Editing Carnegie library (section)

==Criticisms==
The first secretary of the Iowa Library Commission, Alice S. Taylor, criticized the use of Carnegie funding for extravagant buildings rather than providing quality library services.<ref>Stuart Shana L. (2013). "My Duty and My Pleasure": Alice S. Tyler's Reluctant Oversight of Carnegie Library Philanthropy in Iowa. ''Information & Culture, 48''(1), 91–111, p. 93.</ref> Carnegie's funds covered only the library buildings themselves, and Carnegie gave library buildings to cities on the condition that the cities stocked and maintained them.<ref>Murray, S. (2009). ''The library: An illustrated history''. Skyhorse Publishing, p. 184.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Mickelson |first=P. |year=1975 |title=American society and the public library in the thought of Andrew Carnegie |journal=Journal of Library History |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=117–138 [p. 123] |jstor=25540622 }}</ref> As a result, small communities often struggled with maintenance costs associated with Carnegie libraries; towns were often happy to accept funding for  new library buildings, but often unwilling to allocate taxes for upkeep.<ref>Murray, 2009, p. 186.</ref> In fact, this was the most frequent complaint about Carnegie libraries in hindsight: gifting libraries to towns too small to support them actually slowed the development of cooperative regional libraries that those communities now rely on.<ref>{{Harvnb|Mickelson|1975|p=133}}.</ref>

Some critics also saw his massive donations as insulting to communities that would be content to fund their own public works.<ref>Murray, 2009, p. 185.</ref> Others saw his push for public libraries as merely an attempt at social control.<ref>{{Harvnb|Mickelson|1975|p=131}}.</ref> [[Mark Twain]], a supporter of Carnegie, claimed that Carnegie used philanthropy as a tool to buy fame.<ref name=":0">{{Harvnb|Mickelson|1975|p=128}}.</ref> [[William Jewett Tucker]] criticized Carnegie's philanthropy from a religious viewpoint, arguing that it did not offset his "immoral" accumulation of wealth, and that his contributions did not justify the "evils" Tucker claimed existed in capitalism itself.<ref name=":0" /> Carnegie's own steel workers echoed this sentiment, arguing that his wealth would be better spent on improving working conditions for his own employees, rather than on library buildings across the country.<ref name=":1">{{cite web |last=Stamberg |first=Susan |date=August 1, 2013 |title=How Andrew Carnegie turned his fortune into a library legacy |website=NPR |url=https://www.npr.org/2013/08/01/207272849/how-andrew-carnegie-turned-his-fortune-into-a-library-legacy?sc=tw&cc=share |access-date=March 12, 2022}}</ref> Carnegie's response to those criticisms and the ensuing [[Homestead Steel Strike]] was telling of what he thought of his workers' concerns: "If I had raised your wages, you would have spent that money by buying a better cut of meat or more drink for your dinner. But what you needed, though you didn't know it, was my libraries and concert halls."<ref name=":1" />

Carnegie's critics can be most efficiently summed up in the words of [[Finley Peter Dunne]]'s parody of Carnegie himself: "Th' way to abolish poverty an' bust crime is to put up a brown-stone buildin' in ivry town in th' counthry."<ref>{{Harvnb|Mickelson|1975|p=129}}.</ref> The idea that a building would be the panacea to cure all of society's ills, they argued, was simply not sustainable.

A further issue was the impact on pre-existing religious libraries that had promoted learning through free libraries for many years. A typical example is the United Presbyterian Library of Edinburgh, under [[Robert James Drummond]] which was affected following the opening of the Carnegie Library in the city centre.<ref>The History of the Lothian Road United Free Church (Turnbull & Spears) p.69</ref>

In addition to the criticisms of his philanthropic interests and motivations, the construction of libraries in the American South was a highly contentious topic. State and local racial segregations laws across the South sought to bar African Americans access to public facilities, including libraries and when funding the construction of the Carnegie library in Atlanta in 1902, the proposed library, a segregated one, was fought by numerous activists of the period, including [[W.&nbsp;E.&nbsp;B. Du Bois]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Segregated Libraries |url=https://dp.la/exhibitions/history-us-public-libraries/segregated-libraries |access-date=2022-03-25 |website=Digital Public Library of America |language=en}}</ref> In the years following, as the [[American Library Association]] continued to ignore the systematic implementation of [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]] in the South, the Carnegie Corporation also continued to acquiesce to the social norms of the day and even required communities seeking grants to base their appropriations "only upon the White population of the towns."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Wiegand |first=Wayne A. |date=2017-03-01 |title="Any Ideas?": The American Library Association and the Desegregation of Public Libraries in the American South |url=https://doi.org/10.5325/libraries.1.1.0001 |journal=Libraries: Culture, History, and Society |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=1–22 |doi=10.5325/libraries.1.1.0001 |issn=2473-0343|url-access=subscription }}</ref>