The Robber Barons

It was an era when politics took a backseat to a genius expressed in accumulating and holding more private wealth and power than had been possessed in history. An illustration of this power was the financier John P. Morgan who traded gold to an almost bankrupt government in 1895 for U.S. bonds which he promptly sold at an enormous profit. The accumulation of great wealth in the hands of a few is nothing new, since colonial times a minority has held a vast majority of the country’s wealth. But the nineteenth century brought this concentration of wealth to an incredible high.

Image by jimbowen0306 via Flickr

After the civil war when land in the west opened up the great migration west began. Four basics things were needed, tools, labor,steel and capital to build the railroads. Andrew Carnegie provided the steel. Immigrants provided cheap labor. And J.P. Morgan the banker, provided the cash. With unlimited vistas of western land the plan to connect east to west by railway provided unlimited schemes to bilk the Treasury. Corruption reared it’s ugly head with the exposure of the Credit Mobilier Scandal in 1872.

Image via Wikipedia

Massachusetts congressman Oakes Ames was a shovel maker, and one of the directors of the Union Pacific Railroad, the company building the railway west. Ames and the Union Pacific created the Credit Mobilier of America, which was awarded all construction contracts. The company was paid $94 million by Congress while the job only cost $44 million. Ames smoothed the way in Washington by spreading around shares of Mobilier stock, including some to President Grant’s first and second term Vice Presidents, The Union Pacific did the same thing, winning land grants, contracts, and huge over payments.

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Bribes were paid by towns that wanted the railroad to run through them, and millions of acres were given away to Union Pacific as gifts. Grant’s terms were a boom for the corruptible. There was also the Whiskey Ring scandal, that defrauded the government of millions in taxes with the assistance of the Treasury Department and Grant’s secretary, Orville Babcock. In the Bureau of Indian Affairs kickbacks were rampant all the way down the line. All this was still small change compared to the fortunes being made by the great thieves of the generation the so called Robber Barons, Jay Gould, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Carnegie, and Rockefeller.

http://www.triond.com/rw/6239 click here if you would like to publish your favorite bit of history or other articles of interest and earn income.

If you liked the above article you might like thefollowing.

http://socyberty.com/history/a-woman-to-be-reckoned-with/

http://socyberty.com/history/american-aristocracy/

http://socyberty.com/religion/warren-jeffs-prophet-of-the-latter-day-saints/

http://socyberty.com/history/the-grand-adventure-of-jacques-cartier/

http://socyberty.com/history/the-muck-rakers/