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The Robber Baron Concept In American History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Hal Bridges
Hal Bridges
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History at University of Colorado
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Abstract

The most vehement and persistent controversy in business history has been that waged by the critics and defenders of the “robber baron” concept of the American businessman. Far from being a pedantic exercise, this controversy has at various times exerted a decisive influence on business itself. The origins, spread, and obsolescence of the concept are traced here, together with the merits and failings of currently predominant historical attitudes.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Spring 1958 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1958

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References

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9 Richard Hofstadter has called attention to the Progressive bent of Beard and Parrington and their wide appeal to other writers. See his “Charles Beard and the Constitution,” in Howard K. Beale, ed., Charles A. Beard: An Appraisal (Lexington, Kentucky, 1954), p. 88. That there is high professional regard for Main Currents and The Rise of American Civilization is clearly shown in John Walton Caughey, “Historians' Choice: Results of a Poll on Recently Published American History and Biography,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. XXXIX (Sept., 1952), p. 299.

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11 Parrington called this controversy a “political cyclone.” Genzmer, George Harvey, “Vernon Louis Parrington,” Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XIV (1934)Google Scholar, ed. by Dumas Malone, p. 253. Along with President Boyd, some dozen members of the Oklahoma faculty were fired. The controversy arising from these dismissals and the accusations of improper relationships with Standard Oil that led in the fall of 1908 to Governor Haskell's resignation as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee can be followed in a series of unsigned editorial articles in The Outlook, Vol. XC (1908), Sept. 5, pp. 15–17, Oct. 3, pp. 233, 235–237, 242–244, 249–251, Oct. 17, pp. 325–326. It might also be noted that Parrington's good friend and colleague at the University of Washington, J. Allen Smith, was fired from Marietta College for publishing liberal monetary views and supporting William Jennings Bryan in the election of 1896. Hofstadter, Richard and Metzger, Walter P., The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York, 1955), pp. 423–424.Google Scholar

12 Investigations by the trustees and summary dismissals of faculty members preceded Beard's resignation. See Beard, Charles A., “A Statement,” The New Republic, Vol. XIII (Dec. 29, 1917), pp. 249–250.Google Scholar Lerner's interpretation can be found in his Ideas Are Weapons: The History and Uses of Ideas (New York, 1939), p. 158. Additional details are given in Hofstadter and Metzger, Academic Freedom, pp. 501–502. The reference to the academic stereotype of the businessman is on page 420 of this work; in Chapter IX, “Academic Freedom and Big Business,” Hofstadter and Metzger show how the stereotype developed in the Populist and Progressive Eras, and how it does not always fit the facts of academic-freedom cases prior to the First World War.

13 Hofstadter, “Charles Beard and the Constitution,” p. 87.

14 Kazin, Alfred, On Native Grounds: An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature (New York, 1942), p. 93Google Scholar; Parrington, Main Currents, Vol. Ill, p. 12.

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20 Kirkland, Business in the Gilded Age, p. 59.

21 Adams, Railroads, pp. 128–129; Kirkland, Business in the Gilded Age, p. 12.

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23 In his autobiography, Adams set forth his often quoted view of American big businessmen as “mere money-getters … essentially unattractive and uninteresting,” but also confessed that as his life's achievement he “would like to have accumulated — and ample and frequent opportunity for so doing was offered me — one of those vast fortunes of the present day, rising up into the tens and scores of millions …” so that he could have donated a fortune to Harvard. Charles Francis Adams 1835–1915: An Autobiography (Boston, 1916), pp. 190, 210.

24 Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Significance of Sections in American History (New York, 1932), pp. 262–264.Google Scholar Compare the strong emphasis on the creative achievement of post-Civil War industrial capitalists in Hacker, Louis M., The Triumph of American Capitalism (New York, 1940), pp. 427–435.Google Scholar

25 Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920), pp. 317–321, 328.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 322.

27 There is a striking similarity between the approach to the past advocated here by Turner and the modern methods for understanding business leaders that are set forth, much more fully, of course, and in more technical language, in Change and the Entrepreneur: Postulates and Patterns for Entrepreneurial History [Research Center in Entrepreneurial History, Harvard University], (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1949), pp. 108–175.

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29 Larson, Jay Cooke, p. xiv.

30 The Emergence of Modern America 1863–1878 (New York, 1927), pp. 42, 397–400; review of The Robber Barons in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. X (March 3, 1934), p. 522. But in Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage (New York, 1933), p. 607, Nevins in summarizing the social unrest of the nineties mentioned only the sordid side of the Standard Oil record and favorably described Lloyd's Wealth against Commonwealth as a “searching exposure” and the parent of later muckraking literature.

31 Nevins, Allan, John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise (New York, 1940), Vol. I, pp. 603–622Google Scholar, Vol. II, pp. 707–714; Van Hise, Charles R., Concentration and Control: A Solution of the Trust Problem in the United States (New York, 1912)Google Scholar; Schumpeter, Joseph A., The Theory of Economic Development, trans. Redvers Opie (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), p. 93Google Scholar; Sombart, Werner, “Capitalism,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. by Seligman, Edwin R. A. and Johnson, Alvin, Vol. III (1930), p. 200.Google Scholar

32 Nevins, Allan, Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller (New York, 1953), Vol. I, p. viii, Vol. II, pp. 426–436.Google Scholar See also Nevins, Allan, “New Lamps, for Old in History,” The American Archivist, Vol. XVII (Jan., 1954), pp. 3–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Josephson opposes this hypothesis in Nevins and Josephson, “Should American History be Rewritten?”, pp. 9–10, 44–46.

33 Hedges, James Blaine, Henry Villard and the Railways of the Northwest (New Haven, 1930)Google Scholar; Overton, Richard C., Burlington West: A Colonization History of the Burlington Railroad (Cambridge, Mass., 1941)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kirkland, Edward Chase, Men, Cities and Transportation: A Study in New England History 1820–1900, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1948)Google Scholar; Cochran, Thomas C., Railroad Leaders 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action (Cambridge, Mass., 1953).Google Scholar

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35 Hidy, and Hidy, , Pioneering in Big Business, pp. xxviii, 3–8, 201–232, 715–717.Google Scholar

36 For example, Bridges, Hal, Iron Millionaire: Life of Charlemagne Tower (Philadelphia, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dorf, Philip, The Builder: A Biography of Ezra Cornell (New York, 1952).Google Scholar

37 For example, Gregory, Francis W. and Neu, Irene D., “The American Industrial Elite in the 1870's: Their Social Origins,” in William, Miller, ed., Men in Business: Essays in the History of Entrepreneurship (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), pp. 193–211.Google Scholar See also Ratner, Sidney, ed., New Light on the History of Great American Fortunes: American Millionaires of 1892 and 1902 (New York, 1953)Google Scholar, in which Ratner in his introduction criticizes various statistical studies of American business leaders.

38 Cochran, Railroad Leaders, pp. 1–16, 92–93, 172, 182–183, 200–228. For another interesting approach to the business mind of the Gilded Age see Kirkland, Edward C., “Divide and Ruin,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. XLIII (June, 1956), pp. 3–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also, by Kirkland, , Dream and Thought in the Business Community, 1860–1900 (Ithaca, N. Y., 1956).Google Scholar

39 Josephson, “Should American History Be Rewritten?”, pp. 9–10, 44–46; Destler, “Entrepreneurial Leadership,” pp. 28, 38, and “The Opposition of American Businessmen to Social Control During the ‘Gilded Age,’” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. XXXIX (March, 1953), pp. 641–672.

40 Kraus, Michael, The Writing of American History (Norman, Okla., 1953), p. 337Google Scholar; The Social Sciences in Historical Study: A Report of the Committee on Historiography Bulletin 64 (New York, 1954), p. 154; Cochran, Thomas C., “The Legend of the Robber Barons,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. LXXIV (July, 1950), pp. 307–321.Google Scholar

41 Vigorous arguments against the inevitability of monopoly are presented in Walter Adams and Gray, Horace M., Monopoly in America: The Government as Promoter (New York, 1955).Google Scholar

42 On Turner see for example Hacker, Louis M., “Sections — Or Classes?” The Nation, Vol. CXXXVII (July 26, 1933), pp. 108–110.Google Scholar On Nevins see for example Galantière, Lewis, “John D.: An Academy Portrait,” The New Republic, Vol. CHI (Dec. 9, 1940), pp. 795–797.Google Scholar