278 ANDREW CARNEGIE 



While the Carnegie Steel company interested their young 

 men as partners and were always anxious to reward excep- 

 tional service, and carried the bonus system to an extent, 

 perhaps unknown, in any similar organization, the masses of 

 the ordinary workmen could not be embraced under the limited 

 partnership form, even if it had been thought desirable that 

 their savings should be so invested. The objection to this 

 from the point of view of the workman, which always arose 

 in our minds and which we were never able to surmount, 

 was the sad and instructive history of the largest manufactur- 

 ing concerns, especially those of iron and steel. 



More than once in the history of the Carnegie Steel com- 

 pany leading partners have been so doubtful of their future 

 as to beg their more optimistic senior partner to buy large 

 amounts of their interests at actual cost. 



It is an instructive fact that the majority of the principal 

 of these in the United States have, at some period in their 

 career, either been in the hands of receivers, been mortgaged, 

 reorganized, or sold by the sheriff to the great loss of their 

 original owners. Indeed, those who have escaped financial 

 trouble are the exceptions. The great Cambria Iron company 

 were twice in trouble and once sold by the sheriff; Joliet works 

 were also sold; the Bethlehem company have twice been 

 n irtgaged ; the 6 per cent first mortgage bonds of the im- 

 mense Chicago works have sold for as low as 70 per cent, and 

 their shares at less than one half of their par value. The 

 Troy Iron and Steel company have lost heavily and undergone 

 several reorganizations. It may be said that these disasters 

 are of the distant past, but history has a way of repeating the 

 past which we do well to remember. The Pennsylvania Steel 

 company have in recent years been in the receiver's hands. 

 Their shares in demand at $300 in 1881, sold in 1893 as low as 

 $20. There was no over capitalization in any of these com- 

 panies. Only actual cash counted. In 1903 the Consolidated 

 Lake Superior company was embarrassed — after investing of 

 cash capital $34,000,000. Their preferred shares, which 

 recently sold for $80 per share, are quoted on the exchange 

 at $15.50. The common stock, last year at $36 per share, 

 sold for $4. Our oldest and largest shipbuilding company 



