One of the most important financial editors of the latter half of the 19 th century was Henry Demarest Lloyd. The financial editor of the Chicago Tribune from 1874 to 1880, Lloyd would later become an early forerunner of the muckrakers because of his criticism of the Robber Barons who dominated businesses after the Civil War. In addition to his writing in the Tribune, Lloyd wrote about monopolies and the economics of politics for The Atlantic Monthly, and he later wrote books that advocated the position of labor unions.
Lloyd’s most famous business book was “Wealth against Commonwealth,” published in 1894. In it he criticized the size of businesses, writing: “W hat we call Monopoly is Business at the end of its journey. The concentration of wealth, the wiping out of the middle classes, are other names for it. To get it is, in the world of affairs, the chief end of man.”