Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant 1840-1910Forwood, William Bower, Sir
History
Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant 1840-1910
Forwood, William Bower, Sir
Forwood, William Bower, Sir, 1840-1928; Merchants -- England -- Liverpool -- Biography
We were fortunate in inducing Mr. Andrew Carnegie to open the new
library in Windsor Street, and he was so much pleased with it that he
offered to build for us a duplicate in West Derby. He remarked it was
the first time he had ever offered to give a library, making it a rule
that he must be invited to present one, and then if the site was
provided, and a suitable income assured to maintain it, he gave the
necessary funds for the building as a matter of course. Mr. Carnegie
subsequently presented us with another library for Garston, and more
recently he gave me £19,000 for two more libraries, making his gift to
Liverpool £50,000 in all.
Mr. Carnegie's munificence has been remarkable, not only in its extent,
but in its method. He has given £30,000,000 for the erection of
libraries and other institutions, but all of his gifts have been made
after careful investigation, and in conformity with certain rules which
he has laid down. When he opened the Windsor Street Library he stayed at
Bromborough Hall, and we took him also to the opening of St. Deiniol's
Library, at Hawarden. If Mr. Carnegie had not been a millionaire he
would still have been a remarkable man. Endowed with a keen power of
observation, rapidity of judgment, and great courage, he has all the
elements which make for success in any walk in life. He told me that as
a superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railway he saw that iron bridges
should take the place of their wooden bridges. He formed an iron company
to supply these bridges. Another opportunity offered, of which he was
not slow to avail, when the iron bridges had in course of time to be
replaced with steel. The example of this great railway was quickly
followed by others, and the Carnegie Steel Works grew larger and larger.
The carriage of the iron ore 400 miles by rail, from Lake Superior, was
a costly item, so he constructed his own railway, which enabled him to
greatly reduce the carriage. All these things indicate his enterprise
and courage, which have made him not only a millionaire, but also a
great public benefactor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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