CARNEGIE LEGACY BUILT ON A NEED FOR KNOWLEDGE

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

On a typical late afternoon at the Maywood Public Library, children flip through the card catalogue or wander among the shelves, looking for books for their school papers. An elderly couple browse among old books that are being sold for 25 cents each. A woman who has arrived early for an evening lecture sits quietly in the last row of folding chairs in the makeshift lecture room, which is a corner of the fiction collection. In the computer room, a recent addition, a boy who has returned to resume a computer game is told by his friend, ''I killed you while you were gone.''

None of this is extraordinary. That`s the point. No one is walking around the library slack-jawed in utter amazement that such an institution exists for the free use of all. Libraries are everywhere and for everybody.

This happy state of affairs was not inevitable. At one time, readers had to pay a subscription fee for the privilege of borrowing a book. By the late 19th Century, free libraries were clearly the coming thing, but their permanent presence on the American scene was guaranteed by the old gentleman whose bemused face stares out from a portrait in the Maywood library and who is memorialized by a plaque in the entrance that says, ''This library was erected through the generosity of Andrew Carnegie A.D. 1905.''

The Maywood library, a two-story, red-brick building with pillars flanking the entrance in a style sometimes called ''Carnegie Classic,'' is one of 1,679 libraries in this country for which Carnegie gave construction money. Between 1881 and 1917, the Pittsburgh steel tycoon gave away $56 million for the building of 2,509 libraries in the English-speaking world.

At one time, there were 16 Carnegie libraries in the Chicago suburbs

(none were built in the city). Five of the buildings are left, of which the Maywood library most resembles its original appearance. Another Carnegie building in the area, the recently remodeled library of Naperville`s North Park College, received its funding from a different sluice of the Carnegie philanthropic reservoir.

Although the Carnegie buildings that have been razed were as sturdy and foursquare as an Iowa farmer, times had passed them by. Inadequate facilities for new electronic equipment, lack of space for growing collections, and the need to make libraries accessible to the handicapped have contributed to the attrition. But in this sesquicentennial year of Carnegie`s birth--he was born in Scotland this day in 1835--no librarian, architectural historian or average bookworm can deny the enduring legacy of his generosity.

''Aside from the creation of the public school system, the creation of the Carnegie libraries has had the most important, biggest impact on public education in this country,'' said Robert Gangewere, editor of Carnegie Magazine, the publication of Pittsburgh`s Carnegie Institute. ''Carnegie put in place an operating system that influenced . . . the people who want to learn, the kind of people who make a difference in a country.''

''I think Carnegie made a lot of people realize that a library is somewhat like a public school system,'' said Beth Mueller of the Suburban Library System, a state-funded association of libraries from O`Hare to the Indiana border. ''It`s a right, not a privilege. He`s certainly colored my thinking that way.''

But why did Carnegie do it? Why was a personal fortune of $300 million burning a hole in his pocket? And why, from among all the causes and organizations he might have supported, did he choose libraries? An old saying sums up the answers: ''What`s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh.''

In two articles he wrote for the North American Review in 1889, Carnegie propounded what came to be called ''The Gospel of Wealth.'' Carnegie believed that a fortune is a trust to be administered for the good of mankind. As he put it, ''To die rich is to die disgraced.''

At the time, some critics said Carnegie might have simply distributed money to the poor, but that would have rubbed against his Scots Calvinist grain. No, the money should go to institutions and causes that would help people who wanted to help themselves. He, after all, had done just that.

Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835 to a poor weaver and his wife in Dunfermline, Scotland. In later life, he recalled fondly the times his father read to the other men of the village. After the family immigrated to America and settled in what is now a part of Pittsburgh, young Carnegie spent Saturday afternoons in the study of Col. James Anderson, who opened his large private library to working boys of the area. Carnegie, who had no formal schooling past the age of 12, completed his education in Anderson`s study. More important, Carnegie`s love of reading and literature grew from those happy Saturday afternoons.

''It was when reveling in the treasures opened to us,'' Carnegie wrote later, ''that I resolved if ever wealth came to me, that other poor boys might receive opportunities similar to those for which we are indebted to that noble man.''

So, like the 7,689 organs he donated to churches or the aid he gave to the Simplified Spelling Board, his library grants originated in a personal interest. But libraries also suited his bootstrap outlook on life.

''I chose free libraries,'' he said, ''as the best agencies for improving the masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing. They only help those who help themselves. They reach the aspiring, and open to these the chief treasures of the world--those stored up in books.''

Looking back over his career as a philanthropist, he divided the time into what he humorously called his ''retail'' and ''wholesale'' periods. His first libraries, which he began to give away in 1886, went to the towns and cities with which he had personal or professional connections--Dunfermline;

Braddock, Homestead and Duchesne, three Pennsylvania towns where he had steel mills. Pittsburgh refused his first offer, but nine years later the city was pleased to accept $1 million for a main library and seven branches.

These first libraries were really community centers of which a library was only one part. The buildings could have a gymnasium, a music hall, and an art gallery; the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh was charged with providing

''rooms for scientific research and the dissemination of technical knowledge.''

By the time his ''retail'' period ended in 1898, he had donated money for only 16 buildings. These ''retail'' grants were larger than the average grant during his ''wholesale'' period, which began at the turn of the century at about the time he sold his interest in Carnegie Steel (which eventually became U.S. Steel). After the sale, he had a vast fortune at his disposal, and that is precisely what he intended to do with it.

Until World War I put an end to his library work, he made an average of 60 grants a year. In 1903 alone, he gave money for 204 libraries. The majority were in the United States, but Carnegies are scattered throughout the English- speaking world. There were still large grants--New York received $5.2 million in 1901 for 65 branch libraries--but now the majority were similar to the $12,500 given for the Maywood library.

Most of the libraries are in small Midwestern towns. Indiana received 164 building grants, the most of any state. Illinois` 105 grants totaled $1.6 million, one of the top five state totals. The only states without Carnegies are Rhode Island and Delaware.

Approving editorial cartoonists portrayed Carnegie as a Santa Claus whose bag was stuffed with library buildings. Mr. Dooley, that favorite fictional saloonkeeper of turn-of-the-century Chicago, asked one of the regulars in his tavern if ''Andhrew Carnaygie'' had given him a library yet. No, Mr. Hennessy answered, he hadn`t.

''He will,'' said Mr. Dooley. ''Ye`ll not escape him. Befure he dies he hopes to crowd a libry on ivry man, woman an` child in th` counthry. They`re tearin` down gashouses an` poorhouses to put up libries. Befure another year, ivry house in Pittsburgh that ain`t a blast-furnace will be a Carnaygie libry.''

As the number of his grants increased, the features he required in his libraries diminished. He wanted communities to use his money for no other purpose than to build a library, and not a fancy one at that. A fellow Scotsman, James Bertram, was responsible for all correspondence regarding the libraries, and at times his exasperation with the grandiose plans of Anytown, U.S.A., erupted in his replies:

''A request for $30,000 to erect a library building for 5,000 people is so preposterous that Mr. Carnegie cannot give it any consideration.''

Or: ''Mr. Carnegie would like to know whether it is the committee or the architects who are to blame for putting up a monument instead of a Library Building.''

Carnegie could be caustic, too. He wrote across the plans submitted for a library in Denver: ''I am sorry to have my money wasted in this way. Too many pillars.''

Although library boards often wrote entreating letters to Bertram asking for more money to meet unexpected expenses, Carnegie rarely increased the original gift. And, incredible as it seems, a well-made two-story library such as Maywood`s could be built and furnished for slightly more than $18,000. Today, an addition to Geneva`s Carnegie library (built for $8,000 in 1908) is going to cost almost $900,000.

Carnegie`s check-writing binge coincided with a unique moment in American history. After the closing of the frontier in the 1890s, the small towns of the West and Midwest were busy with the chores of providing basic public services. And, with the rapid expansion of the big, industrial cities, the nearby railroad suburbs, such as Maywood, were rapidly outgrowing their original public buildings. When the Maywood library board asked for a grant, the library was jammed into a room in the village hall.

''By the 1890s, libraries had already been built in many cities of the Northeast,'' said Timothy Rub, curator of a recent exhibit on Carnegie libraries at Carnegie`s old mansion in New York, now the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. ''So you don`t find many Carnegie buildings there. But in the new and growing towns of the Midwest, libraries had to compete for limited funds against some very important things, such as sewers, roads and the like. All those improvements required taxation, and many politicians felt that a library should not be supported with additional taxes.''

So Carnegie saved them the expense of constructing a library. By today`s standards, his grants came with no strings. He did not interfere in the community`s choice of books for the library and, for the most part, did not impose uniformity of design. In 1911, Bertram issued ''Notes on the Erection of Library Bildings'' (written in the simplified spelling Carnegie favored), which suggested the most logical arrangements of bookshelves, circulation desks and reading areas; the pamphlet advocated the open plan still seen in most libraries. But towns were not required to follow the notes. Although the neoclassical facade of pillar and pediment as seen in the Maywood building was typical of many Carnegie libraries, they were built in as many styles as architects could imitate.

''The feeling you get from these buildings is that you`re somebody,''

said Gangewere. ''You feel you`re in a temple of learning, a serious place.'' Practically the only condition on Carnegie`s grants was his requirement that towns budget an amount equal to at least 10 percent of his grant annually for maintenance, salary and book acquisition. Carnegie had given money for the building because his intention was to make libraries freely accessible to all, but the care and guidance of the library was the town`s business. The novelist William Dean Howells said Carnegie did not ''give feed with the gift horse.'' But that attitude offended the apostle of self-help. No institution, he said, could become a success without the hard work and tax dollars of dedicated local people. His requirement had a far-reaching effect on the way public libraries are funded in this country.

''Often enabling legislation for taxation had to be passed before the grant could be made,'' said Rub. ''Carnegie forced many communities and states to consider the whole notion of support for libraries.''

Carnegie and his libraries had their critics. H. L. Mencken lobbed a dead cat at the choice of books the ''local wowsers'' put on the shelves. It was, he said, as hard to find a good book in a Carnegie library as it was in a Boston bookstore.

But that complaint was not meant for Carnegie. Criticism of his donations came mainly from labor leaders, who took the attitude that Carnegie`s wealth was the result of the low wages he paid his workers. If the skinflint wanted to do some genuine good, they said, he would give his fortune away in the form of higher salaries.

Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor, took a cynical view of Carnegie`s attempts to buy his way into heaven and the history books, but had to admit that Carnegie ''might put his money to much worse acts.

''Yes, accept his library,'' he advised one local unionist. ''Organize the workers and secure better conditions, and then workers will have some chance and leisure in which to read books.''

Modern criticism of the libraries focuses on things Carnegie could not have anticipated. Besides the problems of space and accessibility, the old buildings` multistory layouts necessitate additional staff to monitor all floors. Their big windows, which were useful in an era of dim indoor illumination, are ruinous in an era of cost-efficiency and energy-

consciousness. And, like any old building, things are always breaking down.

But instead of tearing down old Carnegies, towns are finding it cheaper and more popular with their citizens to remodel or add onto the buildings. Geneva`s library district held a referendum in 1981 on whether to move the library and sell its attractive one-story stone building; the proposal failed. Last year, another proposed bond issue to renovate the old building passed with 70 percent of the vote.

In any event, Carnegie`s benefaction appears to be a gift that has kept on giving. As Mueller, of the Suburban Library System, said, ''The development of libraries probably would have happened without Carnegie, but it would have been a lot slower.''

''Subtract 1,800 libraries from the United States at the turn of the century and all that implies for self-education,'' said Gangewere. ''Take that all away. Would there have a difference? I think there would have been. He put in place the opportunity for self-education.''

Copyright © 2018, Chicago Tribune
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