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1Wealth Against Commonwealth

By Henry Demarest Lloyd

Wealth Against Commonwealth was published in 1894 by Henry Demarest Lloyd to expose the unethical business practices of monopolies. The book primarily focused on the Standard Oil Company, while also citing trusts affecting numerous commodities, including coal, iron, and lumber. Lloyd argues monopolies actively suppress competition, control enough of their respective commodity to reduce production to increase demand and prices, and harm societal well-being by by concentrating control of large sums of wealth and power within a few corporations, undermining democracy (“Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty.”) Henry Demarest Lloyd was born in New York and moved to Chicago after attending Columbia University, where he wrote for the Chicago Tribune and was a leading muckraker journalist. His investigative journalism, criticism of monopolies, and support of organized labor advanced the Progressive Movement. While writing Wealth Against Commonwealth, he reflected on the toll the work had taken on him in a letter to his mother, "It keeps me poking about and scavenging in piles of filthy human greed and cruelty almost too nauseous to handle. Nothing but the sternest sense of duty and the conviction that men must understand the vices of our present system before they will be able to rise to a better, drives me back to my desk every day." - Summary by Bryan Travis