American Tycoons and Robber Barons Quiz

Answer: Medieval Europe and tolls levied upon merchants

The term "Raubritter" was given those nobles and archbishops of the Holy Roman Empire who charged excessive tolls on merchants using the Rhine River for passage of their wares to European markets. Matthew Josephson resurrected and Amercanized the term into "robber baron" for his 1934 exposé of railroad magnates and fees charges farmers for shipping their products. Sinclair's book, "The Jungle," was about the working conditions and lack of health standards in the Chicago meat processing industry.

Answer: Charles Pratt

Charles Pratt and his partner, Henry H. Rogers, were initially competitors and rivals of Standard Oil. However, in 1874, convinced they could not compete against Standard Oil any longer, they agreed to be acquired and become members of the Board of Standard Oil. The Standard Oil monopoly would not be broken up until 1911 under the provisions of the Sherman Anti-trust Act.

Answer: Andrew W. Mellon

Andrew and Richard Mellon were brothers, their parents being Scots-Irish immigrants and their father becoming a respected banker and judge in Pittsburgh. Andrew formed his own banks, the Union Trust Company and Union Savings Bank, and was instrumental in providing capital to many industrialists of the Gilded Age.

His investments included ventures into oil, shipbuilding and steel. He formed partnerships with Edward Goodrich Acheson for the production of silicon carbide (Carbonundrum Company), and with Dr.

Heinrich Koppers for the production of coke ovens. In 1937, he donated $10 million to build the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Answer: John Jacob Astor IV

The Astor family fortune began with John Jacob Astor, a German immigrant to the U.S. He amassed a fortune after the American Revolution due to his activities in real estate and fur trading. Astor IV increased the Astor fortune measurably, mostly in real estate and development such as the Astoria Hotel which later combined with his cousin's Waldorf to become a complex known as the Waldorf-Astoria.

He was also a noted inventor, author of a Sci-Fi novel that foresaw space exploration and living on Jupiter and Saturn in the 21st century, and served in the Spanish American War in which he offered his yacht for service and personally funded a battalion. Madeleine Talmage Force Astor was Astor IV's second wife and was pregnant when the couple sailed on the ill-fated Titanic, after travelling with Molly Brown throughout France and Egypt.

A very young Madeleine survived and gave birth to John Jacob Astor VI.

Answer: False

Hearst's father, George Hearst, had made a fortune in mining. He won the newspaper in a poker game. His son, William Randolph Hearst, was a student at Harvard and asked his father to let him run the newspaper upon graduation.

Answer: James J. Hill

J.J. Hill became known as "The Empire Builder." He crafted a railroad empire from the Great Northern Pacific which travelled from St. Paul to Seattle and the possibilities of the Pacific Ocean. He would later add the Northern Pacific Railroad to his burgeoning monopoly. Leland Stanford, the benefactor of Stanford University, was a scion of the California railroad industry, as was Crocker.

Henry Flagler's railroad extended down the East Coast through Florida, and he is responsible for founding Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida.

Answer: James B. Duke

James B. Duke turned his father's tobacco farm into a conglomerate of farms and pre-rolled cigarette plants known as the American Tobacco Company. He also distributed in Britain under British-American Tobacco Company. He and his brother, Benjamin, founded electrical power plants, known today as Duke Energy. He founded Duke University in his hometown of Durham, N.C. in honor of his father. His will left half of his estate to his 12-year old daughter, Doris, and half to Duke University.

Thomas Walsh was a prospector who struck gold and fathered Evalyn Walsh, to whom he gave the Hope Diamond as a wedding gift upon her marriage to Edward Beale McLean. She also owned the Star of the East.

Answer: Charles Martin Hall

The French Heroult also developed the process and, therefore, it is known as the Hall-Heroult process. The company, of which Hunt was a co-founder, was renamed the Aluminum Company of America and became known as Alcoa. Hall was born and raised in Ohio and graduated from Oberlin College.

He was a generous benefactor of the college, and is honored there with his statue in aluminum. He died without marrying and with no children in Florida in 1914.

Answer: Andrew Carnegie

Carnegie immigrated to America with his parents as a boy. He began his career as a telegraph operator but built the Pittsburgh Steel Company and the Carnegie Steel Company, the latter of which he sold to J.P. Morgan, who created U.S. Steel. He purchased Skibo Castle in Scotland and devoted his time to major philanthropy, including funding an archeology expedition to Utah in which the skeletal remains of a Jurassic dinosaur was discovered.

It was named diplodocus carneigi and nicknamed "Dippi." His philantrophy extended across America and the U.K. and included funding of public libraries, pensions for his former employees, schools and universities, and the arts.

Some of the institutions he fostered bear his name, such as Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, New York's Carnegie Hall, and Leeds Carnegie University in Scotland.

Answer: John J. Roche

John Roche founded the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company which held several mines in Colorado. Upon his death in 1927, his stock in the company went to his only child, Josephine. She had majored in Economics at Vassar and held a graduate degree from Columbia University.

She proved an astute businesswoman, and increased production and profits alongside unionization and the improvement of safety and working conditions for her employees. During the 1930s, she served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Roosevelt administration.

In 1948, she became a director of the UMWA Welfare & Pension Fund where she served until 1971. She died in Washington, D.C. in 1976.