History
Robber Barons
Robber Barons were powerful and wealthy industrialists in the late 19th century who amassed their fortunes through ruthless business practices, often exploiting workers and monopolizing industries. They were known for their cutthroat tactics, such as driving competitors out of business and paying low wages, which led to widespread criticism and calls for government regulation of their activities.
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9 Key excerpts on "Robber Barons"
eBook - ePubBusiness Ethics from the 19th Century to Today
An Economist's View
- David George Surdam(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
large-scale industries. The public gradually realized that under certain circumstances, large-scale and even monopolistic firms benefited consumers, reversing millennia of suspicions toward and disapproval of monopolies. The public expected responsible use of concentrated economic power, especially when such power was granted under state-granted incorporation privileges.Origins of the “Robber Baron” Concept
Historian Hal Bridges traces the history of the “Robber Baron” depiction of the Gilded Age industrialists and financiers. He identifies an article in The Nation , circa 1869, in which the author referred to Cornelius Vanderbilt as “a lineal successor of the mediaeval baron.” Henry Demarest Lloyd’s Wealth against Commonwealth in 1894 developed the argument of the rapacious Robber Barons, although Bridges characterized Lloyd’s work as propaganda. Lloyd’s work , though, exerted great influence upon the public’s perception of the industrialists (Bridges 1958 , 1–3; see also Godkin 1869 , 431–432).Carl Schurz , a German immigrant to American and Civil War general, possibly coined the term “Robber Barons” in a speech at Harvard, comparing the big business leaders of 1882 to the feudal nobility of the Middle Ages; just prior to Schurz’ speech, Lloyd may have inspired Schurz’ choice of words. It didn’t take long for the epithet to capture the imagination of Americans: “by 1900 ‘Robber Baron’ not only had become a journalistic synonym for a certain disreputable type of big businessman but carried the further insinuation that pernicious conduct was typical of all big businessmen, amounting to nothing less than a wholesale indictment of the entire business elite (Tipple 1959
- Donald Sheehan, Harold C. Syrett, Donald Sheehan, Harold C. Syrett(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Columbia University Press(Publisher)
THE IDEA OF THE Robber Barons IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Hal Bridges UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO BOULDER, COLORADO WIDESPREAD in American historical writing is the idea that busi-ness leaders in the United States from about 1865 to 1900 were, on the whole, a set of avaricious rascals who habitually cheated and robbed investors and consumers, corrupted government, fought ruthlessly among themselves, and in general carried on predatory activities comparable to those of the Robber Barons of medieval Europe. Such at any rate appears to be the content of the idea when put into plain language. As actually used by historians, the concept tends to become more suggestive than precise. In this essay it will be referred to as the idea of the Robber Barons, and an effort will be made to trace the broad outlines of its his-torical development after the Civil War, to point out historical interpretations at variance with it, and to appraise its value for present-day historians. In the post-Civil War era, some relatively early expressions of the idea of the Robber Barons can be found. In 1869 E. L. God-kin in The Nation denounced Cornelius Vanderbilt's extortionate ways and called the Commodore a lineal successor of the medi-aeval baron that we read about. 1 In the early seventies the Grangers adopted resolutions comparing American railroad corpo-rations to oppressive feudal barons of the Middle Ages. 2 In the eighties and nineties cries of robbery came from Greenbackers and Populists. Matthew Josephson states that he drew the title of his BRIDGES: T H E Robber Barons 139 book The Robber Barons from the folklore of the Kansas Green-backers and Populists of the 1880's. 3 With the publication in 1894 of Henry Demarest Lloyd's Wealth against Commonwealth, the idea of the Robber Barons gained new importance for American intellectuals. Lloyd, an independently wealthy journalist, was an Emersonian religious thinker and a social reformer who almost but never quite joined the Socialist party.
- Joshua D. Wolff(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
263 The trope of the robber baron has had a longer stay in the popular imag- ination than in historical scholarship. Seminal works such as Gustavus Myers’ History of the Great American Fortunes and Matthew Josephson’s The Robber Barons defined the genre in the early twentieth century. 1 Josephson’s epic of corruption and thievery is still in print after three quarters of a century, and popular histories often recycle his rich yarns. 2 Academic historians, however, have relegated the Robber Barons to leg- end, downgrading them from selfish, power-hungry brutes to merely “semipiratical entrepreneurs” and then transforming them into industrial statesmen. 3 The robber baron archetype suffered some obvious problems, not least of which was the dramatic, Manichean picture of a society in which the “public” was manifestly “good” while industrial titans were manifestly “bad” and immune to social sanctions and cultural norms. 4 Such villainy has no place in contemporary business history, which 8 Octopus of the Wires 1 Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes, III vols., vol. III (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1909); Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons; the Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901 (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1934). 2 For a recent entry in this category, see Jack Beatty, Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865–1900 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). 3 Chester McArthur Destler, “Entrepreneurial Leadership among the ‘Robber Barons’: A Trial Balance,” The Journal of Economic History 6, Supplement: The Tasks of Economic History (1946): 46. 4 Thomas Childs Cochran, “The Legend of the Robber Barons,” Entrepreneurial History 1, no. 5 (1949): 6; Four years later in Railroad Leaders, Cochran expanded his exami- nation of the influence of culture in business behavior and dismissed the robber baron story entirely, expanding the role that managers or “professional entrepreneurs” played in great business enterprises.
eBook - PDFLiberty, Equality, Power
A History of the American People, Enhanced
- John Murrin, Pekka Hämäläinen, Paul Johnson, Denver Brunsman(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Cengage Learning EMEA(Publisher)
19-6 “Robber Barons” No More Q How and why did American elites seek to alter their “robber baron” image in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? The depression of the 1890s—along with the Populist movement and labor protests such as the Homestead and Pullman strikes—shook the confidence of members of the industrial elite. Industrialists were terrified when in 1892 19.10 Mary Lease, Lecturer for the Populists Kansas lawyer Mary Lease was a popular and impassioned speaker for the Populist Party at a time when women’s public speaking was still unusual in politics due to deep-seated prejudices against women in public life. Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo 19-6 “Robber Barons” No More 541 anarchist Alexander Berkman marched into the office of Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie’s right-hand man, and shot him at point-blank range (Frick survived). Although such physical assaults were rare, anger over ill-gotten and ill-spent wealth was widespread. In the 1890s, popular rage forced Mrs. Bradley Martin and her husband to flee to England after she spent $370,000 (roughly $3.5 million in 2007 dollars) on one evening of entertainment for her friends in New York’s high society. Industrial titans were often called “Robber Barons.” Seeking a more favorable image, some industrialists began to restrain their displays of wealth and use their private fortunes to advance the public welfare. As early as 1889, Andrew Carnegie had advocated a “gospel of wealth.” The wealthy, he believed, should consider all income in excess of their needs as a “trust fund” for their communities. In 1901, the year in which he formed U.S. Steel, Carnegie withdrew from industry and devoted himself to philanthropic pursuits, especially in art and education. By the time he died in 1919, he had given away or entrusted to several Carnegie foundations 90 percent of his fortune.
eBook - PDFGlobalization and Postmodern Politics
From Zapatistas to High-Tech Robber Barons
- Roger Burbach(Author)
- 2001(Publication Date)
- Pluto Press(Publisher)
The major difference between the two is their economic “playing field;” while the Robber Barons dominated the U.S. national economy, the new corporate, or “cyber,” barons of the information age have their sights set on con-trolling the markets, resources and assets of the planet. Matthew Josephson, in his classic study titled Robber Barons , describes the “aggressive economic age” of the late nineteenth century. The “barons,” “kings” or “empire builders,” he writes, were determined “to organize and exploit the resources of a nation upon a gigantic scale, ... to do this only in the name of an uncontrolled appetite for private profit...” 3 The likes of James Hill, Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt amassed huge fortunes in railroads, while key national industries like steel and petroleum fell under the sway of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. The dynamic and emergent enterprises of our own aggressive economic age are: computer, communications and Internet firms; media conglomerates; bio-technology corporations; and finance and banking companies. Here we will look at these enterprises and the corporate interests that dominate them, focusing primarily on the United States. While the rise of high-tech firms and research centers is now a global phenomenon, the contours of the corporations of the information age appeared first in the United States and are more readily discernible there.
eBook - ePub- Gerald N. Grob, George Athan Billias(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Free Press(Publisher)
The points that Nevins made about Rockefeller were not fundamentally different from those made by other students of business history. The great nineteenth-century entrepreneurs, business historians emphasized, actually played a vital role in making the United States the greatest industrial power in the world and giving its people the highest standard of living. Far from being immoral, unethical, or evil individuals—although sometimes their methods involved questionable tactics—these industrial statesmen stepped into a disorganized, unstructured, anarchic economy, restored order and rationality, created giant organizations that were in a position to exploit fully the great natural resources of the nation, and took full advantage of the potentialities of the American economy.Like students in the robber baron tradition of American historiography, business historians began with certain underlying assumptions that undoubtedly influenced the way in which they approached their subject. It is quite clear that they rejected the hostile critique of Progressive historians who believed that the social and economic costs of late-nineteenth-century industrialization could have been far lower and less painful and degrading to the mass of Americans, and that the result need not have been a dangerous centralization of economic power that ostensibly threatened freedom and democracy. On the contrary business historians tended to eulogize rather than to disparage the American economic system. Did not the growth and development of the large corporation, they maintained, give the American people the highest standard of living in the world and make possible the victory against totalitarianism? Was not America’s industrial capacity responsible for the strength of a large part of the free world in the struggle with communism? To put it another way these historians concluded that the large corporation, despite its monopolistic and oligopolistic position, was far more of an asset than a liability, Unlike Progressive historians who defined the problem in terms of a tension between democracy and the menace of the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few, business historians minimized the threat of such dangers and opposed efforts to employ historical analysis as an ideological anticorporation weapon.
eBook - ePubThe Robber Barons
The Classic Account of the Influential Capitalists Who Transformed America's Future
- Matthew Josephson(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Mariner Books(Publisher)
CHAPTER FOURTEENThe Robber Barons
THE newly rich who had so quickly won to supreme power in the economic order enjoyed an almost universal esteem for at least twenty years after the Civil War. Their glory was at its zenith; during this whole period they literally sunned themselves in the affection of popular opinion. The degree in which they had won a general public consent is reflected in many a candid and even naively ecstatic chronicle in the press, a press with which they of course maintained the warmest and most inspiring relations.The type of the successful baron of industry now presented itself as the high human product of the American climate, the flower of its own order of chivalry, much wondered at, envied or feared in foreign lands whose peers had arrived somewhat earlier at coronets, garlands and garters. Though the American parvenu was “rough-hewn,” he was certainly “nature’s nobleman,” as the sage of Wall Street, Henry Clews, exclaimed; and what a splendid showing he made when compared with the “English parchment nobility” or any other! “The modern nobility springs from success in business,” Clews solemnly avowed, and a thousand native philosophers shouted assent to him.The historian of the house of Vanderbilt wrote:America is the land of the self-made man—the empire of the parvenu. Here it is felt that the accident of birth is of trifling consequence; here there is no “blood"‘ that is to be coveted save the red blood which every masterful man distills in his own arteries; and here the name of parvenu is the only and all-sufficient title of nobility.
eBook - PDFThe Industrial Revolution in America
Communications, Agriculture and Meatpacking, Overview/Comparison [3 volumes]
- Kevin Hillstrom, Laurie Collier Hillstrom, Kevin Hillstrom, Laurie Collier Hillstrom(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- ABC-CLIO(Publisher)
They were men of great personal ambition and drive, with deep reservoirs of intelli- gence and business acumen. But they were also, with rare exceptions, 61 men capable of great ruthlessness, dishonesty, and self-aggrandizement who took full advantage of an environment in which business ethics were widely considered secondary to the accumulation of personal wealth and power. They often behaved with little or no regard for the environment, the health and safety of their workers, or the deleterious impact of their Machiavellian maneuvers on communities. Nonethe- less, they also lifted the United States into the rank of economically great nations, and the business enterprises they created became the cornerstones of America’s industrial economy. Today, the sometimes amoral business practices of the Robber Barons that stalked America’s financial and business landscapes during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries continue to attract considerable attention and study. But the importance of these men as facilitators and engineers of national economic growth and prosperity is also recognized. Francis Cabot Lowell and the Beginnings of Industrialization The first great industry to make its presence felt on America’s shores was the textile industry of New England. Textile mills dotted the re- gional landscape during colonial days, but they became much more important drivers of economic expansion after 1793, when Eli Whit- ney unveiled his cotton gin invention. This machine, which greatly increased the speed and efficiency with which short staple cotton could be processed, not only prompted a surge in mill building across New England but also led the cotton South to hitch its eco- nomic star even more closely to slavery. Samuel Slater (1768–1835) was the first major entrepreneurial fig- ure in American textile production. He built and operated mills throughout New England, and his efforts solidified the region’s sta- tus as the center of the industry.
eBook - PDF- P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, Sylvie Waskiewicz(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Openstax(Publisher)
520 Chapter 18 | Industrialization and the Rise of Big Business, 1870-1900 This OpenStax book is available for free at https://cnx.org/content/col11740/1.3 Figure 18.9 John D. Rockefeller, like Carnegie, grew from modest means to a vast fortune. Unlike Carnegie, however, his business practices were often predatory and aggressive. This cartoon from the era shows how his conglomerate, Standard Oil, was perceived by progressive reformers and other critics. The PBS video on Robber Barons or Industrial Giants (http://openstaxcollege.org/ l/barons1) presents a lively discussion of whether the industrialists of the nineteenth century were really “Robber Barons” or if they were “industrial giants.” J. Pierpont Morgan Unlike Carnegie and Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan was no rags-to-riches hero. He was born to wealth and became much wealthier as an investment banker, making wise financial decisions in support of the hard- working entrepreneurs building their fortunes. Morgan’s father was a London banker, and Morgan the son moved to New York in 1857 to look after the family’s business interests there. Once in America, he separated from the London bank and created the J. Pierpont Morgan and Company financial firm. The firm bought and sold stock in growing companies, investing the family’s wealth in those that showed great promise, turning an enormous profit as a result. Investments from firms such as his were the key to the success stories of up-and-coming businessmen like Carnegie and Rockefeller. In return for his investment, Morgan and other investment bankers demanded seats on the companies’ boards, which gave them even greater control over policies and decisions than just investment alone. There were many critics of Morgan and these other bankers, particularly among members of a U.S. congressional subcommittee who investigated the control that financiers maintained over key industries in the country.
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