.. 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`_ as the famous philanthropist who donated huge portions of his wealth  for setting up
`public libraries across 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.)


.. _public libraries across united states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Carnegie_libraries_in_the_United_States
.. _Andrew Carnegie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie

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