The Myth Of Robber Barons

In the early nineteenth century the USA was very corrupt. It was a time were monopolistic businesses thrived, and small ones failed. In this time was when J.P. Morgan became the man controlling the most money in the world and ended up owning at his peak, forty companies. In the early nineteenth century J.P Morgan was both a Captain of industry and a Robber Baron.

Jason “Jay” Gould, a ruthless robber baron of the Industrial Revolution, is guilty of stock manipulation to grapple control with other wealthy industrialists, attempting to influence the government outside the boundaries of legal lobbying, and the attempted kidnapping of a foreign dignitary after legal means to his greed-driven ends were expended. The accused was born on a farm in Roxbury, New York. After scamming his first employer, a blacksmith, into giving him half-interest in the shop that he could sell to his father, he later entered into several business partnerships with other businessmen to get into the leather industry in Pennsylvania. Taking advantage of his former partners, he escalated quickly and began investing in railroad stock.

A "robber baron" was someone who employed any means necessary to enrich themselves at the expense of their competitors. Did John D. Rockefeller fall into that category or was he one of the "captains of industry", whose shrewd and innovative leadership brought order out of industrial chaos and generated great fortunes that enriched the public welfare through the workings of various philanthropic agencies that these leaders established? In the early 1860s Rockefeller was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, who came to epitomize both the success and excess of corporate capitalism. His company was based in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Throughout American industrialization, large industries were run by some of the richest men in history. These men got the nickname “robber barons” due to their creation of large monopolies by making questionable business and government activities, and by taking advantage of their workers to succeed. But in The Myth of the Robber Barons by Burton W. Folsom, he argues against these claims, and he takes a deeper look into some of America’s richest and most successful men. By specifically looking at Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill, the Scranton family and many more, Folsom believed that these so-called robber barons were actually entrepreneurs with a drive to succeed, leading to an improvement in American lives.

Good morning to my fellow American citizens and colleagues. I, Andrew Carnegie have decided, after much deliberation, to address my status as a “robber baron”. To truly understand my reasoning on this issue, we must first discuss how I rose to my current status, and what hardships I faced along the way.

Nineteenth century was the golden time of the United States, author Mark Twain named this period of time: Gilded Age. There was a fast-quick way to get rich, which could be told from the success of Andrew Carnegie, who owned the empire of steel, and John D. Rockefeller, who was the king of his oil kingdom, but also made many people suffer from their wealth, and some of them faced bankrupt because of the promising lure. The power boom of industrialists made the rich happy, and made the poor sad. The Supreme Court stood with the rich, but apparently some groups did not like the forced monopoly game, they tried to fight back. Unfortunately, this game has not stopped yet, America is finding a way to shift the economic justice today.

“Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was a self-made multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century.” Cornelius Vanderbilt was born and raised in Staten Island, New York. He had taken the steamship and railroad industry by storm transitioning into a much more modernized time and era making transportation much more efficient. He was a man of boundless energy, and his critical business sense enabled him to out maneuver and beat his many other rivals and competitors. From the knowledge I have gained about Cornelius Vanderbilt I have concluded that he was a true robber bar baron.

America was once seen as a post Civil War wasteland. The country looked as if it were a failed experiment in democracy and no one knew what lied ahead for America. Half a century after the Civil War and its destruction, it was being rebuilt by witty businessmen like Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. The risky entrepreneurial skills the men possessed led America on a path to become the greatest superpower in the world. While Vanderbilt controlled the majority of railways in the United States, Rockefeller controlled the majority of oil in the U.S. and had a large impact on future innovations. Their contributions in society helped the American Industry produce more goods than were ever thought possible before their time. Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller gave Americans a new vision for society by giving rise to entrepreneurs and developing industry in their own astute way.

In the 1870s the term began to be used to describe business tycoons, and the usage persisted throughout the rest of the 19th century. The late 1800s and the first decade of the 20th century is sometimes referred to as an age of robber barons. “Like those old German barons who, from their eyries along the Rhine, swooped down upon the commerce of the noble river and wrung tribute from every passenger that floated by,” Raymond wrote, “Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt . . . has insisted that the Pacific Company should pay him toll, taken of all America that had business with California.” Railroad builders in particular, needing political influence to build their railways, became adept at influencing politicians through the use of lobbyists, or in some

Jameson Stahl Hour 6 Labore Argumentative Paper John D. Rockefeller, at his peak was said to have had a total net worth of around $341 billion in USD today. Rockefeller was at the head of Americas first monopoly. His oil company, Standard Oil, controlled 90% of the entire US oil industry. Rockefeller believed that he was doing the right thing, but others did not perceive him the same way. John D. Rockefeller was indeed a robber baron.

After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country’s founders despised corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. As time went by, corporations began to take one a larger role in the marketplace. This became known as the Gilded Age, from 1870-1900, several businesses dominated the marketplace. These businesses were able to become overwhelmingly popular by creating monopolies, where the company would control production and sales of a product. Several of the business leaders were nicknamed “robber barons” because of the unloving business practices. They paid their employees low wages and intimidated competitions, which would drive them out of business. Then the remaining companies would proceed to raise their own prices because there was no competition; consumers would buy their products no matter what price. Some examples of these “robber barons” were John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Rockefeller owned Standard Oil, which at one time controlled over 90% of oil production in the U.S. Similarly, Carnegie owned Carnegie Steel and earned the equivalent of $309 billion in today’s money. In addition, Cornelius Vanderbilt created a near monopoly in the railroad business and earned $185 billion in today's

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them”. This quote by Eda B. Wells reminds us that now is the time to shine the light upon these unfair business practices of robber barons. The early industrialists of the 19th century were robber barons. Despite their wealth and personal success, these people harmed our society. Robber barons negatively impacted society for two main reasons: their success took away the law of competition and also caused the government to be out of the people’s control.

American society is constantly evolving and changing, but has been consistently shaped by the American economy. The American dream of “rags to riches” drove production and allowed for the rapid rise of industry under the theory of Social Darwinism. The ideas of vertical integration, horizontal integration, and monopoly led to the expansion of railroads, the use of kerosene from refined oil to light homes, and the American domination of the steel industry. These recently introduced concepts and their repercussions are indebted to the businessmen who sought to manipulate and dominate the industry. Despite beginnings in poverty, determination and innovation led Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller to become not only captains of industry in their own time, but also legacies of American success.

In the episode, “A New War Begins,” America has continued to revolutionize and grow rapidly after the death of Abraham Lincoln, one of the most important men in American history. The cause of the rapid growth was different businesses which were: ships, railroads, and oil companies. The episode also included many of the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful men during that era. The men were: Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Tom Scott, and Andrew Carnegie. Vanderbilt was the main man during that time.

The late 18th and early 19th centuries are often characterized by how they were dominated by extremely wealthy people who established a name for themselves by exploiting the current state that the nation was in after the Reconstruction. This period is marked not only by the increase in Monopolies and Trusts as well as the brewing conflict between the wealthy and the poor specifically the business owners and the farmers but by the industrial growth and blossoming of the American economy. However, the individuals who were at the forefront during the Gilded Age such as Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller should be referred to Robber Baron’s as the name captures their deceitful nature, greediness, and thirst for power.