The Robber Barons Author:Matthew Josephson Presents profiles of the captains of industry who ruled America after the Civil War including Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, and Gould. This 1934 book provides a history of the late 19th century that is missing from school history books. The author worked for a few years in Wall Street and learned about the "Men Who Rule America". ... more »Later he wrote a number of biographies for a magazine. These men were no match for the great capitalists who flourished in the late 19th century (the Gilded Age). He decided to write not just about their lives, manners and morals, but how they got their money. Their great wealth was unaffected by any income tax. These barons of industry were "agents of progress" in transforming an agrarian-mercantile society into a mass production economy. Josephson described their most ruthless actions, their plunders and conspiracies, and their lack of ethics. The system they created led to the Great Depression. Since then academic historians created a revisionist history that claimed those entrepreneurs were saviors of the country and not interested in looting and plundering the economy. This "history" is similar to the "truth factories" in George Orwell's "1984" [which is about Britain and the world of 1948]. Their family dynasties have survived, they established trusts that evaded the tax burdens of other wealthy families. [Other writers have pointed out that they sponsored universities to control teachers and thinking, and provide other benefits.] These dynasties seem permanent. The founders were hated by the American people in their lifetime. The farmers of Kansas first applied the name "Robber Barons" to the railroads that oppressed them.« less