.. title: Andrew Carnegie, an immigrant and child laborer.
.. slug: andrew-carnegie-an-immigrant-and-child-laborer
.. date: 2017-03-15 13:42:28 UTC-07:00
.. tags: politics
.. category:
.. link:
.. description:
.. type: text

We know of the `Andrew_Carnegie {% wikipedia article="Andrew_Carnegie" %}` as the famous philanthropist who donated huge portions of his wealth  for setting up
`public libraries across united states: {{% wikipedia article="List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_the_United_States" %}}`. 

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.)

.. _Keep the Internet Open: http://blog.samaltman.com/keep-the-internet-open