Whom do you think of when you hear the words “The Robber Barons?”

The easy answer: The magnates of The Gilded Age of the late 1800s, when imperial and imperious capitalists bestrode the nation: Cornelius Vanderbilt—a railroad magnate—John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, J. Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan et al.

They and their cohorts, all WASP men, controlled the country, bought and sold politicians, exercised make-or-break power over commerce, ruined, suppressed and exploited workers, and wrecked people’s lives.