Wealth Against Commonwealth: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Wealth Against Commonwealth, credited to Henry Demarest Lloyd, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Wealth Against Commonwealth by Henry Demarest Lloyd. Read in English by Bryan Travis. Wealth Against Commonwealth documented the economic, social, and political harms of the oil and railroad monopolies during the United States Gilded Age from the 1870s to the 1890s. By concentrating and controlling large sums of wealth, power, and goods among a few corporations and industrialists, journalist and author Henry Demarest Lloyd argued monopolies threaten the well-being of society and democracy, the “common wealth.” Through personal interviews, investigative reporting, court and legislative records, Lloyd revealed how the oil and railroad trusts, among others, actively suppressed competition and sought to control the supply of commodities to increase demand and prices artificially. Lloyd presented evidence from all levels of economic scale and stakeholders, from independent oil producers and refiners to transportation industries, from small towns to nations, from state and local courts to national legislatures. Henry Demarest Lloyd was a political activist and investigative journalist, or “muckraker.” His activism, criticism of monopolies, and support of organized labor advanced the Progressive Movement. While writing Wealth Against Commonwealth, he reflected on the toll the work had taken on him in a letter to his mother, "It keeps me poking about and scavenging in piles of filthy human greed and cruelty almost too nauseous to handle. Nothing but the sternest sense of duty and the conviction that men must understand the vices of our present system before they will be able to rise to a better, drives me back to my desk every day." (Summary by Bryan Travis)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Wealth Against Commonwealth
• Author credits: Henry Demarest Lloyd
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 46
• Listed recording duration: 22:41:35

Catalogue topics

• politics
• socialism
• muckraker
• standard oil
• capitalism
• trusts
• monopolies
• progressive movement

Opening tracks: first 24 of 46

1. 01 - Chapter I: 'There Are None'—'They Are Legion' — 18:16
2. 02 - Chapter II: Cut Off From Fire — 28:37
3. 03 - Chapter III: Prohibition That Prohibits — 23:15
4. 04 - Chapter IV: 'Square Eaters' — 19:37
5. 05 - Chapter V: Striking Oil, Part 1 — 26:35
6. 06 - Chapter V: Striking Oil, Part 2 — 33:10
7. 07 - Chapter VI: 'Not to Exceed Half' — 31:05
8. 08 - Chapter VII: 'You Are Not to Refine' — 28:01
9. 09 - Chapter VIII: 'NO!', Part 1 — 25:20
10. 10 - Chapter VIII: 'NO!', Part 2 — 23:36
11. 11 - Chapter IX: Who Piped and Who Danced — 34:39
12. 12 - Chapter X: Cheapening Transportation — 23:39
13. 13 - Chapter XI: Song of the Barrel, Part 1 — 31:27
14. 14 - Chapter XI: Song of the Barrel, Part 2 — 28:35
15. 15 - Chapter XII: Unfinished March to the Sea — 34:52
16. 16 - Chapter XIII: Purchase of Peace — 38:23
17. 17 - Chapter XIV: 'I Want to Make Oil", Part 1 — 19:38
18. 18 - Chapter XIV: 'I Want to Make Oil", Part 2 — 20:53
19. 19 - Chapter XV: Sympathetical Co-operation — 30:20
20. 20 - Chapter XVI: 'Turn Another Screw' — 35:20
21. 21 - Chapter XVII: In the Interest of All — 37:45
22. 22 - Chapter XVIII: Ordinary Supply and Demand — 30:27
23. 23 - Chapter XIX: Through the Woman's Eyes — 34:28
24. 24 - Chapter XX: Taken from the Jury by the Judge — 31:31

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.