Andrew Carnegie's Justification Of Wealth

Andrew Carnegie was the father of industrialized steel in the 19th century and owned the affluent Carnegie Steel Company. He quickly expanded steel’s production, became one of the wealthiest men in the world, and thereafter became a striving philanthropist. The pinnacle of Andrew Carnegie’s life was in the midst of the Gilded Age, an era of economic growth that included an underlying societal corruption. During this time, penniless laborers became upset with the unfair way that wealthy industrialists treated them and began to strike against these colossal companies. In 1889, at the peak of his accumulation of wealth, Andrew Carnegie wrote a famous essay titled “Wealth” that described the gap between the rich and the poor. In his justification of wealth, Andrew Carnegie argues that the rich men in the world are vital to society and must use their wealth responsibly in order to ameliorate the lives of the poor.

In response to the labor strikes, Andrew Carnegie claims that there is a large gap between the boss and his employers that has emerged from the advancement of civilization. He believes the upper class has the skills to understand and collect wealth in their lives and the indigent do not. These skills are based upon the law of competition and are the way the rich properly administer their fortunes throughout their lives. Carnegie states that wealth is the great “fortunes” amassed by the millions and not the “moderate sums” that the poor attempt to collect by “many years