American Entrepreneur

CHAPTER 7

The Big Business Backlash: 1870–1920

An 1889 cartoon by J. Keppler, called “The Bosses of the Senate,” showed diminutive senators sitting in their chamber while behind them stood a line of obese figures in top hats with the names “Steel Beam Trust,” “Copper Trust,” and “Sugar Trust” emblazoned on their vests. By the turn of the century, many Americans shared the cartoonist’s view that huge business combinations controlled their lives—or, at least, their economic lives. Politicians tapped into such fears and hostility and turned it into votes for reform and regulation. The attempts by some individuals to monopolize, the constant search ...