Author Insight Video

Transcript

The United States experienced the fastest economic growth in its history during the four decades after the end of the Civil War. That is, between the 1860s and 1900. The rate of urban industrial development in the United States was unprecedented during those years. That economic growth was very much led by an astonishing group of individual entrepreneurs and business executives who helped form the vanguard of industrial growth in the United States. These so-called Captains of Industry were very energetic, aggressive and, at times, unscrupulous men who forged massive corporations that transformed the nature of American economic life and political power during the late 19th century.

Critics of these business titans called them Robber Barons. What they meant by that was a reference to the Middle Ages in Germany where along the Rhine German nobles built castles to control the river. And they would stop river traffic using the threat of their cannons and force passersby to pay tolls in order to continue down the river. So, they were called Robber Barons because they forced traders to pay them taxes in order to proceed down the river.

In 19th century America people began to use this phrase to criticize the practices of these corporate titans who dominated industrial and business life in the 1870s through the 1890s. People like John D. Rockefeller, who formed the Standard Oil Company. People like Andrew Carnegie, who formed the United States Steel Corporation. And Cornelius Vanderbilt, who formed a railroad empire across the United States.

Capitalism is supposed to thrive on competition. But all of these so-called Robber Barons hated competition. They believed it was inefficient and distracting. And so they did their best to eliminate competition, sometimes through fair competition, but also through unscrupulous means such as bribery. At that time there was no government regulation of big business and so therefore they got away with what today would be illegal and unethical practices.

So the Robber Barons created an amazing American prosperity and incredible rates of economic growth but they did so in ways that today would be considered unjust and inappropriate. In that sense their contributions, like so many aspects of American history, were very much a mixed bag: blessings but also burdens. And that helps explains why government began to emerge by the end of the 19th century as a regulator of the business sector. The successes of the Robber Barons forced state and federal governments to intervene more directly in the economic life of the United States.