[[Image:Coal-TR.JPG|thumb|140px|right|[[Theodore Roosevelt]] teaches the childish coal barons a lesson; 1902 editorial cartoon]]The '''Robber Baron''' image of leading American businessmen was a hostile stereotype created by anti-capitalist writers in the [[Progressive Era]] (1890-1920s) who denounced American big business as bad because it supposedly hurt workers, consumers and democracy. The concept was widely popularized by Matthew Josephson's book ''The Robber Barons''.<ref>[https://fee.org/articles/how-the-myth-of-the-robber-barons-began-and-why-it-persists/ How the Myth of the 'Robber Barons' Began—and Why It Persists]</ref>
==Background==
The "robber" theme meant the businessmen seized the wealth created by the workers—the assumption was that capital did not create wealth, only manual labor and farming did that.
[[Business history]] scholars beginning in the 1920s and led by Professor [[Alan Nevins]] at Columbia University and later [[Alfred D. Chandler]] at Harvard, refuted the false "Robber Baron" image. The image occasionally appears in textbooks and, more often, in history lectures or editorials written from a leftist perspective. The image is distinctly American—European and Asians rarely displayed it.
==See also==
* [[John D. Rockefeller]]
* [[Andrew Carnegie]]
* [[Antitrust law]]
==Further reading==
* Bridges, Hal. "The Robber Baron Concept in American History," ''Business History Review'', Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 1958), pp. 1–13 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/3111897 in JSTOR]
* Latham, Earl, ed. ''John D. Rockefeller: Robber Baron or Industrial Statesman?'' (1949), reprints debates among historians. [http://www.questia.com/read/73971734?title=John%20D.%20Rockefeller%3a%20Robber%20Baron%20or%20Industrial%20Statesman%3f online edition]
* Miller, William. "American Historians and the Business Elite," ''Journal of Economic History,'' Vol. 9, No. 2 (Nov., 1949), pp. 184–208 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2113639 in JSTOR]
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baron, Robber}}
[[Category:Economic History]]
[[Category:Business]]
[[Category:Historians]]