Robber Barons Essay

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States of America was still young and had little experience with controlling business. There were no government regulations or laws of business put in place yet, so businessmen found ways to keep all of the company money to themselves and profit from the exploitation of unskilled laborers. They created monopolies that controlled entire industries. Thus, business leaders soon dominated not only the US, but the whole world, as well. Unchecked power at the turn of the century had led to a corrupt capitalist system with huge industrial monarchs that left entire generations of immigrants broken and drained of individuality and spirit.
Business leaders were very greedy and valued profit more than anything. Even safety wasn’t barely considered while the robber barons plotted ways to get rich and control the world. For example, the notorious Credit Mobilier construction company was hired by Congress in 1872 to help build the Union Pacific Railroad. The company had coaxed from Congress much more
than it needed to build the railroad, a total of about $73 million, then bought extremely low-quality construction materials for the railroad. While this gave the company a $23 million profit, it meant a poorly-constructed railroad which put the lives of citizens at risk. Despite this, Credit Mobilier simply didn’t care if it meant becoming wealthy. This heartlessness was widespread at the time, a result of unchecked power.
Generally, the captains of industry’s strategy was to begin by offering products at low prices to get customers.
To get by, however, they had to pay workers very poorly. The manual laborers that were essential to the prosperity of the business were forced to get by on a couple dollars a day. To get more workers, Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford motor company, proposed $5 wages to his employees, nearly twice the average wage at the time. Ford could not let this happen without compensating for the money loss, so he took away the workers’ privacy and rights to talk in large groups. He even would fire them on the spot for no reason. Also, most factory workers had to work 10-12 hour shifts on top of being paid very little so that they could hardly sustain themselves and their families. This exploitation of millions of blue-collar laborers was cruel and extremely greedy of all the power-hungry business leaders and company
owners.
One way the tycoon tigers ensured success and money was by buying out all the competitors with their wealth and getting them unofficially out of the market. Once there was no competition left, the leading company catapulted their prices sky-high. The consumers had no choice but to choose the only company left in the industry, which meant paying those ridiculously inflated costs. The businessmen easily got even wealthier this way. John D. Rockefeller, an American oil industry businessman, is extremely well-known for having used this tactic and for one of his most famous quotes: “I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.” He was cold-hearted, egoistic, and an insatiable appetite for money--the disease that spread quickly and caused an epidemic throughout the United States.
In addition, employers spent very little to none of their precious money on safety precautions. Millions of laborers were injured or killed this way. Often, workers were only children who were at risk of getting fingers and limbs ripped off if they made the slightest wrong move. There was no protection from anything like that happening; employers simply didn’t want to pay for it. Chinese immigrants that found work in building the railroad had to tunnel into mountains using dynamite. There were no time or materials to build supports to hold up the unstable tunnel walls which could collapse at any moment. Many lives were lost by the mountains crushing railroad workers. Simply put, immigrants that were forced to find work in factories or on the railroads had their lives greatly endangered all because their greedy employers couldn’t spare just enough money for safety precautions.
Business leaders that had immense power were able to commit these terrible acts of crime to the American populace and integrity of the revolutionary economic system of the US because Congress had nothing in place to stop them in the first place. It is clear that unchecked power leads to the unwanted rise of powerful tycoons that will cripple the human condition of the nation in that era. Evidently, actions should be taken to avoid the possibility of this ever happening again. In other words, power should not be left unchecked.