Andrew Carnegie is still known as one of the richest people to ever live in the united States or in the world. He gained all his wealth from his major railroad company that controlled over half of the railroad business. His steel business was super successful also and he became known for making his steel and just gaining so much money from it. Carnegie was not always the nicest with his workers and some of the time considered him to be exploiting his workers in the steel factories he owned, His workers had gone on strike and obviously weren't always happy with the conditions they were in. Carnegie cared about his personal image and he is known for saying A man who dies rich dies disgraced. He sold his company for a ridiculous amount of money and retired at 60 and didn't know what to do with it all so he thought he would give back to the community.
Carnegie went to work right away to make society better and to improve the lives of many by funding some pensions and eventually starting the Carnegie Institute of Technology which later turned into Carnegie Mellon University which is known today. He set up science and research center devoted to world peace and other good things. He also spent a lot of money furnishing broken, burnt, or damaged places around the country like churches and social centers and swimming pools.
Soon Carnegie would turn to libraries and focus on getting those to a lot of cities and giving those people access to education and books. From a few early locations in Pennsylvania, he eventually constructed 2,811 libraries around the world which is a ridiculous number from one single person. He considered these libraries and the access to education and books essential to immigrants and the lower classes that weren't fortunate enough to grow up with a ton of resources like the rich. Fun fact he even built a library in Hawaii which is unexpected in that time.
Sometimes he was met with criticism and some believed that the former tycoon was trying to resurrect his image after years of cutthroat business practices. And the city of Louisville even rejected Carnegie building them a library and said that they will not accept gifts from a Prince and can maintain a library on their own without building a monument to Andrew Carnegie.
By the end of his life, Carnegie could claim to build nearly half of all the public libraries in the United States. A few hundred of the buildings have since been demolished or destroyed by fires, but most are still standing, and as many as half continue to operate as libraries. And he eventually gave away 90% of his wealth and died being the Patron Saint of libraries.
source : http://www.history.com/news/andrew-carnegies-surprising-legacy
image : http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2017/02/GettyImages-530845550.jpg
http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2017/02/hith-carnegie-library-missouri-15396v.jpg
your blog post greatly details how such a succesful capitalist used his money for good and indeed the effects of his philanthropic work with libraries can still be seen today. His libraries can be seen as the ones to introduce women into the world of literature that advanced their restricted secular knowledge due to societal restraints. Also his system sparked the movement to create a larger library system because of how it could change a mans life. At this point during the industrial revolution in the US education began to seem so important. Overall this blog post is very well written and provides information for our class to have a deeper insight on such a revolutionary time period in our american history.
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