History of the Great American Fortunes Vol. 1

About this book

History of the Great American Fortunes by Gustavus Myers is a landmark early-20th-century critique of how immense wealth was accumulated in the United States. First published in three volumes between 1909 and 1910, the book examines the rise of powerful American fortunes—from colonial landowners to railroad magnates and industrial monopolists such as the Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans, and Rockefellers. He portrays America's great fortunes not as heroic tales of entrepreneurship but as case studies in systemic injustice, revealing how economic power was amassed not through ingenuity alone but through fraud, exploitation, land grabs, political influence, and manipulation of laws and finance. Myers contends that economic inequality was built into the structure of American capitalism, producing concentrated wealth alongside widespread poverty and labor exploitation. - Summary by Celine Major