Robber Barons or Captains of Industry Since the gilded age of American history historians have debated weather or not the great industrial leader who put our counrty back together in the torent years following the civil war were robber barons or captains of industry. Three of these great men who organized industrial America and changed the American way of life are J. D. Rockefeller, J. Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. Each of these men took their own level of morality and individual business startageis into the world of industry. It was this morality and their personal business strategies that have lead historian to classify these three men as either robber