Cornelius Vanderbilt: America’s First Tycoon

Recommendable! Why was he actually called a robber baron? The term robber baron as applied to American tycoons is mostly Marxist propaganda! 

Vanderbilt was not the first tycoon. This honor belongs to e.g. Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, PA.

"The catalyst for this negative view of American entrepreneurs was historian Matthew Josephson, who wrote a landmark book, The Robber Barons. Josephson, the son of a Jewish banker, grew up in New York and graduated from Columbia University, where he was inspired in the classroom by Charles Beard, America’s foremost progressive historian—and a man sympathetic to socialism." (Source)