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VI
THREE BROTHERS
William was the first to arrive in the States in 1886. Adam had joined him in Pittsburgh in 1895, and finally, Jim came with his family in 1906. There was a lot of industrial Glasgow in these three. In their own way, each proved to be inventive and resourceful, and while they had much in common, they also fought like brothers. All were employed in the steel industry. In the beginning, Adam and Bill worked with the Jones and Laughlin Company in Pittsburgh. Adam was a foreman, and Bill, who had come a decade earlier served at the executive level. Eventually, there was a "falling out" between these two, and the focus of the dispute was an improved site glass for use in blast furnaces, an invention that Adam had patented in 1903 (No.742919). Bill and a man named Messler, who ran J&L at the time, wanted to go in with Adam on production rights, but Adam wanted no part of it. By that time, however, he already had four children and could not afford to develop the patent on his own. In the end, he sold all rights to the company, and never garnered any benefit from its continued use. Bill, Jim, and Adam continued to develop their ideas. Jim developed patents for anchorless castings, and the income from those patents supported his wife Bella long after his death in 1923. At the time of his death, he was the vice president and general manager of the New Process Castings Company, and lived in Dormont, outside Pittsburgh. Bill took an executive position with U.S. Steel, but eventually left that job to become a principal with the Copperweld Steel Corporation of Glassport, Pennsylvania. When he died in 1930, his obituary was carried in newspapers in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Youngstown. Adam took a position as master mechanic at the Corrigan and Kinney works in Josephine, Pennsylvania, where he was second only to the superintendent, Ed Smith, who was referred to as "Big Smith" because of the disparity in their stature. Several years later, Adam took a similar position with the Youngstown Sheet and Tube. From that time on, Adam and Lizzie called Youngstown, Ohio their home, and Adam spent his remaining years managing mills in the Mahoning Valley. In the space of less than ten years, the three brothers began to drift apart. In Pittsburgh, they had lived within a quarter mile of each other, so that family functions could take place quite naturally, but different career choices rendered that impossible. For Adam, Pittsburgh still remained a center of activity. When he lived in Josephine, Pa., he was known to walk eight miles on a Sunday afternoon to get the score of the Pittsburgh Pirates ball game. After moving to Youngstown, he still made it a point to be in Pittsburgh on the opening day of the baseball season. On those occasions, he stayed with his sister Margaret. Peggy Anderson remembers his visits to her family's home. The childhood image that sticks in her mind is that of her uncle shaving in his tie and collar. It was during one of those visits to Pittsburgh, that he first learned that he had a cancer of the bowel. Whether he told his family, is not known, but Peggy remembered the conversation between her uncle and her mother. The doctor said that any attempt to operate on the tumor would spread the disease and the end would come even more quickly. Adam returned to Youngstown and went on with life as usual. One day he announced that it was time to go to the hospital. His son-in-law, Ralph Weir, drove him to St. Elizabeth's where he admitted himself for surgery. His Lizzie and daughter, Flo, were with him on the Wednesday that he entered the hospital. The surgery took place on Friday, and on the following Monday Ralph drove Elizabeth to see her husband. Their youngest, Bob, went with them, and they discussed having the other children visit the next day. "Be brave," was the message that Adam gave to his eight year old son. It was the last exchange that he had with any of his children. The doctor in Pittsburgh had been right, the end came very quickly. He died in hospital, and his final days had an impact on all who heard the melodic strains of the metric Psalms being sung from memory by this man from Glasgow. * * * When Adam died in 1927, he left his wife, Elizabeth with ten children. Their oldest son, Bill, had been killed in a mill accident the year before, so the family lived with a double grief, and the "Great Depression" was yet to come. At that time, my father was eight years old, and the youngest. Surviving the shock of losing the family bread-winner, and then the economic crisis that gripped the country, soon became the main obstacles. Like many families of that period, everyone had to pull together. Some of the "children" were already grown with families of their own, but they stood by their extended family as well. For the men, jobs were hard to find, but being one of "Pop" Smith's sons opened some doors that were closed to others. Ironically, an informal patronage system, like the one that worked against the three brothers in Scotland, now helped the family in the early stages of the Depression. Later, as the economy bottomed out, nothing would be able to help except the common commitment of the family. In the earliest traditions, English families were patriarchal, but Scottish families were matriarchal. The root of this difference lies in the ancient history of the settlement of the Island Kingdom. Those who are unable to understand the historic tension between the peoples of the Britain, have failed to see the cultural influences that were centuries in the making. A case in point is the legend of King Arthur. Those who tell the story as one of the tales of Olde England, have never adequately explained the relationship between Guinevere and Lancelot. Scots who claim Arthur as one of their own, and have the literature and historic sites to prove it, have no such problem. In the ancient tradition of the Pictish Kingdoms, the Queen had multiple husbands. It was not a matter of morality, but practicality in a world where stability could not be provided by men who were likely to be killed in battle. Thus, women were seen as the purveyors of continuity. This ethnic trait runs deep in traditional Scottish families, and though the model for family life in more recent history placed the male in the role of authority, the woman still bore the burden of maintaining the unity and security of the home. This may explain why Grandma Smith remained the unchallenged decision-maker in the family for decades, right up to the time of her death in 1960. For what it is worth, my opinion is that it is easier to be a son in such a family than a daughter. The reason that I say this is that these traditions function in an unconscious mode, and daughters tend to bear the burden of feeling responsible for holding people together in relationships that are increasingly difficult to maintain. There is a drive to create and sustain a family. It is not so much a matter of power as it is a burden of creating security within kinship ties. I offer this as a gift to my sister and aunts and cousins, as they struggle to hold together the pieces of a world that has fragmented family ties. It is a role that you've inherited, but not one for which you must accept blame. Enjoy those you love, but the power to hold them all together is a vision from the land of Camelot.
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