If I had been at home, however, I might have been persuaded to open the works, as the superintendent desired, to test whether our old men would go to work as they had promised.  But it should be noted that the works were not opened at first by my partners for new men.  On the contrary, it was, as I was informed upon my return, at the wish of the thousands of our old men that they were opened.  This is a vital point.  My partners were in no way blamable for making the trial so recommended by the superintendent.  Our rule never to employ new men, but to wait for the old to return, had not been violated so far.  In regard to the second opening of the works, after the strikers had shot the sheriff’s officers, it is also easy to look back and say, “How much better had the works been closed until the old men voted to return”; but the Governor of Pennsylvania, with eight thousand troops, had meanwhile taken charge of the situation.

I was traveling in the Highlands of Scotland when the trouble arose, and did not hear of it until two days after.  Nothing I have ever had to meet in all my life, before or since, wounded me so deeply.  No pangs remain of any wound received in my business career save that of Homestead.  It was so unnecessary.  The men were outrageously wrong.  The strikers, with the new machinery, would have made from four to nine dollars a day under the new scale—­thirty per cent more than they were making with the old machinery.  While in Scotland I received the following cable from the officers of the union of our workmen: 

“Kind master, tell us what you wish us to do and we shall do it for you.”

This was most touching, but, alas, too late.  The mischief was done, the works were in the hands of the Governor; it was too late.

I received, while abroad, numerous kind messages from friends conversant with the circumstances, who imagined my unhappiness.  The following from Mr. Gladstone was greatly appreciated: 

     MY DEAR MR. CARNEGIE,

My wife has long ago offered her thanks, with my own, for your most kind congratulations.  But I do not forget that you have been suffering yourself from anxieties, and have been exposed to imputations in connection with your gallant efforts to direct rich men into a course of action more enlightened than that which they usually follow.  I wish I could relieve you from these imputations of journalists, too often rash, conceited or censorious, rancorous, ill-natured.  I wish to do the little, the very little, that is in my power, which is simply to say how sure I am that no one who knows you will be prompted by the unfortunate occurrences across the water (of which manifestly we cannot know the exact merits) to qualify in the slightest degree either his confidence in your generous views or his admiration of the good and great work you have already done.

     Wealth is at present like a monster threatening to swallow
     up the moral life of man; you by precept and by example have
     been teaching him to disgorge.  I for one thank you.