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The Anatomy of Prejudice: Origins of the Robber Baron Legend

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

John Tipple
John Tipple
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History at Los Angeles State College
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Abstract

Who were the originators of the Robber Baron concept? Not the injured, the poor, the faddists, the jealous, or a dispossessed elite. Rather, it was a frustrated group of observers led at last by protracted years of harsh depression to believe that the American dream of abundant prosperity for all was a hopeless myth.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , Winter 1959 , pp. 510 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1959

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References

1 Presumably the term was inspired by a magazine article written by Henry Demarest Lloyd. See Destler, Chester McArthur, “Entrepreneurial Leadership Among the Robber Barons: A Trial Balance,” The Tasks of Economic History, a special supplement to the Journal of Economic History, Vol. VI (1946), p. 28Google Scholar.

2 See Table I.

3 Richard T. Ely, Burton J. Hendrick, Edward A. Ross, Albert Shaw, Thorstein Veblen, Walter Weyl, and Woodrow Wilson.

4 The eight novelists were Henry Adams, Edward Bellamy, Ignatius Donnelly, William Dean Howells, Mary E. Lease, Frank Norris, David Graham Phillips, and Upton Sinclair. It should be pointed out that three (Adams, Donnelly, and Lease) were only part-time novelists.

5 For a statistical breakdown see Table II.

6 Both had unhappy memories of the Standard Oil Company. Miss Tarbell's father had been an independent oil producer displaced by Standard, and Lawson claimed to have been outmaneuvered in certain speculative dealings with the Standard hierarchy. For details see Tarbell, Ida, All In The Day's Work (New York, 1939), pp. 202–205Google Scholar; and Lawson, Thomas W., Frenzied Finance (New York, 1905)Google Scholar.

7 Regier, C. C., The Era of the Muckrakers (Chapel Hill, 1932), p. 214Google Scholar. Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (New York, 1955), pp. 131–173Google Scholar. Ludwig von Mises, “What's Behind the War on Business,” United States News & World Report, Oct. 19, 1956, pp. 156–175.

8 ·Cantwell, Robert, “Journalism — the Magazines,” Stearns, Harold E., ed., America Now (New York, 1938), p. 347Google Scholar.

9 Though Hofstadter recognizes these limitations, he nevertheless feels that loss of status was the primary motivation (The Age of Reform, p. 149 et seq.).

10 In the 1870's, 64 per cent of the business elite were sons of business or professional men of relatively high social standing; and in the following generation 77 per cent of the business leaders of 1901–1910 came from this older elite. See the studies made by Gregory, Frances W. and Neu, Irene D., “The American Industrial Elite in the 1870's; Their Social Origins,” Men in Business (Cambridge, 1952), Miller, William, ed., p. 202Google Scholar.

11 Destier, Chester McArthur, “Wealth Against Commonwealth, 1894 and 1944,” American Historical Review, Vol. L (1944), pp. 49–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in American Radicalism, 1865–1901 (New London, Conn., 1946), p. 136Google Scholar.

12 Croly, Herbert, The Promise of American Life (New York, 1912), p. 3Google Scholar.

13 Gras, N. S. B. and Larson, Henrietta M., eds., Casebook in American Business History (New York, 1939), pp. 706–714Google Scholar. Thorp, Willard Long, Business Annals (New York, 1926), pp. 206–212Google Scholar.

14 Kirkland, Edward Chase, Dream and Thought in the Business Community: 1860–1890 (Ithaca, 1956), p. 26Google Scholar.

15 Saloutos, Theodore, “The Agricultural Problem and Nineteenth Century Industrialism,” Agricultural History, Vol. XXII (1948), p. 156Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 160.

17 Douglas, Paul H., Real Wages in the United States 1890–1926 (Boston, 1930), p. 41Google Scholar.

18 Croly, op. tit., p. 11.

19 The New York Times, April 15, 1906, p. 2, col. 2.

20 Weyl, Walter E., The New Democracy (New York, 1912), p. 4Google Scholar.

21 White, William Allen, The Autobiography of William Allen White (New York, 1946), p. 429Google Scholar.

22 McClure, S. S., My Autobiography (New York, 1914), p. 246Google Scholar. [Italics: John Tipple.]

28 Tarbell, Day's Work, p. 280; Steffens, Lincoln, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York, 1931), p. 357Google Scholar; Baker, Ray Stannard, American Chronicle (New York, 1945), p. 94Google Scholar; Regier, op. cit., p. 110.

24 Baker, op. cit., pp. 183–184.

25 White, William Allen, The Old Order Changeth (New York, 1910), pp. 3, 7Google Scholar.

28 Address at Kansas City, Missouri, May 5, 1911, and first inaugural address, Washington, March 4, 1914; Heckscher, August, ed., The Politics of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1956), pp. 167, 179Google Scholar.

27 Steffens, Autobiography, p. 494.

28 The New York Times, April 15, 1906, p. 2, col. 2.

29 Ghent, William J., Our Benevolent Feudalism (New York, 1902), p. 170Google Scholar.

30 Weyl, op. cit., p. 244.

31 Lloyd, Henry Demarest, Wealth Against Commonwealth (New York, 1894), p. 502Google Scholar.