1 abr 1868 año - Impact of Industrialization: The Concentration of Wealth; Horatio Alger myth (WXT, SOC)

Descripción:

During this period in history, 90 percent of the wealth was concentrated in the top 10 percent of the population. The wealthy like the Vanderbilt family would show off their wealth, buy large mansions, and have expensive parties to flaunt their wealth to others. Regardless, many Americans paid little to no mind to the large wealth gap between the poor and the wealthy. Instead, they were obsessed with the stories of men like Carnegie Mellon, Edison, or the Horatio Alger novels, that would display a poor young man that with honesty, hard work, and a little bit of luck managed to accumulate large amounts of wealth. This misconception is known as the Horatio Alger myth. The truth is that a story like that of Carnegie Mellon was unusual. The harsher truth is that most of the wealthy are white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males who come from upper or middle-class families who either own large businesses or work in banking. It was extremely hard for a person from a modest background to make it as large as Carnegie Mellon, but people were still obsessed with the possibility of them becoming wealthy through hard work and a little bit of luck.

On Wealth: With the concentration of wealth in America being within the top 10 percent of Americans, many Americans believed that the wealthy were simply using that wealth for themselves and living extravagant lifestyles like that of the Vanderbilt family. However, in the excerpt of On Wealth, Andrew Carnegie argued that the wealthy should distribute their wealth to establishments that would benefit the masses rather than spending their money sporadically and explicitly displaying their wealth. Carnegie donated his money to educational institutions and constructed his own University and Rockefeller dedicated his elderly life to philanthropy as Carnegie stated a man with great fortune should do. As a man who came from a poor life and worked his way up to upper-class status, he can sympathize with the poor and advocate for other wealthy individuals to support those in need. Carnegie’s story became a beacon of hope to less affluent Americans in the United State and prompted them to believe that they could be like Carnegie if they worked hard enough.

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