Was Rockefeller A Robber Baron

A Review of The Myth of the Robber Barons a book by Burton Folsom JR.

A "robber baron" was someone who employed any means necessary to enrich themselves at the expense of their competitors. Did John D. Rockefeller fall into that category or was he one of the "captains of industry", whose shrewd and innovative leadership brought order out of industrial chaos and generated great fortunes that enriched the public welfare through the workings of various philanthropic agencies that these leaders established? In the early 1860s Rockefeller was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, who came to epitomize both the success and excess of corporate capitalism. His company was based in northwestern Pennsylvania.

When evil people do evil things, they should not deserve being the most powerful people in our society or government. A monopoly is the exclusive possession of the supply of a good or service and that means they have complete control of an entire industry, that just doesn’t seem fair. Many monopolists are considered robber barons and some were captains of industry, however they are all in some way selfish, names like John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt come to mind. That is why I proposed a bill to target the railroad industry, the most corrupt monopoly of them all, if we can stop them we can stop everyone else. The railroad industry promotes horizontal integration, vertical integration and discriminates against smaller companies, that is why I wanted to stop them.

To decide upon which of either title the titans deserve more of, let us first consider what exactly identifies and discerns a captain from a filthy baron. A captain of industry is a leader in their field. The prosperity their expertise generates does not necessarily go to them. It advances or benefits the entire economy. They create wealth. A robber baron, by comparison, focuses all their efforts on creating or benefiting themselves, at the expense of society as a whole. They exploit wealth and are filthy economic sell-outs. Knowing the difference, it holds true that the super rich economic titans of industry shouldn’t be particularly referred to as captains or barons. All titans, from “Commodore” Vanderbilt to J.P. Morgan, were so deserving

In the late 19th century, there was a period where the U.S. railroad industry experienced rapid overexpansion and heated competition. JP Morgan was very involved in reorganizing and helping several financially troubled railroads. Through this process, he gained control of portions of these railroads’ stock and eventually controlled around one-sixth of America’s rail lines.

To describe John D. Rockefeller in one word would be an extremely difficult, if not impossible, thing to do. Rockefeller was known by so many things in his time and still today; a captain of industry who revolutionised the American economy with new business practices and keen management of what he controlled, a robber baron who lied and cheated his way to the top with back room dealings and taking advantage of the most disadvantaged of people. In his early life, Rockefeller grew up in Richmond, New York with his two brothers and two sisters about 20 years before the start of the Civil War as the child of Eliza Davison and William Avery Rockefeller. His father was con artist who spent most of John’s life traveling selling his various elixirs and his mother was a devout Baptist who John said shaped his life and most of his religious views for the rest of his life. Towards the end of his life, Rockefeller had built up a beyond substantial fortune but, seeing as how he was now retired from the oil industry and had no desire to invest into a new business, he decided to follow Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth by donating the bulk of his wealth to charity. John D. Rockefeller was truly a man who was almost undefinable despite the simple black and white labels that most people and historians have pinned upon him, as we examine his life it can be determined that Rockefeller was neither an evil man nor a good one but someone who lived his life in the grey.

John began gaining control of the company and it was the head oil manufactory in the world. John knew that running a big industry of oil will strive the community more. Rockefeller was known as a caring individual , he made sure people were together then his business. He would go to homeless shelters and donate money to help them. After him donating he and his associates put together a Standard Oil Company, which gained billions of dollars and was a success. By age twenty seven, he was on verge of bankruptcy until he met up with Vanderbilt hoping to to secure transport rates.  (Nevins,

In 1870 Rockefeller and a few other people incorporated the Standard Oil Company. Also in 1870 Rockefeller became the president for this company. He also gained monopoly of it. So what he did was he would pay for all of the companies in New York but later on the government said that he couldn’t have all of those companies. After that shut down in 1881 he tried again in 1899 but the same outcome with the government (John Davison Rockefeller, 1995). The government played a huge role in Rockefeller’s career. He also was known for his monopoly over his businesses. Also he had a thinking that everyone is wrong and he was always right ( The Men Who Built America,

During the middle 189th century, America experienced the industrial revolution that mostly affected the urban North rather than the rural South. The South used slaves in the majority of the economy that led to disputes with some in the North. After the election of President Abraham Lincoln, the South split from the Union, which was led by South Carolina. Soon, the entire Southern half of the United States was under a new flag of the Confederate States of America. In order to save the Union, President Lincoln declared war on the South and created the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves in American lands and wouldn’t affect the South until after the war. After the Union victory, the American economy was redefined with the rise of the Captains of Industry and Robber Barons. These people, such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, formed large companies that had a monopoly on their products. These companies would then be split up after the presidencies of Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson. Through the presidents, the American business was redefined that allowed more competition in the American

The Rockefeller name is so common these days that many of the youth say it without really even knowing what or who they are talking about. The man responsible for this well-known family empire is John D. Rockefeller. He was born into a modest working class family in 1839. He dropped out of high school and spent a few months doing business training and in 1855 got his first job. His strong work ethic got him a partnership position only 4 short years later. The same year oil was first discovered. It was then that Rockefeller was instantly drawn to the oil business. In 1870 he joined his brother and others to cofound the Standard Oil Company. Rockefeller was a devout Baptist in church every Sunday and a determined business

The monopoly of oil created by Rockefeller caused smaller business to go out of business or make it very unprofitable for them to function. The regular oil companies could not compete with the Standard Oil Company, for they were trying to put smaller companies out of business. Rockefeller joined with competing companies in trust agreements. Participants in a trust turned their stock over to a group of trustees. This made it so you either had to join the bigger company or stop selling oil because it would not be profitable. The first hand account of this happening shows the negative effects to big businesses. How could a business survive when it is being attacked by a monopoly that was formed illegally? The Sherman Antitrust Act made this illegal. The large businesses forming monopolies would say this is the point of capitalism. They can sell their better product for whatever they want. Is it really illegal to undercut prices, but it is morally wrong to do. Unfortunately the owners of the monopolies did not care about others they only cared about themselves. Overall the monopolies formed by Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Pullman were very beneficial to themselves, but to no one else that wasn’t making money. The next document is about how Carnegie feels about giving money away. Carnegie claims that to be rich you must show that you are rich. You must have shunning displays that show wealth. People have to look up to you for answers. People have to want to be you and they must

John D. Rockefeller, born in 1839, started from Gold but made his fortune in the oil industry. Buying one oil foundation here then another one there he invested into the oil field and drill sites bit by bit over a progressive amount of time with discipline. With the power to press and push, or pressure other businesses to sell and pushing those who don’t with court coercion, he monopolized the oil industries as competition eventually surrendered.

For his commercial practices, he used too an autocratic leadership. His most flagrant sin was the ruthlessness with which he crushed competitors. For every competitor who became to be dangerous for his business, Rockefeller used all the above practices to reduce them to nothing, or he extended the olive branch to vanquished rivals, buying out their companies and drawing them into his organization, making at least some of them richer than they could have been on their own. This was not generosity but the mechanism whereby he expanded Standard Oil into a monopoly.

Ida Tarbell attacked the richest man in American history, John Rockefeller, and his company with her book History of Standard Oil Company. She wanted to show all his unfair ways of business, and put a stop to it. As stated in History of Standard Oil Company, “It was not to save his business that he compelled the Empire Transportation Company to go out of the oil business in 1877. Nothing but grave mismanagement could have destroyed his business at that moment; it was to get every refinery in the country but his own out of the way”(Tarbell 2). Rockefellers main goal in everything he did was to get rid of competition in anyway he had to. He would try to get other businesses that were in the same industry as he was out of the way. Which is what he did with the Empire Transportation Company. Since that company was in the same industry as his Standard Oil Company, he wanted to limit the competition, so he ‘compelled the Empire Transportation Company to go out of the oil business in 1877’. Tarbell showed how he unfairly eliminated his competition. Also Tarbell writes, “Yet Mr. Rockefeller has systematically played with loaded dice, and it is doubtful if there has ever been a time since 1872 when he has run a race with a competitor and started fair. Business played in this way loses all its sportsmanlike qualities”(4). Stating all this in her book,

The Railroad revolution in the United States began in the early 1800s. The developed infrastructure was used for freight transportation business. In the mid-1800s the industry experienced explosive growth, followed by significant consolidation in 1870. The rail road companies initiated expansion through acquisitions in attempt to reduce marginal costs and increase their market share. As a result of this competition, a number of cartels were formed; therefore the federal government intervened and established regulation on railroad mergers, infrastructure construction and divestments. On the other hand, the government initiated enormous investments in highway infrastructure, which resulted in the