Robber baron (industrialist)

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Robber baron is a term first applied by 19th century muckrakers and others as social criticism to certain wealthy, powerful, and unethical 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared in that use as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. Those practices included unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources, influencing high levels of government, wage slavery, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors, and to create monopolies and/or trusts that control the market. The label was intended to evoke the abuses of feudal “robber barons“ in medieval Europe. In the modern sense the term combines the incompatible traits of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (“baron”) with those of a republic.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Udo Keppler, Public domain