The book by Burton Folsom, “The Myth of the Robber Baron,” shines a light on a common belief that entrepreneurs during the industrial revolution are robber barons. Burton Folsom’s main point, is that there are two types of entrepreneurs he uses in the book in order to separate the Robber Barons from the entrepreneurs, which I will discuss a little later. Robber Baron is a term that is used for entrepreneurs during the 19th century that used questionable or unethical means to build/attain wealth. They payed there workers low wages while also buying out the competitors that could not keep up with them. Once the competition was brought out and that company was the last one standing they would jack up their prices. As I discussed earlier, Burton Folsom separated the entrepreneurs into two groups, one he classifies as the political entrepreneurs, these are the entrepreneurs that tried to succeed through federal aid, pools, vote buying, or stock speculation. These are the entrepreneurs that rely heavily on government help and subsidies. The other group that he refers to is classified as market entrepreneurs, these are the entrepreneurs that tried to succeed by creating …show more content…
However as stated in the first chapter, no one falls perfectly into one category or the other but instead generally would fall into one of the two categorizes. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about robber barons or about the entrepreneurs that entered the scene around the time of the industrial revolution. However, I would recommend it as a book to read along side others that deal with the a similar topic to get a variety of viewpoints so that they can come up with their own conclusions on whether or not they would consider the market entrepreneurs to be Robber barons or just people who are trying to make a honest living without taking advantage of