Like Anthony Gregory, I agree with many of the nominees for the “Free Market Hall of Fame.” Unfortunately, as Gregory notes, too many good guys are missing, and not all candidates are exactly “free market.”
This is especially true of the “(past) free market business leader” category.
My own nominee would be James J. Hill, a true market entrepreneur. In building his Great Northern Railroad, Hill did not rely on government subsidy and privilege, but rather acted as the true free market businessman should, i.e. guided by the consumer, not the state.
Thomas DiLorenzo includes Hill in his magnificent book, How Capitalism Saved America.
As DiLorenzo writes:
Quite naturally, Hill strongly opposed government favors to his competitors: “The government should not furnish capital to these companies, in addition to their enormous land subsidies, to enable them to conduct their business in competition with enterprises that have received no aid from the public treasury,” he wrote. This may sound quaint by today’s standards, but it was still a hotly debated issue in the late nineteenth century.
He certainly deserves to replace the inflationist, Benjamin Franklin.
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I’m sorry to be so ignorant but am I right in suspecting that James Hill was the model for Henry Galt in The Driver?
I would think so, but after I looked it up, I found:
“It is interesting to note that the character of Henry M. Galt was modeled on 19th century railroad czar and turnaround specialist, Edward H. Harriman (1848-1909). Harriman had bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange at age 22. By 1883, he sat on the board of the Illinois Central and initiated its huge expansion program. In 1898 he took over and rescued the Union Pacific, a property in receivership and near collapse, and shortly thereafter purchased the Southern Pacific and Central Pacific and saved the Erie. It was Harriman who established standards for locomotives, cars, bridges, structures, signals, and so on.”
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/05/050315-16.html
The Driver is high up on my reading list…I just need to buy it.
People also speculate that Hill was the model for Nathaniel Taggart in Atlas Shrugged.
If anyone is looking for a good candidate for question #7 (present entrepreneur), feel free to write-in Jason Osborne.
Jason is the head of Sakal CAI and one of the numerous co-authors with Ed Stringham on their wonderful rejoinder to Buchanan et al.
Franklin was also a rent-seeker. It is fairly well known that he was Postmaster-General. What is often overlooked is just how critical that job was at the time for the newspaper and printing business. The job gave him in effect first access to the “wire service” of the day
Hmm… you’re right. I remember back in my high school days, being the naive liberal I was at the time, reading about Hill in my history textbook. He struck me as far different from the other corrupt ‘robber barons’ I so despised at the time. It was the first few curious glimmers into insight that led me to becoming conservative/libertarian.
An article on Hill on this site would be ideal for me, as I’d like to know more.
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