Untitled Lesson

Big Business Leaders/

Robber Barons & Monopolies

Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt,Morgan

A person who has become rich through ruthless
and corrupt business practices (cheating, bribing,
swindling).

Who is a Robber Baron?

monopoly
When a single company achieves control of an
entire market. *Eliminating all competition

-US Steel and Standard Oil formed
monopolies

Andrew Carnegie
Net worth: 300,000,000,000

Philanthropist and entrepreneur, Andrew Carnegie was born the son of a

weaver in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1835. Carnegie’s father decided to relocate
the family to the United States when the power loom made his handloom work
obsolete. The Carnegies settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where Andrew took
his first job at a cotton factory around the age of 12. Carnegie next went to work
at a telegraph office where he met Pennsylvania Railroad Company
superintendent Thomas Scott. He went to work for Scott. He made numerous
wise financial investments, sold railroad securities in Europe, and founded the
Carnegie Steel Company, which revolutionized steelmaking in the United States.

By the turn of the century Andrew Carnegie had amassed a fortune. In

1901 he sold many of his assets to J. P. Morgan for nearly $250 million,
shifting his attention away from business and devoting himself to
philanthropy. He long believed that anyone who had gained a great degree
of wealth was responsible for using it to improve the lives of others. He
founded several charities for the improvement of schools, the building of
libraries and theaters, scientific research, and global peace initiatives.
Andrew Carnegie died in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1919 and left $350
million to charity.

Philanthropy
the desire to promote the welfare of others,
expressed especially by the generous donation of
money to good causes.

John D. Rockefeller
Net worth: 350,000,000,000

Infamous trust-building industrialist and benevolent philanthropist, John D.

Rockefeller was as complex as he was wealthy. John Davidson Rockefeller was
born in Richford, New York, in 1839, moving to Cleveland, Ohio, with his family
14 years later. Around the age of 20 (early on), Rockefeller and his neighbor
Maurice Clark started Clark & Rockefeller, selling agricultural and meat
products. Around 1863, he built the most successful oil refinery in Cleveland.
Seven years later he co-established the Standard Oil Company. Rockefeller
expanded his oil enterprise throughout the country. His sheer dominance of the
U.S. oil industry grew to an outright monopoly. This move inspired Congress to
enact the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. In 1911, the U.S. The Supreme Court
ruled against his Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and essentially shut
down the monopoly.

Sherman Antitrust Act
a federal statute which prohibits activities that
restrict interstate commerce and competition in the
marketplace. **

It outlawed companies that formed
MONOPOLIES… making it illegal.

Amidst such illegal business practices, Rockefeller had retired from

Standard Oil by 1897 and focused on philanthropy. He had given part of his
income to charity his entire life, but at this point, as the richest man in the world,
he was able to give away much more. He founded the University of Chicago in
1892, Rockefeller University (originally the Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Research) in 1901, and the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913, among others. By
the time of his death in 1937, Rockefeller had spent more than $500 million on
charitable pursuits.

What is vertical integration? A vertically
integrated company owns all of the
different businesses on which it depends for
its operation.

How did vertical integration help Carnegie?
Vertical integration saved money and
enabled many companies to expand.

What is horizontal integration? combining
many firms engaged in the same type of
business into one large corporation.

Cornelius Vanderbilt
Net worth: 185,000,000,000

Shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was a self-made

multi-millionaire who became one of the wealthiest Americans of the 19th century. As a boy,
he worked with his father, who operated a boat that ferried cargo between Staten Island, New
York, where they lived, and Manhattan. After working as a steamship captain, Vanderbilt went
into business for himself in the late 1820s, and eventually became one of the country’s
largest steamship operators. In the process, the Commodore, as he was publicly nicknamed,
gained a reputation for being fiercely competitive and ruthless. In the 1860s, he shifted his
focus to the railroad industry, where he built another empire and helped make railroad
transportation more efficient. When Vanderbilt died, he was worth more than $100 million.

Vanderbilt was a steamship entrepreneur, and the nickname “commodore” was a common
one for important steamboat entrepreneurs in the 1830s, when he first began to be referred to
as Commodore Vanderbilt.

Unlike the Gilded Age titans who followed him, such as steel

magnate Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) and Standard Oil founder John D.
Rockefeller (1839-1937), Vanderbilt did not own grand homes or give
away much of his vast wealth to charitable causes. In fact, the only
substantial philanthropic donation he made was in 1873, toward the end
of his life, when he gave $1 million to build and endow Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tennessee.

J.P. Morgan $
Net worth: 1,200,000,000

One of the most powerful bankers of his era, J.P. (John Pierpont) Morgan

(1837-1913) financed railroads and helped organize U.S. Steel, General Electric and
other major corporations. The Connecticut native followed his wealthy father into the
banking business in the late 1850s, and in 1871 formed a partnership with
Philadelphia banker Anthony Drexel. In 1895, their firm was reorganized as J.P.
Morgan & Company, a predecessor of the modern-day financial giant JPMorgan
Chase. Morgan used his influence to help stabilize American financial markets during
several economic crises, including the panic of 1907. However, he faced criticism
that he had too much power and was accused of manipulating the nation’s financial
system for his own gain. The Gilded Age titan spent a significant portion of his
wealth amassing a vast art collection.

During the late 19th century, a period when the U.S. railroad industry

experienced rapid overexpansion and heated competition (the nation’s first
transcontinental rail line was completed in 1869), Morgan was heavily
involved in reorganizing and consolidating a number of financially troubled
railroads. In the process, he gained control of significant portions of these
railroads’ stock and eventually controlled an estimated one-sixth of
America’s rail lines.

Wrap Up