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Andrew Carnegie A Hero Essay

676 Words3 Pages

A "hero" is considered to be courageous and to have noble qualities and achievements, but over time, the "hero" definition changes to be something else. The view of a "hero" now has become one of wealth. Andrew Carnegie was a man of wealth and was a hero during the second Industrial Revolution, as well as a well-known great philanthropist. Due to his achievements in helping people, many have considered him to be a hero, while others view him as only benefiting himself.

Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland, where his family was not the wealthiest and had difficulty maintaining a standard of living. The Carnegie family of four lived in an attic room above the shop that belonged to his father, who was a weaver, but it was shared with another family (Doc 1). When the Carnegie family decided to come over to America, he started working at the age of 18. He was noticed by the general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, where he became interested in steel and its benefits. …show more content…

Carnegie believed in laissez-faire capitalism, but if the law ensured the survival of the fittest, then let the government's laws interfere (Doc 2). In addition, Carnegie argued that it was shameful for the wealthy to utilize their wealth to advance society while they were still alive, as opposed to the widespread practice of leaving all of one's wealth to one's successors. He believed that the duty of wealth should be used to set examples of modest living and produce beneficial results for the community. (Doc

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He uses this Charles Darwin attitude of “survival of the fittest”, saying that “...law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department [...] essential for the future progress of the race” (Doc 3). Carnegie believes that him and other wealthy beings deserve to have more fortune because they worked harder than anyone else for it, everyone has that equal opportunity.. In addition, anyone else who aspires to work as much as they do can earn just as much money as they

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One argument that could be made would be from Document 1. This tells us Carnegie’s opinion of society in which he states he believes in the survival of the fittest and thinks you need to work for what you want. People could take this as that he doesn't want to help poor people and that he doesn't care about them. Also it could be supported through the fact that he gave most money to schools and organizations and not to poor people. Another argument could be related to the treatment of workers in Document 3.

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Carnegie was “One of the richest men in Gilded Age America, he promoted what he called the Gospel of Wealth, the idea that those who accumulated money had an obligation to use it to promote the advancement of society. ”(Foner pg.32) This is exactly how he used his wealth to help the less fortunate. Although the Gilded age was good, there were a lot of negatives. There was a tremendous amount of “economic inequality because the state did not regulate the growth of business.

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Andrew Carnegie, a late 19th century steel magnate, was immensely successful during the Gilded Age. He kept wages low while eliminating competition, so that workers had no choice but to stay in Carnegie’s company. The Gilded Age is so called because the top appeared to be gold (i.e. the richest people were doing extremely well) but on the inside there were insurmountable wealth inequalities (I.e the rich succeeded at the expense of the rest of the nation). Andrew Carnegie was a large causer of wealth inequality . In his “Gospel of Wealth” he justifies the trend by stating that in an ideal world the rich would give to the poor, but unfortunately our world is impossible.

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The captains of industry believed that the poor people were inferior to the rich people. The rich were superior because they had “wisdom, experience, and the ability to administer”. The duty of a rich person was to help out a poor person which was what was said in the Gospel of Wealth. The Gospel of Wealth is about how the rich person's responsibility is philanthropy. Carnegie believes in charity work so he would donate to libraries, and universities and schools and etc.

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882 Words | 4 Pages

Carnegie believed that the wealthy were obligated to take care of the poor. He called this responsibility the "Gospel of Wealth." He further asserted that "the man who dies rich, dies disgraced." Carnegie used his wealth to fund schools, public libraries, and numerous charitable organizations. However not all were as kindhearted and Carnegie was.

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I agree with Andrew Carnegie’s decision to donate and invest his accumulated wealth in the public because it is the most useful and beneficial way to spend his wealth. Moreover, I believe that distributing the money to relatives or keeping the money to oneself does not sufficiently utilize the money. By donating and investing in the public, a majority of the money can be spent on necessities for the general public, rather than spending the money on a single person. In other words, Andrew Carnegie’s decision to donate and invest in the general public benefits significantly more people than it would if he were to give it to relatives or keep it to himself. Furthermore, I believe that withholding the money to oneself is unrightful in the sense

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The family plodded to make ends meet and pay the $7.50 rent each week. Carnegie was not the type of person to just roll through the movements and just get by. Everyone in his family had to work, but Carnegie knows that he needs to do further than just get a job. He tutored himself how to tap morse code, became locally noticed, and got a job earning $4.00 a week. Next was the railways earning $8.00 a week which came out to be further than what his family's rent was.

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Carnegie throughly believes that there is no respect for "leaving" your wealth after your death, "it may fairly be said that no man is to be extolled for doing what he cannot help doing, nor is he to be thanked by the community to which he only leaves wealth at death." (GoW) Carnegie believe that men who would leave their money at death maybe would've not left it at all and brought it with them. However, Carnegie does bring forth the fact that estates at the time would be taxed more once the previous owner had died, a policy that he hailed as "[wise]. " This policy induces rich men to actually use their money for the good of society a whole during their life so they an choose how it's distributed instead of the government having full reign on how to use their "taxed" money.

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More importantly, Galbraith holds a different view on the duty and ability to aid from Carnegie. Carnegie supports policies which “induce the rich man to attend to the administration of wealth during his life, which is the end that society should always have the view” (Carnegie 490). He encourages rich people to distribute his wealth to help the poor during their lifetimes, which shows that it is the rich’s responsibility to administrate wealth in a society. More than duty, Carnegie believes that only the rich has the ability to efficiently administrate wealth. He condemns the way of distributing wealth after the rich man is dead since it is not efficient in that “it requires the exercise of not less ability than that which acquired the wealth

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Becoming wealthy comes with a lot of responsibilities, Carnegie said that he lived frugally, so his money started racking up, and then he sold his business which concluded to an extreme amount of money. But many workers of his said that his conditions and wages were not fair for how much he was making. “Carnegie, more than any other businessman of the era, championed the idea that America’s leading tycoons owed a debt to society. He believed that, given the circumstances of their successes, they should serve as benefactors to the less fortunate public” (textbook). Carnegies’ Gospel of Wealth states that he put copious amounts of dedication into his work.

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They had to borrow money to move to Allegheny pennsylvania in 1848. At the age of 13 Carnegie got his first job as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread in a cotton mill, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. At 14 he found a job as a telegraph messenger. Later he began to work for the pennsylvania railroads at age 16. He worked under Thomas scott, one of the railroads top officials, as a telegraph operator and learned a lot about the railroad industry while gathering

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In the Gospel of Wealth article, Carnegie argues that the best way on helping society was to help improve people themselves. Carnegie did not believe that the rich simply give the money directly towards the poor. Instead, he wanted to set up intuitions for the poor to allow people to help there self. According to Carnegie, “ [T]he main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so...” (Carnegie, 1889).

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He believed that if the wealthy don't give back some of their profits to the community, they are living a dishonorable life, and although I didn't necessarily agree with this radical viewpoint at first, I now am a firm believer in Carnegie's argument about wealth.

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A hero is someone who does a meaningful deed, worthy of remembrance and selflessly. Andrew Carnegie was a wealthy man. After he sold his steel company in 1900, he devoted the rest of his life giving money to charity. Did Andrew Carnegie’s generosity make him a hero? Andrew Carnegie was not a hero.

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