Robber barons fused corrupt legislative power with personal wealth to control resources.

Evidence

These were the men who, during the “Middle Ages of American industry,” the half century of unbridled industrial expansion following the Civil War, had harnessed America’s vast mineral resources and tapped its long-stored capital to create needed industrial growth but who, to turn that growth into personal wealth, had stationed themselves at the “narrows” of production, the key points of production and distribution, and exacted tribute from the nation. They were the men who had blackmailed state legislatures and city councils by threatening to build their railroad lines elsewhere unless they received tax exemptions, outright gifts of cash—and land grants so vast that, by 1920, the elected representatives of America had turned over to the railroad barons an area the size of Texas. They were the men who had bribed and corrupted legislators—the Standard Oil Company, one historian said, did everything possible to the Pennsylvania Legislature except refine it—to let them loot the nation’s oil and ore, the men who, building their empires on the toil of millions of immigrant laborers, had kept wages low, hours long, and had crushed the unions. Their creed was summed up in two quotes: Commodore Vanderbilt’s “Law? What do I care for law? Hain’t I got the power?” and J. P. Morgan’s “I owe the public nothing.” — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 650

Categorization

• CANDY: The Vanderbilt and Morgan one-line creeds and the Standard Oil refining quip are giftedly quotable dinner-table material about Gilded Age business ethics.
• XREF: connects to: High-authoritarian elites gorged on personal wealth while their people starved; Structural corruption reflects misuse of power and privilege in society.; Wealth and power in bourgeois society come from fraud or force concealed as earnings — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 430 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Denied parkways generate vast insider wealth, creating endemic political corruption incentives. #exemplifies (0.84) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 911
• High-authoritarian elites gorged on personal wealth while their people starved #exemplifies (0.82)
• Wealth and power in bourgeois society come from fraud or force concealed as earnings #exemplifies (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 430
• Structural corruption reflects misuse of power and privilege in society. #expands (0.75)
• Political machines crushed good-government reformers efficiently using patronage power #corroborates (0.72) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 38