Introduction
The life of a hero is characterized by how much they are remembered after their death. Some people are referred to as heroes even before their death. Their lives encompass qualities such as eminence, character and even complexities which can be summarized as positive in their lifetime, their negative part notwithstanding. The strong democratic stand of people like Roosevelt and Churchill makes history worth reading. Of course, there are those remembered for their negative contribution (not heroes in the strictest sense) to society like Hitler. The life of Andrew Carnegie embodies outright good and evil creating a paradox in defining the hero he is. His life as narrated by Peter Krass unravels the reality of a complicated man, a one-time poor boy, an enthusiastic and ruthless businessman building the most profitable steel company in the world in another instance, yet a renowned philanthropist giving away his riches while preaching peace to those who would listen to him. This essay seeks to understand the life of Andrew Carnegie as illustrated in Krass’s book Carnegie and more importantly why the man did as portrayed.
Main body
Krass’s book is not the only one that has been written on Carnegie, being the famous man the latter was. As expected, a one time richest man in the world with a wealth of $100 billion in today’s dollars, only half of Bill Gates’s $50 billion at the time of the stock market bubble, would attract the attention of any sane man. His ‘literary assistant’ James Bridge presents the earliest unauthorized history of his company. He did his work in 1903; something though not widely read today formed a strong basis for the harshness and ruthlessness that Krass has passed on today’s Carnegie. Credible, we could say is the work of James having served in the industries and having gained access to records of the steel company. It was closely followed by the work of Casson, the business writer who was little beguiled by Carnegie’s achievements and wrote about him in 1907. Between 1911 and 1914, Carnegie himself had perhaps realized he is an object of public interest and he thus wrote about himself albeit his work was published after his death.
Other works have been done on Carnegie, some interpretive essays mostly dwelling on the writers’ perspectives, vital studies of his work and life by Jonathan Hughes in 1965, Harold Livesay in 1975 and Stuart Leslie in 1989. The three biographies published are 1932 one by Burton Hendrick, Joseph Wall’s in 1970 and our object of discussion, most recent Peter Krauss’s Carnegie in 2002. Hendrick’s work was based on information he got from Carnegie’s workers and family. Wall, the historian based his work on an academician’s view, giving a more neutral piece. Krauss’s work is neither lacking in scholarly quality nor is its sources not credible. It is rather a combination of prior records with which comes a more analytic view of Carnegie; telling us why his character is how it is. It has exceeded earlier work though we cannot say it has replaced it. Like his predecessors, Krass has made use of Carnegie’s records in the Library of Congress which include company minutes, correspondence mails and other material with United States Steel Corporation’s records. A close colleague of Carnegie- Henry Clay Frick is invaluable to Krauss’s book. Most of the records were not accessible to earlier scholars before the earlier 1980s, hence a reason for Krauss’s upgraded version.
Who is Carnegie himself? He strikes a reader as a complex character whose contradictions are a reflection of the twists of capitalism. One can say Carnegie’s wealth was a combination of luck, skill, vision, exploiting his workers, bribery, deception, technological advancement, monopoly and so on.
He is an individual desperately determined to win. He is overly obsessed with competitiveness and that is why he is still in business even when he has obtained significant wealth in his thirties. He was what many people want to refer to as an egoist, one who wants to satisfy his needs regardless of other people’s feelings and welfare. At the same time, he wanted to have clean relationships with people and wanted to be well thought of.
Is it because of his humble beginnings that he wanted a rapport with people, perhaps an explanation to his philanthropist activities? Having been born to a poor and politically radical artisan family, the man from Scotland had worked as a telegraph clerk at one time. He then goes to a railroad executive, to a steel magnate in the US and lastly to a philanthropist and an advocate of peace. He is presented as a person who accumulated wealth because he had a responsibility. Andrew refers to himself and people like him who have gained popularity due to their superiority and wealth in his essay “gospel of wealth”, as trustees who are meant to bring good to society.
Employee life and company management are significantly outlined in the book. Andrew was not sloppy when recruiting and so his thoroughness especially with senior management is portrayed. He ensured that those holding senior positions were not disgruntled and were ever committed to increasing production and sales while reducing costs. In doing this, these senior managers’ success was often rewarded with grants and shares in the company. Those in lower ranks received bonuses. Where Carnegie seemed merciless, even inhuman, is in the lives of workmen in the line of production; the men whose sole contribution was their physical sweat. They were poorly paid, and as if that was not enough their working conditions and hours was pathetic as exemplified in the excerpt, “All men in the mill had reason to be ornery characters, because, in addition to contending with the heat and the physical strain, the incessant roaring furnaces added immeasurable stress.
There was no time for rest and relaxation. They worked seven-day weeks, and the only holidays granted by the mill owners were Christmas and the fourth of July. Meanwhile, Carnegie took months to gallivant across Europe” (Krass xi) He was at the top of the hierarchy and Andrew identified those who would be in his team. He did this not only to enrich them but to his advantage as they were individuals often interested in the company’s well-being. Being an absentee master he employed people who could work well in his absence. The four deputies he had were people known to have earned his immense trust while gaining an equal amount of wealth associated with the post. He worked closely with his brother Tom, who died in 1886; Tom was the quieter version of Andrew and unlike his brother, he displayed better people management capability.
What changed Andrew’s treatment of people, more or less the same people he had used to obtain so much wealth? Andrew was not a Christian perse, maybe not like his counterpart, John Rockefeller who was also a steel baron. Though both used ruthlessness and competition to accumulate their wealth, Rockefeller’s philanthropic activities could be attributed to his affiliation to Christianity, something that made him give back to the community. Carnegie was perhaps disturbed by the radical emotions and convictions fed to him in his early years (remember his background), making him feel ashamed of dying wealthy. His independent mother also must have had an impact on his insatiable zeal to succeed. He might have seemed unconcerned with the realities of what his business entailed. The filthy neighborhood his ‘moneymakers’ lived in was pushed to the back of his mind and he preferred cleaner New York and European suburbs, maybe he applied the ‘out of sight out of mind’ principle, though the ghosts caught up with him later. He was afraid of being judged guilty; hence his efforts to leave the world better than he had met it (Carnegie 540).
Conclusion
We may not be in a better position to judge. What our said hero applied to accumulate his wealth is despicable. Some may argue that his method of capitalism in his time was acceptable in part because he was not the only one doing it. On top of it all, he overcame his guilt consciousness by giving back to the people, not necessarily those that he had hurt but their future generations. We cannot condemn Andrew Carnegie.
Works Cited
Krass, Peter. “Carnegie”. New York: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2002. Web.