WESTWARD EXPANSION INDUSTRIALIZATION URBANIZATION 1870 1900
AMERICAN INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT IN THE GILDED AGE
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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businessmen who use unethical practices to be wealthy or powerful.
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a factory worker who lives in poverty.
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a businessman who shapes the economy positively, creates new jobs, gives wealth away.
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None of the above
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Detailed explanation-1: -robber baron, pejorative term for one of the powerful 19th-century American industrialists and financiers who made fortunes by monopolizing huge industries through the formation of trusts, engaging in unethical business practices, exploiting workers, and paying little heed to their customers or competition.
Detailed explanation-2: -The term robber baron is also sometimes used to describe any successful businessperson whose practices are considered unethical or unscrupulous. This behavior can include employee or environmental abuse, stock market manipulation, or deliberately restricting output to charge higher prices.
Detailed explanation-3: -These practices included exerting control over natural resources, influencing high levels of government, paying subsistence wages, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.
Detailed explanation-4: -Captains of Industry and Robber Barons The wealthy elite of the late 19th century consisted of industrialists who amassed their fortunes as so-called robber barons and captains of industry. Both can be defined as business tycoons, but there was a significant difference in the way they made their fortunes.
Detailed explanation-5: -Cornelius Vanderbilt He was the first person to be called robber baron, in an article in “The New York Times” on February 9, 1859. Vanderbilt worked his way up through the shipping industry before going into business for himself, becoming one of America’s biggest steamship operators.