Andrew Carnegie is today's subject.

I went to the local library looking for something a while back and being in the Pittsburgh area, the local library simply made a call downtown and got what I was looking for. The called the Andrew
 Carnegie Library and lo and behold, it had what I wanted.

I am not going to get into the side of Carnegie that was pretty tough on building his empire. I am just going to cover a part of what he did as he grew older and realized he couldn't take it with him.

In his later years Andrew Carnegie gave away entire libraries. Between 1883 and 1929 Carnegie gave away 2509 complete libraries both to the public and to universities.

It was his money to do this with and that's what he did with it. I have no problem with that whatsoever. Not one dime of government money was involved. 

Back then a free library was a lot more than it is today. Old Andrew didn't just give away a pile of books when he gave a library. He gave knowledge. Knowledge is power.

Those libraries were open to the public and anyone that wanted to could use them. Before high school and college became attainable those libraries provided a lot of education for the common man. 

They provided incalculable numbers of self educated people and permitted numerous people to better themselves. Some of whom opened businesses or made pay raises for themselves by being more valuable to their employers. No knowing how many fortunes were made by self educated people.

The libraries also provided countless hours of escape and R&R for a lot of people that decided to escape between the pages of a book.

Oh, yeah. For what it's worth. Self education works.

While I didn't use a Carnegie library, I did get my hands on books to study with and passed the necessary tests to earn my Captain's license without ever going to an academy. Later I learned that I could have gotten all of the books I needed at the Carnegie Library downtown.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY