Sublime

All of these businesses operated below the radar screen of megacapitalists like the Morgans. Their primary capital expenses were for real estate and inventory, which could be financed by traditional mortgages and bank working capital lines. But that was true only because they could “externalize” the cost of all the shipping infrastructure that

A short-lived capital stock will manifest in accelerated depreciation and a fragile capital structure will incur an undue interest charge.

And the New York Central. Where did they think the money was coming from? “Keep the Central our road,” he had told Billy. And what had they done? They had sold their stock and let others manage the railroad, and now the Central, their source of wealth, was gone. And the spending! The wild, extravagant, endless spending. The Commodore had never let

Anthony Drexel, of the long-established Philadelphia banking family, changing the firm to Drexel, Morgan & Co., with the older man again named first.

By 1877 the company had become a behemoth that had far outgrown its Cleveland roots. Rockefeller and Flagler determined to move their operations to the burgeoning city of New York, where the company’s far-flung holdings could more easily be managed and where other titans such as railroad builder Cornelius Vanderbilt, fur mogul William B. Astor, and

‘In point of fact,’ resumed Sir James, not choosing to dwell on ‘fits’, ‘Brooke doesn’t mean badly by his tenants or any one else, but he has got that way of paring and clipping at expenses.’

on top of several thick strata of architecture that should be called Nordic Pragmatic lies a thin layer that will almost certainly one day be known as Asshole Capitalist.

(Rockefeller borrowed aggressively from banks, but those were mostly cash flow loans that were quickly repaid, not long-term investment capital.)

North of Mackay lay the principality of Childs Frick, son of Henry Clay Frick, baron of coal and coke, who had gained his legendary wealth during the Panic of 1873 by purchasing for a pittance the land of desperate farmers without telling them that it contained coal, the raw material of the coke essential to steelmaking, then by crushing other