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{{DES | des = The Bookreader review provides a lot of good criticism based on other literature to show how one-sider the presentation is. Also, "A sad effort to justify greed and oppression." | show=}}
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Showing 1-7 of 7 reviews

15 of 42 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Propaganda, October 23, 2012
By Bookreader - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (Paperback)
I bought and read -- cover-to-cover -- this book because the title promised that it would explain why these famous late 19 th century rich industrialist robber-barons were really not robber-barons. Folsom used the word "entrepreneur" instead of the term robber-barons that Mathew Josephson used as the title of his book. Although this book is easy to read, well written, quite well referenced, and worth reading, it also suffers from serious misrepresentations, omissions, and issues that need discussion. My copy is the recent 1996 3rd edition and for a few
of the examples I will discuss below I will reference the pages or chapters.

Forrest McDonald, in the introduction to Folsom, started from the praiseworthy goal that this book somehow sets the record straight but then ended with the theme that is anti-government and anti-subsidy. McDonald's earlier book, We The People, was a rebuttal to Charles Beard's book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution in which Beard suggested that when the "robber-barons" were voting for the formation of the US Constitution they were really voting for the benefits of their own businesses, land ownerships, and financial interests but not for the good of the country. Again, I found shortcomings and flaws in McDonald's book as much as McDonald found flaws in Beard's book.

Most of Folsom's early chapters were devoted to only a few famous names in the early steamship, railroad, steel, and oil industries but also included a line of thinking and analysis which suggested or concluded, repeatedly, that government subsidies and state chartered monopolies were always bad. Other books tell a different story. As examples, Choate (Agents of Influence), Prestowitcz, Jr. (Trading Places), Schlossstein (Trade Wars), and Chang (Bad Samaratans) showed how Japan's government, government-industry cooperation, and government subsidies made short work of taking over much of the U.S. industrial base in the 1950-1980 interval after WW2 and moving it to Japan. Still other books such as by editors
Vickers and Yarrow (Privatization: An Economic Analysis), authors Kikeri, Nelis, and Shirley (Privatization), and author Sclar (You Don't Always Get What You Pay For) went into great detail showing that government involvement in the commercial economy was not always bad and privatization was not always good. In the last two decades (since early 1990s) China, which is all under government control, made short work of moving a major fraction of all of US industry to China and got rich at the same time.

On page 76 of Folsom is an example of the massive privately-sponsored PR effort to preferentially secure the flow of benefits to private elements from government sources. Surely this is self-dealing instead of entrepreneural merit. How this broadly benefits US society was not explained by Folsom.

On p. 118 is the age old story of trickle-down and how it is good for everyone. Unfortunately it sounds like the other age old story of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. On page 119 is another age old story of why the rich should not have to pay taxes. My, what a sense of entitlement!

The real crux of Folsom's book is in the final chapter. This is yet another old story of left wing or liberal media bias (and see p. 120 of Folsom). Most authors and readers are aware of bias but often like to judge only their antagonists as being guilty of it. For comparison, please read Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me). While Folsom presented his heros as having greatly benefitted broader American society, I would, on the contrary, suggest that Parenti (Democracy for the Few) did a better job of showing how much of American society and culture was damaged by the "redistribution" of money from the poor to the rich. Damage, economic and otherwise? By the rich? If you are incredulous at that suggestion, then see the chapters on white collar crime in most criminology textbooks and the history of court cases where prosecution of rich-powerful people in high positions and a large fraction of corporations who committed crimes against various individuals and as well as economic classes of the people. For crimes which were legal
but unethical, there will only be books on the subject of corporate corrupt practices. There are many.

Readers should also be aware of Mathew Josephson's other book, The Politicos. Although more difficult to read, this book showed how the robber-barons used lobbyists, bribes, tricks, tweaks, sneaks, and other sordid methods to get politicians to make or adjust laws favorable to the robber-barons. Teams of lawyers, assistants, and the brute power of their great fortunes
allowed the robber-barons to ruin, financially, anyone they didn't like regardless of whether justice was served. Unfortunately the consequent economic damage has not received the recognition or analysis that it deserves.

Robber-barons existed well before the late 1800s and existed all over the world. For example, land ownership was always exploitative. Solon and Pisistratus, in ancient Greek times, were credited with negotiating relief of the many tenants from the brutal economic grip of the few landlords (See Heaton, Economic History of Europe, p. 37, 1936 edition; Meier, Athens: A Portrait of the City in its Golden Age, english translation of 1998; and Grant, The Rise of the Greeks, pp. 46-63, 1987 edition). Walinsky, ed., in his Agrarian Reform as Unfinished Business (ISBN 0-19-920098-X) showed how Western efforts were made to reduce landlord "robber-barroning" throughout Asia to prevent the spread of communism throughout the 20 t h century. Myer's book, History of the Great American Fortunes, showed that greedy-selfish manipulative processes were present in America well before it became a country. And, Ladurie's book, Carnival in Romans (translation by Mary Feeney), is a brilliant historical study of class warfare in 16 t h century France. There are robber-barons who not only know that they are robber-barons but also want to see more people become robber-barons (see the book with the long title and ISBN 0930566-01-7)

Another key to the conservative bias in Folsom's book is the publisher's mission (as shown by a simple Google search which will locate their website and stated agenda). Thus, I view this book as a slanted view of reality based on examples and details cherry-picked to selectively embellish anything consistent with conservative ideology and ignore any enlightenment that might come from a balanced examination of the story about the robber-barrons.
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77 of 200 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars The Myth of The (altruist) Robber Baron, January 14, 2000
By Robert Baldori (Okemos, MI) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (Paperback)
This book is a revisionist attempt to whitewash some of the more egregious practises of rampant, unregulated capitalism. To his credit, Folsom makes no attempt to disguise his bias. But his study of history is poor, and much of the book is dedicated to critiqueing other history books rather than serious scholarship in the attempt at rehabilitating his cast of American entrepreneurial rogues.
For example, Folsom makes the argument that Vanderbilt made himself the richest man in America because of his entrepreneurial astuteness without any type of government support. He conveniently overlooks the way Vanderbilt and others manipulated the stock of his various companies and bilked shareholders at just about every opportunity while buying off judges and politicians to gain advantage over competitors. These facts are well documented in CHAPTERS OF ERIE, by Charles Francis Adams, Jr. and Henry Adams, a much better, balanced history of that particular era.

Folsom starts with the premise that his "free-market" religion is the answer to all things economic, and moves back through history selecting only the facts that confirm his "true believer" mentality. History doesn't work that way, and neither does the free market.

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11 of 55 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Say hello to "The New History", March 7, 2012
By JCV "runblader" (Adventure, FL United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (Paperback)
Newsflash: Vanderbilt, Rockerfeller, et al. were all political entrepreneurs. No surprise that now, when the division of wealth is greater than any time in US history, noises arise from the right claiming the Robber Barrons to be saints and Teddy Roosevelt the antichrist. Let the Revisionism begin!
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54 of 210 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars This book is deceiving, February 20, 2001
By Bob Heddle (Kirkland, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (Paperback)
If you want to learn about the Robber Barons, you should not read this book.
The stated goal of this book is to argue that government subsidies are bad. It then tries to prove this thesis by describing various Robber Barons. To take the example of the railways: he describes 3 barons who accepted subsidies and wasted them, then describes one (Jim Hill) who didn't and thrived. This is all fine and good, but doesn't prove anything at all. I could show you 3 men who can cook and a woman who can't - does that prove that women can't cook?

Neither does he make any attempt to fully describe any of the robber barons or the industries they competed in. His "thesis" gets him off the hook - he uses only those facts which help his argument, ignoring everything else. He doesn't make any attempt to illustrate their strengths and weaknesses, their mistakes and lucky breaks, etc. Instead he paints a simplistic black-and-white picture of these complex and colorful men.

This book is easy to read, but why bother? If you are interested in the robber barons, look elsewhere. And if you're interested in government subsides, no doubt you'll want more than just century-old anecdotes.

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36 of 199 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible, December 6, 2000
By A Customer
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This review is from: The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (Paperback)
Totally agree about the revisionist comment here. This is a political piece, not an intelligent critique of a cultural phenomenon. Another mindless, adoring tribute to capitalism.
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26 of 162 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Revisionist history at its best!, April 8, 1999
By fwebster@mail.ticonet.co.cr (Costa Rica, america central) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (Paperback)
I read this book after having read the original based on the two reviews above. I wonder if the 'Young America's Foundation' is a conservative indoctrination center and perhaps part of the radical religious right? I wonder if the two reviewers above are in any way connected to the same. This book avers to report truthful facts, which it does. It simply omits lots of others that are pertinent so as to present precisely the picture it wishes to see. Read the original "Robber Barons" for the full story.
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16 of 144 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Bah Humbug, April 4, 2009
By W. Sapp - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America (Paperback)
A sad effort to justify greed and oppression. Smart people can do this, but it's morally repugnant.
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