This was a common thought process of the Guilded Age. Andrew Carnegie was There
are many different views on whether or not business should be regulated during
the Guilded Age. The rich who controlled the government at the time were against
any kind of regulation of business. They wanted one hundred percent capitalism.
The workers on the other hand wanted the business to be regulated, and the
legalization of unions. I am going to support the ideas of the business owners.
There were many wealthy business owners who believed in the gospel of wealth.
This was the idea that God made the rich rich and the poor poor a major follower
of this thought. This is shown in his speech “Wealth.” In this speech he
says that rich and poor are necessary for the race. It also describes how it is
survival of the fittest. The ideas of the gospel of wealth are a scary concept
today. If you look at it with a revisionist viewpoint the idea that rich are
rich because God said so leaves us open for so much discrimination. The thoughts
of this time were not able to see this, and the business owners wanted to keep
the power in their hands. Document E also has a touch gospel of wealth in it. It
talks about a preacher telling his parishioners to go out and make money. It
says that it is the person’s job to go out and become rich. It also talks
about how the rich are the most honest of all people. That because they have
money you are the least likely to lie because you don’t have too. Many people
of the era said that the money would be there even if the rich weren’t there,
but Document G contradicts this idea. It says that the money is there because of
the rich, along with the money that other people have. So the thoughts of the
era by the rich tells point towards no regulation. The gospel of wealth was a
main reason that the owners were able to keep the regulations from coming about.
Without the big business of the Guilded Age we might not have developed into the
superpower we did in this century.