Against monopolies
During the 1890s Brandeis began to question his views on the “industrial order in America,” write Klebanow and Jonas. Becoming more aware that there was a growing number of “giant firms” which were capable of dominating whole industries, he began to lose faith that the economic system was able to regulate them for the public’s welfare. As a result, he began denouncing “cut-throat competition” and fretted over the dangers of monopoly. “He became more aware of the plight of workers and more sympathetic to the labor movement.” His earlier legal battles had convinced him, according to Piott, “that concentrated economic power could have a negative effect on a free society.”
Against powerful corporations
As Klebanow and Jonas make clear, Brandeis was becoming increasingly conscious of and hostile to powerful corporations and the trend toward bigness in American industry and finance. As early as 1895 he had pointed out the harm that giant corporations could do to competitors, customers, and their own workers. The growth of industrialization was creating mammoth companies which he felt threatened the well-being of millions of Americans.[2]:76 Although the Sherman Anti-Trust Act was enacted in 1890, it was not until the 1900s that there was any major effort to apply it. Source
There is in most Americans some spark of idealism, which can be fanned into a flame. It takes sometimes a divining rod to find what it is; but when found, and that means often, when disclosed to the owners, the results are often extraordinary.
Louis Brandeis 1856 -1941
