Dark History: The Robber Barons of the United States ️

[00:00:00]Men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and J.P.

[00:00:02]Morgan built modern America. Workers paid for it in factory fires, mine deaths, and company towns. Pull up a chair and let's talk about the dark history of the American robber barons.

[00:00:13]After the Civil War, the United States was industrializing at brutal speed.

[00:00:17]Steel mills, oil refineries, mines, factories, and company towns spread across the country. And the vast majority of their labor pool consisted of immigrants, freed black workers, poor white laborers, women, and children.

[00:00:30]John D. Rockefeller owned Standard Oil, the most powerful oil company in America. Andrew Carnegie built steel.

[00:00:37]This guy was world-famous for preaching about the importance of philanthropy in public, while his workers faced inhumanly long hours, endless wage cuts, and working conditions that would shock us today. J.P. Morgan, on the other hand, was a finance tycoon. J.P. Morgan Bank controlled most of the loans, treasury bonds, and mergers. All of these companies depended on the finance.

[00:00:58]And in 1901, J.P. Morgan would buy Carnegie's steel business to create U.S.

[00:01:03]Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation in American history. But J.P. Morgan had no intention of improving on the business model or the questionable company practices regarding the health and safety of its workers, either. Carnegie's companies, after all, had quite the reputation. In 1892, Carnegie Steel locked out union workers at Homestead, Pennsylvania during a fight over wages and union control. On July 6th, hundreds of Pinkertons arrived by barge. Workers and townspeople met them at the river, and the standoff turned into an outright gunfight. At least seven workers and three Pinkertons were killed.