Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"Don't indorse.... There are emergencies, no doubt, in which men should help their friends; but there is a rule that will keep one safe. No man should place his name upon the obligation of another if he has not sufficient to pay it without detriment to his own business. It is dishonest to do so."

Mr. Carnegie has not only written books and made money, he has distinguished himself as a giver of millions, and that while he is alive. He has seen too many wills broken, and fortunes misapplied, when the money was not given away till death. He says of Mr. Tilden's bequest of over $5,000,000 for a free library in the city of New York: "How much better if Mr. Tilden had devoted the last years of his own life to the proper administration of this immense sum; in which case neither legal contest nor any other cause of delay could have interfered with his aims."

Of course money is sometimes so tied up in business that it cannot be given during a man's life; "yet," says Mr. Carnegie, "the day is not far distant when the man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was free for him to administer during life, will pass away 'unwept, unhonored, and unsung,' no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be, 'The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.'"

He believes large estates left at death should be taxed by the State, as is the case in Pennsylvania and some other States. Mr. Carnegie does not favor large gifts left to families. "Why should men leave great fortunes to their children?" he asks. "If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the State. Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well hesitate; for it is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed often work more for the injury than for the good of the recipients. There are instances of millionnaires' sons unspoiled by wealth, who, being rich, still perform great services to the community. Such are the very salt of the earth, as valuable as unfortunately they are rare." Again Mr. Carnegie says of wealth left to the young, "It deadens their energies, destroys their ambition, tempts them to destruction, and renders it almost impossible that they should lead lives creditable to themselves or valuable to the State. Such as are not deadened by wealth deserve double credit, for they have double temptation."

In the North American Review for December, 1889, Mr. Carnegie suggests what he considers seven of the best uses for surplus wealth: The founding of great universities; free libraries; hospitals or any means to alleviate human suffering; public parks and flower-gardens for the people, conservatories such as Mr. Phipps has given to the park at Allegheny City, which are visited by thousands; suitable halls for lectures, elevating music, and other gatherings, free, or rented for a small sum; free swimming-baths for the people; attractive places of worship, especially in poor localities. Mr. Carnegie's own great gifts have been largely along the line which he believes the "best gift to a community,"—a free public library. He thinks with John Bright that "it is impossible for any man to bestow a greater benefit upon a young man than to give him access to books in a free library."

"It is, no doubt," he says, "possible that my own personal experience may have led me to value a free library beyond all other forms of beneficence. When I was a working-boy in Pittsburg, Colonel Anderson of Allegheny—a name I can never speak without feelings of devotional gratitude—opened his little library of four hundred books to boys. Every Saturday afternoon he was in attendance at his house to exchange books. No one but he who has felt it can ever know the intense longing with which the arrival of Saturday was awaited that a new book might be had. My brother and Mr. Phipps, who have been my principal business partners through life, shared with me Colonel Anderson's precious generosity; and it was when revelling in the treasures which he opened to us that I resolved, if ever wealth came to me, that it should be used to establish free libraries, that other poor boys might receive opportunities similar to those for which we were indebted to that noble man."

"How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world."

Again Mr. Carnegie says, "I also come by heredity to my preference for free libraries. The newspaper of my native town recently published a history of the free library in Dunfermline, and it is there recorded that the first books gathered together and opened to the public were the small collections of three weavers. Imagine the feelings with which I read that one of these three men was my honored father. He founded the first library in Dunfermline, his native town; and his son was privileged to found the last.... I have never heard of a lineage for which I would exchange that of the library-founding weaver."

Mr. Carnegie has given for the Edinburgh Free Library, Scotland, $250,000; for one in his native town of Dunfermline, $90,000; and several thousand dollars each to libraries in Aberdeen, Peterhead, Inverness, Ayr, Elgin, Wick and Kirkwall, besides contributions towards public halls and reading-rooms at Newburgh, Aberdour, and many other places abroad. Mr. Carnegie's mother laid the corner-stone for the free library in Dunfermline. He writes in his "American Four-in-Hand in Britain," "There was something of the fairy-tale in the fact that she had left her native town, poor, thirty odd years before, with her loved ones, to found a new home in the great Republic, and was to-day returning in her coach, to be allowed the privilege of linking her name with the annals of her beloved native town in one of the most enduring forms possible."