Robber baron (industrialist)

Robber baron is a term first applied as social criticism by 19th century muckrakers and others to certain wealthy, powerful, and unethical 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared in that use as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly^[1] magazine. By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth.^[2] Those practices included unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources, influencing high levels of government, wage slavery, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and/or trusts that control the market, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors.^[2] The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (“baron”) in a republic.^[3]