Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

[ iv ] [14: 1429–61] In 1900 the American industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie, though not personally a religious man, chose religious terms to describe and advocate an outlook on life. He called it the ‘Gospel of Wealth’. It was but one among many such apologies being written around the turn of the century by industrialists who were making great wealth and who found a need to provide a rationale for their own fortune and a guide for others to prosper [16: 301–10]. Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth, and that of other writers, to be sure, had in common a dependency upon an outlook called social Darwinism. This was an extremely voguish interpretation of life that blended some features of Charles Darwin's notions of ‘the survival of the fittest’ with C alvinist incentives to be morally earnest about earning and capitalist economics. The Gospel of Wealth ran counter to one inherited and one contemporary interpretation. Historically, the P rotestants who dominated American culture, while preaching responsibility and stewardship, also saw economic status to be a part of the determined aspect of life. That is, just as sons of noble people inherited nobility while peasants were to be content with their peonage, so the offspring of the landed and affluent were likely to inherit wealth. The message to them was not to trust in their riches or to hoard them; meanwhile, the poor were told to be content ... log in or subscribe to read full text