In total, Carnegie financed the creation of some 3,000 libraries, located in 47 U.S. states, and also in Canada, Britain, Ireland, Belgium, Serbia, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, and Fiji.
In total, Carnegie financed the creation of some 3,000 libraries, located in 47 U.S. states, and also in Canada, Britain, Ireland, Belgium, Serbia, France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the West Indies, and Fiji.
Didn’t he exploit his workers to amass his wealth in the first place?
Its_pipo on
Yeah the whole “robber baron donates to charity” pipeline is peak historical irony
Electrical-Help5512 on
It’s a complicated topic. For me, the philanthropy doesn’t outweigh the way he brutally killed workers striking for fair wages. Everyone will have a different line in the sand.
Those workers that he (and others) underpaid sure would like that if they had the time and or money to get an education.
Lilfozzy on
Ahh yes, the guy who’s famous for siccing the Pinkertons on his striking workers after they got fed up with the low pay and multiple workplace accidents/deaths; he probably lost a lot of sleep getting his gunmen to shoot the strikers.
WookieBugger on
I’m sure whoever said the first line was just super judgy and didn’t understand the wonderful things rich people can do. Like, who made that guy a moral authority?
kermit_the_roosevelt on
Oh shit, I finally meet a billionaire apologist in the wild. I thought they were a myth.
JustACharacterr on
Wow, that’s almost one library per person in Johnstown, Pennsylvania that Andrew Carnegie and his rich friends killed when they deliberately weakened the structural integrity of a dam so they could have a private fishing club and it then flooded and killed 2,209 people, almost 400 of whom were children! And then they claimed in court that it was an Act of God and lied about the extent of the modifications they made to the dam, then paid no damages or penalties or faced any accountability whatsoever for killing 2,200 people just so they could have some more fish in a lake!
The Prosperity Gospel is bullshit; you don’t get to exchange wealth you accumulated off the oppression and degradation of your fellow man into heavenly favor, and building libraries doesn’t outweigh killing thousands of men, woman, and children and then covering up the aftermath. If there is a hell, Andrew Carnegie is certainly burning in it.
9 Comments
Didn’t he exploit his workers to amass his wealth in the first place?
Yeah the whole “robber baron donates to charity” pipeline is peak historical irony
It’s a complicated topic. For me, the philanthropy doesn’t outweigh the way he brutally killed workers striking for fair wages. Everyone will have a different line in the sand.
Please check the beautiful [Carnegie library in Reims, France](https://www.bm-reims.fr/patrimoine/architecture-carnegie.aspx?_lg=fr-FR)
Those workers that he (and others) underpaid sure would like that if they had the time and or money to get an education.
Ahh yes, the guy who’s famous for siccing the Pinkertons on his striking workers after they got fed up with the low pay and multiple workplace accidents/deaths; he probably lost a lot of sleep getting his gunmen to shoot the strikers.
I’m sure whoever said the first line was just super judgy and didn’t understand the wonderful things rich people can do. Like, who made that guy a moral authority?
Oh shit, I finally meet a billionaire apologist in the wild. I thought they were a myth.
Wow, that’s almost one library per person in Johnstown, Pennsylvania that Andrew Carnegie and his rich friends killed when they deliberately weakened the structural integrity of a dam so they could have a private fishing club and it then flooded and killed 2,209 people, almost 400 of whom were children! And then they claimed in court that it was an Act of God and lied about the extent of the modifications they made to the dam, then paid no damages or penalties or faced any accountability whatsoever for killing 2,200 people just so they could have some more fish in a lake!
The Prosperity Gospel is bullshit; you don’t get to exchange wealth you accumulated off the oppression and degradation of your fellow man into heavenly favor, and building libraries doesn’t outweigh killing thousands of men, woman, and children and then covering up the aftermath. If there is a hell, Andrew Carnegie is certainly burning in it.