Posted on 01/09/2013 8:16:45 AM PST by Edmunds mom
One lone trustee objected to the institution’s betrayal of Andrew Carnegie. As Lagemann reports, a Cornell professor presented to the board a proposal that it focus, not on building libraries, but on spreading library science, which would lead to “advancing popular intellectual progress” (read: “smartening up the slack-jawed yokels”). The lonely dissenter, trustee James Bertram, argued that if the board consented to this recommendation, it "would contravene Carnegie’s clear and known wish 'to give libraries to communities and [to] leave the communities absolutely free to manage them any way they might see fit.'”
Because Bertram spoke the truth, the trustees were too ashamed to accept the professor’s recommendation publicly, but the Cornellian was quietly assured the Carnegie Corporation (a philanthropic, not business corporation) would follow the higher path proposed to it. And so the board used the pretext of World War I to suspend library-building grants and never resumed them.
Whereas Carnegie himself, a self-taught man, had wanted library patrons to see themselves as “joint proprietors” of the local community institutions he was seeding, the professor “envisioned library readers becoming ‘clients’ of the expert librarians they would hire.”
The top-down, expert-run, centrally planned view of the world that Carnegie’s usurpers possessed certainly sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Ordinary Americans, in short, just can’t improve themselves on their own initiative, and local communities can’t advance intellectual progress by maintaining a library for those ordinary folks. You need a well-paid expert’s backside warming a chair in a building in a major East Coast metropolis to do that (and it’s best to pay that backside with the interest off a fortune amassed by an ordinary American who improved himself through his own hard work and entrepreneurship).
(Excerpt) Read more at philanthropydaily.com ...
2 Peter 3:3 describes the time of the coming of the scoffers (or mockers) who would be walking according to their own lusts. There are so many of them now, it’s beyond count.
“Andrew Carnegie worked his way up by hard work and self-education.”
And by being the biggest prick to those that he could profit from while being nice to those he needed something from. He was known as one of the meanest men of his time.
...and NPR still can’t pronounce his name correctly.
Carnegie’s vision was strangled in its crib by Dewey and the first wave Progs.
Absolutely. Some people believe that Carnegie built those magnificent libraries just because he wanted to help the little people. Others believe that he did it mainly to buy himself a good reputation. I am among the latter group.
Don't get me wrong. I have used and appreciated Carnegie libraries. But Henry Clay Frick had Carnegie's number. A well-known story:
Near the end of his life, Carnegie sent Frick a letter by messenger. The letter asked for a meeting (the two men had once been partners, but now were feuding). Frick’s reply: “You can tell Carnegie I’ll meet him. Tell him I’ll see him in Hell, where we both are going.”
Ping !
Elites are sneering at me?
Well I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.
I will actually stand up for Andrew Carnegie for an odd reason.
“Sola fide (Latin: by faith alone), also historically known as the doctrine of justification by faith alone, is a Christian theological doctrine that distinguishes most Protestant denominations from Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and some in the Restoration Movement.
“The doctrine of sola fide or “by faith alone” asserts God’s pardon for guilty sinners is granted to and received through faith, conceived as excluding all “works”, alone.”
Now, this being said, it’s important to note that it applies with justification *only* to religion.
In the secular world, liberals, leftists, socialists, and communists are firm believers in the concept that “It does not matter what you actually do. What matters is the righteousness (in your opinion) of what you intended to do.”
Importantly, the *flip* side of this is what happened to Clarence Thomas at his confirmation hearing. “What matters is *not* the evidence or facts, but the seriousness of the charges against him!”
Back to Andrew Carnegie, my point is that his life, his personal meanness, etc., mean *nothing* today, compared to his “good works”, that is, wanting to bequeath libraries.
If he is at fault, it is not for his works, which is all that should matter once he is gone, but for trusting that others would not subvert his good works for their own ends, and making plans to posthumously counter such scoundrels.
In his shoes, I would have taken a lesson from the founding fathers, that schemers will seek to undermine written rules before the ink is dry, so it is best to have groups of people with conflicting purposes, if not interests, to balance each other through veto.
In this case, a separate board far away from the main one, whose sole purpose is to review the board’s spending decisions from the perspective of sticking to the letter and intent of the foundation charter. If not, then they cannot spend a dime.
Carnegie gave away libraries to restore his reputation after his association with causing the first Johnstown flood.
He had been a philanthropist before then, and though he gave Johnstown a library, he didn’t stop there. He truly believed that giving people libraries gave them “a chance to have a chance”, if they chose to take it.
Importantly, it was a gift “that keeps on giving”, and nobody can even guess how much good it did for America, other than “a lot”. A that is one of the best gifts that people can give.
“What people don’t have to work for they do not appreciate.”
And let’s not forget, they don’t appreciate those who provide it, either.
So typical of how liberal elites act... short changed the people while creating high status jobs for themselves... Jerkwads... ( the useful idiots who worked for Al Gore’s Current TV would understand)
Very good post in a very interesting thread. Thanks for the ping.
I’ve encountered this adversarial exchange for about the last 20 years, but only in the last 8 years has it seemed so prolific.
There is a liberal mentality that all information should be amassed in the library (read that as the coming ‘cloud’), and whenever one has a question, one goes to the ‘expert’ to ask the question.
The countering view is that the library is a public organization of information made freely available to all who seek it. The latter view allows every person the opportunity to view anything and everything available in the repository.
The former view holds the information is too valuable to allow anybody access, except the expert who controls the information flow.
The only problem is that the expert isn’t an expert on everything, and begins to find some information to never be accessed, therefore unnecessary, and begins to purge it from the records, not cognizant of its importance to others.
I don’t know how former organized libraries ever contribute to significant research.
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