Isn't it Ironic?

I remember that song being so profound to me my senior year in high school. I thought who ever was singing the song was a genius for talking about how life is full of ironies. Yesterday I watched a movie about Carnegie and it reminded me of this song.

Carnegie immigrated from Scotland with his family, because they were super poor. He started working when he was 13 to help support the family. He had this horribly low paying job but he was determined to try and make it big. Eventually he became a manager with some company, and started learning about making investments. It appears that he dreamed of becoming rich and said he would treat his workers well. Soon he was in a position to own a company. This company was wildly sucessful because it controlled so many aspects of the steel industry. But what really made it profitable was cheap labor. People worked 12 hours a day for 7 days a week to make a very small amount of money.

Carnegie never forgot his upbringing. As he continued to grow in wealth he gave his money to better his city and community. But he didn't have a good reputation because although he was giving away millions of dollars his employees worked in horrible conditions with horrible wages. Furthermore, while he was on vacation, the workers went on strike to try to get better wages. Instead, one of the bosses closed down the factory and hired 300 private detectives in order to protect the replacement workers he was planning to hire. Well, the employees found out about the arrival of the detectives and a mini war broke out. Eventually about 10 or 15 people died, and the Carnegie's company hired non union workers and paid them even less.

Here's the kicker to me. If he had paid his employees well he probably would not have been close to being wealthy. But if he had not been wealthy he couldn't have given money to build libraries and universities and in support of the arts. I mean he truly believed in giving away his money. So why couldn't he have given it to his employees? Maybe if they earned more money, they could work less and either enjoy the arts with their family or even be able to create stuff. It's a little confusing to me.