It was reporters and editors for the hundreds of independent newspapers during the First Gilded Age (1880-1900) era that led the crusades against #Rockefeller and his fellow #monopolists.
Investigative journalism was all the rage then, and it fed public demand for a return to #competition and the de-throning of that age’s #oligarchs.
The vast majority of workers were struggling and they worked for a very small 10 percent of the population who controlled most of the nation’s wealth (a situation we’re at again).
The result was constant strife, #strikes, and the murder of labor leaders;
entire towns were in arms (and sometimes ablaze) with #labor conflict.
The “problem of labor”was the number one issue of the day.
As President Grover Cleveland
— the only Democrat elected during that period
— proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address:
“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies,
🆘 while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel.
⚠️Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”
... But back to Jeff #Bezos and his 2013 purchase of The #Washington #Post.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/democracy-dies-in-their-wallets-when-ec9
