mother country, and is a most earnest advocate of peace between us. He
writes: "Of all the desirable political changes which it seems to me
possible for this generation to effect, I consider it by far the most
important for the welfare of the race, that every civilized nation
should be pledged, as the Republic is, to offer peaceful arbitration to
its opponent before the senseless, inhuman work of human slaughter
begins."
In his "Imperial Federation" he writes: "War between members of our race
may be said to be already banished; for English-speaking men will never
again be called upon to destroy each other.... Both parties in America,
and each successive government, are pledged to offer peaceful
arbitration for the adjustment of all international difficulties,--a
position which it is to be hoped will soon be reached by Britain, at
least in regard to all the differences with members of the same race.
"Is it too much to hope that, after this stage has been reached, and
occupied successfully for a period, another step forward will be taken,
and that, having jointly banished war between themselves, a general
council should be evolved by the English-speaking nations, to which may
at first only be referred all questions of dispute between them?...
"The Supreme Court of the United States is extolled by the statesmen of
all parties in Britain, and has just received the compliment of being
copied in the plan for the Australian Commonwealth. Building upon it,
may we not expect that a still higher Supreme Court is one day to come,
which shall judge between the nations of the entire English-speaking
race, as the Supreme Court at Washington already judges between States
which contain the majority of the race?"
Mr. Carnegie believes that the powers of the council would increase till
the commanding position of the English-speaking race would make other
races listen to its demands for peace, and so war be forever done away
with. Mr. Carnegie rightly calls war "international murder," and, like
Tennyson, looks forward to that blessed time when--
"All men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal Peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea."
Mr. Carnegie has also written, in the _North American Review_ for June,
1891, "The A. B. C. of Money," urging the Republic to keep "its standard
in the future, as in the past, not fluctuating silver, but unchanging
gold."
In his articles in the newspapers, and in his public addresses, he has
given good advice to young men, in whom he takes the deepest interest.
He believes there never were so many opportunities to succeed as now for
the sober, frugal, energetic young man. "Real ability, the capacity for
doing things, never was so eagerly searched for as now, and never
commanded such rewards.... The great dry-goods houses that interest
their most capable men in the profits of each department succeed, when
those fail that endeavor to work with salaried men only. Even in the
management of our great hotels it is found wise to take into partnership
the principal men. In every branch of business this law is at work; and
concerns are prosperous, generally speaking, just in proportion as they
succeed in interesting in the profits a larger and larger proportion of
their ablest workers. Co-operation in this form is fast coming in all
great establishments." To young men he says, "Never enter a barroom....
It is low and common to enter a barroom, unworthy of any self-respecting
man, and sure to fasten upon you a taint which will operate to your
disadvantage in life, whether you ever become a drunkard or not."
"Don't smoke.... The use of tobacco requires young men to withdraw
themselves from the society of women to indulge the habit. I think the
absence of women from any assembly tends to lower the tone of that
assembly. The habit of smoking tends to carry young men into the society
of men whom it is not desirable that they should choose as their
intimate associates. The practice of chewing tobacco was once common.
Now it is considered offensive. I believe the race is soon to take
another step forward, and that the coming man is to consider smoking as
offensive as chewing was formerly considered."
"Never speculate. Never buy or sell grain or stocks upon a margin....
The man who gambles upon the exchanges is in the condition of the man
who gambles at the gaming-table. He rarely, if ever, makes a permanent
success."
"Don't indorse.... There are emergencies, no doubt, in which men should
help their friends; but there is a rule that will keep one safe. No man
should place his name upon the obligation of another if he has not
sufficient to pay it without detriment to his own business. It is
dishonest to do so."
Mr. Carnegie has not only written books and made money, he has
distinguished himself as a giver of millions, and that while he is
alive. He has seen too many wills broken, and fortunes misapplied, when
the money was not given away till death. He says of Mr. Tilden's bequest
of over $5,000,000 for a free library in the city of New York: "How much
better if Mr. Tilden had devoted the last years of his own life to the
proper administration of this immense sum; in which case neither legal
contest nor any other cause of delay could have interfered with his
aims."
Of course money is sometimes so tied up in business that it cannot be
given during a man's life; "yet," says Mr. Carnegie, "the day is not far
distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available
wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away
'unwept, unhonored, and unsung,' no matter to what uses he leaves the
dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict
will then be, 'The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.'"
He believes large estates left at death should be taxed by the State, as
is the case in Pennsylvania and some other States. Mr. Carnegie does
not favor large gifts left to families. "Why should men leave great
fortunes to their children?" he asks. "If this is done from affection,
is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally
speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so
burdened. Neither is it well for the State. Beyond providing for the
wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate
allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well hesitate; for it
is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed often work more for
the injury than for the good of the recipients. There are instances of
millionnaires' sons unspoiled by wealth, who, being rich, still perform
great services to the community. Such are the very salt of the earth, as
valuable as unfortunately they are rare." Again Mr. Carnegie says of
wealth left to the young, "It deadens their energies, destroys their
ambition, tempts them to destruction, and renders it almost impossible
that they should lead lives creditable to themselves or valuable to the
State. Such as are not deadened by wealth deserve double credit, for
they have double temptation."
In the _North American Review_ for December, 1889, Mr. Carnegie suggests
what he considers seven of the best uses for surplus wealth: The
founding of great universities; free libraries; hospitals or any means
to alleviate human suffering; public parks and flower-gardens for the
people, conservatories such as Mr. Phipps has given to the park at
Allegheny City, which are visited by thousands; suitable halls for
lectures, elevating music, and other gatherings, free, or rented for a
small sum; free swimming-baths for the people; attractive places of
worship, especially in poor localities. Mr. Carnegie's own great gifts
have been largely along the line which he believes the "best gift to a
community,"--a free public library. He thinks with John Bright that "it
is impossible for any man to bestow a greater benefit upon a young man
than to give him access to books in a free library."
"It is, no doubt," he says, "possible that my own personal experience
may have led me to value a free library beyond all other forms of
beneficence. When I was a working-boy in Pittsburg, Colonel Anderson of
Allegheny--a name I can never speak without feelings of devotional
gratitude--opened his little library of four hundred books to boys.
Every Saturday afternoon he was in attendance at his house to exchange
books. No one but he who has felt it can ever know the intense longing
with which the arrival of Saturday was awaited that a new book might be
had. My brother and Mr. Phipps, who have been my principal business
partners through life, shared with me Colonel Anderson's precious
generosity; and it was when revelling in the treasures which he opened
to us that I resolved, if ever wealth came to me, that it should be used
to establish free libraries, that other poor boys might receive
opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to that noble
man."
"How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world."
Again Mr. Carnegie says, "I also come by heredity to my preference for
free libraries. The newspaper of my native town recently published a
history of the free library in Dunfermline, and it is there recorded
that the first books gathered together and opened to the public were the
small collections of three weavers. Imagine the feelings with which I
read that one of these three men was my honored father. He founded the
first library in Dunfermline, his native town; and his son was
privileged to found the last.... I have never heard of a lineage for
which I would exchange that of the library-founding weaver."
Mr. Carnegie has given for the Edinburgh Free Library, Scotland,
$250,000; for one in his native town of Dunfermline, $90,000; and
several thousand dollars each to libraries in Aberdeen, Peterhead,
Inverness, Ayr, Elgin, Wick and Kirkwall, besides contributions towards
public halls and reading-rooms at Newburgh, Aberdour, and many other
places abroad. Mr. Carnegie's mother laid the corner-stone for the free
library in Dunfermline. He writes in his "American Four-in-Hand in
Britain," "There was something of the fairy-tale in the fact that she
had left her native town, poor, thirty odd years before, with her loved
ones, to found a new home in the great Republic, and was to-day
returning in her coach, to be allowed the privilege of linking her name
with the annals of her beloved native town in one of the most enduring
forms possible."
When the corner-stone of the Peterhead Free Library in Scotland was
laid, Aug. 8, 1891, the wife of Mr. Carnegie was asked to lay the stone
with square and trowel, and endeared herself to the people by her hearty
interest and attractive womanhood. She was presented with the silver
trowel with ivory handle which she had used, and with a vase of
Peterhead granite from the employees of the Great North of Scotland
Granite Works.
Mr. Carnegie did not marry till he was fifty-two years of age, in 1887,
the year following the death of his mother and only brother Thomas. The
latter died Oct. 19, 1886. Mr. Carnegie's wife, who is thoroughly in
sympathy with her husband's constant giving, was Miss Louise Whitfield,
the daughter of the late Mr. John Whitfield of New York, of the large
importing firm of Whitfield, Powers, & Co. Mr. Carnegie had been an
intimate friend of the family for many years, and knew well the
admirable qualities and cultivation of the lady he married. He once
wrote: "There is no improving companionship for man in an ignorant or
frivolous woman." Miss Whitfield acted upon the advice which Mr.
Carnegie has given in some of his addresses: "To the young ladies I say,
'Marry the man who loves most his mother.'" Mr. Carnegie now has two
homes, one in New York City, the other at Cluny Castle, Kingussie,
Scotland. He gives little personal attention to business, having
delegated those matters to others. "I throw the responsibility upon
others," he once said, "and allow them full swing." Mr. Carnegie is a
man of great energy, with cheerful temperament, sound judgment,
earnestness, and force of character. He has a large, well-shaped head,
high forehead, brown hair and beard, and expressive face.
Mr. Carnegie's gifts in his adopted country have been many and large. To
the Johnstown Free Library, Pennsylvania, he has given $40,000. To the
Jefferson County Library at Fairfield, Iowa, he has given $40,000, which
provides an attractive building for books, museum, and lecture-hall.
The late Senator James F. Wilson gave the ground for the fire-proof
building. The library owes much of its success to its librarian, Mr. A.
T. Wells, who has given his life to the work, having held the position
for thirty-two years. For many years he labored without salary, giving
both time and money.
To the Braddock Free Library, Mr. Carnegie has given $200,000. Braddock,
ten miles east of Pittsburg, has a population of 16,000, mainly the
employees of the Edgar Thomson Steel Works; and the village of Homestead
lies just opposite. The handsome library building has a very attractive
reading-room, which is filled in the evening and much used during the
day by the families of the employees. There is also a large reading-room
exclusively for boys and girls, where are found juvenile books and
periodicals. The librarian, Miss Helen Sperry, writes: "There is a great
deal of local pride in the library, and it grows constantly in the
affection of the people."
The building was much enlarged in 1894 to accommodate the Carnegie Club
of six hundred men and boys. The new portion contains a hall capable of
seating eleven hundred persons, a large gymnasium, bathrooms,
swimming-pool, bowling-alleys, etc.
"In order to encourage public spirit in Braddock," says the _Review of
Reviews_ for October, 1895, "a selection of books on municipal
improvement, streets and roads, public health, and other subjects in
which the community should be interested, was placed on the library
shelves; and it is said that these books have been consulted by the
municipal officers, and results are already apparent." This is a good
example for other librarians. Much work is being done in local history
and in co-operation with the public schools.
To the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny City, Mr. Carnegie has given
$300,000, the city making an annual appropriation of $15,000 to carry on
its work. The building is of gray granite, Romanesque in style, with a
shelving capacity of about 75,000 volumes. The library has a
delivery-room, a general reading-room, women's reading-room,
reference-room, besides trustees' and librarians' rooms. The building
also contains, on the first floor, a music-hall, with a seating-capacity
of eleven hundred, where free concerts are given every Saturday
afternoon on a ten-thousand-dollar organ; there is an art-gallery on the
second floor, and a lecture-room. The latter seats about three hundred
persons, and is used for University Extension lectures, meetings of the
Historical Society, etc. A room adjoining is for the accommodation of
scientific societies. The city appropriates about $8,000 yearly for the
music-hall, fuel, repairs, etc.
The Allegheny Free Library was formally opened by President Harrison on
Feb. 13, 1890. Mr. Carnegie said, in presenting the gift of the library,
"My wife,--for her spirit and influence are here to-night,--my wife and
I realize to-night how infinitely more blessed it is to give than to
receive.... I wish that the masses of working men and women, the
wage-earners of all Allegheny, will remember and act upon the fact that
this is their library, their gallery, and their hall. The poorest
citizen, the poorest man, the poorest woman, that toils from morn till
night for a livelihood, as, thank Heaven, I had that toil to do in my
early days, as he walks this hall, as he reads the books from these
alcoves, as he listens to the organ, and admires the works of art in
this gallery, equally with the millionnaire and the foremost citizen, I
want him to exclaim in his own heart, 'Behold, all this is mine. I
support it, and I am proud to support it. I am joint proprietor here.'"
"Since the library opened four years ago," says Mr. William M.
Stevenson, the librarian, "over 1,000,000 books and periodicals have
been put into the hands of readers.... The concerts have been
exceedingly popular, and incidentally have helped the library by drawing
people to the library who might otherwise have remained in ignorance of
the popularity and usefulness of the institution."
Mr. Carnegie's greatest gift has been the Pittsburg Library. It is a
magnificent building of gray Ohio sandstone, in the Italian Renaissance
style of architecture, with roof of red tile. The architects were
Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow, their plan being chosen from the one
hundred and two sets of plans offered. The library building is 393 feet
long and 150 feet wide, with two graceful towers, each 162 feet high,
and has capacity for 300,000 volumes. The entire "stack" or set of
shelves for books is made of iron in six stories, and is as nearly
fireproof as possible. The lower stories are for the circulating-books;
the upper stories for reference-books.
The library proper is in the centre of the building, reached by a broad
flight of stone steps. Above, cut in stone, are the words, "Carnegie
Library; Free to the People." The vestibule, finished in marble with
mosaic floors, is handsomely decorated. On the first floor are the
circulating-library, "its blue-ceiling panels bordered with an interlace
in orange and white," a periodical room on either side, one for
scientific and technical, the other for popular and literary magazines,
with rooms for cataloguing and for the library officials.
"The reference reading-room on the second floor, large, beautiful, and
well-lighted," says the efficient librarian, Mr. Edwin H. Anderson, "is
for quiet study. Here reference-books, such as encyclopædias,
dictionaries, atlases, etc., are at hand, on the shelves along the
walls, to be freely consulted." This room is of a greenish tone, with
ivory-colored pilasters and arches, and a _fleur-de-lis_ pattern painted
in the wall-panels, from the "mark" of a famous Florentine printer and
engraver four centuries ago.
Across the corridor from the reference reading-room are five smaller
rooms for special collections of books. One is occupied by a musical
library of two thousand volumes, of the late Karl Merz, which was bought
and presented to the library by several citizens of Pittsburg. Another
will contain the collection to be purchased from the fund left by Mr. J.
D. Bernd, and will bear his name. Another will be used for art-books,
and another for science.
The children are to have a reading-room, made attractive by juvenile
books, magazines, and copies of good pictures. A large and well-lighted
room in the basement is used for the leading newspapers of the country.
The library has a wing on either side, one containing the art-gallery,
and the other the science museum. The former has three large
picture-rooms on the second floor, painted in dull red, with a
wall-space of 8,300 feet for the exhibition of paintings and prints. A
corridor 148 feet long, in which statuary will be placed, is decorated
with copies of the frieze of the Parthenon. The basement of this wing
will be devoted to the various departments of the art-schools of
Pittsburg.
In the science museum three large, well-lighted rooms on the second
floor will be used for collections in zoölogy, botany, and mineralogy.
"The closely allied branches of geology, the study of the earth's crust;
paleontology, the study of life in former ages; anthropology, the
natural history of the human species; archæology, the science of
antiquity; and ethnology and ethnography, treating of the origin,
relation, characteristic costumes and habits of the human races, will,
no doubt, receive as much attention as space and funds will permit."
It is also expected that works of skill and invention will be gathered
into an industrial museum for the benefit especially of the many
artisans of Pittsburg. Courses of free lectures will be given to
teachers, to pupils, and to the public, as in the American Museum of
Natural History of New York. Below the three rooms in the museum are
three lecture-rooms, which can be used separately or as one room.
In one end of the large library building, and separated from it by a
thick wall so as to deaden sound, is the music-hall, semi-circular in
plan, with seats for two thousand one hundred persons, and a stage for
sixty musicians and a chorus of two hundred. Much Sienna marble is used,
the floor is mosaic, the walls are painted a deep rose-color, and the
architecture proper in a soft ivory tone, with gilded ornamentation. Two
free concerts, or organ recitals, are given each week through the year,
on the large modern concert organ, built expressly for this hall.
Musical lectures are also given, free from technicalities, illustrated
by choir, organ, and piano. This is certainly taking music, art, and
science to the people as a free gift. To this noble work Mr. Carnegie
has given $2,100,000. Of this amount, $800,000 was for the main
building, $300,000 for the seven branch libraries or distributing
stations, and $1,000,000 as an endowment fund for the art-gallery. From
the annual income of this art-fund, which will be about $50,000, at
least three of the pictures purchased are to be the work of American
artists exhibited that year, preferably in the Pittsburg gallery.
The city of Pittsburg agrees to appropriate $40,000 annually for the
maintenance of the library system. Mr. Carnegie has always felt that the
people should bear a part of the burden. He said at the opening of the
library, Nov. 5, 1895, "Every citizen of Pittsburg, even the very
humblest, now walks into this, his own library; for the poorest laborer
contributes his mite indirectly to its support. The man who enters a
library is in the best society this world affords; the good and the
great welcome him, surround him, and humbly ask to be allowed to become
his servants; and if he himself, from his own earnings, contributes to
its support, he is more of a man than before.... If library, hall,
gallery, or museum be not popular, and attract the manual toilers and
benefit them, it will have failed in its mission; for it was chiefly for
the wage-earners that it was built, by one who was himself a
wage-earner, and who has the good of that class at heart."
Mr. Carnegie has said elsewhere, "Every free library in these days
should contain upon its shelves all contributions bearing upon the
relations of labor and capital from every point of view,--socialistic,
communistic, co-operative, and individualist; and librarians should
encourage visitors to read them all."
The library stands near the entrance of the valuable park of about 439
acres given to the city by Mrs. Schenley in 1889. "This lady," says Mr.
Carnegie, "although born in Pittsburg, married an English gentleman
while yet in her teens. It is forty years and more since she took up her
residence in London among the titled and wealthy of the world's
metropolis; but still she turns to the home of her childhood, and by
means of Schenley Park links her name with it forever. A noble use this
of great wealth by one who thus becomes her own administrator."