The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supercompany

by Charles R. Morris

  The “second American Revolution” quote is in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 452. As an example of the war’s overshadowing Lincoln’s domestic program, the otherwise excellent Oates biography omits any mention of the Homestead, Morrill, or Pacific Railway Acts. For the text of the second inaugural address, I used Ronald C. White, Jr., Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), pp. 18–19. For the long political preponderance of the South and uniqueness of the North, see McPherson, op. cit., pp. 859–61.

  Young Tycoons

  CARNEGIE

  The sketch of Carnegie follows Joseph Frazier Wall, Andrew Carnegie (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), supplemented by Peter Krass, Carnegie (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2002). For the two “Scott’s Andy” and the “devil” quotes, Wall, pp. 121, 125, 126; “the reward,” “alas,” and “Kind master” in Andrew Carnegie, The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986), pp. 82, 223.

  ROCKEFELLER

  The Rockefeller sketch is drawn from Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998), Allan Nevins, John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), and Harold F. Williamson and Arnold R. Daum, The American Petroleum Industry: Vol. I, The Age of Illumination, 1859–1899 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1959), especially pp. 27–114 for early history of the industry.

  On John’s father, the “long, mysterious” quote is from Nevins, I:89, who also has him eventually disappearing “beyond the Mississippi” (I:79). Chernow has the full story on William, pp. 57–59 and 192–94. Since William’s double life was reported in the press, it is astonishing that previous biographers either missed it or chose not to report it. The “very large” quote is in Chernow, p. 77, “soul of a bookkeeper” in Nevins, I:111. The Bryce quote is from James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1923), II:164.

  GOULD

  The sketch of Gould’s early life and career follows Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). The Adams quote is from Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1956), p. 105; the Drew quote is in Klein, p. 3. The battle headline and the credit report are from Klein, pp. 60, 72. The quote “probably the most” is from Julius Grodsinsky, Jay Gould: His Business Career, 1867–1892, The Expansion of America’s Railroad Empire (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957), p. 450.

  MORGAN

  The sketch of J. P. Morgan follows Vincent P. Carosso, The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854–1913 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987) and Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (New York: Random House, 1999).

  For the Hall carbine affair, see R. Gordon Wasson, The Hall Carbine Affair: A Study in Contemporary Folklore (New York: Pandick Press, 1948), although Wasson (and Carosso) would have it that Morgan did not know that the rifles were being resold to the government, which is implausible. For the muckraker version of the affair, see Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962), pp. 60–61. The “first rate” quote is Carosso, ibid., p. 104. The “gentlemen pay their debts” is my characterization, not a direct quote. Gary’s “bitter” and “demoralization” quotes are in U.S. House of Representatives, Hearings before the Committee on Investigation of United States Steel Corporation (Stanley Committee), 8 vols. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1912), I:122–23. For the middle-class character of pioneers, Eric Foner, Free Soil, p. 14.

  2. “. . . glorious Yankee Doodle”

  The America’s Cup account is from David Shaw, America’s Victory (New York: The Free Press, 2002); the “Is the . . .” quote is from p. 213. (After the queen’s party left, the wind died, and the much lighter Aurora almost made a race of it, but America still finished comfortably ahead.) For Crystal Palace details, I consulted multiple Web sites devoted to the exhibition, supplemented by Nathan Rosenberg, ed., The American System of Manufactures (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1969), pp. 2–19. Quote “overrun” is from Rosenberg, p. 3; “wood pigeons” from Shaw, p. 184; Hobbs episode, McCormick reaper Times quotes, Colt exhibit and speech, “prairie” and “magnificent,” Rosenberg, pp. 9–12, 8, 15–17, 7; first Punch quote from Shaw, p. 155; and “Yankee Doodle” from Rosenberg, pp. 18–19. The Rosenberg book compiles the reports of a parliamentary committee of inquiry and of two separate British delegations that toured American factories in the immediate aftermath of the Crystal Palace revelations about American manufacturing prowess. Rosenberg’s extended Introduction (pp. 1–89) is a superb summary of the rise of the “American System of Manufacturing,” while David A. Hounshell’s From American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984) is the basic text. An extremely valuable overview of the “American System’s” evolution, much of it based on interviews with craftsmen in the more important manufactories, was compiled by Charles H. Fitch, a Census Office agent, as part of his work on the 1880s Census of Manufactures. See his Fire-Arms Manufacture 1880: Report on the Manufactures of Interchangeable Mechanisms (Bradley, Ill.: Lindsay Publications, 1992) (reprint of 1883 Census Office Report) and “The Rise of a Mechanical Ideal,” Magazine of American History, 11 (June 1884), 516–27. Many of the priorities he assigns to specific innovators, mostly derived from interviews, have been corrected by subsequent researchers, but Fitch’s pieces remain a key source for drawings, machine specifications, and the development sequences.

  Rise of the Nerds

  The Blanchard story follows Asa H. Waters, Biographical Sketch of Thomas Blanchard and His Inventions (Worcester, Mass.: L. P. Goddard, 1878). Waters knew Blanchard and is the primary source on his life; he produced several accounts, which all differ slightly from each other. See also Carolyn C. Cooper, Shaping Invention: Thomas Blanchard’s Machinery and Patent Management in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), who is particularly good on the history of lathes. (She makes the excellent point that the key innovation in the stocking machine was the independently driven cutting wheel.) The “royal” quote is from Cooper, p. 75; “glanced,” “Well,” “whole principle,” “I’ve got,” “I guess,” from Waters, pp. 5–7. My appreciation to the staff of the American Precision Museum in Windsor, Vermont, for their careful explanations. The eulogy is Waters’s, op. cit., p. 1. For Springfield’s interest, and the history of Blanchard’s contract, besides Cooper, I used Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 124–38. Smith’s work is based on extensive analysis of the Springfield and Harpers Ferry archives.

  Valley Guys

  The Connecticut River Valley description from this period is a collective portrait from Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley: A Regional Study of the Economic Development of the Small Arms Industry, 1798–1870 (Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Studies in History, vol. 33, 1948), an important source; Constance McLaughlin Green, Holyoke, Massachusetts: A Case Study of the Industrial Revolution in America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1939); and Vera Shlakman, Economic History of a Factory Town: A Study of Chicopee, Massachusetts (Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Studies in History, vol. 20, 1935). The quote “[T]here is not” is from Nathan Rosenberg, American System, p. 204. For the influence of Gribeauval and Blanc, see David Hounshell, From American System, pp. 25–26, and Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry, pp. 88–89. The accounts of the venture groups follow Constance McLaughlin Green, Holyoke, Massachusetts, pp. 19–63 and Vera Shlakman, Economic History, pp. 24–80. For a discussion of “enabling technologies,” s
ee the collection of papers by Nathan Rosenberg in his Exploring the Black Box, especially his “The Historiography of Technical Progress,” pp. 3–33, and “Marx as a Student of Technology,” pp. 34–51.

  The Quest for the Holy Grail

  For the modern view of Whitney’s contribution, see Robert S. Woodbury, “The Legend of Eli Whitney and Interchangeable Parts,” Technology and Culture (Summer 1960), 235–53; the standard account is in Constance McLaughlin Green, Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1956). For Colt pistol interchangeability, see David Hounshell, From American System, pp. 48–49. The best sources on Hall are Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry, especially pp. 184–251, and R. T. Huntington, Hall’s Breechloaders: John H. Hall’s Invention and Development of a Breechloading Rifle with Precision-Made Interchangeable Parts and Its Introduction into the United States Service (York, Pa.: G. Shumway, 1972), which has extensive selections from Hall’s correspondence and various official reports on his rifles. Certain specialized works were also helpful, like Robert S. Woodbury, History of the Milling Machine (Cambridge, Mass.: The Technology Press, 1960). The pamphlet quotation is from John H. Hall, “Remarks upon the Patent Improved Rifles Made by John H. Hall of Portland, ME” (pamphlet) (Portland: F. Douglas, 1816); it is a composite from pp. 1, 5. For Thornton background and involvement with Fitch, I used James Thomas Flexner, Steamboats Come True: American Inventors in Action (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), pp. 177–84. Thornton’s involvement with the federal city is in Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man (vol. 2 of Jefferson and His Times) (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), pp. 385–87. The quote on his patents is from the Web-based American National Biographical Dictionary. The quotes “Upon” and “It would” are in Huntington, pp. 3, 4. When scholars exhumed the Thornton patent episode, it explained a long-standing puzzle. The patent submission included an oddly dysfunctional flint lock on the side of the rifle that appears in no known Hall firearm. It appears this is the one “improvement” contributed by Thornton. Smith has identified the firearm displayed to Hall by Thornton as a Ferguson, an English gun dating from 1776 (Harpers Ferry, p. 186). The “bullet-proof” and Thornton quatrain are in Huntington, pp. 12, 27. Hall’s “very guarded” is from Smith, p. 196; “of infinite, ” “I was not aware” are in Huntington, pp. 305, 17; “the manner,” “waste,” are from Smith, pp. 200, 201.

  The 1827 military board and manufacturing reviews are reprinted in full in Huntington, pp. 306–23. The quoted sections are on pp. 311, 319–20, 323. Fitch, in his “The Rise of a Mechanical Ideal,” agrees that Hall had “achieved practical conformity in large lots of arms,” but with the reservation that “the joints between the interchangeable parts were by no means fine”; but he concedes that Hall’s work had clearly passed the “severe tests” that the inspectors had used, although it would not have met 1880s standards (pp. 516, 519). The quote “. . . by 1820” is from Constance McLaughlin Green, Eli Whitney, p. 139.

  The American Machine Tradition

  For Colt history, besides sources previously cited, I used William Hosley, Colt: The Making of an American Legend (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996) and Paul Uselding, “Elisha K. Root, Forging, and the ‘American System,’” Technology and Culture (October 1974), 543–68. The “highest-paid” and “[C]redit for” quotes are from Uselding, 563, 543. “[I]t is impossible” from Nathan Rosenberg, ed., The American System, p. 46. Colt’s British factory was not a success, and closed in 1856. Colt placed the blame on British labor, but England may not have been ready for mass-produced guns. Outside of the military, the most important weapons buyers were upper-class sportsmen who, for instance, liked their rifle stocks custom-made for arm lengths and shoulder fit. It wasn’t just craftsmen’s recalcitrance but also the nature of demand that determined British production preferences. For Alexander Holley, see chapter 5 and sources therein. The quote “very conspicuous” is from Frank Popplewell, Some Modern Conditions and Recent Developments in Iron and Steel Production in America (Man-chester: University Press, 1906), p. 103. The synopsis of state of consumer manufacturing is drawn primarily from David Hounshell, From American System, which is generally organized by dates and product types.

  The British Reaction

  Nathan Rosenberg’s Introduction to American System surveys the British gun manufacturing industry and the parliamentary debates leading up to the decision to proceed with Enfield. The quotes “produced a very impressive,” “[I]n the adaptation,” “In no branch,” and “The American machinery” are from ibid., pp. 43–45, 128–29, 343–44, and 65–66. Whitworth stressed, however, that Great Britain was still ahead in general-purpose machines, and, indeed, the great British machine-tool makers had a lead of many decades over Americans especially in the very advanced tooling for manufacturing large steam engines, ship plate, and similar products. From the start, Americans were more oriented toward mass production of consumer or similar end-products. That may reflect both the nature of British demand—in the absence of a broad middle-class market—but also the fact that they began during a somewhat earlier phase of industrialization. See Abbott Payson Usher, “The Industrialization of Modern Britain,” Technology and Culture (Spring 1960), 109–27, especially pp. 120–21.

  What Made America Different?

  For wood manufacturing and Sheffield steel, see Kenneth D. and Jane W. Roberts, Planemakers and Other Edge Tool Enterprises in New York State in the Nineteenth Century (Cooperstown, N.Y.: New York State Historical Association, 1971), especially pp. 1–12; for wartime steel supplies and imports, see Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Makers, pp. 80–81, 179. For American income and production, see David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some Are So Poor (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), pp. 232, 300. Whitworth on “cheap press” is in Nathan Rosenberg, American System, p. 389. For farm mechanization, see Paul David, “The Mechanization of Reaping in the Ante-Bellum Midwest,” in Henry Rosovsky, Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron by a Group of His Students (New York: John Wiley, 1966), pp. 3–39. The Scientific American quote is on p. 7. For Nathan Rosenberg on role of natural resources, see his Exploring the Black Box, pp. 109–20, an extremely intelligent analysis of what was different about America. For antebellum educational spending, see Albert Fishlow, “The American Common School Revival: Fact or Fancy?” in Henry Rosovsky, Industrialization in Two Systems, pp. 40–67. Apparently, public agitation for better schooling started in the 1820s, but didn’t translate into greater investment until the 1840s, when it began to rise very strongly. The quotes “. . . the Englishman,” “In America,” and “The absence” are from Nathan Rosenberg, American System, pp. 15, 14, and 7n. The Oliver Evans drawing and quote are in a one-page news-sheet advertisement, “Improvements on the Art of Manufacturing Grain into Flour or Meal” (Patent Licensing Announcement, c. 1791, Rare Books Division, New York Public Library). Improvement in British textile machine designs is from David S. Landes, The Wealth, p. 300. The two Lincoln quotes are from Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works, III:361, 478. The “I should not” quote is from Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Arms Makers, p. 95.

  3. Bandit Capitalism

  For the river episode, see W. A. Swanberg, Jim Fisk: The Career of an Improbable Rascal (New York: Scribners, 1959), pp. 47–48, and Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 83. For foreign investment in America, see United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (vol. 2) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), Series 1–25. Gladstone’s economic policies are in Roy Jenkins, Gladstone: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1997), especially pp. 137–57.

  Opéra Bouffe

  For Gould, Fisk, and the Erie wars, I used Maury Klein, Life and Legend; Julius Grodinsky, Jay Gould: His Business Career, 1867–1892, The Expansion of America’s Railroad Empire (Philadelphia, Pa.: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1957); Charles Francis Adams, Jr. and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1956); Edward Harold Mott, Between the Ocean and the Lakes: The Story of Erie (New York: John S. Collins, 1898); W. A. Swanberg, Jim Fisk; and Bouck White, The Book of Daniel Drew: A Glimpse of the Fisk-Gould-Tweed Régime from the Inside (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1911). Klein is the premier Gould scholar, and his book is marked by common sense and good judgment throughout. The Adams essays are the most colorful, and very well researched. The Mott book is the most detailed history of the Erie; it is crisp, thorough, and sardonic, and includes a rich sampling of relevant documents (it is an old book and hard to find; it warrants a reprint edition). The White book on Drew purports to be a diary, but is almost certainly a fabrication, and is best read as a popular biography of Drew, unfortunately disguised as a memoir.