Andrew Carnegie: A Hero Or Hero?

A hero is a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements or noble qualities. These heros put their best selves forward in service to help humanity. Heros take action on behalf of others that are in need. Andrew Carnegie was in fact was a hero. This subject can be controversial because of the fact that Carnegie gave away money after he died, and not while he was alive. Carnegie started off in a very poor family and eventually became very wealthy. This shows the world that anyone can be rich, even if they were born into a poor family. Andrew Carnegie reached a high level of success in money and power and is considered a hero because he showed the qualities of a hero like being caring and generous by donating his money
This concept of social darwinism said that if you were born and raised poor, you would stay poor forever and would never be able to become rich. The first Document, Document B shows how society was separated in 1800s. It says that the poor people had it worse. In this document he comes across as arguing that he is rich and that it was better and he was better than everyone else. Carnegie is basically saying that social darwinism is a good thing. The second document, Document M, shows the 3 ways of what a man can do with his money when he dies. The first option of what you can do with your money is to leave it for your family. Carnegie thought that this option was the worst of them all. He believed that if you left your money for your children, then they would not know the value of it. He wanted them to work for their money and understand the hard work it takes. The second option was to leave your money for charity. This was also not the best option. Carnegie said that if you leave all your money for charity, you are basically saying that I should take my money with me, but if I can’t take it with me, I might as well just leave it. This is a nice gesture, but not really at the same time. The person could have been donating to charity while they were alive, rather than giving it becuase they have no use for it when they are dead. The best option that Carnegie believed in was to give your
Documents N and O show Carnegie helping the poor and donating to his community and other places. Document N is a part of Carnegie’s Philanthropy. This chart was created by Joseph Frazier Wall in 1970. This chart is showing how generous Carnegie was by giving away $350,685,653 to Princeton University, TIAA, Dunfermline Trust, Homestead Relief Fund, Church organs, Carnegie Peace Endowment, Universities of Scotland, Teacher’s Pension fund, Carnegie Institution, Free Public libraries, Carnegie Corporation and much more. The Carnegie Corporation’s net assets in 2005 were listed as $2,167,000,000. The foundation is currently giving out about $100,000,000 a year with most of it used for education. The next document, Document O is a political Cartoon from The Saturday Globe in 1892. This cartoon is showing Carnegie lowering the wages that he gave to his employees by 2%. Lowering these wages would help Carnegie donate more money to his community. This shows that Carnegie was a hero because he gave and is still giving his money to people who need it. Carnegie knew that he would not live forever and he had no use for his money after he died, so he decided to use it before he died on things that were important to him. In Conclusion, Carnegie most definitely earns the title of hero. He deserves this title because of his kindness, generosity and willingness to give. Even though Carnegie believed in Social Darwinism,