Abstract
Business in the U. S. has attracted many varieties of popular attention since the early 1800 s. In the early twentieth century, that attention was almost wholly negative. As the rapidly expanding system of industrial capitalism took hold, mega-corporations took shape, and the lives of workers, farmers, small business owners, and consumers were turned upside down. Within that context, popular writing about businesses' histories mainly took the form of muckraking journalism. Due to the writings of Ida Tarbell, for instance, millions read about the purported evildoings of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil in the pages of McClure's Magazine. Critical, popular accounts of American business continued into the 1930 s, most notably in Matthew Josephson's widely read study of the rise of big business suggestively titled The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861–1901(1934). To some extent, the rise of business history as an academic field reacted against the critical view propounded by Tarbell, Josephson, and others.
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