Andrew Carnegie, an immigrant and child laborer.

We know of the Andrew_Carnegie Andrew Carnegie (English: kar-NEG-ee, Scots: [kɑrˈnɛːɡi]; November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late-19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history. ">Andrew Carnegie as the famous philanthropist who donated huge portions of his wealth for setting up public libraries across united states: List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_the_United_States The following list of Carnegie libraries in the United States provides detailed information on public Carnegie libraries in each state or other territory in the United States, including the number of Carnegie libraries in that state, and the earliest and latest dates of grant award. Click on the state name to go to a detailed listing of the individual Carnegie libraries in that state (divided into public and academic sections). Note that Alaska and Delaware have no Carnegie libraries, and are thus not included in the table. . What I was not aware was, he as an immigrant and a child laborer who got benefited from his reading, when one of his boss opened up his library on Saturdays for his workers.

Got to know this from a very tangential post titled Keep the Internet Open

From Alan Kay:

Yes -- in fact, the original notion about all this was to be in the same spirit as the 1936 Electrical and Telephone Federal Act which was specifically aimed at rural areas that the utilities didn't want to spend money to reach, so the fed mandated "power and phone" as a kind of universal right. This has also been a theme of the EFF. The basic impulse was also one of the drivers behind Carnegie's huge support of the free library system in the US (the whole story there is interesting, including some of the high minded stipulations in the Carnegie bequests, which I've on occasion tried to get the Internet communities to buy off on).

Every Carnegie library had to have two special rooms -- one just for children, and the other where people could be taught to read. Part of the Carnegie money for the libraries supported the reading teachers and sessions. Carnegie was an immigrant and child laborer who could read a little. One of his earliest bosses would open his home library to his workers on Saturdays. Carnegie used this to raise himself up, and never forgot how it happened. (He was also one of the few truly rich people ever who said he was going to give it all away to benefit the civilization around him, and actually did it.)