Burton W. Folsom, Jr.

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Burton W. Folsom, Jr. (born 1947) is an American historian and author. He received his doctorate in history from the University of Pittsburgh in 1976 and as of 2008^[update] is a professor of American history at Hillsdale College.

Folsom has written several books that revise commonly held views about the role of capitalism in the social developments of the Industrial Revolution and the Gilded Age. Folsom shows robber barons as constructive visionaries who benefited consumers and were integral to the development of industry. In his book The Myth of the Robber Barons, Folsom distinguishes between political entrepreneurs who ran inefficient businesses supported by government favors, and market entrepreneurs who succeeded by providing better and lower-cost products or services, usually while facing vigorous competition.

Folsom identifies the following people as market entrepreneurs:

• John Jacob Astor
• James J. Hill
• John D. Rockefeller
• Charles M. Schwab
• Cornelius Vanderbilt

He regards these people as political entrepreneurs:

• Robert Fulton
• Thomas McKenney
• Henry Villard
• Warren Buffett^[1]

Folsom is a former associate of the Free Enterprise Institute and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, both free market think tanks, and a frequent guest of the libertarian organization Foundation for Economic Education. Warren Buffett was noted as a political entrepreneur during Dr. Folsom's talk to The National Conservative Student Conference, on Monday, August 4, 2008.

[edit] Books by Folsom

• New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America (2008) ISBN 1416592229
• Urban Capitalists: Entrepreneurs and City Growth in Pennsylvania's Lackawanna and Lehigh Regions 1800-1920 (2005) ISBN 0940866943
• No More Free Markets or Free Beer: The Progressive Era in Nebraska, 1900-1924 (1999) ISBN 0739100149
• Empire Builders: How Michigan Entrepreneurs Helped Make America Great (1998) ISBN 1890394068
• The Myth of the Robber Barons (1993) ISBN 0963020315
• Entrepreneurs Vs. the State (1989) ISBN 0895265737

[edit] Footnotes