Have the Rich Ever Paid a Fair Share of Taxes? (Part 2)

As the 19th century wound down, the industrialization of the U.S., by then the world's largest and most productive economy, was piling up fortunes of unprecedented size.

Cornelius Vanderbilt had died the richest self-made man in the world when he left his heirs $105 million in 1877. His son William Henry Vanderbilt doubled his father's fortune in just eight years. When Andrew Carnegie agreed to sell Carnegie Steel Corporation to J.P. Morgan for $480 million in 1901, Morgan told him, "Congratulations on becoming the richest man in the world." By 1910, John D. Rockefeller was worth $1 billion.