Andrew Carnegie: A Hero Or Villain?

Many people would claim that Spiderman, Thor, Ironman, Batman, Captain Man and Superman are all heroes. In reality a hero is a person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. An everyday hero would be a mom or dad, a brother or sister, or an aunt. A villain is a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot.The question now is, is Andrew Carnegie a Hero or Villain? Carnegie, born on November 1835 was poor growing up. He would have to take low paying jobs and work his way up to finally getting paid 8.00 dollars a week at the age of 17. At the age of 24 Carnegie worked hard and became superintendent now making 1,500 dollars a year. By the time Carnegie retired he had 225,000,000 …show more content…
As people always say, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, this has now happened to Carnegie. Based on a source, Hamid Garland, he spoke to some of Carnegie’s employees and found out that for 12 hour shift the employee were getting paid 2 dollars and a quarter a day. Others weren't so lucky and were getting paid one dollar and forty cents. This isn't fair to the employees because Carnegie was making plenty of money to be able to give his employees a little raise. Garland also found out that working in the mills was also a dangerous job because sometimes their equipment would break and cause an explosion or even sometimes the equipment would fall on the workers and kill them. Carnegie could have at least attempted to buy better equipment to better protect his employees but he couldn't even do that. In the cartoon given by The Saturday Globe, Carnegie is shown as playing a double life. He is seen giving $5000 to libraries but cut his employers wages by 20%. He is not treating his employers fairly here because he is basically giving away money for free but is reducing the pay of people who are actually working for their money. With all the money he has you'd think he can pay his employees well but he is taking advantage of their labor. In a document it is shown that the average pay for an employee is less than 2 dollars when they are working a little …show more content…
Some may argue that Carnegie is a hero because on a document from 1903 it shows how the cost of steel was decreasing as the years went on and the cost to produce steel was decreasing as well. This is what really caught many people's’ attention, they did not have to spend so much money on steel anymore. He is well known for becoming a successful businessman after growing up poor. Still even after having a great accomplishment, Andrew Carnegie is not a hero because he was ignorant and had no class. He only tried to make himself seem like a nice guy when he was close to death, but by then it was too late, all his secrets were

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