Los Gatos Weekly-Times file photograph
The Carnegie Library was on University Avenue next to St. Luke's Episcopal Church. At the far left is the school tower, which was located on what today is the Old Town parking lot.
Los Gatans might enjoy watching KQED (Channel 9) on Monday evening at l0:30 p.m. There is a local connection. San Francisco Focus, the KQED magazine devoted to Bay Area arts and entertainment, describes the show thusly:
"The richest man in the world: Andrew Carnegie. David Ogden Stiers (of MASH) narrates the story of a poor immigrant boy who became the richest man in the world. After he amassed a fortune by crushing his competitors and exploiting his workers, Carnegie gave much of it away."
Los Gatos was the recipient of a Carnegie Library. The Carnegie Library was torn down in 1954, and the land became a parking lot for St. Luke's. Assets from the sale of the lot to the church combined with municipal funds to build the current Town Library at the Civic Center on E. Main Street.
Carnegie (1835-1919) was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. His father came to the United States when his sons, Andrew and Thomas, were children, and settled in Pittsburgh, Pa. Andrew was first employed in a cotton factory. He later became a telegraph messenger, then an operator and, finally, a superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1888, he became chief owner of a steel works, and in 1901 retired, selling his interests to United States Steele Corporation.
His activities rated him coverage in Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists 1861-1901. Receiving equal coverage in the book were John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould and J. P. Morgan. These equally ruthless empire builders arose at the time of the Civil War, and as they retired, because many of them were religious men, they sought entry into heaven and a favorable biography in history books. Carnegie's gifts were libraries, museums, art galleries, schools and other public institutions in the United States and Europe.
Railroad lines established by enterprise? Partly, but also by dynamiting the other fellow's bridges and shooting his engineers.
Toward the end of his life Rockefeller, who destroyed his oil competitors by raising their railroad rates, took to handing out dimes--no doubt a forerunner of today's public relations image-builder.
These men were visible to the public as they changed the United States from a mercantile-agrarian democracy. In those days, a pedestrian might look through a restaurant widow and see tycoons eating lunch. Today power resides in board rooms, and private eating clubs shade the powerful from view.
On his yacht Cornelius Vanderbilt was asked by a young guest the cost of running the craft. "Young man," said the tycoon, "if you have to worry about the cost, you can't afford a yacht."
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, January 15, 1997.
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