It may seem ironic that the East Side Freedom Library,
home of a growing collection of literature on the labor movement and power of the working-class, is housed in a building essentially given life by Andrew Carnegie. Industrialist, philanthropist, and, oh yeah, the guy who put Henry Frick in charge of dealing with the Homestead Strike of 1892 that eventually ended in a broken Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers union and nine dead workers.
In the library world, Carnegie is most often associated with the funding of over 1,600 libraries in the United States – 2,509 total throughout the world. Between 1892 and 1920, Carnegie and his foundation essentially created the modern idea of public libraries. As a condition of the funding for the library, the community had to put up an annual fund equal to 10 percent of the construction cost. This regularized the idea of a community paying taxes for the privilege of a public library.
In October 1917, three Carnegie libraries opened in Saint Paul. The Arlington Hills branch, located at 1105 Greenbrier Street, was opened in an area heavily populated by Swedish, Irish, Italian, and Mexican immigrants. Today, this area is also home to a thriving population of Salvadorean, African, and Asian immigrants in addition to a large African-American community. The economic make-up of the area hasn’t changed much since Carnegie’s library went up – it’s still predominately working-class.
Both Carnegie and the East Side Freedom Library are concerned with making knowledge available to the community. Where the East Side Freedom Library and Carnegie’s vision defer is in the knowledge they wish for people to leave the building with. Carnegie, who was born into poverty, was the living embodiment of the Horatio Alger myth – a self-made man. He saw his libraries as a place where people could go to better themselves and he believed that if someone worked hard enough, they too could reach to his level. This individualism is almost at odds with the community-centered, collective spirit of ESFL. Even in its current stage of creation, ESFL is being built as a group effort – the collection is largely donated (see Heidi’s previous post for an intro to the collection) and is being put together by interns and volunteers.
So there is laugh to be had that the spirit of collective action is alive and well and finding a home in the House Carnegie Built.
Reading in the Dust 