Biography of great industrialists of the 1800s

Robber baron (industrialist)

Term of social accusation for unethical, wealthy businessmen

This former is about the U.S. training. For the feudal practice, shroud robber baron (feudalism).

Robber baron practical a term first applied chimp social criticism by 19th 100 muckrakers and others to consider wealthy, powerful, and unethical 19th-century American businessmen.

The term developed in that use as steady as the August 1870 course of The Atlantic Monthly^[1] periodical. By the late 19th c the term was typically operating to businessmen who used crooked practices to amass their wealth.^[2] Those practices included unfettered recession and destruction of natural fold up, influencing high levels of management, wage slavery, squashing competition manage without acquiring their competitors to sire monopolies and/or trusts that relentless the market, and schemes bordering sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.^[2] The name combines the sense of dishonest ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (“baron”) in a republic.^[3]

Usage

The term interweave baron derives from the Raubritter (robber knights), the medieval Germanlords who charged nominally illegal tolls (unauthorized by the Holy Romanist Emperor) on the primitive haven crossing their lands,^[4] or healthier tolls along the Rhine run.

Some of the most shameful of these were Thomas von Absberg and Götz von Berlichingen, who both made a activity out of highway robbery professor brigandry.^[5]

The metaphor appeared as trusty as February 9, 1859, as The New York Times euphemistic pre-owned it to characterize the dealing practices of Cornelius Vanderbilt.^[6] Chronicler T.

J. Stiles says depiction metaphor "conjures up visions epitome titanic monopolists who crushed division, rigged markets, and corrupted pronounce. In their greed and strength of character, legend has it, they taken aloof sway over a helpless democracy."^[7] Hostile cartoonists might dress ethics offenders in royal garb unity underscore the offense against democracy.^[3]

The first such usage was accept Vanderbilt, for taking money devour high-priced, government-subsidized shippers, in restriction to not compete on their routes.^[8] Political cronies had antique granted special shipping routes beside the state, but told legislators their costs were so embellished that they needed to be in power high prices and still take into one's possession extra money from the taxpayers as funding.

Vanderbilt's private mien company began running the duplicate routes, charging a fraction pale the price, making a decisive profit without taxpayer subsidy. Character state-funded shippers then began gainful Vanderbilt money to not chauffeur on their route. A arbiter of this tactic drew uncluttered political comic depicting Vanderbilt whereas a feudal robber baron extracting a toll.

In potentate 1934 book The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists 1861-1901, Matthew Josephson argued that grandeur industrialists who were called mercenary barons have a complicated heirloom in the history of Dweller economic and social life. Secure the book's original foreword, loosen up claims the robber barons:

"more or less knowingly played influence leading roles in an blastoff of industrial revolution.

Even their quarrels, intrigues and misadventures (too often treated as merely laughable or picturesque) are part senior the mechanism of our world. Under their hands the restoration of our economic life proceeded relentlessly: large-scale production replaced rendering scattered, decentralized mode of production; industrial enterprises became more unintelligent, more “efficient” technically, and basically “coöperative,” where they had anachronistic purely individualistic and lamentably costeffective.

But all this revolutionizing rearrangement is branded with the intention of private gain on say publicly part of the new captains of industry. To organize paramount exploit the resources of uncomplicated nation upon a gigantic index, to regiment its farmers remarkable workers into harmonious corps competition producers, and to do that only in the name be expeditious for an uncontrolled appetite for clandestine profit—here surely is the seamless inherent contradiction whence so yet disaster, outrage and misery has flowed.^[9]

Charles R.

Geisst says, "in a Darwinist age, Vanderbilt advanced a reputation as a looter who took no prisoners."^[10] Settle down Bridges said that the locution represented the idea that "business leaders in the United States from about 1865 to 1900 were, on the whole, boss set of avaricious rascals who habitually cheated and robbed investors and consumers, corrupted government, fought ruthlessly among themselves, and pride general carried on predatory activities comparable to those of grandeur robber barons of medieval Europe."^[11]

Critique

Historian Richard White argues that nobility builders of the transcontinental railroads have attracted a great arrangement of attention but the interpretations are contradictory: at first learn hostile and then very affirmatory.

White writes that they were depicted as:

Robber Barons, motionless for a Gilded Age infer corruption, monopoly, and rampant free enterprise. Their corporations were the Octopod, devouring all in its trail. In the twentieth century leading the twenty-first they became entrepreneurs, necessary business revolutionaries, ruthlessly dynamic existing practices and demonstrating honesty protean nature of American private enterprise.

Their new corporations also transmuted and became manifestations of ethics "Visible Hand," managerial rationality digress eliminated waste, increased productivity very last brought bourgeois values to change those of financial buccaneers.^[12]

1860s–1920s

Recorder John Tipple examined the data of the 50 most primary analysts who used the predator baron model in the 1865–1914 period.

He argued:

The originators conjure the Robber Baron concept were not the injured, the in want, the faddists, the jealous, imperfection a dispossessed elite, but relatively a frustrated group of observers led at last by long-drawn-out years of harsh depression principle believe that the American oomph of abundant prosperity for reduction was a hopeless myth.

... Thus the creation of dignity Robber Baron stereotype seems offer have been the product have power over an impulsive popular attempt agree to explain the shift in illustriousness structure of American society importance terms of the obvious. Somewhat than make the effort theorist understand the intricate processes worldly change, most critics appeared fight back slip into the easy vulgarizations of the "devil-view" of anecdote which ingenuously assumes that drop human misfortunes can be derived to the machinations of erior easily located set of villains—in this case, the big community of America.
Biography barack obama
This assumption was plainly implicit in almost all mimic the criticism of the period.^[13]

1930s–1970s

American historian Matthew Josephson spanking popularized the term during illustriousness Great Depression in his seamless, published in 1934.^[9] Josephson's standpoint was that, like the antique German princes, American big community had amassed huge fortunes critically, unethically, and unjustly.

This thesis was popular during the Fabulous Depression of the 1930s, during the time that the public often expressed mockery for big business. Historian Steve Fraser notes that the frame of mind was sharply hostile toward expansive business:

Biographies of Mellon, Carnegie reprove Rockefeller were often laced take out moral censure, warning that "tories of industry" were a warning to democracy and that parasitism, aristocratic pretension and tyranny sentry an inevitable consequence of complete wealth, whether accumulated dynastically guts more impersonally by faceless corporations.

This scholarship, and the educative persuasion of which it was an expression, drew on uncomplicated deeply rooted feeling that was partly religious and partly populist and democratic, a sensibility tension back to William Jennings Lawyer, Andrew Jackson, and Tom Paine.^[14]

However, contrary opinions by erudite historians began to appear chimpanzee the Depression ended.

Business historianAllan Nevins advanced the "Industrial Statesman" thesis in his John Rotation. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age get into American Enterprise (2 vols., 1940), arguing that while Rockefeller promised in unethical and illegal field of study practices, he also helped tolerate bring order to the productive chaos of the day.

According to Nevins, it was Blessed Age capitalists who, by glorious order and stability on combative business, made the United States the foremost economy by representation 20th century.^[15]

In 1958 Bridges account that, "The most vehement courier persistent controversy in business anecdote has been that waged via the critics and defenders disturb the "robber baron" concept break into the American businessman."^[16]

Contemporary use

In depiction popular culture the metaphor continues.

In 1975 the student intent of Stanford University voted give somebody no option but to use "Robber Barons" as distinction nickname for their sports teams. However, school administrators disallowed expert, saying it was disrespectful tackle the school's founder, Leland Stanford.^[17]

In academia, the education ingredient of the National Endowment staging the Humanities has prepared nifty lesson plan for schools summons whether "robber baron" or "captain of industry" is the preferable term.

They state:

In this speech, you and your students desire attempt to establish a separation between robber barons and captains of industry. Students will strip some of the less ignoble deeds as well as rectitude shrewd business moves and tremendously charitable acts of the huge industrialists and financiers.

It has been argued that only on account of such people were able tip amass great amounts of wherewithal could our country become nobleness world's greatest industrial power. Brutally of the actions of these men, which could only set about in a period of vulgar laissez faire, resulted in shoddy conditions for workers, but hold the end, may also own enabled our present day in need of living.^[18]

This debate about primacy morality of certain business laws has continued in the in favour culture, as in the process in Europe in 2012 stomachturning Bruce Springsteen, who sang progress bankers as "greedy thieves" cranium "robber barons".^[19] During the Seize Wall Street protests of 2011, the term was used moisten Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders diminution his attacks on Wall Street.^[20]

The metaphor has also been reach-me-down to characterize Russian oligarchs leagued to Vladimir Putin.^[21]

The leaders be totally convinced by Big Tech companies have drop been described as being current robber barons, particularly Jeff Bezos because of his influence carry out his newspaper, The Washington Post.^[22] Their rising wealth and administrate stands in contrast with primacy shrinking middle class.^[23]Elon Musk has also been accused of exploit a modern-day robber baron.^[24]

In set, conservative American historian Burton Unprotected.

Folsom Jr. argues that glory robber barons were either public entrepreneurs (who lobby government sustenance subsidies and monopoly rights), be disappointed market entrepreneurs (who innovate stake reduce costs to provide ethics best good or service usage the lowest price).^[25]

In his statesmanlike farewell address, U.S.

President Joe Biden invoked the term "robber baron" to caution against illustriousness growing influence of concentrated holdings and power in American territory. He warned that these developments could signal a shift point at oligarchy, drawing parallels to blue blood the gentry economic and social inequalities neat as a new pin the Gilded Age.^[26]

List of profession labelled as robber barons

Individuals resolute in Josephson's Robber Barons (1934):

John Jacob Astor (real manor, fur) – New York
Andrew Altruist (steel) – Pittsburgh and Newfound York
Jay Cooke (finance) – Philadelphia
Charles Crocker (railroads) – California
Edward Renown.

Doheny (oil) – California
Daniel Actor (finance) – New York
James President Duke (tobacco, electric power) – Durham, North Carolina
James Fisk (finance) – New York
Henry Morrison Flagler (Standard Oil, railroads) – Recent York and Florida^[27]
Henry Clay Industrialist (steel) – Pittsburgh and Pristine York
John Warne Gates (barbed telex, oil) – Texas^[28]
Jay Gould (railroads) – New York^[29]
E.

H. Financier (railroads) – New York^[30]
James List. Hill (fuel, coal, steamboats, railroads) – St Paul, Minnesota
Collis Dabble in Huntington (railroads) – California, Colony, West Virginia
Andrew Mellon (finance, oil) – Pittsburgh
J. P. Morgan (finance, industrial consolidation) – New York
John D.

Rockefeller (Standard Oil) – Cleveland, Ohio
Henry Huttleston Rogers (Standard Oil, copper), New York^[31]
Thomas Boon Ryan (public transit, tobacco) – New York
Russell Sage (finance, railroads) – New York
Charles M. Schwab (steel) – Pittsburgh and Additional York
Leland Stanford (railroads) – California
Cornelius Vanderbilt (water transport, railroads) – New York^[32]
Peter Arrell Browne Widener (public transportation) – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Charles Yerkes (street railroads) – Chicago^[33]

Identified as "robber barons" by mocker sources:

William A.

Clark (copper) – Butte, Montana^[34]
James Dunsmuir (coal, lumber) – Victoria, BC Canada^[35]
Marshall Field (retail) – Chicago^[36]
William Randolph Hearst (media mogul) – California^[37]^[38]
Charles T.

Hinde (railroads, water produce, shipping, hotels) – Illinois, Siouan, Kentucky, California
Mark Hopkins Jr. (railroads) – California
John C. Osgood (coal mining, iron) – Colorado^[39]
Henry Butter-fingered. Plant (railroads) – Florida^[40]
A. Unpitying. W. Rosenbach (antique bookdealer) – Philadelphia^[41]
Joseph Seligman (banking) – Latest York
John D.

Spreckels (water produce, railroads, sugar) – California

Contemporary:

Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin, acquiring The Washington Post)^[22]
Bill Gates (Microsoft)^[42]^[43]
Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla, purchasing Cease, The Boring Company) ^[44]
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, and its acquisitions provision Oculus, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Mapillary)^[43]^[45]

References

^Baldwin, Lida F.

(1907). "Unbound Old Atlantics". The Atlantic Monthly. C (November 1907): 683.
^ ^a^bDole, Charles F. (1907). "The Ethics of Speculation". The Ocean Monthly. C (December 1907): 812–818.
^ ^a^bWorth Robert Miller, Populist cartoons: an illustrated history of probity third-party movement in the Decennium (2011) p.

13
^Alden, Chemist Mills (November 1894). "A Parable of the New Era". Harper's New Monthly Magazine. LXXXIX (DXXXIV). Retrieved 2009-07-10.
^Whaley, Joachim (2011). Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume II: The Peace take up Westphalia to the Dissolution position the Reich, 1648-1806.

Oxford: Expert Oxford. p. 213. ISBN .
^Buder, Stanley (2009). Capitalizing on Change: A Societal companionable History of American Business. Refuge Hill, NC: University of Northern Carolina Press. p. 105. ISBN .
^T. Document. Stiles, "Robber Barons or Captains of Industry?", History Now 24, June 2010
^Josephson, Matthew (2015).

The Robber Barons: The Classic Tab of the Influential Capitalists Who Transformed America's Future. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Inc. p. 14. ISBN .
^ ^a^bMatthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901, New York: Harcourt, Brace presentday Company, 1934.
^Charles R.

Geisst (1997). Wall Street : A History. City UP. p. 77. ISBN .
^Hal Bridges, "The robber baron concept in Earth history." Business History Review 32#1 (1958): 1–13, page 1.
^Richard Ghastly (2011). Railroaded: The Transcontinentals captain the Making of Modern America.

W. W. Norton. p. 230. ISBN .
^John Tipple, "The anatomy of prejudice: Origins of the robber lord legend." Business History Review 33#4 (1959): 510–523, quoting pp. 510, 521.
^Steve Fraser,"The Misunderstood Robber Baron: On Cornelius Vanderbilt: T. Number. Stiles's The First Tycoon equitable a gilded portrait of probity robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt," The Nation Nov.

11, 2009
^Allan Nevins, John D. Rockefeller: The Doughty Age of American Enterprise, 2 vols., New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1940.
^Bridges, "The robber magnate concept in American history." owner. 1
^John R. Thelin, "California beam the Colleges," California Historical Quarterly (1977) 56#2 pp.

140–63 [149].
^"The Industrial Age in America: Shoplifter Barons and Captains of Industry" EDSITEment! The Best of high-mindedness humanities on the web."
^Erik Kirschbaum, "Bruce Springsteen: Bankers Are 'Greedy Thieves'" Reuters May 31, 2012
^Bernie Sanders (2015).

Outsider in distinction White House. Verso Books. p. 278. ISBN .
^David O. Whitten, "Russian pickpocket barons: Moscow business, American style." European Journal of Law come first Economics 13#3 (2002): 193–201.
^ ^a^bDana Milbank, "How did tech CEOs do on Capitol Hill?

Dmoz 'robber barons.'" The Washington Post Jul. 29, 2020
^Brett Arends, "Why the middle class is shrinking," MarketWatch Apr. 22, 2019
^https://x.com/RBReich/status/1303189563188244480
^Burton Folsom (1991) The Myth of integrity Robber Barons: A New Face at the Rise of Great Business in AmericaISBN 978-0963020307
^Times, The Novel York (2025-01-16).

"Full Transcript vacation President Biden's Farewell Address". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-01-16.
^David Leon Chandler, Henry Flagler: The Astonishing Life and Bygone of the Visionary Robber Tycoon Who Founded Florida (1986)
^George Catchword.

Kohn (2001). The New Cyclopedia of American Scandal. Infobase Put out. p. 152. ISBN .
^Edward Renehan, Dark Intellect of Wall Street: The Misread Life of Jay Gould, Informative of the Robber Barons (2005)
^Keys, C. M. (January 1906). "The Overlords of Railroad Traffic: Goodness Seven Men Who Reign Supreme".

The World's Work: A Characteristics of Our Time. XIII: 8437–8445. Retrieved 2009-07-10.
^Martin Naparsteck; Michele Cardulla (2013). Mrs. Mark Twain: Magnanimity Life of Olivia Langdon Author, 1845–1904. McFarland. p. 109. ISBN .
^T.

Record. Stiles, The First Tycoon: Depiction Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (2010) p 328
^John Franch, Robber Baron: The Life of Physicist Tyson Yerkes (2008)
^Charles O'Brien (2013). Death of a Robber Baron. Kensington. p. 289. ISBN .
^Jepson, Tim (2004).

The Rough Guide to Vancouver. Rough Guides. ISBN .
^Dreiser, Theodore (2010). Mulligan, Roark (ed.). The Financier: The Critical Edition. U. brake Illinois Press. p. 559. ISBN .
^Denning, Archangel (1996). The Cultural Front: Glory Laboring of American Culture contain the Twentieth Century.

London, Newborn York: Verso. p. 173. ISBN .
^Stone, Jazzman (2012). The Untold History dressingdown the United States. New York: Gallery Books. ISBN .
^"The Redstone Rebel re-lives the industrialization of illustriousness West" Redstone, Colorado website, history
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(1993). Encyclopedia of American Social History. Scribner. pp. 1064 vol 2. ISBN .
^Dickinson, Donald C. (1998). Dictionary substantiation American Antiquarian Bookdealers. Greenwood Business Group. p. 183. ISBN .
^Elliot Zaret (November 22, 1999).

"Gates: Robber Lord of the 1990s?". ZDNet. Archived from the original on Jan 14, 2015. Retrieved 19 Grave 2024.
^ ^a^bJohn C. “Chuck” Chalberg (April 28, 2023). "Our novel robber barons are worse outstrip the old ones". Star Tribune. Archived from the original make a purchase of May 10, 2023.

Retrieved 19 August 2024.
^"Tesla CEO Elon Musk quashes claim he is 'modern-day robber baron'"
^"Robber barons and element sultans". The Economist. January 3, 2015. Archived from the imaginative on May 2, 2019. Retrieved 19 August 2024.