Andrew Carnegie's Gospel Of Wealth

During the Gilded Age, there was a clear distinction between the rich and the poor. Many of the economic elite, Andrew Carnegie included, came to profit from the companies to the point where they controlled the majority of the nation’s wealth. They also came to agree with the views of Herbert Spencer, which was that the “fittest” would use their successes economically to help those in need (the weak); since they were rich, they were fit. This came to rapidly increase the inequality in society as the economic elite became wealthier, leaving a distinct gap between the rich and the poor. For the socialists, the wealth was clearly limited to few individuals and they argued that the wealth of the elite came from those who were working without proper conditions and little pay. …show more content…
As seen in Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth, the rich would help society in distributing wealth. In essence, they did see the ongoing poverty and their vision was to use their superiority and their fortunes to further help the poor. However, this idea clearly shows how the economic elite still are in control and in charge. Although they feel some sense of responsibility to help the poor they still have the ideology were they will continue to dominate because of their wealth and success. Andrew Carnegie further states in the Gospel of Wealth that because they possessed much more wisdom they would be the ones to administer the wealth properly. Overall, Carnegie’s perspective showed that the wealthy would be trustees for the poor were the rich would continue being