what were two techniques entrepreneurs used to create monopolies?

American Gilded Age businessmen who were accused of using unscrupulous methods to get rich

Contemporary nineteenth century depiction of an acquisitive and manipulative business enterprise (Standard Oil) as an all-powerful octopus

Robber baron is a derogatory term of social criticism originally applied to certain wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared as early as the August 1870 event of The Atlantic Monthly ^[i] magazine. Past the tardily 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who purportedly used exploitative practices to aggregate their wealth.^[ii] These practices included exerting control over natural resources, influencing loftier levels of government, paying subsistence wages, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and enhance prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.^[ii] The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (a businesswoman is an illegitimate role in a commonwealth).^[3]

Usage [edit]

The term robber baron derives from the Raubritter (robber knights), the medieval German lords who charged nominally illegal tolls (unauthorized by the Holy Roman Emperor) on the archaic roads crossing their lands^[4] or larger tolls along the Rhine river.

The metaphor appeared equally early as Feb 9, 1859, when The New York Times used information technology to characterize the concern practices of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Historian T.J. Stiles says the metaphor "conjures up visions of titanic monopolists who crushed competitors, rigged markets, and corrupted authorities. In their greed and power, legend has information technology, they held sway over a helpless democracy."^[v]

The showtime such usage was against Vanderbilt, for taking money from high-priced, government-subsidized shippers, in order to non compete on their routes. Political cronies had been granted special aircraft routes past the country, but told legislators their costs were and then high that they needed to charge high prices and still receive extra money from the taxpayers as funding. Vanderbilt's individual aircraft visitor began running the same routes, charging a fraction of the price, making a big profit without taxpayer subsidy. The land-funded shippers so began paying Vanderbilt coin to not ship on their route. A critic of this tactic drew a political comic depicting Vanderbilt every bit a feudal robber baron extracting a toll.

In his 1934 book The Robber Barons: The Not bad American Capitalists 1861-1901, Matthew Josephson argued that the industrialists who were called robber barons accept a complicated legacy in the history of American economical and social life. In the volume's original foreword, he claims the robber barons:

"more or less knowingly played the leading rôles in an historic period of industrial revolution. Even their quarrels, intrigues and misadventures (likewise often treated as simply diverting or picturesque) are part of the machinery of our history. Under their easily the renovation of our economic life proceeded relentlessly : big-scale production replaced the scattered, decentralized mode of production ; industrial enterprises became more concentrated, more "efficient" technically, and essentially "coöperative," where they had been purely individualistic and lamentably wasteful. But all this revolutionizing effort is branded with the motive of individual gain on the function of the new captains of manufacture. To organize and exploit the resources of a nation upon a gigantic scale, to regiment its farmers and workers into harmonious corps of producers, and to do this only in the proper name of an uncontrolled appetite for private profit—here surely is the bully inherent contradiction whence so much disaster, outrage and misery has flowed.^[6]

Charles R. Geisst says, "in a Darwinist age, Vanderbilt adult a reputation as a plunderer who took no prisoners."^[7] Hal Bridges said that the term represented the thought that "concern leaders in the United States from nearly 1865 to 1900 were, on the whole, a fix 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."^[8]

The term combines the pejorative senses of criminal ("robber") and aristocrat ("barons" having no legitimate function in a republic). Hostile cartoonists might dress the offenders in purple garb to underscore the offense against democracy.^[3]

Criticism [edit]

Historian Richard White argues that the builders of the transcontinental railroads have attracted a bang-up deal of attention just the interpretations are contradictory: at get-go very hostile and and so very favorable. At first, White says, they were depicted as:

Robber Barons, standing for a Aureate Age of abuse, monopoly, and rampant individualism. Their corporations were the Octopus, devouring all in its path. In the twentieth century and the twenty-first they became entrepreneurs, necessary concern revolutionaries, ruthlessly irresolute existing practices and demonstrating the protean nature of American capitalism. Their new corporations besides transmuted and became manifestations of the "Visible Hand," managerial rationality that eliminated waste matter, increased productivity and brought bourgeois values to supplant those of fiscal buccaneers.^[9]

1860s–1920s [edit]

Historian John Tipple has examined the writings of the 50 most influential analysts who used the robber businesswoman model in the 1865–1914 period. He argues:

The originators of the Robber Baron concept were not the injured, the poor, the faddists, the jealous, or a dispossessed elite, but rather a frustrated group of observers led at terminal by protracted years of harsh depression to believe that the American dream of abundant prosperity for all was a hopeless myth. ... Thus the creation of the Robber Businesswoman stereotype seems to have been the product of an impulsive popular attempt to explicate the shift in the construction of American order in terms of the obvious. Rather than brand the effort to understand the intricate processes of modify, almost critics appeared to slip into the piece of cake vulgarizations of the "devil-view" of history which ingenuously assumes that all human misfortunes tin be traced to the machinations of an easily located gear up of villains—in this instance, the large businessmen of America. This assumption was clearly implicit in almost all of the criticism of the period.^[10]

1930s–1970s [edit]

American historian Matthew Josephson further popularized the term during the Great Depression in his book, published in 1934.^[6] Josephson'due south view was that similar the medieval German princes American big businessmen had clustered huge fortunes immorally, unethically, and unjustly. This theme was popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the public often expressed scorn for big business organisation. Historian Steve Fraser notes that the mood was sharply hostile toward big concern:

Biographies of Mellon, Carnegie and Rockefeller were often laced with moral censure, alarm that "tories of industry" were a threat to democracy and that parasitism, aristocratic pretension and tyranny are an inevitable consequence of concentrated wealth, whether accumulated dynastically or more than impersonally past faceless corporations. This scholarship, and the cultural persuasion of which it was an expression, drew on a deeply rooted feeling that was partly religious and partly egalitarian and democratic, a sensibility stretching dorsum to William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Jackson, and Tom Paine.^[11]

Withal, contrary opinions by academic historians began to appear equally the Depression concluded. Business organization historian Allan Nevins advanced the "Industrial Statesman" thesis in his John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Historic period of American Enterprise (two vols., 1940), arguing that while Rockefeller engaged in unethical and illegal business practices, he likewise helped to bring lodge to the industrial chaos of the day. According to Nevins, it was Aureate Age capitalists who, by imposing order and stability on competitive business, made the United States the foremost economy past the 20th century.^[12]

In 1958 Bridges reported that, "The about tearing and persistent controversy in business organisation history has been that waged by the critics and defenders of the "robber baron" concept of the American man of affairs."^[xiii] Richard White, historian of the transcontinental railroads, stated in 2011 he has no apply for the concept, which has been killed off by historians Robert Wiebe and Alfred Chandler. He notes that "Much of the modern history of corporations is a reaction against the Robber Barons and fictions."^[14]

Recent approaches [edit]

In the popular culture the metaphor continues. In 1975 the pupil torso of Stanford University voted to use "Robber Barons" as the nickname for their sports teams. However, schoolhouse administrators disallowed it, saying it was disrespectful to the school's founder, Leland Stanford.^[15]

In academe, the education partition of the National Endowment for the Humanities has prepared a lesson plan for schools asking whether "robber businesswoman" or "captain of industry" is the better terminology. They country:

In this lesson, yous and your students volition attempt to found a distinction between robber barons and captains of industry. Students will uncover some of the less honorable deeds as well as the shrewd business moves and highly charitable acts of the neat industrialists and financiers. It has been argued that only considering such people were able to amass peachy amounts of capital could our country become the world's greatest industrial power. Some of the actions of these men, which could only happen in a menstruum of economic laissez faire, resulted in poor conditions for workers, but in the end, may also take enabled our present twenty-four hour period standard of living.^[16]

This debate most the morality of sure business organization practices has continued in the popular culture, as in the performances in Europe in 2012 by Bruce Springsteen, who sang about bankers as "greedy thieves" and "robber barons".^[17] During the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, the term was used past Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in his attacks on Wall Street.^[eighteen] The business organization practices and political ability of the billionaires of Silicon Valley has also led to their identification as robber barons.^{[19] [twenty]}

The metaphor has also been used to characterize Russian businessmen allied to Vladimir Putin.^[21]

The leaders of Big Tech companies have all been described as beingness modern-twenty-four hour period Robber Barons, particularly Jeff Bezos because of his influence on his newspaper, The Washington Post.^[22] Their rising wealth and power stands in contrast with the shrinking middle class.^[23]

Listing of businessmen labelled as robber barons [edit]

The people hither are listed in Josephson, Robber Barons or in the cited source,

• John Jacob Astor (existent estate, fur) – New York
• Jeff Bezos (due east-commerce) - Washington^[24]
• Andrew Carnegie (steel) – Pittsburgh and New York
• William A. Clark (copper) – Butte, Montana^[25]
• Jay Cooke (finance) – Philadelphia
• Charles Crocker (railroads) – California
• Daniel Drew (finance) – New York
• James Buchanan Knuckles (tobacco, electrical power) – Durham, North Carolina
• James Dunsmuir (coal, lumber) – Victoria, BC Canada^[26]
• Marshall Field (retail) – Chicago^[27]
• James Fisk (finance) – New York
• Henry Morrison Flagler (Standard Oil, railroads) – New York and Florida^[28]
• Henry Clay Frick (steel) – Pittsburgh and New York
• John Warne Gates (barbed wire, oil) – Texas^[29]
• Jay Gould (railroads) – New York^[30]
• E. H. Harriman (railroads) – New York^[31]
• William Randolph Hearst (media mogul) – California^{[32] [33]}
• James J. Hill (fuel, coal, steamboats, railroads) – St Paul, Minnesota
• Charles T. Hinde (railroads, water transport, aircraft, hotels) – Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, California
• Mark Hopkins Jr. (railroads) – California
• Collis Potter Huntington (railroads) – California
• Andrew Mellon (finance, oil) – Pittsburgh
• J. P. Morgan (finance, industrial consolidation) – New York
• Elon Musk (technology, automotive industry) - California^[34]
• John C. Osgood (coal mining, atomic number 26) – Colorado^[35]
• Henry B. Plant (railroads) – Florida^[36]
• John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil) – Cleveland, Ohio
• Henry Huttleston Rogers (Standard Oil; copper), New York^[37]
• A. S. W. Rosenbach (antique bookdealer) – Philadelphia^[38]
• Charles Thousand. Schwab (steel) – Pittsburgh and New York
• Joseph Seligman (cyberbanking) – New York
• John D. Spreckels (water transport, railroads, saccharide) – California
• Leland Stanford (railroads) – California
• Cornelius Vanderbilt (water transport, railroads) – New York^[39]
• Charles Tyson Yerkes (street railroads) – Chicago^[twoscore]
• Mark Zuckerberg (applied science) – California^[41]

Encounter likewise [edit]

• Business magnate
• Business organization oligarch
• Media proprietor

References [edit]

1. ^ Baldwin, Lida F. (1907). "Unbound Old Atlantics". The Atlantic Monthly. C (November 1907): 683.
2. ^ ^{a b} Dole, Charles F. (1907). "The Ethics of Speculation". The Atlantic Monthly. C (December 1907): 812–818.
3. ^ ^{a b} Worth Robert Miller, Populist cartoons: an illustrated history of the 3rd-party motion in the 1890s (2011) p. thirteen
4. ^ Alden, Henry Mills (November 1894). "A Romance of the New Era". Harper'southward New Monthly Magazine. LXXXIX (DXXXIV). Retrieved 2009-07-10 .
5. ^ T. J. Stiles, "Robber Barons or Captains of Manufacture?" , History At present 24, June 2010
6. ^ ^{a b} Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Not bad American Capitalists, 1861–1901, New York: Harcourt, Caryatid and Company, 1934.
7. ^ Charles R. Geisst (1997). Wall Street : A History . Oxford UP. p. 77. ISBN978-0-19-511512-iii.
8. ^ Hal Bridges, "The robber baron concept in American history." Business History Review 32#1 (1958): 1–xiii, page i.
9. ^ Richard White (2011). Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America . Due west. W. Norton. p. 230. ISBN978-0393342376.
10. ^ John Tipple, "The anatomy of prejudice: Origins of the robber businesswoman legend." Concern History Review 33#4 (1959): 510–523, quoting pp. 510, 521.
11. ^ Steve Fraser,"The Misunderstood Robber Baron: On Cornelius Vanderbilt: T.J. Stiles's The Offset Tycoon is a gilded portrait of the robber baron Cornelius Vanderbilt," The Nation Nov. 11, 2009
12. ^ Allan Nevins, John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise, 2 vols., New York, C. Scribner'due south Sons, 1940.
13. ^ Bridges, "The robber baron concept in American history." p. ane
14. ^ Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modernistic America (2011) pp. xxxi, 234, 508
15. ^ John R. Thelin, "California and the Colleges," California Historical Quarterly (1977) 56#2 pp. 140–63 [149].
16. ^ "The Industrial Age in America: Robber Barons and Captains of Industry" EDSITEment! The Best of the humanities on the web."
17. ^ Erik Kirschbaum, "Bruce Springsteen: Bankers Are 'Greedy Thieves'" Reuters May 31, 2012
18. ^ Bernie Sanders (2015). Outsider in the White House. Verso Books. p. 278. ISBN978-1784784195.
19. ^ Hanson, Victor Davis (17 Baronial 2017). "Silicon Valley Billionaires Are the New Robber Barons". Retrieved xxx August 2017.
20. ^ Motley, Seton (31 July 2017). "Silicon Valley Robber Barons Are Using Government As A Weapon Confronting Us". Retrieved xxx August 2017.
21. ^ David O. Whitten, "Russian robber barons: Moscow business, American style." European Journal of Law and Economics 13#iii (2002): 193–201.
22. ^ Dana Milbank, "How did tech CEOs do on Capitol Loma? Google 'robber barons.'," The Washington Post Jul. 29, 2020
23. ^ Brett Arends, "Why the heart class is shrinking," MarketWatch Apr. 22, 2019
24. ^ "New study compares Amazon to 19th century robber barons, urges policymakers to break upward the online retail giant". GeekWire. 2016-11-29. Retrieved 2022-02-15 .
25. ^ Charles O'Brien (2013). Decease of a Robber Businesswoman . Kensington. p. 289. ISBN9780758286369.
26. ^ Jepson, Tim (2004). The Rough Guide to Vancouver. Crude Guides. ISBN9781843532453.
27. ^ Theodore Dreiser; Roark Mulligan, editor. (2010). The Financier: The Critical Edition. U. of Illinois Press. p. 559. ISBN9780252035043.
28. ^ David Leon Chandler, Henry Flagler: The Amazing Life and Times of the Visionary Robber Baron Who Founded Florida (1986)
29. ^ George C. Kohn (2001). The New Encyclopedia of American Scandal. Infobase Publishing. p. 152. ISBN9781438130224.
30. ^ Edward Renehan, Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons (2005)
31. ^ Keys, C. M. (Jan 1906). "The Overlords of Railroad Traffic: The Vii Men Who Reign Supreme". The World'due south Work: A History of Our Fourth dimension. Xiii: 8437–8445. Retrieved 2009-07-10 .
32. ^ Denning, Michael (1996). The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Civilisation in the Twentieth Century. London, New York: Verso. p. 173. ISBN9781844674640.
33. ^ Stone, Oliver (2012). The Untold History of the United States. New York: Gallery Books. ISBN9780091949310.
34. ^ "Tesla CEO Elon Musk quashes claim he is 'modernistic-24-hour interval robber businesswoman'"
35. ^ "The Redstone Story re-lives the industrialization of the Due west" Redstone, Colorado website, history
36. ^ Mary Kupiec Cayton et al. eds. (1993). Encyclopedia of American social history. Scribner. pp. 1064 vol 2. ISBN9780684192468.
37. ^ Martin Naparsteck; Michele Cardulla (2013). Mrs. Mark Twain: The Life of Olivia Langdon Clemens, 1845–1904. McFarland. p. 109. ISBN9780786472611.
38. ^ Dickinson, Donald C. (1998). Dictionary of American Antique Bookdealers. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 183. ISBN9780313266751.
39. ^ T. J. Stiles, The Starting time Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (2010) p 328
40. ^ John Franch, Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes (2008)
41. ^ David Horsey, "Taking down Zuckerberg's monster" The Seattle Times Dec. 11, 2020

Farther reading [edit]

• Beatty, Jack. (2008). Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865–1900 Vintage Books. ISBN 1400032423
• Bridges, Hal. (1958) "The Robber Businesswoman Concept in American History" Business History Review (1958) 32#one pp. 1–xiii in JSTOR
• Burlingame, D.F. Ed. (2004). Philanthropy in America: A comprehensive historical encyclopaedia (3 vol. ABC Clio).^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Cochran, Thomas C. (1949) "The Fable of the Robber Barons." Explorations in Economic History i#5 (1949) online.
• Folsom, Burton Due west.(1991) The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Await at the Ascension of Big Business concern in America ISBN 978-0963020307
• Fraser, Steve. (2015). The Historic period of Amenability: The Life and Decease of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Ability Footling, Brown and Visitor. ISBN 0316185434
• Harvey, Charles, et al. "Andrew Carnegie and the foundations of contemporary entrepreneurial philanthropy." Business History 53.iii (2011): 425–450. online
• Jones, Peter d'A. ed. (1968). The Robber Barons Revisited (1968) excerpts from primary and secondary sources.^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Marinetto, M. (1999). "The historical development of business philanthropy: Social responsibility in the new corporate economy" Business History 41#four, i–20.
• Ostrower, F. (1995). Why the wealthy give: The culture of aristocracy philanthropy (Princeton UP).^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Ostrower, F. (2002). Trustees of culture: Power, wealth and status on elite arts boards (U of Chicago: Press).^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Josephson, Matthew. (1934). The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901 ^{[ ISBN missing ]}
• Taylor, Marilyn L.; Robert J. Strom; David O. Renz (2014). Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurs: Engagement in Philanthropy: Perspectives. Edward Elgar. pp. 1–eight. ISBN978-1783471010.
• Wren, D.A. (1983) "American business concern philanthropy and higher education in the nineteenth century" Business concern History Review. 57#three 321–346.
• Zinn, Howard. (2005). "Chapter 11: Robber Barons and Rebels" from A People's History of the United States Harper Perennial. ISBN 0060838655

External links [edit]

• Full Show: The New Robber Barons. Moyers & Visitor. December 19, 2014. Interview with historian Steve Fraser
• Industrial Age in America: Robber Barons or Captains of Industry EDSITEment lesson from National Endowment for the Humanities
• Robber Barons, Oil, and Ability from 1860 - Daniel Sheehan, University of California Santa Cruz, "The Trajectory of Justice in America 2019, Course #5"
• higher-level lectures on Robber Barons

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_%28industrialist%29

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