Andrew Carnegie’s decision to assist library construction developed away from his experience. Born in 1835, he spent his first 12 years inside coastal town of Dunfermline, Scotland. There he listened to men read aloud and discuss books borrowed in the Tradesmen’s Subscription Library that his father, a weaver, had helped create. Carnegie began his formal education at age eight, but wanted to stop after only three years. The rapid industrialization with the textile trade forced small businessmen like Carnegie’s father through business. For that reason, family members sold their belongings and immigrated to Allegheny, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Andrew Carnegie’s decision to assist library construction developed away from his experience. Born in 1835, he spent his first 12 years inside coastal town of Dunfermline, Scotland. There he listened to men read aloud and discuss books borrowed in the Tradesmen’s Subscription Library that his father, a weaver, had helped create.look at here Carnegie began his formal education at age eight, but wanted to stop after only three years. The rapid industrialization with the textile trade forced small businessmen like Carnegie’s father through business. For that reason, family members sold their belongings and immigrated to Allegheny, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Although these new circumstances required the young Carnegie to visit work, his learning failed to end. After the year in a textile factory, he was a messenger boy for that local telegraph company. Most of his fellow messengers introduced him to Col. James Anderson of Allegheny, who every Saturday opened his personal library to the young worker who wished to borrow a guide. Carnegie later said the colonel opened the windows through which the sunlight of knowledge streamed. In 1853, should the colonel’s representatives tried to restrict the library’s use, Carnegie wrote a letter to your editor belonging to the Pittsburgh Dispatch defending the ideal of all working boys to savor the pleasures of your library. More important, he resolved that, should he ever be wealthy, he will make similar opportunities open to other poor workers.

Throughout the next half-century Carnegie accumulated the fortune that are going to enable him to meet that pledge. During his years to provide a messenger, Carnegie had taught himself the art of telegraphy. This skill helped him make contacts together with the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he went along to work at age 18. Throughout his 12-year railroad association he rose quickly, ultimately becoming superintendent belonging to the Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh division. He simultaneously invested in a variety of other businesses, including railroad locomotives, oil, and iron and steel. In 1865, Carnegie left the railroad to deal with the Keystone Bridge Company, that was successfully replacing wooden railroad bridges with iron ones. By your 1870s he was paying attention to steel manufacturing, ultimately creating the Carnegie Steel Company. In 1901 he sold that business for $250 million.

Carnegie then retired and devoted the remainder of his life to philanthropy. Before selling Carnegie Steel he had started to consider what to do with his immense fortune. In 1889 he wrote a famous essay entitled The Gospel of Wealth, that he stated that wealthy men should live without extravagance, provide moderately with regard to their dependents, and distribute most of their riches to help the welfare and happiness for the common man–using the consideration to help you solely those would you help themselves. The Most Beneficial Fields for Philanthropy, his second essay, listed seven fields that the wealthy should donate: universities, libraries, medical centers, public parks, meeting and concert halls, public baths, and churches. He later expanded this list to add in gifts that promoted scientific research, the general spread of information, and then the promotion of world peace. Many of those organizations continue to this day: the Carnegie Corporation in Ny, to provide an example, helps support Sesame Street.

As a result of his background, Carnegie was particularly focused on public libraries. At one point he stated a library was the perfect gift for any community, simply because it gave people the opportunity improve themselves. His confidence was based on the results of similar gifts from earlier philanthropists. In Baltimore, for instance, a library offered by Enoch Pratt has been applied by 37,000 people in 12 months. Carnegie considered that the relatively small number of public library patrons were of more value at their community versus the masses who chose not to ever enjoy the library.

Carnegie divided his donations to libraries into the retail and wholesale periods. During the retail period, 1886 to 1896, he gave $1,860,869 for 14 endowed buildings in six communities in the states. These buildings were actually community centers, containing recreational facilities including pools as well as libraries. In your years after 1896, named the wholesale period, Carnegie not necessarily supported urban multipurpose buildings. Instead he gave $39,172,981 to smaller communities which had limited usage of cultural institutions. His gifts provided 1,406 towns with buildings devoted exclusively to libraries. Over half his grants were for under $ten thousand. Although almost all the towns receiving gifts were from the Midwest, as a whole 46 states benefited from Carnegie’s plan.

Andrew Carnegie stopped making gifts for library construction carrying out a report developed to him by Dr. Alvin Johnson, an economics professor. In 1916 Dr. Johnson visited 100 of your existing Carnegie libraries and studied their social significance, physical aspects, effectiveness, and financial condition. His final report determined that as being really effective, the libraries needed trained personnel. Buildings was basically provided, however it was time to staff all of them pros who would stimulate active, efficient libraries on their communities. Libraries already promised continued as being built until 1923, but after 1919 all financial support was considered library education.

When Andrew Carnegie died in 1919 at age 84, he had given nearly one-fourth of his life to causes of which he believed. His gifts to various charities totalled nearly $350 million, almost 90 % of his fortune. Carnegie regarded all education as a method to strengthen people’s lives, and libraries provided certainly one of his main tools to help you Americans produce a brighter future. Questions for Reading 1 1. How did progress and industrialization affect Carnegie, both when he was young, and down the road? 2. Just how much formal education did Carnegie have? What factors led to his affinity for books and reading? 3. What did Carnegie believe wealthy people must do using money? Why did he reckon that? Does a person agree? 4. How did supporting libraries match Carnegie’s past with his fantastic beliefs? Reading 1 was compiled from George S. Bobinski, Carnegie Libraries (Chicago: American Library Association, 1969); Andrew Carnegie, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, reprint (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1920 1986); Barry Sears, Over the Trail of Carnegie Libraries, Antiques and Collecting (February 1994); Gerald R. Shields, Recycling Buildings for Libraries, Public Libraries (March/April 1994).