USA HISTORY

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: -"Robber baron” is a term used frequently in the 19th century during America’s Gilded Age to describe successful industrialists whose business practices were often considered ruthless or unethical. Included in the list of so-called robber barons are Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John D. Rockefeller.

Detailed explanation-3: -The term “robber baron” dates back to the Middle Ages and carries a negative connotation. Robber barons typically employed ethically questionable methods to eliminate their competition and develop a monopoly in their industry. Often, they had little empathy for workers.

Detailed explanation-4: -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-5: -Robber Barons used the ideas of Social Darwinism, the notion that corporate consolidations provided social mobility and opportunity, and the great economic prosperity available to justify the existence of monopolies.