The part about Carnegie doesn't mention how he basically went to England and took a new process for making steel 10x more efficiently from some other guys, came back and invested $100000 in a factory using the new process, and then had congress pass laws enacting tariffs on British steel. He wouldn't have gotten nearly so rich without those tariffs.

Probably because that's a myth. Read Joseph Frazier Wall's biography of Carnegie -- he went to Britain and saw the new steel-making process, but so did many other Americans. Like Carnegie, they were unimpressed, because it made small batches of steel for which there wasn't a ready market.

He got into the steel business about a decade later.

But that story isn't as fun as the legend of the rapacious rapscallion, who only got rich stealing an idea nobody wanted and everyone knew about, ten years later.

The tariff point is correct, though. He would not have been so rich. But he was the low-cost producer, anyway, so he wouldn't exactly have been hurting.

A cool quote: "Gentlemen: you have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt."

Reminds me of the advice to not rely too much on patents but on the business.

You can copy IP in 6 minutes IT in 6 months But to re-create a culture takes years.

When the owner drives a culture of ruthless business excellence (or otherwise), replacing the owner is not a wise business decision.

Well said.

It could really use some more details on how they're coming up with these numbers. I can imagine how they might infer the wealth in current dollars of, say, Carnegie or Ford. But Crassus?

There is a lot more to John D. Rockefeller than the article can ever summarize. I would suggest to anyone who wants to find out about the entire history, politics, discovery and wealth surrounding Oil and oilmen to read Daniel Yergin's The Prize.

To read about Rockefeller try "The Titan". Ever since this book came out in 1997, it has been my favorite business biography followed by Icon "Jobs".

One of Rockefeller's greatest achievements which is not mentioned is the creation of the modern corporation. Rockefeller and his partners were the first ones to pioneer the management of a huge enterprise much of what is taken for granted in today's S&P 500 companies.

Standard Oil came up with the idea of owning a wide variety of companies through trusts.

Also, the idea of management by being first among equals, running the company by consensus (in most cases) by a group of executives without exerting authoritarian control was new.

Finally, Rockefeller help write much of anti trust law. I will leave it at that.