• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • 3
    CommentGo Back
 
 
Robber Barons
 Foreword 1962 Foreword 
q
 
National Scene 
q
 
Young Man Dream 
q
 
Empire Builders 
q
 
Winning West 
q
 
Captains Industry 
q
 
Fight for Erie 
q
 
Grandeurs Empire 
q
 
Rising from Ruins 
q
 
Mephistopheles 
q
 
Caesar Borgia 
q
 
Giants of Northwest 
q
 
Certain Industrialists 
q
 
Morgan and Railways 
q
 
Robber Barons 
q
 
Again Robber Barons 
q
 
Great Trusts 
q
 
Empire of Morgan 
q
 
Battle of Giants 
THERobber Barons
THE GREAT AMERICAN CAPITALISTS1861-1901byMatthew Josephson 
There are never wanting some personsof violent and undertaking natures,who, so they may have power and business, will take it at any cost 
.
FRANCIS BACON
 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANYNEW YORK, 1934
 
FOREWORD T
HIS
book attempts the history of a small class of men who arose at the time of our CivilWar and suddenly swept into power.The members of this new ruling class were generally, and quite aptly, called “barons,”“kings,” “empire-builders,” or even “emperors.” They were aggressive men, as were thefirst feudal barons ; sometimes they were lawless ; in important crises, nearly all of themtended to act without those established moral principles which fixed more or less theconduct of the common people of the community. At the same time, it has been noted,many of them showed volcanic energy and qualities of courage which, under anothereconomic clime, might have fitted them for immensely useful social constructions, andrendered them glorious rather than hateful to their people. These men were robber baronsas were their medieval counterparts, the dominating figures of an aggressive economic age.In any case, “to draw the American scene as it unfolded between the Civil War and the endof the nineteenth century, without these dominant figures looming in the foreground, is tomake a shadow picture,” as the Beards have written. “To put in the presidents and theleading senators . . . and leave out such prime actors in the drama is to show scant respectfor the substance of life. Why, moreover, should anyone be interested in the beginnings of the House of a Howard or Burleigh and indifferent to the rise of a House of Morgan orRockefeller ?”When the group of men who form the subject of this history arrived upon the scene, theUnited States was a mercantile-agrarian democracy. When they departed or retired fromactive life, it was something else : a unified industrial society, the effective economic,control of which was lodged in the hands of a hierarchy.In short, these men more or less knowingly played the leading rôles in an age of industrialrevolution. Even their quarrels, intrigues and misadventures (too often treated as merelydiverting or picturesque) are part of the mechanism of our history. Under their hands therenovation of our economic life proceeded relentlessly : large-scale production replaced thescattered, decentralized mode of production ; industrial enterprises became moreconcentrated, more “efficient” technically, and essentially “coöperative,” where they hadbeen purely individualistic and lamentably wasteful. But all this revolutionizing effort isbranded with the motive of private gain on the part of the new captains of industry. Toorganize and exploit the resources of a nation upon a gigantic scale, to regiment its farmersand workers into harmonious corps of producers, and to do this only in the name of anuncontrolled appetite for private profit—here surely is the great inherent contradictionwhence so much disaster, outrage and misery has flowed.
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
kashifu

Could you please make it available for download?

reply05 / 01 / 2009
free2009all

Only socialists would label capitalists 'robber barons,' which implies, of course, that they stole their wealth either from workers or the planet. They clearly see the excesses, abuses, and other evils of capitalism. It is less clear that they can see--or want to see--the excesses, abuses, and other evils of an overarching government. In point of fact, men like Carnegie started literally with nothing. Through their ingenuity and hard work, however, they built empires that created thousands of jobs and supplied the means to create an infrastructure for a country founded on the principles of divinely inspired equality and inalienable rights. Along that vein, I repudiate any politician and any government that claims that it grants me the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Contrary to decades of statist propaganda--of which universities have been among the loudest propagators--these same rights have applied to every legal citizen of and immigrant to this country. If this were not so, would names like Benjamin Banneker and Booker T. Washington be known? These men refused to be victims and refused to permit anyone to deny what our Creator gave them. Blunders? Excesses? Lack of ethics? Obama, Reed, and Pelosi et al are busily destroying our collective heritage, this opportunity to be great in your own life. Through draconian measures, they are creating three somewhat different classes: rich, privileged statists--themselves; government apparatchiks, which include unions and their thuggery, Obama's private paramilitary force--with, I have no doubt--a stormtrooper mentality, and groups such as ACORN, which commit acts of questionable legality or illegality; and the rest of us. These heartless, mean-spirited, bigoted, hateful, tyrannical politicians, these statists, believe that once they've seized power, it will always be theirs. They and like-minded persons will likely remember the reality of clichés too late: that one reaps what one sows, that what goes around comes around, and, for a bit of a twist, that the evil that one does today, will be one's undoing tomorrow. By the way, what sort of ethical person would stay in a party whose membership includes those who associated or still associate with Nazi collaborators, the KKK, and other racists? There's egalitarianism for you, eh?

reply03 / 27 / 2009
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...