abdicate. At five in the morning in a railway car in the forest of Compiègne, north of Paris, the armistice was signed on 11 November. Carnegie’s ‘hero funds’ and ‘dependants funds’ would have plenty of work to do; 10 million were dead and 20 million wounded in battle, while another 5 million were lost to disease and starvation. Peace talks began in Paris in January 1919 with Woodrow Wilson negotiating for America, Lloyd George for Britain, Georges Clemenceau for France and Vittorio Orlando for Italy; on 28 June the Treaty of Versailles was signed with Germany. The treaty was a compromise but did not include one of Wilson’s ‘Fourteen Points’ – that a League of Nations be established to ensure world peace in the future. This clause had particularly pleased Carnegie. Alas, the terms of the treaty, which included the redistribution of lands once held by Germany and exorbitant reparations to be paid to the Allies, were an eventual source of future international conflict.

At noon on 22 April 1919 – the 32nd anniversary of his own wedding – a somewhat frail Carnegie walked down the grand staircase of 2 East 91st Street, to give his daughter’s hand in marriage to Ensign Roswell Miller. Margaret had been a friend of Roswell’s sister Dorothy at Miss Spence’s school, and Carnegie had been acquainted for some years with Roswell’s father, a former president of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul’s Railroad. Margaret and Roswell had known each other only a short while when he proposed. On their wedding day Margaret was awakened by Angus MacPherson (from Skibo) playing the pipes. Carnegie’s last public appearance saw him waving goodbye to his daughter and new son-in-law as their Stutz automobile swept down the drive to their honeymoon – with Nannie Lockerbie in attendance!

Carnegie’s relationship with his daughter has always been a point of discussion for biographers. His involvement with business, philanthropy and travel, and Margaret’s attendance at private schools, kept them apart. Although he was an attentive father when at home, as Louise was to say, events prevented Margaret ‘from ever knowing your dear Daddy’.
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Was it this that made her question her father’s endowments in the name of peace? Again, was she critical about the source of her father’s wealth? Maybe there is a clue to her attitude in a comment she made to Carnegie’s biographer Burton J. Hendrick: ‘Tell his life like it was. I’m sick of the Santa Claus stuff.’
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Carnegie now spent a sedentary life at his home in New York in the company of Louise. Walks in his garden were followed by backgammon in the evening after supper, with his irritation at losing as keen as ever. He thought often of neglected Skibo, but his physician did not advise him to take the long journey; even despite Carnegie’s opinion that it did not matter if he did die in Scotland. Summers were spent at such places as Pointe d’Acadie, Bar Harbour, Maine, or Brick House, Norota, Connecticut, but in 1917 Carnegie bought the 900-acre estate and house of Shadowbrook on a summit near Lenox overlooking Lake Mahkeenac in the Berkshire Hills, Massachusetts.
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At Shadowbrook Carnegie enjoyed the peaceful New England surroundings and when work was concluded he pored over letters and papers on the activities of the Carnegie Corporation with his secretary John A. Poynton, who had succeeded James Bertram in 1912. Carnegie enjoyed the totting up of his donations; by 1918 the figure had risen to $324,657,399.
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Visitors came and went, although Carnegie’s contemporaries were fast predeceasing him, but one – cousin Dod Lauder – brought back family memories and the echoes of their childhood in Dunfermline. They walked, fished, talked and played checkers. Alas, Dod had little interest now in American history and politics so Carnegie did not get the stimulating conversation on these subjects he so enjoyed. One of the younger generation to visit Carnegie was Charles M. Schwab, whose ebullience acted on Carnegie as a fillip; Schwab brought news of his war work – building submarines and manufacturing munitions – and always succeeded in making Carnegie laugh.
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But soon Carnegie was to be past all such tonics. As Elihu Root was to say, Carnegie was ‘fading gently and happily out of life’.
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On 9 August 1919 Carnegie contracted bronchial pneumonia. His last Sunday was spent resting on a porch overlooking Lake Mahkeenac; Louise was with him and his valet Morrison hovering in attendance. In the next hours Carnegie gently sank into a sleep; he never woke and died a short while after 7am on 11 August 1919.