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Andrew Carnegie: Evaluating a Capitalist Icon - Page 4© Michael J. Swogger
Page 4
Jan 25, 2003
What should be the lesson we teach our children and ourselves learn about Andrew Carnegie? For certain, hard work and innovation were paramount qualities that led to his success. And his influence on American economic and educational life should never be downplayed. But when discussing his great contributions to American industry, the story and sacrifice of his laborers should in no way be diminished. The very fact that Carnegie's degree of success had very much to do with his unwillingness to pay his workers respectable wages and provide safer working conditions. And while his steel industry was not the worst in this regard (the coal and railroad industries were among the most infamous), he had a responsibility to look after those who helped build his fortune. He himself recognized that "[The] poor man may have a wife and children dependent upon his labor. Whether medicine for a sick child, or even nourishing food for a delicate wife, is procurable, depends upon his steady employment." 10 Is failure to work further to match his professed ideals with his actions was a horrible failure on his part, a failure that would have enormous consequences for workers in the steel industry for years to come. A discussion of his rags-to-riches success in America needs to be conducted alongside the fact that he, like many of his contemporaries, hired a substitute to serve in his place during the Civil War.11 A look at his philanthropy, which was truly amazing, must also include the acknowledgement that his wife, Louise Whitfield Carnegie, was highly influential (and even agitating) in convincing him to give back to the community. There is more to his philanthropy than being the "archetypal hero" who knew that America was about "the freedom to get rich, and then the duty to give that wealth away," as Johnson puts it.12 His wife very much played the role of the moral voice after his retirement, much like the role played by Eleanor Roosevelt to her husband concerning civil rights and women's rights issues. Carnegie was one of the greatest giants of American capitalism. But becoming such a giant had its price. In the end, do we say that because Carnegie did do much more good than harm and therefore should be a capitalist hero? This is a very poor criterion for such an assessment. This kind of appraisement reduces the struggle of Carnegie's workers to mere necessities and imperatives to success. It assumes that to be a success in America like Carnegie, one must be willing to overlook the destructive effects one's policies might have on the people whose livelihood is dependent on the labor provided them through those policies. It causes one to draw the conclusion that because Carnegie became the richest man in America, this was the only way to do it.
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