Henry Demarest Lloyd

Henry Demarest Lloyd (May 1, 1847 – September 28, 1903) was a 19th-century American progressive political activist and pioneer muckraking journalist. He is best remembered for his exposés of the Standard Oil Company, which were written before Ida M. Tarbell's series for McClure's Magazine.

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 Demarest.

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

Lloyd attended Columbia College 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.

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.

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