Andrew Carnegie Dbq Essay

446 Words2 Pages

During the Industrial Revolution big businesses took places of small workshops, increasing to quantity but not quality. This made many people lose their jobs, and now there was only one place to work the factories. Ahead of these factories were big business owners, some born into money others worked their way up to it like Andrew Carnegie. Work at these factories became unsafe and the pay was bad, they could only blame one person and that was the owners. People of this time saw these business owners as either villain or hero, witch side of the scale do Andrew Carnegie falls on? Andrew Carnegie robber baron due to his obsession with wealth and money. Document 2 shows that he always watched the cost of how much money he put into making the product. …show more content…

In the iron and steel industry the employees worked for 10.67 hours for only a pay of $1.81. It costed $600 a year to support a 6 member family and that’s with lowest cost. That only $660.65 a year for a family of that size. In document 4 it shows that in while his employees worked long hours off their labor, Andrew daily wage was $92,000. His employees could only work in hopes they could make that much, while he made that just by having them work for him. There are many ways Andrew Carnegie was a robber baron, yes. Yet, he always did things to help the community grow and helped people. In document 5 Carnegie shows a chart shows his foundation and the amount of money it donates to different things and people. In 2005 his foundation was giving out about $100,000,000 a year to education. Trying to give others the opportunity to young people to be just as successful in life as Andrew. The way he looked at money in the 1870’s is helping others even after his death. Andrew Carnegie was a money hungry man. Having a share in government affairs and underpaying his employees. All just help him get ahead of the other competition. He worked his way to the top then had lower people do the work for him. The rag to riches story is an inspiring story, but once you make it to the riches; why let others

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