Robber Barons and Silicon Sultans

choi

Self-made wealth in America  |  Robber Barons and Silicon Sultans; Today’s tech billionaires have a lot in common with a previous generation of capitalist titans—perhaps too much for their own good. Economist, Jan 3, 2015.
www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... neration-capitalist

Note & Quote:
(1) robber baron (industrialist)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
(appeared in North American periodical literature as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine; section 1 History: Medieval German lords)

(2) "In 1848 John J Astor, a merchant trader, was America’s richest man with $20m (now $545m). By the time the United States entered the first world war, John D Rockefeller had become its first billionaire."
(a) John Jacob Astor
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jacob_Astor
(1753-1848; born in Walldorf, near Heidelberg; moved in 1779 to London and in 1784 to US; section 4.1 Fortune from fur trade; then real estate)
(b) John D Rockefeller
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller
(1839 – 1937; "became the world's richest man and the first American worth more than a billion dollars, controlling 90% of all oil in the United States at his peak. Adjusting for inflation, his fortune upon his death in 1937 stood at $336 billion, accounting for more than 1.5% of the national economy, making him the richest person in history")

(3) "In the 50 years since Data General introduced the first mini-computers in the late 1960s, a group of entrepreneurs have spearheaded the transformation of an industrial age into an information society * * * When he died in 1992, Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, was probably America’s richest man with $8 billion. Today Bill Gates occupies that position with $82.3 billion."
(a) mini-computer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer
("The definition of minicomputer is vague with the consequence that there are a number of candidates for the first minicomputer. An early and highly successful minicomputer was Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) 12-bit PDP-8 [launched in 1964] * * * DEC gave rise to a number of minicomputer companies along Massachusetts Route 128, including Data General, Wang Laboratories")
(b) Data General
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General
(1868-1999 (acquired by EMC Corporation); section 1 Origin, founding and early years: Nova and SuperNova; photo caption: "headquarters in Westboro, Massachusetts")

(4) "Rockefeller once controlled 80% of the world’s supply of oil * * * Henry Ford [1863 – 1947], the youngest of the robber barons"

choi

(5) “the robbers and sultans have more in common than most: they are the Übermenschen of the past 200 years of American capitalism”

German English dictionary
* Mensch (noun masculine; plural: Menschen): “man”
* Übermensch (noun masculine; plural: Übermenschen) “superman”

(6) "Railway barons such as Leland Stanford and EH Harriman laid down more than 200,000 miles of track, creating a national market. Andrew Carnegie replaced iron with much more versatile steel."
(a)
(i) Leland Stanford
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford
(1824 – 1893; Many consider him a robber baron; president of Southern Pacific and, beginning in 1861, Central Pacific [both now part of Union Pacific Railroad Co])
(ii) First Transcontinental Railroad
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad
(constructed between 1863 and 1869; The rail line was built by three private companies)
(b) EH Harriman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman
(1848 – 1909; Union Pacific Railroad)

(7) "Both [robbers and sultans] relied on the relentless logic of economies of scale. The robber barons started with striking innovations * * * but their real genius lay in their ability to 'scale up' these innovations to squeeze the competition.

(8) “Alfred Chandler, the doyen of American business historians, summed up the hundred years following the civil war as ‘ten years of competition and 90 years of oligopoly.’”
(a) Alfred D Chandler, Jr
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_D._Chandler,_Jr.
(1918-2007)
(b) I fail to find out where the quotation comes from--a book?

(9) “A century ago the barons had a lock on transport and energy.”  

As well as steel.

choi

(10) “The silicon sultans are some of the few businesspeople who can compete with the robber barons in terms of ownership. Carnegie made a point of always owning more than half of his company. Today most firms are widely held by large numbers of shareholders: the largest individual shareholder in Exxon, the grandchild of Standard Oil, is Rex Tillerson, the company’s chief executive. He owns 0.05% of the stock. But tech is different. Together Google’s two founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and its executive chairman, Eric Schmidt (who also sits on the board of The Economist’s parent company) control two-thirds of the voting stock [as opposed to ordinary shares] in Google. Mark Zuckerberg owns 20% of Facebook shares but almost all of its ‘class B’ shares, which have ten times the voting power of ordinary shares.”

Regarding “Exxon, the grandchild of Standard Oil.”
(a) Standard Oil
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
(1870-1911; Headquarters: Cleveland, Ohio (1870–1885), Manhattan (1885–1911))
(b)
(i) Exxon Corporation. Encyclopaedia Britannica, undated
www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/199234/Exxon-Corporation
("In 1911 the US Supreme Court ordered it to divest itself of 33 of its American subsidiaries. * * * In 1926 the New Jersey company introduced the trade name Esso (representing the abbreviation for Standard Oil, 'SO') and applied it to many of its products and companies. Other Standard Oil companies, however, later contested the name in the courts and succeeded in barring its use in several states. Thus, in 1972, Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) became Exxon Corporation")
(ii) Our history. ExxonMobil, undated (under the heading "About Us")
corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/company/about-us/history/overview
(“1911  Following a landmark US Supreme Court decision, Standard Oil breaks up into 34 unrelated companies, including Jersey Standard [Oil], Socony and Vacuum Oil; 1926  Embodying the phonetic rendition of the initials ‘S’ and ‘O’ in Standard Oil, Jersey Standard brings out a new blend of fuel under the trade name Esso; 1972  Jersey Standard officially changes its name to Exxon Corporation; [In] 1999, Exxon and Mobil join to form Exxon Mobil Corporation”)
(c) Mobil
(i) Mobil
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobil

Quote:

"Following the break-up of Standard Oil in 1911, the Standard Oil Company of New York, or Socony, was founded, along with 33 other successor companies. In 1920, the company registered the name 'Mobiloil' as a trademark.

"In 1931, Socony merged with Vacuum Oil to form Socony-Vacuum.
(ii) History of Mobil in the UK. ExxonMobil, undated (under the heading ExxonMobil in the UK: about us")
www.exxonmobil.com/UK-English/about_history_mobil.aspx
("Records are vague but indicate that whoever first suggested Mobiloil was motivated by the Latin word 'mobilis' - meaning capable of being moved - and by the new horseless carriages that the product lubricated")

choi

(11) “The tech titans are not as rich in relative terms as the robber barons. When Rockefeller retired in the early 20th century, his net worth was equal to about one-thirtieth [~ 3.3%; compare (2)(b) above] of America’s annual GNP. When Mr Gates stepped aside as CEO of Microsoft in 2000 his net worth might have equalled 1/130th of it. But they nevertheless represent the most significant concentration of business wealth in the world. In 2013 34% of billionaire-entrepreneurs aged 40 or under made their money in high tech.”

(12) “Andrew Carnegie, who had risen from bobbin-boy to steel magnate in 17 years, worried about the contrast between ‘the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the labourer.’ But they [bigshots] have taken their strictures only so far. Carnegie bought a ruined castle in Scotland, Skibo, for $85,000 and maintained a staff of 85.
(a) Andrew Carnegie
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie
(1835 – 1919; born in Scotland; together with his family moved in 1848 to Allegheny [that city was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907], Pennsylvania; “His first job at age 13 in 1848 was as a bobbin boy [qv], changing spools of thread in a cotton mill 12 hours a day, 6 days a week in a Pittsburgh cotton factory”/ section 1.2 Industrialist)

A bobbin and a spool are similar. Their difference, if any, I do not know.
(b) Skibo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skibo_Castle

* steading (n): “chiefly Scottish :  the service buildings or area of a farm”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/steading

(13) “That the tech barons have attracted only a fraction of the ire of the robber barons is not surprising: with relatively small, highly paid workforces, they are not involved in the battles with unions that turned the robber barons into ogres. In 1901 US Steel, Carnegie’s creation, employed a quarter of a million men—more than the army and navy combined. Today Google employs more than 50,000, Facebook 8,000 and Twitter 3,500. The electronic toys the tech barons make also inspire more affection among consumers than the commodities or infrastructure that the robber barons produced.”

(14) “Despite these growing worries, there is no sign that the trend will reverse. For all the dramatic changes between the railway age and the silicon age, America still has the right formula for producing entrepreneurs. It sucks in talent from all over the world: Carnegie was the son of an impoverished Scottish textile weaver, Mr Brin the son of Russian immigrants. It tolerates failure: the list of barons who failed at least once before they succeeded includes RH Macy, HJ Heinz, Henry Ford and Steve Jobs. And it encourages ambition. Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner put their finger on an enduring national trait in ‘The Gilded Age’ (1873): ‘In America nearly every man has his dream, his pet scheme, whereby he is to advance himself socially or pecuniarily.’ Walt Whitman did the same: he celebrated ‘the extreme business energy, and this almost maniacal appetite for wealth prevalent in the United States.’ And the ability to produce such men has allowed America, once again, to pull ahead of the rest of the West.”
(a) Rowland Hussey Macy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowland_Hussey_Macy
(1822-1877; in 1858 at Manhattan "founded the department store chain RH Macy and Company")
(b) Gilded Age
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age