How were the industrialists captains of industry?

Upon looking back to the late 1800s during the dawn of the New Industrial Revolution, historians have often portrayed the capitalists of this era in American history as captains of industry. Industries that were built by men such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller led to the eventual greater good for all and opened doors for advancements in aspects of American life such as communication, trade, technology, and social standards.

Had it not been for the births of the corporations these men created, the United States as a whole would not have stepped up to and surpassed its international competitors and would not be as independent as it is today.

Vanderbilt welded together and expanded the older eastern railroad networks and began the trend of replacing old iron tracks with steel rail by first doing it on his New York Central rail line. By 1877, New York Central operated along more than forty-five hundred miles of track.

Andrew Carnegie the steel king was producing one-fourth of the nation's Bessemer steel by 1900. Carnegie also founded the entrepreneurial method of vertical integration, which combined all phases of manufacturing into one organization with the goal of improving efficiency by making supplies more reliable, controlling the quality of the product at all stages of production, and elimination middlemen's fees.

J.P. Morgan later bought Carnegie out for over 400 million dollars and launched America's first billion dollar corporation in 1901, United States Steel Corporation.

In the 1870s, kerosene was America's fourth most valuable export, thanks to John D. Rockefeller, who dominated the oil industry and started the Standard Oil Company in 1870.

Quite obviously, these men succeeded beyond their wildest dreams; they built their companies from the bottom up and helped America flourish into the free-market capitalist society it boasts today.

Together, these men rose to the top and in doing so, pioneered and perfected techniques of mass production and commerce that are still used to this very day.