How Were Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan Different?

David Senra, reading the preface of Charles R. Morris's The Tycoons, says Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Jay Gould chased speed and experiments, while J. P. Morgan tried to rein in the competition the other three kept starting. Most businessmen around them wanted orderly markets and gentlemanly profits. Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Gould came to break that pattern. Morgan was the regulator.

Carnegie's plants were the biggest and the most automated, and his mantra was to cut costs, take share, and gain scale, with profits left to follow. Gould attacked in railroads and the telegraph and pushed public markets further than the people before him. Rockefeller took over world oil markets so fast that the fight was over before most people noticed, and he taught the first lesson in large-scale distribution. Senra calls the four the founding fathers of the American industrial superpower. Morris uses their careers to explain how the American economy expanded after the Civil War.