`The 'Gospel of Wealth' is an argumentative and persuasive essay that was written by Andrew Carnegie in 1889. It was published by the North American Review journal under the title, ‘Wealth’. However, it was later changed to 'Gospel of Wealth' in 1908 (Carnegie and Hutner, 34). This essay described the responsibilities of the wealthy businessmen in making a better society through philanthropy. Andrew Carnegie was a poor immigrant with a Scottish descent. Later, he became a successful businessman who accumulated a lot of wealth in his steel business. His target audience was the rich people in society. He His ideas on philanthropy were motivated by his personal observations on how the rich spend their money on unimportant and extravagant way while the majority in the society is languishing in poverty. Carnegie’s article comes as a revolutionary and persuasive call for the rich people to develop a sense of generosity for the benefit of the general public.
The main theme of Carnegie's essay was the hazard of permitting extensive sums of money to be under the control of few people or organizations which are not well prepared rationally or sincerely to adapt to them (Carnegie, 12). Subsequently, the wealthy business person must accept the obligation of giving his fortune in a way that it will be put to proper use, and not squandered on trivial ways. The very presence of poverty in an industrialist society could be invalidated by the wealthy people in the society. Hoarding personal wealth is morally wrong. Carnegie suggested that the ethics of a free enterprise system in which the government did not interfere with or influence an individual’s right to possess as much wealth as he can get and do whatever they wanted to do it with it were wrong.
In order to fully comprehend the 'Gospel of Wealth', we must first understand his convictions on the subject of capitalism. The emergence of Industrial Revolution and the concept of free market had brought about the individualism and the massive accumulation of profits for personal gain. Carnegie suggested that this system brought about survival for the fittest kind of society where few people became wealthier as the majority languished in poverty. As such, wealth and power was left in the hands of a few people and the gap between the rich and the poor was increased (Zunz, 88). Carnegie hated this disparity and urged his fellow rich businessmen to embrace philanthropy as a way of reducing it.
In addition, Carnegie believed that the wealthy in the society ought to be philanthropic for the common good of the people. He urged the wealthy people to embrace generosity. He suggested that the wealthy have unique abilities, knowledge and are diligent in their business activities. as such, they should distribute their wealth to benefit everyone in the community. Carnegie’s ideas were based on communism rather than capitalism. He viewed communism to be the solution to society’s poverty problems.
Carnegie was of the opinion that wealth should have been shared among individuals through families leaving their money to their relatives, spent on public investments such as building of schools, libraries, hospitals and other public utilities. He felt that the rich people became rich as a result of other people, the society, and therefore, they should give back to them other than wasting their money on non-beneficial ways. This strategy would make sure that the wealth of one would be turned into the wealth of many through sharing and bring about development.
Carnegie reasoned that it the wealthy should set a good example of living and spending their money in a purposeful and meaningful way so as to set precedence for his family and relatives. He believed that by doing this, family members will have a disciplined way to spend money in case the wealthy person dies. They would use the inheritance to make the society better through giving. Carnegie is one of the wealthiest people to inspire such philosophical essentialness and experimentation that it captures and typifies the genuine worth of a wealthy individual and that of being an altruist (Carnegie and Hutner, 56). This essay is an intriguing examination of the distribution of wealth from the point of view of one of the real philanthropists of the twentieth century. Carnegie's perspectives on generous giving are interesting and astounding. His suggestion to the wealthy is that it is good to leave their money to others when they die, and it's immeasurably better to do so while living. That way the money gets spent doing the most useful for the vast majority. In addition, the wealthy head honcho knows best how to spend the money; the general population would squander it.
He also suggests that incredible industrialists held down the wages of their specialists in light of the fact that the additional money they may have made would have been spent on gewgaws that would not have profited society (Carnegie and Hutner, 12). Carnegie, who was enthusiastic about keeping compensation low, utilized all that additional money to build 2500 libraries throughout the country. This is a good approach to advantage the society. Carnegie attempted to persuade his readers that he knew how to fulfill the requirements of the general population vastly improved than did the general population.
Carnegie's article contradicts with other texts such Interview form President McKinley that emphasizes on free trade and defensive mechanisms for the American people without a mention of the importance of philanthropy. However, this article agrees An Indian Perspective by Chief Joseph through the mention of the importance of peace and coexistence through supporting each other in all aspects of society. Carnegie's goals are to have wealth controlled to advantage the regular individuals and group. Nonetheless, I wasn't too certain occasionally when reading this article about which side he was truly on. I think i made sense of it and understood that he supposes wealth ought to be controlled by the hands of a couple however done as such to advantage all individuals whereas most other people who feel that wealth ought to be managed by the assumption that it will just advantage those few.
This essay is informative as it is revolutionary. It It gives a meaningful direction towards change in society on the subject of income inequalities. Philanthropy is a good solution on how to end poverty, bring development and diminish the gap between the rich and poor (Zunz, 23). Carnegie also gives taxation as another solution towards the problem of income inequality. He suggested that the government should initiate progressive taxation systems where those earning more will be taxed more and vice versa. In 1880’s, the negative effects of industrial revolution industrial revolution had taken root. The problem of immigrants, poverty, unemployment and resettlement had taken root (Larry Vandermolen). Carnegie believed that by giving out a portion of wealth to the poor, these problems will be greatly reduced.
Works Cited
Carnegie, Andrew. The Gospel Of Wealth. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.
Print.
Carnegie, Andrew, and Gordon Hutner. The Autobiography Of Andrew Carnegie. Signet;
Reissue, 2006. Print.
Larry Vandermolen, Irene Cheung - from 4e SG/site. "An Indian's Perspective, Chief Joseph".
Wwnorton.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 31 Jan. 2016.
Zunz, Olivier. Philanthropy In America. Princeton University Press, 2014. Print.
