Andrew Carnegie

The Gilded Age was marked by the increase in poverty and social tension across the nation even as industrialization benefitted many and enriched a few. But why did industrial progress seem to increase poverty and social inequality rather than diminish it? Ultimately because of the practices of business and land monopoly, the growth of large corporations; all of which limited the chances of upward mobility for the common man.

As a result, the average American worker and farmer found himself slipping into low-paid wage work and despair. As we moved from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era, the social turmoil and bitter debates escalated over how best to control an industrial system that produced unprecedented progress and wealth, but also unprecedented levels of poverty, suffering, and alienation.

SOCIAL GOSPEL:

The Social Gospel Movement was a religious movement that arose during the second half of the nineteenth century. Ministers, especially ones belonging to the Protestant branch of Christianity, began to tie salvation and good works together. They argued that to honor God, people must put aside their own earthly desires and help other people, especially the needy. The purpose of wealth was not to hoard it but to share it with other, less fortunate people. The ideas that originated from the Social Gospel would heavily influence the Progressive Movement.

Followers of the Social Gospel Movement implemented numerous reforms to help other people. One of their most important contributions to society was the creation of settlement houses. Settlement houses provided numerous opportunities for less fortunate people, including access to education, free or low-cost health care, free or low-cost housing, and innumerable other benefits.

THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH:

"The Gospel of Wealth", is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in 1895 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner.

This approach was contrasted with the traditional method of handing down wealth to heirs. Carnegie argued that surplus wealth is put to best use when it is administered carefully by the wealthy--it should be given to libraries, schools, and institutions of education to give the poor an opportunity to rise.

Carnegie also argues against wasteful use of capital in the form of extravagance, irresponsible spending, or self-indulgence, instead of promoting the administration of capital over the course of one's lifetime toward the cause of reducing the gap between the rich and poor.

Both of these movements helped to fill in where the government was lacking. The government, through these movements, begins to see a gap that they could fill and a way that they could potentially help. These organizations lay the groundwork for government assistance programs of the future--everything from Welfare, and Unemployment, to Jobs Training, and Education.

Adapted from: https://www.edwardtodonnell.com/henry-george.html; http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Social_Gospel_Movement; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_of_Wealth