Robber baron (industrialist)
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Robber baron is a term that revived in the 19th century in the United States as a reference to businessmen and bankers who dominated their respective industries and amassed huge personal fortunes, typically as a direct result of pursuing various anti-competitive or unfair business practices. The term may now be used in relation to any businessman or banker who is perceived to have used questionable business practices or scams in order to become powerful or wealthy (placing them in power of everything having controlled most business affairs.)
The term derives from the medieval German lords who illegally charged exorbitant tolls against ships traversing the Rhine river (see robber baron). There has been some dispute over the term's origin and use. It was popularized by U.S. political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson during The Great Depression in a 1934 book. He attributed its first use to an 1880 anti-monopoly pamphlet in which Kansas farmers applied the term to railroad magnates. The informal term captains of industry may sometimes be used to avoid the negative connotations of "robber baron". Recently the term "Robber 'Boomer' Baron" has been used to describe the undisciplined greed of financial 'robbers' during the financial meltdown in 2008 and 2009.[citation needed]
Appearing in literature during the late 19th century,[1] the Robber Baron thesis was popular until the 1940s. Matthew Josephson's The Robber Barons gave the term its most enduring expression.[2] The theme had much popularity during the Great Depression as there was widespread public scorn against big business.
But by the end of the Great Depression, other historians, notably Allan Nevins, began advocating the "Industrial Statesman" thesis. Nevins, in his John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise (2 vols., 1940), took on Josephson directly. He argued that while Rockefeller may have engaged in unethical and illegal business practices, this should not overshadow his greater contribution of bringing order to the industrial chaos of the day. Gilded Age capitalists, according to Nevins, sought to impose their will for order and stability on the competitive business environment. Their work ultimately made the United States the foremost economy by the twentieth century.[3]
The whole Robber-Baron-or-Industrial-Statesman debate was sidestepped by Alfred D. Chandler in The Visible Hand (1977). There Chandler contended that the business of industrializing America was a historical process and not a morality play of good versus evil. As he later expressed, "What could be less likely to produce useful generalizations than a debate over vaguely defined moral issues based on unexamined ideological assumptions and presuppositions?"[4]
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[edit] List of businessmen who were called robber barons
- John D. Spreckels (San Diego transportation, water, media) – San Diego, California
- John Jacob Astor (real estate, fur) – New York City
- Andrew Carnegie (railroads, steel) – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
- Jay Cooke (finance) – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Daniel Drew (finance) – New York state
- James Buchanan Duke (tobacco) – near Durham, North Carolina
- James Fisk (finance) – New York state
- Henry Flagler (railroads, oil, the Standard Oil company) – New York City and Palm Beach, Florida
- Henry Clay Frick (steel) – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and New York City
- John Warne Gates (steel, oil) – Chicago and Texas
- Jay Gould (finance, railroads) – New York (both state and city)
- Edward Henry Harriman (railroads) – New York state
- Collis P. Huntington (railroads) – California, Virginia, and New York
- Mark Hopkins (railroads) - California
- Charles Crocker (railroads) - California
- Leland Stanford (railroads) – Sacramento, California and San Francisco, California
- John D. Rockefeller (oil) Standard Oil
- Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads)
[edit] In popular culture
In popular American culture, robber barons were usually depicted as men in suits with black top hats and canes as typified by Rich Uncle Pennybags, the icon for the board game Monopoly.
In 1975, students at Stanford University held an election[5] [6] to choose a mascot for the athletic teams and voted for Robber Barons. The university's administration refused to implement the vote, and the teams remain without an official mascot, instead being referred to as the Cardinal. (The university's colors are cardinal and white.)
In the TV series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., the protagonist is hired by a group of industrialists commonly referred to in the show as the robber barons.
[edit] See also
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Look up robber baron in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
[edit] References
- ^ Howe, Maud (1886). Atalanta in the South. Boston: Roberts Brothers. http://books.google.com/books?id=lToRAAAAYAAJ. Retrieved on 2008-01-24. "New York City, that den of robber-barons, keeps the bulk of the wealth of the country as a species of giant playthings..."
- ^ Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861-1901, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934.
- ^ Allan Nevins, John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise, 2 vols., New York, C. Scribner’s sons, 1940.
- ^ Alfred D. Chandler, "Comparative Business History," in D. C. Coleman and Peter Mathias, eds., Enterprise and History (Cambridge, 1984), 7; On Chandler's other accomplishments in this book, see Richard R. John, "Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s, The Visible Hand after thrity Years," Business History Review, 71, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 151-200.
- ^ [What is the history of Stanford's mascot and nickname? http://www.gostanford.com/school-bio/stan-nickname-mascot.html]
- ^ [Cardinal Chronicle http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/november12/column-1112.html]
