institutions. Trust busting in the United States, in contrast to what we have seen in Mexico( this page – this page), illustrates this facet of the virtuous circle. While there is no political body in Mexico restricting Carlos Slim’ s monopoly, the Sherman and Clayton Acts have been used repeatedly in the United States over the past century to restrict trusts, monopolies, and cartels, and to ensure that markets remain inclusive.
The U. S. experience in the first half of the twentieth century also emphasizes the important role of free media in empowering broad segments of society and thus in the virtuous circle. In 1906 Roosevelt coined the term muckraker, based on a literary character, the man with the muckrake in Bunyan’ s Pilgrim’ s Progress, to describe what he regarded as intrusive journalism. The term stuck and came to symbolize journalists who were intrusively, but also effectively, exposing the excesses of Robber Barons as well as corruption in local and federal politics. Perhaps the most famous muckraker was Ida Tarbell, whose 1904 book, History of the Standard Oil Company, played a key role in moving public opinion against Rockefeller and his business interests, culminating in the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911. Another key muckraker was lawyer and author Louis Brandeis, who would later be named Supreme Court justice by President Wilson. Brandeis outlined a series of financial scandals in his book Other People’ s Money and How Bankers Use It, and was highly influential on the Pujo Committee. The newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst also played a salient role as muckraker. His serialization in his magazine The Cosmopolitan in 1906 of articles by David Graham Phillips, called“ The Treason of the Senate,” galvanized the campaign to introduce direct elections for the Senate, another key Progressive reform that happened with the enactment of the Seventeenth Amendment to the U. S. constitution in 1913.
The muckrakers played a major role in inducing politicians to take action against the trusts. The Robber Barons hated the muckrakers, but the political institutions of the United States made it impossible for them to stamp out and silence them. Inclusive political institutions allow a free media to flourish, and a free media, in turn, makes it more likely that threats against inclusive economic and political