"It is a proud day for a man when he pays his last note, but not to be named in comparison with the day in which he makes his first one, and _gets a banker to take it_. I have tried both, and I know. The cars paid the subsequent payments from their earnings. I paid my first note from my savings, so much per month; and thus did I get my foot on fortune's ladder. It is easy to climb after that. A triumphant success was scored. And thus came sleeping-cars into the world. 'Blessed be the man who invented sleep,' says Sancho Panza. Thousands upon thousands will echo the sentiment, 'Blessed be the man who invented sleeping-cars.' Let me record his name, and testify my gratitude to him, my dear, quiet, modest, truthful, farmer-looking friend, T. T. Woodruff, one of the benefactors of the age."
Mr. Pullman later engaged in sleeping-car building, and Carnegie advised his firm "to capture Mr. Pullman." "There was a capture," says Mr. Carnegie, "but it did not quite take that form. They found themselves swallowed by this ogre, and Pullman monopolized everything."
While a very young man, Carnegie was appointed superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. As superintendent he became the friend of Colonel Scott; and, together with some others, they bought several farms along the line of the road, which proved very valuable oil-lands. Mr. Carnegie says of the Storey Farm, Oil Creek, "We purchased the farm for $40,000; and so small was our faith in the ability of the earth to yield for any considerable time the hundred barrels per day which the property was then producing, that we decided to make a pond capable of holding one hundred thousand barrels of oil, which we estimated would be worth, when the supply ceased, $1,000,000. Unfortunately for us the pond leaked fearfully, evaporation also caused much loss; but we continued to run oil in to make the losses good day after day, until several hundred thousand barrels had gone in this fashion.
"Our experience with the farm may be worth reciting. Its value rose to $5,000,000; that is, the shares of the company sold in the market upon this basis; and one year it paid in cash dividends $1,000,000--rather a good return upon an investment of $40,000. So great was the yield in the district that in two years oil became almost valueless, often selling as low as thirty cents per barrel, and not infrequently it was suffered to run to waste as utterly worthless.