---
title: The Gospel of Wealth
summary: In 1889 the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie argued that the rich are trustees of their fortunes and should give them away, wisely, while they live. His essay helped shape modern philanthropy, from the public library to the giant foundation, and so did the questions critics have asked about it ever since.
tradition: Modern Western philanthropy
origin: Andrew Carnegie’s two articles in the North American Review in 1889, and the foundations he and other industrialists created
practice: The very rich giving away most of their fortunes during their lifetimes, to institutions that help people improve their own lives rather than to relief or to heirs
lens: Carnegie dismissed most almsgiving and wanted fortunes spent on lasting institutions, such as libraries and parks, that help people rise, a clear preference for structure over relief. His critics add that the most structural question of all is who gets to decide.
sources:
  - title: The Gospel of Wealth
    publisher: Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie Corporation of New York (2017 edition of the 1889 articles)
    year: 1889
    url: https://carnegie.org/publication/the-gospel-of-wealth/
  - title: History
    publisher: Andrew Carnegie Foundation (formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York)
    url: https://carnegie.org/about/history/
  - title: The Strike at Homestead Mill
    publisher: American Experience, PBS
    url: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/carnegie-strike-homestead-mill/
  - title: 'Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better'
    publisher: Rob Reich, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society
    year: 2018
    url: https://pacscenter.stanford.edu/publications/just-giving-why-philanthropy-failing-democracy-and-how-it-can-do-better
  - title: About the Giving Pledge
    publisher: The Giving Pledge
    url: https://www.givingpledge.org/about-the-giving-pledge/
review: draft
---

## What it is

In June and December 1889, Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born steel magnate, published two articles in the *North American Review* that together became known as *The Gospel of Wealth*. The problem of the age, he wrote, was the proper administration of wealth.

He saw three ways to dispose of a great fortune: leave it to one’s family, which he called the most injudicious; leave it to public causes at death; or give it away during one’s lifetime, the path he urged. He also backed heavy, graduated taxes on large estates, calling them the wisest form of taxation. A rich man should live modestly, provide moderately for his family and manage the rest as a trust for the community. The essay’s most famous line is its verdict on those who fail to: “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.”

## What it rejected, and what it built

Carnegie was scathing about charity that met immediate needs. He guessed that of every $1,000 spent on so-called charity, $950 was spent unwisely, in ways that produced the very evils it meant to cure. The rich should instead build what he called ladders for the aspiring: universities, libraries, medical institutions, parks and other public institutions. He followed his own advice, paying for more than 2,500 library buildings. See [Carnegie’s public libraries](/record/case-studies/carnegie-libraries/).

## Its legacy and its critics

Carnegie Corporation of New York, now the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, calls the essay a foundational document of philanthropy. Its central idea, that the very rich should give most of their wealth away, is alive today. The Giving Pledge, founded by Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett, is a promise by the world’s wealthiest people to give the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.

Criticism followed quickly. In 1892, at Carnegie’s steel works in Homestead, Pennsylvania, managers locked out workers to cut wages and break the union, and a gun battle with hired Pinkerton agents left nearly a dozen people dead. Carnegie, who had backed the plan from Scotland, was widely condemned as a hypocrite. More recently, in his 2018 book *Just Giving*, Rob Reich argues that large-scale philanthropy turns private wealth into public influence that is hard to hold accountable, can last indefinitely and is subsidized through the tax system.

## Through the source lens

Carnegie’s gospel points upstream, to institutions that let people rise. Charitology doesn’t share his dismissal of relief, since every level of the [depth scale](/method/#depth) is needed. And his critics press a question his essay answered with confidence in the judgment of the rich: when they decide what the public receives, who holds them to account? That is part of [Open Problem 21, the Government Question](/open-problems/the-government-question/), and of the [Prestige Economy](/diagnosis/prestige-economy/).