# ## philanthropy in the Gilded Age ties to class-imposed morality > [!zettel] > - keywords:: [[Gilded Age]], [[Philanthropy]], [[Andrew Carnegie]] > - location:: > - period:: > Some Gilded Age reform movements that benefitted from philanthropy played into the assumptions that by virtue of their success, wealthy industrialists are models of morality. Temperance leagues, for example, used Carnegie as a kind of “anti-drink” influencer in [ads like this one](https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.29561779?mag=philanthropy-and-the-gilded-age&seq=1) that heralded his wisdom in sobriety. For literary scholar Kathleen Davis, Carnegie’s theory of giving can be described as [“tycoon medievalism,”](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40890823?mag=philanthropy-and-the-gilded-age) which as she argues used corporate philanthropy to “establis\[h] an impersonal, self-perpetuating mechanism for redistributing economic capital into symbolic capital at a crucial moment in the history of US labor relations.” (2022-03-10, [View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01fxv31anpx520gph0tn7dadqc)) --- related::