'There is nothing so enervating,' Andrew Carnegie wrote in 1891, 'nothing so deadly in its effects upon the qualities which lead to the highest achievement, moral or intellectual, as hereditary wealth.' Boys born with silver spoons in their mouths, Carnegie said, were likely to choke on them. To spare them from ruin, and society from being despoiled by dynastic wealth, he argued for a nearly 100 per cent tax rate on large estates. 'Looking at the usual result of enormous sums conferred upon legatees,' he wrote in the Gospel of Wealth, 'the thoughtful man must shortly say: "I would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar."' Carnegie might well have wondered whether Thomas Mellon, in passing on his huge fortune to his son Andrew, had not bestowed on him a curse rather than a blessing.

LRB 19 July 2007 | PDF Download