Carnegie Offered Money and a Lot of South Wales Refused to Have It: It Was Blood Money: Bringing Public Libraries to the South Wales Valleys

Public libraries were slow to be established in the South Wales Valleys. This was largely because of the multiplicity of Miners’ Institute and Welfare Hall libraries. Their users, the coalminers, valued their independence and scorned the advances of would-be benefactors such as Andrew Carnegie. But circumstances changed with the recession of the I920s, which deeply affected the Institutes which then had to face the rapid spread of the county library movement.