Andrew Carnegie and Herbert Spencer: A Special Relationship

Author(s): John White

Source: Journal of American Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Apr., 1979), pp. 57-71
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British Association for American
Studies
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 57

Andrew Carnegie and Herbert

A
Spencer: Special Relationship
JOHN WHITE

as he never tired of
Andrew Carnegie, informing his readers and audiences,
was an avowed and fervent admirer of the British
railway engineer turned
evolutionary cosmic philosopher, Herbert Spencer. Carnegie frequently
"
addressed Spencer as Dear Master," entitled one of his Auto
" My chapter
Herbert and His and liked to say that
biography Spencer Disciple,"
had had an even greater influence on him than either Burns or
Spencer
in Carnegie, one of his warmest Ameri
Shakespeare. Certainly Spencer had
can friends and a and the two men remained in close
generous admirer,
contact from thetime of their first meeting sometime during the early
i88os until Spencer's death in 1903. An examination of their
friendship
some valuable
yields insights into the reception of Spencer's ideas by the
- if ?
outstanding atypical spokesman of the American business class during
the Gilded Age. It reveals Carnegie's much-vaunted evolutionism to have
been instinctive rather than intellectual, derived not from study and uncer

tainty but from innate optimism and heuristic observation. Again, despite
some historians as the patron saint of industrial
Spencer's promotion by
capitalism, his writings and his relationship with Carnegie indicate that
was critical of American
Spencer highly competitive mores, monopolistic
and materialism.1
practices pervasive
" "
Few men," recalled, have wished to know another more
Carnegie
2
than I to know Herbert Spencer." In 1882, through John Morley,
strongly

John White lectures in American History in the Department of American Studies, University
of Hull, Hull, Humberside, HU6 7RX.
1 For the wider of Spencer's in America see: "The
reception thought John White,
Americans on Herbert Spencer: Some Reactions to His Social and
Evolutionary Thought,
"
1860-1940 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Hull, 1975). The best recent intel
lectual biography of Spencer is J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a
Sociologist (London, 1971); Carnegie's latest biographer is J. F. Wall, Andrew Carnegie
(New York, 1970).
2 Andrew
Carnegie, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie (London, 1920), p. 338.

Amer. Stud. 13, 1, 57-71 Printed in Great Britain

0021-8758/79/BAAS-1004 $01.50 ? 1979 Cambridge University Press

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58 John White

he obtaineda note of introduction to Spencer then about to embark at

Liverpool
on his American visit. Their first recorded meeting was on board
"
the steamship Servia, and Spencer later remembered that a letter of intro
duction was handed to me by Mr. Andrew Carnegie, whose iron-works at

Pittsburgh, aided in their by protection, have made him a

prosperity
3
millionaire." Carnegie attached himself to Spencer and his companion,
Edward Lott, for the nine-day voyage to New York, and regaled his captive
hero with American jokes and anecdotes.4 During the crossing, an insistent

Carnegie persuaded Spencer while in America to visit Pittsburgh. To their

owner, the Edgar Thomson Steel Works represented, in embryo, the indus
trial order predicted by Spencer, in its purest form. Yet to Spencer, on his
visit, industrial Pittsburgh was a and he bluntly
promised nightmare,
"
informed his host following a conducted tour that six months' stay here
5
would justify suicide." Carnegie, however, recorded a happier memory of
reactions :
Spencer's
Mr. took an intense interest in mechanical devices. When he visited our
Spencer
works with me the new him, and in later years he sometimes
appliances impressed
referred to these and said his estimate of American invention and had
push
been realised.6
fully

It was the attentive Carnegie who escorted an exhausted Spencer to the fare
well dinner, staged by his American friends, at Delmonico's, two days before
" "
his departure for England. Carnegie found his Master in a highly nervous
"
condition: His great fear was that he should be unable to say
anything
that would be of advantage to the American people, who had been the first
7
to appreciate his works." A presumably startled Carnegie then heard
not on the doctrine of evolution but on the ill effects of
Spencer expound
" "
American :
persistent activity
Everywhere I have been struck by the number of faces which told in strong
lines of the burdens that had to be borne. ... I have met men who had them
selves suffered from nervous due to stress of business. . . . Immense
collapse
injury is being done by this high pressure life.

Again, Carnegie and other entrepreneurs in the audience could hardly have
3 Herbert
Spencer, An Autobiography (London, 1904), 2, 396.
4 ''
to Carnegie : liked good stories and was a good
According Spencer laugher. American
stories seemed to please him more than others, and of those I was able to tell him not a
few, which were usually followed by explosive laughter." Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 338.
"
remembered
Spencer, however, only that the Atlantic crossing was without noteworthy
incident. Of entries in my diary, one made after only four days at sea, shows my con
stitutional - ' "
impatience Getting very much bored.' Spencer, p. 387.
5 B. The Life of Andrew
J. Hendrick, Carnegie (London, 1933). p. 208.
6
Carnegie, p. 337.
7
Ibid., p. 336.

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 Andrew and Herbert 59
Carnegie Spencer

been comfortable with the following anecdote and Spencer's comment on

it:
I hear that a trader endeavoured to crush out
great among you deliberately
everyone whose business with his own; and the man who,
competed manifestly
himself a slave to accumulation, absorbs an inordinate share of the
making
trade or he is in, makes life harder for all others
profession engaged engaged
in it, and excludes from it many who otherwise
might gain competencies.
"
In conclusion, to his listeners, we have had somewhat
Spencer
' suggested
too much of the It is to
gospel of work.' time preach the gospel of relaxa
8
tion." An ailing Spencer, leaving America for England in 1883, indicated
"
two of his well-wishers to the and declared : Here are
attending reporters
my two best American friends." One of the recipients of this gesture of
uncharacteristic warmth was Edward Livingston Youmans, founder and
editor of the Popular Science Monthly, and a declared Spencerian; the other
was Andrew
Carnegie.9
From the time of his American visit, Spencer and Carnegie maintained
a and were to meet several times in England.
friendly correspondence,
Carnegie also took an obvious
pleasure in sending tokens of affection to his
esteemed In 1891, Spencer was surprised and initially gratified
friend. to
receive the unexpected gift of a piano from Carnegie. With a
genuine
out
"
burst of feeling he informed the sender: I have all along sympathized in
your view the uses of wealth, but it never occurred to me that I
respecting
10
should benefit by the carrying of your view into practice." A shared

antipathy
to militarism and imperialism - the South African War and
American annexation of the Philippines ? further cemented the Carnegie

Spencer relationship between 1890 and 1903. Concerning both episodes,

"
Spencer told Carnegie, No one can more fully agree than I do with your
lx
denunciations of the of our race in the world." On another occa
doings

sion, Carnegie learned from

Spencer that his objections to the
proposed
Dover-Calais tunnel were prompted by a fear that its completion might cause
" " "
the military and naval element in England to
stampede the masses,
8 address is reprinted in E. L. Youmans,
Spencer's Delmonico's ed., Herbert Spencer on the
the Americans
and on Herbert
Americans Spencer (New York, 1883). In his Autobiography,
*'
Spencer notes : my address was mainly devoted to a criticism of American life as
"
to work
characterized by over-devotion (2, 406-07).
9 in Hendrick,
Quoted p. 240.
10 David
Duncan, The Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer (London, 1908), p. 305. In his
"
Spencer offers more characteristic reflections on the episode. When two
Autobiography,
years ago, Mr. Carnegie presented me with a piano, I made arrangements with a pro
fessional to me an hour's performance upon it weekly; but two experiments
lady give
"
sufficed to cause desistance. I got no sleep afterwards on either occasion (2, 453).
11
Hendrick, p. 619.

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6o John White
12
them, and stimulate militarism." Several times Spencer asked
frighten
to to promote schemes of world peace
Carnegie employ his great wealth
and to resolve conflicts. In 1900, he wrote to Carnegie advocating the mobili
"
zation of a kind of peace corps to war against war," and also suggested
that he should spend $1,000,000 to aid in re-establishing Boers on their
farms. Carnegie, however, while sympathy for the Dutch,
expressing
declined to meddle in a matter that was, in a literal sense, none of his
business.13

But Carnegie's more characteristic role in his relationship Spencer with

was that of dedicated follower, and comforter in sickness
and adversity.

response to and
Thus, Carnegie's Spencer's waspish complaint of "neglect
ill-treatment by his fellow countrymen was You had,"
frankly eulogistic.
Carnegie informed Spencer,
a so far in advance that was not to be When have
message recognition expected.
the not been stoned, from Christ down to Take the philos
Prophets Wagner?
from Socrates ... to the martyrs to science from Bruno,
ophers Spencer,
Galileo, Copernicus. Why, my dear friend, what do you mean by complaining
of abuse, scorn? These are rewards
the of the teachers of
neglect, precious
mankind. ... I could wish that you had been tortured on the rack.
imprisoned,
This would have been no reward than is your due. . . . belief is
greater My
that one word or . . . resentment, of the treatment
showing disappointment,
you have received from your countrymen, will detract very much from the

loftiness of our Guide, Philosopher and Friend. Do think over this.14

Less three months

than before his death, Spencer received an emotional
" " "
tribute his
from Devoted : You come to me every day in
Pupil
' ' - lies he ?Why must
thought, and the everlasting why ? intrudes Why
he go? The world on unconscious of its greatest mind in Brighton
jogs
But it will waken some day to its teachings and decree
silently brooding.
15
Spencer's place is with the greatest." After Spencer's death, Carnegie tried
to to the that a bust of
persuade John Morley support proposal Spencer (an
be inWestminster To there was
agnostic) placed Abbey. Carnegie, nothing
incongruous in the suggestion :

If Spencer enters the Abbey it is not to worship but to be worshipped. His

ideas have come to their . . . would stand not the
kingdom. Spencer holding
narrow and absurd Christian scheme of salvation grace, but as a
through
revealer of eternal laws. . . . The idea of Christian ideas in
enveloping Spencer
the and obscuring his causes a smile. . . . The and best
Abbey gospel highest
12
Carnegie, pp. 334-35.
13
Hendrick, pp. 620-21.
14
Ibid., pp. 624-25.
15 to Spencer,
Carnegie 14 Sept., 1903. Herbert Spencer Papers, Athenaeum Collection,
University of London Library.

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 Andrew Carnegie and Herbert Spencer 61

of the race, as saunter around the will to him and

they Abbey point say,
"There is the teacher of what we believe and whom the mass is to
gradually
reach. Here is true and enthroned, and around lie the
Religion, high religion
16
wrecks of
theology."
" "
(Morley was, however, unconvinced by Carnegie's eloquent and cogent
case, and the Dean of Westminster vetoed the proposed memorial.)

Carnegie
undoubtedly derived an immense satisfaction from his personal

acquaintance and friendship with Spencer. Indeed, to Carnegie, Spencer

was sui :
generis, and writing after his death, Carnegie asserted
I have never met a man who seemed to so action,
weigh carefully every
word . . . and so to find his own con
every completely guidance through
science. . . . was the calm I believe that from
Spencer always philosopher.
childhood to
old ... he was never of an immoral act or did an
age guilty
to
injustice any human being.17

warm in his friendships, considered Spencer something

Carnegie, always
more than an intimate friend; he was, Carnegie proclaimed, his intellectual
mentor and saviour.
spiritual

II

The nineteenth century was the age of all-embracing philosophical systems,

based on assumed laws of whose workings could be traced
development
through all the various ranges of phenomena. Herbert Spencer undertook
the staggering task of co-ordinating and synthesizing all existing scientific
into a coherent system, a cosmic or
knowledge single synthetic philosophy,
tracing the operation of the law of evolution throughout the whole of
nature and society. Evolutionism was the
adapted by Spencer during 1840s,
and the remainder of his life was spent in an heroic attempt to apply the
law of evolution - of development from simplicity to
complexity
- to all

It was not Darwin but Spencer who coined the

phenomena.
" " reverberatory
survival of the fittest to characterize the
phrase evolutionary process. In
First Principles (1862), the opening instalment of a projected
System of
Synthetic Philosophy, he offered his famous definition of the evolutionary
the universal law of the transformation of matter and :
process, energy

Evolution is an of matter and concomitant of motion;

integration dissipation
which the matter from an indefinite, incoherent to
during passes homogeneity
a definite, coherent and which the retained motion
heterogeneity; during
a transformation.18
undergoes parallel

Having formulated his theory of evolution, Spencer, in subsequent volumes,

undertook to substantiate it by showing its application in all fields of
16 17 is First 2 (London,
Hendrick, p. 627. Carnegie, pp. 337-38. Principles, 1910), 321.

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62 John White
- in ethics and sociology.19 First Principles
enquiry biology, psychology,
also attempted to reconcile the claims of religion with those of science. The
"
reconciliation was effected by the metaphysical doctrine of The Unknow
" - "
able defined as the of some Cause which transcends our
persistence
or a small part of First Principles,
knowledge conception." Forming only "
"
on The Unknowable was independent of his evolu
Spencer's discourse
tionism and therefore irrelevant to his main concern, which was to interpret
the known universe in general, and the political and moral phenomena of
"
in in terms of evolution and the of force."
society particular, persistence
" "
The Unknowable was to excite more comment than any other
(But
portion of the Synthetic Philosophy and present the largest obstacle to its
? a fact towards the end of
acceptance recognized and deplored by Spencer
his life.)
was also a laissez-faire liberal, whose political views were formed
Spencer
before he embraced evolution. Social Statics (1850), an elaboration of his
earlier writings, was an extended
critique of the Benthamite
stress upon the

positive role of legislation in social reform. In Social Statics appear the

notions of the necessary gradualness of social change and the comparison
of society with a the assumption is that
biological organism. Throughout,
the individual and the State are opposed, any extension of State activity
an inevitable reduction of
involving personal freedom. The functions of
government were it should not
essentially negative: regulate industry,
establish a church, or education. the
attempt colonization, provide Again,
State should not enact any measures of public health, since disease, suffering
and premature death were the penalties imposed by nature on human ignor
ance. But the process was to be welcomed rather than deplored.

Partly by weeding out those of the lowest development and partly by subjecting
those who remain to the of nature secures
never-ceasing discipline experience,
the of a race who shall both understand the conditions of existence and
growth
be able to act to them.20
up

Almost all of Spencer's later writings reflect the views of man and society
expressed in Social Statics.
The salient features of Spencer's philosophical system were its agnosticism
one
(Social Statics is the only of Spencer's works which is avowedly deistic),
its naturalism, its individualism and its evolutionism. As a sociologist,
innovation was to the of natural selection to the sur
Spencer's apply concept

19 The First
completed Synthetic Philosophy comprised Principles (1862); The Principles of
Biology (1864-67); The Principles of Psychology (1872); The Principles of Ethics (1879-83);
The Principles of Sociology (1876-96).
20 Social Statics
(New York, 1954), p. 338.

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 Andrew Carnegie and Herbert Spencer 63

vival of groups and institutional arrangements. His contribution to philo

was the construction of a vast system based on
sophy metaphysical
naturalistic was synonymous with pro
principles. To Spencer, evolution
gress, which was itself automatic, inevitable and continuous. Struggle and
- " the survival of the fittest " - in so as
competition society, long they did
not interfere with the natural laws according to which man had evolved,
were the best guarantees
of progress. While appear to
Spencer's writings
offer ideological support for laissez-faire and unbridled free competition,
they also reveal misgivings about the nature and practices of industrial
" "
on The Morals of Trade
capitalism. In his essay of 1857 (and in phrases
reminiscent of the Southern pro-slavery theorist George Fitzhugh), Spencer
observed :
"
It has been said that the law of animal creation is ? Eat and be eaten," and
"
of our it may be said that its law is - Cheat
trading community similarly
and be cheated." A of keen carried on, as it is, without
system competition,
moral restraint, is much a of commercial cannibalism.
adequate very system
Its alternatives are - use the same as or be
weapons your antagonists, conquered
and devoured. . . . the civilized world . . . and above all in
Throughout
America, social is almost in material
activity wholly expended development.21

Unfortunately, both his critics and admirers construed Spencer as asserting

that social progress and material growth were inseparable.
First Principles and Social Statics appeared in American editions in 1864,
and entered an intellectual climate both conducive and hostile to their
i860, American was
favourable reception. Until thought prevailingly
religious in tone.
Despite denominational differences, Americans shared a
common body of beliefs, founded upon the Christian tradition and the
was the belief in two orders of existence, the
national experience. There
natural and the supernatural, and faith in an over-arching order of divine
and moral laws in the universe. Again, there was the widespread
purpose
assumption that the universe is static with respect to its fundamental laws
and principles of classification. The Darwinian hypothesis, and Spencer's
of it, asserted that all forms of life are continuous
application genetically
and that survival not by divine providence but by the relent
is determined
less struggle between species and individuals. In the half century before
the Civil War, Americans subscribed to and articulated theories of progress,
national destiny and human perfectibility. There was a strong tradition of
in and a
individualism America, corresponding distrust of strong, centralised
government.
But as evolutionism was seen to pose a threat to
expounded by Darwin,

21 in Essays: Political and Speculative 2,

Reprinted Scientific, (London, 1883), 146-47.

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64 JohnWhite

Scriptural authority and theological orthodoxy. Spencer's System of Synthetic

Philosophy entered American waters already chilled by The Origin of
on the eve of the Civil War, Americans while still
Species.22 Moreover,
paying lip-service
to Jeffersonian-Jacksonian maxims, had come to expect,
and had received, some forms of aid. The Civil War and its
governmental
aftermath failed to resolve sectional antagonisms, and administered a severe
shock to the belief in national progress. After 1865, the rise of industrialism,
the rapid influx of European immigrants, urban problems, labour unrest,

political scandals, and persistent racism, demonstrated that the Union was
far from a condition of social equilibrium. With transcendentalism on the
wane, and with pragmatism in its infancy, Americans, after 1865, were, in
some senses, free to make what they would of Herbert Spencer.

Ill
In an address which he prepared in 1902, as Lord Rector of St. Andrews

University, Andrew Carnegie described the intense excitement aroused in

him on first reading the works of Darwin and Spencer :
At this of my life I was all at sea. No creed, no reached me,
period system
all was chaos. I had the old and found no substitute. . . . Here
outgrown
came to me and Darwin, whom I read with interest, until
Spencer " absorbing
down a volume one I was able to : That settles the
laying day say question."
. . . These works were revelations to me. . . .What the law of did
gravitation
for matter, the law of evolution did for mind.23

In his Autobiography, Carnegie is a little more specific concerning his dis

covery of and conversion to evolutionism. As a young man in
Pittsburgh,
in a stage of doubt about element.
the ... I came
theology, supernatural
including
upon Darwin's and works, The Data of Ethics, First
fortunately Spencer's
Social Statics. the pages which how man has
Principles, Reaching explain
absorbed such mental foods as were favourable to him, what was
retaining
what was deleterious, I remember that came in as a
salutary, rejecting light
flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the super
"
natural, but I had found the truth of evolution. All is well since all prows
"
better became motto, true source of comfort.24
my my

both biological -
and technological - became the
Evolutionary progress
essence of Carnegie's faith in the ultimate perfectibility of society. In 1878,
he embarked on a world tour, and his record of that journey can be read
as a statement and confirmation of his new as the excursion of an
faith,
22 See "
especially Bert J. Loewenberg, Darwinism Comes to America," Mississippi Valley
Historical Review, 28 (1941), 339~68.
23 did not, include this passage in the actual
Hendrick, pp. 629-30. Carnegie however,
address. See Andrew Carnegie, Rectorial Address Delivered to the University of St.
Andrews 24
(Edinburgh, 1902). Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 339.

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 Andrew Carnegie and Herbert Spencer 65

evolutionist. he looked on his journey, he saw proof of the evolu

Wherever
on a grand scale, from the formation of coral
tionary hypothesis working " "
islands in the South Pacific to a survival of the fittest struggle being
waged between the peoples of Asia.25
In his prolific essays, notably those collected under the title The Gospel
of Wealth, Carnegie made repeated allusions to Spencer's ideas, liberally
" "
such as survival of the
scattering key
" phrases "
fittest," the struggle for
existence," and the law of competition as his credentials.
" Discoursing
on The Problems and Administration of Wealth," he showed a real

understanding of Spencer's repeated scrictures against indiscriminate

alms-giving.

A well-known writer of philosophic books admitted . . . that he had

given
a of a dollar to a man who him. . . . He knew
quarter approached nothing
of the habits of this beggar, knew not the use that would be made of his
. . . This man to be a of Herbert the
money. professed disciple Spencer; yet
will probably work more injury than all the
quarter-dollar given that night
money will do good which its thoughtless owner will ever be able to give in
true
charity.

Moreover, drew the correct moral from the

Carnegie Spencerian reported
"
episode, namely, that
in bestowing charity, the main consideration should
be to help those who will help themselves ... to assist, but or never
rarely
26
do all." During his life, Carnegie adhered firmly to this article of the

Spencerian creed. Between 1887 and 1907, he dispensed an estimated $125

million in philanthropic none of this went
enterprises, but for the direct
relief of the poor. Like Spencer, he saw no reason in to save the unfit.
trying
viewed business as a
Again, Carnegie seemingly competitive struggle in
which the weak did not survive, and was to business
given justifying
methods and as manifestations of the natural order.
practices Spencerian
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays
for comforts and luxuries is also but the of this law
cheap great; advantages
are also still than its cost ? for it is to this law that we owe wonderful
greater
material which conditions in
train. its
But,
development, brings improved
whether the law be or not, we must of it ... is here;It we
benign say
cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may
sometimes be hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures
the survival of the fittest in every
department.27

Irvin Wyllie, while questioning the influence of Spencer's on the

" writings
American business class, suggests that Carnegie not only recited
Spencer's
25 Round the World
Carnegie, (New York, 1933), pp. 25, 134-35.
26 The
Carnegie, Gospel of Wealth and Other Essays, ed. E. C. Kirkland (Cambridge, Mass.,
27
1962), pp. 26-27. Ibid., p. 16.
AM. ST.?5

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66 John White

but understood their implications, even their intellectual

phrases, perhaps
28
derivation."

Yet one must ask not only whether Carnegie really comprehended Spen
cerian theory but also why he felt such a compelling need to proclaim him
self Spencer's disciple. Again, it should be ascertained whether Carnegie's
own celebrated
philosophy derived from more traditional and familiar
sources than the of evolutionism.29 In was Andrew
well-spring short,
a friend rather than a true follower of Herbert Spencer?
Carnegie

IV
That on at least one occasion, an misunder
Carnegie, betrayed elementary
"
is readily demonstrated. In his essay Popular
standing of Spencer's thought
" "
Illusions About Trusts noted of the concentration of
" (1900), Carnegie
:
capital
There is detrimental to human in it. . . . It is an evolution from
nothing society
the to the and ... is another in the
heterogeneous homegeneous, clearly step
of
upward parth development.30

In the order of Spencerian - from

reversing development
" unwittingly "" " -
to Carnegie revealed his ignorance of
homogeneity heterogeneity
Spencer's teleology and of his fundamental axiom. One must also question

Carnegie's beliefin Spencer's Lamarckian-derived doctrine of the inheri

tance of characteristics. As Spencer (parting company with Darwin)
acquired
saw it, natural selection alone did not explain organic
(and social) evolution ;
there was also a purposive adaptation of individuals to their environment.
The future leaders of society would therefore be those fortunate inheritors
of traits transmitted from to
environmentally-induced generation generation.
on the other hand,
Carnegie, rejected the notion of eugenic superiority and
asserted that the natural leaders of society would emerge from the ranks of
the poor ? from the ranks of the least successful in the struggle for survival,
"
the Spencerian unfit." Business ability, Carnegie further believed, was not
rather the successful was a self-made
hereditary; entrepreneur usually (and
man. " "-
self-educated) Carnegie was a convinced believer in
Again, genius
not a or in the
quality engendered recognized Darwinian-Spencerian pro
cess of natural selection. Like William James, Carnegie could find no
28 I. G. "
Wyllie, Social Darwinism and
the Businessman," of the American
Proceedings
Philosophical Society, 103 (1959), 631. See
also Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America:
The Myth of Rags to Riches (New Brunswick, N.J., 1954).
29 For two brief but
judicious estimates of Carnegie's thought see R. G. McCloskey, American
Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass., and E. C.
1951) Kirkland,
Business in the Gilded Age: The Conservatives' Balance Sheet
" " (Madison, 1952).
30 of Wealth in Kirkland,
Carnegie, Gospel ed., pp. 80-81.

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 Andrew Carnegie and Herbert Spencer 6j

in either Darwinian or theory for the emergence

explanation Spencerian
of the individual as innovator, the great man owing nothing to parentage
or - a Lincoln, a Leonardo, a
environment or, for that matter,
Shakespeare,
a
Carnegie. Such misunderstandings of or deviations from Spencerian theory

prompt the question of whether Carnegie (the most literate of millionaires)

had actually read Spencer, or whether he had imbibed, possibly at second
hand, certain key phrases and premises.
" "
a
Exactly when Carnegie discovered Spencer is matter of conjecture.
In his Autobiography, as we have seen, he states that he first encountered
a young man But neither
Spencer's writings while living in Pittsburgh.
Darwin nor was known in the United States until after
Spencer widely
1865. In 1867, Carnegie moved to New York where he became a member
of the Nineteenth Club, a circle of intellectuals, interested in
Century
and social issues, and it was here that he
religious, philosophical probably
discovered Spencer. He may well have embraced Spencerian evolutionism
because it was a fashionable and impressive concept rather than because it
offered a relief from profound religious doubts and metaphysical uncertain
ties. Although his original acknowledgment of Spencer's influence was in
there is little evidence to support his assertion that his
theological matters,
intellectual came with a revelation of the truths of
emancipation " single
evolutionism. As a child, he recalled, the stern doctrines of Calvinism lay
as a terrible
nightmare upon me." In reality, his religious background was
decidedly unorthodox; his father, brought up as a Calvinist, had left the
"
while his as was
church, mother, Carnegie admitted, always reticent
. . . never mentioned these to me nor did she attend
upon religious subjects
31
church." The young Carnegie received no formal religious instruction,
and it was his world tour, rather than his professed reading of Darwin and
which an answer to his
Spencer, suggested religious queries.
I found that no nation had all the truth in the revelation it as
regards
divine . . . that had its great Buddha for one, Confucius
every people teachers;
for another; Zoroaster for a third; Christ for a fourth. The of all these
teachings
I found to be akin. . . .What a it is to find instead of
ethically pleasure that,
the Supreme revelation to one race or nation, race has
Being confining every
the message best for it in its present stage of The
adapted development.
Unknown Power has none.32
neglected

In its simplest and broadest outlines, Spencer's social evolutionism appealed

to Carnegie's innate and cherished belief in human progress. Having early
orthodox theology, Carnegie, by the age of thirty-three a self-made
rejected "
man, and not content to remain a mere wanted to believe in
capitalist,"

31 32
Carnegie, Autobiography, p. 22. Ibid., pp. 208-09?

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 68 John White

some one which could both explain and

all-embracing theory; preferably
justify his exalted position. By 1868, he was psychologically, if not intellec
to himself with a new creed: one that
tually, prepared " identify
" appeared
impressively scientific and which he could mould to his own purposes.
Herbert Spencer, Carnegie gathered, appeared to offer proof and confirma
tion that the human race was advance
improving through technological
ment, and this new industrial order would render obsolete the old militaris
tic order which Carnegie the general of
despised. Accepting proposition
social evolution, he readily filled in his own details.
A later influence on his awareness of Spencer was James
undoubtedly
Howard former who served as
Bridge, Spencer's secretary, Carnegie's

literary assistant from 1884 to 1889.33 Bridge's own memoirs, in addition to

a memorable of eccentricities, also
providing catalogue Spencer's many
reveal a real understanding of his thought. Carnegie once referred to Bridge
"
as my clever
secretary," and Bridge may well have influenced Carnegie's
understanding of Spencer. Significantly, own account of
Bridge's Carnegie's
career criticized his treatment of business
(which associates), The Inside
History of the Carnegie Steel Trust (1903), makes no mention of Spencer's
influence on
Carnegie.34
Ever optimist, Carnegie never experienced the pessimism and
the sublime

ill-temper which increasingly affected his mentor towards the end of his life,
and this contrast between the two men was as much one of as
personality
of intellectual a
divergence. Bridge drew striking contrast between the
of his two :
temperaments employers
If isolation a Andrew
Spencer's glacial suggested snow-capped mountain,
Carnegie's smiling geniality recalled an Alpine meadow, lush with tender
and with flowers. In contrast with aloofness,
herbage dappled Spencer's icy
radiated warmth and . . .He was the most
Carnegie's sunny personality light.
man I ever knew.35
consistently happy

33 recalled that he was well-received as "I was

Bridge by Carnegie just the man he was
looking for . . . he was about to write a history of the material of the US
development
during the preceding fifty years." J. H. Bridge, Millionaires and Grub Street: Comrades
and Contacts in the Last Half Century (New York, 1931), p. 157.
34 Walter
Troughton, Spencer's secretary from 1883-1903, remembered reading passages of
" "
Inside History to Spencer that left an uncomfortable since Spencer had
impression,"
looked upon Mr. Carnegie as apart from the great mass of American
always standing
bent only on accumulating wealth - as a man
millionaires of liberal ideas as well as liberal
. . . Had he been convinced that Mr. Carnegie had come by his wealth in
disposition.
reprehensible ways, he would not have hesitated to dissociate himself from him, but the
of Bridge's book . . . did not lead to any definite conviction on which such a
reading " "
resolution as this could be based." Reminiscences of Herbert Herbert
Spencer (1903?),
Spencer Papers.
35
Bridge, p. 35.

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 Andrew Carnegie and Herbert Spencer 69

laws, Carnegie once declared, determined both the

Evolutionary grandly
form and substance of society :
We welcome and therefore . . . of environment; the
accept, great inequality
concentration of business ... in the hands of a few; and the law of com
... as not but essential to the future of
petition being only beneficial, progress
the race.36

"
But he could also deplore as one of the crying evils
inequality of wealth
of the day," to be partially rectified legislative governmental
through
action.37 In 1891, Carnegie informed a Scottish journalist that the only way
of achieving the eight-hour day in industry was by State intervention. He
had, Carnegie said, declared himself in favour of this particular reform, but
"
felt that in America trade union action would not be strong enough to
effect it . . . organized capital
can beat
organized labour." The State must,
therefore, produce the desired reform. Asked how a follower of
professed "
Spencer could consider the of hours of labour a fit sub
general regulation
ject for legislation," Carnegie reportedly replied:
I differ from my great master Herbert Spencer in regard to the duties of the
State. No hard and fast laws can be drawn in this matter. Whatever experience
shows that the State can do best, I am in favour of the State
doing.38

main concern, in his was the reconciliation

Carnegie's expressed writings,
of the capitalist order ? which he sometimes attempted
to
justify
on
Spen
- an more
cerian with older and of
grounds persistent concept morality.
with that indiscriminate was and
Agreeing Spencer charity pernicious
futile, Carnegie also made a contribution to
significant philanthropic theory
and practice in his extended reflections on the social responsibilities of rich
"
men ? the In formulating
Gospel of Wealth." "
this philosophy,
"
he revealed
an to a deity other than Spencer's Unknowable." The
allegiance gospel
of wealth," asserted,
Carnegie

echoes Christ's words. It calls the millionaire to sell all that he hath and
upon
to the poor by administering his estate for
give it in the highest and best form
the good of his fellows, before he is called upon to lie down and rest upon
the bosom of Mother Earth.39

Carnegie's philanthropic philosophy rested upon orthodox laissez-faire

as to the of an economic order. But it also
assumptions efficacy unregulated
an addition
to the Spencerian doctrine of self-interest in its
represented
assertion that the individual who accumulates great wealth should con
that wealth during his own lifetime for the general welfare.
sciously employ
36 The Gospel of Wealth in Kirkland,
Carnegie, ed., pp. 16-17.
37 Problems
Carnegie, of Today (New York, 1908), p. 4.
38 in Wall, 39 The Gospel of Wealth in Kirkland,
Quoted p. 392. Carnegie, ed., p. 49.

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yo John White
" "
The Gospel of Wealth in its essentials, was simply a reaffirmation of the
Christian doctrine of the stewardship of great riches, owing less to Herbert
toWilliam Holmes McGuffey and Horatio Alger.40 Similarly,
Spencer than
in advising young men how to achieve business success, Carnegie was more
tem
prone to cite the traditional Puritan virtues of energy, thrift, honesty,
"
and an to the interests of the than he was
perance eye single employer,"
to invoke
evolutionary principles.41
most notable book, Triumphant Democracy (1886), is also his
Carnegie's
most characteristic one, a celebration of the American and
capitalist system
the forces which produced it. Baldly stated, Carnegie's thesis is that the
American democratic system was for the remarkable
largely responsible
material and cultural progress of the country, capitalism and democracy
:
being mutually reinforcing
The not wealth or she has not these,
Republic may give happiness; promised
it is the freedom to these, not their realization, which the Declaration
pursue
of but, if she does not make the or
Independence claims; emigrant happy
this she can do and does do for she makes him a citizen,
prosperous, everyone,
a man.4"2

to the sentiments expressed in

Spencer's response Triumphant Democracy
was
decidedly cool, and indicated the fundamental divergence between his
own and views of social progress. Echoing the remarks which
Carnegie's
he had made to his audience at Delmonico's
reporters, and to American

Spencer discounted the importance of democracy in producing American

material growth, and ascribed it rather to the abundance of land and natural
resources. Moreover, American material while
Spencer argued, prosperity,
undeniable, was unfavourable to American life :
Absorbed by his activities, and spurred on by his unrestricted ambitions, the
American is ... a less than the inhabitant of a where
happy being country
the of success are much and where, in the
possibilities very smaller; majority
of cases, each has to be content with the humdrum career in which circum
stances have him, and, of advance, is led
placed abandoning hopes any great
to make the best of what satisfactions in life fall to his share. I believe on the
whole that he more out of life than the successful American
gets pleasure
and that his children inherit greater for Great as be
capacities enjoyment. may
hereafter the of the enormous America makes, I hold
advantages progress

40 See R. D. the American Mind:

in the McGu?ey Social and Moral Ideas
MayingMosier,
Readers York,
(New 1955), and Richard Weiss, The American Myth of Success: From
Horatio Alger to "Norman Vincent Peale (New York, 1969).
41 "The Road to Success: A Talk to Young Men," an address delivered to
Carnegie,
students of Curry Commercial College, Pittsburgh, 23 June 1885. Reprinted in Carnegie,
The Empire of Business (New York, 1902), pp. 1-18.
42
Carnegie, Triumphant Democracy (New York, 1886), p. 32.

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 Andrew and Herbert 71
Carnegie Spencer

that the of Americans, and those to come for a time

existing generations long
hence, are and will be sacrificed.43
essentially

Triumphant Democracy was at once a celebration of materialist America

and a justification of Andrew Carnegie, of industry turned social
captain
philosopher. It is ironical that Carnegie's mentor should have
alleged
questioned the very basis of his disciple's garrulous optimism.

Andrew was, in an admirer rather than a follower of

Carnegie reality,
on intimate terms with the famous to his intellec
Spencer. To be appealed
tual pretensions and social aspirations. He assiduously courted the distin
men of his as his fellow millionaires
guished day, collecting the famous much
collected works of art. Spencer's public declaration, on
leaving America,
that Carnegie was a valued friend, was the kind of endorsement he could
as a his life, Carnegie adhered firmly to the maxim
display trophy. Through "
in his that one is known by the company he
(repeated Autobiography)
was to inform concerning a most notable
keeps." As he joyfully Gladstone
red letter day :

Just think, one mail me three letters,

brought
One from you
One from Herbert
Spencer
One from John Morley
I am set up as no other can this.44
quite say

When, the late 1860s, Spencer's star was on the rise in America,
during
a firm in progress,
Carnegie, already (if romantic) believer accordingly
declared himself a and the vernacular of the social
Spencerian adopted
evolutionist. But, like his fellow industrialists, Carnegie would not have been

ideologically naked without the Spencerian formulation, and was later to

as as he had once endorsed evolu
espouse Progressivism enthusiastically
a friend and admirer,
tionism. In Andrew Carnegie, Herbert Spencer had
who brought his name ? if not his ideas ? to the attention of Americans in
the Gilded Age. In Spencer, Carnegie had an intellectual idol and faithful
" " " "
For Master and this was to con
correspondent.45 Disciple enough
stitute a special relationship.
43 in Hendrick,
Spencer to Carnegie, 18May, 1886. Quoted pp. 240-41.
44 inWall,
Quoted p. 825.
45 Hendrick "
notes that Carnegie was one of the friends whom to be
Spencer requested
notified of his death, and there was considerable discussion of a suitable keepsake. A
"
brass-bound writing desk was ultimately decided on
(p. 626).

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