ROBBERBARON

Robber baron

In social criticism and economic literature, Robber barons became a derogatory term applied to wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen that appeared in North American periodical literature as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. By the late 1800s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used what were considered to be exploitative practices to amass their wealth. These practices included exerting control over national resources, accruing high levels of government influence, paying extremely low wages, squashing competition by acquiring competitors in order to create monopolies and eventually raise prices, and ...

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robber baron

Noun

  1. In Europe, an aristocrat who charged exorbitant fees or otherwise exacted money from people who journeyed across land or waterways which he controlled.
  2. Especially in the 19th-century and early 20th-century, a business tycoon who had great wealth and influence but whose methods were morally questionable.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: robber baron
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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