The Arnold Carnegie of India. Mr Carnegie funded hundreds of public libraries around the USA in the 1800s. He was a rags to riches 19th century steel billionaire in modern valuations.I have read dozens of testimonials of how small town middle class children use their libraries to enter ivy league universities and onto fantastic careers. I am one of these people.
Andrew Carnegie was regarded as a ruthless businessman by his contemporaries, competitors, and employees. However, he is also almost solely responsible for the free public libraries which have contributed so much to American education (and which, sadly, are now falling into neglect everywhere).
Sometimes you have to regard a person as, y'know, a person -- someone who can do both good things and bad things, things you're grateful for and things you disagree with.
I know I directly benefited from a Carnegie library as a kid. With philanthropy at this scale there is potential to benefit humanity in a way that may otherwise not happen. Compare this to other paths that wealthy people have taken, such as creating trusts that mostly benefit the family and still exist today (e.g. Rockefellers).
To put things in perspective, people felt something similar towards Alfred Nobel before his death and the establishment of the Nobel Foundation. He was nicknamed "The Merchant of Death".
Didn't Andrew Carnegie do basically the same thing? Alfred Nobel's good works were mainly posthumous IIRC, and Rockefeller was mainly his son, but Carnegie did good things late in his own life.
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