Henry Demarest Lloyd

Henry Demarest Lloyd (May 1, 1847 – September 28, 1903) was an American journalist and political activist who was a prominent muckraker during the Progressive Era. He is best known for his exposés of Standard Oil which were written before Ida Tarbell's series for McClure's on the same topic.

Early life

Henry Demarest Lloyd was born on May 1, 1847, in the home of his maternal grandfather on Sixth Avenue in New York City. Henry was the first child of Aaron Lloyd, a graduate of Rutgers College and New Brunswick Theological Seminary and minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Maria Christie (née Demarest) Lloyd.

One of Lloyd's strongest formative influences was the preaching of Henry Ward Beecher, whose sermons he regularly attended.

Lloyd attended Columbia College, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society, and Columbia Law School. Lloyd worked at a library and taught to pay his way through school. Upon graduation, Lloyd was admitted to the New York state bar in 1869.

Journalistic career

In 1872, Lloyd joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, gaining promotion to the position of chief editorial writer in 1875. He remained at the paper until 1885.

Lloyd was one of the precursors to the later muckraker journalists, writing a searing exposé of the monopolistic abuses of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust, "The Story of a Great Monopoly," published in the March 1881 issue of The Atlantic. He later fleshed out his case against the unbridled corporate power of Standard Oil and similar corporations in his best-known book, Wealth Against Commonwealth, published in 1894. Lloyd's work thus preceded Ida Tarbell's more famous 1904 work, "The History of Standard Oil," by a number of years.