Note · Our namesake
Henry Demarest Lloyd, 1847–1903
A Chicago journalist who exposed Standard Oil seventeen years before the courts broke up the trust.
Lloyd was born in New York City, trained as a lawyer at Columbia, and joined the Chicago Tribune in 1872. In 1881 he published “The Story of a Great Monopoly” in the Atlantic Monthly, one of the first public accounts of how Standard Oil and the railroads worked together. It is often counted as the beginning of American muckraking.
He began his book in 1889. Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894) set out, from court records and testimony, how a few combinations had taken control of oil and other industries. He argued that concentrated wealth threatened the “common wealth” of the public itself.
“Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty.”Henry Demarest Lloyd, Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894), chapter I
- 1847Born in New York City.
- 1872Joins the Chicago Tribune.
- 1881“The Story of a Great Monopoly,” Atlantic Monthly.
- 1887Petitions the governor of Illinois for clemency for the Haymarket defendants.
- 1894Wealth Against Commonwealth. Runs for Congress on the People's Party ticket.
- 1903Dies in Chicago, September 28.
- 1911The Supreme Court orders Standard Oil broken up.