The Robber Barons The Great American Capitalists Pdf

Beyond Capitalism Leland Stanfords Forgotten Vision. Published in Sandstone and Tile, Vol. Winter 1. 99. 0, Stanford Historical Society, Stanford, California. Original version 1. Lee Altenberg. Labor can and will become its own employerthrough co operative association. Leland Stanford. Buried in the stacks of the Stanford University Archives is a secret about Stanfords history that has been kept for decades. If you are a teacher searching for educational material, please visit PBS LearningMedia for a wide range of free digital resources spanning preschool through 12th grade. Beyond Capitalism Leland Stanfords Forgotten Vision by Lee Altenberg Published in Sandstone and Tile, Vol. Winter 1990, Stanford Historical Society. It is not the kind of secret that needed anyone to keep it hidden rather, it is a public secreta piece of history that our society, by the very nature of its development over the last 1. Even a university, that great conservator of history, can be party to this erasure when its history does not contribute to the current branding of the institution. The Robber Barons The Great American Capitalists Pdf' title='The Robber Barons The Great American Capitalists Pdf' />The name Leland Stanford today usually conjures up that whole class of historical actors who emerged from the nineteenth century American industrial revolution the multimillionaire industrialists. We recall the other names Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Visual Boy Advance And Roms Nes. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. The public at the time understood that their social power and status exceeded what could be simply called wealthy they were Americas new aristocracy, not through noble birth, but through material acquisition they were the Robber Barons. America%27s_60_Families.png' alt='The Robber Barons The Great American Capitalists Pdf' title='The Robber Barons The Great American Capitalists Pdf' />Many of them, after a lifetime of accumulating unprecedented sums of money, came to be philanthropists, donating much of their wealth to charitable causes. One may speculate on their inner motivations, but certainly their charity carried the implicit message that societys production of robber barons may, in the end, be beneficial. Certainly none of the charitable projects was specifically aimed at creating a society that would no longer give birth to wealthy industrialists. We find, however, one remarkable exception Leland Stanford. Leland Stanford was one of the Big Four the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad, and by mid century he had amassed a fortune of many millions of dollars. When one spoke of a Robber Baron in the 1. Leland Stanford would be among the first names to come to mind. Yet during the final decade of his life, Leland Stanford had come to the conclusion that American society would in the future be better off if it did not create more tycoons such as himself that the industries of American should instead come to be owned and managed cooperatively by their very workers, and the division between capitalist and laborer disappear. This, as Stanford saw it, would be a fulfillment of the dream of American democracy. This idea did not originate with Leland Stanford. In the 1. 88. 0s, the vision of a cooperative commonwealtha system of worker owned cooperativesmoved from the margins of politics to form the core of a mass political movement in the United States, the Populists, which was at its zenith. And Leland Stanford, citing his personal experience and applying his most forceful arguments, became a champion of the vision. The Populists involving millions of southern farmers and northern industrial workers were the last mass movement in the United States to comprehensively challenge the growing domination of society by burgeoning corporations. From todays vantage point, we may identify the labor movement as the home for such political aspirations. This, however, is a misconception the labor movement emerged after the defeat of the Populists in the 1. Populistsambitions it accepted a social contract that gave corporations the role of initiator and controller of employment, production, services, and capital. The labor union movement, in contrast to the Populists, sought merely to give workers better contracts within this structure of control. In American history since the defeat of the Populists, the idea of worker ownership of corporations has been relegated to the margins of political debate and creativity, a niche so marginal that from our vantage point of the 1. In 1. 88. 5, however, when Leland Stanford became a United States Senator and founded Stanford University, worker ownership of industry seemed neither utopian nor quaint. It was a widely discussed idea for averting the escalating crises between corporations and workers that appeared at that time to be headed toward an ominous denouement. Worker ownership of industry was seen as a good idea which needed to be tried, and America was seen as a society free enough that it could be tried. The Populists hoped therefore that the steady replacement of corporations by worker cooperatives could be achieved. The goal of the seizure of State power advocated by the communists in Europe was alien to this movement. Cooperatives were seen not as an end to free enterprise, but as a freeing of enterprise for common people from domination by the plutocracy of wealthy industrialists. While the idea of worker cooperatives may seem to the contemporary reader an interesting, if impractical, ideal, during the Populist movement it formed the foundation for hope in the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Should todays social contract ever fail on a large scale, one can expect that ideas from the margins crazy as well as rational will flow into the center as people become more receptive to novel solutions for the societys woes. It is therefore prudent to maintain the germ lines of social thought, much as horticulturalists maintain heirloom plant varieties for the day when their genetic endowments may prove useful. The story of Leland Stanfords embrace of the concept of worker cooperatives provides a window into a body of social thought that one day we may be glad that we preserved. Father, do not say you have nothing to live for. You have a great deal to live for. Live for humanity. This is what Leland Stanford heard his dying son tell him in a dream while he slept by the boys bedside, awakening to find his son had died. Stanford quoted this dream as the event that gave birth to the idea of Leland Stanford, Junior, University, the memorial to his son. One can only speculate on what internal transformation may have occurred within Leland Stanford at the death of his only child. Other historical figures have also undergone profound transformations after personal tragedy. No documentation of Leland Stanfords inner life appears to remain to resolve such speculation. Regardless of what we may imagine happened to Stanford the man, the historical record shows that in the years after this pivotal event, the Populist vision of worker owned industry emerged as the recurring theme of Leland Stanfords public endeavors. As a United States Senator 1. Stanfords legislative efforts were toward bills that would give worker cooperatives the necessary legal structure and sources of credit in order to flourish. His advocacy of worker ownership was a prominent part of his newspaper interviews and his oratory in the Senate. In founding Leland Stanford Junior University, he made the cooperative vision a leading feature lying at the foundation of the University,. Trustees, the students, and in the legal documents founding the University. Could Stanfords efforts have succeeded Given that they were part of a social movement that in hindsight we know did not prevail, how indeed could they have Stanfords bills never made it out of committee, and his vision for Stanford University was not only left unrealized, but has been entirely. Universitys collective memory.