The Gilded Age was a period of American history from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. This period was known for a select few companies that formed true monopolies on their respective industries, and allowed little to no small businesses to venture into the industry. The three titans of this era were JP Morgan in banking, Cornelious Vanderbilt in the railroad industry, and John D. Rockefeller in oil. These men created companies so giant that they are still in business today, and their families continue to collect tremendous paychecks off of their work. America seems to be working towards a second gilded age, with four new industries taking over. Today I will be drawing similarities and differences between the industry titans of the past compared to their predecessors today. The men of today I will be using as comparisons are Mortimer J. Buckley CEO of Vanguard, Mark Zuckerberg CEO of Meta, and Jeff Bezos CEO of Amazon. The way these men run their businesses seems to draw inspiration from these giants of the past, and they are driving our country into a second Gilded Age.
JP Morgan’s bank was the first billion dollar company in American history, and he pioneered a new way of how to bank. Morgan’s bank holdings were strong enough to help stabilize America in a time of debt, while making himself millions in the process. As is usually the case with corporations, their actions generally have two goals. First is to give the public a deed to tie your name to. Morgan was able to stabilize the entire American economy, making him a well respected face in the public eye. The second goal is to get favors on their side from Uncle Sam himself. When one man is capable of seriously influencing the economy, the government takes notice very quickly. Morgan’s ability to save the country in this time of debt got the government on his side, making him a business that was too big to fail. This allowed him to overwork his employees, treat them incredibly poorly, and not pay his fair share of taxes because the government owes him one. Morgan would also fight for workers rights in interviews, yet when it came time to implement the policies he would talk about he failed to do it. With the money that was not used to pay workers, Morgan would buy up small businesses whenever they came across his desk, and built a monopoly on the banking industry.
Vanguard is an investment company that has similar views and capabilities to JP Morgan’s original banks. Vanguard is the largest investment bank on the planet, and owns a large stake in almost every single company in the world. The CEO of a company like this has their hands in multiple governments and is an incredibly influential figure in the world. These connections allow them to potentially learn what companies are going to rise or fall before anyone else does, however due to the size of the business and their influence in the world they would never get inspected for it. When business and government work together, money becomes the first, second, and third goal for the collaboration. The government’s job is to look out for citizens of their country, yet they have historically put money and financial connections above the taxpayer’s desire. While Vanguard is not as predatory as JP Morgan, they still do similar things. The way that they buy a majority stake of every company they see allows them to control the market in ways we haven’t seen since the gilded age. When the will of one company is pushed to every item you buy in stores, the price manipulation and market prices of anything is up to the whim of a man whose goal in this world is to make as much money as possible with no regard to the consumer.
Cornelious Vanderbilt was instrumental in building the trans continental railroad, one of the most important creations of the 19th century. Vanderbilt either owned or had a large stake in countless railroad companies in America, and combined them into the “New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company”. The company was worth 125,000,000 dollars in 1914, making it one of the largest corporations on the planet. Vanderbilt was notorious for poor treatment of railroad workers, specifically Chinese immigrants that came to America. Over 1,000 Chinese rail workers were killed building this railroad, mainly due to the use of unstable black powder used to blow holes through mountains. Because of the importance of the railroad, Vanderbilt faced no punishment for this and continued to gain more and more profit. The Vanderbilt family continued Cornelious’ legacy, and they continue to appear in the public eye. Heir to the throne of the Vanderbilt family is CNN’s Anderson Cooper, coincidentally another man with a platform that can influence the minds of citizens and politicians alike.
Meta, headed by Mark Zuckerberg, is the biggest tech giant on the planet, their most profitable ventures are Facebook, and Instagram. Zuckerberg has fallen in front of congress’ smoking gun before, facing countless allegations of selling user data, surveilling people through their phones, and listening to conversations in order to show better ads to the user. Meta is also one of the biggest lobbies in the world, donating 19.3 million dollars to various politicians for different purposes. Coincidentally, the only non American owned social media giant is currently being pressured to sell to an American for seemingly no reason. If TikTok were to sell, it is likely that Meta would be the one to purchase it. Instagram and Facebook are known for having over the top data mining and surveillance, and also are rare to show any images that do not align with the US government’s views. TikTok is a platform with no allegiance to the US (or China), and due to that users of the platform are shown a wide variety of topics regardless of if they align with “American views” or not. The cooperation between Meta and the Government allows them to control the social media page of any American who uses it, and severely restricts the freedom of information the constitution guarantees us. The willingness of the Government to cooperate with someone who has been confirmed multiple times to sell user data to any company in the interest of money is a flagrant violation of their role as a civil servant, and is unacceptable.
John D. Rockefeller is the man all oil barons aspire to be. He ruled the oil industry with an iron fist, and got filthy rich doing it. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870, coincidentally a perfect time to establish a known name in the oil industry. At the time, oil was mainly used for lanterns and other light sources; but Rockefeller’s company controlled 90% of oil refineries in the US by 1880, and was a name synonymous with oil itself. After 27 years, Rockefeller retired from the Standard Oil Company in 1897, and maintained sole ownership of one third of Standard Oil Company. In the early 20th century, oil was the single most important material on Earth. The automobile had been made available to everyone thanks to Henry Ford. Expanded research into the oil field has resulted in cargo vessels being powered by diesel fuel instead of coal, and Rockefeller could not be richer. In retirement, Rockefeller seemed to be planning all of this behind the scenes. He used his massive profits from his company to invest in education, infrastructure, and modernizing the American South, all of which would lead to him making massive profits as he can keep the Rockefeller name in the public eye while the age of oil ushers itself in. Unfortunately for Rockefeller, in 1911 the Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil was a true monopoly, and it was split into 34 companies, most notably Exxon, Chevron, Mobil, and Texaco. This did not stop Rockefeller’s cash flow, as he simply bought a tremendous stake in all of these companies and collected even more money; as Forbes declared him the world’s first billionaire. Rockefeller controlled three percent of the GDP when he was at his richest, and he used this in his advantage as much as possible. His descendant Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York in the late 1950’s pioneered a branch of republicans known as “Rockefeller Republicans”. This name comes from the similar point of view to Rockefeller that many prominent republican politicians maintained, and their views generally line up with the wills of the oil industry controlled by the Rockefeller family. These corporate ties to the government are what leads to poor working conditions, underpaid employees, long hours, and so many other issues that plague the workforce today.
Jeff Bezos runs the world digitally the same way Rockefeller did with oil. Amazon is best known for its online shopping, but the company does not profit unless the cloud company Amazon Web Services is active. Amazon Web Service (AWS) is a cloud technology company that sells out server space, computing resources, mobile networks, and online security to companies who need it. There are tons of companies that use AWS to host their servers, but some of the outstanders are Pfizer, NASA, and General Electric. These are all companies that operate with the US Government, and AWS also has won many government contracts as well. Amazon has generated billions of dollars out of the government’s funding; all of which is paid for with taxpayer dollars. Bezos works so closely with countless government organizations every single day, he can influence their actions by bidding for government contracts and can use his unfathomable wealth to lobby representatives to vote a certain way. Bezos is the richest man in the world, and it really comes from taxpayer dollars, not an online shopping megacorp. He can get anything overlooked as he has done multiple times with actions like union busting, overworking employees, not allowing breaks during 12 hour plus shifts, and many other worker rights violations. He simply pays a fine that is nothing more than pocket change to him, and keeps doing what he was doing. This combination of corporation and government only benefits the rich benefactors that have a say in the matter, and leaves everyone else out to dry.
Overall, I believe that corporations need to be kept separate from the government’s actions. When workers first unionized and demanded decent conditions during the gilded age, they were met with union busting force, and threats from the higher ups that they would be laid off and anti union workers would replace them. We have seen these same actions from the billionaires of today, and what is stopping us from doing what the workers did 100 years ago. Some Amazon warehouses have managed to successfully unionize, and they were met with a strong opposing force from managers and corporate higher ups when they were originally setting up. They were able to successfully gain national recognition from the labor board, and this was a huge deal for unions everywhere. I believe that when enough workers stand up to this blind eye from the government and force them to look, we can accomplish great things. Massive corporations don’t have to be bad; if they can pay everyone what they deserve and support good working conditions, they should be allowed to. The government broke up Standard Oil in 1911, and they can step in to do what’s right here.
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/meta/summary?id=D000033563
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/426235/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Republican
https://fourweekmba.com/is-amazon-profitable-without-aws/
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/aws-overview/introduction.html
https://www.thomsondata.com/customer-base/companies-that-use-aws.php
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