HISTORY ON THE AIRWAVES
Ex-prime minister and UN special envoy for global education GORDON BROWN tells us about the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835– 1919), the subject of his new BBC Radio 4 documentary How much did Carnegie give away?
It’s believed that, during his lifetime, Carnegie gave away more than 90 per cent of his fortune – an estimated $380m he had accumulated as the world’s biggest steel maker. No one comes near to him for giving. In today’s money that’s $300bn, much more than what the current largest donors Bill and Melinda Gates have to give away. And why? His article ‘Gospel of Wealth’ said that to die rich was to die disgraced.
Where did he target his money? Carnegie gave money worldwide to science and music – almost mischievously for church organs so they could brighten up what he considered to be very dull religious services. In his later years he gave millions to promote peace and disarmament, but education was his passion.
My father was the first in our family to go to university. Coming from a family where in the depression of the 1930s his father had only seasonal employment as a farm worker, university was possible only because of a Carnegie scholarship.
9hy did he Hocus on education!|
To help people help themselves. Charity was for self-improvement, so that by their own efforts, young people could pursue better lives. He was an egalitarian and always resented those who said that young workers should not be entitled to books to acquire the knowledge to improve.
But he could also be accused of being authoritarian. He thought he knew best, as he said to his workers who went on a strike for higher wages that ended in violence and deaths: “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. And that’s what I’m giving to you.”
Many of today’s philanthropists target other areas. Why is this?
Endowing your local university is still popular, but even when there are 260 million children out of school and 800 million (half the developing world’s children) who will never achieve school qualifications, global education lacks the immediacy and in-your-face drama that lifesaving donations for surgery and treatments bring.
The cause of universal education may now be taken for granted, almost old hat, in a way that it was not in previous generations. There are signs that things are beginning to change, but the cause Carnegie stood for needs reinvigorating.
Gordon Brown’s documentary about Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the centenary of Carnegie’s death: Sunday 11 August, at 1.30pm
“In his later years he gave millions to promote peace and disarmament, but education was his passion”