Robber baron

Examples of Robber baron in the following topics:

• Robber Barons and the Captains of Industry

  • The term "robber baron" was applied to powerful nineteenth-century industrialists who were viewed as having used questionable practices to amass their wealth.
  • "Robber baron" is a derogatory term used for some powerful nineteenth-century American businessmen.
  • It combines the notions of criminality ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy ("baron").
  • Some nineteenth-century industrialists who were called "captains of industry" overlap with those called "robber barons," however.
  • Identify the qualities of a robber baron and a captain of industry

• Deregulation

  • This occurred with the railroad industry following the era of the so-called "robber barons".

• Freedom, Inequality, and Democracy in the Gilded Age

  • It created for the first time a class of the super-rich "captains of industry," the "Robber Barons," whose network of business, social, and family connections ruled a largely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant social world that possessed clearly defined boundaries.

• The Gilded Age

  • Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt of the Vanderbilt family, and the prominent Astor family were labeled as "robber barons" by the public, who felt they cheated to get their money and lorded it over the common people.

• The Railroad Strikes

  • Thomas Alexander Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, often considered one of the first robber barons, suggested that the strikers should be given "a rifle diet for a few days and see how they like that kind of bread. " However, local law enforcement officers refused to fire on the strikers.

• Introduction to the Four Functions of Governmen

  • For most people the general undesirability of private-involuntary associations (robber-victim, air polluter-victim) and of compound-involuntary ones (the Nazi extermination campaign against Jews, military conscription, arbitrary economic regulations) is implicit in the examples we have adduced.

• The Magna Carta

  • In 1215 some of the most important barons engaged in open rebellion against their king.
  • It promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of twenty-five barons.
  • John was already personally unpopular with a number of the barons, many of whom owed money to the Crown, and little trust existed between the two sides.
  • Here the rebels presented John with their draft demands for reform, the "Articles of the Barons."
  • As a means of preventing war, the Magna Carta was a failure, rejected by most of the barons, and was legally valid for no more than three months.

• Voluntary, Involuntary, and Trust Associations

  • A grossly involuntary association exists, for example, when the victim hands over his wallet in response to the robber's threats.
  • This association involves a sanction that will be imposed unless the victim cooperates, and if the victim could have nothing at all to do with the robber he would gladly do so.
  • But there is no such choice, for their relationship has been unilaterally established by the robber.

• Justification of Government

  • If the worst that could be done to a robber were to boycott him (withdrawn inducements) and denounce him (power of pen), the price of robbery would not be high enough to deter it.
  • Anarchists, of course, might reply that these involuntary associations—produced in protecting people from robbers—are not as bad as those that would otherwise be produced by the robbers.

• Tombs

  • Wealthier Egyptians could afford to be buried with jewelry, furniture, and other valuables, which made them targets of tomb robbers.
  • Because of the riches included in graves, tombs were a tempting site for grave-robbers.
  • The increasing size of the pyramids is in part credited to protecting the valuables within, and many other tombs were built into rock cliffs in an attempt to thwart grave robbers.