THE LEGACY OF ANDREW CARNEGIE. When Andrew Carnegie retired in 1901 at age 65, the Scottish

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1 Oooo 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

2 \C0o OOOO Stfcl 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

3 I \C>oo 00<x> G'ifC'] Dunfermline in 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-

4 O O O o 4 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, 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-

5 \ 0 O O O C X X? 5 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

6 \pou QCOO 5V&1 6 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.

7 \doo eooo 7 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.