Cover image of 'The Tycoons," an account of US economic history in the nineteenth century

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

A few other names crop up from time to time. But the four men who rode atop the wave of the Gilded Age were Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. Their business activities during the final four decades of the nineteenth century drove America’s ascension into the most powerful industrial nation on the planet. And they shaped the rules that governed the US economy for decades to come. Alternately celebrating and vilifying them, author Charles R. Morris profiles the four and explores their work in his marvelous account of nineteenth century US economic history, The Tycoons.

An emerging economic power with a competitive advantage

Morris is an attorney and not a trained economist. Academics in the field sometimes question his writing. But if The Tycoons represents revisionist economic history, I’m all for it. Because Morris tells a great story about how the United States emerged in the nineteenth century as the world’s greatest economic power by the dawn of the twentieth. He begins with a fascinating account of the American success in precision engineering by the 1850s. That success made possible the manufacture of interchangeable parts—a feat no other economic power could achieve for decades to come. And he continues that story showing how Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan drove the unprecedented economic boom that followed the Civil War, a boom based in part on that singular competitive advantage.

The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy by Charles R. Morris (2005) 400 pages ★★★★★

State militia entering Homestead, Pennsylvania, to put down the strike of July 1892 against Andrew Carnegie, one of the signal events in US economic history
State militia entering Homestead, Pennsylvania, to put down the strike of July 1892 in response to a plea from Andrew Carnegie’s manager, Henry Clay Frick. Image: Britannica

Eye-opening portraits of four titans

Morris’s portrayals of his four subjects are eye-opening at times. He shows how the commonly accepted images we have of them today frequently distort the reality. Carnegie, who is known today largely for his philanthropy, was a ruthless and treacherous businessman who consistently underpaid and overworked his employees and treated his partners shabbily. Rockefeller, pictured as a tight-fisted and humorless oilman, was in fact a brilliant man who was unfailingly honest and fair in his business dealings. And those who know the name Jay Gould think of him as a reckless stock speculator who bankrupted one business after another in a relentless drive for personal wealth. But Morris shows that Gould was instead an extraordinarily talented railroad turnaround specialist and manager.

Only Morgan emerges from the pages of The Tycoons looking like most historians remember him: a tough, glowering presence who towered over Wall Street in the closing decade of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth.

Morris writes well and he has clearly done his homework. In The Tycoons he makes extensive use of excerpts from primary sources such as diaries, internal business correspondence, Congressional hearing transcripts, and contemporaneous stories in newspapers and magazines. The book is an excellent starting point for anyone with even a passing interest in the economic history of the United States in its formative century.

About the author

Photo of Charles R. Morris, author of this US economic history in the 19th century
Charles R. Morris. Image: New York Times

Charles R. Morris was born in humble circumstances in Oakland, California, in 1939. He earned both a bachelor’s and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, spent twelve years working in senior posts in the state governments of New Jersey and Washington State, and then moved to the private sector, working in finance for Chase Manhattan Bank and a financial technology consulting firm. He was the author of fifteen books, all nonfiction. Morris died in New Hampshire in 2021 at the age of eighty-two.

The New York Times published an excellent obituary of the author at “Charles R. Morris, Iconoclastic Author on Economics, Dies at 82” (December 15, 2021).

For an insightful look at the man who preceded the subjects of this book by a generation and set the template for their work, see The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles (The first robber baron and the emergence of the corporation). The book deservedly won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

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