The Gospel of Wealth

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While reading part 1 of Down with the Old Canoe by Steven Biel, I was struck by the intense moralization that the titanic caused. It was especially striking that while mainstream newspapers saw the Titanic as a symbol of fearless chivalry and as the justification of wealth, many American pastors saw this a a sign of God’s punishment for mans excess and hubris. This leads me to agree with Wells’ post that the Titanic crash had no inherent meaning, but it was a blank slate for people to project meaning onto based on the emotions they were feeling at the time. Of the meanings that people projected onto the disaster, the one I found to be most interesting and controversial was the idea that the noble wealthy men sacrificed themselves for the sake of the poor and the immigrants, but that these “underclass” citizens were undeserving.

The idea that the wealthy are inherently moral seems strange for this time period. As the nation shifted from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era, more Americans started viewing large companies as bad for society and the wealthy as immoral and only looking out for themselves. Why then is an entire segment of society seeing the Titanic as a validation for the wealthy. At first I assumed that all of the newspapers reporting these stories would be from places like New York, where the readership was the industrial elite, but newspapers from all over the country were reporting this very story. On page 43 Biel quotes a Denver columnist who writes about the “disease-bitten child whose life is at best less than worthless, goes to safety.” What was in my mind the most interesting paradox was that for many the wealthy proved their right to live by dying, while the poor showed they were fit for death by living. There is a certain chivalric notion to that statement that I think one would be hard pressed to find in our modern era. Speaking of the modern times, I was trying to imagine a newspaper running an article like the Denver paper did in our time, and at first I thought it could never happen. As I thought more about it, the way most American newspapers report on the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have a similar tone. While I think it is important that we hear about and honor our dead soldiers, far more innocent Iraqi and Afghani civilians have been killed in the conflict and that is often not reported on, and when it is it is more of a side note.