Is that not true? Carnegie and Rockefeller were even relatively richer than the CEOs are today, and I'm sure their lawyers were compensated for as well as today's richest lawyers as well.
The only period of relatively more equality was post-WW2. Inequality then, as ever, has only been reduced by mass death -- either in the form of wars, or plagues, famines etc.
The mechanism of wealth acquisition, ie., investment /(preferential attachment), necessarily iterates towards increasing levels of inequality.
Your productivity is your effect on net increases in economic transactions. A CEO has a massive effect. Jeff Bezos can literally, right now, change the GDP of entire countries just by making a decision.
One minute of his time can raise or lower a country's economic activity.
> while the money went elsewhere
Did it? Productivity increases is still the reason people have rising wages.
That we don't see the 1:1 wage:productivity increases we used to (post-WW2), doesnt mean that productivity isnt still the key metric to be increasing.
As to why that is probably the form automation takes today has a lot to do with it, ie., that innovations in factories used to increase the productivity of working class people; now such increases accumulate to highly skilled workers.
Ironically, I think this makes my point: our economy has become politically unstable because of the relative increase of low-productivity labour. This would get much worse with people transitioning to care work.
Intuitively, "pay according to productivity" makes sense, but productivity gains have far outpaced the pay of workers while the money went elsewhere. Let's face the reality that productivity prescribes the total sum that goes around but not how each individual's contribution is credited in a society.