Our Billionaire Philanthropists
“Despite the self-congratulatory hallucinations, “Wealth” contains a genuinely noble philanthropic message. The rich man has a duty to live unostentatiously, Carnegie argues—to provide modestly for his own dependents, and “to consider [the balance of his wealth] simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer […] to produce the most beneficial results for the community.” He goes on to say, unblushingly, that the man of wealth is the ablest, best kind of man, who should therefore become “agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.” One may wonder how these last remarks would have been received by the jailed and brutalized strikers of Carnegie’s Homestead Mill.
