Great Depression and Wealth

Primary Source Analysis The document and work under review within this section is a chapter that is titled Wealth Against the Commonwealth. It was authored by Henry Damarest Lloyd and it came out in 1894. The work was published in New York. The opening salvo from the work is that nature is wealthy but that man is poor.

What is meant by this is that not everyone is fed when it comes to the men and women of the people and it is asserted that this is true since time began, to use the words of the author himself. A perfect example of this is say when Lloyd says "the majority have never been able to buy enough of anything, but this minority have too much of everything to sell" (Lloyd, 1894). Lloyd then talks about a major dichotomy that exists when it comes to liberty.

Lloyd talks about how liberty produces wealth but that wealth also destroys liberty. Lloyd notes that big businesses with monopolies and other people with wealth are able to engage in "gluttonous" behavior while there are others that are left with little to nothing in comparison. Lloyd uses the term "Caesar" to describe those that are dominant and well-to-do as compare to the meager subjects that struggle with not nearly enough of their own [footnoteRef:1]. [1: Lloyd, H. D. 2016.

"Excerpt from Henry Demarest Lloyd Wealth Against Commonwealth 1894 < 1876-1900 < Documents < American History from Revolution to Reconstruction And Beyond." Let.Rug.Nl. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1876-1900/excerpt-from-henry-demarest-lloyd-wealth-against-commonwealth-1894.php.] Rather than keep things general, Lloyd gets to specifics. He decries businesses that can artificially toy with and otherwise tinker with the market. There are words about how a sugar producer can close a refinery or change production so as to change the prevailing price of the product. Lloyd then talks about how "barbarians" will destroy society.

Rather than saving that term for the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, Lloyd instead suggests that the barbarians are the rich that are able to control and otherwise dominate the poor. Lloyd suggests that the moral and character-related fiber of American business and wealth is "morbid" and that "property to the extent of uncounted millions has been changed from the possession of the many who owned it to the few who hold it (Lloyd, 1894).

Even with the ostensible fairness of the system as it existed in the country at the time, Lloyd is also saying that the system has become many bad things including artificial, technical and corrupt, to use the words that Lloyd used [footnoteRef:2]. [2: Lloyd, H. D. 2016. "Excerpt from Henry Demarest Lloyd Wealth Against Commonwealth 1894 < 1876-1900 < Documents < American History from Revolution to Reconstruction And Beyond." Let.Rug.Nl. http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1876-1900/excerpt-from-henry-demarest-lloyd-wealth-against-commonwealth-1894.php.] Author The author whose work is quoted above is rather famous for his work.

He was born in 1947 in the city of New York City. He died in 1903 in Chicago, a mere decade or so after the work quoted above. His penchant and common work was the expose that focused on the abuses that were deemed to be rendered by industrial monopolies. He is deemed to be a "classic" author of what has come to be known as muckraking journalism. Lloyd's educational credentials were quite advanced in that he went to Columbia University and then later was admitted to the bar in 1869.

He later joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune and worked there for more than a decade, about 13 years in total, in the literary, financial and editorial departments. One of specific targets over the years was the behavior and perceived misdeeds of the Standard Oil Company. He used his work in the Tribune and the Atlantic Monthly to raise concerns about antitrust and just how destructive companies could be when it came to controlling most or the entire market that they inhabited.

He tried to make a foray into politics about the same time that the work mentioned at the onset of this report came out. However, he was defeated in 1894 and eventually bowed out of trying further. He ran under the National People's Party banner but withdrew and generally supported the Socialists after he gave up trying to win himself [footnoteRef:3]. [3: Brittanica. 2016. "Henry Demarest Lloyd - American Journalist." Encyclopedia Britannica.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Demarest-Lloyd.] Historical Context If there are two things that should be drawn out when it comes to the historical context in question, it would be the lack of a social safety net for the poor and people in general at the time and the lack of antitrust legislation. Indeed, Social Security did not come around until the 1930's and Medicare did not come until the 1960's.

At the same time, corporate monopolies were taking full advantage of their power and Lloyd was quite stirred up about this. Beyond that, Lloyd died a mere generation or two before the Great Depression hit. This was before the creation of the Fed and a central banking system.

To be sure, the economic structure of the United States (or lack thereof) at the time and the lack of a proper regulatory system for the banks and businesses surely contributed to the mire and gloom that occurred in the 1920's and 1930's. Even further, it was the poor people of the world and not primarily the business barons of that day that suffered the worst when the economic crash came that has not been matched since.

Indeed, the closest that America has come since then is the Great Recession in 2007 to 2009. As bad as the housing and financial crash was, it was a mere fraction of the Great Depression that led to its naming [footnoteRef:4]. [4: Cole, Lee. 2016. "Misguided Government Policies Prolonged Great Depression." UCLA Newsroom.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/misguided-government-policies-80595.] Understanding of History As the Great Depression and other events later proved, the system that was seen in the late 1800's and before that as well was clearly not optimal when it came to keeping businesses and the economy.