History of the United States II / Unit 3 USH2 0325 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Robber Barons or Captains of Industry
The idea
Whether the great industrialists were robber barons or captains of industry is a question the sources answer on both sides. On one side: Standard Oil's integration cut the price of kerosene by about eighty percent, cheap steel remade the country's building and transport, and Carnegie gave most of his fortune to libraries, colleges and concert halls, arguing in eighteen eighty-nine that the rich were trustees for the public. On the other: Standard Oil's rivals were driven out by price wars and discounted freight rates, Morgan's financial reach drew the charge of a money trust, and the Yawp reports that by eighteen ninety the wealthiest one percent of Americans owned a fourth of the nation's assets. The anchor itself separates Vanderbilt, who built railroads that worked, from Jay Gould, whose profits came from manipulating stock.
In practice
Two portraits of the same man: the philanthropist opening a public library, and the owner whose manager locked out the workers at Homestead.
Where people slip
Two misreadings sit on either side. The first treats the industrialists as villains whose fortunes produced nothing but misery, which cannot account for cheaper kerosene, cheaper steel, and the libraries. The second treats them as heroes whose success proves they deserved it, which cannot account for Homestead, the price wars, or a distribution of wealth this narrow. Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth assumed great fortunes were legitimate and asked only what the rich owed the public; the locked-out workers at Homestead were asking what the company owed them. The course adopts neither label. It gives the evidence each rests on, because the anchor carries both readings, and the same man can fit both descriptions in the same decade.
Your place on the trail
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