Speaker 1: Hello friends, we have a book coming out finally and
Speaker 1: it is awesome. You're gonna make me say the title again. Yeah, fine,
Speaker 1: it's Stuff you Should Know colon An Incomplete Compendium of
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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chucker's Bryant over there.
Speaker 1: Jerry was just here doing the COVID set up and
Speaker 1: then got out of the room really quick, held her
Speaker 1: breath for five straight minutes. It's a new record, it really,
Speaker 1: It's a new studio record. Sure. Uh, and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. That's that's no David Blaine record,
Speaker 1: by the way. No, I mean that's our studio record.
Speaker 1: You should see her when she's pearl diving though, right,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that be something If Jerry did have a secret
Speaker 1: life pearl diving, that would be amazing, it would um.
Speaker 1: But we're not talking about Jerry Chuck enough about her. Instead,
Speaker 1: I propose that we have a nice, pleasant conversation about
Speaker 1: robber barons. Yeah, this is an interesting topic because depending
Speaker 1: on who you ask, the robber barons were either the
Speaker 1: greatest thing to ever happen to this country, right, or
Speaker 1: one of the worst things to ever happen to this country. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And at first, from what I could tell, historians, like
Speaker 1: immediately after in the like a few decades after UM,
Speaker 1: the Gilded Age, which we'll talk about where the you know,
Speaker 1: the age the robber barons worked and operated and lived
Speaker 1: in UM really took it to be like their their presence,
Speaker 1: their existence was one of the worst things ever. But
Speaker 1: over time there's kind of been a reformation of them,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a revisiting of them that
Speaker 1: has tried to to to revive their images or actually
Speaker 1: make their images possibly better than it ever has been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it kind of I think a lot that
Speaker 1: this has to probably depends on what you feel about,
Speaker 1: you know, capitalism to this extent where kind of doesn't
Speaker 1: matter how you make your money, if it's sort of
Speaker 1: underhanded and you sort of undercut competitors and monopolize things,
Speaker 1: that's all just free trade man, free capitalism, and that's
Speaker 1: how it works out. And then those guys ton of
Speaker 1: gave a ton of money to society before they died,
Speaker 1: and so they that's that's all. Uh, that in justifies
Speaker 1: the means. Yeah, I actually that Yeah, that's the conservative
Speaker 1: way to look at it. UM. And I ran across
Speaker 1: something camera was called, but it's basically, oh, human imperfection.
Speaker 1: Did you know that the idea that humans are imperfect
Speaker 1: and there's really no reason to try to make a
Speaker 1: perfect society because it will always be imperfect and in
Speaker 1: ruin um that that is a corner stone, a hallmark
Speaker 1: of conservativism. Did you know that? Uh? I didn't, But
Speaker 1: I mean, of course you can't make a perfect society.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Well there, what so conservatives are saying
Speaker 1: that in opposition to all of the liberal um efforts
Speaker 1: to make a perfect society, to have government regulation that
Speaker 1: says no, no, we should all have clean water and
Speaker 1: we should do it at the expense of making corporations
Speaker 1: clean up the waste water before they they release their
Speaker 1: waste into the the shared common water resources. Things like that, right,
Speaker 1: And that there's this idea that you can you can
Speaker 1: mold society into some perfect form, that that's the opposite
Speaker 1: of human imperfection, that that's like what liberals think, and
Speaker 1: that that is that right there is one of the
Speaker 1: main dividing lines between conservative and liberal. I've been on
Speaker 1: the planet for almost forty four years now, and I
Speaker 1: had no idea that it was just that simple, and
Speaker 1: it really kind of this. I think the word perfect
Speaker 1: is what's a stumbling block for me because I don't
Speaker 1: know a single liberal thinks that they can make things perfect.
Speaker 1: I think the goal is to make things better. Yeah, yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's it's a great word either,
Speaker 1: but I think that that's you know, I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: you're gonna argue with the Stanford Encyclopedia philosophy, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'll bring it on, man, I'll punch that thing right
Speaker 1: in the face. Speaking of Stanford, did you know that
Speaker 1: Stanford University was named Yeah, a robber Baron named Leland Stanford. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of universities are named after robber Baron's. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of problems with some of the early
Speaker 1: histories of of universities, as we'll find out in the
Speaker 1: coming weeks. So we should get into the gilded Age.
Speaker 1: We should hop in the old way back machine, because
Speaker 1: that's the age that we're talking about. And when you
Speaker 1: hear guilded age, it might sound really great because I mean,
Speaker 1: what's better than a gilded I don't know, toilet gilded lily.
Speaker 1: Isn't that another one? That another thing people guild. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's a pretty good band name though, Gilded Lily, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a nineties power pop. Oh, totally, you nailed it.
Speaker 1: Not said what about breakfast, said Tiffany's. But the Gilded
Speaker 1: Age is. And Dave Russe helped us put this together,
Speaker 1: and he points out it's not a term of endearment.
Speaker 1: When something is gilded, that means it's it's got a
Speaker 1: thin coating of gold, but underneath it's you know, it
Speaker 1: could be a gilded tird. Sure, I hate that word
Speaker 1: so much. I love it. It's so great. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I hate I love it and how awful it is,
Speaker 1: Oh gotcha, But I think it's so awful it like
Speaker 1: comes out on the other side is just plain old
Speaker 1: awful to me. So um, yeah, that's the that's the
Speaker 1: idea of the guilded Age, that it looked great on
Speaker 1: the outside, but on the inside it wasn't so great,
Speaker 1: and when it was so This was the second half
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, basically from pretty much the end
Speaker 1: of the Civil War up until the first decade of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, and it was characterized by a huge,
Speaker 1: massive shift in the American economy where I saw somewhere
Speaker 1: that at some point in the eighteen sixties to some
Speaker 1: point in the early eighteen eighties and about fifteen years,
Speaker 1: the American economy doubled doubled in size in fifteen years.
Speaker 1: That's how massive it was, and that's how fast it happened.
Speaker 1: And what it was was a transition from an agrarian
Speaker 1: society to an industrial society. And it happened virtually overnight
Speaker 1: as far as history goes. Yeah, and it was because
Speaker 1: it happened so quickly and because it was such growth,
Speaker 1: I think the government was like, we're going to stay
Speaker 1: out of this and kind of just let you your
Speaker 1: dudes do what you're gonna do. No regulation. Uh, you
Speaker 1: can be as competitive as you want to be, and
Speaker 1: you can satisfy scratch every capitalist it you want, and
Speaker 1: we're just gonna let that happen because we're also kind
Speaker 1: of getting rich on the side. Right, So that kind
Speaker 1: of raises something that I saw is that the idea
Speaker 1: that that it's kind of like a myth of the
Speaker 1: las a fair government. During this era, they were definitely
Speaker 1: las fair when it comes to regulation and letting corporatists
Speaker 1: run rough shot over labor. But they were anything butt
Speaker 1: hands off when it came to corporate welfare and political
Speaker 1: entrepreneurship and helping out the wealthy class at the expense
Speaker 1: of the people in general. So in one hand, on
Speaker 1: one hand, they were las fair, on the other they
Speaker 1: were not. Yeah, and what we're talking about here is
Speaker 1: uh stuff like um snatching up resources where you could
Speaker 1: hoarding them for yourself under like building such a massive
Speaker 1: business that you could drive out every other smaller business, Uh,
Speaker 1: drive them right out of business by undercutting prices. Uh,
Speaker 1: jobs were more scarce, so you could have people work
Speaker 1: harder for less and less wages. That kind of thing,
Speaker 1: right exactly. And what's crazy, Like it was a dog
Speaker 1: eat dog economy. Um, it was just nuts how it happened.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of like learning on the fly,
Speaker 1: and the learning curve was extremely steep because I mean
Speaker 1: this was just basically a country of farmers who had
Speaker 1: been you know, looked down upon by Europe for a
Speaker 1: century or more, and they all of a sudden were
Speaker 1: captains of industry, and the most ruthless among them were
Speaker 1: the ones that rose to the top. Because, like you're saying,
Speaker 1: there was no rules, there was no regulation, there weren't
Speaker 1: any standards of business. They were all figuring it out
Speaker 1: as they were going along, and they went immediately to
Speaker 1: the worst impulses that capitalism can can raise in a
Speaker 1: person when you're in pursuit of as much possible wealth
Speaker 1: as you can get, and there's plenty of it to
Speaker 1: be had. And then, like you're saying, not only did
Speaker 1: the federal government not get involved, they weren't equipped to
Speaker 1: get involved because at that point, most of the government
Speaker 1: was focused on local stuff. And now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: as as the United States is truly becoming a continent
Speaker 1: wide nation, um, the federal government is kind of lagging
Speaker 1: behind to catch up. It wouldn't really begin to catch
Speaker 1: up in the progressive era. And some would say that
Speaker 1: the pendulum swung the exact opposite way to the exact
Speaker 1: opposite extreme direction that it had during the guilded Age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's let's talk about the guilded Age and
Speaker 1: the I guess just you owe it all the trains
Speaker 1: really and trains you owe to steal, so you gotta
Speaker 1: go back a little bit. Uh. Steel was a very
Speaker 1: big deal, uh in that when they found out Mr
Speaker 1: Henry Bessemer in the eighteen fifties found out how to
Speaker 1: make steal like a lot cheaper. He got a new
Speaker 1: process going where it was just like a making vast
Speaker 1: amounts of steel for a fraction at the cost and speed,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you could open up those
Speaker 1: local rail lines to stretch across the country and all
Speaker 1: these regional, um specialty businesses and industries, whether it was uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Cincinnati was known for furniture, and obviously in
Speaker 1: places like Wyoming you had coal, and you had copper
Speaker 1: and Montana and you had a lot of timber and Oregon.
Speaker 1: You could get that stuff anywhere you wanted to go,
Speaker 1: and that changed everything. Yeah, not only could you get
Speaker 1: it to where you wanted to go, you could do
Speaker 1: it exponentially cheaper than it used to be overland or
Speaker 1: stay using canals, and then also way faster too. So
Speaker 1: now if you were making like really great arm chairs
Speaker 1: and Cincinnati, like you were saying, like, not only did
Speaker 1: you have the town that they're just known for it,
Speaker 1: that's their mascot, I believe of the baseball team sitters right, Um,
Speaker 1: not only did you have the town of Cincinnati and
Speaker 1: maybe some other regional parts of Ohio as your market
Speaker 1: you know, hawd the entire country to supply with chairs,
Speaker 1: and that that happened at a really great time, the
Speaker 1: steel coming along and building the railroads, because the United
Speaker 1: States economic engine was kind of idoling a really high
Speaker 1: rpm for a little while before this. Apparently the War
Speaker 1: of eighteen twelve caused the United States to kind of
Speaker 1: stop relying on Europe and turn inward and become much
Speaker 1: more self reliant than it had been before. So it
Speaker 1: started to exploit more industry and resources rather than rely
Speaker 1: on imports from Europe. That was a big one. And then, um,
Speaker 1: the Civil War had brought a lot of factories online
Speaker 1: in the North that hadn't been there before, and so
Speaker 1: when the Civil War ended, these factories were all ready
Speaker 1: to go. And with the abundance of plentiful steel, that
Speaker 1: that that that engine got put into gear and it
Speaker 1: just kind of took off like a rocket. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: I was reading this and I tried to find out,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't really get a firm hold. I wondered
Speaker 1: if back then, when this started to happen, you know
Speaker 1: how people rail against global trade and the globalization. I
Speaker 1: wonder if people railed against nationalization of commerce back then
Speaker 1: or if they all just thought it was all great. No. No.
Speaker 1: But one of the things I read about that's actually
Speaker 1: a mark in favor of the Gilded Age being uh,
Speaker 1: actually a good thing for America is that people everyday
Speaker 1: people were super involved in politics and the political process
Speaker 1: and agitating for what they wanted. And so if there
Speaker 1: were people who were definitely in favor of this kind
Speaker 1: of just taking off like a rocket, knitting the country together,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, nationalization, then there was definitely opposition
Speaker 1: parties to that too who saw the problems with it.
Speaker 1: But the cool thing is is that everybody was involved
Speaker 1: in Everybody was like like like they cared about the
Speaker 1: direction the country was going, rather than just sitting back
Speaker 1: and being like, well, nothing we can do about it.
Speaker 1: I wonder though, if it was like if there were business,
Speaker 1: like if they were furniture makers in Cincinnati going, I
Speaker 1: don't want to sell my chairs out there. That is
Speaker 1: not what they said like in Cincinnati. Is that not
Speaker 1: the Cincinnati accident? No, Okay, I might be thinking of Maine, right,
Speaker 1: But I wonder if I wonder who was opposing it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know. I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1: Some of the things that I saw where one of
Speaker 1: the big fights was over currency and whether it should
Speaker 1: remain on the gold standard or whether it should be
Speaker 1: easy money, which, of course the so the farmers wanted.
Speaker 1: I think they wanted easy money. I can't remember who
Speaker 1: wanted to stay on the gold standard and others wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, um basically, to to leave the gold standard
Speaker 1: and make money a lot more um easy to come by.
Speaker 1: The runny Dangerfield movie. That was an easy easy money. Man.
Speaker 1: That's a tawdry movie, wasn't it. Yeah, that's good though. Yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: even the worst danger Field movie still pretty great. And
Speaker 1: on that point real quick, I'm sorry, Um. I know
Speaker 1: we don't like to go off on tangents very often. Um,
Speaker 1: but I have been watching Happy Days, I mean surely lately. Man.
Speaker 1: That is some comfort food, isn't it, Dude? They are?
Speaker 1: But not only that, it's not like junk food though.
Speaker 1: They're like well written, well acted, well directed TV shows.
Speaker 1: Like really, it's not at all like throwaway or disposable.
Speaker 1: It doesn't rely on slick special effects or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's just good stuff. Man. Yeah, I agree, And you
Speaker 1: know what, since we're on this tangent, we should tell
Speaker 1: everyone that we're writing a book and it's coming out
Speaker 1: this fall. Yeah, it's called Stuff you Should Know, an
Speaker 1: incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. And you can preorder
Speaker 1: it now if you want a special system poster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you preorder it and you can go and upload your
Speaker 1: receipt at stuff you Should Read books dot com and
Speaker 1: then there's like a little thing that says like your
Speaker 1: pre order gift, and you upload a picture of your
Speaker 1: seat and they mail it to you and you will
Speaker 1: be very happy with it because it's pretty awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we want to sell We do want to sell
Speaker 1: these books out there. We want to sell these books
Speaker 1: all over the world. Yes, we're glad that the railroad
Speaker 1: exists so we can move these books around easily. Oh man,
Speaker 1: you make kidding. Ship these things to Cincinnata, right, So
Speaker 1: where were we So we were shipping things regional businesses.
Speaker 1: We're becoming national businesses. People were leaving the farms, they
Speaker 1: were leaving small towns. They were going to the big city.
Speaker 1: Immigrants were pouring in from Europe. African Americans were going
Speaker 1: north because reconstruction didn't work out so well, because it
Speaker 1: was not abandoned. Yeah, yeah, have we done one on reconstruction. No, no,
Speaker 1: we really need to though totally. I mean the more
Speaker 1: I've been I've been reading a lot about that that
Speaker 1: period in history, and yes, we need to definitely do
Speaker 1: one on that. But the point is there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people flocking to work this uh, what was
Speaker 1: called the Second Industrial Revolution where we saw a a
Speaker 1: period of about forty years, factory output went from one
Speaker 1: point nine billion to thirteen billion dollars, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: like this happened like almost overnight. It's it's astounding how
Speaker 1: fast this happened. Um, I don't think it even happened
Speaker 1: this fast in the First Industrial Revolution, you know, the
Speaker 1: one that that um started over in Manchester. Like I
Speaker 1: think that it's this is nothing like this has ever
Speaker 1: happened in the history of the world. As far as
Speaker 1: I know, I believe it. So um oh sure, I
Speaker 1: was just getting wrapped up my own economic engines idling
Speaker 1: high right now, Well, take your foot off the gas
Speaker 1: and let's take a little break and we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about Mark Twain and uh what these a
Speaker 1: few economic stats of the day right after this. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: we're back, Charles. I'm feeling much better now that my
Speaker 1: foots off. The guess that was this good advice. Well,
Speaker 1: we we mentioned Mark Twain, And the only reason we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Mark Twain for a moment is
Speaker 1: because in eighteen seventy three he co wrote a novel.
Speaker 1: It's a satire called The Gilded Age Colon, a Tale
Speaker 1: of Today, where it followed a poor country farmer who
Speaker 1: is sort of I mean, does he move to the
Speaker 1: city trying to get in on the Second Industrial Revolution? Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: It's it's exactly that kind of migration that you're talking
Speaker 1: about just a few minutes ago. And it didn't work
Speaker 1: out so well, right, I don't know, I've never read
Speaker 1: the book, but from from what I can tell, um, no,
Speaker 1: it didn't work out very well because he is taking
Speaker 1: advantage of by all manner of bad people like crooked
Speaker 1: politicians and crooked businessmen, um. And it is basically run
Speaker 1: through the ringer from what I can tell. But for
Speaker 1: I've also seen that that wasn't it wasn't exactly the
Speaker 1: best piece of writing Mark Twain's ever come up with.
Speaker 1: But the thing is that he releases in eighteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: and this is like at the very beginning of the
Speaker 1: Gilded Age. So he saw it pretty quickly what was
Speaker 1: going on. And what he saw was this emergence from
Speaker 1: a relatively egalitarian society of a group of ultra mind
Speaker 1: bogglingly wealthy people that just rose up from the United
Speaker 1: States and through you know, cheating and business acumen and
Speaker 1: taking advantage of people and overworking people and underpaying people,
Speaker 1: but also like having a lot of vision and foresight,
Speaker 1: all the these things coming together grab control of almost
Speaker 1: all of the wealth that was being produced by the
Speaker 1: average American, and all of the average Americans put together,
Speaker 1: who had moved to these cities for the promise of
Speaker 1: better wages, better living than the farm could offer. Some
Speaker 1: people were exploiting that more than other people, and those
Speaker 1: people came to be known as the robber barons, and
Speaker 1: they were the lynch pin of why people think of
Speaker 1: the Gilded Age as a rotten part of American history. Yeah,
Speaker 1: here's some stats for you. In eighteen ninety, the top
Speaker 1: one and this they should all sound very familiar if
Speaker 1: you're alive and breathing oxygen today, But in eighteen ninety,
Speaker 1: the top one percent of the US owned fifty one
Speaker 1: percent of all wealth. Yeah, dude, more than half of
Speaker 1: all wealth in that nuts. It is nuts, but you're right,
Speaker 1: it does sound very familiar. The top twelve percent owned
Speaker 1: eighty six percent of all wealth, and the lower fort
Speaker 1: of the US population, which was about half the population,
Speaker 1: owned one cent. Uh. And here's that's even more nuts. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean all these just top one another. I think
Speaker 1: here's the last one. Uh in even the richest four
Speaker 1: thousand families. That sounds like a lot of people, but
Speaker 1: that's less than one percent of the population. The richest
Speaker 1: four thousand had as much wealth as the other eleven
Speaker 1: point six million families combined. Yeah, how about that? So
Speaker 1: that is what you call economic inequality, right, And I
Speaker 1: think the thing is is especially over time. But I
Speaker 1: get the impression during that age too, like the people
Speaker 1: who resent that, liberals typically um tend to be painted
Speaker 1: with this brush that says, you're just jealous. You've never
Speaker 1: made that much money in your life, you probably never will,
Speaker 1: and it sickens you to see somebody else with that
Speaker 1: money because you don't have it. And it's that second part,
Speaker 1: that last part about because you don't have it, that
Speaker 1: I think misses the mark work, and that even at
Speaker 1: the time, during the guilded guilded age today when people
Speaker 1: look at it in quality, that kind of stuff, what
Speaker 1: there what a lot of them. I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: people out there who are just jealous and haters for
Speaker 1: that reason, but a lot of them say no, no,
Speaker 1: like that, that that level, that that amount of disparity
Speaker 1: shouldn't exist. Where if if there are people who are
Speaker 1: just genuinely suffering, who are just poor and aren't able
Speaker 1: to make it with whatever living they're making, um, if
Speaker 1: they exist, they shouldn't have people who have that much
Speaker 1: amount of money. And that was a sentiment in the
Speaker 1: guilding guilded age is much too. It wasn't like they
Speaker 1: didn't realize this was going on at the time. Um,
Speaker 1: the sentiment was very much like it is today, except
Speaker 1: in the Gilded Age they did things like form labor
Speaker 1: unions and strike and um, and just basically did something
Speaker 1: about it. They didn't take it laying down, which is
Speaker 1: actually criticism that's levied or has been levied in the
Speaker 1: past against people today. Yeah, and I think there's also
Speaker 1: a notion that the more left leaning people are anti success,
Speaker 1: and that's that's not true either. It's um, well, that's
Speaker 1: all I'm gonna say about that. That's just not true. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's just not true. They're they're not asids, they're not
Speaker 1: anti success um. And and I don't think that every
Speaker 1: conservative thinks like, yeah, man, that like it's all fair
Speaker 1: and you should be able to do whatever you want
Speaker 1: to get ahead and stomp on any one's head that
Speaker 1: you want to get there. I think these are just
Speaker 1: broad brush um things that keep the country divided. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I think that. Uh yeah, I think most both sides
Speaker 1: misunderstand each other. Conservatives and liberals misunderstand each other to
Speaker 1: a debilitating degree these days. Agreed, So let's let's get
Speaker 1: off that. Let's go back to the original the o
Speaker 1: g robber barons who were not to these guys, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the term robber baron, which didn't happen in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century US for the first time. It happened
Speaker 1: thousands of years ago in Europe. I don't know about
Speaker 1: thousands of years, but pretty close to, pretty close to eight,
Speaker 1: I'll give you that. So um, apparently along the Rhine River,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to move goods up and down northern
Speaker 1: Europe like that was your your way to go. But
Speaker 1: unfortunately for you. There were places where the Rhine river
Speaker 1: like really narrowed with high cliffs, and you were easy
Speaker 1: prey for local nobility who wanted to like set up
Speaker 1: toll booths basically and said, you need to give me
Speaker 1: some money if you want to keep going, implying your
Speaker 1: goods along the Rhine. Yeah, and you had You couldn't
Speaker 1: just portage your steamship up a mountain and over a mountain.
Speaker 1: You had to pay the piper. Plus they didn't exist
Speaker 1: at the time. What steam much hips? And when did
Speaker 1: those come around? Uh? They early nineteenth century. You have
Speaker 1: a much better just general world timeline that lives in
Speaker 1: your brain than I do. Well. I understand history perfectly
Speaker 1: and without any um delusions or any of my opinions
Speaker 1: informing my vision of history as well. I think that's
Speaker 1: what you're known for sure. Uh wait wait were you joking?
Speaker 1: Oh no, okay, I just always get the time periods confused,
Speaker 1: So I rely on books and research like a big
Speaker 1: dumb dumb so so do I. Yeah, no, but then
Speaker 1: you keep it in your brain. Mine just floats out
Speaker 1: like like you ever cartoons with birds flying around people's
Speaker 1: head when they get knocked out. Chuck, I've seen every
Speaker 1: cartoon that ever existed, and I remember each of them
Speaker 1: perfectly without any of my opinions coloring my view of them.
Speaker 1: Those birds are always above my head. I don't have
Speaker 1: to get hit with an antiville or a piano. So
Speaker 1: the Ryne Gorge was one of those really narrow straits,
Speaker 1: and uh in twelve fifty Emperor Frederick the Third died.
Speaker 1: There was no successor, and basically that meant no regulation.
Speaker 1: And believe it or not, even way back then, a
Speaker 1: lack of regulation meant that people would take advantage of that.
Speaker 1: That's the same as it is today. It's almost like
Speaker 1: people are imperfect, almost, And so these thieves would move
Speaker 1: into that gorge, jam up those tolls, maybe just steal
Speaker 1: stuff if they wanted to as well. And they were
Speaker 1: named the robber barons. That's where that term came from.
Speaker 1: Those people, yeah, because they actually were like low level
Speaker 1: nobility and they already were well off, but that didn't
Speaker 1: prevent them from, you know, trying to take advantage of
Speaker 1: the merchant class who were just trying to make their
Speaker 1: way and make a living. And that became like a
Speaker 1: really great description for some of the the most successful
Speaker 1: business tycoons of the nineteenth century. I think it first
Speaker 1: popped up in an Atlantic article in eighteen seven d Yeah,
Speaker 1: where it didn't directly say that, it didn't say that
Speaker 1: these guys are the new robber barons, but it said
Speaker 1: that the old robber barons of the Ryan Valley were
Speaker 1: actually probably more honest than the new aristocracy of swindling millionaires.
Speaker 1: So that's a big, big time burn. So even in
Speaker 1: eight seventy people were saying, like, this is wrong, there's
Speaker 1: something like really wrong here. I mean, this is within
Speaker 1: just a few years of the Guild of Age really
Speaker 1: starting to take off, and people had already identified that
Speaker 1: there were some major issues developing. Yeah, it's so weird
Speaker 1: to look at this stuff and just how apt it
Speaker 1: applies to what's going on today. And we think, I
Speaker 1: think some people think that these are all new problems
Speaker 1: and new issues, but it's as old as time, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so weird. It is a little weird to too.
Speaker 1: It's it is weird. What's even weirder, though, is like
Speaker 1: I believe if we if we look back, if we
Speaker 1: zoom out far enough, we see humanity kind of ever
Speaker 1: going upward, even though there's like peaks and valleys in
Speaker 1: the line. The line overall is kind of up moves
Speaker 1: upward towards something great, I think, but toward perfection. I
Speaker 1: wasn't Maybe I wasn't. Uh, I wasn't alive ten thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, So who knows. Maybe that was the pinnacle
Speaker 1: of human existence. I don't know. Maybe. So should we
Speaker 1: can say, should we talk about a few of these dudes? Yeah? So,
Speaker 1: um we I feel like we have kind of set
Speaker 1: this up that the robber barons were ruthless business tycoons,
Speaker 1: and we're going to start with one of the first ones,
Speaker 1: Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, for my money, was the o
Speaker 1: G robber baron. Yeah, and Commodore is a nickname, um that,
Speaker 1: and as you will see he later, Vanderbilt University is
Speaker 1: named for him, and their mascot is the Commodore's because
Speaker 1: of him, and a commodore as a naval officer sort
Speaker 1: of above not quite an admiral, but above the captain
Speaker 1: a fleet. Oh well, that's actually pretty appropriate because he
Speaker 1: did command a fleet of ships, originally sailboats. Originally a
Speaker 1: sailboat I think when he was fourteen and then um,
Speaker 1: steamships to ferry people around um, New York, there were
Speaker 1: by this time, and you know, you know what's ironic.
Speaker 1: We were talking about steamships and when they were invented.
Speaker 1: The guy who invented steam, Robert Fulton. Remember we did
Speaker 1: a whole episode on steam technology. He had a thirty
Speaker 1: year monopoly UH in New York to ferry people using steamships,
Speaker 1: and ironically, Cornelius Vanderbilt had to overcome that monopoly UH
Speaker 1: using ingenuity and his own resourcefulness and eventually was successful
Speaker 1: in breaking that monopoly just through good business tactics that
Speaker 1: actually resulted in far lower fares for everyday people and companies.
Speaker 1: I think just at his first try, UM, by improving
Speaker 1: the size of the steam engine and using cheaper anthracite coal,
Speaker 1: he managed to drop the average ferry price from like
Speaker 1: seven dollars to three dollars and his first try. That's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so I think that's really kind of like instructive though,
Speaker 1: man Like think about it. You think of this guy's
Speaker 1: like a ruthless robber baron, and in many many ways
Speaker 1: he was, as we'll see, but he was able to
Speaker 1: get to that position by by outwitting and outsmarting other
Speaker 1: robber barons, and that was the climate at the time.
Speaker 1: Like it's so easy to sit back from this time
Speaker 1: and just be like just judge, judge, judge. And it's
Speaker 1: actually kind of fun too, it's a great pastime. But
Speaker 1: you also have to remember at the time, um, that
Speaker 1: was that was the business climate. That's just what it was.
Speaker 1: And if you weren't willing to do that, well, then
Speaker 1: you were not going to make it in in business.
Speaker 1: Which is fine, Like maybe you'd say this is too
Speaker 1: cutthroat for me, I'm just gonna sell out to these guys, um,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with that. But the ones who
Speaker 1: were left standing are the ones that you know, history
Speaker 1: still remembers, for better for worse. Yeah, and it's worth
Speaker 1: pouring out, um. And as we'll do with I think
Speaker 1: we're going over four of these guys. But some had
Speaker 1: money born into it, some started out very poor. And um,
Speaker 1: Cornelius Vanderbilt, even though that sounds like such a rich,
Speaker 1: hoity toity name, now, uh, he was born very poor.
Speaker 1: He was born in sevent uh in a farming family
Speaker 1: on uh Staaten Island and quit school when he was eleven.
Speaker 1: And that's when he started working on the boat docks,
Speaker 1: and he he was literally a self made man, starting
Speaker 1: with that first little ferry boat that you mentioned at
Speaker 1: age fourteen. Um. He was a big dude, and he
Speaker 1: was very savvy but also very ruthless. He and this
Speaker 1: is something that you'll see with a lot of these men,
Speaker 1: was a competition and a competitive edge and nature. That
Speaker 1: was sort of the underlying thing with all of them.
Speaker 1: I think that I watched There Will Be Blood recently
Speaker 1: for movie Crush and Daniel Plainview was very much based
Speaker 1: on some of these robber barons and that he has
Speaker 1: that great, great classic line from that movie when he goes,
Speaker 1: I have a competition in me. I want no one
Speaker 1: else to succeed, and that just crystallizes that character. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these guys it wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to just get rich. They wanted to devastate the competition, right.
Speaker 1: So it makes you wonder, like, is that just a
Speaker 1: normal There's just at any given time there's a you know,
Speaker 1: a handful or a multiplicity of people who are like that.
Speaker 1: It's just that these guys happened to be living in
Speaker 1: a time where they had the freedom and ability to
Speaker 1: exercise that to their to their greatest ability. Or was
Speaker 1: it that these guys shaped the business world because they
Speaker 1: all happened to be alive at the same time. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's it's interesting though that it's that competition,
Speaker 1: and again with the plane view, not just a competition
Speaker 1: to succeed, but accompassing competition to see that others don't. Right. So, um,
Speaker 1: did you talk about the railroad yet? I didn't catch it. No.
Speaker 1: So you know he started off in the steam uh, steamboats.
Speaker 1: But if you know Vanderbilt, you know he was a
Speaker 1: railroad guy. And if you look at the list of
Speaker 1: robber barons, uh, I'd say easily like a third of
Speaker 1: them were railroad men. Yeah. Because there was so much
Speaker 1: money to be made from the railroads. It was just
Speaker 1: like printing your own money. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why was because there's so much stuff being shipped over
Speaker 1: the railroads that if you own the railroad, you gotta
Speaker 1: cut of every single industry because every single industry basically
Speaker 1: had to use your form of transportation. That's why they
Speaker 1: all got into it. Plus it was wide open, like
Speaker 1: there was so much open space and so much room
Speaker 1: for expansion that it was a it was a good
Speaker 1: time to get rich off of the railroad for sure.
Speaker 1: So his first railroad ride was at thirty nine years old.
Speaker 1: He wasn't like in his twenties and early thirties getting
Speaker 1: into the railroad business. He wasn't even on a train
Speaker 1: until it was almost forty and that train crashed. Uh
Speaker 1: an axle broke and went down an embankment and he
Speaker 1: punctured along broke some bones, and I guess was lying
Speaker 1: there wheezing out of a hole in his long saying,
Speaker 1: this is the future. That was so great, and he
Speaker 1: got into railroads. It's it's crazy, like a year later, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did. And one of the things that he had
Speaker 1: a really great talent for was identifying like loser railroad
Speaker 1: seemingly loser railroads and figuring out ways that they actually
Speaker 1: had been overlooked in. A really good example of that
Speaker 1: is the Harlem Railroad, which was just a short little
Speaker 1: line other railroads, larger railroads used to connect to New
Speaker 1: York City, but Vanderbilt recognized that it was the only
Speaker 1: line that went all the way into the heart of Manhattan,
Speaker 1: and so he bought that up. And he also at
Speaker 1: the same time not only got control of that little railroad.
Speaker 1: This is a really early chance for him to show
Speaker 1: how good he was at driving up stock prices. So
Speaker 1: when he came along and bought the Harlem Railroad, or
Speaker 1: started buying shares of the Harlem Railroad, that was worth
Speaker 1: in today's money, a hundred and sixty eight dollars of share,
Speaker 1: not too shabby, but from what I could tell at
Speaker 1: the time, not very great at all. By the time
Speaker 1: he was done cornering this stock um, he had driven
Speaker 1: the shares up to fifty hundred and ninety eight dollars
Speaker 1: in just a few years. And so in doing so,
Speaker 1: not only did he make a ton of money for himself,
Speaker 1: he also developed this reputation that made owners of other
Speaker 1: railroads say, I own a bunch of shares in my railroad.
Speaker 1: You want to come buy mine and drive my stock
Speaker 1: price and then buy me out. And so he didn't.
Speaker 1: He didn't even have to plunder other companies. They came
Speaker 1: to him and just said, here, buddy, Bias please. They
Speaker 1: were Blue Star Airlines. What is that? Remember that from
Speaker 1: from there will be blood. There were no airlines and
Speaker 1: there will be blood. Remember Wall Street That was the
Speaker 1: one that Martin Sheen worked for. Yeah, that Geko came
Speaker 1: in and bought out and uh, I think he shuddered
Speaker 1: them though. That was the difference. Yeah, yeah, he was
Speaker 1: a corporator, he he Uh. And actually that era, the
Speaker 1: eighties junk bondera, is frequently cited, or it was at
Speaker 1: the time as the Second guild at age. This is
Speaker 1: not the first time. We're living in what's known as
Speaker 1: the Second guilded age. So to put a bow on Vanderbilt,
Speaker 1: he uh consolidated, like you said, all these railways between
Speaker 1: New York and Chicago. He manipulated stock, he fixed prices.
Speaker 1: He the guy, like he said, earlier government wasn't looking
Speaker 1: so you can kind of do what you wanted. And
Speaker 1: he became a very very very wealthy man, and like
Speaker 1: a lot of these guys, late in his life, turned
Speaker 1: into a philanthropist. UM built Grand Central Station. It was
Speaker 1: called the Grand Central Depot at the time, UM which
Speaker 1: during the recession provided tons and tons of jobs for people. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the Central University of Nashville was eventually renamed
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt University because all he did was give him a
Speaker 1: million bucks. Isn't it crazy significant? Like I feel like
Speaker 1: we could get stuff. You should know listeners to pitch
Speaker 1: in and get a university named after us. Let's try that.
Speaker 1: Actually like stuff you should know you we could do. Uh,
Speaker 1: we can morganize the struggling university. How about that? Hey,
Speaker 1: one more thing about Vanderbilt. So he left about a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars to his mostly to his eldest son, William.
Speaker 1: In six years, William doubled that, mostly by investing in railroads.
Speaker 1: That's how much money you can make in railroads. And
Speaker 1: William was also well known for throwing probably the most
Speaker 1: lavage party in the history of New York City. Um,
Speaker 1: they spent one point eight million dollars in today's dollars
Speaker 1: on champagne alone. Yeah, that was when he finished his
Speaker 1: mansion on Fifth av And Uh. I looked it up
Speaker 1: because to see if any of these robber baron mansions
Speaker 1: were still around today. But yeah, I don't, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think it. I mean, I know this one was
Speaker 1: demolished in ninety. So if you want to get a
Speaker 1: really good idea of just how rich these people were,
Speaker 1: go to Newport, Rhode Island and visit Millionaires Row, because
Speaker 1: there was a huge there's a huge overlooking this cliff.
Speaker 1: There's a long row of the most astounding mansions you've
Speaker 1: ever seen built during the guilded one of the better
Speaker 1: walks you can take in life. It really had the
Speaker 1: ocean on one side and then these mansions on the other.
Speaker 1: It's really cool and each mansion, each mansion is so
Speaker 1: different from the others. It just touring them is amazing.
Speaker 1: You could just be utterly disgusted by the concept of
Speaker 1: billionaires or robber barons or whatever, and you can still
Speaker 1: enjoy taking this tour of these mansions. They're just works
Speaker 1: of art, you know. It's really it's really worth a visit.
Speaker 1: Plus Newports just one of the more charming towns in
Speaker 1: the kind I love Newport. Or you could take a
Speaker 1: hate walk and uh, just look at those mansions and
Speaker 1: think about what what wrecking ball would look like, shake
Speaker 1: your fists at the dumb waiters and all that. But
Speaker 1: then you turn around, look at the ocean and think, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, it's really cool. It's like, it's a definitely
Speaker 1: cool to visit them, for sure. And by the way,
Speaker 1: a little piece of trivia if you go, if you
Speaker 1: enter Central Park at the hundred and fifth Street entrance,
Speaker 1: that big beautiful iron gate was from that mansion, the
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt Mansion. They donated a lot of the stuff before
Speaker 1: they demolished it, is that right? Yeah? So I mentioned
Speaker 1: organization and that's actually named after the next robber Baron
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about. Okay, do we break beforehand?
Speaker 1: And I think we'd break after p how about that?
Speaker 1: Are you okay with that? Okay? So so then we're
Speaker 1: gonna hang in there. Everybody doneat don't fast forward yet,
Speaker 1: We're going to stick around and talk about JP Morgan
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah. He was born with money. He did
Speaker 1: not come from meager means and work him stuff up
Speaker 1: by his bootstraps. He was the son of a very
Speaker 1: successful banker and merchant and used those connections to get
Speaker 1: a plumb job at Wall Street when he was twenty
Speaker 1: years old, and then when he was in his thirties,
Speaker 1: he partnered partner with a guy named Anthony Drexel who
Speaker 1: was a banker, uh and from Philly and created Drexel
Speaker 1: Morgan and Company. And it became one of the biggest
Speaker 1: investment banks at the time in the world. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And this was when he was in his early thirties,
Speaker 1: like you said, right, so um. JP Morgan was known
Speaker 1: as the guy who financed all the other robber barons um,
Speaker 1: and he had his fingers in basically every pot that
Speaker 1: was going on. He also knew that like, you could
Speaker 1: make money off of the railroads because you're taking a
Speaker 1: cut of all the other industries, so he definitely got
Speaker 1: involved in them. But his whole thing was um what's
Speaker 1: called horizontal integration, where you you you basically come along
Speaker 1: you say this industry should be doing way better than
Speaker 1: it is. I think there's too many competitors and they're
Speaker 1: all holding one another down. I'm gonna slowly start buying
Speaker 1: them up. And here's the thing. This is how you
Speaker 1: get control of a full industry during the Gilded Age.
Speaker 1: You go to a couple, you start buying them up,
Speaker 1: and then you put all those together and you you
Speaker 1: form a bigger company that's way leaner, has much better
Speaker 1: economies of scale, and you can compete better against all
Speaker 1: the other guys. So you start buying some of the
Speaker 1: other guys up because they're facing going out of business now.
Speaker 1: And then you've got left the real holdouts, the ones
Speaker 1: that are never going to sell to you because they
Speaker 1: hate your stupid face and they'll never give a penny
Speaker 1: to you make sure that you'll never set foot in
Speaker 1: their offices ever again. And what you do then is
Speaker 1: you start selling for us than costs. Yeah, you're a
Speaker 1: big company, so you can totally stand that for a
Speaker 1: much longer time than these holdout competitors, and they face
Speaker 1: either financial ruin or you eventually put them out of business,
Speaker 1: and either way, you no longer have that competition. You
Speaker 1: literally control an entire industry consolidated into one beefy mega company,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you have what's called Morganization,
Speaker 1: which was I don't know if that was pioneered by
Speaker 1: JP Morgan, but he definitely perfected it enough that they
Speaker 1: named the process after him. Yeah, and that's a good
Speaker 1: example of what I was talking about earlier, is it's
Speaker 1: not enough to succeed and be successful, but to make
Speaker 1: sure no one else can be. So like it would
Speaker 1: be the kind of thing and that one company you
Speaker 1: were talking about that maybe kind of pretty small even,
Speaker 1: but they might might hold have an iron grip on
Speaker 1: one very tiny region of the United States, and you
Speaker 1: could just let them have their business, or you could
Speaker 1: do what you're talking about and make sure that you
Speaker 1: uh squash them by any means necessary and forced them
Speaker 1: to sell. And that's I think that's where capitalism for
Speaker 1: a lot of people has gotten its bad name. Is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: work hard, succeed do well, but not at the expense
Speaker 1: of every other person trying to do well, right, because
Speaker 1: it interferes with something this country is based on, which
Speaker 1: is called the quality of opportunity, which is the idea
Speaker 1: that at least under the eyes of the law, every
Speaker 1: single person in America has an equal shot at making it,
Speaker 1: at making something of themselves, of having like a good life.
Speaker 1: And when somebody is cheating or engaging in monopolies or
Speaker 1: using underhanded tactics to to run out the competition so
Speaker 1: that there is no competition any longer, that that is problematic.
Speaker 1: That that flies in the face of the idea of
Speaker 1: equality of opportunity. That's right. And if you listen to
Speaker 1: our Monopoly game episode UH, you might remember that JP
Speaker 1: Morgan was the basis of uh monopoly Man. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: talked about that good. Okay, that makes me feel good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was modeled after old JP Morgan himself. Uh. And
Speaker 1: he was actually one of the first people to be
Speaker 1: targeted um for antitrust in nineteen o four, Teddy Roosevelt
Speaker 1: came after him under the Sherman Antitrust Act and said, hey,
Speaker 1: this Northern Securities Corporation, uh is really monopoly? And Supreme
Speaker 1: Court said, yeah, it is busted up. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: today when we think of trusts, we think of like,
Speaker 1: you know, a legal entity that that can hold um assets.
Speaker 1: At the time, the word trust meant basically an industry
Speaker 1: that had been morganized, where all of the competitors have
Speaker 1: been folded into one large company and the market was
Speaker 1: cornered by this one mega company, General Electric, UM U S. Steel,
Speaker 1: Both of those were morganized companies. And apparently U S.
Speaker 1: Steel was the first one billion dollar company that ever
Speaker 1: existed because of that that level of consolidation. But then, yeah,
Speaker 1: when the Sherman Anti Trust Act was passed in nine,
Speaker 1: that was a clear sign that that this was not
Speaker 1: going to stand much longer. And and I think Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: it was Roosevelt, you said, right, who busted that up.
Speaker 1: And he ran on that and actually went against He
Speaker 1: was a Republican, I believe, and he went against the
Speaker 1: advice of the you know, the elder statesman in the
Speaker 1: Republican Party established himself as a genuine UM President of
Speaker 1: the people and helped set himself up for reelection just
Speaker 1: from that one anti trust act. So that's j P.
Speaker 1: Now do we take a break. Oh one more thing, Chuck,
Speaker 1: I'm not toying with you, I swear so. One one
Speaker 1: of the ways that Morgan one of the reasons he's
Speaker 1: reviled still. And he did some philanthropy, probably more than
Speaker 1: he gets credit for, for sure, but UM. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons he's revival is because one of the ways
Speaker 1: he made it so that he could compete with other
Speaker 1: companies was UM and sell for lower than than cost
Speaker 1: was by slashing wages, slashing the workforce and increasing productivity
Speaker 1: of the existing workers, and then just making sure that
Speaker 1: working conditions. He didn't spend a cent on improving working
Speaker 1: conditions to make them safe, and that that is really
Speaker 1: not why not because he amassed a fortune. Some people
Speaker 1: criticize him for that, but it's tactics like that, like
Speaker 1: like becoming a billionaire basically UM on the backs of
Speaker 1: people who he wouldn't have spent a cent to make
Speaker 1: sure could stay alive working in his factories. That is
Speaker 1: the quintessential problem people have always had with robber barons.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of mentality? That's right now, I'm done.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll come back right after this and finish
Speaker 1: up with two more robber barons. Hello, everybody, we're back
Speaker 1: to talk about Andrew Carnegie. You've ever been to Carnegie
Speaker 1: Hall or Carnegie Mellon University. I've been to both. You've
Speaker 1: been to one of the university with you. That's right.
Speaker 1: We did a little job there one time. That was fun.
Speaker 1: I've been to Carnegie Hall. I would I ushered a
Speaker 1: show there. I didn't usher. I passed out the playbills,
Speaker 1: which meant I got to see the show for free.
Speaker 1: And I saw it. Oh man, it was one of
Speaker 1: those special nights. I got to see Beethoven's Night with
Speaker 1: the full orchestra and German choir at Carnegie Hall. It
Speaker 1: was amazing. Wow. Something else that's pretty neat And all
Speaker 1: I needed was a boat? Is that the one that's um?
Speaker 1: Maybe I named it wrong. It's the dune dune dune, dune,
Speaker 1: dune dun dun un. Oh, the die Hard song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the die Hard song. I got you and saw die
Speaker 1: Hard in concert. It was great. Hious. So Carnegie, Uh,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Andrew Carnegie who was born in Scotland
Speaker 1: and they came to Pittsburgh. He was very poor. He's
Speaker 1: about thirteen years old and he worked in a cotton
Speaker 1: factory and he and this will come into play later,
Speaker 1: he kind of self taught himself from books that he
Speaker 1: borrowed from a wealthy benefactor from his private library, which
Speaker 1: is will come to play later. His favorite one was
Speaker 1: Flowers in the Attic. Wow, I would have thought great expectations,
Speaker 1: but that's okay, no, So he Um, he, like Vanderbilt,
Speaker 1: is a definitely a self made man for sure. And
Speaker 1: I guess he kind of was. He had his fingers
Speaker 1: in a lot of different pots, kind of like JP
Speaker 1: Morgan at first. And then he turned his attention to
Speaker 1: steel because again remember steel is like the basically the
Speaker 1: the foundation for this American economy just blowing up. Sure,
Speaker 1: so he he his name became synonymous with steel, and
Speaker 1: I guess at first, up until about eight two, he
Speaker 1: had a reputation as being a friend of the worker,
Speaker 1: and that the workers at Carnegie Steele in Homestead, just
Speaker 1: across the river from Pittsburgh. Um, they they felt like,
Speaker 1: you know, Carnegie would take care of them. Um, and
Speaker 1: They found out the hard way that that was not
Speaker 1: the case when they went on strike in two during
Speaker 1: what came to be known as the Homestead Strike, which
Speaker 1: would result in the death of ten people, which is
Speaker 1: not how they planned things to go. Uh. And apparently
Speaker 1: the reason why that happened is because the Pinkerton's were
Speaker 1: called in as strike breakers. Yeah. I might want to
Speaker 1: eventually do an episode on this, but um that that's
Speaker 1: sort of the overview. You bring in the Pinkerton's and
Speaker 1: then they battle with the like literally with guns. Pinkerton's died.
Speaker 1: I think like eight or nine of the ten or
Speaker 1: twelve people that died rode the Pinkerton's. No, No, I
Speaker 1: think it was just one I think were the strikers. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well we should definitely do a full episode then, because
Speaker 1: for sure I want to get this right. But but
Speaker 1: what I read was that the the strikers, Um, so,
Speaker 1: the Pinkerton's showed up in barges and they were basically
Speaker 1: hired on as a private army to protect scab workers
Speaker 1: and and bust the strike up. Um. But they arrived
Speaker 1: in barges and after the initial violence, the striking workers
Speaker 1: and some of their families surrounded these barges and demanded
Speaker 1: that the Pinkerton's come off the boats, and then the Pinkerton's.
Speaker 1: So the Pinkerton's said, Okay, we'll come off if you
Speaker 1: guarantee our safety. And they said fine, and the Pinkertons
Speaker 1: came off and they got beaten by all of the strikers.
Speaker 1: They just completely went back on their word and then
Speaker 1: set their barges on fire. I guess the Pinkerton's escaped
Speaker 1: to the factory with their life, and um, the National
Speaker 1: Guard was called in to quell the violence. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: National Guard was called in not only to quell the violence,
Speaker 1: but also called in to act in the interest of Carnegie.
Speaker 1: So he kind of commandeered at his own little personal
Speaker 1: army to help take care of things right, starting with
Speaker 1: the Pinkerton's and then with the National Guard. And it's
Speaker 1: like this kind of collusion that is also another huge criticism.
Speaker 1: Like we were saying, the government is known for being
Speaker 1: like las fair as far as the regulation is concerned,
Speaker 1: but they'll totally send in the National Guard not just
Speaker 1: to quell violence, but to make sure that the strike
Speaker 1: breakers don't attack the scab labor to keep the factory going.
Speaker 1: And that that that kind of like government capital collusion
Speaker 1: at the expense of the workers. Is that is there's
Speaker 1: a long standing edition of of that being almost universally
Speaker 1: reviled in America over enough of an arc of time.
Speaker 1: If that keeps up more and more just everyday, Americans
Speaker 1: start to notice and start to resent it, and that
Speaker 1: apparently is a really good force for social change, because
Speaker 1: Americans don't like that kind of thing after a long
Speaker 1: enough period of time. Yeah, And I think Carnegie tried
Speaker 1: to distance himself from that strike by saying that he
Speaker 1: was sort of out of the loop. He was in
Speaker 1: Scotland the whole time, but they have since found correspondence
Speaker 1: that shows that he was very much involved in that.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's some speculation that he may have
Speaker 1: had some genuine moments of regret and guilt over that,
Speaker 1: because he was a big time philanthropist later in life.
Speaker 1: I think he said in his book The Gospel of Wealth,
Speaker 1: the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. And uh,
Speaker 1: we mentioned the libraries coming back into play. He more
Speaker 1: than libraries, and that's really one of his big legacies,
Speaker 1: along with um the arts, the Carnegie Corporation, and the
Speaker 1: Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Museum. But
Speaker 1: the libraries really have made a pretty big difference in
Speaker 1: this country. They really have, for sure. Um. And he
Speaker 1: was one of just the all time great philanthropists in
Speaker 1: American history for sure. Um. But he still pales in
Speaker 1: comparison to the the all time top record holder philanthropist,
Speaker 1: John D. Rockefeller, who is also Robert Barroon. But he
Speaker 1: also is far and away America's most prolific um and
Speaker 1: generous benefactor for sure. He was also one of the
Speaker 1: most visionary philanthropists of all time too. Yeah. And some
Speaker 1: people say that he was, you know, if you just
Speaker 1: account for money and inflation, the richest man ever to live. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how they calculate that, because his nine
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar UH peak in nineteen twelve is about
Speaker 1: twenty three billion today. So here I saw how You're ready.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's yeah, go ahead if you do. His
Speaker 1: wealth relative to the total economic output is an even
Speaker 1: larger figure than gross domestic product. Had a feeling it
Speaker 1: was something like that his wealth represented two percent of
Speaker 1: the total economic output of the United States of the time.
Speaker 1: To to have that value today, you would have to
Speaker 1: be worth about three hundred and fifty billions, and I
Speaker 1: think Jeff Bezos is worth hundred and forty or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, And I think we didn't even mention
Speaker 1: it was it Carnegie that had at one point like
Speaker 1: one dollar of every twenty dollars in circulation was his. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, that was Carnegie for sure. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: these numbers are staggering, for sure, people like Rockefeller and
Speaker 1: Carnegie is just it's unbelievable. But the thing is in
Speaker 1: in like like John John D. Rockefeller was a ruthless,
Speaker 1: ruthless businessman who put a lot of people out of business,
Speaker 1: brought a lot of misery and hardship on just small
Speaker 1: everyday producers of oil, which we'll see. But again, it's
Speaker 1: really difficult to overstate the impact that his philanthropy has
Speaker 1: had on the United States. He peaked at nine million,
Speaker 1: like you said, when he died, he had he'd given
Speaker 1: away everything but twenty six million of that, and he
Speaker 1: probably felt kind of bad that he had twenty six
Speaker 1: million dollars left because he had He was a very
Speaker 1: religious man, and apparently he um learned very early on
Speaker 1: that it was every man's religious duty to make as
Speaker 1: much money as you possibly can and then to give
Speaker 1: away as much money as you possibly can too. And
Speaker 1: he he apparently lived that even before he was wealthy,
Speaker 1: when he was still just an average worker, he would
Speaker 1: give away something like ten percent of all of his
Speaker 1: pay check. So he was a philanthropist his whole life,
Speaker 1: for sure. He was still a robber baron too though, yeah,
Speaker 1: and his whole you know, of course, oil was his business.
Speaker 1: Standard oil, um, it was just a goliath and there
Speaker 1: and there were a bunch of big like sort of
Speaker 1: like the railroads. It was oil, and the railroads were
Speaker 1: industries where you could have a bunch of people that
Speaker 1: had these huge, huge corporations. But Standard Oil was far
Speaker 1: and away bigger than any of them. By the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, they controlled more than of the oil market,
Speaker 1: can you imagine. And the way that he cornered the
Speaker 1: market was, you know, he did that standard organization kind
Speaker 1: of thing where he went around and bought it first
Speaker 1: and then started to turn up the heat on the competition,
Speaker 1: on the holdouts. But one of the ways that he
Speaker 1: turned up that heat was he colluded with the railroad, um,
Speaker 1: the different railroads in the area who were shipping all
Speaker 1: this oil. To say, not only were they going to
Speaker 1: give him a rebate so he got money back where
Speaker 1: they wouldn't give money back to other oil shippers just
Speaker 1: because of you know, volume, That makes sense, but they
Speaker 1: also had to get his business, and he had so
Speaker 1: much business that they would do this. They the railroads
Speaker 1: had to tax and added tax on all of his competitors,
Speaker 1: so they paid an extra twenty to thirty cents of
Speaker 1: barrel to ship. Not just paid more than he did
Speaker 1: because of his rebates, they paid more in addition to
Speaker 1: that just for not being John D. Rockefeller. And then
Speaker 1: on top of that, to keep him from taking that
Speaker 1: rebate and going around to other railroads and getting a
Speaker 1: cheaper rebate and abandoning that railroad. Um, they actually gave
Speaker 1: him a kick back of that added tax. So his
Speaker 1: competitors were getting taxed by the railroads and he was
Speaker 1: actually getting some of that tax himself too. You just
Speaker 1: can't possibly compete with that, and it put a lot
Speaker 1: of smaller oil producers and shippers and refiners out of business.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, it is. Uh. Let me see, he gave
Speaker 1: seventy five million away to the University of Chicago. Well,
Speaker 1: it kind of founded the University of Chicago with that money.
Speaker 1: Also Spellman too, which was established to educate freed slaves.
Speaker 1: Um he he he bankrolled Spellman for its founding as well.
Speaker 1: And in one of our best and most favorite episodes
Speaker 1: you might remember the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission helped eradicate hookworm
Speaker 1: in the South. That is one of our better episodes
Speaker 1: for sure. So those are just four of the uh
Speaker 1: sort of most uh famous and some might say notorious.
Speaker 1: Robert Barons big long list. You know you could throw
Speaker 1: Henry Ford in there, uh, John Jacob Astor, Charles Schwab,
Speaker 1: Andrew Mellon, Jay Gould, Yeah, I looked at I was
Speaker 1: thinking about J. Paul Getty, but he was later on
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have qualified. So some of these guys had
Speaker 1: some terrible quotes to that also just made them despised
Speaker 1: through history. Um. Carnegie said that, uh, it's not the
Speaker 1: man who does the work who gets rich, it's the
Speaker 1: man who gets other men to do the work, which
Speaker 1: is not a very tasteful thing to say when you're
Speaker 1: ultra wealthy and breaking strikes with guns. Um. That Jay
Speaker 1: Gould guy I mentioned, He said that he could hire
Speaker 1: one half of the workers in America to shoot the
Speaker 1: other half to death if he wanted to, which is
Speaker 1: another nice thing to say. And apparently John D. Rockefeller
Speaker 1: once said competition is a sin. So these guys had
Speaker 1: some terrible pr um and because of that a lot
Speaker 1: of people have said, like, well, I wonder if some
Speaker 1: of the ultra wealthy industrialists or innovators or people who
Speaker 1: basically the billionaires who are leading the world today are
Speaker 1: are they just like Robert Barns with better pr and
Speaker 1: better marketing. And apparently supposedly that's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 1: And here's why. Remember I was saying that like Robert
Speaker 1: Barons were kind of being reformed by historians these days,
Speaker 1: especially conservative historians. Well, they point to some like really
Speaker 1: indisputable things like these guys were ruthless, and they engaged
Speaker 1: in horrific anti competitive, uh kind of anti capitalist tactics
Speaker 1: to to get those that wealth, and they did it
Speaker 1: on the backs of workers that they took advantage of
Speaker 1: and didn't pay very well and um killed in their workplaces. Basically. Um.
Speaker 1: But the reason that America is still powerful today is
Speaker 1: because of the work that these guys did of the
Speaker 1: the industries that they created. UM. Public schooling came about
Speaker 1: and was kind of became widespread to prepare people for
Speaker 1: the jobs that these guys created. UM. And you really can't,
Speaker 1: you can't look away from the fact that some of
Speaker 1: them were the greatest philanthropists that the country has ever produced.
Speaker 1: To UM, the that flies in the face with kind
Speaker 1: of the exception of Bill Gates, it flies in the
Speaker 1: face of the people who are around day, UM that
Speaker 1: that not only are they not great phil anthropists necessarily.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at Steve Jobs, who wasn't around anymore, but
Speaker 1: definitely was not a good phil anthropist in his life.
Speaker 1: He is now, his family is, but he wasn't when
Speaker 1: he was alive. UM. That's a big, big mark against
Speaker 1: people who have control of significant portions of the wealth
Speaker 1: in America today. But also even more than that, those
Speaker 1: guys today are they're presiding over a decline, the decline
Speaker 1: in wages, decline in living conditions, whereas these guys, these
Speaker 1: captains of industry and the robber barons from the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: they were presiding over a rise, like an improvement in UM,
Speaker 1: the the way that America lived and the standard of living,
Speaker 1: the kind of the polar opposite, even though the inequality
Speaker 1: is roughly the same. Very interesting, I think so too.
Speaker 1: I also wonder, though, too, if the this this inequality
Speaker 1: will usher in a second progressive era where it seems
Speaker 1: like it has all of the markings to do that.
Speaker 1: We need to do a progressive era episode too sometime. Okay, alright, well,
Speaker 1: since you said deal, Chuck, I think that's time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail. Huh. Yeah, I think I alluded to
Speaker 1: this in another one about the word marijuana. Didn't I
Speaker 1: talk about that totally? But I didn't read the mail, right,
Speaker 1: not that I remember. Now, all right, this is from
Speaker 1: Jack Glick. Hey, guys, love the show. Been listening for
Speaker 1: five years or so, to make sure not to miss
Speaker 1: any new episodes, listening to the one on Macha when
Speaker 1: you started to talk about marijuana, decided to get in touch.
Speaker 1: I am the lead analyst on cannabis taxation for the
Speaker 1: Canadian federal government, and we long ago made a decision
Speaker 1: to refer to the plant by its proper name cannabis. Uh.
Speaker 1: Marijuana has a number of historically racist associations, and I
Speaker 1: know you guys are always using wary of using appropriate
Speaker 1: terms for things. I had a good laugh at the
Speaker 1: question over whether womb was still okay to say in
Speaker 1: the ultrasound const I thought, you'mily to know that how
Speaker 1: outdated and implicitly offensive marijuana is. And I'd like to
Speaker 1: encourage you to use the word cannabis when referring to
Speaker 1: in the future. All the best, keep it up. That
Speaker 1: is from Jack Glick. That is a great name, Jack,
Speaker 1: great job, great name, great email from a great guy.
Speaker 1: I assume it sounds like a great guy. If you
Speaker 1: want to show off what a great person you are,
Speaker 1: you can email us yourself like Jack click did mean
Speaker 1: what a great name? Um. You can wrap it up,
Speaker 1: spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio is at the
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