AHC/WI: British equivalents of Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie and so on

Thomas1195

Banned
As we know, the emergence of innovative, intelligent and cunning industrialists played a huge role in the rise of the USA as an industrial behemoth during the late 19th century, in addition to government policies (e.g. tariffs). Many of them had poor background. The most notable ones include:
- Cornelius Vanderbilt
- John D. Rockefeller
- Andrew Carnegie
- Thomas Edison
- George Westinghouse
...and many others
These guys basically single-handedly brought the US to the global leadership position in oil, railway, steel and electricity, which were the backbone of an industrial power.

Meanwhile, such giants never emerged in Britain. Guys with poor background like Andrew Carnegie would have ended up working in a shipyard as a factory worker.

Your challenge is to have such giants to emerge in Britain during the same period. I think the most important difference was about social structure, which would require a very early POD to change.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
I'm not sure if this was really possible in Britain given the stratified class conscious nature of British society.

In America especially in this era-business acumen, as well as an ability to manage work forces, resources and yes play footsies with politicians(the corruption of this era is legendary) allowed those from poor or non descript backgrounds to "pull up their bootstraps".

In Britain this was never the case at least not in this era-the aristocracy and landed gentry were still very much a thing, and the whole system was designed to maintain that class order. Not allow working class Britain's to ascend to the heights of wealth and power.

Also the new money-industrialists, newspaper owners and so on largely integrated with the aristocracy-marrying into it, sending their sons to the same schools, etc... Thus joining with the aristocracy though remaining economically and culturally distinct from it.

In the US there wasn't really an aristocracy-sure there was old money and wealthy families in the south, or east coast, or New England, but there was plenty of openings-new industries, new businesses, new oppurtunities.

These openings and the fact American society was such that poor but hardworking immigrants or laborers might have a chance to make it meant that gilded age robber barons could emerge in the US when their parents had been poor immigrants skinning rabbits for a living or working on the docks.

This for a variety of social, economic, and political reasons wasn't possible in the UK.
 
Whilst there were undoubtedly differences in social structure in both countries, the idea that Britain was entirely class-bound and that America was a veritable land of the free isn't really rooted in the actual histories of either country. I mean, many of the American captains of industry that you list were financed from London by the very establishment that you argue held back such figures in Britain. Succeeding in business in the United States in the c19th was still very much a game of what influential people you knew, how you could attract the support of society 'influence makers' such as newspaper editors, and whether you could attract wealthy patrons to help you get an initial injection of capital.

Besides, there are plenty of men who rose from relative obscurity in Britain like the American ones you mentioned.

George and Robert Stephenson
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Henry Bessemer
William Armstrong
Samuel Montagu
William Jacks
Both halves of Peto and Betts
Edward Harland [of Harland and Woolf]

Not all of them came from abject poverty but then neither did all of the Americans on your list [Westinghouse had a more middle-class background than terrible poverty for example].

There are certain differences you could make - an earlier move towards ending the bar of non-conformity would allow many companies from Quaker or Unitarian backgrounds [Cadburys, Barclays, Rowntrees, Lever Brothers, etc] to raise money a little easier and earlier and also take a more active role in national politics than they already did, for example.

But to claim that such men didn't exist in the UK or that the US was a veritable poor man's paradise of people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps on every corner doesn't do a fair job of representing the c19th reality.
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
I think that there are two questions here. The first is that American culture identifies and searches for the Great Man, and attributes success to the force of personality of that individual. Victorian and Edwardian British culture also did this to an extent, but we recognised a wider range of achievements than the Americans did. For example Gordon, Baden-Powell, Kipling and Livingstone were all feted for achievements that brought little economic reward. This is probably to do with the ways that these man fit into the state ideology of Commerce, Military competence and valour and muscular Christianity. We no longer focus on the Great Men, whereas America seems to have retained this fascination.

The second is that the economic boom in the US was due to the conquest and usurpation of Native-American land, which created massive opportunities between around 1850-1900. This allowed non-traditional elites much more opportunity, as there simply was not sufficient population to exploit this territory with elite members. A similar trajectory was followed in Aus, NZ and Canada. Famously, a third of the Canadian parliament were Gaelic-speakers in 1890.
 
I think that there are two questions here. The first is that American culture identifies and searches for the Great Man, and attributes success to the force of personality of that individual. Victorian and Edwardian British culture also did this to an extent, but we recognised a wider range of achievements than the Americans did. For example Gordon, Baden-Powell, Kipling and Livingstone were all feted for achievements that brought little economic reward. This is probably to do with the ways that these man fit into the state ideology of Commerce, Military competence and valour and muscular Christianity. We no longer focus on the Great Men, whereas America seems to have retained this fascination.

The second is that the economic boom in the US was due to the conquest and usurpation of Native-American land, which created massive opportunities between around 1850-1900. This allowed non-traditional elites much more opportunity, as there simply was not sufficient population to exploit this territory with elite members. A similar trajectory was followed in Aus, NZ and Canada. Famously, a third of the Canadian parliament were Gaelic-speakers in 1890.

There is certainly something of the Great Men obsession here, although its important to remember that one of the original great men texts was British and about an industrialist - Samuel Smiles's biography of George Stephenson.

As for your second point, I don't know if the opening up of native land in this period really impact industry that directly did it? I mean, I understand that westward expansion in the US fueled a demand for industrial goods and technologies [particularly rails and telegraphs] but until the oil explosion at the end of the century much of the industrial concentration tended to be in the North and Midwest - that was where men like Carnegie and Westinghouse made their fortunes and they did it through more conventional patterns of investment and fund-raising.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
I'm not sure this is true at all. What about George Hudson (railroad baron), Robert Clive (and other nabobs who get rich in India), Cecil Rhodes (British South African Company,), Rothschild (banking).

There are phenomenon of explosion of Gentleman Clubs (and Freemasonry). All which imply there explosion of nouve riche in 18-19th century.

They simply less well-known.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
George and Robert Stephenson
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Henry Bessemer
William Armstrong
Samuel Montagu
William Jacks
Both halves of Peto and Betts
Edward Harland [of Harland and Woolf]
Most of them were before 1870.

Cadburys, Barclays, Rowntrees, Lever Brothers, etc
Britain did not have many progressive, modernist industrialists operating in heavy and new industries (Alfred Herbert, John Brunner and Ludwig Mond were the few exceptions).


Besides, American industrialists tended to be way more risk-taking, ruthless and innovative, and more visionary.

You know, Rockefeller was able to undercut the whole railway industry by simply adopting oil pipes to transfer oil, and this also revolutionized oil industry. Even his act of using "Standard Oil" brand had its purpose. Later, when facing competition from electrical companies in lighting market, he came up with the idea of selling gasoline, which at that time were just some kind of industrial waste of the oil industry.

Similarly, you can look at the way Andrew Carnegie gambled everything he had to build the Eads Bridge to cross the Mississippi as a steel one. And after that, he was really creative when he used an elephant to encourage people to cross the bridge. He was also credited for pioneering vertical integration in steel industry.

I also failed to mention Cyrus McCormick.


I'm not sure this is true at all. What about George Hudson (railroad baron), Robert Clive (and other nabobs who get rich in India), Cecil Rhodes (British South African Company,), Rothschild (banking).
The problem is that none of them were industrialists.

I'm not sure if this was really possible in Britain given the stratified class conscious nature of British society.

In America especially in this era-business acumen, as well as an ability to manage work forces, resources and yes play footsies with politicians(the corruption of this era is legendary) allowed those from poor or non descript backgrounds to "pull up their bootstraps".

In Britain this was never the case at least not in this era-the aristocracy and landed gentry were still very much a thing, and the whole system was designed to maintain that class order. Not allow working class Britain's to ascend to the heights of wealth and power.

Also the new money-industrialists, newspaper owners and so on largely integrated with the aristocracy-marrying into it, sending their sons to the same schools, etc... Thus joining with the aristocracy though remaining economically and culturally distinct from it.

In the US there wasn't really an aristocracy-sure there was old money and wealthy families in the south, or east coast, or New England, but there was plenty of openings-new industries, new businesses, new oppurtunities.

These openings and the fact American society was such that poor but hardworking immigrants or laborers might have a chance to make it meant that gilded age robber barons could emerge in the US when their parents had been poor immigrants skinning rabbits for a living or working on the docks.

This for a variety of social, economic, and political reasons wasn't possible in the UK.
Strongly agree. American society generally allowed people to, well, dream more. Although Ford rose in the next century, he was the most prominent example.

All prominent US billionaires at that time, except for Morgan, rose from poor background.
 
Most of them were before 1870.

:neutral: Well you can declare any sort of victory you like if you move the goalposts enough.

You know, Rockefeller was able to undercut the whole railway industry by simply adopting oil pipes to transfer oil, and this also revolutionized oil industry. Even his act of using "Standard Oil" brand had its purpose. Later, when facing competition from electrical companies in lighting market, he came up with the idea of selling gasoline, which at that time were just some kind of industrial waste of the oil industry.

Similarly, you can look at the way Andrew Carnegie gambled everything he had to build the Eads Bridge to cross the Mississippi as a steel one. And after that, he was really creative when he used an elephant to encourage people to cross the bridge. He was also credited for pioneering vertical integration in steel industry.

I also failed to mention Cyrus McCormick.

I wasn't disputing that American Captains of Industry weren't innovators or risk-takers, just that there was no special essence in the United States that necessarily made such men vastly more likely to succeed. Nor was there vast restrictions in British society that prevented such men rising up. Its also worth noting that, whilst good publicity and business tactics, none of these things are particularly new or unique. A number of inventors in the c18th in Britain used animals to create spectacle, for example. Richard Trevithick challenged anyone to bring along a horse to race his new engine Catch me Who Can in the 1800s. Samson Fox had the entire town of Harrogate hooked up to Water Gas to prove his system was safe.

My wider point was that you have extreme views of society in late c19th Britain and USA which are too distinct and aren't rooted in the realities of societies at the time.


Besides, American industrialists tended to be way more risk-taking, ruthless and innovative, and more visionary.

<snip>

Strongly agree. American society generally allowed people to, well, dream more. Although Ford rose in the next century, he was the most prominent example.

How on earth can you historically prove a society allowed people to ''dream'' more than another society? I'd agree that the slightly less hierarchical society in the States, and it was only slightly less than in Britain, possibly made it easier for men from ''outsider'' backgrounds to raise money and finance businesses. But I don't see how you can claim the United States was somehow more visionary a society than Britain - how could you historically test that from the primary sources available?
 
The post-1870 qualification suggests that this is more a product of technological environment / comparative advantages at that phase in an industrial cycle, rather than this reflecting a difference in social structure (to the extent this is a valid qualification anyway!).

(As well, doesn't that GDP/capita growth and productivity growth does not really diverge between UK and US until 1920s-1940s, mainly in the war period, reflect that these Gilded Age industrialists didn't do much, at least during their lifetime, to shift the trajectory of the society on to one of more productive and effective business and technology?).
 

Brunaburh

Gone Fishin'
As for your second point, I don't know if the opening up of native land in this period really impact industry that directly did it? I mean, I understand that westward expansion in the US fueled a demand for industrial goods and technologies [particularly rails and telegraphs] but until the oil explosion at the end of the century much of the industrial concentration tended to be in the North and Midwest - that was where men like Carnegie and Westinghouse made their fortunes and they did it through more conventional patterns of investment and fund-raising.

I'd say that the expansion into new markets and protectionism of a growing domestic market was essential in the US development. Western societies expanding into previously "virgin" land exhibit phenomenal birthrates and economic growth, this was a key factor in sustaining the US boom. The sheer quantity of resources and their comparative proximity to population centres was also massively important. Also, the importation of labour was vital, and this depended on over-population in Europe and powered the US boom.

The US also spoke English and was just a week's sail from Liverpool, thereby having access to the Europe's technical advances with no patent protection and the comparative advantages of local production, informal empire and state protectionism. It is not surprising that US companies were successful. What is more interesting is why the US allowed these companies to be dominated by individuals?
 
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