Andrew Carnegie:
H - With the year being 1889, Social Darwinism was now controlling much of the wealth in American, for better and for worse. With massive amounts of wealth going to the elite, little was left for the lower echelons of America. With backlash coming, to ease the moral burden likely on these oligarchs, the idea of philanthropy was reborn in America.
P - The author was very clearly in support of helping those of lower classes who he thought were wanting to change their situation into something better. In this way, he still subscribes to some form of Social Darwinism, as he believes that flat out almsgiving would be detrimental to the human race, but he also believes that almsgiving doesn’t help the individual too.
The author also believed that the rich man’s wealth should’ve been used to improve other people’s lives. More specifically, he believed that the rich man should have had an active part in helping this come true, not just waiting until he died to bestow his wealth upon something.
Factual Information (Historical event or development):
During this time, a popular outlook within Christianity was that people should focus not just on the next life but also the current life they lived. As a result, people had more motivations to be charitable and to live their life instead of just using it to prepare for the afterlife.
In this era, there was a humongous amount of destitution within America. Lower working class people would have had to work long and hard hours to scrape by. As a result, some people believed that those who were deemed to be deserving of assistance in these classes that were lower than the elite should get said assistance from those of wealth.
During this time, American society and the economy experienced rapid change. As a result, many people tried to keep up with the new hardships they faced. People tried to work extremely hard in belief that they would reach success because of it. This belief fell in line with the thought of Social Darwinism, which was also prevalent at the time.
What does this document tell us about the author and the time period?
This tells us that the author, Andrew Carnegie, was a very wealthy and successful man who was willing to help out other people who may not be as successful as himself. However, he did still follow some of the structure in social Darwinism. This was not a common mindset because during this time, the economy was rapidly changing and people were becoming more conscience about their money.
Change:
One change is the politics that took place during this time period. During this time, there were lots of political corruption by large businesses which caused the questioning of democracy. Is America democratic because businesses are controlling votes?