Al Capone, J.D. Rockefeller, And The Robber Barons - Lessons Of Individual Power For Our Collective Age

The Robber Barons of the early Twentieth Century - Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and J.P. Morgan- are icons of American history, responsible in large part for the creation of the great American industrial empire of steel, railroads, energy, and finance.  They had vision, ambition, will, intelligence, and a fearless sense of competition.  They brooked no comers, and worked to control and monopolize their economic investments and to expand them into other sectors of enterprise.  They were unstoppable, untouchable, and inviolate, and thanks to them America began its ascent to world power. 

Nowadays, of course, these men have been cancelled for their predatory injustice to the working man, their corporate greed, and trampling ambition.  Men are not supposed to act this way, and must be bound to a more compassionate, inclusive social contract.  There is no room in America for the likes of Gould, Fisk, and the rest of them.  The infrastructure, wealth, and economic dominion they created was unparalleled, but instead of being credited with the founding of the modern American capitalist engine, they are dismissed, canceled, and relegated to insignificance. 

Yet it is hard to dismiss this phenomenon, this genius cluster of a century ago.  Only a few times in history have such talent and remarkable creativity come together.  The Founding Fathers were such cluster - how was it possible that Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams, and Monroe came together at the same time?  What series of antecedents, variables, historical influences, and pure luck facilitated such an assemblage?  What factors predisposed the emergence of such Nineteenth Century Russian literary geniuses - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Pushkin, and others?

In any case, the era of the Robber Barons was remarkable, and a testimony to individual enterprise.  Again, in today's era of collectivism innovation, progress, and wealth generation are considered group enterprises, the contributions of labor and capital equally.  Progressivism, in part derived from Socialist/Deconstructionist neutering of inspiration, creativity, and innovation, is suspicious if not hostile to individualism.  Society and government as its agent must act to limit personal excess, control, or expansion.  Laws under progressive governments are intent on controlling private enterprise - i.e. that collection of self-motivated and self-interested individuals - and arrogating more power to the state. 

The Robber Barons fought hard against the demands of labor and any attempt by government to favor workers over owners.  Workers, while indispensable for the manual labor required to extract oil, build rail systems, and make steel, for industrialists were simply figures in an economic equation, pluses and minuses on a spread sheet manipulated to increase profit. 

While this algorithm is vilified by today's progressives, it was no more than the unfettered economic system which was the engine of wealth creation.  The expansion of Vanderbilt's rail system provided thousands of jobs for the laborers who worked the line.  Carnegie's steelworks, vital for industry, employed thousands more.  The profits from their companies were invested in Morgan's banks and then invested in further economic activities. 

 

The reforms begun by President Taft who, over the objections of industrial titans, began a series of revolutionary changes to labor practices were welcomed by most Americans; but they began a process of increased arrogation of authority to the federal government, driving spikes into the very foundation of American economic enterprise. 

Given the nature of individual endeavor - a hardwired, ineluctable drive for survival, dominance, and control - and given the capitalist nature of the American economy, there are new titans - Gates, Bezos, Jobs, Brin, and Buffett - who have engineered the same economic revolution as their Robber Baron predecessors even while under the yoke of government surveillance and intervention. While progressive governments continue to ignore this unique capitalist productivity and force more and more taxation and regulation upon them, they manage to find ways to make money. 

The point is that individual economic genius should be recognized.  It is not some assemblage of workers and community organizers that creates wealth, It is the few, the unique, and the unusual.  Collectivism inhibits growth, innovation, and enterprise.  The Robber Barons showed the way - that capitalist hunger, individual motivation, and absolute will are the sine qua non elements of economic progress.  Attempts to neutralize or neuter the men who espouse these characteristics are ill-considered at best. 

All of America was built this way.  What was more aggressively capitalist than the enterprise of big landowners in the South and West.  Such 'aggrandizement' led to the spread of economies of scale, mechanization, increased productivity and greater access to foodstuffs by the population.  Socialist-style collective farming - or the more limited preservation of the small family farm - has never worked and never will. 

The West was won just as the East in the hands of Carnegie and Rockefeller was won - through will, determination and raw personal ambition.  Again, while land reforms and some measure of social support was welcomed, attempts to redefine capitalist enterprise to fit a more 'inclusive' model, is wrong-headed. 

 

The Chicago of the 1930s was no different than that of the New York of the Robber Barons.  Al Capone and the Mafia bosses ran the city with aggressive territorialism, intimidation, violence, and absolute will.  Government - of and for the people - was irrelevant and impotent as Capone ruled the city.  Not surprising given the fact that Chicago had the deserved reputation of a hard-driving, indomitable place. 

Carl Sandburg's poem Chicago said it best not only about the city he loved but about America:

 They tell me you are wicked and I believe them

 They tell me you are wicked and I believe them

 For I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

 And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: yes, it is true I have seen the gunman  kill and go free to kill again.

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

 And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:

 Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse  and strong and cunning.

 America is not alone in this expression of individual enterprise, territorialism, and hegemonic ambition. The empires of Ancient Rome, Egypt, Persia, China, Europe, and Genghis Khan were no different. Louis XIV alone built Versailles, expanded and extended French rule, created wealth, ruled with absolute power, vision, and purpose.  Chinese emperors Wu, Wen, Taizong, and Taizu were no different in their imperial, powerful, creative rule.  Cyrus and Darius, Persian shahs of the Achaemenid Empire, ruled vast territories and laid the foundation for the expansion of Persian influence. 

All of these rulers shared common traits - ambition, confidence, will, vision, courage, and intelligence - and thanks to their enterprise, civilization was spread. 

It is a mistake to think that such traits can be modified, engineered, or eliminated. On the contrary they should be encouraged, supported, and embraced. 

Again, Sandburg in the same poem:

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
            Bareheaded,
            Shoveling,
            Wrecking,
            Planning,
            Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
            Laughing!