Legendary muckraker Gustavus Meyers’ second of three volumes in his massive account of the origins of certain American oligarchs turns his look to what was for generations a central feature of U.S. social, economic, and political life; the power and wealth of the railroad magnates.

History of the Great American Fortunes, Volume Two: Great Fortunes from Railroads by Gustavus Myers. Charles H. Kerr Co-Operative, Chicago. 1910.

Contents: The Seizure of the Public Domain, A Necessary Contrast, The Beginnings of the Vanderbilt Fortune, The Onrush of the Vanderbilt Fortune, The Vanderbilt Fortune Increases Manifold, The Entailing of the Vanderbilt Fortune, The Vanderbilt Fortune in the Present Generation, Further Aspects of the Vanderbilt Fortune, The Rise of the Gould Fortune, The Second Stage of the Gould Fortune, The Gould Fortune Bounds Forward, The Gould Fortune and Some Antecedent Factors. 366 pages.

The Charles H Kerr publishing house was responsible for some of the earliest translations and editions of Marx, Engels, and other leaders of the socialist movement in the United States. Publisher of the Socialist Party aligned International Socialist Review, the Charles H Kerr Co. was an exponent of the Party’s left wing and the most important left publisher of the pre-Communist US workers movement.

PDF of original book: https://archive.org/download/historyofgreatam02myeruoft/historyofgreatam02myeruoft.pdf