Os Magnatas

by Charles R. Morris

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Genres: History, Biography, Business, Nonfiction, Economics, American History, Finance

388 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.

See also:

Charles R. Morris

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two pretty solid books mashed messily into a single volume. The lives of the Tycoons are recounted here, but they are interrupted and interspersed by chapters chronicling the overall development of the US industrial economy. These chapters are good in and of themselves: the section on the American machine tradition and the origin of interchangeable parts is excellent and one I will likely return to when I need a refresher on antebellum industrialization. The final chapter on the ludicrous pseudo-discipline of Scientific Management is quite interesting, but is far removed from any of the men Morris claims to be his focus, and he seems more interested in grinding axes than anything else at that point. These chapters are among the best in the book, but they render the narrative stilted in its execution.

This is all further marred by the author's insistence on including a superfluity of financial facts and numbers, many of which will likely be meaningless to the lay reader. A few illustrative examples are always helpful, but entire paragraphs are sometimes devoted to the recounting of every minor change in the economy.

Finally, as intimated above, the book assumes the reader possesses a high degree of knowledge concerning financial matters (which I do not). This especially afflicts the early chapters on Jay Gould. He was known as "The Dark Genius of Wall Street," and I trust that estimation on the part of Gould's fellow financiers--in the same way I trust physicists when they tell us that Einstein was a genius. The excitement of some episodes is carried on by the breathless quality of Morris's prose, while the reader is left puzzling over numbers and arcane terms all the while wondering what the big deal is.

All in all a good book to give the impression of an era and to give some insight into the workings of the Robber Barons and their very mixed legacy. However, unless you're walking in with an MBA under your arm, prepare for some parsing of numbers and terms.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not the history of the topic I would recommend. Allowing for what seems to be solid research, Morris is too adulatory of the technological advances and hard driving, semi-pathological, approach of the titans he writes about. He seems happy to note instances where Ida Tarbell got it wrong. He occasionally adds a short section on the collateral damage, but early on he makes it clear that he admires the smart ones who saw where technology could take them, and has little but contempt for workers who found meaning in their artisan’s craftsmanship. He describes the conditions in steel towns, and the continual wage cutting, but doesn’t waste tears over them.

I will say that the early section on the development of interchangeable parts and machining in general in the US was quite well done. I hadn’t been aware that the government was so involved in the early stages of this process, because it started with gun production. The inventors were private, but the contracts were military. I was particularly intrigued by the wider implications of the insistence by a pork barrel Congress that the government R&D contract for really making production of interchangeable rifle parts large scale and solid, insisted that the works be put in Harpers Ferry Virginia.

My sister came to visit from out of town yesterday. I found out that by complete coincidence, she is reading American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism 1865-1900 by Brands. My guess is that it might be better than this one. But on reflection I looked to see whether there is an Oxford American History volume on this period, since I was so impressed by its What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1848 by Howe. Indeed, coming out on September 1 is The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 by Richard White. If you are interested in the topic, I’d wait for that one.

[Jeremy Perron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charles Morris' book deals with how the United States went from a patched together society after the Civil War to having one of the most powerful economies in the history of the world. Many historians have clashed over the `great man' theory and social history, this book gives you a bit of both. The world was changing and that change was going to come regardless of who was in charge. Nevertheless, these four individuals were responsible for the direction that it ultimately took.

From what I know of political history I came into this book thinking Jay Gould was something of a creep and this book did nothing change my mind. It is amazing how a person can an act in such a manner that laws would have to be created to prevent someone from ever acting that way again.

"Then, in the summer of 1869, with his railroad wars raging on every side, and the outcome still hanging in the balance, Gould launched, or was swept up in, the infamous Fisk-Gould `Gold Corner'. It is one of the most notorious episodes in American financial history, one that demonstrates not only Gould's own self-destructive streak but also the fragility of America's postwar financial markets and the openness of the corruption. The Gold Corner forever fixed the image of Gould as the evil genius of Wall Street; even worse from Gould's perspective, it destroyed an important ally in his railroad wars, fatally tipping the balance against him." (p.69)

Andrew Carnegie is known as the good entrepreneur, manly for his charity that he displayed for many years. He some ways he reminds me of Thomas Jefferson who would publicly talk about the evils of slavery, even go so far and abolish the transatlantic slave trade during his presidency, while at the same time owning hundreds of slaves and freeing very few of them. Carnegie would talk about doing good by his employees and often do badly by them. Morris describes him as a man who was always obsessed that his employees were making too much and he was always looking for ways to slash their wages.

John D. Rockefeller was known as a man with a heart of stone. However Morris shows he could be a ruthless businessman, but of the four subjects he was probably the nicest. He was very rich man who could have used a better P.R. person.

"Although he often played rough he was surprisingly free of vindictiveness. When he took over another man's business, he generally paid a fair price, indeed, he often overpaid. A typical ploy was to open his books to the target: any sensible man would understand that competition was hopeless and make a deal. If a target was especially obdurate, rejecting all reasonable offers, a switch would turn and Rockefeller would suddenly unleash total blazing warfare on every front--price, supplies, access to transportation, land-use permits, whatever created pain. When the target capitulated--they always did--the fair price offer would still be available, often with an offer to join the Rockefeller team." (p.20)

Then there was J.P. Morgan, the banker. He seems to be the elite of the elite in this book, although I think Rockefeller was richer. (Indeed, Morris thinks Rockefeller was richer than even Rockefeller himself was aware.) Morgan's role became so prominent that, in a way, he was the Federal Reserve before there was a federal reserve. Morris points out that it was Morgan bailing out the government in the middle of multiple panics that the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

In addition to the giants, Morris discusses the rise of new type of Middle class, one whose role is to be the primary consumers of the new market. Morris shows how houses would become homes and a new buying culture was to be created.

This is a great book about how American business boomed in the years that followed the American Civil War. It is an interesting take on the transformation of a culture.

[Gary K Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this is one of those books I wanted to read... kind of expecting it to make me mad... Rich folks bending rules to make tons of $$$ - most often at the expense of the little guy... whether that be the small business owner or the front line workers. So did the book deliver? Kind of. In many places the author seemed very sympathetic to the tycoons – especially Rockefeller. The defense in many cases was “everyone was doing it – they were just better at it” and... “the individuals so appalled at what they were doing were holding them to laws/standards that they desired them to be.. and not what the laws were at the time. Technically what they were doing was within the law”... That sounds like “I was just following orders...” or more recently in American politics “I have abused the tax laws so badly that I should be entrusted to fix them...” Huh?!?! Those defenses that just don't work for me.

In other cases the author did come down pretty hard on all four of the tycoons covered. From the very long title you probably know the tycoons covered are Andrew Carnegie, J. D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. (Pierpont) Morgan. What I was kind of expecting was a an in depth analysis of each of these early businessmen – like 4 biographies in one. That's not really how this book was laid out. It did cover the four of them for sure, but in a very haphazard way – much of which was very non-linear which made it confusing at times. It started out with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln with a very interesting section on his funeral procession. The backdrop was the political climate at the time in the country given the deep divides at the end of the Civil War.

Enter the tycoons... each is briefly introduced with their early stories covered. So far so good. Then the author goes into a very long section on interchangeable parts and early steel production techniques. While the engineer in me found this interesting – it wasn't what I was expecting to be reading about. In glancing through a few other reviews I found that many folks were put off quite a bit with the tangential scientific subject matter forays... For me that wasn't as big of an issue. I actually want to go learn more about steel production on YouTube 😀 What I didn't follow quite as well was the way the author threw around economic theory and business terms – with very little explanation. I can tell from the author's other works that he is big into this so I'm sure it all made sense to him. “Dammit Jim... I'm a scientist not an economist!” - or something like that. 😀

I hadn't heard of the 'mudsill theory' before. Essentially that society must have a lower class of workers to do all the 'grunge work' that is beneath everyone else. And.. not so secretly – those lower class of folks just happen to be of another race... Not surprising given the time period, but despicable.

There was also a lot of discussion on unrest with the workers at the time and horrific work conditions – often leading to bloody confrontations. One such incident involved Carnegie and his head guy at the Homestead Works Steel Company – Henry Clay Frick. Frick brought together 300 hundred armed Pinkertons to take down striking workers at the plant. This led to 10 deaths and 70 injuries. Around the same time an anarchist made an assassination attempt on Frick... He broke into his office shot him twice in the neck at close range – then was wrestled to the floor (another person joined the fight at this point) and proceeded to stab him four times in the leg. Frick refused to leave work for medical assistance and finished his day out as usual. Afterwards 2500 workers lost their jobs and those who stayed had their wages cut in half. Frickin' guy 😀

Another diversion from the main them of the book was a big section on the rise of the middle class and how retail changed given mail order catalogs and such. How early pioneers like Aaron Montgomery Ward and Richard Sears changed the way people bought goods. A fun aside... I had no idea that Sears started his business catalog selling watches (and Roebuck repaired them). They also talked a great deal about home building and such. The only way this tied into the main story was “our tycoons missed the boat on this one” and that when they built the railroad they didn't expect this type of product to be shipped.

The railroad parts were interesting to me. The whole bit on 'rebates' seemed suspicious. This is how Rockefeller took out so many competitors. Work with the RR's to give rebates to him, but not to his competitors... by offering exclusive business to the railroads once they drive them all out of business. The author's premise that nothing really illegal happened and that the other businesses didn't know what they were doing and probably should have been driven out of business... seems out of touch. He does mention in other parts of the book that less competition didn't turn into big innovations or cost savings as promised. He said that other countries at the time didn't care about monopolistic practices and actually thought it gave them more leverage to other countries. I'd never heard that before, but I guess I could see that idea being prevalent at that time.

The last 10% of the book was interesting, but again had little to do with our tycoons. It talked about Frederick Winslow Taylor and his emerging ideas on 'business science'. This was very interesting as it deal with early time/motion studies started in the late 19th century. I actually didn't realize these types of ideas were even around back then... I thought they came up with a lot of that in the 1970s... Having read through this the 'scientific management' wasn't quite as rooted in science as Taylor led on.

So I rated the book at 3.5 stars and generously rounded it up to 4. Despite the fact that the subject matter drifted off course a lot there was a lot of good information here. I probably will have to go back and revisit it again. In many places he was just throwing out facts/figures/people so fast I found it hard to absorb much of it. I have already added some individual biographies on the tycoons to my TBR for future study.

[Rose Rosetree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indeed, this really was "the story of the rise of the nerds." (See Page 33.)

Only let's keep in mind, many of us Goodreaders are nerds. We also manage to be caring people who prize honor over greed.

The same can't necessarily be said of Andrew Carnegia, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, or J.P. Morgan.

Of special interest to me was the transformation of the food industry... among so many industries.

IN CONCLUSION

Following this saga, it may help if you read as if dentists: Namely, intelligent folks who has learned (when at work) to downplay our sense of smell.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little to dry for my tastes
Begins in the 1850s with the nascent happenings of industrialization
Wish I had a stronger background in the stock market and economics

[Berry Muhl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some will consider this revisionist. Others, like myself, who've already cracked enough books on the subject to be roughly familiar with the subject matter, will know better.

I purchased this book as part of a lengthy research project into the nature of human society and politics. (The disciplines I'm delving into include evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, paleoanthropology, physical anthropology, archaeology, history, sociology, economics, and political science.) By the time I got around to opening this one, I'd already accepted the general thesis that the American middle class, far from being a 20th-century product of the labor movement, was instead created during the mid-to-late 19th century, under the aegis of the superindustrialists and their outsize influence on our market economy. (One need only look into the development of department stores, circa 1870, with their clear catering to middle-class sensibilities.)

So there wasn't much new here, conceptually speaking, for me, at least as regards that thesis. What there is outside of that, however, is well worth the read. Morris is a writer of rare quality, sometimes droll, always informative, never dull. The early chapters go into great detail in explaining why American industry managed to so rapidly outpace its competitors, despite Britain having a decided head start: the innovative, entrepreneurial spirit of the Colonies carried over into the States, never having been hobbled by British traditionalism vis-a-vis protectionism and trade unionism. In several episodes involving various Expositions in Europe over a span of decades, Morris recounts the astonishment expressed by Brits and Continentals over the American initiative with regard to interchangeability of parts...first in firearms, then in steam machinery, and eventually in automobiles. Each time, the witnesses are taken aback, anew, as if the previous incidents had never happened. That's largely because the lessons our inventive ancestors brought overseas were never capitalized on. Europeans remained mired in ancient practices that closely guarded the occupations of tradesmen at the expense of productivity and innovation.

The tycoons themselves are not always front and center in this book. We are given a biographical overview of each, and then are treated to a longer combined history in which their various machinations and interactions give rise to various features of the industrial economy of the so-called Gilded Age. While most of them can be seen to have rapacious, even villainous aspects at times, only Jay Gould comes off as being truly dastardly, and Morgan is portrayed as almost saintly by comparison.

For someone with my particular set of ideological biases, the book comes across as a depiction of the rise of American exceptionalism. It's clearly geared toward capitalists and advocates of markets. But I honestly think that any person, of any stripe, who has any interest in economics will find much of value here.

[Johan Rehnstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy is a book of about 400 pages, telling the story of how these four men, and many more that we get to meet in the book, took an active part in shaping the American economy into the modern age during the late part of the 1800s and the early part of the 1900s. This is my summary / review of the book.

Andrew Carnegie was born in 1835 and passed away in1919. He was a voracious reader and relentless in improving everything and anything including himself. He was full of energy, with an immense charm and an instinct for deal making. He was also very manipulative and not shy of taking credit for his underlings’ successes, and he was a corrupt liar. His focus was the steel industry, in which he eventually created the world’s largest steel company.

John D. Rockefeller was born in 1839 and passed away in 1937. He was diligent, religious, honest, utterly reliable, direct, understated and factual. He was an exceptional salesman exuding immense self assurance, but he also committed perjury. His focus was Standard Oil, creating the world’s largest oil company.

Jay Gould was born in 1836 and passed away in 1892. Gould had a burning ambition and was a superb financial engineer with a close interest in operational details and he was usually able to outstrategize his competition. He controlled the largest transportation company in the world.

These three businessmen personified the unlimited entrepreneurial opportunities opened by vast resources and freedom from class and chaste constraints.

Pierpont Morgan was born in 1837 and passed away in 1913. Morgan was born into a banking family where it was taken for granted that he would succeed to the firm. Tall, strong, and outgoing with an obvious interest in numbers. He had an eye for ladies (he had several unconcealed mistresses) and had an appetite for risks. At one point in time, he even became the de facto American central banker.

The first chapter in the book is a prelude outlining how in no other country political freedom was an intrinsic part of the national project, with conscious efforts to make its citizens economically independent. The sheer size of America and its already impressive industrial base made it ripe for hyper development. Through the Homestead Act of 1862, some 10% of the land was settled over time and part of the money collected from these sales went to education of farmers and mechanics.

In the second chapter, the author explains how important a landmark the win of the yacht America was together with the picking of the British Branagh lock by Arthur C Hobbes in 1851. We are introduced to Cyrus McCormick and Samuel Colt as well as to the young genius Thomas Blanchard who invented a machine with which you could automate the manufacturing of gun stocks. In this chapter the author also describes the important development of a manufacturing technique to produce interchangeable parts, which was to a large part developed by the extremely focused John Hall in the early 1800s. This required a new and automated machining process and engineering which led to the American Machine Tradition which partly made the rise of the American mass consumer society in the 1880s possible. The author also describes the British reaction to this American development and describes what made America different.

The third chapter is called Bandit Capitalism and starts with a description of how Jay Gould and his loyal co-conspirator Jim Fisk Jr. took control over the Erie Railway Company from the business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. These were raw and explosive times, with massive injection of federal spending after the American Civil War and foreign money pouring into the country. Gould and company expanded their railroads and got swept up in the Gold Corner debacle which is described in some detail over more than a few pages. Tightly connected with the development of the railway system was the development of the oil industry, a business mastered by John D. Rockefeller. We are also introduced to him in this chapter, describing how he built Standard Oil in the Cleveland - Pittsburgh area being an early adopter of proven technology and always on the prowl for talent and with a keen understanding of the importence of distribution. The chapter ends with a description of how Andrew Carnegie was very effective starting his career as steel magnate with investments in mills, rail car manufacturing, bridge construction and telegraph business.

In the fourth chapter we get to understand the deep current of social unrest with farm protests and the violent conflicts between workers and owners / companies, e.g. the strike at Pennsylvania Railroad in 1877 when even the National Guard was called in and used a Gatling gun against the protestors, resulting in a total death toll of more than twenty people. The 1870s were marked by the crash of 1873, when almost a hundred different railroads defaulted, leading to a full-fledged banking crisis, as railroads accounted for more than 80% of total stock market capitalization. The US market was also impacted by the financing of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war reparations exacted at Versailles, totalling $1 billion in gold, leading to a reduced cash flow into the US. Despite the unrest, the development of the American economy continued. The author describes how automation impacted the farm production and the meat industry and how the extended railway system and the invention of the refrigerator cars using mechanical forces air circulation systems, meant products could be shipped long distances and led to structural changes of various industries. It is easy to be in awe over what people accomplished back in those days. Imagine running six thousand miles of barbed wire at the XIT ranch that had more than three million acres of land.

The fifth chapter takes us into the steel making business starting off explaining how people were introduced to the Corliss engine presented at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. It continues with an historical explanation of steel making and how the breakthrough to large scale steel-making came in the 1850s from the British inventor Henry Bessemer. The chapter explains how Carnegie reorganized the industry and created the world’s largest steel company in the world, Carnegie Steel Inc, as well as how Gould after years of hard work emerged in control of virtually the whole centre of the country’s railway system, and how Rockefeller with his quite and reasonable management style built Standard Oil to cover 90 percent of the market.

The sixth chapter takes us into the American mass consumer society, with the opening of John Wanamaker’s Grand Depot in Philadelphia in 1876, and how this development was part of the tectonic reshaping of American social and economic arrangements that was gaining speed in 1870s and 1880s. We read about brands still in existence today, such as Procter & Gamble, Colgate and Palmolive. The author describes the new middle class and writes about income inequality and social mobility. The extended railway system could now provide the connection between business and customers over long distances. You could even buy a piano to any railroad shipping point, and have it returned if the customer found the piano not “in every way satisfactory”.

In the seventh chapter the author describes how best practices started to become used more and more. Businesses were run analytically and not by rule of thumb. Chemists were hired to run testing and research laboratories within steel and oil production. Specifications and testing protocols were developed and the conscious wedding of academic research to industrial practices sparked a mini boom in professional organizations. The number of students grew quickly in the end of the century. This chapter also contains an entire section on how poorly Carnegie handled the Homestead tragedy where Pinkerton guards were in gun fights with the workers. The author ends with a quote from St. Louis Post-Dispatch saying: ”Say what you will of Carnegie, he is a coward. And gods and men hate cowards.” In the end of the century, the American society carried a high degree of animus against trusts and monopoly situations. The author describes the process surrounding the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust ACT in 1890.

The eight chapter is more focused on Morgan and how he became the world’s leading banker, exercising an immense authority in the USA, a country he was very bullish on. Morgan mediated substantial changes in the profile of a large part of American business with only thirteen partners and about eighty employees, taking active part in the great merger movement leading to the the birth of big steel. Even the Bank of England turned to Morgan to assist with the disastrous Barings bank gamble on Argentina in 1890. Morgan also took on the dual roles of being both the American Federal Reserve and the SEC chairman, respectively and simultaneously at two perilous instances, during the gold panic of 1893-95 and the stock market panic of 1907.

In the second last chapter, the author discusses America surpassing Britain as the world’s leading economy and eventual global political power. The Rothschild banking family lost ground to Morgan when Great Britain had to borrow from a foreign power to finance a war within its own empire (the Boer war). Some of the numbers provided are staggering. E. g. in 1800, the output of American factories and mines was a sixth that of Great Britain. By 1900 its output was 25% larger. Why did this happen and what were the differences? Some of the reasons mentioned in the book are methodologies, work organization, and mechanization. Plants in Britain were relatively older and smaller with a lower level of mechanization. The industry structure in Britain was older and set in its ways. Education amongst bosses and workers was higher in America. Another factor mentioned and investigated is the aggressive use of protective tariffs by both American and Germany.

In the last chapter the author introduces us to the snobbish, narrow minded, obsessive and hard driving plant manager Frederick W Taylor who developed Taylorism which was part of the concept of scientific management which partly focused on eradicating variation and uncertainty. This was being part of the increased presence on business consultancy which became its own business during this period. I found the description of how long it took American industry to realize this concept was wrong, very interesting. With the introduction of the Toyota system the production industry realized that costs fell with zero defects and the entire model around Economic Order Quantity was wrong. The right amount of inventory was none.

I found this book to provide a good understanding of how each person fit into the overall economic American environment. For someone who is interested in reading more about this group of industrialists, I would recommend reading this book first, and then read biographies.

Many interesting, detailed stories are presented, like the horrifying deaths of sixteen workers due to decompression sickness during the build of the St. Louis Bridge. The book has several detailed footnotes, like one about the Granger movement, that was founded in 1867 to fight monopolistic grain transport practices.

The book is not only focused on the four main figures, but also introduces several other important people in the history of the USA. The author is also bringing forward different views on various topics, e. g. around the anti monopoly process at the end of the 1800s and early 1900s.

As someone not having English as my mother tongue, I also learned a number of new words, e. g. that encomium means highly praised; stalwarts is loyal, reliable and hardworking; restive means unable to remain still; unctuous means excessively flattering; aplomb means self assurance in a stressful situation; tawdriness means showy, but cheap with low quality; impecunious means having little or no money; and etiolated means having lost vigour or substance.

Personally, I don’t have much criticism of the book, but, after reading some other reviews, I think worth mentioning for a reader of this review would be: the book does contain lots of financial facts and numbers; in some instances an understanding of economics and business will help; some parts of the book are very detailed which might slow down a reader; and the author jumps around a bit in his telling of the fantastic story of America’s economic development in the 1800s / early 1900s.

[Alex M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bad, biased, and annoying

[Ann Mcelligott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted an introduction to the era of the "robber barons" without having to read long biographies of the men focused on this book (and I know such biographies have been written). Morris does not simply provide biographical material on the four men, but he places them in the rapidly developing economy of the era. Following the Civil War, the country rapidly moved from an agrarian/artisan culture, a country of farmers and independent craftsmen, to a mechanized industrial culture. In many ways the railroads were the engine of this rapid growth. However of the four tycoons, only Jay Gould was primarily engaged in the railroads. Other reviewers have found the stories of the four men to be diluted by the focus on the greater history of industrial development in this era. I appreciated learning about them in the larger context.

[Brian "Alostarre" King · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this book was a bit all over the place. While it did talk about the 4 main guys or "tycoons" it really jumped around a lot and also focused on many other players within the game. There is some good history to be found here, it's just that I found it to be a rather dull and dreary read. (I had to push myself to finish this one. There was no excitement of getting a chance to read this again throughout the days leading up to the finish.) The one thing I pulled away from this book is that, if you were alive in the mid to late 1800's in America and you wanted to be highly successful, you just need to be an asshole. You need to lie, steal, cheat and cut the wages of your employees at every chance you can get, that's it.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Large parts of this were a slog to get through, but other parts were quite interesting. The author sometimes got off on tangents, and frankly, I found the tangents more interesting than the primary subject matter. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan were successful because of a combination of intelligence-- and lack of ethics. They manipulated the stock market, lied (mostly Carnegie), broke laws when it was convenient, and didn't care if their wheeling and dealing burned workers or other companies. I really wasn't interested in the formation of trusts, pools, corporations, tariffs, PPP ratios, etc., but was very interested in the lifestyle and occupational changes brought about by fast transportation, the rise of industry farming, growing consumerism, development of new materials, and new ways of organizing work. An economist or stock broker would probably find the book more riveting than I did.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 1 out of 5]

My God this book was boring. I love nonfiction, and I was excited to learn about these four titans of industry. But I struggled so so much to get through this. This book is thoroughly researched and informative, but the presentation is excruciatingly dull. There's so much detail about steel production, business transactions, archaic stock and financial rules, and tariff laws. If you're interested in Carnegie, Gould, Morgan or Rockefeller, surely there are much more entertaining tomes than this.

[John Smiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot, but I'd like to warn potential readers that I believe the title is a bit misleading.

Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, and J.P. Morgan are featured prominently in the book, but the book is much more about the rise of the US as a Super Economy than a biography of these men---at least I think so.

Be prepared for lots and lots of numbers and financial terms---something I enjoyed but may not be everyone's cup of tea.

[Akhil Jain · Rating 5 out of 5]

My fav quotes:

Page 24 |
"The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed any citizen, including single women and freed slaves, to take possession of virtually any unoccupied 160-acre tract of public land, for a $12 registration and filing fee. Live on it for five years, build a house and farm the land, and it was yours for just an additional $6 “proving” fee."
Page 24 |
"No other country had conceived the notion of educating farmers and mechanics, and the Morrill Act schools are still the foundation of the state university systems."
Page 27 |
" CARNEGIE was as relentless in self-improvement as in everything else, reading voraciously. When his investment income passed the $50,000 mark in 1868, he promised himself that he would work for just two more years to secure that level of income for life, and then devote himself to finer pursuits."
Page 36 |
"Rockefeller companies unquestionably paid bribes to local officials, but the business environment in nineteenth-century America was a bit like that in today’s Middle East: as the English observer Lord Bryce wrote, “It is only by the use of money that [corporations] can ward off the attacks constantly made on them by demagogues or blackmailers.” Rockefeller didn’t need to cheat to win world oil dominance; he was simply better at the business than anyone else."
Page 67 |
"Samuel Colt’s great factory at “Coltsville” in Hartford, Connecticut, which became the Mecca of the “American system” in the 1850s, is a case in point. Colt was a promoter, not an engineer, who once made his living staging laughing gas exhibitions. He devised his repeating firearms in the mid-1830s, but his breakthrough did not happen until the Mexican War (1846–48), when his pistol design caught the fancy of Samuel Walker, the legendary commander of the Texas Rangers. With Walker’s support, Colt won a patent renewal in 1849 and set up his own factory. To run it, he recruited Elisha K. Root, the manager"
Page 73 |
"Outside of the military, British manufacturers were far less eager, and moved much more slowly, to adopt Armory practice, or the “American system.”"
Page 74 |
"In an insightful analysis of the causes for the American surge, Whitworth proposed a list that included the relative scarcity of labor; the country’s great natural resources (although he points out that large tracts of the nation were quite barren); the lack of resistance to innovation on the part of workers; fewer barriers to organizing businesses; and most important in his view, the high national rate of literacy supported by a “cheap press.”"
Page 75 |
"the Englishman has not got the ductility of mind and the readiness of apprehension for a new thing which is required. . . . An American readily produces a new article; he understands everything you say to him as well as a man from a college in England would; he helps the employer by his own acuteness and intelligence."
Page 76 |
"Alfred Hobbs, the American lock maker,"
Page 78 |
"Driving it all was the sense of opportunity—Lincoln’s “prudent, penniless beginner” could strive to become an independent businessman."
Page 88 |
"The economics of railroads are the same as for airlines, and Jay Gould may have grasped them more quickly and clearly than anyone else."
Page 97 |
"Fisk blithely repudiated his losses, producing a forged letter, allegedly from his brokerage partner, Henry Belden, representing that all of Fisk’s trading was on Belden’s account. Belden took the fall and went into bankruptcy; he later recovered his career with a position in Gould’s brokerage."
Page 96 |
"Gould seems to have felt no qualms on deserting Fisk; if nothing else, one must admire the clarity of his mind. Early on Thursday, he and his brokerage partner, Henry Smith, worked out a strategy that mixed highly visible purchases with much larger disguised sales to let Gould run off his holdings."
Page 102
"There was also a history between Gould and Rockefeller; one Rockefeller muckraker, indeed, declared that the whole Standard Oil Trust “must be regarded as the gigantic offspring of the Erie ring.”"
Page 103
"In the early days, “oil-boiling,” as refining was called, was not much different from distilling whiskey, and early refiners used color, smell, and taste to decide which distillates were most suitable for kerosene, heating oil, or other products."
Page 107
"a refiner-railroad petroleum cartel. A new corporation, the South Improvement Company (SIC),"
Page 112
"Gould–Vanderbilt–Scott trunk line battles were never primarily about oil; they were about dominating the grain traffic routes to Chicago and the Midwest."
Page 116
"The whole point of the SIC was to reduce and rationalize capacity, so it would make no sense to admit small refiners unless they agreed to merge with their powerful bigger brothers. The SIC was all along intended as a pressure tactic, as Tarbell alleges."
Page 120
"The St Louis bridge did indeed open to much fanfare, on July 4, 1874,"
Page 123
“Railroads doubtless settled on rebates as the preferred method of discounting to window-dress performance for bondholders. By booking the base rate as revenue and showing the subsequent rebate as a cost, rather than as a revenue reduction, railroads could bulk up their top-line revenue growth. Some midwestern “Granger” states later passed antirebate laws, but most were quickly repealed when railroads responded by raising rates. In any case, they applied only to intrastate shipping."
Page 126
"The Commercial and Financial Chronicle (the Wall Street Journal of the day)"
Page 129
"In 1872, New York banks, in short, were financing long-term borrowers with foreign hot money, just as Thai and Malaysian banks did in 1997."
Page 137
"The 1870s seem to have been the rare case of a “supply shock.” A supply shock is a good thing; it is the infelicitous term economists use for a sudden, and permanent, improvement in productive capacity, what Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan recently called a “paradigm shift.” With the massive post–Civil War investment in infrastructure, force-fed by the likes of Jay Gould, transaction costs were dropping like a stone. Telegraphic and cable communications were driving down the risks and costs of financial services."
Page 138
"One of the most striking developments in America was the industrialization of farming. As grain and meat production and transport became"
Page 139
"A farmer could plow a straight line for months, according to the local tall tale, then turn around and harvest on the way back."
Page 145
"All the lines had singled out the boom in cattle transport as a superior earnings opportunity, and most were making large investments in stock cars"
Page 148
"Men who prided themselves on crop management burned late-night kerosene lamps puzzling over balance sheets."
Page 149
"Wages did increase strongly over the first twenty years of the industry, especially in real terms, but hours got longer and the lines got faster as well."
Page 150
"It is the fixed dividends and debt service on falling nominal revenues, not falling operating margins, that explains the high rate of defaults."
Page 168
"Carnegie travelled more than anyone else in the company, and was constantly on the lookout for new technologies, he was among the best informed people within the company on technical developments."
Page 176
"But straightaway we are assured that “JAY GOULD” is at the bottom of the whole affair, as he is said to be at the bottom of everything that goes on nowadays. We strongly suspect that he will yet be found to . . . have had something to do with the hard Winter, frozen water-pipes, and plumbers’ extravagant bills. He doubtless formed a “ring” with the plumbers sometime last Summer, and then produced the recent severe cold, so as to get all his machinery to work."
Page 178
"As Cornelius’s oldest son, “Willie” had assumed leadership of the family properties on his father’s death in 1877, and Gould stripped away the great railroad and telegraph holdings one by one, the way a wolf takes bites out of a running deer."
Page 185
"But Standard Oil bears comparison with any of them. It was as large and complex as any railroad, its operations were spread throughout the globe, and it may have been the only big business to control its entire value chain from production and processing of raw materials down through distribution to wholesalers and in many areas even to retailers."
Page 194
"Even as the Cleveland operations grew to employ several thousand workers, Rockefeller reputedly knew almost all of them by name. He always reached out for the ablest executives he could find, gave them plenty of running room and support, and kept most of them bound to him for the rest of their careers."
Page 203
"“The most valuable class in any community is the middle class,” Walt Whitman proclaimed in 1858,"
Page 209
"Survival was a matter of brutally hard labor and lots of kids."
Page 214
"We will ship any Windsor Organ or Piano on trial to any railroad shipping point in the United States, subject to the following conditions: Upon receipt of order we will ship the instrument to our own address, send a sight draft with bill of lading attached to your banker’s. When the shipment arrives at destination, the purchaser will be required to deposit with the bank the price of the instrument, but with the understanding that the money is to be held fifteen (15) days. During this time the instrument may be given a thorough trial at your home. . . . If you find that it is not in every way satisfactory you can return it to the station agent at any time before the expiration of the time specified, and by obtaining bill of lading . . . and presenting same at bank, the entire amount deposited will be refunded."
Page 216
"Richard Sears, whose operations outstripped Ward’s by the early 1900s, got his start in 1886 selling watches by mail; Alvah Roebuck joined as the watch repairman. Sears’s main innovation was aggressive advertising, some of it outrageous. By the 1880s almost all department stores had their own mail-order operations: if a lady in California wanted to buy from Bloomingdale’s, she had only to write and request their catalog. When John Wanamaker became postmaster-general in 1889, he ensured that mail-order catalogs had the most favorable rates, since they were “aiding the dissemination of knowledge.”"
Page 217
"Goldman, Sachs, one of a new breed of Jewish investment banks (Lehmans was another) that focused on the retail and consumer goods businesses overlooked by the Morgans and Kuhn, Loebs of the world."
Page 220
"A Kodak-sponsored photography contest in New York in 1897 drew 26,000 people."
Page 231
"But the interesting question for us is why were companies suddenly buying huge office buildings? Or more precisely, why did white-collar staffs start growing so fast that paper management—forms and ledgers, file jackets, filing systems, bookkeeping machines, typewriters and carbon paper, business charts and graphs—had become a major industry in its own right by the 1890s?"
Page 261
"Most other countries, especially on the continent, freely granted monopolies in railroads and similar businesses, and as often encouraged bigness in the name of national competitiveness."
Page 262
"There was no mystery to railroad rate-setting: the roads charged whatever they thought the traffic would bear. When long-haul west–east lines first opened, railroads marked up their rates proportionate to the distances and got very little business. Western wheat came to dominate world markets only after railroads made it very cheap to get to the coast. New York farmers and grain merchants were the big losers, but the chances of Congress requiring the roads to raise rates from the west were approximately zero.* What farmers did care about, on the other hand, was rate volatility, since the perennial price wars frequently caused a violent seesawing of tariffs."
Page 267
"When the historian John McGee examined every alleged case of predatory pricing, however, he could not find “a single instance in which the Standard used predatory price cutting.”"
Page 269
"Rockefeller always worried about declining production from Pennsylvania wells, and pressed for major Midwest acquisitions to secure a continuing crude supply. At one point, after his partners had voted against the acquisitions, he announced that he would proceed with his own money. (They subsequently changed their minds.) After securing his midwestern crude base, it was Rockefeller who drove the creation of the Standard’s petroleum research laboratory, and recruited Herman Frasch, a German chemist and later a pioneer"
Page 272
"The political analyst Charles Ferguson has pointed out that it is not the aggressive, efficient monopoly that is most to be feared. Far greater economic costs are inflicted by complacent, dead-weight, monopolistic incumbents."
Page 273
"The accelerating spread of electricity was clearly going to obliterate the kerosene market, and the company had been late to appreciate the opportunity in automobiles."
Page 282
"Like most of the day’s bankers, they used the words “ruinous” and “competition” as if they were hyphenated."
Page 284
"By the time Junius died of a carriage accident in 1890, and Tony Drexel, the nominally senior partner of Drexel, Morgan, died in 1893, Pierpont—fifty-six and at the peak of his powers—was already the bank’s acknowledged leader on both sides of the Atlantic."
Page 284
"served as its de facto central banker as well."
Page 288
"The Reading’s voting stock was placed in a trust under Morgan’s control for a period of five years—another standard Morgan condition—and"
Page 288
"Morgan’s fees for his trouble were very high, almost always at least 5 percent and sometimes as much as 10 percent of the new money raised."
Page 288
"Morgan’s fees for his trouble were very high, almost always at least 5 percent and sometimes as much as 10 percent of the new money raised. In fairness, he usually took most of it in stock so that his interests were aligned with those of his investors."
Page 289
"The core problem is that a railroad, a telephone company, or an airline must invest huge amounts of capital before it can earn a dime. Then once the infrastructure is in place, it makes sense to sell services at almost any price to help cover the fixed-cost overhang. Free competition therefore quickly leads to cutthroat pricing and financial turmoil, as in the scorched-earth competition among AT&T, Worldcom, and MCI in the 1990s, or the continuing wave of bankruptcies in the airline industry. Unfortunately, the uniformly dismal experience with regulated monopolies makes the nasty Darwinism of unfettered competition almost attractive. Just consider the appallingly bad performance of regulated companies like the electrical utilities on almost any measure."
Page 293
"He inquired of one of his executives whether they should attend the next meeting, or “simply send flowers for the corpse?”"
Page 299
"In effect, Morgan was promising to manage the greenback–sterling exchange rate,* which required entering foreign exchange markets to buy greenbacks, or sell sterling, any time the greenback wobbled. This is a classic central bank function—extremely risky for a private partnership with no call on public resources, and an unseemly delegation of government power. The"
Page 302
"When the crisis passed, and the news of what Morgan had accomplished sunk in, the public reacted with something like shock. There were many suggestions that the bankers, or even Morgan personally, had engineered the crisis to enrich themselves. All shakeouts rearrange the pecking order on Wall Street, and there is no doubt that the sharpest financiers came out of the crisis better off than they went in; but there is no basis for accusations that the crisis was contrived, or that Morgan’s own actions were based on anything other than a sense of public duty."
Page 302
"If nothing else, the 1907 crisis was an important factor in building a legislative consensus for the creation of the Federal Reserve system in 1913."
Page 318
"Carnegie remarked that his house was about as far from Morgan’s office as Morgan’s office was from his house."
Page 324
"“If we have done anything wrong, send your man to my man and they can fix it up.”)"
Page 328
"The relationship between Morgan and the senior Rockefeller was better in 1907. While Morgan was struggling to pilot the country through the market crash, Rockefeller made a point of calling on him at his office and pledging half his fortune if it were required. The news report itself had a calming effect."
Page 332
"American advantage involved no fundamental breakthroughs, but was rather about methodologies, work organization, and, above all, mechanization."
Page 347
"Absent Carnegie, the “Fathers” of the Bessemer Association, America’s original steel cartel, could more easily have maintained their cautious, controlled development strategy; the genius of Alexander Holley might never have been given full play; men on the cut of a Gates and a Gary would have been in control from the start. Without the tariff, in short, the American industry might have evolved more like that of Great Britain, and one of the earliest, and the most dramatic, examples of the highly mechanized, mass-scale, intensely driven industrial machine that was a hallmark of the American advance might have been delayed too long to make a difference."
Page 372
"At what speed does Taylor’s plan expect any man to work? . . . At that speed which is the fastest at which he will be happy and at which he can thrive continuously. As the nation’s pundits were swept up in an “efficiency"
Page 382
"The most famous of the Japanese paradigms, the “Toyota system,” developed over more than twenty years under the leadership of Taiichi Ohno, was a direct refutation of the EOQ logic. Costs fell with zero defects. The right amount of inventory was none at all. One always stopped the production line to prevent a defect (or else it would always recur). Long production runs always produced wasteful amounts of inventory. (The solution was to reduce the cost and time of changeovers to near zero.) Ohno’s system emphasized close contact between top management and the plant floor, and a deep respect for workers—in contrast to the quite open disdain that pervaded Taylorism."

[Dave Godfrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decided to read the book as I found this section of the podcast "History that Doesn't Suck" - both interesting and a part of US History I didn't know too well.

On the positive, the book is more than just a focus on the 4 titular tycoons - as it also dives into the history and concurrent events that formed the age they lived in. I found that particularly interesting.

On the negative, the author is (probably understandably) an unapologetic apologist for the 4 tycoons. When forced to criticize them - it seems almost grudgingly and with lots of caveats. Also, the last chapter seemed more of a way to criticize modern managers and 'scientific management' than any summation of the rest of the book.

In total - interesting and informative history, but flawed.

[Caleb J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting historical review of 4 influential business men in the post Civil War industrial boom.
It is a good mix of personal history of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould and J.P. Morgan and their emergence in the late 19th Century and powerful influence into the 20th Century and beyond. It is often technical with in depth economic commentary which is beyond this dilettantes expertise. Morris tackles this monumental effort with thought provoking skill. My rating is more about my enjoyment than the abilities of the writer. I leave that to the economic experts to evaluate.

[Justin Sasia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping this book would contain a narrative that tied these tycoons together. There wasn't a definitive narrative in the book, which made me feel like it was just providing context for this era and then abruptly ended. It was a difficult read.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too many chapters on general American mechanization and industrialization but the chapters on mass consumerism and JP Morgan were interesting. Carnegie was slimier than I realized (even though everyone thinks he’s the good one) and Rockefeller less predatory/robber baron than everyone thinks

[Lyndee Feick]

Had to read for class and retained only like 10% of the information. Andrew Carnegie is a bitch.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not so much about Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan themselves as it is about the evolution of the American economy. The discussion of these business tycoons appears only incidentally, as part of the broader story of how the economy developed. I would have preferred more focus on their individual lives and enterprises, but the book was interesting nonetheless.

[Hamish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a difficult book to follow. From the title, one would expect it to be a combined biography of Carnege, Rockefeller, Morgan, and Gould, and that it would either progress chronologically (what were each of them doing in 1960? 1970? 1980?), or else progress through the individual personalities (Carnege birth to death, Rockefeller birth to death, etc). In fact, the book progresses more like: follow Gould for a while, follow Carnege for a while, primer on 1970s steel production, back to Carnege, essay on whether Britain's free trade policy at the time made economic sense, follow Morgan for a while...

With all this jumping about, often with unclear connective tissue, I had a hard time retaining and synthesising information. I often got Rockefeller and Carnege mixed up, and only realised half way through a chapter that we've switched from talking about one to the other. By the end, I had only the vaguest sense of the timelines, biographies, and personalities of the tycoons. I know that Morgan basically ran American finance over his career, and that Gould, Rockefeller, and Carnege between them held empires in rail, oil, and steel, but I couldn't say who was involved in what. I'm not even sure that all four were alive at the same time. I need to read some wikipedia to actually get all this straight.

Ok, after looking it up, here's what happened: all four tycoons were born 1835-1840, and their respective domains were Gould=rails, Carnege=steel, Rockefeller=oil, Morgan=finance.

But I did learn some interesting stuff:
* Carnege was a brutal employer who constantly strived to underpay his workers and lie about it to the outside world
* Gould seems worthy of the epithet "robber baron"
* Inspiration for Henry Ford's factories lines came from the packing house "disassembly lines" in which meat was animal carcuses were taken apart for meat
* The first victims of modernisation were often not the poor, but the petite bourgeouis. Whereas they previously might have owned a small componany in which they practice their craft, they were made redundant by the de-skilling of their trade into repetitive factory work
* "The ninteenth century meat packing line was a medievel vision of hell. Gory, filthy, unremitting, unforgiving of even the slightest slip or misstep, and freezing cold, besides."
* In the 1880's you could buy a "princess bust developer", which looked like a metal toilet plunger (see here) but promised a "round, firm, and beautiful bust" with regular usage.
* Taylor of scientific management fame was basically a fraud who mixed super precise measurements with wild guesses and unworkable methodologies
* Alfred Chandler, an intellectual successor of Taylor wrote books which give a history of industry via Hegelian dialectics. This sounds interesting and I wouldn't mind reading it.
* Chandler regards research laboraties in his writing as "black box[es] on a chart, intermittently producing recommendations to be mulled over by the philosopher kings [management] of the time". This is totally hilarious and fully squares with my stereotypes about management.

[Caleb Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fantastic content obscured by a complete lack of organization or consistent structure.

[Brendan · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of an economic history book than biography. This book is scant on biographical information. It also lacks focus, spending as much time talking about developments in machine operations as it does any personal events in these famous mens' lives. Now, that may not be a problem if economic history is your field, but it was quite drab for me.

For a book whose cover features a Mount Rushmore-like array of industrialists, I feel like I learned nothing about them. Aside from a few interesting anecdotes (the insider meetings with Morgan and the Treasury to alleviate the 1907 market crash were interesting, albeit too short) there is little biographical information or interesting tidbits about the prominently featured mens' upbringing, romantic life, heroic stories, etc. These titans of industry feel as hollow and archetypal as Clip Art after finishing this book than they did before. The biographical piece - they were born in X year, to a family of [insert social class here], and married so and so at age 35 - are as easily gleaned from a Wikipedia. "Okay now lets skip forward to their most studied period." What the heck!

What little characterization we get - he mentions J.P. Morgan's apprenticeship years under his father- are nothing more than a tease. If J.P. Morgan's twenties were full of caddish, risk-taking adventure, how about more than one story? I'm here to learn about J.P. Morgan, not spend a whole chapter about some Virginia armory being able to perfect interchangeable machine parts! Jeez dude!

Full of economic arcana (the entire last chapter is a bizarre detour on "Taylorism" and the industrial management movement known as Scientific Management, which ends abruptly with zero conclusions relating to the previous 300 pages of the book; nor do the final paragraphs even MENTION Carnegie, Gould, Rockefeller or Morgan) this book also lacks narrative focus. It picks up steam towards the middle ("the first mass consumer culture" chapters are an interesting look at America truly plunging headlong into consumerist modernity) but falls flat on its face again towards the end. In terms of narrative, none of the chapters seem to mesh together.


In terms of its sources, it has a high quantity of sources, but it clearly draws more from the field of economic history than any biographical narrative gathered through worthwhile treatment of primary sources. I could see this book being part of curriculum for an economics course, but it is not good for casual reading. Expect a 5:1 ratio of technical machinery discussion to biographical storytelling.

This is book is dry and boring. In its defense, it has a misleading book cover, title, and genre. I would almost say this book should be stripped of the "Biography" tag. The author lacks focus (seriously, that ending is weird as hell; he doesn't even bother to tie the previous chapters together).

[Jose Miguel Porto · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the Civil War, the industrial revolution and technological developments (standardization and mechanization) impacted most industries. Extractive industries needed to bring the products to the markets and railways, led by Jay Gould and Vanderbilt, were built in excess of actual demand to cover most of the US. The railways needed financings and capital markets, led by J.P. Morgan flourished. Andrew Carnegie developed US Steel and the associated industry to cover the steel needs for the growing infrastructure. The growing infrastructure allowed for the creation of the Bonanza farms and the huge Texas cattle ranch. The new industrial era required oil consumption, which was capitalized by John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Steel production, available infrastructure and mass production allowed for the creation of a consumer economy. People moved from the farms into the cities. All of these tycoons monopolized their respective markets. They believed that scale was needed to reduce costs and become efficient, as opposed to ruinous competition. This was a time of structural economic and demographic changes which resulted in the rise of huge trusts led by their respective tycoons. There are certain similarities between the industry monopolization of the industrial age and the current monopolization of the technology age.

[César Augusto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um livro excelente para quem quer saber mais como os Estados Unidos viraram a maior potência mundial, há algumas partes que devido a minha falta de familiaridade com assuntos econômicos (termos, teorias) dificultou um pouco o entendimento de certas partes do livro, mas em geral foi esclarecedor, tratou de mostrar que não foi somente o setor de aço, ferrovias e petróleo que impulsionaram a economia, o mercado interno foi grande responsável por isso e permitiu também o desenvolvimento de outros setores da economia. Além disso, a velocidade com que os Estados Unidos cresceram ao ponto de pouco mais de 100 anos após a sua independência, ter superado a sua ex-metrópole , a Grã-Bretanha em vários aspectos econômicos. A ambição pelo menos de John D. Rockfeller e Andrew Carnegie é algo a ser admirado. Sempre buscando o domínio, não se acomodando quando tinham domínio absoluto de seus mercados. Me fez lembrar do Barão de Mauá, um empreendedor, será que ele poderia ser um Rockfeller à brasileira? Nunca saberei a resposta graças a uma elite medíocre e mentecapta que temia perder seus privilégios.

[Eric T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was somewhat disjointed. It would jump from biographical tales of the eponymous tycoons to the development of the industrial economy in America to the development of professional management. Regardless it was chock full of interesting concepts and rather esoteric economic history. If you are a buff of business history you may like this.


The part that did not appeal to me was the two chapters or so explaining the machinations and schemes of Jay Gould on Wall St. It is very dense with financial concepts and assumes one has a fair amount of base knowledge in high finance and macroeconomics. It was hard to read at times.


I particularly enjoyed the chapters contrasting the development of American mass production and efficient industry with the British lack of the aforementioned, as well as the final chapter on Taylorism.

[Paul Spence · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a glimpse into the extraordinary transformation and growth of the American economy that started during the Civil War but accelerated tremendously over the next forty years. The Civil War was a time of westward expansion under the Homestead Act, neo-Whig infrastructure development, especially railroads, and the rise of corporations to supply wartime needs. Those trends continuing after the War, the author's four tycoons are representative of men who saw the opportunities and advantages in dominating such core industries as railroads, iron and steel production, and oil extraction and refining, all undertaken in a favorable environment that erected barriers against foreign competition but with few domestic regulations. It should be noted that the book is far more an examination of the logic for developing large enterprises than it is biographical.

A legitimate question that the author addresses is what was the basis of this astonishing economic surge? The short answer is immense natural resources, necessity, and ingenuity, in addition to an advantageous legal setting. The ever expanding population virtually required that huge enterprises come into existence that were capable of making the capital investments to meet their needs. Fortunately, America had the iron ore, oil deposits, rich farmlands, vast plains and waterways, etc which large businesses could exploit to meet the demands for transportation and durable goods.

Yankee ingenuity does not get short shrift in the author's account. He points especially to the Connecticut River valley as a hub for developments in manufacturing. Machinery was designed to produce to tight tolerances the interchangeable parts necessary for the mass production of guns, farming machinery, consumer goods, etc. However, this mechanization did not come without fundamental social impacts. Employers became far less dependent on skilled artisans for production; quickly trained, lowly paid, and easily replaced machine-tenders became mere cogs in manufacturing. The author little appreciates that this power imbalance in the workplace was a constant source of conflict and was not effectively addressed until the CIO unionization drives of the 1930s. On the other hand, as the author points out, never before had so many affordable products become available to the middle-class. Apparently, the status of being a middle-class consumer was a substitute for the loss of status as an independent, skilled producer.

The author merely sketches the early lives and the personal characteristics of these four individuals. All were smarter than the next guy, were ambitious, and could be ruthless, as well as deceitful. The author describes the basic business dealings of each individual that propelled them to rise above their competitors. In addition, all seemed to have mastered navigating the treacherous, that is, unregulated, financial waters of the times involving stocks, bonds, and the like. Unfortunately, most of that financial wheeling and dealing is the most confusing aspect of the book.

Despite theoretical claims that competition is key to capitalism, the last thing that companies with large capital investments want is competition. To control pricing a company must dominate its sector by getting bigger, merging with others, or joining pools or cartels. All of these men, especially Carnegie and Rockefeller, using those mechanisms, achieved the kind of dominance that permitted them to generally control the marketplace. Nonetheless, the broader American economy was prone to panics and downturns throughout the 19th century. It was J.P. Morgan, banker extraordinaire, who was powerful enough to bring stability to financial markets through judicious injection of funds, among other measures. The author indicates that Morgan acting as a conservative force actually performed the role that the Federal Reserve was created for in 1913.

The author basically ignores or downplays the reactions of American workers and farmers to the control that these large enterprises had in the economy and over politicians and to the depressions and deflation of the late 19th century. He mentions the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the Haymarket Square bombing of 1886, and the Homestead strike of 1892 against the Carnegie works, but does so to generally show the irrational and violent reactions of workers. The largest worker organization of the times, the Knights of Labor, gets no mention, and the entire Populist movement gets a mere wave of the hand. They were concerned that enormous corporations not only squeezed them economically but also undermined the democratic process. The author does acknowledge that the free laborer that Lincoln extolled, who would someday become an owner, had become more illusion than reality.

To the author's credit, he does note that the managerial strategies that began with the tycoons and lasting beyond WWII, that is, vertical integration, regarding workers as merely replaceable pieces, etc, have proven to be a prescription for failure. According to him, the just-in-time reliance on a network of suppliers and relying on smart production workers has made Toyota a model manufacturer.

It is interesting to see the basic paths these individuals took to reach economic heights, though a full understanding would require referring to other sources. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the book is the technical genius displayed by several in revamping manufacturing from both the micro and macro level. Also, the author provides some correctives to negative perspectives about these individuals, especially Rockefeller

[Cindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I expected. I thought this would be more of a straight biography, but there was so much financial stuff in here that I was totally lost. He either needed to explain stuff better or refocus the book. Long section about some gold deal Jay Gould was involved in that also sucked in the Grant administration, but it took me THREE readings before I had any idea what was going on. Then we got into anti-trust stuff and I was completely lost. I'm giving up for now, but I may pick it up again when I'm feeling smarter.

[Matt Melucci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent insight on the business and character of some indispensable men in the late 19th. History tends to repeat itself, and there are definitely several ties to some trends today with a select few tycoons in the tech industry and emerging tariffs.