Douglas And Carnegie Comparison

            Imagine being born, a slave, and raised in an institution where your kind was not treated deferentially. Imagine being subjected to horrible and grotesque beatings for simply speaking your own language. Imagine this institution never teaching you the ways of the world to be an aid in your personal growth. This institution is slavery. Frederick Douglass, a slave of the early 1800s, led that very life. In his book My Bondage and My Freedom, Douglas describes his life from birth until late adulthood. Frederick Douglass led a painful life of solitude through slavery for most of his youth, but later developed into a prestigious self-made man and scholar. We must ask ourselves, what is a self-made man. According to the American Heritage dictionary, a self-made made is one who has achieved success or recognition by one's own efforts (bartleby.com/61/). This being true, every man holds different beliefs that allow him to become a self-made man. Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish self-made scholar, wrote about that very question, of what is a self-made man, in his lecture, "A Talk to Young Men." There are many ways to compare Douglass's self-made life to Carnegie's, from rags to riches, ideals.
             Andrew Carnegie's lecture, "A Talk to Young Men," is meant to be a list of objectives for young men to follow to become a self-made man in a working class society. This document gives young men advice on what to and what not to do in life, in order to be successful. Carnegie explains that young men must start at the bottom and work their way to the top. " Young men should begin at the beginning," Carnegie wrote, " and occupy the most subordinate positions" (229). In the most subordinate position, he meant that one should have employment in a socially and economically even position. Wealth and success, according to Carnegie, must be worked hard for (historytools.org/sources/carnegie-abridged.html). Carnegie viewed becoming a self-made man as a business system; sort of like a ladder, start at the bottom and earn your way to the top.