Oh What A Time... - #183 BIG Companies and ELIS RAN THE HACKNEY HALF (Part 2)

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re looking at commercial entities that went bigger than their wildest dreams. We’ve got for you: Japanese consumer electronics firm Casio, how did Cadbury make that chocolate money and lastly, how Andrew Carnegie acquired insane wealth and then, incredibly, went about giving it away!And isn’t the world a better place for mass sporting events? AND IS THE WORLD TALKING ENOUGH ABOUT ELIS RUNNING THE HACKNEY HALF? Do let us know: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime. Hello and welcome to part two of big companies over on our Patreon. We just did an episode looking at 80s super hit TV show Tomorrow's World and what they thought the future would look like in the 70s, 80s and 90s. We love this episode. Here, please enjoy it a little bit from that. And the aeroccar is half the price of any other five-seat helicopter.

Perhaps one day it might be cheap enough for all of us to helicopter out of an earthbound traffic jam. into the wide open spaces of the air, as long as they last. Now obviously, this is a video episode. So you really need to, if you're listening to this just with the audio, you need to understand what you're dealing with when we talk about a flying car. Tom, how would you describe what we heard there is a flying car? So it is, its bottom half is a sort of slightly round bubble-like car. Yeah.

That bit's fine. And then on top of it, it has two huge, huge propellers which jut out way ahead of the car and way behind the car, which feels like the issue for me. Well, they're rotor blades for a helicopter. Exactly. So really, it's, it's, I wouldn't say it's a flying car. I'd say it's a helicopter that can drive.

Yes. And what no one mentions at any point is that the massive rotor blades would have made parking a complete nightmare. Can you, you can't get into an NCP? car park in an helicopter. Where would you put it? I never thought about that. It's like a width restriction or like

going into a car park with a height restriction. You've got two huge rotors hanging out. Like if you take like a normal, I don't know, Tesco car park in which you can get 600 cars, if you've got rotor blades on everyone, that then goes down to about 60 cars. Like it is so impractical. The idea of having rotor blades that big.

Helicopies like, it's like a little shabler. Also, how often do you think a year someone is sat in heavy traffic maybe by a Pelican crossing, pressing the wrong button and decapitating a pedestrian? How often is that happening? Because the propellers are literally head height as well when it's on the ground. In the video as well, they present the idea that you're stuck in traffic and you're thinking, sod this, fire up the rotors. But can you imagine being stuck out of car and the rotors start flying?

You're right behind this car and suddenly going to take off. And then where'd you land? It's insane. Where do you land? And the amount of decapitations, you'd be decapitating just general pedestrians. Town would be a bloodbath. Also, and I think this is a fair point,

if you are travelling somewhere where you can land in your helicopter, at a point you're thinking, I'm going to leave this traffic jam and I'm going to fly there. Why wouldn't you just fly from the beginning? So there you go. That was Tomorrow's World. If you want that full episode, and it is a video episode. you can get it at patreon.com forward slash oh what the time and many many people a great many

have said it's one of their favorite episodes that we've ever done so check that out patreon.com forward slash oh what a time but we are gathered here today to talk about big companies and this is part two mr tom crane the floor is yours thank you christopher so i am now going to tell you lovely boys the story of one of the all-time classic british companies which is cadbury's ignoring the fact it was purchased by Kraft in 2003 and then Mondalais, it wasn't really British anymore, but at its start it was British. But before we get into...

Don't you take my chocolate away from... Absolutely. It'll always be British to me. Before we get into this, though, I think it's an important question. We have to broach it. What is the greatest cabri's chocolate bar ever released, in your opinion?

What is your go-to cabri's chocolate bar? I'm going to shock here. Yeah. I'm going to say Whisper. Mm. Ellis is just Googling. whether crunchy is in fact a Cadbury's probably. Yeah, that's literally. Well, I know

Oh God, what's a Star Bar? Crunchy is Cabriss, yeah. Cream Egg. Cream eggs up there. Oh my God. I love a Star Bar. What is a Star Bar? What's that? Yeah, it's like a sort of boost, but it's like a boost combined with the Snickers. That for me is saying the word claggy. Oh, it's incredibly claggy. You can't speak for half an hour afterwards. Boost is so claggy.

It is so claggy. It's up there with double decker in terms of clag. Oh, my gosh. I think it's clag rating is between eight and ten. I'm a clag guy. It's the double decker. I'll give you some chocolate. No, no, no, what am I on about?

It's a flake. Oh, right. I'm a flake man. I'm a flake man. You're having a flake sands ice cream. Are you insane? Yeah. In the bath and I've got my, I've got my, I've got my, I'm a crumbly guy.

I like crumble and clag. Let me give you some chocolate. bars, by the way, I wanted to give me a clag rating out of 10 for each of them. Okay, double decker? Clag 9. Yeah, it's really, really high, isn't it? Let's go for like just a classic dairy milk. Four.

Five, I was going to say. Do you know what I'd say? Like a room temp dairy milk, I'd give that a 7 or 8. A cold one, you can go down to 2 or 3. A hot, a hot dairy milk. One that's been in your, basically been in your pocket you've forgotten about on a warm day. Fantastic. Yeah.

Do you like room temp chocolate? I can't stand it. I've put chocolate bars in the micro to warm them up in the past. You're insane. You've lost it. I've lost the dressing room. My dad used to put a marsbar in the fridge to cool it down. He likes a cold marsbar.

Yeah, my friend does this. I think that's my grandmother who's stuff. I think it's weird personally. But yeah, I need to warm myself up. Yeah. I think the final one I'll check. I think Snickers probably is like a 12 or 13 out of 10 and a clag rating. It is insane.

The boost is. mega-clag. The chomp is mega-clag and the curly-whorley is mega-clag. Oh, curly-whirley's up there. The cubby's caramel is mega-clag. A hot curly-whirley on a summer's day. That is... It could just be called the cabri's clag. That's what it should be called. They should do a box set of the claggy ones. The cabri's clag. And as you open the box, it'll release heat into the box.

Everything is extra clacking. Absolutely. Genuinely, dear listeners, if you can think of a chocolate bar, more claggy than a curly-whirley, do write in, although I'm confident you won't. Excuse me, make any clag. It's the claggiest substance no demand, apart from maybe Pete Tar or something like that. It's just amazing. My favourite Cadbury's bar is the Cadbury's snack bar, which is a shortbread square. Oh, yeah.

Get the vendor machines at football. Yeah. Power league centres. Yellow packet. They come in six little squares. They're incredible. And here's a thing. This is my joyful childhood memory.

My dad, his business, he used to make printing ink. And there was about a two or three year period when he printed. He made the ink for cabri's snack bars. Did he? And every Christmas, he would bring back a huge box of cabri's snack bars that he would plonk in the middle of the living room. I know that's when Christmas was beginning. It would be like 120 snack bars. And he'd ring a bell and wish everyone a merry clagnes.

Do not dare say that the snack bar is claggy. It's the opposite. It's the anti-clclag. Actually, actually, my favorite chocolate bar is the Cadamory's stick of cucumber because my body's a temple. I don't believe in eating chocolate. Well, there we go. So, that's the big... A twirl is claggy?

A twirl is claggy? Do you know what? Easter is the claggiest time of the year, even more so at Christmas is it. Because those Easter are. eggs are getting left in a cupboard. And when it's time to eat them, they're all room-tempt. And that's clag. I've thought of the clagiest one.

I've thought of the clagiest one, which is the cream egg, the middle of the cream egg. There is nothing clagier than that. Yeah, but who has the time to do that? Anyway, we must move on to real history. Okay, I'm going to take you back to the beginning of Britain's claggiest company. Cabarees was established way back in 1842. Is that early than you thought? I mean, that's classic Victorian sort of monolith, mega company.

Maybe even a bit late. Maybe not, right, right. Interesting. And as you say, L, classic Victorian company, classic Victorian entrepreneur who started it. A man by the name of John Cadbury, he's a Birmingham seller of tea, coffee and drinking chocolate. That's quite a sweet job, isn't I like that? He's just 23 years old. He started this company.

He's got quite a striking look. employees at the Cabrary factory describe him as always arriving in a broad brimmed Quaker hat. You know those hats you see on the front of the Quaker Oats boxes? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's how he arrived, cheery-faced with this huge brimmed hat on him as he came into work. He did come from quite a wealthy and devout Quaker family. So the money sort of came from somewhere. His father, Richard, was a hugely successful linen draper.

So someone who makes linen, sells tablecloths, stuff like that. They were originally from Devon. they settle in the West Country and it's his father's money which allows his son to start the Cadbury business. Do you think his father had any idea

that his son's company would go on to be quite successful? I know we all back our kids. But if your son is starting a company, are you thinking this is going to become one of the biggest companies known to the country? Or are you thinking,

or just see how this goes? I'm looking at a picture of John Cadbury now. He does look like a chocolatier. So if you're his dad, he's got the beard of a chocolate. chocolate day. There are so many things now that I assumed were future-proof in terms of jobs that no longer exist. Right. But we're going to like chocolate forever, aren't we? Yes. And a lot of chocolate bars, it's weird, like we're invented in the sort of 30s. Yeah. Like, I don't think

I would, I would taste have changed very much when it comes to chocolate. Absolutely. And I think it's still seen as something that can be a bit of a treat and not be too unhealthy if you don't have too much of it. So it's sort of kept hold of that a little bit, I think. It's like high quality chocolate.

People can still enjoy it in a way they don't feel too guilty about maybe. I mean, look at stuff like Chocoloni or these companies have boomed still today. Yeah. These are recent things. They're still more and more of them coming. As Quakers, though,

the Cabri family, they endow their business activities with their personal philosophies and values. This is partly, well, largely, why they ended up working with drinking chocolate and chocolate, as you'll find out. And these were values to be admired. How about this for a decent bunch? This gives you an idea of what the family was like. Richard, the father, was an abolitionist and actively campaigned against slavery. He was also a philanthropist who supported various

modes of health care in his adopted city. And as for John, this is the son, the guy who started cabri. He was a peace advocate, an opponent of animal cruelty. So a lot of really healthy moral standpoints kind of flowed through them. But it was one of their values. Make flag not war. That was their main one. Exactly. But it was one of their values that had a particular significance for this business. Do you want to guess what it was and why it impacted what they chose to do? Weren't they a really great company to work for? Yes, they were. We will find this out. But before that, what is the core tenant or the core value that this family held that led John to this area of chocolate and

drinking chocolate and stuff like that. It's really quite interesting. Is it something to do with family or? No, it was to do with alcohol. So they were really temperate. They were against alcohol and they believed that one of the best ways of ensuring people abstain from alcohol was to drink drinking chocolate instead. So this is one of their beliefs. Yeah, absolutely. Although the idea of sort of a night out just on drinking chocolate.

Your same amount of spewing when it comes midnight. I was going to say, it's no less sickly than sort of a night out drinking. It's very good. Like we're wicked. The high streets of Britain filled with people throwing up hot chocolate. I was a messy of the night.

I must have had 12 points of drinking chocolate. Do you know what? Every time, Every time I have a hot chocolate, I'm like, this is nice. Why don't I do this more often? Rarely will I buy the stuff? Rarely will it get late? I think I'll have a nice warm cup of cup.

Yeah, 12 pounds of hot chocolate. Then I moved on to some miniature heroes at the end of the night. There's like shots of miniature heroes. It's a bad idea. That's said they, Chris, I've never needed more than half a mug of hot chocolate. Half is all you need. Also, one thing I was wondering about is what they'd have made of Bayleys. That would be quite a sort of, they feel sort of quite, well,

Yeah, good point. It's chocolate-flavored alcohol. How do we feel about that? It's neither fish not foul, is it, Bailey's. Do you remember Celebrity Fit Club? I think about this. I've told you this before. Something happened on Celebrity Fit Club

that I think about whenever someone brings up Bayleys, which is that Tommy Walsh from a ground force. He told me off once. Did he? We'll get off to that. On Celebrity Fit Club, on the first episode, they had to talk about how they'd got themselves so overweight. And Tommy Walsh's vice was that he would drink a pint of Bayleys

every day. What? With ice. And he was showing himself drinking a pint of Bailey's every day. Wow. Legend. And why did he tell you, Alfell?

I played in a charity football game against an Arsenal 11. There's like an Arsenal celebrity 11 that's mainly Arsenal supporting celebrities. And you took a shot which knocked over his pint of Bailey. He's not good. He's a goalie, isn't he? Tommy Walter.

playing goal that day and then there was a couple of professional footballers on the pitch and Tommy Walsh and a couple of sort of assorting celebrities and it was the first half was fun and then there was a bit of aggro in the second

half I was tucked away on the sort of wing I wasn't getting involved in a fight of shalti football match I think this is mad but I remember Tommy Walsh head at the pitch was like wait! We've got it out of their waiting tonight to help your charity. He links you to do his not.

What are we doing fire? It's a charity football match. My way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Baileys is kicking in. He's on me.

He's getting cranky, hasn't it? This pint of Bailey's yet. Exactly. So as I say, this movement into drinking chocolate into chocolate, a lot of it comes from this moral point about drinking. And it was with this outlook in mind that John establishes the company, Cabberies. his sons Richard and George, who later remodeled the business as Cadbury Bros. Or brothers, after John's death in 1889, they also inherit these values.

And they use them to make reality one of their father's cherished ideas, which is a model village where temperance could be like a core tenet. And this village would come to be known as Bourneville. Have you heard of Bourneville? Yeah, yeah. And it's laid out, okay, in a sort of arts and crafts style of architecture in the 1890s. And you mentioned L earlier the idea that this is a company that looked after people. This is the shiny example of that. It was an incredible success. In fact, the cabarees pioneered

what would be come to known as the industrial welfare, which is a peaceful alternative to the often fraught relations between employer and employee. And this was particularly true of heavy industries like ironworking and coal mining, but was no less important and apparent in factories too. And with this success, these places basically, they had wonderful living quarters for people, they had social things laid on for people.

They thought about your life outside of work as well. They really cared for you as people. And it was so successful that other confectioners around Britain followed suit, particularly those with a Quaker background. These are the ones that did something similar. Round trees, exactly, founded by Henry Isaac Roundtree in York in 1862, Fries were founded by Joseph Fry in Bristol in 1759.

Maynard's, which was founded in 1880, Macintoshes, Barrett & Co. Macawans, Bassett, which was formed by George Bassett in Sheffield in 1842. So many chocolatiers in Britain at one time. They're all familiar names, aren't they? Yeah. The Britain was chocolate mad. It's mad.

Well, there's still the Runtries Foundation. Yes. So Runtry still does a lot of work in sort of El, are you implying they do all sorts? Oh. That's very... That's very cranies. Yeah, that was beautiful.

Neft. Fantastic. But I love the fact that there's so many chocolatiers in Britain. What an idea of Britain at that time. That's a Victorian job I could do. Yeah. That is nice, isn't it? Do you know, I must have...

I think I've shared this before, where I live in East London. The estate, the housing estate that I'm on... Do you live in East London? I do that in a half on Sunday. Thanks a good. supporting. The housing estate I've on was inspired by the temperance movement. So we've got two Baptist Church on this

housing estate and no pubs because alcohol was obviously kind of was bad within the movement. So there's no pubs near me. And this goes back to this estate being creative. It's part of the temperance movement. There you go. So that is true. These places too, Bourneville. None of these places have pubs in the area because they

want it to be a temperate lifestyle. And of these, it was the Roundtree Company in York, which was another Quaker business, which did the most to emulate what the Cabri brothers had achieved. In the decade before the First World War, Roundtree established its own model village. This is called New Earswick, which is to the north of York and came to be known informally as the Round Tree village. And likewise, when Cabri acquired Fries in 1919 and then set about moving the factory from Bristol to Keynesham, which is on the road between Bristol and Bath. That's very close to where I grew up,

actually. Not only did they build a state of the art factory, they also added playing fields, leisure and recreation facilities, all for the benefit of their workers. What I find a bit depressing about that is it didn't become more wholesale. Yeah. Companies weren't seeing that and all these happy workers and thinking, yeah, let's do that. Yeah. A lot of them were just going, no, we'll stick with profits. I know there are some huge companies, like, imagine if they were doing this. Yeah, exactly. How that is just... Imagine if everyone would work for Amazon was, you know, got you to like that. It's really quite sad, isn't it?

And in the end, what most distinguished Cabri was the family's commitment to this alcohol-free lifestyle. They're 100% commitment to Clagg. When are we going to build a housing estate that is built entirely around Clag? Just at the very centre of this lifestyle is the concept of Clag. Yeah, exactly. And then we'll figure out everything else around that principle. So aside from their obsession, with Clag. As I say, it was their commitment to an alcohol-free lifestyle and to the belief that

the only way, basically, to make certain that their workforce would also live a life without booze was to house them in communities where the company rules held sway, which is why, as he say, Chris, there's no public houses in these areas to offer temptation. But with a critical eye, you could say that Cadbury had engaged in sort of social experimentation, that their religious convictions allied to the profits gain from selling addictive, sugary confections made all of this possible. But I think that is kind of unfair really, because the idea that workers should live in better conditions and enjoy facilities of leisure, recreation, self-improvement, they really did help to change Britain for the better then and now. And without Cadbury and without Bourneville,

that sort of wider initiative may not have happened or been quite so widespread. So I think it's pretty amazing what this family achieved and what the other chocolatiers did in Britain as a sort of social change, a social movement and a way of improving employees' lives in a way that modern companies often don't replicate today. Yeah, I'm going to raise a star bar to John Cadbury. Let me share with you the story of Andrew Carnegie. I didn't know much about Andrew Carnegie other than Nick Carnegie Hall and vague notion that he was a bit of a philanthropist.

What's your Carnegie knowledge like? Zero. Very little, yeah. Good. Because this is going to blow your mind. Few lives capture the contradictions of 19th century capitalism, quite like Andrew Carnegie's. He was born, poor, and died one of the richest men who ever lived.

He built an industrial empire on the backs of workers. He treated brutally. But then he gave away nearly all of his fortune in an effort to improve the lives of ordinary people. He's a real mind-melter, Andrew Carmigi. I'll be fascinated at the end of this for you to decide whether he's a good guy or a bad guy. He funded thousands of libraries while leaving behind a labor dispute

remembered as one of the bloodiest in American history. But let's start at the very beginning in 1835 in Dunfermeline, a town in Fife with a long tradition of hand loom weaving. his father, William Carnegie, was a skilled weaver who for a time made a reasonable living, got by. But by the 1840s, conditions were fast becoming brutal for hand weavers. Industrial looms were spreading rapidly, mass-producing cloth far cheaper than craftsmen could manage by hand. So across Britain, traditional weaving communities just collapsed almost overnight.

The Carnegie's were among the casualties. And in 1848, when Andrew was just 12 years old, the family did what hundreds of, thousands of other struggling Europeans did in the 19th century, and they emigrated to the United States. And they settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which was then a fast-growing industrial city. Andrew Carnegie's first job in America was as a bobbin boy in a Pittsburgh cotton factory. And it's worth just... What's a bobbin boy? Exactly, right? Any guesses?

I'm guessing it's someone who probably... If he's a boy, it's a child, probably went into the looms and did dangerous things like that to unfail cotton that's gone wrong, and it's just incredibly dangerous. pools of water full of apples and there's only one way you can get them out. Yeah, you're right, Crane. So a bobbin board doesn't just collect bobbins. They literally reach into running machinery to clear fluff away, replace threads and fix minor problems. But crucially, while the machines are still moving,

so the product is- When they come out again, they're wearing a jumper. Very good. A bobbin-boy's life was like filthy, exhausting, and it was really dangerous, like losing fingers and losing your life was actually quite common. You were expected to work 12 hours a day, six days a week. And for that, you would earn $1.20 per week. $1.20 per week.

Now, just remember that sum because the numbers are about to get astronomical as Andrew Conagie grows up. But that was in 1848. And the labor market into which a 12-year-old was thrown, many who was earning $1.20 a week in an incredibly dangerous profession. But in 1849, Carnegie went out of the factory and into something new, he became a telegraph messenger boy for the Pittsburgh office of the Ohio Telegraph Company. The Telegraph was cutting-edge technology. It was basically the internet of the 19th century. So messages that had once taken days or weeks to send could now travel across the country in minutes. And anyone who understood that

basically had a career. Carnegie did more than understand that. He was a lot. basically mastered it. So by 1850, he had been promoted to telegraph operator. In 1853, by now he's 18, he joins the Pennsylvania Railroad, which is one of the most important corporations in America as a telegrapher and a secretary. By 1859, he was running the railway's Western Division on a salary of $1,500 a year. And that earned him a glowing piece in the local newspaper, which held him up as a model for young men. This is a piece from the newspaper. Be attentive, be industrious, honest and faithful like Mr Carnegie, and like him sooner or later, you will get a rich reward.

Wow. The young immigrant had become an American success story. And now Carnegie has money in his pocket. So what does he do? He starts investing. And his first investments are in railway-related businesses. And then in early 1860s, with the American Civil War raging, he put around $11,000 into the Columbia Oil Company,

which is drilling in the aptly named Oil Creek Valley in Pennsylvania. I mean, the name's a bit of a giveaway. That does make it sound like, it feels like they're going to find some. Especially it's called that when they first turned up. What's his place called?

I've got a feeling. Yeah. Come to the right place. If investing in oil companies around this time feels familiar, Pennsylvania, oil boons, fortunes made from black gold, that's because it is.

Upton Sinclair's 1926 novel, Oil was set in this world. And this book was later adapted into There will be blood There will be blood Paul Thomas Anderson's film which I think is probably

one of my favourite films That's a very good movie Also what a what a soundtrack as well Do you know who composed the soundtrack? I do isn't it? Johnny Greenwood from radio Johnny Greenwood I'm getting so many points here Ellis

That was the best minute of podcasting I've ever done Yeah It's on fire I went to the I think he was at the barbican or something like that? I went to see Johnny, I went to see a screening

of the film with Johnny Greenwood and an orchestra live playing the soundtrack as the film went. What a night. Carnegie's oil investment paid out around $18,000. So that's from an investment at $11,000, which was a tiny return

and a sign that he had a head for spotting profitable industries. But it was an oil that made him super rich. That was steel. By 1865 for the Civil War over in the United States, beginning a period of explosive industrial growth. Carnegie sold most of his other interests,

moved decisively into steel. He financed the construction of the Edgar Thompson steelwork, then acquired the nearby homestead steel mill. He brought to American steelmaking the latest British innovations, particularly the Bessemer process, which made it possible to produce steel cheaply

and at industrial scale. If you want to get really rich around this time, you've got to get into steel, haven't you? Yeah. It's better than chocolate. I mean, it's less claggy in many respects. By the 1880s, Carnegie's Empire had become the largest steel operation in the world, far surpassing the traditional centres of British iron and steel production at Dalais and Mertha Tidville.

In 1892, Carnegie formerly consolidated his businesses into the Carnegie Steel Company. By the time he sold it in 2001, the firm was worth around roughly $492 million. That is the equivalent of 20 billion. million dollars today. Wow. Carnegie's personal share of the sale was 226 million or about $8.7 billion in today's terms. Wow. He had become one of the richest men in human history.

That's incredible. But on the very same day, Carnegie Steel was formally created 1st of July 1892. Something else began. And this is something that would haunt Carnegie's reputation for the rest of his life. A bitter strike broke out at Homestead Steel Mill. The dispute had been brewing for months. Wages were being cut. Workers wanted to keep their union recognized.

Management led by Carnegie's lieutenant, Henry Clay Frick, was determined to break it. Carnegie himself was conveniently away in Scotland. So to force the issue, Frick hired private armed agents from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, basically a private security force used routinely by American industrialists to suppress strikes. On the 5th of July 1892, a pitched battle broke out between the Pinkertons and the strike. workers. Gunfire is exchanged from boats on the river, barricades on the bank. Dozens of people were killed, many more injured. The strike drags on through to November when it finally collapses. The union was broken. The wages cut and the name Homestead entered

American history as a byword for corporate violence. While this is happening, Carnegie's thousands of miles away. The company was his, the policy was his and the responsibility, whether he likes to admit it or not, was also his. So at that point, reputation of the gutter. But then comes the part of his life that you're going to struggle to reconcile. And historians actually do struggle to reconcile this. In 1901, with his fortune secured, Carnegie sold the company and devoted the rest of his life to one task, giving away as much of his money as possible. A real life, Brewster's millions. Wow. So this is not typical behavior for the rich then or now, but Carnegie's had a philosophy,

which he set out in a famous 1889 essay, the Gospel of Wealth. And he said that the man who dies rich, dies disgraced. Wealth, he argued, should be returned to society during one's lifetime. So he acted on that belief on an extraordinary scale. So Carnegie's gifts included, he went to Dunfermline, his birthplace,

and he built a swimming bath and a public library. He funded 2,500 public libraries across the US, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Belgium, Serbia, Australia, New Zealand, San-Aucing, the West Indies and Fiji, major endowments to universities and scholarships, particularly in Scotland and in Picts. But he made his money back on late fees, didn't he with those libraries? He thought this is not what I want. I'm trying to get rid of my money. So, you know Carnegie Hall, the concert theatre in New York?

Is that named after him or did he build it? He both. He built it. The construction of Carnegie Hall in New York was part of this endeavor, also the founding of the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now the Carnegie Mellon University. The Carnegie Library became one of the great... The Carnegie Mellon University. Yeah, they've renamed it, yeah, Carnegie Mellon.

The Mellon University. Where do you go? I go to the Mellon University. That's not a name of a university, is it? You can't be named after a fruit, can you? What are you doing your BA? at the Leeds pineapple polly. I don't know what's going on.

The Carnegie Library became one of the great cultural inheritances of the English-speaking world, small, dignified, often built in classical styles and dropped into towns that never previously had access to free books. Carnegie also threw himself into political causes, most notably opposition to American imperialism. So after the United States seized the Philippines from Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898,

Carnegie was appalled. He believed America was betraying its founding principles by becoming a colonial power. So in an extraordinary gesture, he personally offered the Filipino people $20 million, the exact sum the United States had paid Spain for the islands. His idea was that the Filipinos could use the money to buy their own freedom. The offer wasn't taken up, and the Philippines remained in an American colony for decades. Carnegie persisted, though. He became a leading figure in the American Anti-Imperious League, alongside the novelist Henry James Mark Twain

and former Democratic President Glover Cleveland when Carnegie did eventually die of pneumonia in August 1919, the numbers were staggering. He'd given away the equivalent of $7 billion in modern money. Wow. It's mad. Wow.

I had no idea. He left the remainder of his fortune in trust to be used for good causes in perpetuity. By the standards of the modern super rich, this is almost... I just can't wrap my head around this. late in life, he distilled his philosophy into a simple three-part rule. You should spend the first third of your life getting educated, the second third making money,

and the final third giving it all the way to good causes. So who was Andrew Carnegie? A self-made immigrant who pulled himself up from a Pittsburgh cotton mill to the top of the industrial world or the man whose private army gunned down striking workers at Homestead, the man who funded thousands of libraries so that people could educate themselves if they had working class backgrounds or any other background or the boss who Mills cut their wages and broke their union. Is he a goody or a baddie?

I guess he's kind of both. What do you think? Yeah. Yeah. It's a difficult one, isn't it? He's quite a complex character to study. I'm intrigued as to whether any of that end-of-life decision about giving away all his money is in some way linked to a guilt over what happened.

I don't know. I mean whether the way you described it, Chris, it sounds like he maybe tried to distance himself from the violence at the strike, but possibly on some level that's trying to atone. Yeah, it's kind of his idea. I think he's ultimately a goodie because there are so many examples

of rampant Victorian capitalist, industrialists who just hoard all that cash and die insanely rich. There's not many examples of, through history, of someone doing what Carnegie did. And also the levels of generosity. And also that legacy is ultimately quite, positive I would argue. Yeah. It does still happen. I sponsored

Ellis 4.5 billion pounds to do the Hackney Marathon. It does still happen. I sponsored him 5 billion to do the Hackney marathon, but obviously now it's a half, that is entirely void. It does render it, yeah. Well, that's it for this week. Thank you so much for listening. Big news. You've probably

realized it's going to be half term soon, which means we're not recording. recording oh what a time for a week. So instead, we're going to put onto the main feed a couple of old subscriber episodes. But if you want to enjoy that full archive, including two bonus episodes every month, you can go over to patreon.com forward slash oh what the time to enjoy us while the likes of Tom is sunning himself through half term. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to run the Hattney half again just to see if Tom's going to support me this time. I've only known him since 2003. I don't know. I've expected to see him. I've talked about it quite a lot,

but never mind. to write that you should be ashamed of yourself Placcar and hold it up. There you go. We'll be back after half term, but enjoy those old subscriber episodes while we're away and we'll see you again very soon. Thank you so much

for listening and your support. Have a lovely time. Whatever you're doing. Bye-bye. Oh, what's time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content. Two bonus episodes every month. Early

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