Tycoons or Robber Barons

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the big business boom in the U.S.A. in the early 1900s and notes that there was a difference of opinion between whether the owners of big businesses were robber barons or tycoons.The paper also tells us that the owners themselves maintained that they were doing the world a great service and hence should not be criticized. The paper then examines the political and economic history of the times to determine if the owners of the big businesses were indeed robber barons or tycoons.

From the Paper:

"The accumulation of the first great fortunes, coinciding with the humanitarian reform movement of the antebellum period, helped to plant the idea that the possession of great wealth carried with it commensurate social responsibilities. Although this concept was not to become generally accepted until a much later date, it probably intensified post-mortem criticism of John Jacob Astor, who died in 1848 without leaving a significant amount of his fortune for public purposes. The Whig aristocrat, Philip Hone, labeled Astor "a self-invented money-making machine," and others went beyond personal criticism to challenge the close relationship of wealth and virtue and the parallelism of private wealth and public gain so often assumed in the past. The acidulous James Gordon Bennett anticipated Henry George's denunciation of unearned increment by asserting that at least one-half of Astor's fortune belonged to the people of New York, whose labors had raised the value of his vast real estate holdings."

Sample of Sources Used:

• John Tipple, in "The Anatomy of Prejudice: Origins of the Robber Baron Legend," Business History Review, 33 (1959), 510-21
• Hofstadter, Richard; 1959; Social Darwinism in American Thought George Braziller; New York
• James L. Stokesbury. John Jacob Astor: Wealthy Merchant and Fur Trader http://www.upa.pdx.edu/IMS/currentprojects/TAHv3/Content/Boundaries/John%20Jacob%20Astor.pdf.
• Matthew Josephson. The Robber Barons (1934)

More papers on Tycoons or Robber Barons:

• Essay # 89851 : "Impact of Robber Barons"
• Essay # 4941 : "The Robber Barons: American Capitalists of the Late Nineteenth Century"
• Essay # 57659 : "The "Robber Barons"

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