Robber Barons vs Captains of Industry

410 Words2 Pages
On February 9, 1859, Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times, said something strange about Cornelius Vanderbilt. Raymond didn’t like Vanderbilt, a steamship tycoon with such a vast fleet that he was known as the Commodore, then the highest rank in the US Navy. In an editorial titled “Your Money or Your Line,” Raymond blasted him for taking a large monthly payment from the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in return for Vanderbilt’s foregoing competition on the sea lanes to California. “Like those old German barons who, from their eyries along the Rhine, swooped down upon the commerce of the noble river and wrung tribute from every passenger that floated by,” Raymond wrote, “Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt . . . has insisted that the Pacific Company should pay him toll, taken of all America that had business with California.” Though Raymond never used the exact phrase “robber baron,” his editorial is the first known use of the metaphor in American journalism. It has become an enduring description of the industrial moguls of the nineteenth century. It conjures up visions of titanic monopolists who crushed competitors, rigged markets, and corrupted government. In their greed and power, legend has it, they held sway over a helpless democracy. Hide Full Essay But here’s the strange part: That’s not what Raymond meant. He compared Vanderbilt to medieval robber barons because he preyed upon monopolists. Pacific Mail had total market control of the sea lanes to California, and it bought off Vanderbilt in order to preserve its monopoly. Raymond attacked the Commodore for pursuing “competition for competition’s sake; competition which crowds out legitimate enterprises.” To the editor of the New York Times in 1859, Vanderbilt was a robber baron because he was a challenger, a spoiler—almost the opposite of the current meaning of the term. So how did the definition of

More about Robber Barons vs Captains of Industry

Open Document