Essay On Why Andrew Carnegie Is Not A Hero

The boom of industrialization in the United States lead to several changes throughout the nation that forever affected both the economy, as well as workers within it. One such worker was named Andrew Carnegie, who as a boy began in a very poor family, but then throughout his life worked hard to advance up to one of the highest positions in the steel manufacturing industry. This made his presence widely known throughout the American economy, and furthermore later brought up the argument: was Andrew Carnegie a hero? Throughout his life, though primarily during his career, Andrew Carnegie made several debatable choices concerning his work. These choices further clouded the argument as to whether he was a hero or not. However, Andrew Carnegie overall

During the late 1800s, workers often worked long hours for little payment. Andrew Carnegie’s workers suffered no different, as according to historical statistics of the United States, in 1892 the average steel or iron worker made approximately $1.81 a day. While in correlation to this, they would work for an approximate 10.67 hours a day. These numbers in comparison to other types of industry are not extremely terrible, as according to this document, steel and iron workers had the second best wages of six opposing industries. However, in an additional note below the statistics, it is noted that Andrew Carnegie made an approximate $92,000 daily (Document I). This difference in wages between his workers and Carnegie himself shows evidence to the fact that Carnegie was not a hero. As someone with such wealth should be able to distribute higher living wages to his employees. This idea of distributing wealth is also supported in another historical statistics chart. This chart shows a graph of the steel production in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Luxembourg between 1870 and 1900. The United States alone produced over 10,000 tons of steel in the 1900s. Furthermore, according to this document, one-third of this steel had been produced by Carnegie’s mills (Document E). This large amount of production not only shows the control of Carnegie on the steel industry, but also shows how efficiently Carnegie’s employees work. These hardworking producers deserved higher wages for their output of steel. However, unlike the traditional hero, Carnegie instead decides not to increase the wages of his employees. Despite the fact that Carnegie is noticeably wealthy enough to afford a raise in wages from Document I. This supports the idea that Carnegie is not a hero, as a hero would normally work for the benefit of