History of the Great American Fortunes

by Gustavus Myers

Originally published in 1910, a primary source for the business and development of American power in the nineteenth century. As Myers describes in his preface, it was the fashion in the early twentieth century to write of the multi-millionaires in an unfavorable light, as if they were all robber barons and had no social conscience. In his history he was attempting to be more realistic in his perspective. Volume one tells of the colonization of America and the large land grants and the great land fortunes. Volumes two and three cover the great fortunes from railroads, with extensive material on J. P. Morgan in relation to that category. Gustavus Myers (1872-1942) was an American historian who worked on a number of newspapers and magazines in New York City, joined the Populist party and the Social Reform Club, and was a member (1907-12) of the Socialist party. Such books as The History of Tammany Hall (1901), History of the Great American Fortunes (1910), and History of the Supreme Court of the United States (1912) were detailed, realistic exposes through which Myers made his reputation in the muckraking era of American literature.

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction, Politics, Business

732 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

Gustavus Myers (1872–1942) was an American journalist and historian who published a series of influential studies on wealth accumulation. His name is associated with the muckraking era of U.S. literature—somewhat erroneously, since his work is not journalistic, does not aim at popular magazine publication and takes an altogether more scholarly investigative approach to its subjects.

In the decade of the 1910s, he emerged as a leading scholar of the American socialist movement when he authored a series of volumes for Charles H. Kerr & Co., the country's largest publisher of Marxist books and pamphlets.

Between 1909 and 1914, Myers published three volumes on the history of family wealth in the United States, one volume on the same topic for Canada, and a history of the Supreme Court of the United States. These publications were frequently cited and used in an academic setting for several decades, with Myers' History of the Great American Fortunes revived in a single volume format in 1936.

This classic work (History of the Great American Fortunes), by far Myers' most important and influential, details and documents at great length the corruption and criminality underlying the formation and accumulation of the great American fortunes of the 19th century that formed the foundations of the American corporate-financial economy, from Astor and Vanderbilt, Jay Gould and Marshall Field, Stanford and Harriman, to Elkins, Morgan and Hill, Whitney, Rockefeller, Dodge, Havemeyer and numerous others, and displays the permanently devastating effects on the structure of the American economy and the quality of life of the vast majority of Americans and on American society.

Myers' approach is by no means "Marxist;" his concern is with the legal and administrative enablement of financial crimes and pillage by legislation and the corruption of government bodies nominally delegated to enforce it.

Reviews

[Dina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Behind Every Great Fortune There Is a Crime - this as true as ever in this book. Starting from killing and swindling of native indians in America to using the money to buy off huge tracks of land and politicians to further increase their wealth. Alas, nothing has changed. Our hero is still the wealthy one irrelevantly of how that fortune is gained.

[Thomas (aka Tom) Dinan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Myers was a socialist who hated capitalism. And that shines through every page. So it's a perverse irony that he (in effect) lays out the techniques for amassing a vast fortune using capitalistic principles. It's a good starting point for building your fortune.

[Dina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book should be mandatory read in high school and colleges. What a great expose of a system that calcified all democratic process in US. What a slap in the face of traditional neoliberal economics that talks about free-markets and fair competition. Should be read for everyone who wants to understand how business is actually done, rather how we are told its done.

Great read overall.

[Peter Talbot · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing 712 page screed against American capitalist's predations against workers, citizens and their flouting of the rule of law through bribery, extortion and chicanery that moves more or less chronologically from Girard and Astor through Vanderbilt, Gould, Sage, Field, Harriman and Hill and a central focus on railroad "development" with side glances at other industries, all in the "muckraking" style. Revisited in several updated editions, the 1934 edition during the New Deal is the most interesting. A huge amount of excellent primary research is included that is not convenient from any other source. Recommend highly for any student of American history, law and especially of the excesses of the "Gilded Age." It is perhaps the ultimate "progressive" American economic history.