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.
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