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 to 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.