Neither a rags-to-riches biographical sketch nor a
perfectly scanned-in
image of Mr. Carnegie could serve as as great a personal tribute to the
great Founder of
Libraries, the earnest Champion of
Peace and the resolute Captain of Industry as presenting his own
words online--available electronically and immediately to
the whole world through the World Wide Web. He would be tickled pink.
Mr. Carnegie loved to promote his ideas and opinions in print. As one
of America's most successful businessmen and, perhaps, the world's
richest man, it can be assumed that he felt his opinions and advice were
not without proven merit. In fact, his journalistic career had begun
early when the young man found himself barred from free membership in
Col. James Anderson's "Mechanics' and Apprentices' Library." In 1853
Carnegie took the matter to the pages of the Pittsburgh Dispatch;
and, as
Joseph Wall notes in his definitive biography of Andrew Carnegie, the
victory the young man won through his letters to the editor left a lasting
impression:
It was also his first literary success, and for
Andrew nothing else
that he had known in the way of recognition by others had been quite
as exhilarating as this experience of seeing his own words in print.
It fed his vanity and at the same time increased his appetite for more
such food. At that moment a journalistic ambition was born which he would
spend the remainder of his life attempting to satisfy. (1)
An American possessed of nineteenth century grandeur, he was yet a man of
contradictions. The wealthiest human being of his time, he was convinced
of the merits of poverty in developing character. His vast wealth,
produced by the sweat of "the toilers of Pittsburgh," he returned to the
city he loved, to America, to Scotland, to England and to the
world. Not a religionist, he yet spoke in spiritual terms when expressing
what he hoped his benefactions would accomplish in the world and in the
lives of those very toilers whose labor had produced his wealth:
"Man does not live by bread alone." I have
known millionaires starving for
lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in
man,
and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in
luxuries
beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that
makes
the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which
possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the useful drudge
of
things immeasurably higher than itself. Exalted beyond this, as it
sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays the beast. My
aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be
it to have
contributed to the
enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit,
to
all that tends to bring into the lives of the
toilers of Pittsburgh
sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of
wealth. (2)
In fact, by
the time he died in 1919, he had given away
$350,695,653 (3). At his death,
the last $30,000,000 (4) was likewise given
away to foundations, charities and to pensioners.
Andrew Carnegie was convinced of and committed to the notion that
education was life's key. He was convinced of the power of, what we term
today, access to information. He learned that lesson profoundly in the
libraries
of Col. Anderson in Allegheny
City. It was an experience he never forgot and
which motivated his campaign of world-wide library-building. Over the
doors of The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, carved in
stone, are his
own words, "Free to the People." (5)
William F. Buckley, Jr., in a newspaper column, describes a
proposal for a portable mini-computer ("TeleRead") able to effectively
store and display the texts of hundreds of books--"everyone's personal
library." Buckley pays Mr. Carnegie this perspicacious compliment:
Andrew Carnegie, if he were alive, would probably buy TeleRead
from Mr. Rothman for $1, develop the whole idea at his own
expense, and then make a gift of it to the American people. (6)
Andrew Carnegie stood somewhere between 5'2" and
5'6". But inside,
where the meanings are, there had to be a great, tough, disciplined and
determined giant of a man--a spirit much akin to the gracefully powerful
and wonderfully purposeful image of The Reading
Blacksmith,
the focus of Mr. Carnegie's memorial to his childhood benefactor, James Anderson.
Although a Captain of Industry, he was peculiarly naive or perhaps just
eternally optimistic about human nature--sharing with old Walt
Whitman an abiding democratic faith in the common sense, decency and
nobility of spirit of the people. Andrew Carnegie lived through the
industrialization of America and was one of the leading actors in that
drama. He was a shrewd and alert businessman who could charm Mark Twain
with
his adage, "Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket."
(7)
He was also a millionaire with an extraordinary social conscience. "The
man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced," (8)
he so wrote and so believed.
His
legacy lives on in the hundreds and hundreds of libraries that his wealth
made possible. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, one of Mr. Carnegie's
chiefest joys, celebrates this November its 100th anniversary, a
refuge to
August Wilson
and to thousands and thousands of inquiring minds over ten decades.
The spirit of Andrew Carnegie, his faith in the ability of individuals
to better themselves and thus the society in which they live, now
prepares to face the challenges of the 21st Century. Through the power of
a technology unforeseen in his day, may his
ideas and his example gain a new audience and a new life.
I quote from The Gospel of Wealth, published
[25] years ago:
This,
then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: first, to set an
example of modest unostentatious living, shunning display; to provide
moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and,
after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply
as trust funds which he is strictly bound
as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment,
is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the
community.
From Carnegie Library of Pittsburg
Mr. Carnegie Speaks (567K 52.68
sec.)