Famous Givers and Their Gifts. Bolton Sarah Knowles
tone, with gilded ornamentation. Two free concerts, or organ recitals, are given each week through the year, on the large modern concert organ, built expressly for this hall. Musical lectures are also given, free from technicalities, illustrated by choir, organ, and piano. This is certainly taking music, art, and science to the people as a free gift. To this noble work Mr. Carnegie has given $2,100,000. Of this amount, $800,000 was for the main building, $300,000 for the seven branch libraries or distributing stations, and $1,000,000 as an endowment fund for the art-gallery. From the annual income of this art-fund, which will be about $50,000, at least three of the pictures purchased are to be the work of American artists exhibited that year, preferably in the Pittsburg gallery.
The city of Pittsburg agrees to appropriate $40,000 annually for the maintenance of the library system. Mr. Carnegie has always felt that the people should bear a part of the burden. He said at the opening of the library, Nov. 5, 1895, "Every citizen of Pittsburg, even the very humblest, now walks into this, his own library; for the poorest laborer contributes his mite indirectly to its support. The man who enters a library is in the best society this world affords; the good and the great welcome him, surround him, and humbly ask to be allowed to become his servants; and if he himself, from his own earnings, contributes to its support, he is more of a man than before… If library, hall, gallery, or museum be not popular, and attract the manual toilers and benefit them, it will have failed in its mission; for it was chiefly for the wage-earners that it was built, by one who was himself a wage-earner, and who has the good of that class at heart."
Mr. Carnegie has said elsewhere, "Every free library in these days should contain upon its shelves all contributions bearing upon the relations of labor and capital from every point of view, – socialistic, communistic, co-operative, and individualist; and librarians should encourage visitors to read them all."
The library stands near the entrance of the valuable park of about 439 acres given to the city by Mrs. Schenley in 1889. "This lady," says Mr. Carnegie, "although born in Pittsburg, married an English gentleman while yet in her teens. It is forty years and more since she took up her residence in London among the titled and wealthy of the world's metropolis; but still she turns to the home of her childhood, and by means of Schenley Park links her name with it forever. A noble use this of great wealth by one who thus becomes her own administrator."
Near the library are the $125,000 conservatories given to the people by Mr. Phipps, and a source of most elevating pleasure. Mr. Carnegie's gifts in and about Pittsburg amount already to $5,000,000; yet he is soon to build a library for Homestead, and one each for Duquesne and the town of Carnegie. "Such other districts as may need branch libraries," says Mr. Carnegie, "we ardently hope we may be able to supply; for to provide free libraries for all the people of Pittsburg is a field which we would fain make our own, as chief part of our life-work. I have dropped into the plural, for there is one always with me to prompt, encourage, suggest, discuss, and advise, and fortunately, sometimes, when necessary, gently to criticise; whose heart is as keenly in this work as my own, preferring it to any other as the best possible use of surplus wealth, and without whose wise and zealous co-operation I often feel little useful work could be done."
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