Many so-called robber barons—James J. Hill, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John D. Rockefeller—became wealthy entrepreneurs through product innovation and business efficiency. Of the goods and services they provided, supply grew, and prices fell rapidly, greatly boosting Americans’ standards of living. This is the opposite of monopolistic behavior.
A robber baron is one of America’s successful industrialists during the 19th century, which was also known as the Gilded Age. A robber baron is a term that is also sometimes attributed to any successful businessperson whose practices are considered unethical or unscrupulous.* This behavior can include employee or environmental abuse, stock market manipulation, or deliberately restricting output to charge higher prices.
*The unscrupulous person is without scruples of conscience, and disregards, or has contempt for, laws of right or justice with which he or she is perfectly well acquainted, and which should restrain his or her actions: unscrupulous in methods of making money, in taking advantage of the unfortunate.
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