The Real Robber Barons

De-Americanization of America

The Real Robber Barons

Altered truths

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            As the massive farm bill is debated, the rhetoric of condescension toward the folks who actually produce food is being ratcheted upward. Word is out all of us capitalistic agricultural cronies are siphoning the public trough dry.

            What is revealing about the issue is not the tedious, poisonous attack. What is interesting is the new number. There are now 210,000 full time farms and ranches that are producing 80% of our food and fiber. Somebody has come up with an excellent reference to this new reality. The “thin green line”, the legitimate green wave, is trending toward translucency as it is held up against the backdrop of this nation.

            Groups like the Environmental Working Group, one of those favored progressive 501C3 groups, are out there crying foul about the subsidy money these “thin green linemen” are making. What they don’t mention is for every dollar spent by Americans on food only $.12 goes to a farmer, and, for every dollar spent through the Farm Bill, .$.80 goes to social programs.

The hypocrisy is these environmental courtiers exist solely off coerced transfers. They certainly don’t peddle a good or a service that can be touched, tasted, or eaten.

            If this character predation ranting is genetic, what other historical conclusions have been contorted?

            Brilliance of spirit

            Let’s start with the educational process.

American history was thrown at us without expectation of critical thinking. The more we learn the more we recognize widespread historical editing. We didn’t learn enough from or about our Founders and Framers, and some of the most profound observations didn’t come from Americans. Many foreigners were insightful judges of our character.

            American history should start with a chapter of Alexis de Tocqueville.  A French jurist, de Tocqueville visited us in 1831. He came away with a view of America that is largely forgotten today. He was flabbergasted at the ability of “primitive and wild” pioneers to discuss with authority their young nation’s past, the workings of the Constitution, and the promises of its future. Regarding this he wrote, “I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous districts in France.”

            His conclusions came from the importance great expectations played in the American psyche. He admired the spirit of Americans who penetrated the wilderness with nothing more than a “Bible, an axe, and some newspapers.” An intimate relationship existed between that pioneer, natural law, and the preservation of freedom.

            He was fascinated, too, by the power of the American pulpit without appointed governmental roles. He concluded the American revolutionist had such a profound respect for Christian morality, he was self driven to avoid actions that were rash and unjust. Who today would even suggest such a thing?

            Finally, he was intrigued with the education of the New England states. He believed the American spirit that gushed forth was made stronger by the rarified attitude of what was being taught in those schools.

            “Every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; He is taught, moreover, the documents and the evidences of this religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution.”

            Particularly, in the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts something special was happening.

            “… it is extremely rare,” he wrote, “to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.”

            Who were the Americans of that time? Did something special happen from an outgrowth of such a unique spirit?  

            American giants

            A marker date, 1861, shall be used. That was the date Lincoln called American youth forward to march to their deaths for his cause. A subset of those young men, largely under 30, is impressive. Philip Armour, Andrew Carnegie, Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, James Hill, J.P. Morgan, and John Rockefeller were in their ‘20s. Jay Cooke, Collis Huntington and Leland Stanford were in their ‘30s.

            Most of them came directly from the de Tocqueville model. Huntington and Morgan were Connecticut Yankees by birth while Gould and Cooke were descendents from the state. Fisk was the son of a Vermont peddler. Carnegie and Hill were descendents of Scottish traders.

            We know them through our history books as villains, cheats, and ruthless capitalists who raped and pillaged their way to riches.

           The truth is all but Morgan grew up in poverty. All but Carnegie could be deemed puritanical and pious. Only Fisk was prone to drinking and weaknesses of the flesh. All demonstrated a precociousness of independence. Huntington left home at 14. Carnegie was fully employed by age 13.

          Gould came from a poor farming family in New York. Frail, he dreaded the freezing mornings when he walked barefooted to milk cows. By age 12, he was teaching himself geometry and the complexity of logarithms. That foundation would serve him well when he was building railroads.

          Only one of them, Morgan, had a silver spoon education. The rest were limited and or largely self taught. It is interesting to recognize Morgan was the tardiest of the group to engage his talents in empire building. All the others were well on their way to first fortunes before age 30. That phenomenon consistently reoccurs in true giants of any industry. Formal education has a dampening affect on real ingenuity and ultra success.  Historically, extended education tends to instill in the student one dominant trait … the propensity to defer independence and work for another man.

          Every one of them was prudent and methodical to the extreme. Generally, they were discreet, strong willed, and supremely self disciplined. Shouldn’t such traits be emulated and admired?

          Our educational system taught us to hate their names. They were profiled as complicit with greed, self serving, and wicked. They became known as the Robber Barons. In truth, they were supremely courageous, brilliant Americans who redefined civilization.  

The real Robber Barons

          Of those giants, John Rockefeller is the easiest to profile. He came from New York. He was greatly influenced by his mother. He was a devout Baptist who served the Lord and pursued his intricately defined goals unremittingly. He spent essentially nothing on himself for years. He trained one year as a bookkeeper. By 16, he was the steward of books for a produce merchant on the docks in Cleveland. By age 19, he was a partner in a grain commission company. By age 23, he sold his holdings in the latter and entered the oil business. His genius injected technologies unknown to the history of man along with a degree of stability into the industry not just in the United States, but in the world.

          In every reference, there is the obligatory mandate to condemn him by those who have no idea of the genius and the courage it took to do what he did. They were not with him in those days when he would retire to his bed to read his Bible and talk to his pillow regarding ideas that swirled in his head. Similarly, they weren’t with him when he assumed huge risk and the threat of failure in pursuing those ideas.

         The irony is his critics are the benefactors. Rockefeller left 550 million pre-WWII dollars to various charities. From those foundations and others like them came the modern anti-capitalistic groups. They are aligned under the banner of environmentalism.

        Similar stories abound in the banking, meat, railroad, and the steel businesses.  

The railroad business is the best example. History books vilify the risk takers. What they don’t divulge is the complicity of congressman who continuously offered up American treasure for the pursuit of that category’s business goals.  

        In a short review, at least 158,293,000 acres of public lands were deeded by the federal government to the railroad developers to finance and secure various links.  Along with those property rights went the underlying mineral rights. Coal, copper, oil, gold, and stone under them went along with the timber and surface rights.

        One of the so called “railroad senators”, Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts defended such actions. He said, “I give no grudging vote in giving away either money or land. I would sink $100,000,000 to build the road and do it most cheerfully, and think done a great thing for my country. What are $75,000,000 or $100,000,000 in opening a railroad across regions of this continent, that shall connect the people of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and bind us together … nothing! As to the land, I don’t begrudge them.”

        Why did he not begrudge them? Was he really so patriotic?

What Wilson failed to mention was the fact that, in every federal project of magnitude, he and many other elected representatives just happened to be committed investors.

        Patriotism my patute’ … they wanted to make sure their contrived investments succeeded!

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Giants of industry do share an inevitable weakness. They suffer from being human like the rest of us.”