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141 In his American Conservatism in the Age of Enterprise, 1865–1910, Robert G. McCloskey contends that society’s acceptance of the doctrines of Social Darwinism and laissez-faire economics ultimately and inevitably turned the democratic faith upside down. That is, property rights supplanted human rights as the primary tenet of democracy; in the process capitalism and democracy became synonymous terms and the excesses committed by the business community aroused negligible criticism in a society consumed by materialism.1 Some members of the business elite, however, sought a more self-satisfying rationale for their actions than could be found in the bleak atmosphere of William Graham Sumner’s survival-of-the-fittest postulates. Out of the tortured conscience of Andrew Carnegie came the “gospel of wealth” which glorified youthful poverty, hard work, thrift, success, and organized philanthropy indulged in during the wealthy man’s lifetime. Thus possessors of wealth became stewards of the people, whose superior abilities obligated them to use their fortunes to uplift their fellow men.2 Imitators of Andrew Carnegie, conscious and otherwise, included John Henry Kirby, the East Texas lumberman, whose life and career in many ways paralleled that of the Pennsylvania ironmaker. Like Carnegie, Kirby grew up in modest surroundings, worked hard, and reaped his first financial successes through fortunate connections with already established men of wealth. Like Carnegie, too, John Henry Kirby sincerely believed he was a just, compassionate employer and a charitable, patriotic citizen. “I try,” he wrote to an intimate in 1910, “to do my duty as a citizen, build up the country, create opportunities for men, promote the prosperity of communities, [and] add to the taxable wealth of the country.” Kirby then listed what he considered most praiseworthy among his actions as a responsible businessman and patriot: reduction of the working day of his employees from eleven to ten hours without a decrease in wages, provision of free house rent and supplies to needy workers when the Panic of 1907 forced The Gospel of Wealth Goes South John Henry Kirby and Labor’s Struggle for Self-Determination, 1901–1916 george t. morgan jr. 142 George T. Morgan Jr. a closing of Kirby Lumber Company operations, leadership of the Texas Five Million Club and cash contributions amounting to over $10,000, assumption of the presidency of the Texas Commission at the St. Louis World’s Fair and donations in excess of $10,000, and a $5,000 contribution for a monument to Hood’s Texas Brigade, “as gallant a fighting organization of citizen soldiers as ever drew a blade or ever spilled patriotic blood in behalf of liberty.”3 Kirby’s public charities—directed in good “gospel of wealth” style toward social uplift of the less fortunate—provided him with equal personal satisfaction . His listing in this regard included commentary through which there runs a strong strain of the philosophy of stewardship: provision of funds for teachers ’ salaries for a night school program at Kirbyville, “so as to give opportunity to the children of the poor that they could not otherwise enjoy”; donation of twenty-fivehundreddollarstohelpMethodistUniversityatGeorgetownbuilda dormitory “for the accommodation of the poor boys in attendance . . . who were not otherwise able to secure its advantages”; maintenance over an eight-year period of from five to nine boys and girls attending institutions of higher learning throughout the state, many of whom were offspring of “dead ministers whose wives were unable to educate their children”; and donation of five thousand dollars for a Young Men’s Christian Association building in Houston “to provide entertainment, education and culture for ambitious young men, most of them the sons of mechanics and people in moderate circumstances.”4 Throughout a long life John Henry Kirby remained proud of these and other philanthropies, but like so many of his fellows he failed to realize that selfseeking even if screened by paternalism often leads the well-intentioned astray and results not in benevolence but repression. Thus Andrew Carnegie defended the right of workers to organize and join unions, yet in the Homestead strike of 1892 his company used the lockout, blacklist, scab labor, and armed Pinkerton detectives to break the strike and reduce the steel workers’ union to an impotency from which it did not recover until the 1930s.5 John Henry Kirby, while he never recognized unionism as a legitimate or beneficial goal for the workers, likewise employed standard antiunion tactics to deny his laborers the advantages provided by collective bargaining. A short memory permitted him to defend himself...

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