Was Andrew Carnegie A Hero?

Was Andrew Carnegie a hero? Many people have asked this hotly debated question. Andrew Carnegie was an incredibly influential businessman. He was one of the richest Americans at the time, using the money to fund his philanthropy. He donated millions of dollars to various organizations, leading people to view him as a hero. Andrew Carnegie was a poor man growing up. He started with a house that cost 20 dollars to rent, and throughout his life, he had to work his way up the social ladder and eventually ended up living in mansions and castles. Carnegie used a business practice he invented called vertical integration, which lowered costs and effectively made better quality products. Carnegie was a well respected boss and provided equal pay for

Andrew Carnegie is heroic because he donated 350 million dollars to various charities (Document 12). His work has single-handedly made him a hero because no matter how you think of Carnegie, he still donated half a billion dollars to these charities. He helped America tremendously with donations to public spaces such as donations of church organs and free public libraries where he constructed 2811 of them. Words cannot describe how many people he’s helped with these donations some of which like the public libraries, we can still see today. These libraries provided free education and helped so many people learn. He is a hero for this because he went out of his way to help others; by donating this money, he has helped so many people. (Document 10) This part where the author says that “Not even 10,000 Carnegie Public Libraries” would compensate for the direct and indirect evils resulting from the homestead lockout sticks out to me because Carnegie has already donated a 5th of what they asked. This shows how many people Carnegie helped because of this hyperbole that the author made that we shouldn’t take seriously. Carnegie had already done a 5th of what was asked. To publicly attack Carnegie’s philanthropy is uncalled for and I think it just proves how well he has done in providing his service. Thinking about it, 2000 public libraries probably inadvertently caused more good than harm done at the homestead lockout. Just as he has harmed, he doubled that in his good deeds. Carnegie's philanthropy was good for the economy because it helped students get a great education which helped the schools. These students who ended up becoming successful would also help the economy. Carnegie's philanthropy was a result of his steel company; from working diligently to being the cheapest and most affordable steel carnegie could invest in this work of