for poor and
sometimes misguided though well-meaning laborers would fill my heart
and soften it; and thereby soften theirs.

Upon my return to Pittsburgh in 1892, after the Homestead trouble, I
went to the works and met many of the old men who had not been
concerned in the riot. They expressed the opinion that if I had been
at home the strike would never have happened. I told them that the
company had offered generous terms and beyond its offer I should not
have gone; that before their cable reached me in Scotland, the
Governor of the State had appeared on the scene with troops and wished
the law vindicated; that the question had then passed out of my
partners' hands. I added:

"You were badly advised. My partners' offer should have been accepted.
It was very generous. I don't know that I would have offered so much."

To this one of the rollers said to me:

"Oh, Mr. Carnegie, it wasn't a question of dollars. The boys would
have let you kick 'em, but they wouldn't let that other man stroke
their hair."

So much does sentiment count for in the practical affairs of life,
even with the laboring classes. This is not generally believed by
those who do not know them, but I am certain that disputes about wages
do not account for one half the disagreements between capital and
labor. There is lack of due appreciation and of kind treatment of
employees upon the part of the employers.

Suits had been entered against many of the strikers, but upon my
return these were promptly dismissed. All the old men who remained,
and had not been guilty of violence, were taken back. I had cabled
from Scotland urging that Mr. Schwab be sent back to Homestead. He had
been only recently promoted to the Edgar Thomson Works. He went back,
and "Charlie," as he was affectionately called, soon restored order,
peace, and harmony. Had he remained at the Homestead Works, in all
probability no serious trouble would have arisen. "Charlie" liked his
workmen and they liked him; but there still remained at Homestead an
unsatisfactory element in the men who had previously been discarded
from our various works for good reasons and had found employment at
the new works before we purchased them.

CHAPTER XIX

THE "GOSPEL OF WEALTH"

After my book, "The Gospel of Wealth,"[44] was published, it was
inevitable that I should live up to its teachings by ceasing to
struggle for more wealth. I resolved to stop accumulating and begin
the infinitely mor