Monopoly concentration and robber-baron arrogance widened class polarization in the early 1880s.

Evidence

At the other end of the scale, power and arrogance accumulated no less swiftly. Business combinations sprouted on all sides, many of them pressing toward monopoly. Henry Demarest Lloyd’s pioneering exposé of the Standard Oil Company in 1881 supplied a dramatically documented illustration of a trend which was becoming increasingly hard to ignore. Many of the new tycoons did nothing to disguise it. ‘This was the uninhibited period when William Vanderbilt rapped out his famous “The public be damned,” when the United States Senate became known as a millionaire’s club, when another business leader is supposed to have said that the rich own America and intend to keep it. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 216

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Exploitation expands because of market dependence rather than capitalist greed. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 108

Broader Connections

• Exploitation expands because of market dependence rather than capitalist greed. #qualifies (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 108