Education: Carnegie Manna

¶ To the Metropolitan Opera Company . . . . . . $25,000

¶ To New York City's jobless 250,000

¶ To community chests . . . . . . 20,000

Such were some of the $992,750 emergency grants cited last week in the annual report of Dr. Frederick Paul Keppel, president of Carnegie Corp., to show how Depression has forced Andrew Carnegie's $135,000,000 philanthropy out of its true channel of education. Hard times have not only cut the corporation's funds but have also materially reduced the inflow of new ideas on how and where to spend money. Explained President Keppel: "Those from whom ideas in ordinary times might be expected have been overworked and strained and have had neither the time nor the freshness of mind to develop them. . . . All in all the corporation will welcome an opportunity to return to its normal spheres of action and devote to them its entire energies and resources."

But even with a dearth of ideas President Keppel and his Carnegie trustees managed in one year to rain $4,855,747 in philanthropic manna down upon all the English-speaking world. As usual library interests got most of the Carnegie bounty—$1,186,300. They needed it, for, while the total income of 21 ranking public libraries in the U. S. was dropping from $11,600,000 to $8,800,000 in two years, book circulation was jumping from 33,400,000 to 42,900,000.

To adult education went 227,500 Carnegie dollars, of which it spent $750 on Southern Mountain whites and $5,000 on the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen.

The Corporation backed researches on mayflies, vitamins, cosmic rays, American Indian languages, factors in the failure and success of college teachers. It published a translation of Algazel's Metaphysics, a treatise on Federal Education in Alaska.