JACOB FUGGER

JOHN LAW

NATHAN ROTHSCHILD

ROBERT OWEN

CORNELIUS VANDERBILT

HETTY GREEN

HACHIROBEI MITSUI AND HIS WIFE

CECIL RHODES

BASIL ZAHAROFF

MARK HANNA

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

J. P. MORGAN

Historical Pictures

JACOB FUGGER

ORGANIZER OF CAPITALISM

MONEY MAGICIAN

IN THE Rothschilds we come upon an elemental energy that can be described as nothing less than an organized appetite. The founders of this fortune were driven by nothing short of an acquisitive fury.

COSIMO DE’ MEDICI

THE TEMPTATION to include in this volume whole chapters about three men was not easy to resist. They were Cosimo de’ Medici, Sir Thomas Gresham, and Jacques Coeur. The essentials in the stories of these men were quite the same. They were the chief pioneers in organizing the forms of the new capitalist system in Italy, England, and France, respectively.

THE LONG annals of money getting have produced but one Robert Owen. If you can imagine one of the largest employers in America—Mr. Henry Ford, for instance—becoming the leader of the labor movement, or Mr. Tom Girdler taking the field for factory reform, or Mr. Owen D. Young going up and down the land clamoring for a recovery scheme not unlike Mr.

THE RAIL KING

A SMALL CATBOAT scudding the waters of the bay from Stapleton to Battery Pier; at the tiller a big hulk of a youth, large-faced, broad-chested, blue-eyed, bursting with health and blood and self-assurance. This is the sixteen-year-old ferryman of Staten Island—Cornelius Vanderbilt—who has just plunged into business for himself.

EARLY IN 1833 a young man arrived in the town of New Bedford and went at once to the offices of Isaac Howland, Jr., & Company. His name was Edward Mott Robinson and thereafter he was the “Company” in that important firm of merchant-adventurers. He was a dashing figure, tall, erect, handsome, distinguished in his bearing.

MISERS

THERE CAN be little doubt that Hetty Green satisfied most of the elements in the definition of a miser. Whatever other ingredients this definition ought to contain, certainly a French version—literally translated—is not amiss: “The love excessive of the silver for it to accumulate.”