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Summary Of Gospel Of Wealth By Andrew Carnegie

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Andrew Carnegie: Bettering the Community

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American businessman who became extremely rich through the steel industry. After gaining a lot of money, he became a philanthropist who donated his money to the making of libraries in the United States. Being a rich businessman, Carnegie writes that it is important to dispose of one’s wealth in a matter that the community can benefit from it. The way in which he comes to this conclusion and rules out the two other possibilities will be further discussed.

Carnegie addresses people in this same status of living as himself, for that reason wealthy people who have become rich by themselves. This section from the essay, Gospel of Wealth is meant as a guide to those that have …show more content…

In his time, there is a clear difference between those that are rich and the those that are not based on dress, living conditions and the things they eat amongst other things. He concludes that this change is good and that this has brought about civilization and that both the chief and tenants are better suited.

Being well suited has come with the responsibility of giving away the large sum of money the rich have acquired. Carnegie proposes three ways which an individual can spread his wealth. One is old way which is passing the wealth on to your oldest son. Carnegie disapproves of this route because he feels that the recipients have no appreciation for the wealth and therefore just spend it with disregard. He feels that rather than passing on the entire sum to succeeding generations, the daughters and wife should receive very “moderate sources of income” while the son should make his own …show more content…

In his closing argument where he writes that the poor will be unable to attain such profits themselves is misguided in my opinion. Carnegie himself rose to his status through working hard and without the help of others. He was immigrant and also from a family who had made money through weaving. How can he then not have faith in the American dream? Or just simply belief that if an individual worked hard, they could attain a large sum of money. In addition, his writing is biased mainly because he sees his class as being the sole givers. His essay is meant to persuade those in his class to improve the living condition of the less fortunate and better the community. On the other hand, his attitude towards giving large sum of money to family members who will only waste the money rather than using it for greater purposes is agreeable. All in all, his purpose of this essay is for greater purpose and has allowed less fortunate people or the community to benefit from his wealth because education is the best way to improve the community. By establishing libraries or educational buildings, Carnegie stayed true to his philosophy and has bettered the

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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 and Samuel Gomper have different takes when it comes to the role that wealthy people should have in society. The two authors have opposed feelings toward the poor people being in the state of condition that they are in. Although their views are different what they are proposing in both documents can help the poor people. Carnegie’s The Gospel of Wealth focus more on what the wealthy people should do with their wealth to benefit the society.

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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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At the end of the 19th Century, as the United States was experiencing rapid industrialization, a reconfiguration of the social order yielded opposing visions of social progress. Andrew Carnegie, wealthy businessman, and Jane Addams, founder of Chicago’s Hull House, put forward different methods to achieve such progress, where Addams focuses on creating social capital in a seemingly horizontal manner while Carnegie advocates for a top-down approach. While both of them seem to reap a sense of purpose from their attempts to improve the nation, their approaches vary depending on their vision of the composition of the population they want to uplift. First, Carnegie and Addams’ desire to improve society is partly self-serving. For Carnegie, improving society is the role of the wealthy man who, “animated by Christ’s spirit” (“Wealth”), can administer wealth for the community better than it could have for itself (“Wealth”).

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Andrew Carnegie was the one who wrote the Gospel of Wealth and it was a positive idea for the people who are not wealthy. Carnegie says that the upper class has a responsibility to address the issues of the wealth inequality. In the Gospel of Wealth, Carnegie stated that the wealthy class can be a better state than the government or state. Carnegie also states that the wealthy should dispense wealth and it should be a way that does not promote drunkenness. Carnegie argues that there are two types of wealthy people.

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Carnegie thinks it is better to build public institutions than give charity to the poor because the poor need to have the “desire to improve” and find help in these public institutions. (Carnegie 30). He believes that rather wealthy “Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives” can find the proper use for their money, which is to help the community. (Carnegie 29). By just giving money to the poor the wealthy are doing all their work and instead the poor should find the assistance they need to improve their lives.

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In the primary source document “Wealth and Its Uses” the author Andrew Carnegie explains the problem of proper administration of wealth. He believes that the bind between the rich and the poor to create a harmonious relationship is still possible but the distribution of surplus wealth needs to be addressed and fixed. Andrew Carnegie explains that one of the duties of the man of wealth is to consider all of his extra wealth as a trust fund. That in which he should give back in a manner that he thinks is the best way to benefit the community. This document was written because Andrew Carnegie noticed the problem with the distribution of surplus wealth and wanted to see a progressive change.

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The Gospel of Wealth. Line 55-60 P.209). Carnegie’s main idea was that you don’t give out handouts, you give them a way to bring themselves out of the bottom. That is a huge thing because he saw himself as an example of someone who brought themselves out of a poor situation. So for him this was a way of giving money back to the community and he was a very charitable man.

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Carnegie had turned out to be rich in the wake of living in destitution all through his childhood, in under one century. In the business world, Carnegie could

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Carnegie believed, essentially, that the only two options available were for some to be wealthy or none to be wealthy, and decided that it was more beneficial to, “the progress of the race,” that the elite few enjoy wealth to the detriment of many. Does this sound like a compassionate or selfless man? He goes on to claim that no “evil” has resulted from accumulation of wealth– completely disregarding the plight of the worker in favour of the rich. Document 1 reveals that his supposedly “humble” personal life was anything but. Carnegie owned a castle in Scotland that had cost $10 million to renovate, and presumably even more to acquire in the first place.

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“Everything looks good on the outside, but in the inside it’s not”. “Gilded age critics argued that the concentration of wallet in the bank accounts of the rich robbed workers of just compensation and gave the few to much power. Andrew Carnegie one of the nations leading industrialists and among the richest Americans of the era defended the concentration of wealth” (Document 18-4 Gospel of Wealth). There was an inequality of wealth which the article Carnegie wrote The Gospel of Wealth explained that there is a gap between him and his workers and how Carnegie believes in Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest. Social Darwinism provided justification for the increasing society unequal of wealth being distributed to very few people and the poor weren’t as “fit” as the rich people.

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Underpinnings and Effectiveness of Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” In Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth”, Carnegie proposed a system of which he thought was best to dispose of “surplus wealth” through progress of the nation. Carnegie wanted to create opportunities for people “lift themselves up” rather than directly give money to these people. This was because he considered that giving money to these people would be “improper spending”.

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During the Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie and the miners were part of the industrial core of U.S. history, as both played a key role in developing the country's economy, albeit in different ways. Also, Carnegie saw fortune as an important part of the capitalist system. The Gospel of Wealth has epitomized the perception of Carnegie concerning wealth and poverty because he strongly feels that it is the duty of the affluent to give a part of their excess wealth back to society in such a way as would help improve welfare and advancement. The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in a harmonious relationship (Carnegie). Gospel of Wealth -.

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This quote highlights Spencer’s opinion of wealth, which is that when someone employs a less educated that, they have no one to blame but themselves and should face the consequences. At the same time, those who were less fit were left behind. Wealth for both Spencer and Carnegie was seen as a measure of individual success for survival and a sign of superior abilities and qualities. These quotes show the similarity between the two sources because both sources repeatedly bring up the idea of the wealthy assisting and providing for the working class. Both of these quotes highlight the shared ideology that wealthier individuals should strive to improve society

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In this text, he makes a valid argument as to why the rich should administer their own wealth unto those with less fortune. He begins his argument by explaining how wealth has revolutionized the United States. Carnegie mentions how the Sioux chief's wigwam was similar in appearance when compared to the huts of those inferior to him, and then compares this to the differences in economic classes of the 1800s. Carnegie later states how the very definition of wealth has changed throughout the years, where the poorest farmer of the 1860s owns more luxuries than the landlord of just a few years prior. Carnegie includes these two facts because he wants to show how much society has progressed throughout the last few hundred years.

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