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- [00:00]
T-Mobile Representative
With T Mobile. No trendspotter has to deal with Trendspotty service because T Mobile helps keep you connected from big cities to your hometown on America's largest 5G network. Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off at the $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines via virtual prepaid card. Last 15 days qualifying unlock device credit service port in 90 days device knowledgeable carrier and timely redemption required Card is no cash access. It expires in six months.
- [00:30]
Autotrader Representative
Look around, everyone. Every car you see is probably on Autotrader. Like that sleek convertible that turned heads when it picked you up from the airport. Or the custom ride from your favorite van. Life couple on social media. Even that vintage sports car that's tailing you a little too closely. New cars, used cars, electric cars, even flying cars. Well, okay, no flying cars yet. But as soon as those things get invented, they'll be on Autotrader. If you see a car you like, it's probably on Autotrader. That's kind of their thing. Autotrader.
- [00:59]
Josh Clark
Hey, everybody, it's me, Josh. And for this week's select, I've chosen our July 2020 episode on Robber Barons. It turns out that today's billionaires and leaders of industry bear some resemblance to the robber barons of the Gilded Age. But there are some big differences. Namely, today's billionaires are kind of terrible at philanthropy, and the robber barons of the last century were far less preoccupied with outer space. Hope you enjoy this episode. It's a pretty good one. Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chucker's Bryant over there. Jerry was just here doing the COVID setup and then got out of the room really quick, Held her breath for five straight minutes.
- [01:55]
Autotrader Representative
It's a new record.
- [01:57]
Josh Clark
It really is.
- [01:58]
Autotrader Representative
New studio record, sure.
- [02:00]
Josh Clark
And this is stuff you should know. That's no David Blaine record, by the way.
- [02:04]
Autotrader Representative
No, I mean that's her studio record. You should see her when she's pearl diving, though, right?
- [02:10]
Josh Clark
Wouldn't that be something? If Jerry did have a secret life. Pearl diving.
- [02:14]
Autotrader Representative
That would be amazing.
- [02:16]
Josh Clark
It would. But we're not talking about Jerry. Chuck. Enough about her. Instead, I propose that we have a nice, pleasant conversation about robber barons.
- [02:27]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, this is an interesting topic because depending on who you ask, the robber barons were either the greatest thing to ever happen to this country or one of the worst things to ever happen to this country.
- [02:43]
Josh Clark
Yeah, yeah. And at first, from what I could tell, historians, like immediately after, in the, like few decades after the, the Gilded Age, which we'll talk about, where the, you know, the age the robber barons worked and operated and lived in really took it to be like their, their presence, their existence was one of the worst things ever. But over time, there's kind of been a reformation of them, you know, kind of like a revisiting of them that has tried to, to, to revive their image or actually make their image possibly better than it ever has been.
- [03:17]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, I mean, it kind of. I think a lot of this has to probably depends on what you feel about capitalism to this extent, where kind of doesn't matter how you make your money if it's sort of underhanded and you sort of undercut competitors and monopolize things. That's all just free trade, man, free capitalism. And that's how it works out. And then those guys gave a ton of money to society before they died, and so they, That's. That's all that justifies the means.
- [03:51]
Josh Clark
Yeah, I actually ran across. Yeah, that's the conservative way to look at it. And I ran across something. I can't remember what it's called, but it's basically, oh, human imperfection. Did you know that the idea that humans are imperfect and there's really no reason to try to make a perfect society because it will always be imperfect and end in ruin. That. That is a cornerstone, a hallmark of conservatism. Did you know that?
- [04:24]
Autotrader Representative
I didn't, but I mean, of course you can't make a perfect society. It makes sense.
- [04:29]
Josh Clark
Well, there. So conservatives are saying that in opposition to all of the liberal efforts to make a perfect society, to have government regulation that says, no, no, no, we should all have clean water and we should do it at the exp. Making corporations clean up the wastewater before they, they release their waste into the, the shared common water resources, things like that. Right. And that there's this idea that you can, you can mold society into some perfect form, that that's the opposite of human imperfection, that that's like what liberals think. And that that is that right there is one of the main dividing lines between conservative and liberal. I've been on the planet for almost 44 years now, and I had no idea that it was just that simple. And it really kind of is.
- [05:19]
Autotrader Representative
I think the word perfect is what's a stumbling block for me, because I don't know a single liberal thinks that they can make things perfect. I think the goal is to make things better.
- [05:28]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Yeah, agreed. I don't know that it's a great word either, but I think that that's, you know, I mean, hey, you're gonna argue with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I'm not.
- [05:38]
Autotrader Representative
Bring it on, man. I'll punch that thing right in the face.
- [05:41]
Josh Clark
Speaking of Stanford, did you know that Stanford University was named out? Yeah, a robber baron named Leland Stanford, actually.
- [05:50]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, a lot of universities are named after robber barons.
- [05:53]
Josh Clark
Yeah. There's a lot of problems with some of the early histories of universities, as we'll find out in the coming weeks.
- [06:00]
Autotrader Representative
So we should get into the Gilded Age. We should hop in the old way back machine, because that's the age that we're talking about. And when you hear Gilded Age, it might sound really great because, I mean, what's better than a gilded, I don't know, toilet.
- [06:18]
Josh Clark
Gilded Lily. Isn't that another one? That. Another thing. People Guild.
- [06:22]
Autotrader Representative
I don't know. That's a pretty good band name, though.
- [06:24]
Josh Clark
Gilded Lily.
- [06:26]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. Like a 90s power pop.
- [06:28]
Josh Clark
Oh, totally. You nailed it. I said, what about Breakfast at Tiffany's?
- [06:35]
Autotrader Representative
But the Gilded Age is. And Dave Ruse helped us put this together, and he points out it's not a term of endearment. When something is gilded, that means it's got a thin coating of gold, but underneath it's. You know, it could be a gilded turd.
- [06:49]
Josh Clark
Sure. I hate that word so much.
- [06:52]
Autotrader Representative
I love it. It's so great.
- [06:53]
Josh Clark
Do you? Oh, man, I hate it.
- [06:55]
Autotrader Representative
I mean, I love it in. How awful it is.
- [06:59]
Josh Clark
Oh, gotcha. But I think it's so awful, it, like, comes out on the other side as just plain old awful to me.
- [07:05]
Autotrader Representative
Okay.
- [07:07]
Josh Clark
So, yeah, that's the. That's the idea of the Gilded Age, that it looked great on the outside, but on the inside, it wasn't so great. When was this? So this was the second half of the 19th century, basically from pretty much the end of the Civil War up until the first decade of the 20th century.
- [07:25]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah.
- [07:25]
Josh Clark
And it was characterized by a huge, massive shift in the American economy, where I saw somewhere that at some point in the 1860s to some point in the early 1880s, in about 15 years, the American economy doubled. Doubled in size in 15 years.
- [07:47]
Autotrader Representative
Wow.
- [07:48]
Josh Clark
That's how massive it was, and that's how fast it happened. And what it was was a transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society. And it happened virtually overnight, as far as history goes.
- [08:00]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And it was because it happened so Quickly. And because it was such growth, I think the government was like, we're going to stay out of this and kind of just let you dudes do what you're going to do. No regulation. You can be as competitive as you want to be and you can satisfy, scratch every capitalist itch you want. And, and we're just gonna let that happen because we're also kind of getting rich on the side.
- [08:27]
Josh Clark
Right. So that kind of raises something that I saw. Is that the idea that it's kind of like a myth of the laissez faire government during this era they were definitely laissez faire when it comes to regulation and letting corporatists run roughshod over labor. But they were anything but hands off when it came to corporate welfare and political entrepreneurship and helping out the wealthy class at the expense of the people in general. So on one hand they were laissez faire, on the other they were not.
- [09:01]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, and what we're talking about is stuff like snatching up resources where you could hoarding them for yourself, like building such a massive business that you could drive out every other smaller business, drive them right out of business by undercutting their prices. Jobs were more scarce so you could have people work harder for less and less wages, that kind of thing.
- [09:28]
Josh Clark
Right, exactly. And what's crazy, like it was a dog eat dog economy, it was just nuts how it happened. And there was a lot of like learning on the fly and the learning curve was extremely steep because I mean, this was just basically a country of farmers who had been, you know, looked down upon by Europe for a century or more. And they all of a sudden were captains of industry. And the most ruthless among them were the ones that rose to the top because like you're saying there was no rules, there was no regulation, there weren't any standards of business. They were all figuring it out as they were going along and they went immediately to the worst impulses that capitalism can, can raise in a person when you're in pursuit of as much possible wealth as you can get and there's plenty of it to be had. And then like you're saying not only did the federal government not get involved, they weren't equipped to get involved because at that point most of the government was focused on local stuff. And now all of a sudden, as the United States is truly becoming a continent wide nation, the federal government is kind of lagging behind to catch up. It wouldn't really begin to catch up in the Progressive era. And some would say that the pendulum Swung the exact opposite way to the exact opposite extreme direction that it had during the Gilded Age.
- [10:52]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, I mean, let's talk about the Gilded Age and the. I guess just you owe it all to trains, really. And trains you owe to steel. So you gotta go back a little bit. Steel was a very big deal in that. When they found out Mr. Henry Bessemer in the 1850s found out how to make steel, like a lot cheaper, he got a new process going where it was just like making vast amounts of steel for a fraction of the cost and speed.
- [11:23]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [11:23]
Autotrader Representative
And all of a sudden you could open up those local rail lines to stretch across the country and all these regional specialty businesses and industries, whether it was, you know, Cincinnati was known for furniture. And obviously in places like Wyoming, you had coal and you had copper in Montana and you had a lot of timber in Oregon. You could get that stuff anywhere you wanted to go. And that changed everything.
- [11:50]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Not only could you get it to where you wanted to go, you could do it exponentially cheaper than it used to be over land or say, using canals, and then also way faster too. So now if you were making like really great armchairs in Cincinnati, like you were saying, like, not only did you have the town, they're just known for it. That's their mascot, I believe, of the baseball team. Yeah, the sitters. Right. Not only did you have the town of Cincinnati and maybe some other regional parts of Ohio as your market, you now had the entire country to supply with chairs. And that happened at a really great time, the steel coming along and building the railroads. Because the United States economic engine was kind of idling at really high RPM for a little while before this. Apparently The War of 1812 caused the United States to kind of stop relying on Europe and turn inward and become much more self reliant than it had been before. So it started to exploit more industry and resources rather than rely on imports from Europe. That was a big one. And then the Civil War had brought a lot of factories online in the north that hadn't been there before. And so when the Civil War ended, these factories were all ready to go. And with the abundance of plentiful steel, the. That engine got put into gear and it just kind of took off like a rocket.
- [13:13]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. When I was reading this and I tried to find out, but I couldn't really get a firm hold. I wondered if back then when this started to happen, you know, how people rail against global trade and the globalization. I wonder if people railed against nationalization of commerce back then or if they all just thought it was all great.
- [13:34]
Josh Clark
No, no. One of the things I read about that's actually a mark in favor of the Gilded Age being actually a good thing for America, is that people, everyday people, were super involved in politics and the political process and agitating for what they wanted. And so if there were people who were definitely in favor of this kind of just taking off like a rocket, knitting the country together, that kind of stuff, nationalization, then there was definitely opposition parties to that too, who saw the problems with it. But the cool thing is that everybody was involved and everybody was like, like, like they cared about the direction the country was going, rather than just sitting back and being like, well, nothing we can do about it.
- [14:17]
Autotrader Representative
I wonder, though, if it was like, if there were business, like if there were furniture makers in Cincinnati going, I don't want to sell my chairs out there.
- [14:28]
Josh Clark
That is not what they sound like in Cincinnati.
- [14:30]
Autotrader Representative
Is that not a Cincinnati accent?
- [14:32]
Josh Clark
No.
- [14:33]
Autotrader Representative
Okay. I might be thinking of Maine.
- [14:35]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [14:36]
Autotrader Representative
But I wonder if. I wonder who is opposing it.
- [14:40]
Josh Clark
I don't know. I don't know. I haven't seen that one. Some of the things that I saw were one of the big fights was over currency and whether it should remain on the gold standard or whether it should be easy money, which, of course, the. So the farmers wanted. I think they wanted easy money. I can't remember who wanted to stay on the gold standard and others wanted, you know, basically to leave the gold standard and make money a lot more easy to come by.
- [15:07]
Autotrader Representative
I thought you said that was like the Rodney Dangerfield movie.
- [15:10]
Josh Clark
That was easy. Easy money. Man, that is a tawdry movie.
- [15:14]
Autotrader Representative
It was, wasn't it?
- [15:16]
Josh Clark
Yeah, it was good, though.
- [15:17]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah.
- [15:19]
Josh Clark
Hey, even the worst Dangerfield movies are still pretty great.
- [15:23]
Autotrader Representative
Agreed.
- [15:24]
Josh Clark
And on that point, real quick, I'm sorry, I know we don't like to go off on tangents very often, but I have been watching Happy Days and Vernon Shirley lately.
- [15:36]
Autotrader Representative
Man, that is some comfort food, isn't it?
- [15:38]
Josh Clark
Dude, they are. But not only that, it's not like junk food, though. They're like well written, well acted, well directed TV shows. Like, really, it's not at all like throwaway or disposable. It doesn't rely on slick special effects or anything like that. It's just good stuff, man.
- [15:55]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, I agree. And you know what? Since we're on this tangent, we should tell everyone that we're writing a book and it's coming out this fall.
- [16:02]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [16:02]
Autotrader Representative
It's called Stuff youf Should Know An Incomplete Compendium of mostly interesting things. And you can pre order it now if you want a special custom poster.
- [16:10]
Josh Clark
Yeah. You pre order it and you can go and upload your receipt at stuffyou should readbooks.com and then there's like a little thing that says like get your pre order gift and you upload a picture of your receipt and they mail it to you. And you will be very happy with it because it's pretty awesome.
- [16:25]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And we want to sell, we do want to sell these books out there. We want to sell these books all over the world.
- [16:31]
Josh Clark
Yes. We're glad that the railroad exists so we can move these books around easily.
- [16:36]
Autotrader Representative
Oh man, you ain't kidding. Ship these things to Cincinnati.
- [16:42]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [16:43]
Autotrader Representative
So where were we? So we were shipping things. Regional businesses were becoming national businesses. People were leaving the farms, they were leaving small towns, they were going to the big city. Immigrants were pouring in from Europe. African Americans were going north. Because reconstruction didn't work out so well.
- [17:01]
Josh Clark
Yeah, because it got abandoned.
- [17:03]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. Yeah. Have we done one on reconstruction?
- [17:07]
Josh Clark
No, no. We really need to though.
- [17:08]
Autotrader Representative
Totally.
- [17:09]
Josh Clark
I mean the more I've been reading a lot about that period in history and yes, we need to definitely do one on that.
- [17:15]
Autotrader Representative
But the point is there are a lot of people flocking to work this, what was called the second Industrial revolution where we saw over a period of about 40 years, factory output went from 1.9 billion to $13 billion.
- [17:30]
Josh Clark
Right. I mean like this happened almost overnight. It's astounding how fast this happened. I don't think it even happened this fast in the first Industrial Revolution. You know, the one that started over in Manchester. Like I think that it's. This is. Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of the world, as far as I know.
- [17:51]
Autotrader Representative
I believe it.
- [17:52]
Josh Clark
So should we tell you about. Oh sure. I was just getting revved up. My own economic engine's idling high right now.
- [18:00]
Autotrader Representative
Well, take your foot off the gas.
- [18:02]
Josh Clark
Okay.
- [18:03]
Autotrader Representative
And let's take a little break and we'll talk a little bit about Mark Twain and what these a few economic stats of the day right after this.
- [18:19]
Nyx Representative
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- [19:23]
Oz Velozian
To understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Os Velozian, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued.
- [19:34]
Cara Price
And I'm Cara Price, the other new host, and I'm ready to adopt early.
- [19:38]
Oz Velozian
And often on tech Stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.
- [19:49]
Josh Clark
One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long.
- [19:53]
Autotrader Representative
Enough so that people evolve into Martians.
- [19:55]
Nyx Representative
Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality.
- [19:59]
Josh Clark
How is it possible that the world's.
- [20:02]
Oz Velozian
New energy revolution can be based in.
- [20:04]
Josh Clark
This place where there's no electricity at night?
- [20:07]
Cara Price
Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.
- [20:18]
Oz Velozian
Listen to Tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:24]
Minnie Driver
What if you ask two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast Mini Questions. Over the years, we have had some incredible guests. People like Courtney Cox, star of the infinitely beloved sitcom Friends, EGOT winner Viola Davis, and former Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair. And now Mini Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven Questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe, and Cord Jefferson. Each episode is a new person story with new lessons, new memories, new and new connections to show us how we're both similar and unique. Listen to Mini questions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 7 Questions Limitless answers.
- [21:40]
Josh Clark
All right, we're back. Charles. I'm feeling much Better now that my foot's off the gas. That was just good advice.
- [21:45]
Autotrader Representative
Well, I mentioned Mark Twain and the only reason we're gonna talk about Mark Twain for a moment is because in 1873 he co wrote a novel, a satire called the Gilded A Tale of Today where it followed a poor country farmer who is sort of, I mean, does he move to the city trying to get in on the second industrial revolution?
- [22:09]
Josh Clark
Yeah, totally. It's exactly that kind of migration that you were talking about just a few.
- [22:13]
Autotrader Representative
Minutes ago and it didn't work out so well. Right?
- [22:17]
Josh Clark
I don't know, I've never read the book. But from, from what I can tell, no, it didn't work out very well because he is taken advantage of by all manner of bad people like crooked politicians and crooked businessmen, and is basically run through the wringer, from what I can tell. But I've also seen that that wasn't, it wasn't exactly the best piece of writing Mark Twain's ever come up with. But the thing is that he released this in 1873 and this is like at the very beginning of the Gilded Age. So he saw it pretty quickly what was going on. And what he saw was this emergence from a relatively egalitarian society of a group of ultra, mind bogglingly wealthy people that just rose up from the United States and through, you know, cheating and business acumen and taking advantage of people and overworking people and underpaying people, but also like having a lot of vision and foresight. All these things coming together grab control of almost all of the wealth that was being produced by the average American and all of the average Americans put together who had moved to these cities for the promise of better wages, better living than the farm could offer. Some people were exploiting that more than other people. And those people came to be known as the robber barons. And they were the linchpin of why people think of the Gilded Age as a rotten part of American history.
- [23:52]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, here's some stats for you. In 1890, the top one, and these should all sound very familiar if you're alive and breathing oxygen today, but in 1890, the top 1% of the US owned 51% of all wealth. Yeah, dude, more than half of all wealth. Isn't that nuts?
- [24:13]
Josh Clark
It is nuts, but you're right, it does sound very familiar.
- [24:16]
Autotrader Representative
The top 12% owned 86% of all wealth. And the lower 44% of the U.S. population, which was about half the population, owned 1.2%.
- [24:30]
Josh Clark
That's even more nuts.
- [24:32]
Autotrader Representative
Well, I mean all of These just top one another, I think. Here's the Last one. In 1897, the richest 4,000 families. That sounds like a lot of people, but that's less than 1% of the population. The richest 4,000 had as much wealth as the other 11.6 million families combined. Yeah, how about that?
- [24:52]
Josh Clark
So that is what you call economic inequality. Right. And I think the thing is, especially over time, but I get the impression during that age too, like the people who resent that, liberals typically tend to be painted with this brush that says you're just jealous. You've never made that much money in your life, you probably never will. And it sickens you to see somebody else with that money because you don't have it. And it's that second part, that last part, part about because you don't have it that I think misses the mark. And that even at the time during the Gilded Age, today, when people look at inequality, that kind of stuff, what a lot of them, I'm sure there are people out there who are just jealous and haters for that reason, but a lot of them say no, no, like that level, that amount of disparity shouldn't exist where if there are people who are just genuinely suffering, who are just poor and aren't able to make it with whatever living they're making, if they exist, then you shouldn't have people who have that much amount of money. And that was a sentiment in the Gilded Age as much too. It wasn't like they didn't realize this was going on at the time. The sentiment was very much like it is today, except in the Gilded Age. They did things like form labor unions and strike and just basically did something about it. They didn't take it laying down, which is actually criticism that's levied or has been levied in the past against people today.
- [26:26]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And I think there's also a notion that the more left leaning people are anti success and that's not true either. It's. Well, that's all I'm going to say about that. That's just not true. It's just not true. They're not anti said, I rest. They're not anti success. And I don't think that every conservative thinks like, yeah, man, it's all fair and you should be able to do whatever you want to get ahead and stomp on anyone's head that you want to get there.
- [27:02]
Josh Clark
Right.
- [27:03]
Autotrader Representative
I think these are just broad brush things that keep the country divided.
- [27:08]
Josh Clark
Yeah, absolutely. I think that. Yeah, I think both sides misunderstand each other. Conservatives and liberals misunderstand each other to a debilitating degree these days.
- [27:18]
Autotrader Representative
Agreed. So let's get off that and let's go back to the original. The OG robber barons who were not these guys. I'm talking about the term robber baron, which didn't happen in the 19th century US for the first time. It happened thousands of years ago in Europe.
- [27:37]
Josh Clark
I don't know about thousands of years, but a thousand. Pretty close to. Pretty close to 8th, I'll give you that one. So apparently along the Rhine river, if you wanted to move goods up and down northern Europe, like that was your way to go. But unfortunately for you, there were places where the Rhine river like really narrowed with high cliffs and you were easy prey for local nobility who wanted to like set up toll booths basically and said you need to give me some money if you want to keep going. Implying your goods along the Rhine.
- [28:10]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And you couldn't just ported your steamship up a mountain and over a mountain. You had to pay the piper.
- [28:18]
Josh Clark
Plus they didn't exist at the time.
- [28:21]
Autotrader Representative
What steamships? When did those come around?
- [28:26]
Josh Clark
The early 19th century.
- [28:29]
Autotrader Representative
You have a much better just general world timeline that lives in your brain than I do.
- [28:34]
Josh Clark
Well, I understand history perfectly and without any delusions or any of my opinions informing my vision of history as well.
- [28:44]
Autotrader Representative
I think that's what you're known for.
- [28:47]
Josh Clark
Sure. Wait, wait, were you joking?
- [28:51]
Autotrader Representative
Oh no.
- [28:52]
Josh Clark
Okay, good.
- [28:54]
Autotrader Representative
I just always get the time periods confused. So I rely on books and research like a big dum dum. So do I. Yeah, no, but then you keep it in your brain. Mine just floats out. Like you ever see these cartoons with birds flying around people's head when they get knocked out?
- [29:09]
Josh Clark
Chuck, I've seen every cartoon that ever existed and I remember each of them perfectly and without any of my opinions coloring my view of them.
- [29:17]
Autotrader Representative
Those birds are always above my head. I don't have to get hit with an anvil or a piano. So the Rhine gorge was one of those really narrow straits. And in 1250, Emperor Frederick III died. There was no successor. And basically that meant no regulation. And believe it or not, even way back then, a lack of regulation meant that people would take advantage of that. That's crazy. Same as it is today.
- [29:43]
Josh Clark
It's almost like people are imperfect.
- [29:45]
Autotrader Representative
Almost. And so these thieves would move into that gorge, jam up those tolls, maybe just steal stuff if they wanted to as well. And they were named the robber barons. That's where that term came from. Those people.
- [29:59]
Josh Clark
Yeah, because they actually were like low level nobility and they already were well off, but that didn't prevent them from trying to take advantage of the merchant class who were just trying to make their way and make a living.
- [30:10]
Autotrader Representative
That's right.
- [30:11]
Josh Clark
And that became, like, a really great description for some of the most successful business tycoons of the 19th century. I think it first popped up in an atlantic article in 1870 where it didn't directly say that. It didn't say that these guys are the new robber barons, but it said that the old robber barons of the Rhine Valley were actually probably more honest than the new aristocracy of swindling millionaires.
- [30:40]
Autotrader Representative
Burn.
- [30:40]
Josh Clark
So that's a big, big time burn. So even in 1870, people were saying, like, this is wrong. There's something really wrong here. I mean, this is within just a few years of the Gilded Age really starting to take off. And people had already identified that there were some major issues developing.
- [30:58]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, it's so weird to look at this stuff and just how apt it applies to what's going on today. And we think. I think some people think that these are all new problems and new issues, but it's as old as time, you know?
- [31:11]
Josh Clark
Yeah.
- [31:11]
Autotrader Representative
So weird.
- [31:13]
Josh Clark
It is a little weird to. It is weird. What's even weirder, though, is like, I believe if we look back, if we zoom out far enough, we see humanity kind of ever going upward. Even though there's, like, peaks and valleys in the line. The line overall is kind of up. Moves upward toward something great, I think, but toward perfection. I was. Maybe I wasn't alive 10,000 years ago, so who knows? Maybe that was the pinnacle of human existence. I don't know.
- [31:47]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, maybe.
- [31:48]
Josh Clark
So should we say.
- [31:49]
Autotrader Representative
Should we talk about a few of these dudes?
- [31:51]
Josh Clark
Yeah. So I feel like we have kind of set this up, that the robber barons were ruthless business tycoons. And we're going to start with one of the first ones, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, for my money was the OG Robber baron.
- [32:09]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And Commodore is a nickname that. And as you will see, he later Vanderbilt University is named for him and their mascot is the Commodores because of him. And a Commodore is a naval officer sort of above. Not quite an admiral, but above a captain. I think they command like a fleet.
- [32:29]
Josh Clark
Oh, well, that's actually pretty appropriate because he did command a fleet of ships, originally sailboats. Originally a sailboat, I think, when he was 14, and then steamships to ferry people around New York.
- [32:44]
Autotrader Representative
I thought there were no steamships.
- [32:46]
Josh Clark
There were by this time. And you know what's ironic, we were talking about steamships and when they were invented. The guy who invented steam, Robert Fulton. Remember we did a whole episode on steam technology.
- [32:58]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:59]
Josh Clark
He had a 30 year monopoly in New York to ferry people using steamships.
- [33:05]
Autotrader Representative
That's right.
- [33:06]
Josh Clark
And ironically, Cornelius Vanderbilt had to overcome that monopoly using ingenuity and his own resourcefulness and eventually was successful in breaking that monopoly just through good business tactics that actually resulted in far lower fares for everyday people and companies. I think just at his first try, by improving the size of the steam engine and using cheaper anthracite coal, he managed to drop the average ferry price from like $7 to $3 in his first try.
- [33:41]
Autotrader Representative
That's amazing.
- [33:42]
Josh Clark
Yeah. So I think that's really kind of like instructive though, man. Think about it. You think of this guy as like a ruthless robber baron. And in many, many ways he was as we'll see. But he was able to get to that position by outwitting and outsmarting other robber barons. And that was the climate at the time. Like it's so easy to sit back from this time and just be like, just judge, judge, judge. And it's actually kind of fun too. It's a great pastime. But you also have to remember at the. That was the business climate. That's just what it was. And if you weren't willing to do that, well then you were not going to make it in business, which is fine. Like maybe you'd say, this is too cutthroat for me. I'm just gonna sell out to these guys. And there's nothing wrong with that. But the ones who were left standing are the ones that history still remembers for better or for worse.
- [34:34]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And it's worth pointing out and as we'll do with, I think we're going over four of these guys. But some had money born into it, some started out very poor. And Cornelius Vanderbilt, even though that sounds like such a rich hoity toity name now, he was born very poor. He was born in 1794 in a farming family on Staten island and quit school when he was 11. And that's when he started working on the boat docks. And he was literally a self made man, starting with that first little ferry boat that you mentioned at age 14. He was a big dude and he was very savvy, but also very ruthless. And this is something that you'll see with a lot of these men was a competition and a competitive edge and nature. That was sort of the underlying thing with all of them. I think that I watched There Will Be Blood recently for Movie Crush and Daniel Plainview was very much based on some of these robber barons. And he has that great, great classic line from that movie when he goes, I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. And that just crystallizes that character. And I think a lot of these guys, it wasn't enough to just get rich. They wanted to devastate the competition.
- [36:02]
Josh Clark
Right. So it makes you wonder, like, is that just a normal. There's just, at any given time, there's a, you know, a handful or a multiplicity of people who are like that. It's just that these guys happen to be living in a time where they had the freedom and ability to exercise that to their. To their greatest ability. Or was it that these guys shaped the business world because they all happen to be alive at the same time?
- [36:32]
Autotrader Representative
I don't know.
- [36:33]
Josh Clark
I wonder.
- [36:34]
Autotrader Representative
It's interesting, though. It's that competition. And again, with the Plainview, not just a competition to succeed, but a competition to see that others don't.
- [36:45]
Josh Clark
Right. So did you talk about the railroad yet? I didn't catch it, no.
- [36:49]
Autotrader Representative
So, you know, he started off in the steam steamboats, but if, you know, Vanderbilt, you know, he was a railroad guy. And if you look at the list of robber barons, I'd say easily like a third of them were railroad men.
- [37:04]
Josh Clark
Yeah. Because there was so much money to be made from the railroads. It was just like printing your own money. And one of the reasons why was because there's so much stuff being shipped over the railroads that if you own the railroad, you got a cut of every single industry, because every single industry basically had to use your form of transportation. That's why they all got into it. Plus, it was wide open. Like, there was so much open space and so much room for expansion that it was a good time to get rich off of the railroad, for sure.
- [37:35]
Autotrader Representative
So his first railroad ride was at 39 years old. He wasn't, like, in his 20s and early 30s getting into the railroad business. He wasn't even on a train until he was almost 40. And that train crashed. An axle broke and went down an embankment, and he punctured a lung, broke some bones, and I guess was lying there wheezing out of a hole in his lung, saying, this is the future.
- [38:01]
Josh Clark
That was so great.
- [38:03]
Autotrader Representative
And he got into railroads. It's crazy, like, a year later.
- [38:07]
Josh Clark
Yeah, he did. And one of the things that he had a really great talent for was identifying, like, loser railroads, seemingly loser railroads, and figuring out ways that they actually had been overlooked. And a really good example of that is the Harlem Railroad, which is just a short little line that other railroads, larger railroads, used to connect to New York City. But Vanderbilt recognized that it was the only line that went all the way into the heart of Manhattan. And so he bought that up. And he also, at the same time, not only got control of that little railroad, this is a really early chance for him to show how good he was at driving up stock prices. So when he came along and bought the Harlem Rail or started buying shares of the Harlem Railroad, it was worth, in today's money, $168 a share. Not too shabby, but from what I could tell at the time, not very great at all. By the time he was done cornering this stock, he had driven the shares up to $5,998 in just a few years. And so, in doing so, not only did he make a ton of money for himself, he also developed this reputation that made owners of other railroads say, I own a bunch of shares in my railroad. You want to come buy mine and drive my stock price up and then buy me out? And so eventually, he didn't even have to plunder other companies. They came to him and just said, here, buddy, buy us, please.
- [39:37]
Autotrader Representative
They were Blue Star Airlines.
- [39:39]
Josh Clark
What is that?
- [39:40]
Autotrader Representative
Remember that from Wall Street?
- [39:41]
Josh Clark
Is that from There Will Be Blood?
- [39:42]
Autotrader Representative
No, there were no airlines in There Will Be Blood. Now, remember Wall Street? That was the one that Martin Sheen work, that gecko came in and bought out. And I think he shuttered them, though. That was the difference.
- [39:57]
Josh Clark
Yeah, yeah. He was a corporate raider. And actually, that era, the 80s junk bond era, is frequently cited, or it was at the time, as the second Gilded Age. This is not the first time we're living in what's known as the second Gilded Age.
- [40:10]
Autotrader Representative
So to put a bow on Vanderbilt, he consolidated, like you said, all these railways between New York and Chicago. He manipulated stock, he fixed prices, like you said earlier, the government wasn't looking, so you could kind of do what you wanted. And he became a very, very, very wealthy man. And like a lot of these guys, late in his life, turned into a philanthropist, built Grand Central Station. It was called the Grand Central Depot at the time, which during the recession, provided tons and tons of jobs for people. And then the Central University of Nashville was eventually renamed Vanderbilt University because all he did was give him a million bucks. Isn't that crazy?
- [40:55]
Josh Clark
Is that right?
- [40:56]
Autotrader Representative
I guess back then, that's a lot of money.
- [40:57]
Josh Clark
That's significant. Sure, sure.
- [40:59]
Autotrader Representative
Like, I feel like we could get stuff youf should Know listeners to pitch in and get a university named after us.
- [41:06]
Josh Clark
Let's try that.
- [41:07]
Autotrader Representative
Actually, like stuff you should know.
- [41:09]
Josh Clark
We could do a. We could Morganize a struggling university. How about that? Hey, one more thing about Vanderbilt. So he left about $100 million to his. Mostly to his eldest son, William. In six years, William doubled that, mostly by investing in railroads. That's how much money you could make in railroads. And William was also well known for throwing probably the most lavish party in the history of New York city. They spent $1.8 million in today's dollars on champagne alone.
- [41:40]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, that was when he finished his mansion on 5th Ave. And I looked it up to see if any of these robber baron mansions were still around today. Oh, yeah, I don't think. I mean, I know this one was demolished in 1926.
- [41:55]
Josh Clark
So if you want to get a really good idea of just how rich these people were, go to Newport, Rhode island and visit Millionaires Row. Because there was a huge. There's a huge. Overlooking this cliff. There's a long row of the most astounding mansions you've ever seen. Built during the Gilded Age.
- [42:13]
Autotrader Representative
It's one of the better walks you can take in life.
- [42:16]
Josh Clark
It really is.
- [42:17]
Autotrader Representative
It's got the ocean on one side and then these mansions on the other. It's really cool.
- [42:21]
Josh Clark
And each mansion, each mansion is so different from the others. Just touring them is amazing. You could just be utterly disgusted by the concept of billionaires or robber barons or whatever. And you can still taking this tour of these mansions. They're just works of art, you know.
- [42:37]
Autotrader Representative
I agree.
- [42:38]
Josh Clark
It's really worth a visit. Plus, Newport's just one of the more charming towns in the country.
- [42:42]
Autotrader Representative
I love Newport. Or you could take a hate walk and just look at those mansions and think about what a wrecking ball would look like.
- [42:49]
Josh Clark
Shake your fists at the dumbwaiters and all that.
- [42:52]
Autotrader Representative
But then you turn around, look at the ocean and think, oh, okay, all right.
- [42:55]
Josh Clark
It's really cool. It's definitely cool to visit them for sure.
- [42:58]
Autotrader Representative
And by the way, a little piece of trivia if you go. If you enter Central park at the 105th street entrance, that big beautiful iron gate was from that mansion, the Vanderbilt Mansion. They donated a lot of the stuff before they demolished it.
- [43:13]
Josh Clark
Is that right?
- [43:14]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah.
- [43:15]
Josh Clark
So I mentioned Morganization and that's actually named after the next robber baron we're going to talk about. Okay.
- [43:20]
Autotrader Representative
Do we break beforehand?
- [43:22]
Josh Clark
No, I think we break after J.P. how about that? Are you okay with that? Sure. Okay, so then we're going to hang in there, everybody. Don't fast forward yet. We're going to stick around and talk about JP Morgan right now.
- [43:36]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. He was born with money. He did not come from meager means and work himself up by his bootstraps. He was the son of a very successful banker and merchant and used those connections to get a plum job at Wall street when he was 20 years old. And then when he was in his 30s, he partnered with a guy named Anthony Drexel, who was a banker from Philly, and created Drexel, Morgan & Co. And it became one of the biggest investment banks at the time in the world.
- [44:07]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And this was when he was in his early 30s, like you said. Right. So JP Morgan was known as the guy who financed all the other robber barons, and he had his fingers in basically every pot that was going on. He also knew that, like, you could make money off of the railroads because you were taking a cut of all the other industries. So he definitely got involved in them. But his whole thing was what's called horizontal integration, where you, you, you basically come along, you say, this industry should be doing way better than it is. I think there's too many competitors, and they're all holding one another down. I'm going to slowly start buying them up. And here's the thing. This is how you get control of a full industry during the Gilded Age. You go to a couple, you start buying them up, and then you put all those together and you form a bigger company that's way leaner, has much better economies of scale, and you can compete better against all the other guys. So you start buying some of the other guys up because they're facing going out of business now. And then you've got left the real holdouts, the ones that are never going to sell you because they hate your stupid face and they'll never give a penny to you, make sure that you'll never set foot in their offices ever again. And what you do then is you start selling for less than cost.
- [45:25]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah.
- [45:26]
Josh Clark
You're a big company, so you can totally stay in that for much longer time than these holdout competitors, and they face either financial ruin or you eventually put them out of business. And either way, you no longer have that competition. You literally control an entire industry consolidated into one beefy mega company. And all of a sudden you have what's called Morganization, which is. I don't know if it was pioneered by JP Morgan, but he definitely perfected it enough that they named the process after him.
- [45:54]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And that's a Good example of what I was talking about earlier is it's not enough succeed and be successful, but to make sure no one else can be. So, like, it would be the kind of thing in that one company you were talking about that may be kind of pretty small even, but they might hold. Have an iron grip on one very tiny region of the United States. And you could just let them have their business, or you could do what you're talking about and make sure that you squash them by any means necessary and force them to sell. And that's. I think that's where capitalism for a lot of people has gotten its bad name is like, yeah, work hard, succeed, do well. But not at the expense of every other person trying to do well.
- [46:43]
Josh Clark
Right. Because it interferes with something this country's based on, which is called equality of opportunity, which is the idea that, at least under the eyes of the law, every single person in America has an equal share at making it. At making something of themselves, of having, like, a good life. And when somebody is cheating or engaging in monopolies or using underhanded tactics to run out the competition so that there is no competition any longer, that is problematic. That flies in the face of the idea of equality of opportunity.
- [47:17]
Autotrader Representative
That's right. And if you listen to our Monopoly game episode, you might remember that J.P. morgan was the basis of Monopoly Man. Uncle Peter, did you say that? Yeah, we talked about that.
- [47:30]
Josh Clark
Good. Okay. That makes me feel good.
- [47:32]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. He was modeled after old JP Morgan himself, and he was actually one of the first people to be targeted for antitrust. In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt came after him under the Sherman Antitrust act and said, hey, this Northern Securities Corporation is really Monopoly. And Supreme Court said, yeah, it is. Bust it up.
- [47:55]
Josh Clark
Yeah. And so today, when we think of trusts, we think of, like, you know, a legal entity that can hold assets. At the time, the word trust meant basically an industry that had been Morganized, where all of the competitors had been folded into one large company and the market was cornered by this one mega company, General Electric, US Steel, both of those were morganized companies. And apparently US Steel was the first $1 billion company that ever existed because of that level of consolidation. But then, yeah, when the Sherman Antitrust act was passed in 1890, that was a clear sign that this was not going to stand much longer. And I think Roosevelt. It was Roosevelt, you said, right? Yeah, Teddy, who busted that up. And he ran on that and actually went against. He was a Republican, I believe, and he went against the advice of the elder statesman in the Republican party, established himself as a genuine president of the people and helped set himself up for reelection just from that one antitrust act.
- [49:01]
Autotrader Representative
So that's JP now do we take a break?
- [49:06]
Josh Clark
Oh, one more thing, Chuck. Yeah, I'm not toying with you, I swear. So one of the ways that Morgan, one of the reasons he's reviled still and he did some philanthropy, probably more than he gets credit for for sure. But one of the reasons he's reviled is because one of the ways he made it so that he could compete with other companies was and sell for lower than cost was by slashing wages, slashing the workforce and increasing productivity of the existing workers and then just making sure that working conditions, he didn't spend a cent on improving working conditions to make them safe. And that that is really not because he amassed a fortune. Some people criticize him for that. But it's tactics like that, like becoming a billionaire basically on the backs of people who he wouldn't have spent a cent to make sure could stay alive working in his factories. That is the quintessential problem people have always had with Robber Behrens is that kind of mentality.
- [50:10]
Autotrader Representative
That's right.
- [50:11]
Josh Clark
Now I'm done.
- [50:12]
Autotrader Representative
All right, we'll come back right after this and finish up with two more Robber Barrons.
- [50:27]
Nyx Representative
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- [51:30]
Oz Velozian
Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvar Loshen, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued.
- [51:41]
Cara Price
And I'm Cara Price, the other new host and I'm ready to adopt early.
- [51:45]
Oz Velozian
And often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.
- [51:56]
Josh Clark
One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long.
- [52:00]
Autotrader Representative
Enough so that people evolve into Martians.
- [52:02]
Nyx Representative
Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality.
- [52:06]
Josh Clark
How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night?
- [52:14]
Cara Price
Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity. So join us.
- [52:25]
Oz Velozian
Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [52:31]
Minnie Driver
What if you ask two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast, Mini Questions. Over the years, we have had some incredible guests. People like Courtney Cox, star of the infinitely beloved sitcom Friends, EGOT winner Viola Davis, and former Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair. And now Mini Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe, and Cord Jefferson. Each episode is a new person story with new lessons, new memories, and new connections to show us how we're both similar and unique. Listen to Mini questions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Seven questions limitless answer.
- [53:47]
Autotrader Representative
Hello, everybody. We're back to talk about Andrew Carnegie. You've ever been to Carnegie hall or Carnegie Mellon University? I've been to both.
- [53:58]
Josh Clark
You've been to one? I've been to the university with you.
- [54:01]
Autotrader Representative
That's right. We did a little job there one time. That was fun. I've been to Carnegie Hall. I ushered a show there. I didn't usher. I passed out the playbills, which meant I got to see the show for free. And I saw.
- [54:15]
Josh Clark
Which show?
- [54:16]
Autotrader Representative
Oh, man. It was one of those special nights. I got to see Beethoven's 9th with the full orchestra and German choir at Carnegie Hall. It was amazing.
- [54:26]
Josh Clark
Wow.
- [54:27]
Autotrader Representative
Something else.
- [54:28]
Josh Clark
That's pretty neat.
- [54:29]
Autotrader Representative
And all I needed was a bow tie.
- [54:31]
Josh Clark
Is that the one? That's.
- [54:38]
Autotrader Representative
No, maybe I named it wrong. The dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun.
- [54:44]
Josh Clark
Oh, the Die Hard song.
- [54:45]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, the Die Hard song.
- [54:46]
Josh Clark
I Got you.
- [54:47]
Autotrader Representative
I went and saw Die Hard in concert. It was great.
- [54:52]
Josh Clark
It was hilarious.
- [54:53]
Autotrader Representative
So Carnegie, we're talking about Andrew Carnegie, who was born in Scotland and they came to Pittsburgh. He was very poor, he's about 13 years old and he worked in a cotton factory. And he. And this will come into play later. He kind of self taught himself from books that he borrowed from a wealthy benefactor from his private library, which will come into play later.
- [55:20]
Josh Clark
His favorite one was Flowers in the Attic.
- [55:22]
Autotrader Representative
Wow. I would have thought Great Expectations, but that's okay.
- [55:26]
Josh Clark
Nope, nope. So he, like Vanderbilt, is definitely a self made man for sure. And I guess he kind of was. He had his fingers in a lot of different pots. Kind of like JP Morgan at first. And then he turned his attention to steel because again, remember, steel is like the, basically the foundation for this American economy just blowing up.
- [55:49]
Autotrader Representative
And he was in Pittsburgh.
- [55:50]
Josh Clark
Sure. So his name became synonymous with steel. And I guess at first, up until about 1892, he had a reputation as being a friend of the worker. And that the workers at Carnegie Steel in Homestead, just across the river from Pittsburgh, they felt like, you know, Carnegie would take care of them. And they found out the hard way that that was not the case when they went on strike in 1892 during what came to be known as the Homestead strike, which would result in the death of 10 people, which is not how they planned things to go. And apparently the reason why that happened is because the Pinkertons were called in as strikebreakers.
- [56:33]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, I might want to eventually do an episode on this, but that's sort of the overview. You bring in the Pinkertons and then they battle with the, like literally with guns. Pinkerton's died. I think like eight or nine of the 10 or 12 people that died were the Pinkertons.
- [56:51]
Josh Clark
No, no, I think it was just one. I think the nine were the strikers. Yeah.
- [56:55]
Autotrader Representative
Okay, well, we should definitely do a full episode then. Cause for sure, I want to get this right.
- [57:01]
Josh Clark
But what I read was that the strikers. So the Pinkertons showed up in barges and they were basically hired on as a private army to protect scab workers and bust the strike up. But they arrived in barges and after the initial violence, the striking workers and some of their families surrounded these barges and demanded that the Pinkertons come off the boats. Didn't they burn them and the Pinkertons? So the Pinkertons said, okay, we'll come off if you guarantee our safety. And they said, fine. And the Pinkertons came off and they got beaten by all of the strikers, they just completely went back on their word and then set their barges on fire. I guess the Pinkertons escaped to the factory with their life and the National Guard was called in to quell the violence.
- [57:49]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah, well, National Guard was called in not only to quell the violence, but also called in to act in the interest of Carnegie. So he kind of commandeered his own little personal army to help take care of things.
- [58:00]
Josh Clark
Right. Starting with the Pinkertons and then with the National Guard. And it's like this kind of collusion that is also another huge criticism. Like we were saying, the government is known for being like laissez faire as far as regulation is concerned. But they'll totally send in the National Guard not just to quell violence, but to make sure that the strikebreakers don't attack the scab labor to keep the factory going. And, and that kind of like government capital collusion at the expense of the workers. There's a long standing tradition of that being almost universally reviled in America over enough of an arc of time. If that keeps up, more and more just everyday Americans start to notice and start to resent it. And that apparently is a really good force for social change because Americans don't like that kind of thing after a long enough period of time.
- [58:52]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And I think Carnegie tried to distance himself from that strike by saying that he was sort of out of the loop. He was in Scotland the whole time. But they have since found correspondence that shows that he was very much involved in that. And you know, there's some speculation that he may have had some genuine moments of regret and guilt over that because he was a big time philanthropist later in life. I think he said in his book the Gospel of Wealth, the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. And we mentioned the libraries coming back into play. He built more than 2,500 libraries and that's really one of his big legacies, along with the arts, the Carnegie Corporation and the Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Mellon University, Carnegie Museum. But the libraries really have made a pretty big difference in this country.
- [59:49]
Josh Clark
They really have, for sure. And he was one of just the all time great philanthropists in American history, for sure. But he still pales in comparison to the all time top record holder, philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, who is also a robber baron. But he also is far and away America's most prolific and generous benefactor, for sure. He was also one of the most visionary philanthropists of all time too.
- [60:22]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And some people say that he was, you know, if you just account for money and inflation. The richest man ever to live. I'm not sure how they calculate that because his $900 million peak in 1912 is about 23 billion today.
- [60:40]
Josh Clark
So here I saw how. You ready?
- [60:42]
Autotrader Representative
I'm sure it's. Yeah, go ahead.
- [60:44]
Josh Clark
If you do his wealth relative to the total economic output, which is an even larger figure than gross domestic product.
- [60:52]
Autotrader Representative
I had a feeling it was something like that.
- [60:53]
Josh Clark
His wealth represented 2% of the total economic output of the United States at the time. To have that value today, you would have to be worth about 350 billion.
- [61:05]
Autotrader Representative
Okay.
- [61:06]
Josh Clark
And I think Jeff Bates Bezos is worth 140 or something like that.
- [61:10]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And I think we didn't even mention, was it Carnegie that had at one point like $1 of every $20 in circulation was his.
- [61:23]
Josh Clark
Yeah, that's right. That was Carnegie for sure.
- [61:25]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. I mean, these numbers are staggering, for sure. For people like Rockefeller and Carnegie, it's just, it's unbelievable.
- [61:31]
Josh Clark
But the thing is, in like, like John, John D. Rockefeller was a ruthless, ruthless businessman who put a lot of people out of business, brought a lot of misery and hardship on just small, everyday producers of oil, which we'll see. But again, it's really difficult to overstate the impact that his philanthropy has had on the United States. He peaked at 900 million, like you said. When he died, he had given away everything but 26 million of that. And he probably felt kind of bad that he had $26 million left because he was a very religious man. And apparently he learned very early on that it was every man's religious duty to make as much money as you possibly can and then to give away as much money as you possibly can, too. And he apparently lived that even before he was wealthy, when he was still just a average worker. He would give away Something like 10% of all of his paycheck. So he was a philanthropist his whole life for. He was still a robber baron too, though.
- [62:35]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. And his whole, you know, of course, oil was his business. Standard Oil, it was just a Goliath. And there were a bunch of big, like, sort of like the railroads. It was oil. And the railroads were industries where you could have a bunch of people that had these huge, huge corporations. But Standard Oil was far and away bigger than any of them. By the early 1900s, they controlled more than 90% of the oil market.
- [63:02]
Josh Clark
Can you imagine?
- [63:03]
Autotrader Representative
90%.
- [63:05]
Josh Clark
And the way that he cornered the market was, you know, he did that Standard Morganization kind of thing where he went around and bought at first and then started to turn up the heat on the competition, on the holdouts. But one of the ways that he turned up that heat was he colluded with the railroad, the different railroads in the area who were shipping all this oil to say not only were they going to give him a rebate, so he got money back where they wouldn't give money back to other oil shippers just because of, you know, volume. That makes sense. But they also had to get his business. And he had so much business that they would do this. The railroads had to tax an added tax on all of his competitors. So they paid an extra 20 to 30 cents a barrel to ship. Not just paid more than he did because of his rebates, they paid more in addition to that, just for not being John D. Rockefeller. And then on top of that, to keep him from taking that rebate and going around to other railroads and getting a cheaper rebate and abandoning that railroad, they actually gave him a kickback of that added tax. So his competitors were getting taxed by the railroads, and he was actually getting some of that tax himself, too. You just can't possibly compete with that. And it put a lot of smaller oil producers and shippers and refiners out of business.
- [64:25]
Autotrader Representative
It's amazing.
- [64:27]
Josh Clark
It is.
- [64:28]
Autotrader Representative
Let me see. He gave 75 million away to the University of Chicago. Well, it kind of founded the University of Chicago with that money.
- [64:37]
Josh Clark
Also Spelman, too, which was established to educate freed slaves. He bankrolled Spelman for its founding as well.
- [64:47]
Autotrader Representative
And in one of our best and most favorite episodes, you might remember, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission helped eradicate hookworm in the South.
- [64:56]
Josh Clark
Yeah, totally remember that. That is one of our better episodes for sure.
- [65:01]
Autotrader Representative
So those are just four of the sort of most famous and some might say notorious robber barons. Big, long list. You know, you could throw Henry Ford in there. John Jacob Astor, Charles Schwab, Andrew Mellon, Jay Gould. Yeah, I looked at. I was thinking about J. Paul Getty, but he was. Later on, he wouldn't have qualified.
- [65:22]
Josh Clark
So some of these guys had some terrible quotes, too, that also just made them despised through history. Carnegie said that it's not the man who does the work who gets rich, it's the man who gets other men to do the work, which is not a very tasteful thing to say when you're ultra wealthy and breaking strikes with guns. That Jay Gould guy I mentioned, he said that he could hire one half of the workers in America to shoot the other half to death if he wanted to, which is another nice thing to say. And apparently John D. Rockefeller once said, competition is a sin. So these guys had some terrible pr. And because of that, a lot of people have said, like, well, I wonder if some of the ultra wealthy industrialists or innovators or people who. Basically the billionaires who are leading the world today, are they just like robber barons with better PR and better marketing?
- [66:19]
Autotrader Representative
Maybe.
- [66:19]
Josh Clark
And apparently supposedly that's not necessarily the case. And here's why. Remember I was saying that like robber barons were kind of being reformed by historians these days. Yes, especially conservative historians. Well, they point to some really indisputable things like these guys were ruthless and they engaged in horrific anti competitive kind of anti capitalist tactics to get those wealth. And they did it on the backs of workers that they took advantage of and didn't pay very well and killed in their workplaces, basically. But the reason that America is still powerful today is because of the work that these guys did of the industries that they created. Public schooling came about and was kind of became widespread to prepare people for the jobs that these guys created. And you really can't, you can't look away from the fact that some of them were the greatest philanthropists that the country has ever produced too. That flies in the face, with kind of the exception of Bill Gates, it flies in the face of the people who are around today that not only are they not great philanthropists necessarily, I'm looking at Steve Jobs, who isn't around anymore, but definitely was not a good philanthropist in his life. He is now, his family is, but he wasn't when he was alive. That's a big mark against people who have control of significant portions of the wealth in America today. But also, even more than that, those guys today are. They're presiding over a decline, a decline in wages, a decline in living conditions. Whereas these guys, these captains of industry and the robber barons from the 19th century, they were presiding over a rise, like an improvement in the way that America lived and the standard of living, kind of the polar opposite, even though the inequality is roughly the same.
- [68:21]
Autotrader Representative
Very interesting.
- [68:22]
Josh Clark
I think so too. I also wonder though too if this inequality will usher in a second Progressive era, which it seems like it has all of the markings to do that. Maybe so we need to do a Progressive Era episode too, sometime. Okay, deal. All right. Well, since you said deal, Chuck, I think that's time for listener mail, huh?
- [68:44]
Autotrader Representative
Yeah. I think I alluded to this in another one about the word marijuana. Yeah, didn't I talk about that?
- [68:50]
Josh Clark
Totally.
- [68:50]
Autotrader Representative
But I didn't read the mail, right?
- [68:52]
Josh Clark
Not that I remember, no.
- [68:54]
Autotrader Representative
All right. This is from Jack Glick. Hey guys, Love the show. Been listening for five years or so and make sure not to miss any new episodes. I'm listening to the one on Matcha. When you started to talk about marijuana, I decided to get in touch. I am the lead analyst on cannabis taxation for the Canadian Federal government and we long ago made a decision to refer to the plant by its proper name, cannabis. Marijuana has a number of historically racist associations and I know you guys are always using wary of using appropriate terms for things. I had a good laugh at the question over whether womb was still okay to say in the ultrasound episode. I thought you might like to know how outdated and implicitly offensive marijuana is, and I'd like to encourage you to use the word cannabis when referring to it in the future. All the best. Keep it up. That is from Jack Glick.
- [69:45]
Josh Clark
That is a great name Jack. Great job, great name. Great email from a great guy I.
- [69:51]
Autotrader Representative
Assume sounds like a great guy.
- [69:53]
Josh Clark
If you want to show off what a great person you are, you can email us yourself like Jack Glick did. Man, what a great name. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com Stuff youf Should Know is.
- [70:10]
Autotrader Representative
A production of iHeartRadio.
- [70:12]
Nyx Representative
For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever.
- [70:17]
Josh Clark
You listen to your favorite shows.
- [70:25]
H
Here's to those who have been touched by metastatic breast cancer or mbc, which is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body. Celebrating the patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, scientists and others who have been part of the HR positive HER2 negative NBC community with Ibrance Palbocyclib, a Pfizer product prescription Ibrance 125 milligram tablets with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with HR positive HER2 negative NBC as the first hormonal based therapy, Ibrance may cause low white blood cell counts that may lead to serious infections. Ibrance may cause severe inflammation of the lungs. Both of these can lead to death. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening chest pain, cough or trouble breathing before taking ibrands. Tell your doctor if you have fever, chills or other signs of infection, liver or kidney problems, are nursing, pregnant or planned to be all medical conditions you have and about all the medicines you take. For more information about side effects, talk to your doctor. Talk to your healthcare team about Ibrance, visit ibrance.com or call 1-844-9-IBRANCE for more information.
- [71:25]
Oz Velozian
Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology. From high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [71:55]
Josh Clark
Hey you guys, I'm Katherine Legge. I'm a racing driver who's literally driven everything with four wheels across the planet, and I've got a new podcast, it's Cool Throttle Therapy. This season I'm competing in some of the world's most notorious racing events. Tune in to my new podcast, Throttle Therapy, with Katherine Legg, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [72:21]
Cara Price
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.