Mr. Carnegie’s Advice.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 17, 26 April 1911, Page 37

Mr. Carnegie’s Advice.

Andrew Carnegie is something of a preacher and a giver of advice as well as dollars. In an impromptu talk the other day to some girls employed in the office of a magazine in New York, where he was making a call, he advised them to marry poor men for choice, but not to refuse a man merely because he was a millionaire. Most millionaires’ wives are not happy, said Mr. Carnegie, after contrasting the happiness of work with the doubtful advantage of being born rich. ’They have too many luxuries and too few mental resources. Now, some of my partners have been unjustly criticised for what is not their fault but the fault of their wives. Two of Mr. Carnegie’s former partners have left the presidency of the Steel Corporation after more or less stormy social careers. “I would rather be born poor than a millionaire,” continued the ironmaster, “ami have the experience of both states. I have made forty-two or forty-three millionaires in my time, and I want to say that the only right a man has to acquire wealth lies in his acquiring it by some useful labour. The great trouble to-day is that millionaires’ sons do not recognise this.” Mr. Carnegie concluded by advising the girls to “smile all the time” and by saying that much of his success he owed to his mother, “who was a seamstress, cook and washlady.” She never till late in life

had a servant and yet was a cultivated woman.