robber barons

Cultural  

1. A term applied to certain leading American businessmen of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. The term suggests that they acquired their wealth by means more often foul than fair.

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Example Sentences

No one was more powerful than J. Pierpont Morgan, one of the original robber barons External link identified External link by Matthew Josephson in 1934 as “members of a new ruling class…the dominating figures of an aggressive economic age.”

From Barron's

Ours is a history in which New York robber barons used the promise of belonging to splinter the poor into factions and manipulate them into fighting among themselves during the Gilded Age.

From Los Angeles Times

This was the age of robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil was a business “trust” comprising dozens of companies in numerous vertically linked industries.

From Barron's

This was the age of robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil was a business “trust” comprising dozens of companies in numerous vertically linked industries.

From Barron's

The new national-security initiative moves him closer to replicating the work of his bank’s namesake, the Morgans, who helped bring together robber barons and Gilded Age financiers to backstop America’s industrial revolution and stave off financial crises.

From The Wall Street Journal