[00:00.00]Lesson Eleven
[00:02.98]Text
[00:05.43]How I Served My Apprenticeship
[00:09.20]Andrew Carnegie
[00:12.25]It is a great pleasure to tell how I served my apprenticeship as a businessman
[00:19.62]But there seems to be a question preceding this:
[00:23.56]Why did I become a businessman?
[00:27.12]I am sure that I should never have selected a business careerif
[00:32.08]I had been permitted to choose.
[00:36.05]The eldest son of parents who were themselves poor, I had, fortunately,
[00:43.18]to begin to perform some useful work in the world
[00:47.62] while still very youngin order to earn an living and therefore
[00:54.88]came to understand even in early boyhood
[00:59.14]that my duty was to assist my parents
[01:03.29]and become, as soon as possible
[01:07.66]What I could get to do not what I desired,
[01:12.91]was the question.
[01:15.76]When I was born my father was a well to do master weaver in Scotland.
[01:22.13]This was the days before the steam engines.
[01:26.07]He owned no fewer than four handlooms and employed apprentices.
[01:32.92]He wove cloth for a merchant who supplied the material.
[01:37.46]When the steam engine came, handloom weaving naturally declined.
[01:44.62]The first serious lesson of my life came to me one day
[01:50.47]when I was just about ten years old
[01:54.31]My father took the last of his work to the merchant,
[01:58.75]and returned home greatly distressed
[02:02.72]be cause there was no more work for him to do.
[02:07.97]I resolved then that the wolf of poverty should be driven from our door some day
[02:15.63]The question of starting for the United States
[02:19.99]was discussed from day to day in the family council.
[02:24.56]It was finally resolved
[02:27.91]that we would join relatives already in Pittsburgh.
[02:32.48]I well remember that both father and mother
[02:37.94]thought the decision was a great sacrifice for them,
[02:42.38]but that "it would be better for the two boys."
[02:47.94]On arriving, my father entered a cotton factory.
[02:53.30]I soon followed, and served as a "bobbin boy,"
[02:58.47]and that was how I began my preparation for subsequent apprentices
[03:03.93]hipas a businessman.
[03:06.85]I cannot tell you how proud I was
[03:10.90]when I received my first week's earnngs one dollar and twenty cents.
[03:17.88]It was given to me because I had been of some use in the world!
[03:22.84]And I became a contributing member of my family!
[03:28.09]I think this makes a man out of a boy sooner than almost anything else.
[03:33.94]It is everything to feel that you are useful.
[03:38.10]I have had to deal with great sums.
[03:42.25]Many millions of dollars have since passed through my hands.
[03:46.51]But the genuine satisfaction I had from that one dollar and twenty cents
[03:53.56]outweighs any subsequent pleasure in money making.
[03:58.29]It was the direct reward of honest,manual labor;
[04:03.75]it represented a week of very hard work
[04:08.11]so hard that it might have been described as slavery
[04:13.86]if it hadn't been for its aim and end.
[04:18.12]It was a terrible task for a lad of twelve to rise every morning,except Sunday
[04:25.98]go to the factory while it was still dark,
[04:29.92]and not be released until after darkness came again in the evening,
[04:36.09]forty minutes' break only being allowed at noon.
[04:40.53]But I was young and had my dreams,
[04:45.20]and something within always told me that this would not, could not,
[04:51.87]should not last
[04:54.92]I should some day get into a bettet position.
[04:59.18]Also, I felt myself no longer a mere boy,
[05:04.74]but quite a little man,and this made me happy.
[05:10.10]A change soon came,for a kind old Scotsman,
[05:16.45]who made bobbins,took me into his factory before I was thirteen.
[05:22.61]But here for a time it was even worse than in the cotton factory,
[05:29.17]because I was set to fire the boiler in the cellar
[05:33.74]and run the small steam engine which drove the machinery.
[05:39.38]The responsibility of keeping the water right and of running the engine,
[05:46.36]and the danger of my making a mistake
[05:50.48]and blowing the whole factory to pieces,
[05:54.61]caused too great a strain,
[05:58.16]and I often awoke and found myself sitting up in bed through the night,
[06:05.32]trying the steam gauges.
[06:08.56] But I never told them at home about this.
[06:12.43]No, no! Everything must be bright to them.
[06:17.68]This was a point of honor,
[06:21.15]for every member of the family was working hard,
[06:25.52]and we were telling each other only the bright things.
[06:31.47]Besides,no man would complain and give up he would die first.
[06:38.73]There was no servant in our family,
[06:42.39]and my mother earned several dollars per week
[06:46.75]by binding shoesafter her daily work was done!
[06:51.43] Father was also hard at work in the factory.
[06:56.47]And could I complain?
[06:59.63]My kind employer soon relieved me of the strain,
[07:04.10]for he needed someone to make out bills and keep his accounts,
[07:09.56]and finding that I could write a plain schoolboy hand and could add up,
[07:16.61]he made me his only clerk.
[07:19.98]But still I had to work hard upstairs in the workshop
[07:25.34]for the clerking took but little time.
[07:29.59]You know how people grumble about poverty as a great evil,
[07:35.34]and it seems to be accepted that if people had only plenty of money
[07:41.51]and were rich they would be happy and more useful,
[07:47.28]and get more out of life.
[07:50.75]As a rule,
[07:53.50]there is more genuine satis faction from life in the humble cottages of the poor
[07:59.74]than in the palaces of the rich.
[08:03.53]I always pity the sons and daughters of rich men,
[08:08.18]who are attended by servants,and have a governess even at a later age.
[08:15.33]They do not know what they have missed.
[08:19.10]For the poor boy who has in his father his constant companion,
[08:24.76]tutor, and model,and in his mother his nurse,
[08:30.69] teacher,guardian angel, saint,all in one,has a richer,
[08:38.64] more precious fortune in life than any rich man's son,
[08:44.38]and compared with which all other fortunes count for little.
[08:49.84]It is because I know how sweet and happy and pure the home of honest poverty is
[08:57.29]how free it is from perplexing care, from social envy and emulations,
[09:04.42]how lovingand how united its members may be in the common interest
[09:10.79]of supporting the family,
[09:14.45]that I sympathize with the rich man's boy
[09:19.60]and congratulate the poor man's boy;
[09:23.67]and it is for these reasons
[09:27.33]that from the ranks of the poor so many strong,
[09:32.08]eminent,self-reliant men have always sprung and always must spring.
[09:39.74]If you will read the list of the immortals who "were not born to die,"
[09:46.79]you will find that most of them
[09:50.45]were born to the precious heritage of poverty.
[09:55.02]It seems,nowadays,
[09:58.18]a matter of universal desire that poverty should be abolished.
[10:04.34]We should be quite willing to abolish luxury,
[10:08.71]but to abolish honest,industrious
[10:13.15]self denying poverty
[10:16.67]would be to destroy the soil uponwhich mankind produces the virtues
[10:22.63]which enable our race to reach a still higher civilization
[10:27.80]than it now possesses. |