In 1881, industrialist Andrew Carnegie built a public library in his hometown of Dunfermline, Scotland. At the time, Carnegie had amassed a Musk-sized fortune in 19th-century dollars. He made it his life’s work to fund libraries across the United States and the English-speaking world because he believed strongly in the power of education to change the lives of immigrants like him.
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“Between 1886 and 1919, Carnegie’s donations of more than $40 million paid for 1,679 new library buildings in communities large and small across America,” writes the National Park Service. Carnegie built the libraries “but insisted that communities maintain them and provide the necessary funding for operations,” according to the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Carnegie’s charge to communities to care for his
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