Joodi+S.+Carnegie+B

=== Well, hello. My name is Andrew Carnegie. I am a man whose life went from rags to riches. It wasn’t a quick, sudden change, but it took time. On November 25, 1835, I was born into a hard working family of weavers in Dunfermline, Scotland. When the Industrial Revolution started my father's business's income started to decrease and into the pockets of factories that started to boom. It was not clear to us if we would survive Scotland's industrialization. So on May 17, 1848 my family immigrated to the United States from Scotland to look for a better life and to have chance to live. ===


=== At the young age of 12 I started work in a local cotton factory earning 1.20 a week, at 15, I became a telegraph messenger boy in Pittsburgh. I learned to send and decipher telegraphic messages and became a telegraph operator at the age of 17. My next job was as a railroad clerk, working for the Pennsylvania Railroad. I worked my way up the ladder to become train dispatcher and then division manager. At the age of 24, I had already made some small investments that laid the foundations of what would become my tremendous fortune. ===


=== Well, one day when i was still young I found my mother crying because of our family struggles. There and then, I promised myself and my mother to become rich and have a happy life until the day we die. And after i made my fortune I didn't know to use the money properly. Well, I saw many of the rich using the money for only their luxuries, and I didn't like that. So I decided that i wasn't going to live like that, but live helping other people. And as you know, I was born into a family without much. I think that had a lot of effect on me to become a philanthropist. ===

=== You want to know what I thought about our society and what problem they had? I'll read you a direct quote from my essay, "The Gospel of Wealth." "The problem of our age is the administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship." === === This means that I thought our society had a problem with knowing how to distribute and use money properly. Only the rich had money but they didn't use it to help society. ===


=== I believed that the rich should use their wealth to help the society instead of just using the money for only their luxuries. I gave away my fortune But instead of charities I funded many libraries, other educational in institutions, and other places because I believed that charities wouldn't put the money to good use. I believed that I should help people by letting them help themselves. I like to say "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced." ===    "Andrew Carnegie." Pittsburgh.About. 5 Dec. 2008 < <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">http://pittsburgh.about.com/cs/famous/p/andrew_carnegie.htm <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">>. "Andrew Carnegie." Abc-Clio. 5 Dec. 2008 < <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[|http://www.worldhistory.abcclio.com/library/searches/searchdisplay.aspxentryid=314546&fulltext=Andrew+Carnegie&nav=non&specialtopicid=-1] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">>. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(38, 42, 44); font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; line-height: 25px;">"The Richest Man in the World: Andrew Carnegie." __The Richest Man in the World: Andrew Carnegie__. 1999. PBS. 5 Dec. 2008 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/index.html>. <span style="color: rgb(38, 42, 44);"> "Andrew Carnegie." __Andrew Carnegie__. 1999. 5 Dec. 2008 <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/usacarnegie.htm>. <span style="color: rgb(38, 42, 44);"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><Primary>  <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(19, 20, 23); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(19, 20, 23); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Carnegie, Andrew. //Triumphant Democracy// (1886) online edition <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(19, 20, 23); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">   <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(19, 20, 23); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">    <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(19, 20, 23); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Carnegie, Andrew. //The Gospel of Wealth and Other Essays// (1901) online edition   <span style="color: rgb(19, 20, 23);"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">      <span style="color: rgb(19, 20, 23);"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;"><span style="color: rgb(19, 20, 23);">  Andrew Carnegie, “The Upward March of Labor,” in   //Problems Today: Wealth, Labor, Socialism//

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=<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Modern History Sourcebook: Andrew Carnegie: The Gospel of Wealth, 1889 = <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> The problem of our age is the administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. . . . The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to day measures the change which has come with civilization.

This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. Much better this great irregularity than universal squalor. Without wealth there can be no Maecenas [//Note: a rich Roman patron of the arts//]. The "good old times" were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as to day. A relapse to old conditions would be disastrous to both-not the least so to him who serves-and would sweep away civilization with it....

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We start, then, with a condition of affairs under which the best interests of the race are promoted, but which inevitably gives wealth to the few. Thus far, accepting conditions as they exist, the situation can be surveyed and pronounced good. The question then arises-and, if the foregoing be correct, it is the only question with which we have to deal-What is the proper mode of administering wealth after the laws upon which civilization is founded have thrown it into the hands of the few? And it is of this great question that I believe I offer the true solution. It will be understood that fortunes are here spoken of, not moderate sums saved by many years of effort, the returns from which are required for the comfortable maintenance and education of families. This is not wealth, but only competence, which it should be the aim of all to acquire.

There are but three modes in which surplus wealth can be disposed of. It can be left to the families of the decedents; or it can be bequeathed for public purposes; or, finally, it can be administered during their lives by its possessors. Under the first and second modes most of the wealth of the world that has reached the few has hitherto been applied. Let us in turn consider each of these modes. The first is the most injudicious. In monarchial countries, the estates and the greatest portion of the wealth are left to the first son, that the vanity of the parent may be gratified by the thought that his name and title are to descend to succeeding generations unimpaired. The condition of this class in Europe to day teaches the futility of such hopes or ambitions. The successors have become impoverished through their follies or from the fall in the value of land.... Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? If this is done from affection, is it not misguided affection? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened. Neither is it well for the state. Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well hesitate, for it is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed oftener work more for the injury than for the good of the recipients. Wise men will soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families and of the state, such bequests are an improper use of their means.

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As to the second mode, that of leaving wealth at death for public uses, it may be said that this is only a means for the disposal of wealth, provided a man is content to wait until he is dead before it becomes of much good in the world.... The cases are not few in which the real object sought by the testator is not attained, nor are they few in which his real wishes are thwarted....

The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion.... Of all forms of taxation, this seems the wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share. By taxing estates heavily at death, the state marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life.

. . . This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to attend to the administration of wealth during his life, which is the end that society should always have in view, as being that by far most fruitful for the people....

There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes: but in this way we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the reconciliation of the rich and the poor-a reign of harmony-another ideal, differing, indeed from that of the Communist in requiring only the further evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our civilization. It is founded upon the present most intense individualism, and the race is prepared to put it in practice by degrees whenever it pleases. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will become, in the best sense, the property of the many, because administered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the poorest can be made to see this, and to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts.

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This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth: First, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial result for the community-the man of wealth thus becoming the sole agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer-doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves. According to the Gospel of Wealth what problem did Carnegie think was going about in the society? How did he think the society should act upon it?

How should a man of wealth act according to the Gospel of Wealth?

Compare and contrast the three modes in which surplus wealth can be disposed of. According to Carnegie what mode would be the best way of using great fortune? Why?

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