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.
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