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The Robber Barons | 
 enlarge | Author: Matthew Josephson
Publisher: Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $17.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 57106
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 492
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0156767902
Dewey Decimal Number: 332.0973
EAN: 9780156767903
ASIN: 0156767902
Publication Date: June 1962
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Condition: The book is clean but may have highlights.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 How Robber Barons Reformed America June 20, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This 1934 book provides a history of the late 19th century that is missing from school history books. The author worked for a few years in Wall Street and learned about the "Men Who Rule America". Later he wrote a number of biographies for a magazine. These men were no match for the great capitalists who flourished in the late 19th century (the Gilded Age). He decided to write not just about their lives, manners and morals, but how they got their money. Their great wealth was unaffected by any income tax. These barons of industry were "agents of progress" in transforming an agrarian-mercantile society into a mass production economy. Josephson described their most ruthless actions, their plunders and conspiracies, and their lack of ethics. The system they created led to the Great Depression. Since then academic historians created a revisionist history that claimed those entrepreneurs were saviors of the country and not interested in looting and plundering the economy. This "history" is similar to the "truth factories" in George Orwell's "1984" [which is about Britain and the world of 1948]. Their family dynasties have survived, they established trusts that evaded the tax burdens of other wealthy families. [Other writers have pointed out that they sponsored universities to control teachers and thinking, and provide other benefits.] These dynasties seem permanent. The founders were hated by the American people in their lifetime. The farmers of Kansas first applied the name "Robber Barons" to the railroads that oppressed them.
Jay Gould bought the "New York World" and the Associate Press to control the news to his advantage. Most newspapers then were independently owned, unlike today's corporate media. The Robber Barons used their control of transportation to levy tolls on all shipments. Today's versions are trying to privatize public highways and add new tolls to enrich themselves and impoverish the rest of us. Chapter 12 tells about the formations of pools and trusts. The use of legal shields, violence and sabotage set a precedent for latter-day organized crime. Bankers were enriched in 1873 when the Federal Government stopped silver currency. Debts contracted with cheap greenbacks had to be repaid with expensive gold (p.290). The "Railway Mania" of the Civil War era led to excessive railroad lines that lost money (p.292). Hundreds of millions of dollars were lost to bankruptcy and fraud. [Was this comparable to the High-Tech stock swindles of the late 1990s?] The Pennsylvania Railroad was the most powerful in business (p.295). Unregulated competition led to enormous waste and an impoverished society (p.297). The Morgan bank worked out a deal which evaded the law (p.299). [The decision of the US Supreme Court suggests they were touched like other politicians (p.306).]
"Nature's Noblemen" were at their height of power and reputation in the 1880s. They were in control of government (police, army, navy, courts), the schools, the press, the church, and fashionable society (as ever a "kept class" attached to the ruling class). They were true believers in the God that rewarded them with riches and powers (pp.316-317). "God gave me my money" (p.318). [Divine right?] They donated millions to churches because it was good business (pp.320-321) They money was orthodox! Rockefeller's Chicago University argued to justify the trusts (p.324). They appointed and controlled Federal judges. The lives of the colossally rich showed their emptiness and vulgarity (p.337). Chapter 15 explains how laws were passed (pp.356-358). Their absolute powers were shown by their ruthless attacks on labor unions (p.361). The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was passed against the industrialists but was used against unions (p.367)!
Chapter 16 explains how mismanagement led to the Panic of 1893, the worst depression of the 19th century. [Economic oppression and a lack of money cause depressions.] Depressions were used to eliminate small competitors (p.379). Price fixing swindled tax-payers (pp.385-386). "Pump and dump" schemes made millions (pp.387-388). Carnegie supplied low-quality armor for Navy ships (p.391). Chapter 17 tells how the House of Morgan used people's monies to control the people (p.409). Morgan saved railroads in order to destroy them (p.413). Morgan "saved the country" (p.414)! Chapter 18 tells how the US Steel Trust was created. $1,321 millions in stocks and bonds were sold to buy $681 millions of tangible assets (p.429)! Things began to change in 1901 with Teddy Roosevelt (p.445). Trusts exploited the public (p.447). Would plutocracy triumph over the people (p.448)? They continued to profit from plundering the people (p.451) They learned to use "public relations counselors" to present themselves to the public (p.452).
The `Bibliography' lists the books used for research. There is no mention of the attacks on the militia in those days. [Have we learned anything since then?]
 Interesting book, but June 12, 2006
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
I found the Robber Barons an interesting book to read but I thought Matthew Josephson's book the Money Lords was better. It is a well written book as you would expect from Josephon. Robber Barons is a classic and a good general history of the pioneers of industry including Astor, Vanderbilt, Drew, Cooke, Gould, Fisk, Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller and Harriman of which I am sure most will find it interesting but it lacks the insight and wisdom of Money Lords. There are numerous interesting stories of all the above metioned men as they made their individual quests for success. Most of the men made a great deal of their fortunes through stocks on Wall Street which some of their stories are outlined here. Interesting enough is that over half made their fortunes in Rail Roads through ownership and stock manipulation. This is a good book giving the reader a general overview of some of the biggest fortunes made during the late 1800's.
The Robber Barons Are Corporatists; NOT Capitalists! January 8, 2006
20 out of 35 found this review helpful
Oh - the confusion in political language! No, folks, the Robber Barons did not rise out of laissez-faire capitalism; they were not capitalists! The Robber Barons rose out of the State's ability to grant corporate status; they are children of the State. They rose out of Statism, NOT free enterprise. In fact, they are the antithesis of free enterprise as Paul H. Weaver so rudely discovered during his stint at Ford (see The Suicidal Corporation).
That said, Josephson's book is not just a book on the history of corporatism in America; this book IS history just as Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' is a piece of Americana. By wrongly labelling the corporatist robber barons as "The Great American Capitalists", he unintentionally gave the corporatists the rhetoric of free enterprise with which to hide their statist anti-capitalist behavior. In other words, there was a huge difference between Andrew Carnegie, the partner,who payed the highest wages and charged the lowest prices, and J.P. Morgan's U.S. Steel, the corporation that charged the highest prices and ran to its parent - the State, for protective tariffs. Carnegie ran a laissez-faire business; Morgan's (who got started selling defective rifles to the government)U.S. Steel was a corporation - just as bureaucratic and inefficient as its parent, the State. (are you beginning to see that there's a difference?)
The unfavorable portrait of the American businessman came about when Josephson could not distinguish between them and the corporatists: "This book attempts the history of a small class of men who arose at the time of our Civil War and suddenly swept into power". Yes, war is the health of the State. And corporations are creations of the State - extensions of the State. And statist elites are granted corporate status and privileges. Josephson doesn't quite grasp the difference between them and businessmen, but he can observe what these corporatists are doing: "These men more or less knowingly played the leading roles in . . . the renovation of our economic life proceeded relentlessly: large-scale production replaced the scattered, decentralized mode of production; industrial enterprises became more concentrated, more 'efficient' technically, and essentially 'cooperative', where they had been purely individualistic and lamentably wasteful."
Notice the difference here? The "lamentably wasteful" ways were the ways of laissez faire capitalism; the approaches perceived by Josephson to be more "efficient" were the corporate ways. Yet, Josephson is critical of corporations and their corporatism: "But all this revolutionizing effort is branded with the motive of private gain on the part of the new captains of industry. To organize and exploit the resources of a nation upon a gigantic scale, to regiment its farmers and workers into harmonious corps of producers, and to do this only in the name of an uncontrolled appetite for private profit - here surely is the great inherent contradiction whence so much disaster, outrage, and misery has flowed". Josephson sounds like he may have liked the Soviet version of industrialization while he criticizes the corporatist version. Yet both are statist approaches.
Josephson also confused monopoly profits with market profits. All monopolies are created by the State; in a free market there are no monopolies. The statist corporations and their stifling of competition through the heavy hand of government gave rise to monopolies "whence so much disaster, outrage, and misery flowed". Yet, he correctly identified these Robber Barons as destroyers. But I'm pretty sure he did not know that it was laissez-faire capitalism that they were destroying.
Today, corporations have been granted Constitutional rights by the State, who views them as "artificial persons". A country by the corporations, of the corporations, and for the corporations. Josephson would rightly be incensed, although he couldn't think of the correct words to say.
This is the finest history of the Robber Barons December 18, 2005
17 out of 22 found this review helpful
Judging by the attack "reviews" below there must be some right-wing campaign in progress to discredit Josephson. It's probably being organized by one of those propaganda machines they call "conservative think tanks".
That nonsense aside, the book itself is a fabulous read as a tome on both history and grand business strategy for building a trust. Indeed I found it difficult to put down at night in order to go to sleep. Josephson brings the Robber Barons alive.
For anyone interested in how men can amass such great fortunes the book provides plenty of clues by revealing the strategies used by the Robber Barons.
One final point, a few of the attack reviews here are critical of Josephson for siding with labor in their disputes with the Robber Barons. They conveniently overlook the fact that most workers were treated as slaves back then working 12 hour days 6 times per week. If they dared complain about dangerous work conditions, the Andrew Carnegie types would simply send in battalions of Pinkerton goons to bust heads open and maybe even murder a few workers for good measure.
There is no other history of the Robber Barons that comes close to this book.
Complicated and Lacking August 17, 2005
7 out of 13 found this review helpful
I decided to read this book because I have a great interest in the topic and Josephson is cited in a number of books by authors I enjoyed (Chernow, Morris, amoung others). However, like other reviewers I found this book to be complicated and lacking a flow that the other works have. Josephson focuses mainly on the railroad barons leaving gaps about other important business people of the time. Additionally I was unable to determine what point of view Josephson has on the Barons...I found it hard to tell if he admired them or was writing in protest of what they did (although Charles Beard was cited throughout). One of the good qualities of this text is a large portion is dedicated to the Union Pacific gang (Stanford and Huntington) and Jay Gould...I've not been able to find a quality history of Jay Gould. In summation, if you are interested in reading a book about business people of the Gilded Age I advise you to read "Titan" or "The House of Morgan" by Chernow.
P.S. If half stars were an option, this would be 3.5 since they are not I must rate this a 3, a 4 would be a bit too generous.
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