Staring out from their photographs, they are the archetypal tycoons: one a steely-eyed Scot with a spade-shaped white beard; another a craggy, Ichabod Crane look-alike; the third a fat cat in striped pants with a watch chain strung across an ample paunch. Today they have the look of fossilized reactionaries, but these turn-of-the-century titans were men who lived in booming, anarchic times and thrived on them. The Gilded Age was a turbulent period of unfettered capitalism and unfathomable wealth for them and their peers–an environment free of income tax, meddling regulators and other curbs on the animal spirits of freewheeling entrepreneurs. Yet these febrile decades, forever decried as the era of the robber barons, forged the tremendous engine of economic growth that propelled the country from rural isolationism in the 19th century to world industrial leadership in the 20th. Three men–Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J. Pierpont Morgan–personified this sweeping turn-of-the-century transformation. Imbued with all the greed, guile and enterprise of the age, they exhibited a bullish faith in America’s future despite the depressions, strikes and financial panics that punctuated these tumultuous years. In their different ways, each dealt a mortal blow to the small-scale economy of the early republic, fostering vast industries that forever altered the size and scope of the nation’s business. In crafting the first major multinational corporation, Standard Oil, Rockefeller provided a sneak preview of the 20th century. At his zenith, he refined, distributed and marketed nearly 90% of America’s oil. The unlikely offspring of a raffish snake-oil salesman and a strict Baptist mother, Rockefeller grew up in several rustic hamlets in upstate New York and Ohio. He began his career as an assistant bookkeeper in a Cleveland, Ohio, commodity-brokerage house in 1855 and invested in his first refinery during the Civil War. When he co-founded Standard in 1870, the oil fields of western Pennsylvania–the heart of the new industry–were in a chaotic state as gluts dragged down prices below production costs. Rockefeller then began to employ the tactics that made him a legend. Imposing his own granite discipline on the industry, he bought up rivals, modernized plants and organized the oil industry on an enduring basis. Never the curmudgeon of myth, Rockefeller had a droll, genial personality that masked supreme cunning and formidable self-control. It is certainly true that he was not the least bit squeamish about tough tactics. He colluded with railroads to gain preferential freight rates, secretly owned rivals, bribed state legislators and engaged in industrial espionage. From Cleveland, he rolled up one refining center after another until his control was absolute. He was still in his 30s, the boy wonder of American business. At the same time, he was a devout Baptist with a ministerial air, who professed to have no less a business expert than the Lord on his side.
