Books, Bluster, and Bounty: Local Politics and Carnegie Library Building Grants in the Intermountain West, 1890-1920

2. The Challenging Process of Applying for a Carnegie Library Building Grant

40 2 The Challenging Process of Applying for a Carnegie Library Building Grant “A hard matter for amateurs” Andrew Carnegie changed American public library history in 1898 when he began offering funds “wholesale” from his vast fortune for the construction of free public library buildings. Before that date Carnegie had donated library construction funds on an ad hoc basis to a few towns and cities well known to him, including his home town of Dunfermline, Scotland, and Allegheny and Homestead, Pennsylvania, where he had business interests. Now the possibility of a grant existed for any community in America which would apply. Over the next twenty years, Carnegie public library building grants had funded construction of 1,679 new public library buildings in 1,412 communities, many of them places that had never before possessed a purpose-built library. The need for Carnegie’s assistance was particularly great in the Intermountain West, where in 1898 only one applicant community, Salt Lake City, housed its public library in a building constructed with library service in mind.1 As the previous chapter suggested, a quarter of Intermountain West applicant communities had no library at all when they approached Carnegie. Of the communities that did offer library service, only about half of the institutions were municipally supported and free to borrowers. The 1 Salt Lake City sought Carnegie funds not to replace this extant library—which was relatively new and perfectly adequate—but to fund construction of a branch library in a working-class neighborhood, as discussed in chapter 5. The Challenging Process of Applying for a Carnegie Library Building Grant 41 rest led a tenuous existence, relying on subscription fees, fundraisers, and overworked volunteers. Carnegie library building grants were consequently desirable to public library proponents in the Intermountain West. But they weren’t easy to win. As applicants walked through the rigid and complex set of steps Carnegie required, they found their abilities to find facts, persuade, organize, negotiate , and calculate tested, and their reservoirs of patience plumbed. Some became furious at what they perceived as unnecessary obstacles and deliberate obfuscation. Few emerged to stand at dedication ceremonies as naïve and energetic as when they began. Carnegie’s requirements strained the capacities of applicants from every region of the United States.2 The circumstances of life described in the previous chapter, though, made the process particularly complicated in the interior West. The Genesis of Carnegie Public Library Building Grants Born in Scotland in 1835, Carnegie immigrated to the United States with his working-class parents in 1848. An energetic young man, he rose quickly from messenger boy to telegraph operator and then to division manager of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He invested in oil, sleeping cars, and bridges. He added iron, steel mills, and railroads to his business interests. By 1901 he had assembled such a fortune that he sold the Carnegie Company (including Carnegie Steel and other concerns) and retired from business, embarking on a career as a philanthropist.3 Why Carnegie decided to become a philanthropist is much debated. He himself said that as a young man he had consciously chosen to live “that life which will be the most elevating in character.” He even provided himself with a tangible reminder to stay the course of virtue: a famous memo, long preserved, that registered his youthful vow to give away his surplus, should he ever become rich. “The amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolitary [sic],” the young idealist wrote to his future self. Once that wealth 2 Bobinski provides many brief examples of such difficulties in Carnegie Libraries. See also Martin’s Carnegie Denied, which provides extensive case studies of application failures. 3 Biographical detail about Carnegie can be found in Wall’s standard work, Andrew Carnegie, and in Nasaw’s recent Andrew Carnegie, which draws on newly available sources. Books, Bluster, and Bounty 42 had been achieved, Carnegie offered this credo to others. In two essays published in the North American Review in 1889 (titled “Wealth” and “The Best Fields for Philanthropy”), Carnegie articulated his theory of stewardship. This “Gospel of Wealth” contended that rich men had an obligation to act as trustees for their less fortunate but worthy brethren.4 Some commentators have suggested that Carnegie’s philanthropy was driven by less idealistic motives. In particular, the public library building grant program inspired cynics to accuse Carnegie...