WEBVTT NOTE The Age of Robber Barons 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 The Age of the Robber Barons 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:18.000 When we consider the problems facing all of us in the world we live in, and when we grope and seek ardently to find solutions for these problems, 3 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:28.000 many people find it difficult to believe that a free market offers the best possible alternative to what we have. 4 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:58.000 The reason for this is that they have a fear of free market operations. And one of the fears that they have is the fear of unscrupulous men who get themselves in positions of economic supremacy, and because of that most people believe that should this occur they would be absolutely helpless before the power and the might of those men in positions of economic influence and power. 5 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:24.480 In support of this fear that people have relating to the power and the bigness and the unscrupulousness 6 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:32.360 Business of Men in Major Economic Positions. There is a period of time in our history that 7 00:01:32.360 --> 00:01:38.360 is referred to by a number of writers as the age of the robber barons. And this period 8 00:01:38.360 --> 00:01:46.720 of time and the persons who rose to prominence during that time are often cited as a reason 9 00:01:46.720 --> 00:01:53.160 to justify the fear that people have of a free market. So it would be an important thing 10 00:01:53.160 --> 00:02:00.720 for us to examine that era to see just what did happen and to see what the robber barons 11 00:02:00.720 --> 00:02:08.860 did, the so-called robber barons, what they did and what they are accused of. In studying 12 00:02:08.860 --> 00:02:15.360 the age of the robber barons, we can set it down chronologically as that period of time 13 00:02:15.360 --> 00:02:22.480 arising after the Civil War, probably about 1875, and continuing on up in general to about 14 00:02:22.480 --> 00:02:29.520 1910. Actually, in some respects, the age of the robber barons continues today. There 15 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:38.120 are still a few men who are giants in industry, commerce and finance, who loom large on the 16 00:02:38.120 --> 00:02:44.680 American horizon, and doubtless who will be listed in some future book as robber barons 17 00:02:44.680 --> 00:02:50.080 At the present time, very few people call them that, because they usually think of the 18 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:56.840 age of the robber barons as already having passed. Nonetheless, these men would probably 19 00:02:56.840 --> 00:03:03.720 qualify at some future time, so we might keep them in mind. There is actually a literature 20 00:03:03.720 --> 00:03:11.920 in existence, perhaps several hundred titles, relating to the robber barons, the giant moguls, 21 00:03:11.920 --> 00:03:18.160 and the big men of apparent power and influence who certainly dominated that period of time 22 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:26.660 from 1875 to 1910 in the development of this country. And, of course, what we should examine 23 00:03:26.660 --> 00:03:32.960 then is the criticism that has been leveled against these persons to see whether or not 24 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:38.640 the criticism is warranted and whether or not these men in fact injured the development 25 00:03:38.640 --> 00:03:44.680 of America, and made conditions worse for people generally, or if in point of fact their 26 00:03:44.680 --> 00:03:51.540 contribution was beneficial and people gained as a result of what these men did. 27 00:03:51.540 --> 00:03:59.040 In studying the various books that have been produced and the scholarship that has examined 28 00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:07.720 the lives of the so-called robber barons, there are in the main three criticisms that 29 00:04:07.720 --> 00:04:17.320 Let me take these three criticisms and see whether or not they are warranted. The first 30 00:04:17.320 --> 00:04:26.280 of these is this, that every one of the robber barons became enormously wealthy. Now, I don't 31 00:04:26.280 --> 00:04:32.280 think there's any question of that. In fact, that's how you qualify as a robber baron. 32 00:04:32.280 --> 00:04:39.280 You would have to be wealthy in a very, very large way, and so the men that are held up 33 00:04:39.280 --> 00:04:46.680 to criticism here and attack and abuse in every case are very, very wealthy men. 34 00:04:46.680 --> 00:04:52.160 It actually appears as we go over the literature respecting these people and this period of 35 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:57.900 time that becoming wealthy is almost a crime in itself. 36 00:04:57.900 --> 00:05:03.980 This seems to be the attitude of the writers, that commercialism per se is bad, that anyone 37 00:05:03.980 --> 00:05:10.760 who succeeds in a commercial venture is somehow reprehensible, and anyone who succeeds in 38 00:05:10.760 --> 00:05:18.060 an extraordinary way must be a villain of the first caliber. Why would this idea persist? 39 00:05:18.060 --> 00:05:25.380 Well, it appears to trace back to a very early concept that many people seem to have about 40 00:05:25.380 --> 00:05:32.940 about the workings of the market. It is lost in antiquity, but the idea apparently stems 41 00:05:32.940 --> 00:05:40.220 from a view of the world that suggests that the total amount of wealth in existence is 42 00:05:40.220 --> 00:05:46.300 static. There is just so much of everything. And therefore it would follow, if that were 43 00:05:46.300 --> 00:05:53.540 true, when all the wealth in the world is just a fixed amount, x, whatever it may be, 44 00:05:53.540 --> 00:06:00.420 that if a man enters into a business transaction with another man and profits as a result of 45 00:06:00.420 --> 00:06:07.620 that transaction, then it would follow, using this same base of reasoning, that the second 46 00:06:07.620 --> 00:06:15.540 man with whom the transaction occurred would have lost. And so there appears to be just 47 00:06:15.540 --> 00:06:23.420 is an innate type of villainy or immorality in business per se. Any kind of business is 48 00:06:23.420 --> 00:06:30.140 viewed as being something that, well, somehow it's a little dirty. It's just not the kind 49 00:06:30.140 --> 00:06:36.580 of thing that good people want to get into. They get into it unavoidably because they 50 00:06:36.580 --> 00:06:41.620 have to stay alive, but actually they would prefer not to be there. They would prefer 51 00:06:41.620 --> 00:06:47.700 to be in something that is at a higher moral level. And this is the way these thoughts 52 00:06:47.700 --> 00:06:53.100 run. And this of course appears in the literature against the robber barons. So it is made to 53 00:06:53.100 --> 00:07:02.100 appear that here we have a typical robber baron who has made a fantastic amount of money. 54 00:07:02.100 --> 00:07:08.620 Well, obviously then, according to the thinking, since he has made so much money, he must have 55 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:44.380 People viewed wealth as consisting primarily of land. And when they did, well, you're 56 00:07:44.380 --> 00:07:49.460 dealing with something that is more or less static. They're not making very much land 57 00:07:49.460 --> 00:07:56.380 anymore. You have pretty much a fixed quantity of land. But that is not the only kind of 58 00:07:56.380 --> 00:08:02.900 wealth that exists. The land can be improved, and whatever is added to the land becomes 59 00:08:02.900 --> 00:08:08.320 additional wealth. And then the goods, the personality that human beings have learned 60 00:08:08.320 --> 00:08:14.800 and how to produce and create and manufacture. All of these things become wealth, and so 61 00:08:14.800 --> 00:08:21.320 the amount of wealth in the world is constantly increasing. Take for a moment and go back 62 00:08:21.320 --> 00:08:29.360 in your mind to say the time of Henry VIII in England. Henry VIII, one of the great tutors, 63 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:35.640 was a very, very powerful man, virtually what could be called an absolute monarch, a total 64 00:09:05.640 --> 00:09:35.640 The Theory of Money and Credit 65 00:09:35.640 --> 00:09:40.800 He didn't have that as a rule. He caught most of the diseases that were available. He never 66 00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:46.960 had an adequate medical examination. He never rode in an automobile or saw a bicycle, much 67 00:09:46.960 --> 00:09:53.960 less an airplane, or even conceived that such things were possible. He never attended an 68 00:09:53.960 --> 00:10:00.520 opera or a decent concert. He attended concerts, but by our standards they were pretty shoddy 69 00:10:00.520 --> 00:10:08.400 Affairs. His clothing was not properly made. He never saw television or a moving picture 70 00:10:08.400 --> 00:10:15.600 show. This man was deprived by our standards, and yet he had the best of everything. 71 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:22.640 Now, take a look at Henry VIII and then view our own period of time. Is there more wealth 72 00:10:22.640 --> 00:10:28.000 in the world today than there was at the time of Henry VIII? Obviously there is. Well, where 73 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:34.380 Where did it come from? If the total amount of wealth is static, then there could be no 74 00:10:34.380 --> 00:10:40.500 more wealth now than there was at the time of Henry VIII. At the time of Henry VIII, 75 00:10:40.500 --> 00:10:46.780 most of the people of England were impoverished. Probably 90% of the people of England didn't 76 00:10:46.780 --> 00:10:53.260 have enough to eat. Today, most of the people of England have enough to eat. Where did that 77 00:10:53.260 --> 00:10:59.260 Additional Food, that additional wealth. Clearly what has happened is that when human 78 00:10:59.260 --> 00:11:05.740 beings apply their brains and their energies to the products of nature and put the pieces 79 00:11:05.740 --> 00:11:11.260 together, correctly, they produce wealth, and we all have more. Now this is a point 80 00:11:11.260 --> 00:11:16.220 that Adam Smith saw in his work, The Wealth of Nations, but it is a point that many people 81 00:11:16.220 --> 00:11:26.740 When a free exchange occurs in a free market, both sides to the exchange profit. Because, 82 00:11:26.740 --> 00:11:32.780 assuming a free market, the exchange will not occur unless each party to the exchange 83 00:11:32.780 --> 00:11:38.460 would rather have the exchange occur than not, because anyone who wants to can voluntarily 84 00:11:38.460 --> 00:11:45.300 withdraw at any point. So exchanges only occur when in the mind of the party to the exchange 85 00:11:45.300 --> 00:11:52.340 It is to his advantage to culminate the exchange. That's why they occur. So in point of fact, 86 00:11:52.340 --> 00:11:58.540 here we have these so-called robber barons becoming enormously wealthy, which they did, 87 00:11:58.540 --> 00:12:05.220 but they did so in process of making exchanges with other persons who gained at the same 88 00:12:05.220 --> 00:12:11.700 time they did. Now that's a hard thing for people to understand, but that's the truth. 89 00:12:11.700 --> 00:12:17.940 in any kind of exchange assuming a free market. And at the time we are speaking of, the market 90 00:12:17.940 --> 00:12:24.820 was far more free than it is today. At that time, the people who purchased the goods or 91 00:12:24.820 --> 00:12:32.380 the services offered by the robber barons became wealthier as a result of those exchanges 92 00:12:32.380 --> 00:12:38.420 just as the robber barons did. So although I will have to admit that every one of the 93 00:12:38.420 --> 00:12:45.560 Robert Barons, who has been accused of accumulating great wealth, I could stand here and say that 94 00:12:45.560 --> 00:12:52.540 accusation is justified. Nevertheless, I would say it's not a criminal accusation. It's a 95 00:12:52.540 --> 00:12:58.680 good thing. Our problem in this country is that we don't have enough wealthy people. 96 00:12:58.680 --> 00:13:04.160 Not that we have too many. And of course, the idea, and it is an absurdity if you look 97 00:13:04.160 --> 00:13:11.280 Look at it. The idea that a person can become rich by exploiting people who have nothing 98 00:13:11.280 --> 00:13:17.000 is clearly fallacious. How can you make profits off somebody who hasn't anything to begin 99 00:13:17.000 --> 00:13:23.780 with? Take a number of people and assume that they have nothing, and then you take something 100 00:13:23.780 --> 00:13:27.960 away from them. How can you take something away from them if they haven't got anything? 101 00:13:27.960 --> 00:13:33.480 Clearly that's not so, and yet that's the general feeling and that's the general tone 102 00:13:33.480 --> 00:13:40.000 of Most of the Literature aimed at criticizing the robber barons. It is said that they exploited 103 00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:45.240 the poor and got rich by taking something away from those who didn't have anything to 104 00:13:45.240 --> 00:13:49.280 have it taken away in the first place. And that's clearly ridiculous. But this is what 105 00:13:49.280 --> 00:13:55.360 you find in the literature. So that's the first accusation. The robber barons got wealthy. 106 00:13:55.360 --> 00:14:00.400 Let me admit it. The second accusation that is brought forward is that every one of the 107 00:14:00.400 --> 00:14:07.520 Robert Behrens fundamentally tried to become a monopolist. He sought to corner the market 108 00:14:07.520 --> 00:14:13.520 in his own favor and drive everybody else who was competing with him out of business. 109 00:14:13.520 --> 00:14:22.520 Well, in examining the behavior of the men who lived from 1875 to 1910 and are called 110 00:14:22.520 --> 00:14:29.040 Robert Behrens, I'm going to have to plead in favor of that accusation, too. I think 111 00:14:29.040 --> 00:14:59.040 I think every one of the robber barons was definitely engaged in trying to become as monopolistic as he could. I think that's true. As a matter of fact, I'll go beyond that. I think that virtually all businessmen would like very much to work so well at their business that they would make it very difficult for their competition and maybe secretly, way down deep inside, they'd like to drive their competition right to the wall and put them out of business. 112 00:14:59.040 --> 00:15:06.120 I'm perfectly willing to accept that concept. I think it's true that any good businessman 113 00:15:06.120 --> 00:15:11.240 has enough confidence in himself and he knows what he's doing well enough and can do it 114 00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:17.640 well enough so that he feels he's got a reason to attract customers and that the reason that 115 00:15:17.640 --> 00:15:23.420 he has for attracting customers is valid enough so that he wants to get most of the customers 116 00:15:23.420 --> 00:15:28.800 coming his way, if not all of them, because he feels he can do a better job. So let me 117 00:15:28.800 --> 00:15:33.160 We confess, then, on behalf of the robber barons, that this is what they were trying 118 00:15:33.160 --> 00:15:39.800 to do. The interesting thing is, is that it doesn't matter. Because if you have a free 119 00:15:39.800 --> 00:15:47.680 market, the competitive factors are so dominant that even though these men may very well have 120 00:15:47.680 --> 00:15:55.640 sought monopolies, not one of them ever got one. They tried, but they never made it. So, 121 00:15:55.640 --> 00:16:02.600 If you have a free market and you have big men engaged in very, very keen competition, 122 00:16:02.600 --> 00:16:07.780 and that's what we had during the so-called age of the robber barons, you don't have to 123 00:16:07.780 --> 00:16:13.680 worry about the people becoming monopolists, assuming that they're limited only to a free 124 00:16:13.680 --> 00:16:19.900 market operation, because here you had a case where admittedly the government did not intrude, 125 00:16:19.900 --> 00:16:25.600 at least it didn't begin to intrude particularly until around 1890. So you have 1875 to 1870, 126 00:16:25.600 --> 00:16:30.880 1890 with very little government intervention, and during that time you have these men striving 127 00:16:30.880 --> 00:16:35.360 to become monopolists and doing their best to become monopolists, and there is no government 128 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:38.960 intervention, and these men did not become monopolists, in spite of the fact that they 129 00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:44.600 tried. Now, of course, it is sometimes suggested by various writers that they did, in fact, 130 00:16:44.600 --> 00:16:49.640 become monopolists, but this is not true. I'll touch on one or two of them specifically 131 00:16:49.640 --> 00:16:55.640 in a moment, to show that the accusation against them as monopolists is invalid, although 132 00:16:55.640 --> 00:17:01.280 certainly it is not invalid if we are talking in terms of intention. Every one of these 133 00:17:01.280 --> 00:17:06.040 robber barons, I am sure, intended to become a monopolist. 134 00:17:06.040 --> 00:17:13.160 Now the third accusation that is levelled at these same men, this is not a constant 135 00:17:13.160 --> 00:17:18.120 accusation, although most of them have it laid at their door, and that is the accusation 136 00:17:48.120 --> 00:17:53.120 If the writers had had the same amount of wealth, be that as it may, it is clear that 137 00:17:53.120 --> 00:18:02.600 some of these so-called robber barons had a very large penchant for spending money on 138 00:18:02.600 --> 00:18:07.840 frivolous things. That is, they would give parties that were lavish and expensive, and 139 00:18:07.840 --> 00:18:12.920 they would sometimes have two yachts when one would have sufficed, and they would have 140 00:18:42.920 --> 00:18:51.120 have impeccable taste, but he steals my money in order to express it. Somehow I have a lot 141 00:18:51.120 --> 00:18:57.680 better feeling for the so-called robber barons who earned their own money and didn't steal 142 00:18:57.680 --> 00:19:03.760 it even though they may not have expressed themselves with the expenditures that they 143 00:19:03.760 --> 00:19:09.840 undertook as you and I might have. Nonetheless, I can't get excited about it, whereas I can 144 00:19:09.840 --> 00:19:39.000 The three points that are usually named are, 1. They attain great wealth, 2. They sought 145 00:19:39.000 --> 00:19:43.160 Monopoly, and 3. They had bad taste. 146 00:19:43.160 --> 00:19:49.340 Now to those accusations I am going to add a fourth. Now most of the literature in this 147 00:19:49.340 --> 00:19:56.280 area does not mention this as a negative factor, although of course the facts in the cases 148 00:19:56.280 --> 00:20:02.840 are recited. But here is the negative factor that I see that applies to these men. Not 149 00:20:02.840 --> 00:20:09.600 Not to all of them, but to a great many. And that is that when they tried to obtain monopolies 150 00:20:09.600 --> 00:20:15.960 in the free market, and found that they could not do so, that the market itself, so long 151 00:20:15.960 --> 00:20:22.560 as it is free, is competitive, and therefore they didn't have a chance of getting a monopoly, 152 00:20:22.560 --> 00:20:28.840 then we find one after another of these big men, these so-called robber barons, turning 153 00:20:28.840 --> 00:20:35.740 to the government to try to get laws passed that would place them in a privileged position 154 00:20:35.740 --> 00:20:40.240 so that they could take advantage of their competition. Now, when that happens, I give 155 00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:46.840 these men a bad mark because that is not the way a free market should work. A free market 156 00:20:46.840 --> 00:20:52.120 should be what the name implies, a market that is free of restraints. And that means 157 00:20:52.120 --> 00:20:57.560 that it will be a competitive market and that everybody in it is going to have to compete 158 00:20:57.560 --> 00:21:03.280 at the same level with everybody else. But as long as you have a government that wealthy 159 00:21:03.280 --> 00:21:12.280 men can go to in order to get special power handed to them, then you do have the chance 160 00:21:12.280 --> 00:21:18.640 of corrupting the market and ultimately creating a condition of privilege which a number of 161 00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:24.760 the men that we think of as robber barons in fact took advantage of. Now this does not 162 00:21:24.760 --> 00:21:28.920 mean to suggest that they all did because they did not. There are several outstanding 163 00:21:28.920 --> 00:21:34.160 cases where these big men refused absolutely to have anything to do with the government 164 00:21:34.160 --> 00:21:38.480 and operated strictly in the market and made their fortunes without any political help 165 00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:44.040 or connivance. And I applaud them unceasingly, even though they may have tried to get a monopoly 166 00:21:44.040 --> 00:21:49.280 that never came close. But the ones that came closest were the ones that went to the government 167 00:21:49.280 --> 00:21:58.780 for Help, and of course that I view as reprehensible whether they became wealthy or not as a result. 168 00:21:58.780 --> 00:22:05.360 Let me take a few of the names now of the so-called robber barons and discuss just one 169 00:22:05.360 --> 00:22:13.640 or two cases. We have to begin the list with John D. Rockefeller. He is the number one 170 00:22:13.640 --> 00:22:21.400 Bad Boy in American Economics, his name has become a household word of anathema in a sense, 171 00:22:21.400 --> 00:22:26.560 so we must take a look at him and Standard Oil. And then of course there was Carnegie 172 00:22:26.560 --> 00:22:32.300 and Vanderbilt and Morgan and Jay Gould and a fellow named Jim Hill and Henry Ford is 173 00:22:32.300 --> 00:22:39.320 often brought in. There are just a number of men who became prominent, wealthy, important 174 00:22:39.320 --> 00:22:47.020 Focal points of wealth and power in the economy and who have been tabulated, you see, as these 175 00:22:47.020 --> 00:22:49.160 robber barons, so called. 176 00:22:49.160 --> 00:22:56.160 Well, let's take Rockefeller as a case in point. Rockefeller's worst critics admit 177 00:22:56.160 --> 00:23:02.200 at the outset that here is a man who is scrupulously honest. That's an interesting point. They 178 00:23:02.200 --> 00:23:12.320 We take pains to point out that John D. Rockefeller never misplaced a penny. His books were immaculate. 179 00:23:12.320 --> 00:23:18.660 He accounted for everything that he ever touched. No one has ever faulted him on any charge 180 00:23:18.660 --> 00:23:27.720 of dishonesty. There is no question that Rockefeller became wealthy. He became one of the all-time 181 00:23:27.720 --> 00:23:34.480 of the World, and obviously he did it with the creation of standard oil. Now first it's 182 00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:39.520 important to understand that standard oil as it began was not anywhere nearly the size 183 00:23:39.520 --> 00:23:46.160 that it is today. We're talking about 1875 when the development of oil in the country 184 00:23:46.160 --> 00:23:54.040 was primarily going into paraffin and kerosene products. Gasoline was only just being developed 185 00:23:54.040 --> 00:23:59.820 and the internal combustion engine was just getting started. So the oil business as such 186 00:23:59.820 --> 00:24:06.180 was a tiny business compared to what it is today. So of course naturally we tend to have 187 00:24:06.180 --> 00:24:12.820 better hindsight than foresight and so we think of standard oil as this giant firm. 188 00:24:12.820 --> 00:24:18.240 At the time Rockefeller created it, it was just a little operation, that's all it was. 189 00:24:18.240 --> 00:24:25.640 But Rockefeller sought not to bring in new oil wells or develop the flow of oil in this 190 00:24:25.640 --> 00:24:32.600 respect. What he sought was to improve on the refining of oil. And he thought that he 191 00:24:32.600 --> 00:24:40.360 could do it well enough so that only his company would be the only company that would do any 192 00:24:40.360 --> 00:24:45.640 oil refining. That is what he wanted standard oil to accomplish. So he set out to do it. 193 00:24:45.640 --> 00:24:51.760 And of course later on, as you know, Standard Oil was cited by the anti-trust people by 194 00:24:51.760 --> 00:24:58.680 the Justice Department and a trial ensued and Standard Oil was found guilty of monopoly 195 00:24:58.680 --> 00:25:05.520 practice and was at this point fined and broken up into a number of subsidiary companies. 196 00:25:05.520 --> 00:25:10.340 Incidentally, it was broken up exactly the way Mr. Rockefeller had planned it. He wanted 197 00:25:10.340 --> 00:25:15.080 it broken up because it had become unwieldy and he made the recommendations to the court 198 00:25:15.080 --> 00:25:19.880 that were accepted by the court, so that actually the court assisted Mr. Rockefeller in making 199 00:25:19.880 --> 00:25:25.240 standard oil more efficient than it had been to begin with, which was pretty cute. 200 00:25:25.240 --> 00:25:32.840 Anyway, when Rockefeller got into the oil business and decided that he wanted a monopoly 201 00:25:32.840 --> 00:25:43.240 in this area, he began competing with every other refinery on this basis. He cut prices. 202 00:25:43.240 --> 00:25:48.960 He reduced his prices and he improved his quality, and of course the result was that 203 00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:56.080 he really gave his competition something to work against. Now, the accusation was brought 204 00:25:56.080 --> 00:26:01.100 out in the hearing, and it's certainly true, that by this type of practice, by cutting 205 00:26:01.100 --> 00:26:07.280 his prices and becoming increasingly efficient, Rockefeller forced a number of companies into 206 00:26:07.280 --> 00:26:16.200 Bankruptcy. If they did not have good management, he did have good management, and he was able 207 00:26:16.200 --> 00:26:17.560 to bankrupt them. 208 00:26:17.560 --> 00:26:24.180 This is a very interesting sidelight here. After he had bankrupted a company by competing 209 00:26:24.180 --> 00:26:29.600 with them at a level that they couldn't meet, his normal procedure was to go over and buy 210 00:26:29.600 --> 00:26:36.280 up the assets so that the people that he literally drove to the wall were never ruined because 211 00:27:06.280 --> 00:27:36.280 in the antitrust proceedings that in the face of Rockefeller competition when it was as tough as it could be a number of companies were gaining ground on Rockefeller and he was not only not defeating them he was not able to defeat them and they prevented him from having a monopoly at all and they did it in the free market not with any government help so there is the story of Rockefeller I wish there were time to get into some of the other stories but if you'll examine 212 00:27:36.280 --> 00:28:04.370 To examine this area with an open mind, I think you'll see that the men called robber barons did a lot more good than they did harm. Wealth is not reprehensible, per se. I would certainly recommend that wealthy men don't run to the government for things. But if they operate in the free market, we haven't anything to fear from men, no matter how competitive they are in their various economic pursuits. Thank you.