ENCOURAGING PUBLIC MENDICANCY. Cap in Hand to Andrew Carnegie.

Free Lance, Volume X, Issue 468, 28 August 1909, Page 6

ENCOURAGING PUBLIC MENDICANCY. Cap in Hand to Andrew Carnegie.

ANOTHER undignified proposal to go on a begging expedition to the American millionaire, Andrew Carnegie, has to be recorded against a Dominion town. This time it is Palmerston North which offends our public pride and sense of dignity. Also it has to be stated that it is Palmerston's second suit for the stranger's gold. Certainly it has not yet been definitely decided to approach Mr. Carnegie, but the notice of motion in that direction is before the Palmerston Town Council. Some time ago the people of the Manawatu capital opened their mouths pretty widely to the Pittsburg multi-millionaire and asked for enough money to erect a building with four ornamental frontages. • • • Andrew replied with a curt refusal. Said that such a building was altogether out of the question. He also remarked that their present building seemed to him to give very good library accommodation, and he would like to know what was to be done with it when it was discarded as a library. Well, all that showed an enquiring turn of mind in the millionaire, and served to prove that he doesn't part with his dollars on the utterance of the magical word "library." • • • But now a Palmerston Councillor has tabled a motion to approach Mr. Carnegie on more modest lines. The request is to be made for a trifling £5000. Be it said, to the credit of many people in the town, that there is strong local feeling in Palmerston against the application. It might have been thought that even though a sense of the fitness of things did not prevent their first begging crusade, Carnegie's refusal would have saved Palmerston from any repetition of the indignity It appears, however, that this spirit of public mendicancy — getting something for nothing — and begging for other men's gold, has got a strong hold on a good many people in the Dominion. There has been too much of this sort of thing, and it is high time that those who seek to promote the cap in hand business learned that they offend the self respect of bv far the majority of our people by these applications. • • • "We have always in these columns protested against the practice. What possible justification could there be for us in New Zealand — a people carving out its fortune upon the highest lines of self-reliance and honest industry — going to a foreign millionaire for money to build our educational institutions ? He has no interest in this country, and Aye have no interest in nor claim upon Mr. Carnegie. Surely, Palmerston North, a model town in many respects, and thoroughly

progressive one, has more self-respect and ambition than to grovel as a suppliant once-refused to the stranger millionaire! Better far that Palmerston should do without a public library altogether than take up this humiliating attitude. And the unfortunate thing about it all is that so many others of our towns have got the same poverty of spirit. Let us learn the wholesome lesson of self-reliance.