The Gilded Age, a time when a few individuals amassed tremendous fortunes, was powered by a great industrial surge. This created a huge demand for metals like zinc, tin, copper, and lead. No one was more successful at making money from base metals than the Guggenheims, a family of Jewish immigrants from Aargau in German-speaking Switzerland. By 1914 the family controlled 75-80 percent of the world’s silver, copper and lead, and could fix output and prices at will.
When his boys were young, Meyer Guggenheim assembled them and gave each a stick to break. He then put together seven sticks that nobody could even bend, emphasizing that individually each was fragile but together they were invincible.