As the Second Industrial Revolution transformed the United States, a small group of individuals helped grow the country’s industries and companies. They were known as captains of industry, business magnates, tycoons, or robber barons. The exact way they were remembered had a lot to do with how they built their wealth and what they did with it later in life. Here, we’ll learn about four leaders of the Gilded Age.

The first of the tycoons was born in 1794 on Staten Island. Growing up, he watched his mother sell vegetables and stash silver coins in the family’s grandfather clock. As a boy, Vanderbilt quit school to work on his father’s boat—moving passengers and goods across the New York Harbor. Vanderbilt earned the nickname “Commodore” and soon ran his own fleet of boats.

Staying a step ahead of transportation innovations, Vanderbilt continued on to steamships and railroads. By joining railroad lines together, he eventually built a fortune of more than $100 million.

Vanderbilt didn’t always get along with his family members, but he cared deeply for his most prized possession, a $14,000 horse named Mountain Boy, who became a national celebrity.

Seemingly indestructible, Vanderbilt survived a train wreck, tropical disease exposure, storms at sea, and heart trouble before dying in his 80s.

John Pierpont Morgan started out life well positioned for his future in banking. Born in Connecticut in 1837, Morgan came from a well-to-do New England family. His father was a successful financier and a partner at a banking firm in London. Morgan followed in his father’s footsteps and grew his own banking career. Morgan drew foreign investors to American businesses and combined companies, joining their boards of directors in the process.

Morgan became known for hard tactics. At one point, he took competing railroad directors out on his yacht, the Corsair. He then told them they wouldn’t return to shore until the men worked out a compromise.

Morgan helped form General Electric and the U.S. Steel Corporation, which would become the country’s first billion-dollar company. In the 1890s, he bailed out the U.S. Treasury when it was close to bankruptcy. Then in 1912, he was booked on the RMS Titanic, but he didn’t sail.

When Morgan died a year later, he left behind a huge art collection, much of it given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Born in a stone cottage in Scotland in 1835, Andrew Carnegie grew up the son of a skilled handloom weaver. After the introduction of steam-powered looms, his father struggled to find work. The family fell on even harder times after the Highland Potato Blight and left for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Carnegie went to work as a bobbin boy at age 12 and later became a telegraph messenger. He would often deliver messages to the theater and sometimes stayed to watch the Shakespeare plays on stage. He later built a successful railroad career, but by his 30s, Carnegie’s growing wealth made him uneasy.
Carnegie thought about retiring early, but instead went on to become the richest man in America, investing in steel factories. He argued for workers’ rights, but his desire to cut costs often drove him to ignore these rights. He fought against wage increases and shorter workdays.

Carnegie eventually sold his steel company to J.P. Morgan for $480 million and committed himself to philanthropy, believing that “a man who dies rich dies disgraced.”