While ruthless capitalists all played a critical role in America's rise as a super power, the actions they had taken to do so were not only corrupted and greedy but also easily avoided. Through the use of lower wages, union exterminations, and channeling money towards buildings rather than people, robber barons abused their positions. Today's views of fairness prove that these employers were exactly that-thieves and exploiters.
Industrialists of the time period abused their positions to justify cutting wages through political machines, forcing their employees into twelve hour work days, and firing bottom line workers, in the belief that this was vital for the growth of the United States. They believed that without lowering the wages of their employees, products like steel would not be affordable. However, lowering wages was never an essential measure to make steel affordable; this was all a plot to squeeze any possible revenue from the business.
English: I took photo with Canon camera of Andrew ...
Andrew Carnegie Signature
LaborerIn Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science by E. Lavasseur [Doc F], Lavasseur introduced a weaver in England who said that "he had worked seventeen years in England, and that conditions were much better than in America." If England had treated its workers as well as this weaver suggested and remained an industrial giant, America could have followed in its footsteps and achieved the same prosperity through better means.
In his 1889 essay "The Gospel of Wealth", Andrew Carnegie [Doc C] states that it is up to the rich to bring to the poor their "superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer." However, the high class failed to "do better for the poor than they would for themselves" as Carnegie promised. Robber barons did not empathize with their workers; those same workers did not approve the amounts of money their bosses spent on libraries...