Andrew Carnegie (see photo at left), John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and many other
blazing entrepreneurs were storied names in our history. But were they “Robber Barons” as often
described, or were they captains of industries who did good?
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Business leaders in the United States from about 1865 |
In the golden age of American families, parents did
not consult with their children before booking vacations,
a charming custom I passed along to my daughter,
Molly. Life is full of pain and heartache, I told her when
she was ten years old, as she wondered why she and I
were hauling our suitcases on the icy sidewalks of Butte,
Montana toward the former home of William Andrews
Clark, and not down Main Street in Disneyworld, like
her friend Anna Waller.
“Molly, someday you will tell your friends about
the time that you spent a night in the Copper King
Mansion, home to one of America’s most notorious
Robber Barons.”
“I’m sure I’ll forget about this trip to Butte, Montana!
I’m starving and it’s cold. The bank thermometer says
it’s minus seven.—What’s a Robber Baron?”
“Glad you asked.”
“Oh no, I didn’t mean to ask. Take back. I really don’t
care about Robber Barons.”
“Too late. It will be our lead topic at dinner.”
Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont
Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, James B. Duke, and Williams
Andrews Clark—these men, and a handful of others
from the latter half of the nineteenth century and
the first few years of the twentieth, are the legends of
American business. Today, their names are revered on
Wall Street, carry weight in Washington, and are affixed
to a couple of our finest colleges. In the case of Carnegie,
Rockefeller, and Duke, their century old foundations
continue to support noble and just causes.
But who were these men? How did they make their
money? Were they ruthless Robber Barons as many
claim, or were they the captains of industry, the men
whose drive and ambition quite literally built the country?
Should we shove aside the uncomfortable, as we do
with our slave-owning presidents, George Washington
and Thomas Jefferson, or take more public note of the
fuller life? Such questions are academic to us, but very
real to those who once worked in Andrew Carnegie’s
steel mills.
In 1890, you and your husband leave Poland for a
better life in America. You pass through the immigration
on Ellis Island in New York. You learn that the great steel
mills of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania are looking for workers,
so you go there. Your husband lands a job with United
States Steel. It all sounds good, but it isn’t.
Your husband works twelve-hour shifts, seven days
a week, in very dangerous conditions. Vacation days?
Your husband gets one a year—July 4. Pay? Your husband
earns ten dollars a week, just above the poverty
line of 500 dollars a year. Line up 4,000 men. Add up their
salaries and stare at the sum. Now you know what the
owner makes.
“Hard! I guess it’s hard,” said a laborer at the
Homestead mill. “I lost forty pounds the first
three months I came into this business. It
sweats the life out of a man. I often drink two
buckets of water during twelve hours; the sweat
drips through my sleeves, and runs down my
legs and fills my shoes.”
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) became one of the
richest people in American history. In the last two decades
of his life, he became one of the most generous.
Today, he is best remembered for his role in the construction
of over three thousand public libraries. His
1889 article proclaiming “The Gospel of Wealth,” called
on the rich to use their wealth to improve society.
Carnegie and his ilk made their fortunes during
the Gilded Age, one of my favorite eras in American history.
Our post-Civil War government was in its infancy,
its immaturity no match for the voracious appetites
of America’s first tycoons. In 1873, Mark Twain and his
co-author, Charles
Dudley Warner, published
The Gilded Age:
A Tale of Today, a clever
title that exposed the
illusion of the seemingly
glittery period,
to the graft, materialism,
and corruption
below the surface.
Your name is Ida
Tarbell and you are
fourteen years old. Your dad and dozens of other small
oil producers in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania receive
unexpected buy-out offers from John D. Rockefeller’s
Standard Oil Company. The offer was really a threat:
Accept this or we will wipe you out. The “oil war” of
1872 ended with Rockefeller owning 85% of the city’s oil
refineries. Ida never forgot her dad’s suffering.
Thirty years later, in a devastating, nineteen part
investigative series published in McClure’s magazine,
she exposed the corruption at Standard Oil. According
to Smithsonian, it was “a masterpiece of journalism
and an unrelenting indictment that brought down one
of history’s greatest tycoons and effectively broke up
Standard Oil’s monopoly.” New York University placed
her 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company,
at No. 5 on a list of the top 100 works of 20th-century
American journalism.
Rockefeller (see photo above), by then a noted philanthropist, referred
to her as “that poisonous woman,” but told advisers not
to comment on the allegations. Today, the Rockefeller
Foundation’s mission is to “promote the well-being of
humanity throughout the world.”
Our nations booming industries needed financial
acumen; such was provided by John Pierpont “J.P.”
Morgan (1837-1913) (see photo at left), a man described as America’s greatest
banker. When he died, his fortune was estimated
at “only” $80 million, prompting John D. Rockefeller to
say, “And to think, he wasn’t even a rich man.”
| Even if we chose to tag Carnegie and Rockefeller “Robber Barons,” we should note the noble paths they selected, well before they died. Both men felt a social responsibility, both gave away much of the money they had earned through their still vibrant charitable foundations. In the days before federal income taxes (Sixteenth Amendment, 1913), these two men played the dual role of business and government quite well—they maximized their profits and then awarded their excess to the betterment of all. |
Another ruthless businessman—James B. Duke
(1856-1925)—is of similar caliber. He made his money
by monopolizing the tobacco markets, then later, by
acquiring textile mills and power companies. Eventually,
the government broke up his monopolies, but not
before his fortune had been made. Near the end of
his life, he established The Duke Endowment. Today, it
provides financial support to Duke University and others,
including Davidson College and Furman University.
The same generosities that place a few of our Robber
Barons in kinder light cannot be found in the life of
the Railroad King, Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt
(1794-1877) (see photo at left). Our nation needed a rail system, he was determined
to control that market, and he did, eventually
amassing a fortune that his son, William Henry Vanderbilt
doubled. Only late in his life did the Commodore provide
the necessary endowment to fund his namesake
university, his only major philanthropic effort.
It is possible to sample what life was like during the
Gilded Age. The youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt
built the famous and now-public Biltmore Estate
near Asheville, North Carolina. But to best experience
the era, travel to Newport, Rhode Island. It is in that
resort city that the Vanderbilt grandsons, pushed by
wives who wished to out-do each other, constructed
competing “cottages” that cost upwards of $15M. It is
possible to tour the mansions, as it is dozen of others
in Newport, including one owned by Doris Duke, daughter
of James B. Duke.
And then there is the story of William Andrews
Clark, the Copper King. Similar to the other Robber Barons,
he acquired much, gave back some. In 1999, when
Molly and I toured his former home, we were shocked
when we learned that one of his daughters, Huguette
Clark, was still alive. Her 2011 death at the age of 104
would make national news. Here was the last living link
to the Gilded Age, the papers wrote.
To use a lyric from a Paul Simon song from the
1960’s, “What a time it was, it was.”
I called Molly when I learned of her death.
“I knew you’d call! I can’t believe she lived that long.
And never mind what I said when I was ten years old,
I will always remember that trip to the Copper King
Mansion in Butte, Montana.”
Americana is a monthly column highlighting the cultural and historical nuances of this land through the rich story-telling of columnist Bill Fitzpatrick, author of the books, Bottoms Up, America and Destination: India, Destiny: Unknown.