The industrial bourgeoisie

Owners of factories, banks, railroads, and shipping companies. Often self-made men from middle-class or skilled-artisan backgrounds. They prospered enormously. They built grand houses in suburbs distant from factory smoke. They sent children to private schools and entered politics. By the late nineteenth century the wealthiest industrialists (Rockefeller in oil, Carnegie in steel, Krupp in arms) commanded fortunes that dwarfed those of European aristocrats.