2
Select the correct text in the passage.
Which sentence in this excerpt from The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie suggests that handouts to the poor would do more harm than good for
the people and society?
Beyond providing for the wife and daughters moderate sources of income, and very moderate allowances indeed, if any, for the sons, men may well
hesitate, for it is no longer questionable that great sums bequeathed oftener work more for the injury than for the good of the recipients. Wise men will
soon conclude that, for the best interests of the members of their families and of the state, such bequests are an improper use of their means.
It is not suggested that men who have failed to educate their sons to earn a livelihood shall cast them adrift in poverty. If any man has seen fit to rear
his sons with a view to their living idle lives, or, what is highly commendable, has instilled in them the sentiment that they are in a position to labor for
public ends without reference to pecuniary considerations, then, of course, the duty of the parent is to see that such are provided for in moderation.
There remains, then, only one mode of using great fortunes; but in this we have the true antidote for the temporary unequal distribution of wealth, the
reconciliation of the rich and the poor-a reign of harmony-another ideal, differing, indeed, from that of the Communist in requiring only the further
evolution of existing conditions, not the total overthrow of our civilization. It is founded upon the present most intense individualism, and the race is
projected to put it in practice by degree whenever it pleases. Under its sway we shall have an ideal state, in which the surplus wealth of the few will
become, in the best sense the property of the many, because administered for the common good, and this wealth, passing through the hands of the few,
can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves. Even the
poorest can be made to see this, and to agree that great sums gathered by some of their fellow-citizens and spent for public purposes, from which the
masses reap the principal benefit, are more valuable to them than if scattered among them through the course of many years in trifling amounts through
the course of many years.
Much of this sum, if distributed in small quantities among the people, would have been wasted in the indulgence of appetite, some of it in excess, and it
may be doubted whether even the part put to the best use, that of adding to the comforts of the home, would have yielded results for the race, as a race,
at all comparable to those which are flowing and are to flow from the Cooper Institute from generation to generation. Let the advocate of violent or
radical change ponder well this thought.