knowledge, fear, and hope
This is the Lawrence, Kansas, Public Library, built in the early 20th century.
Andrew Carnegie, the uneducated, Dunfermline emigre’ who thrived in western Pennsylvania, established an endowment in the late 1800s to build similar libraries, large and small, in towns across the United States. Carnegie was a controversial figure, ruthless in business but dedicated to his mother. He did not marry until late in life. He was one of the creators a steel empire during the Gilded Age of the late In the 1800s, the likeness of which the world had never witnessed, the focus of most of his life’s efforts. Like the rich in our contemporary Gilded Age, he had more money than he could count, but could not take it with him when he passed.
Carnegie chose to endow 2509 libraries around the world, the bulk of which were at U.S. colleges and in towns. Every state except Delaware and Alaska has one. The one is Lawrence is relatively large compared with others I have seen.
“Free to the People” is a moniker given to these libraries as Carnegie’s explicit reason for building them was to offer access—this was, of course, generations before the “world wide web” was available to one tucked under the covers in bed or on a farm outside Minott—to knowledge and information completely unknown to previous generations largely left only religious texts for reading material. The knowledge available to the overwhelming majority of Americans (or anyone else globally) was so limited because access resided at that point in the paltry higher education systems in the 1880s.
Carnegie’s legacy created two consequences I cannot ignore this morning. His libraries opened the door to millions of Americans integrating education, reading, and slaking their thirst for knowledge into the daily rituals of life. That sounds daft but the value of knowledge is its transmissability from one brain to another. Libraries are repositories of acquired information for the explicit purpose of sharing it, whether appearing in refereed journals, non-fictional volumes, or fiction to mask the names and faces of real people. Libraries intend to expand knowledge rather than leave wisdom in the hands of a few. Andrew Carnegie, a man whose knowledge evolved from a small Scottish city through his experience in Pittsburgh over decades, made the brazen decision to assure the sustained expansion of that knowledge. This was a transformative step in American and world history.
Carnegie’s actions also stand in stark contrast to today’s billionaires who seem less interested in a public commitment. Yes, there are Schwartzman Fellowships to study China and Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford but these are available to a handful of people. Michael Bloomberg has endowed his alma mater the Johns Hopkins University with millions to advance worthy causes—which I applaud—but his is not the norm. Many huge donations target existing institutions to leave a memory of the contributor rather than to affect the lifestyle of a community. In short, few of today’s vastly rich share their wealth as widely with the public at large. To my knowledge, no one is dedicating massive endowments to assure genuine access to the poorest portions of our country, intercities hollowed out by so many plagues.
Further, too many Americans today abhor the expansion of knowledge and thought processes, preferring instead indoctrination. The latter provides a supposed certainty in a world where massive shifts are occurring, like it or not. Critical thinking, whether by reading or testing hypotheses, challenges the existing ideas, oftening engendering discomfort along the way. That is how we see benefits in health care, innovations in science, and improvements so demonstrably powerful in every day life for many, if not all.
Look at what occurred on this date over the past nine decades alone. Without education and libraries, millions could never know the sacrifices those embarking on Omaha Beach made 81 years ago today. They would not know James Meredith, one of so many civil rights activists, was shot in asking for equality after civil rights legislation became the law of the land in the United States of America. They probably would never have any idea that the United States lost a reconnaissance flight over Laos, if people knew that country exists, fully six years before the Kent State massacre resulting from protests associated with alleged U.S. expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos during 1970. The value of reading history alone alters our vision of ourselves, courtesy of libraries online or in brick-and-mortar buildings.
As true when Galileo or Copernicus provided evidence to contradict orthodox views centures ago, we are seeing efforts to discourage, if not penalize, those asking for reconsiderations as a result of learniang. It behooves anyone to inquire for evidence in using logic on any proposition or statement of “fact” but Carnegie’s belief, in synch with the building block process of this country, was that libraries make us better equipped to do so. Accessability to the broadest array of views, manifested in books of any and all types, has been the hallmark of the educational system transforming us—into a nation as well as a dynamo of inquiry, business, and caring. You have to know when something is valid or trash, in other words, by considering its content methodically.
Yet too many are viewing that fundamental process as dangerous today rather than at the heart of what made us the envy of the world. Whether it’s attacking higher education or substituting anecdotal health advice for blind, peer-reviewed recommendations, this is undermining us. Scientists are avoiding the United States in favor of places their intellectual curiosity can thrive and they can receive support to advance innovative ideas. Children in schools as well as military officer candidates who will be empowered to protect us in the event of conflict are no longer offered the privilege and responsibility of studying views differing from a narrow slice of American comfort despite the damage it will do to their intellectual capacities. Reasoning is the purview uniquely of humans yet we now find it frightening to behold.
Andrew Carnegie, welcomed as an immigrant from far away, was far from a saint. But the libraries he bequeathed us offer a tribute to the true genius of America. We are seeing how perishable this gift can be without protecting it.
I welcome your rebuttals, challenges, suggestions, or thoughts on this or any other column. Actions do create consequences so I encourage thoughts to expand our civil, measured discussion on topics affecting our world today and into the future.
I appreciate your time. Please feel free to circulate this if you find it valuable. I deeply thank those who subscribe as your financial support allows me to expand my reading. $55 per year or $8 monthly makes you a subscriber.
Be well and be safe. FIN
“Carnegie Libraries Across the United States”, CarnegieCorp.org, retrieved at https://carnegie-libraries.carnegie.org/map/
Kate Zernicke, “U.S. Scientists Warn That Trump’s Cuts Will Set Off A Brain Drain”, NYTimes.com, 3 June 2025, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/trump-federal-spending-grants-scientists-leaving.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare