This book describes two of the transforming events in America’s economic life, the Homestead Strike and the evolution of Carnegie Steel Company into United States Steel Corporation. Les Standiford frames the events and clash of wills of Carnegie and Frick in the moral framework of Weber’s analysis of the Protestant ethic which some believe gave moral self-justification to those captains of industry. This book views the Homestead Strike through the prism of the personalities and values of two titans of that era, Carnegie and Frick. Did Carnegie, the older, wealthier and more visible, hold the higher moral ground? Standiford declares no winner.
There was an abundance of workers, and the items they were producing were being found in homes across the country. Industry was making a lot of money, but due to the number of able workers, these same companies believed that they did not need to treat them well. The workers were putting in ten to twelve hours a day, five and a half, or six days a week (p. 9). The working conditions
According to Andrew Carnegie, men of wealth should have to provide for the less fortunate and should set a good example. The men have to provide all the necessities for his family. Also the men of wealth had to give back to the community.
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.
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.
Carnegie’s views on the treatment of his workers are one of the things that he did that are considered unethical. For instance, during America’s depression in the early 1800’s, Carnegie’s workers were repeatedly asked to work long hours for little play; many unions resisted, particularly in the Homestead Strike of 1892. In the Homestead Strike, workers were angry about pay cuts and Carnegie’s
Document 4 states that all wealthy men have given enough importance to the middle class, that they even have established jobs for them. Well I say that Andrew Carnegie believed in social Darwinism and therefore would not do anything to justify his richness and to help the less privileged. His steel production may have opened up new job opportunities but the jobs were a living hell and so I say that the working conditions for workers in the U.S. were horrible and Andrew Carnegie only supported himself and wanted to look good so he offered jobs in his factory, which were bad.
Karl Marx once wrote, “History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good.” By all accounts, a hero is someone who not only has a positive impact on their community, but also consistently demonstrates their own selflessness, morality, compassion, and generosity. Was Andrew Carnegie one of these great, heroic men? Or was he just another wealthy hypocrite, chaining the poor to the harsh machinery of capitalism while claiming to be giving them the means with which to free themselves? By examining his personal life and opinions, his supposed “philanthropy” and the harsh and vile treatment of his labourers, it is evident that Andrew Carnegie cannot, in good conscience, be proclaimed a hero, as in most
Andrew Carnegie was the founder of the largest steel company. Carnegie grew in a poor community but then migrated to Western Pennsylvania just to completely make a change in his life and later on being recognized as one of the wealthiest people in that era. In Carnegie’s testimonial, The Gospel of Wealth, we can observe his way of thinking in regards of the benefits farmers got from the rich people. Carnegie said that “Today the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the preceding generation would have deemed incredible…” (Carnegie). He explained that there is no reason for others to criticize the privileges rich people get in comparison to those farmers get being that, farmers and poor people have now better opportunities than they had before, “The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford.
He also conveys that companies should be helping support communities that they are near to. Gompers also insist on the right to organize and that workers deserve to be paid adequate wages in that law should be passed to help with workers compensation. The financial cloud of railroads left employees helpless in many ways. Document E by Andrew Carnegie called "Wealth" explains how some business leaders believed in charity but also saw themselves as Superior compared to the common human. This shows how Business Leaders were not very humble and not often remembered where they came from and how they were once in the same position as these people that they are treating so unfairly.
Andrew Carnegie makes it clear that people in society with wealth should help those who deserve the financial help. If those in need of help put in their effort, then why shouldn’t they be helped by those who don’t need it? In the Life of the Average Coal Miner, the harsh conditions that children faced is revealed. Children would work for hours in a crucial and dangerous environment and be rewarded with very little money that did not equal to the amount of work they put in. It is unfair to those who worked in the conditions in the Life of the Average Coal Miner.
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 -.
“If a [miner] escapes the gas, the floods, the ‘squeezes’ of falling rock, the cars shooting through the little tunnels, the precarious elevators, the hundred perils, there usually comes to him an attack of ‘miner’s asthma’ that slowly racks and
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.
“The subject was The Meaning of Life. It was taught from experience. ”(Albom,2) Tuesdays with Morrie is the final lesson between a college professor, Morrie, and one of his long-lost students and the author of the book, Mitch Albom. After seeing his professor in an interview on the show called Nightline, Mitch is reminded of a promise he made sixteen years ago to keep in touch with him after college.
