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THE LEGACY OF ANDREW CARNEGIE

When Andrew Carnegie retired in 1901 at age 65, the Scottish

immigrant and son of a poor weaver had locked away in his own

Hoboken, New Jersey, bank the largest private fortune in the

world. Between that time and the start of World War I, Carnegie

gave most of his fortune away—a total of nearly 350 million

dollars. That's the equivalent of somewhere between two and

three billion dollars today.

The principle at the heart of all of Carnegie's trusts,

endowments, and gifts was self-help. "The main consideration,"

he wrote "should be to help those who will help themselves, to

provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve

may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which

they may rise, but rarely or never to do all." Carnegie beleived

that no one could be pushed "up a ladder unless he is willing to

climb a little himself."

Carnegie created dozens of trusts and institutions devoted

to education, research, societal welfare, and peace from our own

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to the Hero

Fund Trust—designed to give financial assistance to those

injured attempting to save the lives of others—to the

International Court of Justice at The Hague. (These

institutions, according to Goodenough's conservative estimate,

are spending about $4 per second; and of course the estimate

doesn't include the value of billions of dollars in capital

assets.) Among the most vital and perhaps the most widely known

elements of the Carnegie legacy are the more than 2,500 free

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public libraries he made possible. Fewer might be aware,

however, that among the direct and indirect results of the

Carnegie fortune are nearly 8,000 church organs around the world,

J.K. Galbraith's The Affluent Society, the Mount Wilson

astronomical observatory in California, and that perennial

children's television favorite, "Sesame Street."

Carnegie Libraries

Believing that injustice and human misery were bred of

ignorance and desiring to bring to America the tradition of the

public library and to further it in Great Britain, Carnegie built

more than 2,500 libraries at a total cost of more than 56 million

dollars. The idea combined two of Carnegie's favorite themes:

education and self-help. He donated the library buildings with

few, but important conditions: the local community had to

provide the site, pledge an annual sum for maintenance (usually

10% of Carnegie's gift), and display in or on the library the

words "Let there be light."

Carnegie viewed his approach as philanthropy at its best—

his gifts compelling others to produce further benefit for

themselves. "When the library is supported by the community,"

Carnegie said, "all taint of charity is dispelled." (In fact,

Carnegie provided maintaining endowments for only three of his

libraries, and in each case the community failed to provide any

further funds for upkeep.

The first gift of a library went to Carnegie's native

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Dunfermline in 1881. The largest was $5 million for sixty-six

branches of the New York Public Library. The enormity of the

gift committed the City of New York to provide $500,000 annualy

for upkeep. At one point, Carnegie was receiving two or three

requests per day for library grants—some as modest as $1,000.

Free public libraries financed by Carnegie can be found, in

addition to the United States and Great Britain, in Canada,

Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Mauritius, and

Figi.

In 1926, the Carnegie corporation expanded the program,

supporting the American Library Association's attempts to

strengthen the profession and improve library services.

Carnegie Organs

Andrew Carnegie believed that music was a humanizing force

and said that the organ particularly aroused the deeper nature of

man. Carnegie had organs in his homes in New York and Skibo,

Scotland, and during his life donated more than 7,000 of the

instruments to churches worldwide at a total cost of over six

million dollars.

The first organ gift went to the Swedenborgian Church in

Allegheny—where his father had worshipped when he first moved to

America. Carnegie followed with gifts to other churches—and

what began as an occasional request for a similar gift soon

turned into a flood. In keeping with Carnegie's gospel of self-

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help, churches had to raise half the money required before the

remainder would be granted.

Carnegie organs can be found in at least 14 countries around

the world, and of the approximately 4,000 in the United States,

1,300 are located in Pennsylvania.

Carnegie Hall

On his trans-Atlantic honeymoon voyage to Scotland, Andrew

Carnegie met Walter Damrosch, conductor of New York's Oratorio

Society. Not much persuasion was required to convince Carnegie

that the Society needed a new concert hall—rehearsals were being

held in a piano warehouse for lack of proper space.

Carnegie organized the building not as a philanthropic

effort but as a business venture with himself as chief

stockholder. Originally named "Music Hall", it opened as the

home of the Oratorio and Symphony Societies in May, 1891. The

New York Herald wrote of the event, "All was quiet, dignified,

soft, slow, and noiseless, as became the dedication of a great

temple." The name was soon changed to "Carnegie Hall" because a

"music hall" conjured up visions of vaudeville houses.

The Carnegie Corporation sold the hall to private buyers

after Carnegie's death. The new owners planned to destroy the

Hall and erect another building on its site. Strong and

widespread protest by artists and patrons saved the day.

Carnegie Hall is now owned by New York City, managed by a non-

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profit corporation, and supported annually by hundreds of local

and national businesses and individuals. The building has been

designated a national historic landmark.

The Authors Club-Carnegie Fund

Carnegie's first journalistic endeavor was a letter he wrote

to the Pittsburgh Dispatch as an 18-year-old protesting the

imposition of a charge at the previously free library of Colonel

Anderson. His protest was successful. Carnegie began to

contribute frequently to newspapers and later became an author as

well. (His first works on a coaching trip to Britain and a

round-the-world tour became popular successes.)

Not surprsingly, Carnegie cultivated authors—including Mark

Twain and Matthew Arnold—providing financial help for some of

them both privately and through the Author's Club of New York.

(The club published collections of its members works.) He set up

the Carnegie Fund to support needy writers who were club members

and for any other authors deemed worthy of assistance.

The Cooper-Hewitt Museum

In 1901, Carnegie, his wife, and his daughter, moved into

the 64 room mansion they had built on upper Fifth Avenue—then

almost a rural locale. This was to be Andrew Carnegie's home for

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the rest of his life. His contributions to Cooper Union College-

-where thousand of men and women, many of them immigrants, were

educated free—later combined with the interest of his

granddaughters in arts and decorative design to result in the

Cooper-Hewitt Museum. When financial difficulties at Cooper

Union forced the college to entrust its collections to the

Smithsonian, the Carnegie Corporation deeded Andrew's mansion to

the Smithsonian as the new and permanent home of the Cooper-

Hewitt Museum.

The Museum's picture archive and design library has become

one of the major design reference centers in the United States.

And the mansion's main public rooms have been restored for

visitors as they were in Carnegie's lifetime.

There are, of course, further, less obvious examples of the

rich cultural and educational legacy that can be traced to Andrew

Carnegie, his fortune, and his vision. Among them are gifts to

some 500 academic institutions, endowments to trusts and

Foundations that allowed groups like the Children's Television

Workshop to be created and supported, donations to organizations

like the New York Zoological Society, and even gifts to the

Academy of Paris relating to Madame Curie's work on radium.

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Carnegie Quotes

Reading

"The taste for reading is one of the most precious possessions in life. There is no human arrangement so powerful for good. . .as that which places within reach of all the treasures of the world which are stored up in books."

Education "Upon no foundation but that of popular education can man erect the structure of an enduring civilization.

"Culture" "Let no one underrate the influence of entertainments of an elevating or even an amusing character , for these do much to make the lives of the people happier and their natures better.