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Carnegie: A Man of Contradiction
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Andrew Carnegie was a man of contradiction. Throughout his life his actions and beliefs were often contradictory. A lot of this contradiction had to do with his economic and social philosophy which was that the rich were meant to be rich and the poor were meant to be poor. This was what he believed as an adult and it was how he ran his business empire. However, he had been the poorest of the poor when he was a kid, but then he became the richest man in the world at one point. So Carnegie contradicts himself because he was both poor and rich. Other contradictions were when he treated the poor somewhat equally to the rich, like building libraries where they could learn. However, these contradictions about Carnegie can be explained somewhat by focusing on and understanding some of the contradictory influences that Carnegie had throughout his life. Carnegie grew up in Dunfermline, Scotland during the industrial revolution. Both his father and his uncle were leaders who pushed for the rights of ordinary people and they gave speeches and held private meetings. Another influence was the family’s religion, Calvinism. Calvinism says that there should be justice for everyone and that everyone should essentially be equal in terms of what they have and their status. So his family and his religion influenced him that people should be equal. Heilbroner also explains that Carnegie was influenced a lot by poetry, especially the poet Burns. A lot of his poetry is about egalitarianism, so similar to Calvinism and his father’s political ideas. But Carnegie also saw that the industrial revolution put both his parents out of jobs and threw his family into terrible poverty. He experienced and probably became sensitive to the miseries of the world. But in contrast, his family’s poverty and what he began to learn about some of the new technology of the industrial revolution also became the driving force behind his overpowering urge to accumulate wealth.
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