Charity In The Gilded Age

Grand industrial and economic growth, as well as personal opportunities for monetary success, were never higher than in the Gilded Age. The founding Industrial Fathers such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, to name a few, were the pioneers of the Gilded Age and without them, the United States would not resemble even a fraction of what it does today. Without question, these men were the driving force behind the industrial boom, but the debate rages on as to whether these corporate magnates were sagacious business men seeking to debauch the United States for the procurement of monetary superiority or if they were a benevolent force seeking to bring America to the highest level of economic success ever seen

Throughout history, wealth was kept within the family, totally opposite of what we see and expect from most successful business people of today. To bolster the notion that these industrial pioneers were not solely in it for themselves, men like Rockefeller gave millions in charitable donations. Carnegie even wrote a book about how to effectively spread money to the commonwealth as well as teaching the lower classes how to provide for themselves. In fact, Carnegie’s book was given to Bill Gates, a man known for his charitable contributions. As if these Statesmen’s giving nature were not enough, their impact on the world war was extraordinary; without them, America would have been left in the dust. Henry Ford’s invention of the assembly line and Vanderbilt’s mass transit of industrial goods through the means of railroads was pivotal to the United States success. In summation, while some may have suffered under the rapid transition of agriculture to industrialization, the benefits created far outweigh the negatives. Many of the problems created can simply be wrote off as growing pains felt by the nation. To call these men robber barons is a gross misunderstanding and factually