Andrew Carnegie Industrial Capitalism Outline

His crafty yet cunning skills in how to make more, using less helped skyrocket Carnegie's steel business (Doc. 4). After all the long, tedious years of building an empire, Carnegie generously donated a large amount of money to the public (doc. 9). He helped fund schools, colleges, libraries, and other public organizations (doc. 9). This selfless act proves that Carnegie had good intentions in helping his community.

The period during the late 19th century was called ‘Gilded Age’ which meant that the period was glittering and prosperous on the surface but corrupt underneath. It was the time that full of scandal-plagued politic and shady business practice. The famous robber Boss Tweed tried his best to make as much money as he could and did whatever he wants without concerning the corruption and justice.

I feel that Carnegie was a very generous and benevolent philanthropist in his giving of hundreds of millions of dollars to schools, libraries, arts and music centers, and other educational and recreational facilities. However, I believe it would have been more ethical to be more

After retiring, Carnegie’s fortune was estimated to be as large as half a billion dollars. From that time on, with the philosophy that the rich have a moral obligation to give away their money, he devoted himself to philanthropy. Although ironic, this man of great fortune strongly believed in the merits of poverty for the development of character and work ethic, and determined that wealthy men should not leave their fortunes to their children, but should give it away, claiming "The man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced." The picture of community service, Carnegie is quoted as saying, "Pittsburgh entered the core of my heart when I was a boy, and cannot be torn out. I can never be one hair’s breadth less loyal to her, or less anxious to help her in any way, than I have been since I could help anything. My treasure is still with you, and how best to serve Pittsburgh is the question which occurs to me almost every day of my life."

In the early nineteenth century the USA was very corrupt. It was a time were monopolistic businesses thrived, and small ones failed. In this time was when J.P. Morgan became the man controlling the most money in the world and ended up owning at his peak, forty companies. In the early nineteenth century J.P Morgan was both a Captain of industry and a Robber Baron.

At the turn of the 19th century also known as the Gilded Age, many immigrants came to the United States looking for opportunities to live a new life that they were not able to live back home. Many of them may have had hopes of finding a miraculous career that would bring them fame and fortune just like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan did. But in reality it was not as glamorous and prosperous as it may have seemed to be. Instead it was filled with greed and corruption. Although the United States experienced an economic boom, it created an extremely wealthy upper class. Thus only widening the wealth gap between the rich and poor during this era.

Andrew Carnegie, a Gilded Age industrialist, was a captain of industry, because he expanded the American steel industry through hard work, becoming one of the richest people in history, and then donated about 90% of his fortune in an attempt to improve society.

In the movie, The Richest Man in the World, Andrew Carnegie played a major role in influencing the Industrial Revolution, which changed the economy of the US and the world forever. This era brought upon significant changes through economic developments that would not only change the ways of the economy but also the social aspect of society, especially within the cities where this growth was located. The shift from hand-made to machine-made products increased productivity and decreased costs. Through the innovations of the new forms of energy, such as iron, and then steel, establishments of factories began, competition between businessmen arose, and innovations of transportation in the city through railroads and bridges developed. The

From 1865 to 1900, a surge in industry and business began to come into effect. Railroads, oil, steel, and various inventions enabled the rise of these businesses. As time went on, the leaders of the businesses would become more eager to achieve wealth. Some historians have described these people as ‘robber barons’ or people who use extreme methods to control and maintain their wealth and power. Others would chastise that belief, declaring that it is an unjust conclusion to draw. Despite the oppositions fervent belief, the undeniable evidence supports the belief that many of the businessmen in the late 19th century were ‘robber barons’. These men had a blatant disregard for human lives and an unquenchable urge to assume control over citizens’ lives that instilled corruption and greed in them.

The Gilded age was the period in U.S. history where politics had caused a halt in social advancement. The Robber Barons had become so rich and powerful that the country had plunged into an era of corruption. As illustrated in Joseph Keppler’s , “The Bosses of the Senate,” the monopolies of the rich had garnered immense influence in the government, effectively removing the people

The market mechanism of the Gilded Age was laissez-faire capitalism, an economic system based solely on the law of supply and demand, driven single-handedly by the motivation of entrepreneurs to generate profit, regulated purely by the ruthless competition between companies and owners. Such an economic environment inevitably resulted in monopoly and encouraged illegal business practices to get ahead due to the lack of government intervention. In this free-market capitalism, large companies were able to lobby the government and hurt, or even prevent other businesses from kickstarting and competing, by controlling the nation’s political outcomes through financing its politicians. These robber barons running these billion-dollar companies extracted the maximum profits from labor by bitterly preventing their employees from organizing unions. Ultimately left with a monopoly, these companies were able to deceive their consumers about their products and were to set skyrocket prices without any competition for customers to turn to for cheaper alternatives.

Accurately established by many historians, the capitalists who shaped post-Civil War industrial America were regarded as corrupt “robber barons”. In a society in which there was a severe imbalance in the dynamics of the economy, these selfish individuals viewed this as an opportunity to advance in their financial status. Thus, they acquired fortunes for themselves while purposely overseeing the struggles of the people around them. Presented in Document A, “as liveried carriage appear; so do barefooted children”, proved to be a true description of life during the 19th century. In hopes of rebuilding America, the capitalists’ hunger for wealth only widened the gap between the rich and poor.

The United States at the end of the 19th century was a breeding ground for big business and the strong connection it achieved with the government. At this point the wealthy has monopolized the country and the government has stepped aside corrupting the foundation in which it was meant for the people.

We live in a world controlled by an invisible yet very present force that shapes the way we live our daily lives. With industry as its host and technology as the blood being pumped into its heart, it is a force powerful enough to bend politics to fit its needs. Capitalism; a method of industry where production and distribution are privately or corporately owned, its operation grows through profits, exploitation of labor, and extinguishing competition. During the Industrial Revolution technology was on the global stage. Factories and machines are built in existing cities producing and distributing mass goods on a global scale. Over time this fast production of goods would replace the old agricultural economy to a modern urban economy. Today the revolution is praised for creating a global trade market while surging us into a world of technology.

Industrial capitalism, when developed, was something altogether different from any previous formats in both scale and in practice. Joyce Appleby's definition of industrial capitalism was "An economic system that relies on investment in machines and technology that are used to increase production of marketable goods"- The Relentless Revolution by Joyce Appelby: http://dft.ba/-appelby. Industrial capitalism first developed in Britain in the nineteenth century. Britain had lots of advantages at this time; it was the dominant power on the seas and was making good money from its Colonies, including the slave trade.