Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh. For this week's Select I've
Speaker 1: chosen our July twenty twenty episode on robber Barons. It
Speaker 1: turns out that today's billionaires and leaders of industry bears
Speaker 1: some resemblance to the robber barons of the Gilded Age,
Speaker 1: but there are some big differences. Namely, today's billionaires are
Speaker 1: kind of terrible at philanthropy, and the robber barons of
Speaker 1: the last century were far less preoccupied with outer space.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed this episode. It's a pretty good one.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuckers Bryant over there. Jerry was just here
Speaker 1: doing the COVID setup and then got out of the
Speaker 1: room really quick.
Speaker 3: Hell their breath for five straight minutes.
Speaker 4: It's a new record. It really is a new studio.
Speaker 1: Sure, and this is stuff you should know. That's no
Speaker 1: David Blaine record, by the way.
Speaker 2: No, I mean that's her studio record. You should see
Speaker 2: her when she's pearl diving, though.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be something if Jerry did have a secret
Speaker 1: life pearl diving that would be amazing. It would, but
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an interesting topic because depending on who
Speaker 2: you ask, the robber barons were either the greatest thing
Speaker 2: to ever happen to this country, right or one of
Speaker 2: the worst things to ever happen to this country.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And at first, from what I could tell, historians,
Speaker 1: like immediately after in the like a few decades after
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 in,
Speaker 1: really took it to be like their their presence, their
Speaker 1: existence was one of the worst things ever. But over time,
Speaker 1: there's kind of been a reformation of them, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like a revisiting of them that has tried
Speaker 1: to revive their image or actually make their image possibly
Speaker 1: better than it ever has been.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it kind of.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of this has to probably depends
Speaker 2: on what you feel about, you know, capitalism to this
Speaker 2: extent where kind of doesn't matter how you make your
Speaker 2: money if it's sort of underhanded and you sort of
Speaker 2: undercut competitors and monopolize things. That's all just free trade man,
Speaker 2: free capitalism, and that's how it works out. And then
Speaker 2: those guys a ton of gave a ton of money
Speaker 2: to society before they died, and so they that's that's
Speaker 2: all the injustifies the means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually, yeah, that's the conservative way to look
Speaker 1: at it. And I ran across something I can't remember
Speaker 1: what's called, but it's basically, oh, human imperfection. Did you
Speaker 1: know that the idea that humans are imperfect and there's
Speaker 1: really no reason to try to make a perfect society
Speaker 1: because it will always be imperfect and in ruin that
Speaker 1: that is a cornerstone, a hallmark of conservatism.
Speaker 3: Did you know that?
Speaker 2: I didn't, But I mean, of course you can't make
Speaker 2: a perfect society.
Speaker 4: It makes sense.
Speaker 1: Well, so conservatives are saying that in opposition to all
Speaker 1: of the liberal efforts to make a perfect society, to
Speaker 1: have government regulation that says no, no, we should all
Speaker 1: have clean water, and we should do it at the
Speaker 1: expense of making corporations clean up the waste water before
Speaker 1: they release their waste into the shared common water resources.
Speaker 1: Things like that, right, And that there's this idea that
Speaker 1: you can mold society into some perfect form, that that's
Speaker 1: the opposite of human imperfection, that that's like what liberals think,
Speaker 1: and that that is that right there is one of
Speaker 1: the main dividing lines between conservative and liberal. I've been
Speaker 1: on the planet for almost forty four years now, and
Speaker 1: I had no idea that it was just that simple,
Speaker 1: and it really kind of is.
Speaker 2: I think the word perfect is what's a stumbling block
Speaker 2: for me, because I don't know a single liberal thinks
Speaker 2: that they can make things perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, 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'd think that that's you know, I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: you're gonna argue with the Stanford Encyclopedia philosophy, I'm not.
Speaker 4: I'll bring it on, man, I'll punch that thing right
Speaker 4: in the face.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Stanford, did you know that Stanford University was
Speaker 1: named out verbarranded.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a robber baron named Leland Stanford.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, a lot of universities are named after Robert barons.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of problems with some of the early
Speaker 1: histories of universities, as we'll find out in the coming weeks.
Speaker 4: So we should get into the Gilded Age.
Speaker 2: We should hop in the old wayback machine, because that's
Speaker 2: the age that we're talking about. And when you hear
Speaker 2: gilded age, it might sound really great, because I mean,
Speaker 2: what's better than a gilded I don't know, toilet.
Speaker 3: Gilded Lily?
Speaker 1: Isn't that another one that another thing people guild?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's a pretty good band name though, Gilded Lily, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like a nineties power pop.
Speaker 1: Oh, totally, you nailed it. And I said, what about breakfast?
Speaker 1: Said Tiffany's.
Speaker 4: But the Gilded Age is.
Speaker 2: And Dave Ruz helped us put this together, and he
Speaker 2: points out it's not a term of endearment.
Speaker 4: When something is gilded.
Speaker 2: That means it's it's got a thin coating of gold,
Speaker 2: but underneath it's you know, it could be a gilded turd.
Speaker 3: Sure, I hate that word so much.
Speaker 4: I love it. It's so great, do you? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean I hate I love it and how awful
Speaker 4: it is?
Speaker 3: Oh gotcha?
Speaker 1: But I think it's so awful it like comes out
Speaker 1: on the other side as just plain old awful to me. Okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the idea of the Gilded Age that
Speaker 1: it looked great on the outside, but on the inside
Speaker 1: it wasn't so great. And what it was this So
Speaker 1: this was the second half of the nineteenth century, basically
Speaker 1: from pretty much the end of the Civil War up
Speaker 1: until the first decade of the twentieth century, yea. And
Speaker 1: it was characterized by a huge, massive shift in the
Speaker 1: American economy where I saw somewhere that at some point
Speaker 1: in the eighteen sixties to some point in the early
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties, in about fifteen years, the American economy doubled
Speaker 1: doubled inside in fifteen years. That's how massive it was,
Speaker 1: and that's how fast it happened.
Speaker 3: And what it was was.
Speaker 1: A transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
Speaker 1: And it happened virtually over night as far as history goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was because it happened so quickly, and
Speaker 2: because it was such growth, I think the government was like,
Speaker 2: we're going to stay out of this and kind of.
Speaker 4: Just let your dudes do what you're going to do,
Speaker 4: no regulation.
Speaker 2: You can be as competitive as you want to be,
Speaker 2: and you can satisfy a scratch every capitalist itch you want,
Speaker 2: and we're just going to let that happen because we're
Speaker 2: also kind of getting rich on the side.
Speaker 1: Right, So that kind of raises something that I saw
Speaker 1: is that the idea that it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: myth of the lase fair government during this era. They
Speaker 1: were definitely lase fair when it comes to regulation and
Speaker 1: letting corporatists run rough shot over labor. But they were
Speaker 1: anything butt hands off when it came to corporate welfare
Speaker 1: and political entrepreneurship and helping out the wealthy class at
Speaker 1: the expense of the people in general. So in one hand,
Speaker 1: on one hand, they were lase fair, on the other
Speaker 1: they were not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what we're talking about here is stuff like
Speaker 2: snatching up resources where you could hoarding them for yourself,
Speaker 2: like building such a massive business that you could drive
Speaker 2: out every other smaller business, drive them right out of
Speaker 2: business by undercutting their prices. Jobs were more scarce, so
Speaker 2: you could have people work harder for less and less wages.
Speaker 3: That kind of thing, right exactly.
Speaker 1: And what's crazy, Like it was a dog eat dog economy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, 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 been,
Speaker 1: you know, looked down upon by Europe for a century
Speaker 1: or more, and they all of a sudden were captains
Speaker 1: of industry, and the most ruthless among them were the
Speaker 1: 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 raise in a person
Speaker 1: when you're in pursuit of as much possible wealth as
Speaker 1: you can get, and there's plenty of it to be had.
Speaker 1: And then, like you're saying, not only did the federal
Speaker 1: government not get involved, they weren't equipped to get involved
Speaker 1: because at that point, most of the government was focused
Speaker 1: on local stuff. And now, all of a sudden, as
Speaker 1: the United States is truly becoming a continent wide nation,
Speaker 1: the federal government is kind of lagging behind to catch up,
Speaker 1: and wouldn't really begin to catch up in the progressive era.
Speaker 1: And some would say that the pendulum swung the exact
Speaker 1: opposite way to the exact opposite extreme direction that it
Speaker 1: had during the Gilded age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, let's talk about the Gilded Age and
Speaker 2: the I guess just you owe it all to train really,
Speaker 2: and trains you owed to steel, so you got to
Speaker 2: go back a little bit. Steel was a very big
Speaker 2: deal in that when they found out mister Henry Bessemer
Speaker 2: in the eighteen fifties found out how to make steel
Speaker 2: like a lot cheaper. He got a new process going
Speaker 2: where it was just like a making vast amounts of
Speaker 2: steel for a fraction at the cost and speed, and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, you could open up those local
Speaker 2: rail lines to stretch across the country and all these
Speaker 2: regional specialty businesses and industries, whether it was you know,
Speaker 2: Cincinnati was known for furniture, and obviously in places like
Speaker 2: Wyoming you had coal, and you had copper, and Montana
Speaker 2: and you had a lot of timber and Oregon. You
Speaker 2: could get that stuff anywhere you wanted to go, and
Speaker 2: that changed everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only could you get it to where you
Speaker 1: wanted to go, you could do it exponentially cheaper than
Speaker 1: it used to be over land or say using canals,
Speaker 1: and then also way faster too. So now if you
Speaker 1: were making like really great armchairs in Cincinnati, like you
Speaker 1: were saying, like, not only did you have the town
Speaker 1: that they're just known for it, that's their mascot, I
Speaker 1: believe of the baseball team.
Speaker 4: Yeah, citters right.
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 how the entire country to supply with chairs.
Speaker 1: And that happened at a really great time, the steel
Speaker 1: coming along and building the railroads, because the United States
Speaker 1: economic engine was kind of idling a really high rpm
Speaker 1: for a little while before this. Apparently the War of
Speaker 1: eighteen twelve caused the United States to kind of stop
Speaker 1: relying on Europe and turn inward and become much more
Speaker 1: self reliant than it had been before. So it started
Speaker 1: to exploit more industry and resources rather than rely on
Speaker 1: imports from Europe.
Speaker 3: That was a big one.
Speaker 1: And then the Civil War had it brought a lot
Speaker 1: of factories online in the North that hadn't been there before.
Speaker 1: And so when the Civil War ended, these factories were
Speaker 1: all ready to go, and with the abundance of plentiful steel,
Speaker 1: that engine got put into gear and it just kind
Speaker 1: of took off like a rocket.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When I was reading this and I tried to find out,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't really get a firm hold. I wondered
Speaker 2: if back then, when this started to happen, you know
Speaker 2: how people rail against the global trade and the globalization.
Speaker 2: I wonder if people railed against nationalization of commerce back then,
Speaker 2: or if they all just thought it was all great.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: No, But one of the things I read about that's
Speaker 1: actually a mark in favor of the Gilded Age being
Speaker 1: actually a good thing for America is that people everyday
Speaker 1: people were super involved in politics, in 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. I figure who saw the problems
Speaker 1: with it. But the cool thing is is that everybody
Speaker 1: was involved in Everybody was like like like they cared
Speaker 1: about the direction the country was going, rather than just
Speaker 1: sitting back and being like, well, nothing we can do
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: I wonder though, if it was like if there were business,
Speaker 2: like if they were furniture makers in Cincinnati going, I
Speaker 2: don't want to sell my chairs out there, that.
Speaker 3: Is not what they said, like in Cincinnati.
Speaker 4: Is that not a Cincinnati accident?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, I might be thinking of Maine. Yeah right, But
Speaker 2: 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 3: I think they wanted easy money. I can't remember who wanted.
Speaker 1: To stay on the gold standard and others wanted, you know, basically,
Speaker 1: to leave the gold standard and make money a lot
Speaker 1: more easy to come by.
Speaker 4: The runny Dangerfield movie.
Speaker 1: That was an easy easy money. Man, That is a
Speaker 1: tawdry movie, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah? It was good though.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Hey, even the worst Dangerfield movies are still pretty great. Agreed,
Speaker 1: And on that point, real quick, I'm sorry. I know
Speaker 1: we don't like to go off on tangents very often,
Speaker 1: but I have been watching Happy Days and surely.
Speaker 4: Lately, man, that is some comfort food, isn't it, Dude?
Speaker 3: They are?
Speaker 1: But not only that, it's not like junk food though,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, written, well acted, sure, 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.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: And you know what, since we're on this tangent, we
Speaker 2: should tell everyone that we're writing a book and it's coming.
Speaker 3: Out this fall. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's called Stuff you Should Know, an incomplete compendium of
Speaker 2: mostly interesting things. And you can pre order it now
Speaker 2: if you want a special Tustin poster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you pre order it and you can go and
Speaker 1: upload your receipt at stuff you should Read books dot
Speaker 1: com and then there's like a little thing that says
Speaker 1: like get your pre order gift and you upload a
Speaker 1: picture of your receipt and they mail it to you
Speaker 1: and you will be very happy with it because it's
Speaker 1: pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we want to sell We do want to
Speaker 2: sell these books out there. We want to sell these
Speaker 2: books all over the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, we're glad that the railroad exists so we can
Speaker 1: move these books around easily.
Speaker 2: Oh man, you ain't kidding ship these things to Cincinnata, right,
Speaker 2: So where were we? So we were shipping things. Regional
Speaker 2: businesses were becoming national businesses. People were leaving the farms,
Speaker 2: they were leaving small towns, they were going to the
Speaker 2: big city. Immigrants were pouring in from Europe, African Americans
Speaker 2: were going north because reconstruction didn't work out so well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it was that abandoned.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Have we done one on reconstruction?
Speaker 1: No, No, we really need to though, totally. I mean
Speaker 1: the more I've been I've been reading a lot about
Speaker 1: that that period in history, and yes, we need to
Speaker 1: definitely do one on that.
Speaker 2: But the point is there are a lot of people
Speaker 2: flocking to work. This what was called the Second Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 2: where we saw over a period of about forty years,
Speaker 2: factory output went from one point nine billion to thirteen
Speaker 2: billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean like this happened like almost overnight. It's
Speaker 1: astounding how fast this happened. I don't think it even
Speaker 1: happened this fast in the First Industrial Revolution, you know,
Speaker 1: the one that started over in Manchester. Like I think
Speaker 1: that it's this is nothing like this has ever happened
Speaker 1: in the.
Speaker 3: History of the world. As far as I know, I
Speaker 3: believe it.
Speaker 1: So oh sure, I was just getting reped up. My
Speaker 1: own economic engines idling high.
Speaker 2: Right now, Well, take your foot off the gas, okay,
Speaker 2: and let's take a little break and we'll talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about Mark Twain and what these a few
Speaker 2: economic stats of the day right after this.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, Charles. I'm feeling much better now
Speaker 1: that my foot's off the gas. That was just good advice.
Speaker 4: Well, I mentioned Mark Twain.
Speaker 2: And the only reason we're going to talk about Mark
Speaker 2: Twain for a moment is because in eighteen seventy three
Speaker 2: he co wrote a novel, a satire called The Gilded
Speaker 2: Age Colon a Tale of Today, where it followed a
Speaker 2: poor country farmer who is sort of I mean, does
Speaker 2: he move to the city trying to get in on
Speaker 2: the Second Industrial Revolution?
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: It's exactly that kind of migration that you were talking
Speaker 1: about just a few minutes ago.
Speaker 4: And it didn't work out so well. Right.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never read the book, but from what I can tell, no,
Speaker 1: it didn't work out very well because he has taken
Speaker 1: advantage of by all manner of bad people like crooked
Speaker 1: politicians and crooked businessmen, and is basically run through the
Speaker 1: ringer from what I can tell. But I've also seen
Speaker 1: that that wasn't It wasn't exactly the best piece of
Speaker 1: writing Mark Twain's ever come up with. But the thing
Speaker 1: is that he releases in eighteen seventy three. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is like at the very beginning of the Guilded Age,
Speaker 1: So he saw it pretty quickly what was going on.
Speaker 1: And what he saw was this emergence from a relatively
Speaker 1: egalitarian society of a group of old, mind bogglingly wealthy
Speaker 1: people that just rose up from the United States and
Speaker 1: through you know, cheating and business acumen and taking advantage
Speaker 1: of people and overworking people and underpaying people, but also
Speaker 1: like having a lot of vision and foresight, all these
Speaker 1: things coming together grab control of almost all of the
Speaker 1: wealth that was being produced by the average American, and
Speaker 1: all of the average Americans put together, who had moved
Speaker 1: to these cities for the promise of better wages, better
Speaker 1: living than the farm could offer. Some people were exploiting
Speaker 1: that more than other people, and those people came to
Speaker 1: be known as the robber barons, and they were the
Speaker 1: lynchpin of why people think of the Gilded Age as
Speaker 1: a rotten part of American history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's some stats for you. In eighteen ninety the
Speaker 2: top one. And this they should all sound very familiar
Speaker 2: if you're alive in breathing oxygen today. Right, But in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety the top one percent of the US owned
Speaker 2: fifty one percent.
Speaker 4: Of all wealth. Yeah, dude, more than half of all wealth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in that nuts, it is nuts, But you're right,
Speaker 1: it does sound very familiar.
Speaker 2: The top twelve percent owned eighty six percent of all wealth,
Speaker 2: and the lower forty four percent of the US population,
Speaker 2: which was about half the population, owned one point two percent.
Speaker 3: And here's that's even more nuts.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean all these just top one another. I
Speaker 4: think here's the last one.
Speaker 2: In eighteen ninety seven, the richest four thousand families. That
Speaker 2: sounds like a lot of people, but that's less than
Speaker 2: one percent of the population. The richest four thousand had
Speaker 2: as much wealth as the other eleven point six million
Speaker 2: families combined.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how about that?
Speaker 1: So that is what you would call economic inequality, right,
Speaker 1: And I think the thing is is especially over time.
Speaker 1: But I get the impression during that age too, like
Speaker 1: the people who resem that liberals typically tend to be
Speaker 1: painted with this brush that says you're just jealous. You've
Speaker 1: never made that much money in your life, you probably
Speaker 1: never will and it sickens you to see somebody else with.
Speaker 3: That money because you don't have it.
Speaker 1: And it's that second part, that last part about it,
Speaker 1: because you don't have it, that I think misses the mark.
Speaker 1: And that even at the time, during the gill Gilded Age, today,
Speaker 1: when people look at it, inequality that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: a lot of them, I'm sure there are people out
Speaker 1: there who are just jealous and haters for that reason,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them say no, no, like that,
Speaker 1: that level, that amount of disparity shouldn't exist, where if
Speaker 1: there are people who are just genuinely suffering, who are
Speaker 1: just poor and aren't able to make it with whatever
Speaker 1: living they're making, if they exist, then you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: people who have that much amount of money. And that
Speaker 1: was a sentiment in the Gilding Gilded Age as much too.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like they didn't realize this was going on
Speaker 1: at the time. The sentiment was very much like it
Speaker 1: is today, except in the Gilded Age they did things
Speaker 1: like form labor unions and strike and just basically did
Speaker 1: something about it. They didn't take it laying down, which
Speaker 1: is actually criticism that's levied or has been levied in
Speaker 1: the past against people today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think there's also a notion that the
Speaker 2: more left leaning people or anti success, and that's that's
Speaker 2: not true either. It's well, that's all I'm going to
Speaker 2: say about that. That's just not true. It's just not true.
Speaker 2: They're not said, they're not anti success. And I don't
Speaker 2: think that every conservative thinks like, yeah, man, like it's
Speaker 2: all fair and you should be able to do whatever
Speaker 2: you want to get ahead and stomp on any one's
Speaker 2: head that you want to get there, right. I think
Speaker 2: these are just broad brush things that keep the country divided.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I think that the Yeah, I think both
Speaker 1: sides misunderstand each other. Conservatives and liberals misunderstand each other
Speaker 1: to a debilitating degree these days.
Speaker 4: Agreed.
Speaker 2: So let's get off that and let's go back to
Speaker 2: the original the og robber barons, who were not to
Speaker 2: these guys. I'm talking about the term robber baron, which
Speaker 2: didn't happen in the nineteenth century US for the first time.
Speaker 2: It happened thousands of years ago in Europe.
Speaker 3: I don't know about thousands of years, but thousands pretty
Speaker 3: close to pretty close.
Speaker 1: To eighth out. I'll give you that one. So apparently
Speaker 1: along the Rhyan River, if you wanted to move goods
Speaker 1: up and down northern Europe like, that was your your
Speaker 1: way to go. But unfortunately for you, there were places
Speaker 1: where the Ryan River like really narrowed with high cliffs,
Speaker 1: and you were easy prey for local nobility who wanted
Speaker 1: to like set up toll booth basically and said you
Speaker 1: need to give me some money if you want to
Speaker 1: keep going, implying your goods along the Rhine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you had You couldn't just portage your steamship
Speaker 2: up a mountain and over a mountain.
Speaker 4: You had to pay the piper.
Speaker 1: Plus they didn't exist at the time.
Speaker 4: What steamships? When did those come around?
Speaker 1: The early nineteenth century?
Speaker 2: You have a much better just general world timeline that
Speaker 2: lives in your brain than I do.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: I understand history perfectly and without any air delusions or
Speaker 1: any of my opinions informing my vision of history as well.
Speaker 4: I think that's what you're known for sure.
Speaker 3: Uh wait, wait were you joking? Oh no, okay, good.
Speaker 2: I just always get the time periods confused, So I
Speaker 2: rely on books and research like a big dumb dumb
Speaker 2: so so do I?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, but then you keep it in your brain.
Speaker 2: Mine just floats out like yous cartoons with birds flying
Speaker 2: around people's head when they get knocked out.
Speaker 3: Chuck.
Speaker 1: I've seen every cartoon that ever existed, and I remember
Speaker 1: each of them perfectly without any of my opinions coloring
Speaker 1: my view of them.
Speaker 2: Those birds are always above my head. I don't have
Speaker 2: to get hit with an anvil or a piano. So
Speaker 2: the Ryan Gorge was one of those really narrow straits.
Speaker 2: In twelve fifty, Emperor Frederick the Third died, there was
Speaker 2: no successor, and basically that meant no regulation. And believe
Speaker 2: it or not, even way back then, a lack of
Speaker 2: regulation meant that people would take advantage of that.
Speaker 4: It's crazy, same as it is today, and.
Speaker 3: It's almost like people are imperfect.
Speaker 2: Almost, And so these thieves would move into that gorge,
Speaker 2: jam up those tolls, maybe just steal stuff if they
Speaker 2: wanted to as well, and they were named the robber barons.
Speaker 4: 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. That's right, and that became
Speaker 1: like a really great description for some of the most
Speaker 1: successful business tycoons of the nineteenth century. I think it
Speaker 1: first popped up in an Atlantic article in eighteen seventy, 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's said
Speaker 1: that the old robber barons of the Rhine 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: eighteen 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 Gilded Age really starting
Speaker 1: to take off, and people had already identified that there
Speaker 1: were some major issues developing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so weird to look at this stuff and
Speaker 2: just how apt it applies to what's going on today.
Speaker 2: And we think, I think some people think that these
Speaker 2: are all new problems and new issues, but it's as
Speaker 2: old as time, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so weird.
Speaker 1: It is a little weird to to it's it is weird.
Speaker 1: What's even weirder though, is like I believe if we
Speaker 1: if we look back, if we zoom out far enough,
Speaker 1: we see humanity kind of ever going upward, even though
Speaker 1: there's like peaks and valleys in the line.
Speaker 3: In the line overall is.
Speaker 1: Kind of up moves upward towards something great, I think.
Speaker 4: But toward perfection.
Speaker 1: I wasn't Maybe I wasn't alive ten thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: So who knows. Maybe that was the pinnacle of human existence.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe, So should we can say, should we talk about
Speaker 2: a few of these dudes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we I feel like we have kind of
Speaker 1: set this up that the Robert 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 og
Speaker 1: robber Baron.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Commodore is a nickname that and as you
Speaker 2: will see he later, Vanderbilt University is named for him,
Speaker 2: and their mascot is the Commodores because of him. And
Speaker 2: a commodore is a naval officer sort of above not
Speaker 2: quite an admiral, but above a captain.
Speaker 4: I think they command a fleet.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's actually pretty appropriate because he did command
Speaker 1: a fleet of ships, originally sailboats, originally a sailboat I
Speaker 1: think when he was fourteen, and then steamships to ferry
Speaker 1: people around New York. I thoughts there were by this time,
Speaker 1: and you know, you know what's ironic, We were talking
Speaker 1: about steamships and when they were invented the guy who
Speaker 1: invented steam, Robert Fulton. Remember we did a whole episode
Speaker 1: on steam technology. H Yeah, he had a thirty year
Speaker 1: monopoly in New York to ferry people using steamships, and ironically,
Speaker 1: Cornelius Vanderbilt had to overcome that monopoly using ingenuity and
Speaker 1: his own resourcefulness and eventually was successful in breaking that
Speaker 1: monopoly just through good business tactics that actually resulted in
Speaker 1: far lower fares for everyday people and companies. I think
Speaker 1: just at his first try, by improving the size of
Speaker 1: the steam engine and using cheaper anthracite coal, he managed
Speaker 1: to drop the average ferry price from like seven dollars
Speaker 1: to three dollars in his first try.
Speaker 4: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that's really kind of like instructive though,
Speaker 1: man Like think about it. You think of this guy
Speaker 1: as like a ruthless robber baron, and in many many
Speaker 1: ways he was, as we'll see, but he was able
Speaker 1: to get to that position by outwitting and outsmarting other
Speaker 1: robber barons. And that was the climate at the time.
Speaker 1: It's so easy to sit back from this time and
Speaker 1: just be like, just judge, judge Hutch and it's actually
Speaker 1: kind of fun too, it's a great pastime. But you
Speaker 1: also have to remember at the time that that was
Speaker 1: the business climate.
Speaker 3: 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 business. Which
Speaker 1: is fine, Like maybe you'd say this is too cutthroat
Speaker 1: for me. I'm just going to sell out to these guys,
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 or for worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's worth pointing out. And as we'll do
Speaker 2: with I think we're going over four of these guys.
Speaker 2: But some had money born into it, some started out
Speaker 2: very poor. And Cornelius Vanderbilt, even though that sounds like
Speaker 2: such a rich, hoity toity name, now, he was born
Speaker 2: very poor. He was born in seventeen ninety four in
Speaker 2: a farming family on Statine Island and quit school when
Speaker 2: he was eleven, and that's when he started working on
Speaker 2: the boat docks. And he was literally a self made man,
Speaker 2: starting with that first little ferry boat that you mentioned
Speaker 2: at age fourteen. He was a big dude, and he
Speaker 2: was very savvy, but also very ruthless. And this is
Speaker 2: something that you'll see with a lot of these men,
Speaker 2: was a competition and a competitive edge and nature. That
Speaker 2: was sort of the underlying thing with all of them.
Speaker 2: I think that I watched There Will Be Blood recently
Speaker 2: for movie Crush and Daniel Plainview was very much based
Speaker 2: on some of these robber barons, and that he has
Speaker 2: that great, great classic line from that movie when he goes,
Speaker 2: I have a competition in me. I want no one
Speaker 2: else to succeed, and that just crystallizes that character. And
Speaker 2: I think a lot of these guys it wasn't enough
Speaker 2: to just get rich. They wanted to devastate the competition, right.
Speaker 1: So it makes you wonder, is that just a normal
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Or was it that these guys shaped.
Speaker 1: The business world because they all happened to be alive
Speaker 1: at the same time.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I wonder it's it's interesting though, that it's that competition
Speaker 2: and again with the plane, to you, not just a
Speaker 2: competition to succeed, but a comp competition to see that
Speaker 2: others don't.
Speaker 3: Right, So, did you talk about the railroad?
Speaker 4: Did?
Speaker 3: I didn't catch it.
Speaker 2: No, So you know he started off in the steam uh, steamboats.
Speaker 2: But if you know Vanderbilt, you know he was a
Speaker 2: railroad guy. And if you look at the list of
Speaker 2: robber barons, I'd say easily like a third of them
Speaker 2: were railroad men.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because because there was so much money to be
Speaker 1: made from the railroads. It was just like printing your
Speaker 1: own money. And one of the reasons why was because
Speaker 1: there's so much stuff being shipped over the railroads that
Speaker 1: if you own the railroad, you got a cut of
Speaker 1: every single industry because every single industry basically had to
Speaker 1: use your form of transportation. That's why they all got
Speaker 1: into it. Plus it was wide open, like there was
Speaker 1: so much open space and so much room for expansion
Speaker 1: that it was a good time to get rich off
Speaker 1: of the railroad for sure.
Speaker 2: So his first railroad ride was at thirty nine years old.
Speaker 2: He wasn't like in his twenties and early thirties getting
Speaker 2: into the railroad business. He wasn't even on a train
Speaker 2: until it was almost forty and that train crashed an
Speaker 2: axle broke and went down an embankment and he punctured along,
Speaker 2: broke some bones, and I guess was lying there wheezing
Speaker 2: out of a hole in his lung saying, this is
Speaker 2: the future. That was so great, And he got into railroads.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, like a year later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that he had a really
Speaker 1: great talent for was identifying like loser railroads, seemingly loser railroads,
Speaker 1: and figuring out ways that they actually had been overlooked.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And a really good example of that is the Harlem Railroad,
Speaker 1: which was just a short little line that other railroads,
Speaker 1: larger railroads used to connect to New York City, but
Speaker 1: Vanderbilt recognized that it was the only line that went
Speaker 1: all the way into the heart of Manhattan. And so
Speaker 1: he bought that up, and he also, at the same
Speaker 1: time not only got control of that little railroad. This
Speaker 1: is a really early chance for him to show how
Speaker 1: good he was at driving up stock prices. So when
Speaker 1: he came along and bought the Harlem Railroad, or started
Speaker 1: buying shares of the Harlem Railroad, it was worth in
Speaker 1: today's money, one hundred and sixty eight dollars a 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, he had driven the
Speaker 1: shares up to fifty nine 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 off and then buy me out. And so eventually
Speaker 1: he didn't even have to plunder other companies. They came
Speaker 1: to him and just said, here, buddy, bias please.
Speaker 4: They were Blue Star Airlines.
Speaker 3: What is that? Remember that from that from there will
Speaker 3: be blood.
Speaker 4: There were no airlines and there will be blood.
Speaker 2: No remember Wall Street, that was the one that Martin
Speaker 2: Sheen worked for. Yeah, did geck O came in and
Speaker 2: bought out and I think he shuddered them though, that
Speaker 2: was the difference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, he was a corporate raider.
Speaker 1: He and actually that era, that eighties junk bond era
Speaker 1: is frequently cited or it was the time as the
Speaker 1: Second Gilded Age.
Speaker 3: This is not the first time.
Speaker 1: We're living in what's known as the Second Guilded Age.
Speaker 2: So to put a bow on Vanderbilt, he consolidated, like
Speaker 2: you said, all these railways between New York and Chicago.
Speaker 2: He manipulated stock, he fixed prices like you said earlier,
Speaker 2: the government wasn't looking so you kind of do what
Speaker 2: you wanted. And he became a very very very wealthy man,
Speaker 2: and like a lot of these guys late in his life,
Speaker 2: turned into a philanthropist. Built Grand Central Station it was
Speaker 2: called the Grand Central Depot at the time, which during
Speaker 2: the recession provided tons and tons of jobs for people,
Speaker 2: and then the Central University of Nashville was eventually renamed
Speaker 2: Vanderbilt University.
Speaker 4: Because all he did was give him a million bucks.
Speaker 4: Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 4: I guess back then, that's a lot of.
Speaker 3: Money significant, sure, sure.
Speaker 2: Like I feel like we could get stuff you should know,
Speaker 2: listeners to pitch in to get a university named after
Speaker 2: for us.
Speaker 3: Let's try that, actually, stuff you should.
Speaker 1: You we could do. We could organize a struggling university.
Speaker 3: How about that?
Speaker 1: Hey, one more thing about Vanderbilt. So he left about
Speaker 1: one 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 could make in railroads. And
Speaker 1: William was also well known for throwing probably the most
Speaker 1: laviage party in the history of New York City. They
Speaker 1: spent one point eight million dollars in today's dollars on
Speaker 1: champagne alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was when he finished his mansion on Fifth Ave.
Speaker 2: And I looked it up because to see if any
Speaker 2: of these robber baron mansions were still around today.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, I don't think it. I mean, I
Speaker 4: know this one was demolished in nineteen twenty six.
Speaker 1: So if you want to get a really good idea
Speaker 1: of just how rich these people were, go to Newport,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island man visit Millionaire's route because there was a
Speaker 1: huge there's a huge overlooking this cliff. There's a long
Speaker 1: row the most astounding mansions you've ever seen built during
Speaker 1: the guilded one.
Speaker 2: Of the better walks you can take in life. It
Speaker 2: really got the ocean on one side and then these
Speaker 2: mansions on the other.
Speaker 1: It's really cool and each mansion, each mansion is so
Speaker 1: different from the others.
Speaker 3: Just touring them is amazing. You could just be utterly.
Speaker 1: Disgusted by the concept of billionaires or robber barons or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you can still enjoy taking this tour of these mansions.
Speaker 1: They're just works of art, you know. It's really it's
Speaker 1: really worth a visit. Plus, Newport's just one of the
Speaker 1: more charming towns in the I love Newport.
Speaker 2: Or you could take a hate walk and just look
Speaker 2: at those mansions and think about what would wrecking Ball
Speaker 2: would look like.
Speaker 3: Shake your fists, set the dumb waiters and all that.
Speaker 4: But then you turn around, look at the ocean and think, oh, okay, all.
Speaker 1: Right, it's really cool. It's it's a definitely cool to
Speaker 1: visit them, for sure.
Speaker 2: And by the way, a little piece of trivia if
Speaker 2: you go if you enter Central Park at one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifth Street entrance, That big beautiful iron gate was
Speaker 2: from that mansion, the Vanderbilt Mansion. They donated a lot
Speaker 2: of the stuff before they demolished it.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So I mentioned Morganization, and that's actually named after the
Speaker 1: next robber Baron we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: Okay, do we break beforehand? And I think we break
Speaker 2: after JP?
Speaker 3: How about that? Are you okay with that?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 1: Okay? So then we're going to hang in there, everybody,
Speaker 1: don't don't fast forward yet. We're going to stick around
Speaker 1: and talk about JP Morgan right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was born with money.
Speaker 2: He did not come from meager means and work himself
Speaker 2: up by his bootstraps. He was the son of a
Speaker 2: very successful banker and merchant and used those connections to
Speaker 2: get a plumb job at Wall Street when he was
Speaker 2: twenty years old, and then when he was in his thirties,
Speaker 2: partnered with a guy named Anthony Drexel who was a
Speaker 2: banker and from Philly and created Drexel Morgan and Company.
Speaker 2: And it became one of the biggest investment bank at
Speaker 2: the time in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was when he was in his early thirties,
Speaker 1: like you said, right, So JP Morgan was known as
Speaker 1: the guy who financed all the other robber barons, and
Speaker 1: he had his fingers in basically every pot that was
Speaker 1: going on. He also knew that like you could make
Speaker 1: money off of the railroads because you were taking a
Speaker 1: cut of all the other industries, so he definitely got
Speaker 1: involved in them. But his whole thing was what's called
Speaker 1: horizontal integration, where you basically come along you say, this
Speaker 1: industry should be doing way better than it is. I
Speaker 1: think there's too many competitors and they're all holding one
Speaker 1: another down. I'm going to slowly start buying them up.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. This is how you get control
Speaker 1: of a full industry. During the Gilded Age. You go
Speaker 1: to a couple, you start buying them up, and then
Speaker 1: you put all those together and you form a bigger
Speaker 1: company that's way leaner, has much better economies of scale,
Speaker 1: and you can compete better against all the other guys.
Speaker 1: So you start buying some of the other guys up
Speaker 1: because they're facing going out of business now, and then
Speaker 1: you've got left the real holdouts, the ones that are
Speaker 1: never going to sell to you because they hate your
Speaker 1: stupid face, and they'll never give a penny to you.
Speaker 1: Make sure that you'll never set foot in their offices
Speaker 1: ever again. And what you do then is you start
Speaker 1: selling for less than cost. Yeah, you're a big company,
Speaker 1: so you can totally stand that for a much longer
Speaker 1: time than these holdout competitors, and they face either financial
Speaker 1: ruin or you eventually put them out of business, and
Speaker 1: either way you no longer have that competition. You literally
Speaker 1: 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 it was pioneered by
Speaker 1: JP Morgan, but he definitely perfected it enough that they
Speaker 1: named the process after him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's a good example of what I was
Speaker 2: talking about earlier, is it's not enough to succeed and
Speaker 2: be successful, but to make sure no one else can be.
Speaker 2: So like it would be the kind of thing in
Speaker 2: that one company you were talking about that may be
Speaker 2: kind of pretty small even, but they might hold have
Speaker 2: an iron grip on one very tiny region of the
Speaker 2: United States, and you could just let them have their business,
Speaker 2: or you could do what you're talking about and make
Speaker 2: sure that you squash them by any means necessary and
Speaker 2: force them to sell. And that's I think that's where
Speaker 2: capitalism for a lot of people has gotten its bad name.
Speaker 2: Is like, yeah, work hard, succeed do well, but not
Speaker 2: at the expense of every other person trying to do well.
Speaker 1: Right, because it interferes with something this country's based on,
Speaker 1: which is called the quality of opportunity, which is the
Speaker 1: idea that at least under the eyes of the law,
Speaker 1: every single person in America has an equal shot at
Speaker 1: making it, at making something of themselves, of having like
Speaker 1: a good life. And when somebody is cheating or engaging
Speaker 1: in monopoly or using underhanded tactics to run out the
Speaker 1: competition so that there is no competition any longer, that
Speaker 1: that is problematic. That flies in the face of the
Speaker 1: idea of equality of opportunity.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: And if you listen to our Monopoly Game episode, you
Speaker 2: might remember that JP Morgan was the basis of monopoly Man.
Speaker 4: Uncle Peter said, yeah, we talked about that.
Speaker 3: Good, Okay, that makes me feel good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He was modeled after old JP Morgan himself, and he
Speaker 2: was actually one of the first people to be targeted
Speaker 2: for anti trust in nineteen oh four, Eddie Roosevelt game
Speaker 2: after him under the Sherman Anti Trust Act and said, hey,
Speaker 2: this Northern Securities Corporation is really monopoly, and Supreme Court said, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is busted up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so today when we think of trusts, we
Speaker 1: think of, like, you know, a legal entity that can
Speaker 1: hold assets. At the time, the word trust meant basically
Speaker 1: an industry that had been morganized, where all of the
Speaker 1: competitors had been folded into one large company and the
Speaker 1: market was cornered by this one mega company, General Electric,
Speaker 1: us Steel, both of those were morganized companies, and apparently
Speaker 1: US Steel was the first one billion dollar company that
Speaker 1: ever existed because of that level of consolidation. But then, yeah,
Speaker 1: when the Sherman Anti Trust Act was passed in eighteen ninety,
Speaker 1: that was a clear sign that this was not going
Speaker 1: to stand much longer. And I think Roosevelt, it was Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: you said, right, yeah, Teddy who busted that up? And
Speaker 1: he ran on that and actually went against He was
Speaker 1: a Republican, I believe, and he went against the advice
Speaker 1: of the the Elder Statesman and the Republican Party established
Speaker 1: himself as a genuine president of the people and helped
Speaker 1: set himself up for reelection just from that one anti
Speaker 1: trust act.
Speaker 4: So that's jp. Now do we take a break.
Speaker 1: Oh one more thing, Chuck, Yeah, I'm not toying with you,
Speaker 1: I swear.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that Morgan one of the reasons
Speaker 1: he's reviled still. And he did some philanthropy, probably more
Speaker 1: than he gets credit for, for sure, but one of
Speaker 1: the reasons he's reviled is because one of the ways
Speaker 1: he made it so that he could compete with other
Speaker 1: companies was in sell for lower than cost, was by
Speaker 1: slashing wages, slashing the workforce and increasing productivity of the
Speaker 1: existing workers, and then just making sure that working conditions.
Speaker 1: He didn't spend a cent on improving working conditions to
Speaker 1: make him safe, and that is really why not because
Speaker 1: he amassed a fortune. Some people criticize him for that,
Speaker 1: but it's tactics like that, like becoming a billionaire basically
Speaker 1: on the backs of people who he wouldn't have spent
Speaker 1: a cent to make sure could stay alive working in
Speaker 1: his factories. That is the quintessential problem people have always.
Speaker 3: Had with robber barons, is that kind of mentality.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: Now, I'm done.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll come back right after this and finish
Speaker 2: up with two more robber barons. Hello, everybody, we're back
Speaker 2: to talk about Andrew Carnegie. You've ever been to Carnegie
Speaker 2: Hall or Carnegie Mellon University.
Speaker 4: I've been to both.
Speaker 3: You've been one of the university with you. That's right.
Speaker 4: We did a little job there one time. That was fun.
Speaker 2: I've been to Carnegie Hall. I ushered a show there.
Speaker 2: I didn't usher. I passed up the playbills, which meant
Speaker 2: I got to see the show for free, and I
Speaker 2: saw the show.
Speaker 4: Oh man, it was one of those special nights.
Speaker 2: I got to see Beethoven's Ninth with the full orchestra
Speaker 2: and German choir at Carnegie Hall.
Speaker 4: It was amazing.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Something else that's pretty neat And all I needed was
Speaker 4: a bow tie?
Speaker 3: Is that the one that's d d d d ding
Speaker 3: ding ding ding didn't.
Speaker 4: Know, maybe had named it wrong.
Speaker 2: It's the uh dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun.
Speaker 3: Oh, the die Hard song.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Diehard song.
Speaker 3: I got you.
Speaker 4: I went and saw a Dieharden concert. It was great, hilarious,
Speaker 4: so Carnegie.
Speaker 2: Uh, we're talking about Andrew Carnegie, who was born in
Speaker 2: Scotland and they came to Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4: He was very poor.
Speaker 2: He's about thirteen years old and he worked in a
Speaker 2: cotton factory and he and this will come into play later,
Speaker 2: he kind of self taught himself from books that he
Speaker 2: borrowed from a wealthy benefactor from his private library, which
Speaker 2: is come to play later.
Speaker 1: His favorite one was Flowers in the Attic.
Speaker 4: Wow. I would have thought great expectations, but that's okay.
Speaker 3: No, nope.
Speaker 1: So he he, like Vanderbilt, is definitely a self made
Speaker 1: man for sure. And I guess he kind of was.
Speaker 1: He had his fingers in a lot of different pots,
Speaker 1: kind of like JP Morgan at first, and then he
Speaker 1: turned his attention to steel because again remember steel is
Speaker 1: like the basically the foundation for this American economy just
Speaker 1: blowing up.
Speaker 4: And he was at Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: Sure, so he his name became synonymous with steel, and
Speaker 1: I guess at first, up until about eighteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: he had a reputation as being a friend of the worker,
Speaker 1: and that the workers at Carnegie Steel in Homestead, just
Speaker 1: across the river from Pittsburgh, they they felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: Carnegie would take care of them, and they found out
Speaker 1: the hard way that that was not the case when
Speaker 1: they went on strike in eighteen ninety two during what
Speaker 1: came to be known as the Homestead Strike, which would
Speaker 1: result in the death of ten people, which is not
Speaker 1: how they planned things to go. And apparently the reason
Speaker 1: why that happened is because the Pinkertons were called in
Speaker 1: as strike breakers.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I might want to eventually do an episode on this,
Speaker 2: but that's sort of the overview. You bring in the
Speaker 2: Pinkertons and then they battle with the like literally with guns.
Speaker 2: Pinkertons died. I think like eight or nine of the
Speaker 2: ten or twelve people that died with the Pinkertons.
Speaker 1: No, no, I think it was just one. I think
Speaker 1: were the strikers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, well we should definitely do a full episode then,
Speaker 2: because for.
Speaker 4: Sure I want to get this right.
Speaker 1: But what I read was that the strikers, so the
Speaker 1: Pinkertons showed up in barges and they were basically hired
Speaker 1: on as a private army to protect scab workers and
Speaker 1: bust the strike up. But they arrived in barges and
Speaker 1: after the initial violence, the striking workers and some of
Speaker 1: their families surrounded these barges and demanded that the Pinkertons
Speaker 1: come off the boats and the Pinkertons So the Pinkertons said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll come off if you guarantee our safety. And they
Speaker 1: said fine, and the Pinkertons came off and they got
Speaker 1: beaten by all of the strikers. They just completely went
Speaker 1: back on their word and then set their barges on fire.
Speaker 1: I guess the Pinkertons escaped to the factory with their
Speaker 1: life and the National Guard was called in to quell
Speaker 1: the violence.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, national Guard was called in not only to quell
Speaker 2: the violence, but also called in to act in the
Speaker 2: interest of Carnegie. So he kind of commandeered his own
Speaker 2: little personal army to help take care of things.
Speaker 1: Right, starting with the Pinkertons and then with the National Guard.
Speaker 1: And it's like this kind of collusion that is also
Speaker 1: another huge criticism. Like we were saying, the government is
Speaker 1: known for being like las fair as far as regulation
Speaker 1: is concerned, but they'll totally send in the National Guard
Speaker 1: not just to qwelve violence, but to make sure that
Speaker 1: the strike breakers don't attack the scab labor to keep
Speaker 1: the factory going, and that kind of like government capital
Speaker 1: collusion at the expense of the workers. Is that there's
Speaker 1: a long standing tradition of that being almost universally reviled
Speaker 1: in America.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think Carnegie tried to distance himself from
Speaker 2: that strike by saying that he was sort of out
Speaker 2: of the loop. He was in Scotland the whole time,
Speaker 2: But they have since found correspondence that shows that he
Speaker 2: was very much involved in that. And you know, there's
Speaker 2: some speculation that he may have had some genuine moments
Speaker 2: of regret and guilt over that, because he was a
Speaker 2: big time philanthropist later in life. I think he said
Speaker 2: in his book The Gospel of Wealth, the man who
Speaker 2: dies thus rich dies disgraced. And we mentioned the libraries
Speaker 2: coming back into play. He built more than twenty five
Speaker 2: hundred libraries, and that's really one of his big legacies,
Speaker 2: along with the arts. The Carnegie Corporation and the Endowment
Speaker 2: for International Peace, Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Museum. But the
Speaker 2: libraries really have made a pretty big difference in this country.
Speaker 3: They really have, for sure.
Speaker 1: And he was one of just the all time great
Speaker 1: philanthropists in American history, for sure, but he still pales
Speaker 1: in comparison to the all time top record holder philanthropist
Speaker 1: John D. Rockefeller, who is also a Robert Baron. But
Speaker 1: he also is far away America's most prolific and generous
Speaker 1: benefactor for sure. He was also one of the most
Speaker 1: visionary philanthropists of all time too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and some people say that he was, you know,
Speaker 2: if you just account for money and inflation, the richest
Speaker 2: man ever to live. I'm not sure how they calculate that,
Speaker 2: because his nine hundred million dollar peek in nineteen twelve
Speaker 2: is about twenty three billion today.
Speaker 3: So here I saw how you ready?
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's yeah, go ahead, if you do his
Speaker 1: wealth relative to the total economic output, Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: even larger figure than gross domestic product.
Speaker 4: I had a feeling it was something like that.
Speaker 1: His wealth represented two percent of the total economic output
Speaker 1: of the United States at the time. To have that
Speaker 1: value today, you would have to be worth about three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty billion, Okay, and I think Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: is worth one hundred and forty or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think we didn't even mention it was
Speaker 2: it Carnegie that had at one point, like one dollar
Speaker 2: of every twenty dollars in circulation.
Speaker 4: Was his.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, that was Carnegie for sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean these numbers are staggering, for sure, for people
Speaker 2: like Rockefeller and Carnegie.
Speaker 4: It's just it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, in like, like John D. Rockefeller
Speaker 1: was a ruthless, ruthless businessman who put a lot of
Speaker 1: people out of business, brought a lot of misery and
Speaker 1: hardship on just small everyday producers of oil, which we'll see.
Speaker 1: But again, it's really difficult to overstate the impact that
Speaker 1: his philanthropy has had on the United States. He peaked
Speaker 1: at nine hundred million, like you said, when he died,
Speaker 1: he had he'd given away everything but twenty six million
Speaker 1: of that, and he probably felt kind of bad that
Speaker 1: he had twenty six million dollars left because he had
Speaker 1: He was a very religious man, and apparently he learned
Speaker 1: very early on that it was every man's religious duty
Speaker 1: to make as much money as you possibly can and
Speaker 1: then to give away as much money as you possibly
Speaker 1: can too, And he apparently lived that even before he
Speaker 1: was wealthy, when he was still just.
Speaker 3: An average worker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he would give away something like ten percent of
Speaker 1: all of his paychecks. So he was a philanthropist his
Speaker 1: whole life, for sure. He was still a robber bearing too.
Speaker 2: Though, Yeah, and his whole you know, of course, oil
Speaker 2: was his business. Standard oil it was just a goliath,
Speaker 2: and there were a bunch of big like sort of
Speaker 2: like the railroads. It was oil and railroads were industries
Speaker 2: where you could have a bunch of people that had
Speaker 2: these huge, huge corporations. But Standard Oil was far and
Speaker 2: away bigger than any of them.
Speaker 4: By the early.
Speaker 2: Nineteen hundreds, they controlled more than ninety percent of the
Speaker 2: oil market. Can you imagine ninety percent.
Speaker 1: And the way that he cornered the market was, you know,
Speaker 1: he did that standard organization kind of thing where he
Speaker 1: went around and bought at first and then started to
Speaker 1: turn up the heat on the competition, on the holdouts.
Speaker 1: But one of the ways that he turned up that
Speaker 1: heat was he colluded with the railroad. The different railroads
Speaker 1: in the area who were shipping all this oil. To say,
Speaker 1: not only were they going to give him a rebate
Speaker 1: so he got money back where they wouldn't give money
Speaker 1: back to other oil shippers just because of volume. That
Speaker 1: makes sense, but they also had to get his business,
Speaker 1: and he had so much business that they would do this.
Speaker 1: The railroads had to tax and added tax on all
Speaker 1: of his competitors, so they paid an extra twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty cents a barrel to ship. Not just paid more
Speaker 1: than he did because of his rebates, they paid more
Speaker 1: in addition to that just for not being John D. Rockefeller.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, to keep him from
Speaker 1: taking that rebate and going around to other railroads and
Speaker 1: getting a cheaper rebate and abandoning that railroad, they actually
Speaker 1: gave him a kickback 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 4: It's amazing it is.
Speaker 2: Let me see, he gave seventy five million away to
Speaker 2: the University of Chicago. Well, it kind of founded the
Speaker 2: University of Chicago with that money.
Speaker 1: Also Spellman too, which was established to educate freed slaves.
Speaker 1: He bankrolled Spellman for its founding as well.
Speaker 2: And in one of our best and most favored episodes,
Speaker 2: you might remember the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission helped eradicate hookworm
Speaker 2: in the South.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. That is one of our better episodes for sure.
Speaker 2: So those are just four of the sort of most
Speaker 2: famous and some might say notorious.
Speaker 4: Robert Barons big long list.
Speaker 2: You could throw Henry Ford in there, John Jacob Astor,
Speaker 2: Charles Schwab, Andrew Mellon, Jay Gould, Yeah, I looked at
Speaker 2: I was thinking about J. Paulgetty, but he was later
Speaker 2: on he wouldn't have qualified.
Speaker 1: So some of these guys had some terrible quotes too
Speaker 1: that also just made them despised through history. Carnegie said
Speaker 1: that it's not the man who does the work who
Speaker 1: gets rich, it's the man who gets other men to
Speaker 1: do the work. Yeah, which is not a very tasteful
Speaker 1: thing to say when you're ultra wealthy and breaking strikes
Speaker 1: with guns. That Jay Gould guy I mentioned, he said
Speaker 1: that he could hire one half of the workers in
Speaker 1: America to shoot the other half to death if he
Speaker 1: wanted to, which is another nice thing to say. And
Speaker 1: apparently John D. Rockefeller once said competition is a sin.
Speaker 1: So these guys had some terrible pr and because of that,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have said, like, well, I wonder
Speaker 1: if some of the ultra wealthy industrialists are in or
Speaker 1: people who basically the billionaires who are leading the world today,
Speaker 1: are they just like Robert Barons with better pr and
Speaker 1: better marketing. Maybe, And apparently supposedly that's not necessarily the case.
Speaker 3: And here's why.
Speaker 1: Remember I was saying that like Robert Barons were kind
Speaker 1: of being reformed by historians these days, especially conservative historians. Well,
Speaker 1: they point to some like really indisputable things like these
Speaker 1: guys were ruthless and they engaged in horrific anti competitive,
Speaker 1: kind of anti capitalist tactics to get those wealth and
Speaker 1: they did it on the backs of workers that they
Speaker 1: took advantage of and didn't pay very well and killed
Speaker 1: in their workplaces. Basically, but the reason that America is
Speaker 1: still powerful today is because of the work that these
Speaker 1: guys did of the industries that they created. Public schooling
Speaker 1: came about and was just kind of became widespread to
Speaker 1: people for the jobs that these guys created, and you
Speaker 1: really can't, you can't look away from the fact that
Speaker 1: some of them were the greatest philanthropists that the country
Speaker 1: has ever produced. Too. That flies in the face, with
Speaker 1: kind of the exception of Bill Gates. It flies in
Speaker 1: the face of the people who are around today that
Speaker 1: not only are they not great philanthropists necessarily. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at Steve Jobs, who wasn't around anymore, but definitely was
Speaker 1: not a good philanthropist in his life. He is now,
Speaker 1: his family is, but he wasn't when he was alive.
Speaker 1: That's a big, big mark against people who have control
Speaker 1: of significant portions of the wealth in America today. But
Speaker 1: also even more than that, those guys today are they're
Speaker 1: presiding over a decline, a decline in wages, decline in
Speaker 1: living conditions, whereas these guys, these captains of industry and
Speaker 1: the robber barons for the nineteenth century, they were presiding
Speaker 1: over a rise, like an improved in the way that
Speaker 1: America lived and the standard of living. The kind of
Speaker 1: the polar opposite, even though the inequality is roughly the same.
Speaker 3: Very interesting, I think so too.
Speaker 1: I also wonder though too if this inequality will usher
Speaker 1: in a second progressive era, which it seems like it
Speaker 1: has all of the markings to do that too, So
Speaker 1: we need to do a progressive era episode too sometime. Okay, deal,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, since you said deal, Chuck, I think
Speaker 1: that's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 2: Huh, Yeah, I think I alluded to this in another
Speaker 2: one about the word marijuana. Didn't I talk about that totally?
Speaker 2: But I didn't read the mail, right, not that I
Speaker 2: remember knowing. All right, this is from Jack Glick. Hey, guys,
Speaker 2: love the show. Been listening for five years or so,
Speaker 2: and to make sure not to miss any new episodes,
Speaker 2: I'm listening to the one on Macha when you started
Speaker 2: to talk about marijuana.
Speaker 4: Decided to get in touch.
Speaker 2: I am the lead analyst on cannabis taxation for the
Speaker 2: Canadian federal government, and we long ago made a decision
Speaker 2: to refer to the plant by its proper name cannabis.
Speaker 2: Marijuana has a number of historically racist associations, and I
Speaker 2: know you guys are always using wary of using appropriate
Speaker 2: terms for things. I had a good laugh at the
Speaker 2: question over whether womb was still okay to say in
Speaker 2: the ultrasound episode. I thought you might like to know
Speaker 2: that how outdated and implicitly offensive marijuana is, and I'd
Speaker 2: like to encourage you to use the word.
Speaker 4: Cannabis when referring to it in the future. All the best,
Speaker 4: keep it up. That is from Jack Glick.
Speaker 1: That is a great name, Jack, great job, great name,
Speaker 1: great email from a great guy.
Speaker 4: I assume sounds like a great guy.
Speaker 1: If you want to show off what a great person
Speaker 1: you are, you can email us yourself like Jack Glick did.
Speaker 3: Man what a great name.
Speaker 1: You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom
Speaker 1: and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.