text: do the ends justify the means? so i'm writing a paper about the steel mills in pittsburgh and the treatment of the workers and the modernist attitude of neglect towards the workers, and one of the things i notice, is that carnegie especially believed that the ends justified the means, that if he did good work and was charitable, that would wipe out all of his earlier transgressions.  at the same time as he believed this, the braddock mills had a twelve hour work day.  you worked all day or all night in the steel mills (doing dangerous manual labor) and then once a week you would work a twenty four hour shift in the mills.  you had every sunday off.    the death rate in the mills was much higher during the twenty four hour shift than other times, due to exhaustion.  on the other hand, those mills built america.  all the great railroads and early skyscrapers that fueled the american economy came out of there.  so do the ends (building america) justify the means (killing and maiming and maltreating workers)? it is impossible to achieve moral ends through immoral means. don't forget, those workers wouldn't have worked at the steel mill if they thought they could have gotten a better job someplace else, so carnegie et. al. did those men a favor. ditto for sneaker-making kids in singapore. before you go thinking i'm crazy, consider this: from 1750 to 1800(the advent of industrialism in england), the child mortality rate in london dropped 70%. i don't expect you to believe that, i expect you to check the facts yourself. in other words, john bull saved the lives of many poor people. isn't it better to work in a loud, dangerous machine shop, than to die of starvation? also, if it weren't for the factories, there'd be no labor party. factory jobs lifted generations of people out of poverty and into the law-making middle class. in this case, the end is a better standard of living, and the means are hard work. nothing wrong there.