robber barons

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.

Example Sentences

Props to the robber barons of yesteryear — at least they had style.

From Salon

More of us are waking up to the present alarm, even if few are moved to consult a selection of books spelling out the similarities shared by modern technocrats and 19th-century robber barons.

From Salon

As the president fantasizes about returning America to the Gilded Age, where robber barons extracted the earth’s resources for unimaginable profit while laborers worked for starvation wages, he’s forgetting that his oligarch donors need accurate economic data too.

From Salon

But the actual turn of the century saw the rise of the Progressive Era during which the robber barons turned to philanthropy, funding medical research, libraries, museums and universities; unions and the women’s suffrage movement triumphed; and President Theodore Roosevelt enacted his Square Deal, breaking up trusts, avoiding tariffs, protecting consumers and establishing the national parks.

From Los Angeles Times

“Bernie is rising to the top, in my eyes, because I’m seeing all this corruption that’s going on at the top of the Republican Party, all the robber barons. I relate to him more.”

From Slate