Andrew Carnegie: God of Public Libraries

Dying wealthy epitomizes success in the United States. Andrew Carnegie disagreed. Born to penurious basket weavers on November 25, 1835, in Dunfermline, Scotland, Carnegie spent his early childhood working in family looms and then, starting at age 12, laboring in cotton factories in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. As an adult, he spearheaded the mass production of steel, earning millions of dollars. In spite of his newfound wealth, the tycoon held, “The man who dies rich dies disgraced” (“Wealth”). Provided honest means, Carnegie had no qualms about acquiring wealth. However, a devout presbyterian, Carnegie frowned upon the hoarding of wealth. Deeming wealth the chief instrument for the betterment of society, anyone who failed to donate the majority of their wealth before their passing had, in Carnegie’s eyes, failed society. It, therefore, surprises none that Andrew Carnegie proved the most generous philanthropist of the 19th century. And the focus of his philanthropy? A voracious reader, Carnegie’s most prominent contributions were public libraries.

Andrew Carnegie erected a whopping 1689 public libraries during his lifetime. That figure amounts to 10 percent of the public libraries found in the United States today. However, Andrew Carnegie’s construction of public libraries was not random charity. If anything, Carnegie held random charity akin to throwing money in the ocean. Instead, Andrew Carnegie’s construction of public libraries served to actualize his moral ideals. By constructing public libraries, Carnegie’s first motive was to educate the American public. Second, Carnegie believed his public libraries would facilitate the creation of self-made businessmen. Third, Carnegie posited public libraries would provide the proletariat an escape from the drudgery of quotidian life. Andrew Carnegie’s construction of public libraries is thus the greatest reflection of his ideals and character.

Historians note Carnegie’s dedication to public libraries, and detailed scholarship abounds. An example of such research is Peter Mickelson’s “American Society and the Public Library in the Thought of Andrew Carnegie’’. A historian at the University of Texas, Mickelson argues that Andrew Carnegie’s support of public libraries reflected a desire to support his moral beliefs rather than to simply be charitable. To support his claim, Mickelson’s article begins with primary sources from Carnegie’s associates. These sources indicate that Carnegie, prizing intellectual pursuits over material wealth, was different from other men of his stature. Mickelson then traces the origin of Carnegie’s love of reading. Mickelson’s article highlights that in one of Carnegie’s boyhood factory jobs, the owner granted Carnegie and the other factory boys access to his personal library after work. Mickelson denotes how among his companions, Carnegie read the most, consuming everything from medieval literature to technical manuals. The article then draws from Carnegie’s own testimonials in which the magnate attributes his success to his love of knowledge, claiming, “A man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled” (“Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie”). Essentially, Mickelson’s article first showcases Carnegies’ intellectualism, and then uses this premise to justify the conclusion that the tycoon’s contributions to public libraries were profoundly personal. Mickelson’s thinking effectively promotes that Andrew Carnegie built public libraries in the hopes that working-class boys would follow in his footsteps. Mickelson’s article is well- substantiated and detail-oriented, but it is also inescapably insular. It often omits critical historical context, namely, that while much of Carnegie’s thinking was personal, the ethos of the “self-made man” was popular during the late nineteenth century, particularly among the industrialist class.

Unlike Peter Mickelson, for historian Abigail van Slyck, historical context is everything. Slyck’s thesis maintains that the Carnegie library architecture reflected Andrew Carnegie’s and the industrialist class’s values. However, Slyck focuses on a different set of Carnegie’s values. Where Mickelson analyzes Carnegie’s love of reading and knowledge, Slyck highlights the tycoon’s attachment to modernity and efficiency, the industrialist ethos. She supports her claim by noting the architectural similarities between Carnegie’s public libraries and his steel factories, with the ladder epitomizing modern construction. Slyck uses the example of both the Carnegie factories and the Carnegie libraries having open floor plans to further support his claim. Slyck analyzes Carnegie’s preference for an floor plan with particular zeal. She asserts that the open floor plan found in both his libraries was a values-based design. Using a direct testimonial from the businessman to support her analysis, Slyck shows that Carnegie preferred open floor plans for their efficiency and lack of hierarchy. According to Slyck, Carnegie in particular wanted to rebel from the baroque-style libraries in his native Scotland that were pretentious in their design, having a “nobleman’s” section with certain sections written in Latin, making the acquisition of knowledge a convoluted and stratified process. Carnegie, on the other hand, concludes Slyck, wanted to apply the industrialist mentality to public libraries, housing all books on one level with no special sections, making knowledge acquisition meritocratic, efficient, and practical, just like modern business (from the industrialist perspective at least). His lack of ornamentation of his libraries also showed a preference for practicality over style, allowing for the “mass production” of libraries, another key industrialist value. Overall, Slyck shows Carnegie’s libraries to be a key reflection of his values, but unlike Mickelson, extends her argument to include not just his personal values, but also those of the industrialist class, painting Carnegie in a more collective light. This helps lend credibility to her argument as many of her thesis’ subpoints reflect the viewpoints of more than just one man. Despite this context-based thoroughness, Slyck does seem a bit removed from her subject and does not make an effort to pry into Carnegie’s individuality.

Given the previous historiography, there is now sufficient context to dive into each of Carnegie’s three principle values and their promotion through the magnate’s construction of public libraries. Carnegie’s first principle value behind the construction of the public libraries was educating the American public, particularly young children. It is no secret that Andrew Carnegie valued education and knowledge, as well as understood its ability to elevate one’s character, having been quoted by reporters such as Charles Kinder as saying, “Feed the soul of that child on the right kind of mental food and you will make of him one of God’s noblemen who will be a blessing to humanity” (Kinder). For further clarity, Carnegie did not merely regard education as important, he regarded education as the most important aspect of a well-lived life. In his autobiography, Carnegie states, “I decided there was no better use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library”(Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie). To further cement his belief in public libraries, Carnegie asserts in an excerpt of his book Wealth, “A library outranks any other thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in a desert”(Wealth). Thus, given the previous evidence, it is clear that Andrew Carnegie’s character and beliefs were centered around both education and meritocracy, and the construction of public libraries most reflects these ideals. His career as a businessman was built on meritocracy, but he often lamented about the lack of intellectualism among his many fellow businessmen, even the self-made ones, and held several of his colleagues to be mere acquirers of wealth (note that Carnegie regarded intellectualism as the true measure of education rather than pedigrees, as he was an unschooled albeit brilliant autodidact). As for philanthropy, his goals and contributions focused on education, and thus Carnegie built public libraries, universities, and funded scientific research, but of all these efforts, Carnegie viewed the libraries as the most meritocratic, as universities and scientific research were accessible only to a smaller swath of society. Therefore, of all his endeavors, public libraries best reflect Andrew Carnegie’s ideals to educate the American populace.

When constructing his public libraries, his second but perhaps most personal ideal was to facilitate the creation of self-made businessmen. Though a capitalist to the core, Andrew Carnegie was deeply concerned about income inequality and the separation of the proletariat and owner classes, remarking on the stratification of American society, “Rigid Castes are formed, and, as usual, mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust. Each Caste is without sympathy for the other, and ready to credit anything disparaging in regard to it” (Wealth). And Carnegie’s antidote to such a caste system? The production of self-made businessmen like himself, or what he called the “reconciliation of the rich and poor”. In Carnegie’s world view, more self-made businessmen means greater wealth for society but less social stratification, the ladder of which he viewed as the greatest problem afflicting modern life. Looking at his own life story for inspiration, Carnegie viewed public libraries as the best way to develop ambitious, intelligent, poor, young men into the leaders of the future. Andrew Carnegie believed public libraries accomplished this because, while available for everyone, only the most curious and industrious would take advantage of them. He asserted, “The fundamental advantage of a library is that it gives nothing for nothing. Youths must acquire knowledge themselves. There is no escape

from this”(Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie). His belief in his own success stemming from the library is evident in his own autobiography, in which he writes about being given access to books with reverence, “Colonel James Anderson — I bless his name as I write — announced that he would open his library of four hundred volumes to boys so that any young man could take out, each Saturday afternoon, a book which could be exchanged for another on the succeeding Saturday”(Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie). So Carnegie’s dictum is clear: public libraries allow the best and brightest, though poorest men, to rise far beyond their station in life. The construction of public libraries thus supports the creation of self-made men like none other of Carnegie’s contributions, as the universities and scientific research centers he created were still predominantly housed by the sons of rich men.

Of course, part of Andrew Carnegie’s belief in the “self-made man” was rooted in the idea of individual exceptionalism. A social Darwinist, Carnegie believed that some men, regardless of their birth, possessed superior character traits that would make them successful over other men. Having risen from poverty to become the richest man of his time along with John D. Rockefeller, Carnegie no doubt regarded himself as such a man, and thus believed that it was his role to be helping those who wanted to help themselves, stating, “The individual administrator of surplus wealth has as his charge the industrious and ambitious.”(Best Fields for Philanthropy). It only helped that Carnegie’s mentor was the prominent philosopher Herbert Spencer. Spencer was a staunch advocate of social Darwinism and meritocracy, and as such, received nothing but adulation from Carnegie, who said, “To my father and my mother I owe my physical being; to you, sir, I owe my intellectual being. At a critical moment you provided the safe paths through the bogs and morasses; you were my teacher”(Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie).Yet from Spencer, Carnegie also learned ethics, and in his study Carnegie realized that since not everyone, by definition, could be exceptional and thus a self made man, he had to find a way to benefit the eternal proletariat. Carnegie’s solution? You guessed it. Public libraries. Carnegie reasoned since he could not hope to better the prospects of some men, he could at least provide them an escape from the drudgery of their daily lives: free books. Though intensely practical, Carnegie did not look down on literature in favor of technical manuals. He himself was a great consumer of classic literature, from Chaucer to Goethe, etc. If you contrast Carnegie’s other contributions such as universities, scientific research funding etc, with public libraries, only public libraries can benefit those, “who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talent”(Wealth), as going to a public library to read for pleasure requires less determination than getting university education as a working class citizen. Thus, only Carnegie’s public libraries support his ideal for the perennial working class.

Andrew Carnegie was the most influential philanthropist of his time, rivaled only perhaps by John Rockefeller and Andrew Mellon. This within itself speaks volumes of Carnegie’s character. However, like any man, Carnegie was a complex figure, and as a philanthropist, calling him simply generous would not say much. From the multitude of primary and secondary sources examined, it is clear that both Carnegie and his associates identified his moral pillars: education, merit, and philanthropy. His construction of public libraries reflects these pillars unlike any other of his contributions. Firstly, as we saw in the Kinder source, public libraries are a vehicle for the education of the public, particularly children, thus supporting Carnegie’s value of education. Second, the public libraries, as per Abigail van Slyck and Peter Mickelson, promoted a meritocratic environment in which the most ambitious and intelligent men benefitted the most and had a chance to rise in society. Third, as Carnegie, even with his staunch individualism, believed in goodwill towards men above all else, his public libraries also helped “unexceptional” men, providing, if nothing else, a source of escape from the drudgery of quotidian life. With fewer beneficiaries, we see that Carnegie’s universities and research funds could not compete with his public libraries in the actualization of these three ideals. With this in mind, it is dubious whether, in Carnegie’s case, the man made the library or the library made the man.

References:

Mickelson, Peter. “American Society and the Public Library in the Thought of Andrew Carnegie.” The Journal of Library History (1974–1987), vol. 10, no. 2, 1975, pp. 117–138. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25540622. Accessed 1 Mar. 2021.

Kaufman, Polly Welts. Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 31, no. 2/3, 1996, pp. 191–193. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1215164. Accessed 1 Mar. 2021.

Andrew Carnegie: ‘Wealth’ (1889).” American History, ABC-CLIO, 2021, americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/298687. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.

“Andrew Carnegie: ‘Wealth’ (1889), Excerpt — On the Wealth Gap, the Working Class, and Distribution of Wealth.” American History, ABC-CLIO, 2021, americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/2124223. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.

“Andrew Carnegie: Quote on Economics.” American History, ABC-CLIO, 2021, americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/281334. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.

“Andrew Carnegie: Quote on Libraries.” American History, ABC-CLIO, 2021, americanhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/344450. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.

“The Corner Stone Laid.” American Decades Primary Sources, edited by Cynthia Rose, vol. 1: 1900–1909, Gale, 2004, pp. 386–390. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3490200117/UHIC?u=sant80796&sid=UHIC&xid=a28a51e1. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.

“Carnegie, Andrew.” Industrial Revolution Reference Library, edited by James L. Outman, et al., vol. 3: Primary Sources, UXL, 2003, pp. 34–44. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3425800055/UHIC?u=sant80796&sid=UHIC&xid=8987a2c7. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.

Carnegie, Andrew, 1835–1919. Autobiography Of Andrew Carnegie : with Illustrations. London :Constable, Ltd., 1920.