The Robber Barons

[The following is Episode 13 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

                He had come to the United States in 1848, when he was a boy, only twelve years of age, with only five years of schooling.  His father, a weaver, had left their native Scotland, with his family, after the widespread use of a new invention, the power loom, had robbed weavers of their profession.  They settled in Pennsylvania, poor and destitute, staking their future on the promise of a new life in a new land.  The boy would never return to school.  He found immediate employment at a mill, where he earned $2 a week, and his dedication to his work brought him rapid advancement.  A year later, he was working as a clerk at a telegraph office, and his penchant for rapidly memorizing faces and addresses, to speed up delivery of messages, led to even more success, including wage increases which raised his salary to $20 a month.  He learned Morse code, and found a new career as a telegraph operator, and in 1856 made his first investment, purchasing ten shares of stock in a message and freight delivery service.  Two years later, he invested in the new invention of sleeping cars for railroads, and exclaimed, after reaping a substantial return, “Blessed be the man who invented sleep.”  In 1859, at the age of twenty-four, he was made superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania railroad, and two years later, was investing in oil fields in Pennsylvania.  By 1865, he was at the head of a bridge-building company, as well as an iron company, both of which he had formed in partnership with friends.  Profiting from a high demand for iron after the end of the American Civil War, as well as innovations in production and sales implemented by his employees, his fortunes continued to grow.  It was with some reluctance that he expanded his operations into the making of steel, complaining that it took more time and was costlier to manufacture than iron, but it was in steel that he would find his greatest and most enduring successes.  And, in 1901, when he finally sold his steel empire and retired, it would be for the sum of 250 million dollars.  From his humble beginnings as an impoverished, poorly educated Scottish immigrant to his phenomenal rise as a captain of industry, Andrew Carnegie would come to symbolize the awesome, transforming power of the industrial revolution, as well as the titanic, unforgiving power of America’s robber barons.

            The industrial revolution was like none other in human history.  It was not a rebellion of peoples, not a political or social upheaval like the American and French Revolutions.  But its outcome would fundamentally change the lives of individuals at all levels of society, would radically transform the balance of power among nations, and would force philosophers, theologians, and scientists to rethink the role of man’s place in the world, and civilization’s ultimate destiny.  Like other revolutions, it had been brought on by a number of distinct causes, which collectively prepared the way for a sweeping change or upheaval.  One of the most important had been the Crusades, during the Middle Ages, when Christian armies fought to regain the Holy Land from the Muslims.  While the Crusades had ultimately failed, they had opened new avenues for trade between the peoples of Europe and the Middle East.  The general growth of trade, in turn, had given the merchant a greater role in society, had promoted the growth of a money economy, and had paved the way for the downfall of feudalism.  Another cause, which also promoted the growth of trade, had been the age of exploration.  The travels of Marco Polo in China had brought West and East together, while the exploits of Christopher Columbus and other Portuguese and Spanish Explorers introduced Europe to the New World.  The Renaissance, which began in Italy, cleared away the smothering dominance of religious dogmatism and introduced a new spirit of learning, which laid the foundation for scientific inquiry and experimentation.  This, in turn, led to technological progress, particularly in Britain in the eighteenth century, where James Watt invented the steam engine, and other British inventors introduced mechanical means of production, such as the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, and the power loom, that would ultimately make the factory system possible.

  

            It was in Britain, in fact, that the industrial revolution first made its appearance, around the year 1760.  Factories had already existed there and in other civilized countries for centuries, but these were generally just large workshops, where laborers worked independently at manual tasks or with the aid of simple tools.  And in spite of the growing demand for manufactured goods, employers generally preferred an alternative approach to the factory system, in which raw materials would be provided to laborers, who would then work in their own homes and return finished articles in exchange for their wages.  But the new machines that were being invented to produce large quantities of manufactured goods were too large and expensive to be put into individual homes, and the factory system soon became the generally favored method of production.

            But when the industrial revolution came to the United States of America, in the nineteenth century, it took on a distinctly American character.  For here was a young country, forged in the crucible of revolution, with a steely determination inspired by its idealistic beginnings.  Its boundaries were expanding, as the strange, forbidding, sometimes terrifying, and often-hostile territories yielded to the relentless push of the pioneer.  America was creating its legend as it was living it, and its heroes, its own versions of Gilgamesh, Moses, and Arthur, became figures who loomed larger than life just decades after they lived, instead of centuries.  The tales of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, of George Washington, Ben Franklin, and the Founding Fathers, of Johnny Appleseed and Daniel Boone, along with mythical heroes such as Paul Bunyan, illustrated the qualities of the emerging American hero: brave, determined, inquisitive, ambitious, ready to take on Herculean tasks, who could occasionally be relentless and uncompromising, but also gentle and compassionate.  This was a land of striking contrasts: it’s people were the heirs to a centuries-old tradition of European civilization, and yet they were forced to return, at times, to a near primitive encounter with nature as they staked out a new livelihood.  They were steeped in the ideals of a fundamentalist, and generally tolerant religious outlook, committed to the American experiment of democracy and political liberty, and proud of their individualism, and yet were ruthless in their unyielding encroachment upon native lands, and often indifferent to the plight of the African slave.  And while they took pride in their country and its new form of government, in their fervor to succeed, and to live out their personal visions of success, they would often evade the law, usurp it, or try to limit its reach.  It was within this culture of contrasts, in the wake of the industrial revolution, that a new figure would rise to take his place in the pantheon of American legends: the tycoon.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

            One of the earliest incarnations of this new breed of American titan was Cornelius Vanderbilt.  Born in Staten Island, New York in 1794, he embarked on his career at the age of 16, when he created a ferry service to shuttle passengers and freight between Staten Island and Manhattan.  By his early twenties, he owned a fleet of schooners, and in 1829 he bought his first steamship.  Over the next two decades, his expanding line of steamships, which he continually improved while aggressively undercutting the rates of his competitors, made “Commodore” Vanderbilt an unrivaled success.  When the California Gold Rush hit in 1849, he moved quickly to find his own treasure, in transporting prospectors from east to west with his new land-and-sea line.  Seeing the great promise and potential of the railroad, he sold his steamboats in 1862, and within five years had acquired a railroad company of his own, eventually establishing a direct rail route from New York to Chicago.  This same pattern would play itself out in the life story of John D. Rockefeller.  Born in Richford, New York in 1839, he also began his career at the age of 16, as a bookkeeper.  But he would not remain in this relatively humble station for long.  Within three years, he had purchased a partnership in a small company, using savings that he’d accumulated during that time.  In 1862, the same year that Cornelius Vanderbilt had hitched his star to the railroad, Rockefeller found his own calling in oil.  He partnered with Sam Andrews, an inventor who had discovered a more efficient process for refining crude petroleum, and eight years later, formed the Standard Oil Company.  Like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller was driven by an ambition to excel, to dwarf his rivals through innovation and aggressive business tactics, and he relentlessly sought out opportunities to enhance his competitive advantage.  But this unbridled ambition often led him along dark and controversial paths.  When he and his associates organized the largest oil refiners in Cleveland into the South Improvement Company in 1872, and then attempted to win for them preferential treatment with the railroads, there was a public outcry against the arrangement.  The refiners eventually yielded to this public opposition, but not before they had succeeded in buying out most of their competitors.  Rockefeller himself was in control of 90% of all refineries in the country by 1878.  In 1882, he created the Standard Oil Trust, the first of its kind in America, an organization that behaved like a corporation, but, as a trust, placed itself above the laws that traditionally governed corporations.  Here, at the summit of his career, Rockefeller had a virtual monopoly over the oil industry, and to secure his domain, he had attempted to shield it from the laws that might interfere with his sovereignty.  The Ohio Supreme Court declared the trust illegal in 1892.  The empire of Standard Oil would be dismembered, but its emperor would eventually retire a very wealthy man.  During his lifetime, his personal fortune would nearly reach one billion dollars.

John Davison Rockefeller

            Although Andrew Carnegie, who came to this country as an impoverished immigrant from Scotland, had much more humbler beginnings than that of Vanderbilt and Rockefeller, his career would exhibit all of the characteristics common to an American captain of industry.  From a very early age, he exhibited drive, initiative, and an untiring energy directed towards personal success.  At the earliest opportunity, he sought to become an entrepreneur, an organizer, and an owner, getting his income from profits rather than from wages.  And he found his path to success through innovation, seeking out new processes, inventions, and markets that would place him at the forefront of an industry.  When he established his niche as a dominant figure, he ruled it as a virtual emperor, using aggressive tactics to stifle or eliminate competition, and even trying to operate outside of the laws and conventions that bound the common man.  But at the pinnacle of his success, after reaping profits of an unparalleled magnitude, he redirected much of his energy to philanthropy, donating millions of dollars to charitable causes and institutions.  Carnegie, in fact, became the archetype of the American business tycoon.  His story, more than those of any of his peers, illustrated both the glory and the infamy of the robber baron. 

Andrew Carnegie

            Carnegie’s empire would reach its pinnacle through the efforts of another man who would loom large in his legend, Charles M. Schwab.  Schwab had also had humble beginnings – in fact, as a youth, he had once tended Carnegie’s horses.  But in 1881, he was working in one of Carnegie’s companies as an engineer’s assistant, and by 1892 had risen to the rank of general superintendent at the Carnegie steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania.   On the evening of December 12, 1900, at a dinner held in his honor, he would make history.  In attendance were some of the leading members of the New York financial community, along with other prominent businessmen, including H. H. Rogers, a close associate of John D. Rockefeller and president of the Standard Oil Company.  Seated to Schwab’s right was one of the most eminent financiers of all, John Pierpont Morgan.  At the end of the dinner, Schwab was invited to give a speech.  Standing before the assembled audience of some of the most powerful men in America, he began by saying that he could only talk about steel, because he was incapable of talking about anything else.  He spoke for half an hour, and in his speech he shared a vision of the great potential that lay unrealized within his industry.  Demand for steel was increasing, he said, and would continue to do so.  And while the Carnegie company had succeeded, through its sheer size, in minimizing production costs, greater reductions in prices were necessary to capture the world market.  This could only be attained, he said, by more integration, and the reduction of wasteful competition.  New plants needed to be constructed, in more favorable locations, and older, more obsolete and less favorably placed plants abandoned.  In a word, what was needed was a single, national steel corporation, unlike any the world had ever seen, a giant trust, coordinating the efforts of every production facility across the country.  It is said that when Schwab had begun his speech, J. P. Morgan had picked up a cigar, preparing to light it for an after-dinner smoke.  When Schwab had finished, Morgan was still holding the cigar but had never lit it, having been mesmerized by what he’d heard.  After the cheers had subsided, J. P. Morgan pulled Schwab aside, to talk with him privately.  Three months later, the United States Steel Corporation was formed, the largest industrial corporation in the world, with a capitalization of over one billion dollars.  The dinner which had led to its creation was later described by a critic and historian as “one of those informal parliaments” where “without the interference of police or senators the issues of heavy industry could be faced peacefully and a balance of power effected.”  It was a stark demonstration of the new realities of the industrial revolution, that in the modern age, capitalists played a prominent role in the shaping of the welfare and destiny of a nation, a role that rivaled or eclipsed the ones played by the leaders of the church, the military, and even the state itself.

John Pierpont Morgan

            In addition to the steel industry that he created, and his substantial charitable contributions, Carnegie left one other, remarkable legacy.  It began with a visit from a young law student, who had found a job to support himself through school by writing articles for a magazine on the rich and successful in America.  He was given an assignment to interview Andrew Carnegie, and visited him at his office.  After a three-hour interview, Carnegie invited the young man to dinner at his home, and it was here that he made a most unusual proposition.  He told the young man that the world was in need of a philosophy of success, a summary of the principles by which he and others like him had accomplished great things, and amassed large fortunes.  But, he continued, such a philosophy would require twenty years of patient investigation, which would consist of interviewing the most successful persons in the world.  If this young man were willing to take on such a momentous task, Carnegie said, then he could provide him with letters of introduction to such persons.  But there was a condition.  The writer would receive no compensation for his work, no support of any kind beyond the letters of introduction.  He would be expected to demonstrate the effectiveness of the principles of success which he discovered by applying them to himself.

            The young writer, Napoleon Hill, accepted the challenge.  For the next twenty years, he interviewed many of Carnegie’s peers in business, such as Henry Ford, Charles Schwab, Harvey Firestone, and John D. Rockefeller, along with great inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, and the American presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and William Howard Taft.  The philosophy that came out of these endeavors has appeared and reappeared in books on personal development and business success for nearly seventy years since the publication of Napoleon Hill’s most influential book, Think and Grow Rich, and they have become the staple of career counselors, success gurus, and motivational speakers to this day.  At the core of Napoleon Hill’s success philosophy was a simple but powerful idea, that a person’s thoughts and beliefs have a pervading influence, not just over the circumstances of his own life, but over those of his fellow human beings, in ways that he cannot conceive or imagine.  Hence, to succeed, one must have a clear objective and purpose, and a passion for obtaining that objective which includes a willingness to sacrifice for it, along with a belief that its attainment is possible.  But the power of an individual’s thoughts, Napoleon Hill contended, is multiplied many times over when it is joined in a cooperative alliance with those of others who work in a spirit of harmony to attain mutually desired goals.  And, beyond this, there is an even greater power, that Hill referred to as Infinite Intelligence, a type of universal storehouse of Divine power and knowledge, which is available to all who develop the capacity to open their minds to its influence.  This philosophy, with its emphasis on personal initiative, and teamwork, coupled with a reverential if somewhat pragmatic acknowledgement of a higher power, had a modern, but distinctly American, cast.  In a world where the science of evolution was challenging religious faith in the traditional ideas of Creationism and Christian altruism, a recipe for success, for making oneself a survivor in an increasingly competitive world, seemed to be a direct answer to the prayer of modern man.  But the success philosophy of which this recipe was a part appealed to principles characteristic of the classic American Protestant ethic, which extolled the virtues of self-reliance and hard work.  It embodied the American dream, in which anybody could become a success, if only he made himself worthy of it.  And yet, in spite of its emphasis on personal power and material reward, it still made way for a higher power, although now this higher power was not some supreme moral agent or lawgiver, but a power in a distinctly modern sense, a source of energy and inspiration for those who knew how to utilize it.

            But there was a dark side to this new culture of ambition, symbolized by the nineteenth century American tycoons.  For in spite of their reliance on invention, on new technologies, and on capital, a critical component in their success continued to be labor.  But the modern laborer, consigned to working in the new factory system, often found that he had little more rights and privileges than the ancient serf.  In theory, he could negotiate his wages, based upon the tried and true principles of supply and demand.  In practice, however, he was often a hostage to whatever particular industry dominated his local community, forced to work for the wages that it offered, because there was no viable alternative.  His only recourse was unionization, and collective bargaining, a system that was viewed as pernicious and subversive by the capitalists who ran his factories.

            Carnegie was no exception, although in public pronouncements he professed to support the right of his laborers to organize.  In an essay that he wrote in 1866, he said, “The right of working men to combine and to form trade unions is no less sacred than the right of the manufacturer to enter into associations and conferences with his fellows. . . . My experience has been that trade unions upon the whole are beneficial both to labor and to capital.”  But his actions provided a stark contrast to his words.  In the very next year, when iron workers held a strike at one of his plants in Pittsburgh, he brought in foreign workers to take their place, and in 1884, he used strikebreakers at a mill in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, as he did over the next three years at the same plant.  But the most memorable conflict with union workers occurred at his steel mills in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892.  At that time, their union, the Amalgamated Association, had submitted modest demands, asking only for a renewal of their existing contract.  Carnegie sent a stark message to Henry Clay Frick, chairman of the board of directors of his operations, which read: “As the vast majority of our employees are Non-Union, the Firm has decided that the minority must give place to the majority.  These works therefore will be necessarily Non-Union after the expiration of the present agreement.”  Frick rejected the union proposal, and insisted that wages be reduced.  The union attempted to compromise, proposing a more modest pay cut, but Frick would not yield.  On June 25, he posted notices announcing that the company would henceforth bargain only with individual workers, but not with the union.  What followed was one of the most momentous, and most tragic, confrontations between labor and business in American history.

Henry Clay Frick

            Homestead was a steel town, and the wages paid by the local mill literally sustained the community, by employing a large segment of its population.  A lockout by upper management was a threat to the livelihood of everyone in Homestead, and everyone prepared for the coming siege.  When the company began closing down parts of the mill at the end of June in 1892, locking out 1100 employees, the remaining 2,400 refused to come to work on the first of July. In the early morning hours of Wednesday, July 6, two barges, filled with three hundred strikebreakers hired by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, sailed up the Monongahela River to the mills.  A steam whistle blew, sending out a general alarm to the strikers and their sympathizers to prepare for action.  Men, women, and children rushed to the bank of the river, carrying guns, rocks, sticks, or anything that they could use as a weapon.  For the first time since the strike had begun, the workers stormed the plant.  No one knows who fired the first shot, but during the next twelve hours a bloody gunfight ensued, that left many casualties on both sides.  When the Pinkertons finally surrendered, a mob of angry townspeople descended upon them, pulling reluctant stragglers from the barge, and forcing them to run a gantlet as they herded them into town.  Workers, sympathizers, and even housewives and children beat them with sticks and pelted them with stones.  Years later, a historian sympathetic to the steel industry, in describing the Homestead strike, would write, “American workmen seemed inspired with the French Reign of Terror!”  Carnegie, who was in Scotland during the conflict, after learning of the details, telegrammed Frick with blunt words of encouragement.  “Never employ one of these rioters,” he wrote.  “Let grass grow over works.”  When the local sheriff tried to restore order in Homestead on July 8, he could find none of its citizens to deputize.  Even businessmen refused to support him.  The strikers, in their victory, had gained the attention of the entire nation, and of Europe as well.  They had brought the  Homestead Works, and Homestead itself, under their control, and made a landmark stand for labor.  But their victory would prove to be short-lived.  On July 12, the Pennsylvania militia, equipped with rifles, bayonets, and Gatling guns, arrayed themselves into lines of battle on a hill overlooking Homestead, and trained their artillery on the town below.  Four thousand more troops appeared across the river.  Representatives from the town made their way up the hill to talk to General Snowden, the militia’s commander.  “We come as representing the citizens of Homestead as well as the Amalgamated strikers,” one of the representatives said.  “I am always glad to meet the citizens, the good citizens, of any community,” the general replied.  “We have been peaceful and law-abiding citizens,” said the representative.  “No you have not” replied the general.  “You have not been peaceful and law-abiding citizens.”  In the days, weeks, and months that followed, under the watchful protection of the occupying troops, the Carnegie Company regained control of its mill.  By the end of July, hundreds of strikebreakers were at work in the plant.  At the end of August, Henry Clay Frick declared that the mill was in good working order, and the strike a thing of the past.  The militia was gone by October 13, and on November 21, the strike was officially called off by the union itself.  But by then it had become irrelevant.  Most of the skilled union laborers who had worked there would never return, having been permanently blacklisted by the company.  In the wake of the failed uprising were ruined lives, and a general sickening sense of despair and hopelessness.  In a sense, the entire town itself was a casualty of the conflict.

Pennsylvania State Militia Marching to the Homestead Strike

            But Carnegie, too, had paid a price for his role in the Homestead affair.  He was roundly condemned by clergymen, newspapermen, and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.  Shortly after the strike, The St. Louis Dispatch wrote: “Three months ago Andrew Carnegie was a man to be envied.  Today his is an object of mingled pity and contempt. . . . Ten thousand ‘Carnegie Public Libraries’ would not compensate the country for the direct and indirect evils resulting from the Homestead Lockout.”  The saga of Homestead, more than any other, exemplified the paradox of the new American tycoon.  He was a creator of new industries, and of new jobs for thousands of employees.  His successes literally rebuilt society, creating a new infrastructure that supported a higher quality of life.  And, after reaching the pinnacle of his career, he was a great philanthropist as well, donating millions of dollars to charitable causes, creating foundations dedicated to altruism, and founding libraries, schools, and other public-spirited institutions.  His life served as a model for a new American archetype, the self-made man, exemplifying the spirit of individualism, initiative, competitiveness, and the drive to succeed and rise to the top, regardless of the circumstances of life that one is born into.  But there was a dark side to this archetype.  American tycoons were generally ruthless in their drive to succeed, employing questionable tactics to stifle competition, if they didn’t attempt to buy out the competition outright.  They often shirked the law, as well as unwritten codes of conduct and fair play, if these were perceived as obstacles to their success.  And their ruthlessness was often directed not just against their competitors, but also against their own employees, if these attempted to demand a fairer wage or better working conditions through collective bargaining.  In the shadows of their empires were the wreckage of ruined lives – competitors driven out of business, and employees blacklisted for demanding fairer treatment.  And when their empires began to fall, as they inevitably did, entire cities and local economies became casualties in the wake of failed mills and factories that once were focal points of economic life: Homestead, Pennsylvania, Flint, Michigan, and Gary, Indiana, among others.

            The Homestead strike was followed, over the next decade, by other bitter conflicts between organized labor and management, often marred by violence, in the coal and railroad industries, that provided a catalyst for the growing labor movement.  But there were other reactions, in the nineteenth century, to the imposing power of the capitalist, including the emergence of state socialism, an ideology which believed that only government, by controlling the means of production of vital resources and affecting a redistribution of wealth, could protect the common citizen from exploitation by the owners of capital.  A more radical offshoot of socialism was anarchism, which espoused organized resistance and terrorism as weapons against domination by both business and government.  During the Homestead strike in 1892, Henry Clay Frick was nearly assassinated by an anarchist, but survived the attack.  Nine years later, an anarchist’s bullet would claim the life of U.S. President William McKinley.  Ironically, the death of McKinley, who was generally perceived as a friend to capitalism and the American business community, would come to symbolize, for many, the end of the golden age of industrial expansion.  But long before McKinley took office, a reaction in the government was already setting in against the growing power of monopolies and corporate trusts.  In 1890, two years before the Homestead Strike, Congress enacted the Sherman Antitrust Act, which made illegal, in its words, “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce, among the several States, or with foreign nations.”  In the decades that followed, other anti-trust legislation would be passed which would strengthen the power of the government to combat monopolies and preserve competition.  A new era had dawned in American history, characterized by active involvement on the part of legislators and the regulatory bodies that they created, to protect citizens from abuses by big business.  During the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, for example, eight corporations would be dissolved as the result of anti-trust actions.  Government regulation of business became a permanent feature of American life, a feature that was praised by some, condemned by others.  To its supporters, the system represented the setting off of one power, under the direct control of the people, against another, which was in the hands of an elite business class.  But to its detractors, it was simply replacing one potential evil – exploitation of labor and consumers by business – with another, much more dangerous one – domination of the citizen, in all walks of life, by an increasingly powerful state.  The debate has continued to this day, in all civilized nations of Europe and America.  And although this debate has raged on for the past century, large powerful corporations continue to thrive, with the capability of influencing economic, social, and political events throughout the world in ways that were unimaginable during the era of the robber barons, while the government of the United States, on the other hand, continues to grow in both magnitude and power, expanding its control over all facets of the lives of its people.  Meanwhile, the common citizen and laborer looks on, unsure of who is really oppressing him, and who is supporting him.

Political Cartoon Featuring Teddy Roosevelt

            The age of industrialism, in America, had been an age of giants.  While the accomplishments of these captains of industry were impressive in their own right, as they literally transformed the face of the American landscape, the men themselves provided an inspiring example that was especially suited to this young nation of immigrants.  For many of them, if not immigrants themselves, came from humble backgrounds, and yet, through their own initiative, dedication, and uncompromising zeal, had risen to the very pinnacle of success, and exercised power in society that in centuries past had been limited to monarchs, popes, and noblemen.  And their achievements, in the nineteenth century, seemed to provide a tangible demonstration of the principles embodied in a new science that had risen to prominence in their day: Darwin’s theory of evolution.  For there was no better reflection, in human society, of the principle of natural selection, as in the domination of a successful businessman over his competitors.  Tangible rewards awaited the brightest, the most tenacious, and the most industrious.  This was social Darwinism, to be sure, and yet, this American version was a characteristically democratic one.  As it was later embodied in the teachings of Napoleon Hill, success was available to anyone who was willing to exercise the commitment to attain it.  But this egalitarian philosophy of success had a dark side.  For inherent in its presumption that anybody could be a success, was the implication that those who were homeless, poor, or even oppressed had only themselves to blame.  It suggested that the beggar on the street, the business failure, or the laborer in a steel mill who worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, often in hazardous conditions, could change the unhappy circumstances of their lives, if only they tried.  It was this philosophy that accounted for the paradoxical behavior of Carnegie and his fellow tycoons: men who could be immensely generous philanthropists, while at the same time being ruthless competitors and unforgiving employers.  And similar ideas have created an enduring vein of callousness and insensitivity to the plight of the less advantaged that has survived in the American consciousness to this day.  But in Europe, at the dawn of the twentieth century, social Darwinism would take an even darker turn.  Here, in the writings of radical intellectuals, the superman would have not only an indomitable personal freedom, stronger spirit, and contempt for the weak, but also a racial pedigree.  As the promise of the new century began to fail, betrayed by a devastating, pointless world war, many would embrace this darker ideal of the superman, as part of a desperate attempt to restore a sense of personal pride, in the face of a hostile world that had lost its bearings.  Others would find a sense of purpose in equally hollow ideologies.  And at the heads of these were false prophets, demagogues, and tyrants, who would eclipse, in their tyrannies, the greedy acts of any American robber baron, and who would leave in their wake a toll of oppression, murder, and destruction unrivalled by any other age in human history.