Andrew Carnegie: respected genius or selfish industrialist?

Andrew Carnegie | Photo: Shutterstock

CHe arrived in Allegheny City in 1848 – at the age of 12, one would expect Andrew Carnegie’s name to appear in Pittsburgh’s newspapers decades later when he was a railway man. Instead, the city met him on November 2, 1849. A blurb in the Daily Gazette in Pittsburgh informed the city that “A messenger boy on the name Andrew Carnegie … yesterday had found a draft for the amount of five hundred dollars. Like an honest guy, he immediately made the fact known and deposited the paper in good hands. ”

An honest guy! The 13-year-old Carnegie had fled with $ 500 and helped his fighting family, which laid out in Scotland. Instead, he did the right, an early indication of his strong moral character. Bravo!

But as Carnegie Biographer David Nasaw emphasized, the design without identification was worthless. As if you have tried to have a check that you have found on the street, only to have to say for the bank employee: “Sir, that is interpreted by Giant Eagle.” What is a story of an honest boy on his surface is actually an early indicator of Andrew’s future as opportunist who knew how to maneuver yourself in a position of public seriousness, even if the full truth had harder lines.

So it fits Andrew – and our relationship with his legacy. He is either loved or hated. Worship for his “genius” or despise for his “self -addiction”. For everything to blame or only the lack of monetary people for industrial Henry Clay Fricks Despotic rule. Worthy of the murals and statues or deserved trigger.

My therapist always reminded me of something that today’s society has largely forgotten: “Several things can be true.” Andrew Carnegie contained a variety.

In a note that was already quite rich at the age of 33, Carnegie said: “The accumulation of wealth is one of the worst types of idolatry. No idol, the more debase than the worship of the money. “He publicly wrote in 1889:” Not bad, but good, is from the breed of the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it. ”

The man who wrote in an article from 1886: “Time is approaching, I hope when it will be impossible in this country to work men 12 hours a day,” seemed to forget that his employees were not allowed to return in 1885 To return to which Edgar Thomson Steel does not work to increase the working day – to 12 hours.

Who wrote: “To be expected that you will be too peaceful for the necessities of life from your daily wages and see a new man.

He, whose correspondence revealed that he was regularly in contact with Frick during the HomeSead Lockout from 1892, and the extended knowledge that Pinkerton Guards were engaged, the New York Times said in the following January, “the past to bury the past , of which I knew nothing about. ”

These are really damn reports of his words that do not agree with the truth. And so some argue, should we delete it and no longer consider his legacy as it is worth the modern Pittsburgh.

But there is a complicated factor that is worth researching: its humanity.

Andy lived in the shadow of a literal castle and grew in a family whose motto was “death to privilege”. He spent his childhood to see his Weaver father as a provider until the family left her beloved Scotland to Pittsburgh, where Young Andy decided early on that he would assimilate, learn and earn. He learned as a coil boy and worked 12-hour days in a textile mill for low wages. He learned a telegraph operation and then the railway industry before he went on iron, and finally a pivot point in steel, which consolidated its way towards midas-like wealth.

He wanted to do it better for his mother than his father ever could, although this meant being a capitalist and industrialist – which enabled him against work. Andrew seemed to struggle with this moral struggle all his life; He never fully freed himself from his central childhood and sometimes spent her with his dear grandfather to visit the work activists’ meetings. How could he reconcile the opposing forces in his soul-work and social progress towards Laissez-Faire capitalism and prosperity?

He found a convenient answer in a personalized version of Herbert Spencer’s social Darwinism, who theorized that industrialists like Carnegie use the tendency to earn their thoughts to earn prosperity and to improve society. Here was the magical formula: Carnegie was not wealthy because he was greedy, but because he couldn’t help it. The trick was to use its money for improving those without the same evolutionary promotion. It is a very problematic theory, but it served to relieve its inner turbulence. Once he was annoyed that I would go beyond the hope of permanent recovery that I would continue to collect assets. This fear never escaped him completely, but this theory calmed him down that it would be justified if he revealed everything before death.

He did not give all his money from guilt over the farm – or the Johnstown Flood. He determined his plans in a piece that was published a few years before these fatal events, no legacy and encouraged his wealthy contemporaries to do the same. Essentially, he said, they earn everything they can because it is the rich that are given by the development with the skills to improve the world, the economy into capital and the employment of work – but give away everything before They die so that they can continue to help those who would help themselves.

There are those who look at his murals and rightly wonder whether it is not time to continue from Carnegie’s legacy – but we should also look at what he has left behind. We live in a Pittsburgh that would simply not have become what it did without him, from his role in creating the steel capital of America to his part in every science and art that came from Carnegie Mellon University. We should recognize that every library that has enriched a spirit, every work of art that has enriched a soul, and every foundation that is still alive and gives is its legacy.

In contrast to other industrialists who left their heirs huge prosperity transactions, Andrew Carnegie gave away everything – around 350 million US dollars, an astronomical sum in today’s dollar. He loved his money; He was annoyed for his soul. He took a lot; He gave a lot. Several things are true.

Not pray Andrew Carnegie; Don’t throw it into the trash can of history either. Confirm where you feel like you have gone wrong and his commitment into events that stole lives. Also recognize that because of a constant moral struggle, in which his inner “death to privilege” with the rich man war heart he left a legacy of permanent good.

It is okay that he agrees in many ways.

In her column, Virginia Montanez intervenes deeply into the local history to find the forgotten secrets of Pittsburgh. Register for your e -mail newsletter at: atmemingspace.substack.com.