Andrew Carnegie may have been the wealthiest man of his time, with an obviously prestigious education, however, I do not agree with his opinion on the administering of wealth and how one’s money should be handled during and throughout his lifetime. Carnegie’s opinion on the administration of wealth was that it was the responsibility of a wealthy man to distribute his money to foundations or people who needed it, and to help better society. His argument is that if said money was spread out over the population instead of concentrated into the hands of select families then there would be no way to benefit a nation on a large scale like a wealthy man could. He said in his essay, “It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so.” I strongly disagree with this opinion and believe that the money obtained and held by the wealthy of this time would do more good distributed evenly among the surplus population, rather than placing it in the hands of a few and leaving the rest to work, starve, and struggle under their power.

The opinion of Andrew Carnegie in this article is that of the three ways that money can be disposed of, it is best that a man spend or donate the money in his own lifetime, rather than after death, to where he sees fit and in the best interest of society. How a wealthy man views the needs of his society, though, is dramatically different from the needs of the majority of the population. In his words, “This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of Wealth…The man of wealth thus becoming to sole agent and trustee for his poorer brethren… doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.” Andrew Carnegie may have believed that he knew what the public needed, but he did not know of the suffering that went on in his own factories or the streets of the cities where he ran his company. Carnegie donated a good portion of his money to founding musical centers and libraries; however, these donations did very little to better the lives of the poor, for the factory workers under his employment had little to no education; all they needed to know was how to work hard for little pay and how to survive on it. The libraries he funded are helpful today, in an educated, middle-class society, but when the majority of the population is poor, centers for learning do not do half the amount of good that food or money would have. How were the poor he wished to educate supposed to afford this education? Rather than donate all of his money to several large causes, it would have served him better to perhaps spare a few of his millions of dollars and raise his workers’ wages.

Also mentioned in The Gospel of Wealth is that it is only fair that a man hold all of the money and power in a society if he earns it himself. For Carnegie, no doubt, this was easy to say; after all, he had come to America as an immigrant and become to richest man alive. For others, though, they did not have the proper upbringing or education in order to achieve this. Quoted from the Gospel of Wealth: “It will be understood that fortunes are here spoken of, not moderate sums saved by many years of effort, the returns from which are required for the comfortable maintenance and education of families. This is not wealth, but only competence, which should be the aim of all to acquire.” Carnegie goes on to argue that the surplus wealth he has can be disposed of in a more practical manner to benefit everyone. One must wonder, however, what it is that this supposed benefit comes from. The money which Carnegie and other millionaires held that could have been given to the poor cost many their lives. Quite a few perished in factories, or starved, or lived a miserable life with no purpose or happiness. Was the cost of saving all that money to fund a library worth the lives of those who worked to provide that income? For the workers in his factories produced the steel that gave him his success, however he did not raise their wages, nor provide them with hearty meals three times a day. In his opinion, sacrificing their lives and their happiness was worth it to start a science project or build libraries. How much is a human life, worth, though? How can one place a value on anyone’s head? In my opinion, the best way to determine whether or not Andrew Carnegie's idea presented in The Gospel of Wealth is a valid one, is to determine how much the lives he sacrificed are worth, versus the funding he provided for the advancement of our nation.