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THE ROBBER BARONS OF THE 19TH CENTURY
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Below is one of our free research papers on THE ROBBER BARONS OF THE 19TH CENTURY. If the term paper below is not exactly what you're looking for, you can search our essay database for other topics.
THE ROBBER BARONS OF THE 19TH CENTURY
Cornelius Vanderbuilt... ... an ill educated, ungrammatical, coarse, and ruthless, but clear-visioned man. He started his millions in the steamboat industry. As a young boy he went to work for a small steamboat owner, Thomas Gibbons. After learning how to operate a steamboat, he designed one and persuaded Gibbons to build it. Vanderbuilt's slogans of low prices for superior rates attracted many customers. But an unknown to the passengers was that the food and drink on the boat was extravagantly overpriced. Later Vanderbuilt saw that real money was in the railroad business. He established a shipping-land transit across Nicaragua, in response to the California gold rush. In 1873 he was the first to connect New York and Chicago by rail. During all the money making, farmers were feeling the rear end of it all. Hit hard by the depression of the 1870s, they protested against "railroad bankruptcy". The government then stepped in and tried to control the railroad monopolies. By winning the Wabash case, it proclaimed that individual states had no power to regulate interstate commerce. Congress took it further by establishing the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887. It prohibited rebates and pools and required the railroads to publish their rates openly. It also forbade unfair discrimination against shippers and outlawed charging more for a short haul then a long one over the same line. Andrew Carnegie... ... was known as the ste...
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