50 Years Ago: Carnegie and—Cant? (1955)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Croesus and library vendor, has recently delivered himself of several lectures upon the horrors of war—Carnegie, the head of the great American Capitalist Corporation which raised an army in opposition to the steel-workers of Pittsburg struggling to prevent a further hardening of their already hard enough conditions; Carnegie, the head of the mighty firm that conducted a bitter and bloody war to vindicate the right of Capital to wring out of the labour of the workers larger and ever larger profit; Carnegie, the multi-millionaire, every penny of whose stupendous wealth is stained with the blood of his workmen, slaughtered by armed Pinkertons to make Carnegie’s holiday and to help build him a reputation of a great philanthropist—this Carnegie comes to say:— 

   “There still remains the foulest blot that ever disgraced the earth, the killing of civilised men by men like wild beasts as a permissible mode of settling international disputes, although in Rousseau’s words, ‘ War is the foulest fiend ever vomited forth from the mouth of hell'. "

So, "the foulest blot,” when used to settle international disputes . . . and yet when it occurs at Homestead, the hell that sweats for Mr. Carnegie the millions that Mr. Carnegie’s labour never produced, Mr. Carnegie expresses his horror in—loud silence. It is wonderful the great difference a little change in the geographical situation of the seat of war will make.

From the Socialist Standard, December 1905.