<Dl> <Dd> Biographies of Mellon, Carnegie and Rockefeller were often laced with moral censure, warning that "tories of industry" were a threat to democracy and that parasitism, aristocratic pretension and tyranny have always trailed in the wake of concentrated wealth, whether accumulated dynastically or more impersonally by the faceless corporation . This scholarship, and the cultural persuasion of which it was an expression, drew on a deeply rooted sensibility--partly religious, partly egalitarian and democratic--that stretched back to William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Jackson and Tom Paine . </Dd> </Dl> <Dd> Biographies of Mellon, Carnegie and Rockefeller were often laced with moral censure, warning that "tories of industry" were a threat to democracy and that parasitism, aristocratic pretension and tyranny have always trailed in the wake of concentrated wealth, whether accumulated dynastically or more impersonally by the faceless corporation . This scholarship, and the cultural persuasion of which it was an expression, drew on a deeply rooted sensibility--partly religious, partly egalitarian and democratic--that stretched back to William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Jackson and Tom Paine . </Dd> <P> However a counterattack by academic historians began as the Depression ended . Business historian Allan Nevins challenged this view of American big businessmen by advocating the "Industrial Statesman" thesis . Nevins, in his John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise (2 vols., 1940), took on Josephson . He argued that while Rockefeller may have engaged in some unethical and illegal business practices, this should not overshadow his bringing order to the industrial chaos of the day . Gilded Age capitalists, according to Nevins, sought to impose order and stability on competitive business, and that their work made the United States the foremost economy by the 20th century . </P> <P> In 1958 Bridges reported that, "The most vehement and persistent controversy in business history has been that waged by the critics and defenders of the "robber baron" concept of the American businessman ." Richard White, historian of the transcontinental railroads, stated in 2011 he has no use for the concept, which has been killed off by historians Robert Wiebe and Alfred Chandler . He notes that, "Much of the modern history of corporations is a reaction against the Robber Barons and fictions ." </P>

Who did the term robber barons refer to and who used this term