Cartoon of Andrew Carnegie's giving, 1903. via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Penguin Classics
The Gospel of Wealth Essays and Other Writings
The man who dies rich dies disgraced.
$18.00
Available · worldwide delivery
- Author
- Andrew Carnegie; ed. David Nasaw
- Publisher
- Penguin Classics
- Published
- January 2006
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Paperback
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
Surplus Wealth Is a Trust
In June 1889, at the height of his fortune, Andrew Carnegie published an essay arguing that great wealth is a trust the rich administer for the community, that leaving it to heirs corrupts them and leaving it at death is too late, and that the man who dies rich therefore dies disgraced. English editors gave the essay its lasting name, the Gospel of Wealth, and Carnegie, unusually among moralists, then obeyed himself, spending his last decades giving the fortune away, most visibly in thousands of free libraries.
This Penguin Classics edition, edited by his biographer David Nasaw, sets the famous essay among Carnegie's other writings on labour, empire and money. The contradictions stand in plain view, the Homestead employer preaching stewardship, which is exactly why the debate he started about wealth's obligations has never closed.
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