me as an assistant operator.  The telegram from Louisville in reply stated that Mr. Reid highly approved of promoting “Andy,” provided Mr. Brooks considered him competent.  The result was that I began as a telegraph operator at the tremendous salary of twenty-five dollars per month, which I thought a fortune.  To Mr. Brooks and Mr. Reid I owe my promotion from the messenger’s station to the operating-room.[18] I was then in my seventeenth year and had served my apprenticeship.  I was now performing a man’s part, no longer a boy’s—­earning a dollar every working day.

[Footnote 18:  “I liked the boy’s looks, and it was very easy to see that though he was little he was full of spirit.  He had not been with me a month when he began to ask whether I would teach him to telegraph.  I began to instruct him and found him an apt pupil.” (James D. Reid, The Telegraph in America, New York, 1879.)

Reid was born near Dunfermline and forty years afterwards Mr. Carnegie was able to secure for him the appointment of United States Consul at Dunfermline.]

The operating-room of a telegraph office is an excellent school for a young man.  He there has to do with pencil and paper, with composition and invention.  And there my slight knowledge of British and European affairs soon stood me in good stead.  Knowledge is sure to prove useful in one way or another.  It always tells.  The foreign news was then received by wire from Cape Race, and the taking of successive “steamer news” was one of the most notable of our duties.  I liked this better than any other branch of the work, and it was soon tacitly assigned to me.

The lines in those days worked poorly, and during a storm much had to be guessed at.  My guessing powers were said to be phenomenal, and it was my favorite diversion to fill up gaps instead of interrupting the sender and spending minutes over a lost word or two.  This was not a dangerous practice in regard to foreign news, for if any undue liberties were taken by the bold operator, they were not of a character likely to bring him into serious trouble.  My knowledge of foreign affairs became somewhat extensive, especially regarding the affairs of Britain, and my guesses were quite safe, if I got the first letter or two right.

The Pittsburgh newspapers had each been in the habit of sending a reporter to the office to transcribe the press dispatches.  Later on one man was appointed for all the papers and he suggested that multiple copies could readily be made of the news as received, and it was arranged that I should make five copies of all press dispatches for him as extra work for which he was to pay me a dollar per week.  This, my first work for the press, yielded very modest remuneration, to be sure; but it made my salary thirty dollars per month, and every dollar counted in those days.  The family was gradually gaining ground; already future millionairedom seemed dawning.