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Belays book supported a system where everyone is equal, and there is no gap between the rich and the poor. As you can imagine this was extremely popular amongst the hard working middle class. This book also talked about good working conditions and essentially a perfect society. For the many stuck in factories for over fifty hours a week this sounded great. The “middle class” at this time actually consisted every poor people. These people did not even realize how unjustly they were being treated. “the injustice of the nineteenth entry industrial system has given way to a socialist utopia. This is stated in document three when Dry. Elite is describing the new world to Julian West, who has just awoken from a hypnotic sleep of one hundred and thirteen years. The above quote really did show the public all the injustices of the time period. The “middle class” people also loved Belays vision because it revealed factory owners evil ways that went untouched for so long. Although the average people supported Edward Belays ideas of common wealth in this book there were others who opposed it, the rich.
Andrew Carnage’s book The Gospel of Wealth (1889) supported the wealthy man’s idea of life, a separation of classes. His book states “help those who are willing to help themselves” as seen in document two. By this Carnegie shows that he supports the vicious idea of social Darwinism, otherwise known as the survival of the fittest. The factories during this time period were truly horrible places to work. They were unsanitary, unsafe, and paid minimal wages. While Carnegie controlled the factory he would have thousands of people working or him getting paid little to nothing.
These types of factories were common and ruined the economy and were an unfair distributor of wealth. While Carnegie supported this style of work, Bellary was a proponent of the exact opposite, a common wealth amongst men. Again Andrew Carnegie opposed this because he was one of the lucky ones; he was the head of a factory. He’s already rich; he didn’t care about the poor. Carnegie wasn’t the only one who was critical of Bellary’s vision. Russell H. Connell who was also a wealthy man, disagreed with the idea Of common wealth.
Counsel’s famous speech “Acres of Diamonds” supported separation between rich and poor. His speech explains that if you work hard and use the opportunities provided by the well- off you will become rich. As stated in document one- “never in the history of our country was there an opportunity so great for the poor man to get rich as there is now and in the city of Philadelphia. ” This speech really just gave a false sense of hope. Connell preached that if you worked hard that would make you rich, and during this time period that was not the case.
There were so many men that worked hard all their lives and died very poor. The only reason he actually went around telling this story was to keep factory workers from going on strike and to keep them hard at work with the hope they would be rich one day. With a totally unfair distribution of wealth during this time period it is easy to see why the rich didn’t agree with Bellary’s ideas of equality. Also because of the amount of poverty at this time it makes sense that Edward Belays Looking Backward was so extraordinarily popular.