I first met Mr. Carnegie on a special train to Tuskegee. Mr. Robert C. Ogden, chairman of the Board of Trustees of Tuskegee Institute, had invited about a hundred men and women to be his guests for a week on a special train from New York to Tuskegee and back. The train was made up of stateroom cars with two dining cars, and the guests occupied the train all the week, even while at Tuskegee. (Principal Washington had built a spur from the main road right into the Tuskegee campus. He used to say of it: "It is not as long as the New York Central, but it is just as broad.") It was a very happy party. It was made up largely of University presidents and professors, well-known editors, many publicists, and a sprinkling of clergymen and authors. Practically every man on the train was a man of international reputation, but three or four stood out among all the rest not only because of eminence, but because of the good time they were having. They were in picnic mood and were enjoying the trip immensely. They were often together. I recall especially Mr. Taft, Mr. Carnegie, Lyman Abbott, President Eliot and Professor Dutton discussing international affairs. The Philippine question was then to the front and there was a wide diversity of opinion in this group on that question, and when the talk veered around to the Philippines, as it always did, a crowd of us younger men would gather about this group and listen— sometimes egg the disputants on. Sometimes the disputants would get quite warm on the subject, and then we heard some rare talk. All phases of internationalism were discussed, but on this subject the members of the group were pretty well agreed. But when it came to the question of armament there came a division of the house again. There were a good many educators on the train, and most of them were pretty thoroughly in accord with Mr. Carnegie's views, namely, that the vocational side of education should be stressed, and that science should replace the classics.
It was in the dining car that I first met Mr. Carnegie. I was sitting alone, and he came and sat down opposite me. He immediately said, "You must be the youngest man in the party." I told him that I thought I was and that I was greatly enjoying the trip. He then wanted to know who I was and what I did. I told him that I was pastor of the Pilgrim Congregational Church, New York City, and that I had recently come down from Lenox, Mass. He at once said, "Aren't you a rather young man to be pastor of a church in New York?" I told him that I thought I was, but that the congregation had not thought so, so I could not help it. He wanted to know if I was especially interested in the problem of Negro education. I told him that I was interested in it as I was in several problems of human betterment, but that my special interest, outside of my distinctive parish work, was international peace. I watched his face as I said this and saw a real interest suddenly come into it. He was always on the lookout for young men to whom he could pass on his work and interests. This was one of the secrets of his great business success. He watched with great keenness the young men in his employ, and as he found the right man he turned over responsibilities to him. He thus discovered thirty or forty of the men who afterwards became heads of his great industries and succeeded to them. In the same way he was always watching for young men who had come under the spell of the vision of a new world order based on those same principles which prevail among gentlemen. He believed that nations could live together as gentlemen as easily as individuals. He believed that nations could outgrow duelling as had individuals. He did not believe that the question of justice could be settled by fists or guns. He believed the time had come, when, if this was called to the attention of most men, and arbitration treaties, international courts, leagues of peace-loving nations offered in the place of war as a method of settling international disputes, they would rise to them. This was his chief interest. He was possessed by it; when he found anyone equally enthusiastic, especially a young man, he at once became interested in him.
Immediately he asked me how I came to be interested in that subject. I told him I did not know. I thought that it was perhaps a sudden sense of the silliness, the ridiculousness, the futility as well as the cruelty of the whole war business. I believed in evolution. I thought we had as a race risen up out of the brute world on to a higher plane, but that just as we had brought one or two unnecessary, outgrown physical appendages with us— the appendix, for instance— so we had brought other brute characteristics— war. This had suddenly come over me— I knew not when or how.
I then ventured to ask him how he became so interested in the cause of international good will. He said that he supposed it was by somewhat the same process as that which I had just mentioned, but that he thought that his first trip through Europe, where he came up against the eternal sight of armament and soldiers, did more to goad him to take up the war against war than anything else. (Dr. Charles E. Jefferson once told me that it was this sight of Europe armed to the teeth— its flat contradiction of Christianity— that stirred him to that fight against wars as a means of settlement of international disputes he has so valiantly waged.)
Mr. Carnegie also said: "I came home brooding over the fact that the world was carrying a great, oppressive, unnecessary burden on its back; one, too, that the people would gladly be rid of. I began from that day to do my best to help them slough it off."
I was telling him about the Lake Mohonk conferences on international arbitration, two or three of which I had already attended, when someone else came and sat down with us, and entered into the conversation. We began talking about the education of the Negro, and here there was a little difference of opinion. Mr. Carnegie was so convinced of the splendid results for the Negro from the technical training which Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute were providing, that it was a little difficult to get him interested in the higher education such as Atlanta University and Fisk University were furnishing. I think he had a little of that feeling that Mr. Washington himself occasionally seemed to have, that the Negro would be wise not to worry over social standing, but bend all his efforts towards success in agriculture, trades and business, and especially try to make himself indispensable to the community. (In justice to Mr. Washington it should be remembered that he realized the need of teachers and leaders for his race, and was always friendly toward higher institutions of learning. But I knew him very well and I could never detect very much sympathy in him for that group of fine men represented by Professor Dubois and Professor Kelly, who were standing inflexibly for the Negro's full rights as a man.) I do not think Mr. Carnegie quite appreciated the sensitiveness of some Negroes of culture and fine instincts, or how they suffered under certain rebuffs which came. I told him of a young Negro, a college graduate, who was very fond of music, who had bought his ticket for the Metropolitan Opera, and was removed from his seat just as the performance began, because a Southern gentleman did not wish to sit beside him.
"Did they actually do that?" asked Mr. Carnegie, quite warmly.
"Professor Dubois tells the story in 'The Souls of Black Folk'," I said, and added, "I imagine cultured, educated Negroes are meeting such experiences all the time. I have known of several."
"That is all wrong," said Mr. Carnegie. "That is not democracy. One citizen has every right another citizen has in a real democracy."
I asked Mr. Carnegie if he would stop the higher education of the Negro or insist that he have the rights to which such education entitles him. Immediately he answered that he would insist on his being treated as a man, not as a Negro. He himself had always treated men as men, according to their worth, not their color. I asked him if he did not think that, where young Negroes had certain ambitions and ideals reaching beyond that of workingmen, they ought to be allowed to gratify them, and ought there not to be colleges for the exceptional Negro? He was very broadminded in his answer. He said he thought any boy anywhere in the world ought to have the opportunity to become his best and truest self. He was not opposed to the higher education of the Negro. He would be glad to see any Negro boy go through any university. But he did think Mr. Washington had found the secret of the solution of the Negro problem, and that he would advise the Negroes to fit themselves to do the best work possible, for in that way lay their ultimate recognition by the white people. But he would be glad to shake hands with any Negro boy who had put himself through college.
I had other talks with him on the way to Tuskegee and saw him often after our arrival. He and Mr. Taft aroused great interest among the students, they being the two men in the party of whom everybody had heard. Mr. Carnegie was very happy there. He saw the library which he had given, every brick of which had been made by the students and laid in place by them. He visited all the shops and saw the boys learning trades by making things to be used on the grounds and by building shops and houses, and saw the girls learning dressmaking by making their own clothes. He visited the dairies and gardens where girls and boys were fitting themselves for farm work, and one day took a drive over the immense farm. He was greatly impressed and said one day that Mr. Washington was one of the geniuses of the century. (On another occasion he remarked that Mr. Washington was one of the greatest men the South had produced. This quite angered some of our Southern friends, and when I afterwards quoted the remark in an article in a magazine I received several rather sharp letters. The only answer I made was that it was true, and was also, I thought, a very universal judgment.) We lived in the train while at Tuskegee, the cars having been pulled into the grounds. But one day the students gave a barbecue for the guests, and we all had dinner in a grove, seated on benches before long wooden tables. It was evidently very amusing to the students to see these distinguished men discussing roast pig and sweet potato pie. The worthies enjoyed it all very much and became boys again.
Every day there were exercises in the big assembly hall, at which the school sang and the visitors made addresses. Mr. Carnegie was fascinated by the singing. I shall have occasion later on to refer to his love for music. It cast a spell over him, and I have often heard him say, "Music is heaven"— not a bad definition if one stops to think what music means. The singing was very wonderful and Mr. Washington, knowing how fond Mr. Carnegie was of music, had the students sing the old Negro melodies by the hour. I have never heard a more wonderful or sweeter volume of tone than rose from those thousand Negro throats. They all sang with spontaneity and swaying rhythm, but most glorious of all was the deep undertone of bass, rolling out in perfect harmonies. One morning I was hurrying to the chapel— a little late— for the morning exercises. As I came round a corner, there, under the chapel windows, almost hidden by some big bushes, stood Mr. Carnegie with eyes shut and folded hands, in a kind of trance, as the swelling tone rolled out through the open windows. I, too, stopped and listened, and watched him.
The music stopped and he came out of his trance. He turned to where I stood. His eyes were shining. He had been off in great spaces. It took him a moment to get back. He took my arm and said only this, "I wanted it to go on forever." When, that evening, he made his great address, he took occasion to refer to the music. He spoke beautifully about it. He said it was worth coming clear to Tuskegee to hear; it would sing itself through his soul all the rest of his life; after all, the old prophets and poets who had pictured heaven as a place where one lived to music were not far off in their prophecies; he had great hopes of a race that could sing as theirs could; in their songs they had made a distinct contribution to the riches of the world; the poet had said of a great city being built that its walls had risen to music; they should build their own lives to the music of their songs. It was one of those inspired moments which frequently came to this great man. I shall have occasion to refer to several others where, for a moments, this man of business and ardent reformer, suddenly became poet and seer.
Mr. Carnegie's address was one of the events of the week. It was a discussion of the whole problem of education, especially as it applied to races that had been held back in the progress of the world. It was unique and full of originality and personality, as his addresses always were, and was read from manuscript. But the audience had something in store for them beyond the address, and got two or three of the most delicious thrills any audience ever experienced. Mr. Carnegie had been preceded by a certain bishop of the Southern Methodist Church. The bishop was a very eloquent man, eloquent in the Southern style, piling up great periods and soaring as the eagle soars. He suddenly launched out into a summary of the things which made America the greatest nation in the world. One thing after another contributed to this greatness, until suddenly he added: "We build the greatest battleships in the world and man them with the finest men," or something to that effect. (I have not the address before me.) Knowing Mr. Carnegie's feeling about battleships at just that time, I glanced to where he sat. No more sphinx-like face was ever witnessed. But I knew we had not heard the end of those battleships. When he arose to follow the bishop, he stood for a moment staring at the audience. He put on his glasses to read— and then slowly pushed them up on his forehead and turning to the bishop, said, with voice trembling with scorn, "Have I lived to hear a Christian minister, and a bishop at that, boasting of battleships!" I cannot recall the rest of his words, but for three minutes he pleaded with the young men and women to throw in all their powers and influence to creating a world where there should be no battleships, but courts of arbitration and nations living together as Christian gentlemen. The bishop looked very uncomfortable, and no doubt wished he was back in his own district. Mr. Carnegie could not drop the subject. Two or three times in the course of his address the bishop's battleship suddenly rushed into his mind, and he had to stop, right in the middle of a sentence bearing no relation to the battleship, to relieve his mind, while the audience chuckled to itself. The next day Mr. Carnegie whispered to me, with a sly look in his eye, "Didn't I lay the bishop out in good style?"
There was one very outstanding incident in the course of the address. He was reading from his manuscript an account of the great progress made in the uplift of the Negro as he had seen it during his lifetime. It had been wonderful.
Then he stopped, put the glasses up on his forehead again, and, looking over the vast audience, said: "Can one imagine the joy that would fill the heart of Armstrong and those other noble pioneers in Negro education could they look down upon us as we sit here tonight?" And then with most spontaneous and intimate voice added, "And who knows but they may be looking down upon us?"
I do not remember a more impressive moment in any great assembly. It was worth a whole volume on immortality. Furthermore, it was a perfect revelation of Mr. Carnegie's own heart. His faith was of his heart. In great moments he always rose to the world of the spirit as I shall have occasion to show.