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"Robber baron" is a derogatory term of social criticism originally applied to certain wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared as early as the August 1870 issue of ''The Atlantic Monthly'' magazine. By the late 1800s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. These practices included exerting control over natural resources, influencing high levels of government, paying subsistence wages, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.〔 The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (a baron is an illegitimate role in a republic).〔Worth Robert Miller, ''Populist cartoons: an illustrated history of the third-party movement in the 1890s '' (2011) p. 13〕 == History == The term robber baron derives from the medieval German lords who charged nominally illegal tolls (tolls unauthorized by the Holy Roman Emperor) on the primitive roads crossing their lands or the larger tolls on ships traversing the Rhine〔—all such actions without adding anything of value,〔 (see robber baron) but instead lining one's pockets to the detriment (added costs) of the common good. U.S. political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson further popularized the term during the Great Depression in a 1934 book by the same title. He attributed the phrase to an 1880 anti-monopoly pamphlet about railroad magnates.〔Matthew Josephson, ''The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901'', New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934.〕 Like the German antecedent princes, Josephson alleged that American big businessmen amassed huge fortunes immorally, unethically, and unjustly. The theme was popular during the Great Depression amid public scorn for big business. After the Depression, business historian, Allan Nevins, challenged this view of American big businessmen by advocating the "Industrial Statesman" thesis. Nevins, in his ''John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise'' (2 vols., 1940), took on Josephson. He argued that while Rockefeller may have engaged in some unethical and illegal business practices, this should not overshadow his bringing order to industrial chaos of the day. Gilded Age capitalists, according to Nevins, sought to impose order and stability on competitive business, and that their work made the United States the foremost economy by the 20th century.〔Allan Nevins, ''John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise'', 2 vols., New York, C. Scribner’s sons, 1940.〕 This debate about the morality of certain business practices has continued,〔(Bruce Springsteen: Bankers Are 'Greedy Thieves'" (Huffington Post) )〕 with the term being applied to modern industrialists and media moguls. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robber baron (industrialist)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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