¹ For typical notices of the previous week's radio fraud topics in the summer of 1933, see Dallas Better Business Bureau, Bulletin, 28 July 1933, New York Stock Exchange Archives, New York City.

² Bullock, Steven C., “A Mumper among the Gentle: Tom Bell, Colonial Confidence Man,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 55 (1998): 231–58;CrossRefGoogle ScholarYoung, James Harvey, The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines before Federal Regulation (Princeton, 1961);Google ScholarOlegario, Rowena, A Culture of Credit: Embedding Trust and Transparency in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 2006);CrossRefGoogle ScholarPlazak, Dan, A Hole in the Ground with a Liar at the Top: Fraud and Deceit in the Golden Age of American Mining (Salt Lake City, 2006);Google ScholarMihm, Stephen, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ On the growing sophistication of early twentieth-century American advertising, see Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of Advertising and Its Creators (New York, 1984);Google ScholarMarchand, Roland, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920– 1940 (Berkeley, 1985);Google ScholarLaird, Pamela, Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing (Baltimore, 1998);Google ScholarStole, Inger, Advertising on Trial: Consumer Activism and Corporate Public Relations in the 1930s (Urbana, 2006).Google Scholar

⁴ To be clear about the nature of this part of the argument—I do not wish to challenge the relevance of these more venerable depictions of business-government relations for a number of important policy contexts, as laid out in leading works such as the following: Wiebe, Robert, Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1962);Google ScholarKolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York, 1963);Google ScholarHawley, Ellis, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917–1933 (New York, 1979);Google ScholarKeller, Morton, Regulating a New Economy: Public Policy and Economic Change in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990). Pivotal business interests in the early twentieth century did frequently and vociferously oppose regulatory action, especially with regard to labor conditions; they did, especially after the cooperative experience of World War I, and including in the area of commercial speech, frequently seek government assistance in facilitating industrywide standard setting; they did sometimes fervently desire governmental regulation, as in the case of the creation of the Federal Reserve or the tweaking of transportation rate regulations, or the imposition of federal oversight over food and drugs sold in interstate commerce. In addition, the capacious domain of “business” almost always contained fault lines, as particular industries and firms took different sides of particular regulatory issues. I seek not a new framework for “lumping,” but rather some additional “splitting,” both about regulatory aspirations and the extent to which they bore institutional fruit.Google Scholar

⁵ For an extremely useful exploration of the concept of bureaucratic autonomy by a historically minded political scientist, see Daniel Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862–1928 (Princeton, 2001). Although Carpenter develops this conceptual framework with regard to governmental agencies, it is applicable to nongovernmental organizations as well.Google Scholar

⁶ A sample of fraud cost estimates includes: “Why “Blue Sky’ Laws Are Needed,” Indianapolis Times, 11 Dec. 1923, in Seymour Cromwell Scrapbooks, vol. 2, New York Stock Exchange Archives; “Financial Crime Loss Is Three Billions Yearly,” New York Times, 6 July 1924, H5;Google Scholar“Debit 3 Billions a Year to Crooks,” Current Opinion, 1 Oct. 1924, 510;Google Scholar“War on the White Collar Bandits,” Literary Digest, 6 Mar. 1926, 11–12; “Getting Rich by Going Broke,” Literary Digest, 27 Apr. 1929, 65–67;Google ScholarEllison, E. Jerome and Brock, Frank W., The Run for Your Money (New York, 1935), 3–4.Google Scholar

⁷ Smith, Edward H., “Profit in Loss,” Saturday Evening Post, 5 Feb. 1921, 14–15, 59–70;Google ScholarSmith, , “The Credit Trimmers,” Saturday Evening Post, 13 May 1922, 88–100;Google ScholarNational Association of Credit Men, Commerce and the Credit Crook (New York, 1925);Google ScholarStarr, Helen, “How Bankruptcy Brings Bargains in Merchandise,” Los Angeles Times, 10 May 1925.Google Scholar

⁸ Guenther, Louis, “Pirates of Promotion: Market Manipulation and Its Part in the Promotion Game,” World's Work 37 (1919): 393–98;Google ScholarDies, Edward Jerome, “The Fine Art of Catching the ‘Sucker,‘” Outlook, 28 Mar., 4 and 11 Apr. 1923,590–93,631–33, 674–78;Google ScholarSmith, Edward H., Confessions of a Former Confidence Man: A Handbook for Suckers (New York, 1923);Google Scholar“Tipster Publications Direct Investors’ Money into Specially Prepared Channels,” Special Bulletin No. 10, New York City Better Business Bureau, 15 Aug. 1924;Google Scholar“Boston Curb Exchange,” Special Bulletin of the National Better Business Bureau, 17 Mar. 1927;Google Scholar“Tipster Sheet,” Special Bulletin of the National Better Business Bureau, September 1928.Google Scholar

⁹ Beuick, Marshall D., “Who Pays for Credit Frauds?” Credit Monthly 28 (May 1926): 9Google Scholar; Alger, George, “Unpunished Commercial Crime,” American Lawyer 12 (Sept. 1904): 380.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Kenner, H. J., The Fight for Truth in Advertising (New York, 1936), xGoogle Scholar; Sidener, Merle, “Patroling the Avenues of Publicity,” World's Work 35 (1918): 638Google Scholar; “Advertising As Power for Good,” Utica Daily Press, 12 Mar. 1924, in Historical Clippings Files, New York City Better Business Bureau, New York CityGoogle Scholar; Sharp, R. S., “A Suggestion for Curbing the Pirates of Promotion,” World's Work 45 (1919): 354–56Google Scholar; Boston Better Business Commission, The Boston Better Business Commission: An Outline of Its Work (Boston, 1922), 1–2Google Scholar; “The Financial Situation,” Commercial and Financial Chronicle (11 Feb. 1922), in Cromwell Scrapbooks, vol. 2Google Scholar; “Caution! Trial of South Motors Case,” Special Bulletin, National Better Business Bureau, 12 Dec. 1926.Google Scholar

¹¹ Kenner, H. J., “Letter to the Editor,” Printer's Ink, 8 May 1924Google Scholar; “Fighting Frauds and Fakes,” Wilmington (Delaware) Journal, 3 July 1926, both in Historical Clippings Files; “Social Unrest Laid to Stock Swindling,” New York American, 22 Feb. 1919Google Scholar; “Stock Frauds Seen As Spur to Bolshevism,” New York Times, 22 Feb. 1919, both in Stock Fraud Scrapbook, New York Stock Exchange Archives.Google Scholar

¹² On “second wave” consumerism, see Robert Mayer, The Consumer Movement: Guardians of the Marketplace (Boston, 1989)Google Scholar; Cohen, Lisabeth, A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003); Stole, Advertising on Trial.Google Scholar

¹³ For useful memoirs of the early evolution of NACM and the Better Business Bureaus, see: Tregoe, J. H., Pioneers and Traditions of the National Association of Credit Men (New York, 1946)Google Scholar; Kenner, Fight for Truth in Advertising. On the early history of NACM, see also Olegario, Culture of Credit. There were many other institutions with similar goals and methods, both locally and nationally. The American Medical Association funded a large staff to monitor the marketing of medicines and other health treatments. Chambers of Commerce in places like Chicago and Holyoke, Massachusetts, initiated campaigns in the early 1920s to educate the residents of their cities about investment frauds. In 1924, the American Depositors' Association created a free information bureau so that depositors could inquire about the legitimacy of a given promotion before taking the plunge; the Investment Bankers Association and several national magazines, such as Outlook and World's Work, maintained similar services. But NACM and the Better Business Bureaus took the leading roles in the business community's efforts to root out fraud, especially outside the domain of health care. “Protecting Wage-Earners from Stock Swindlers,” Literary Digest 65 (12 June 1920): 153–56Google Scholar; “Educating the Public in Fraudulent Stocks,” World's Work 46 (Oct. 1923): 25–27Google Scholar; “New Defense against the Stock Promoter,” World's Work 47 (Apr. 1924): 678–79.Google Scholar On the AMA's antifraud battles, see Young, James Harvey, The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth Century America (Princeton, 1966.).Google Scholar For Wall Street's role in creating the New York City Better Business Bureau, see Ott, Julia, “The ‘Free and Open’ ‘People's Market’: Public Relations and the New York Stock Exchange, 1913–1929,” Business and Economic History Online 2 (2004): 1–42.Google Scholar

¹⁴ ”To Prosecute Fraudulent Failures,” Baltimore Sun, 10 Dec. 1897,10Google Scholar; “To Fight Fraud,” Baltimore Sun, 6 July 1899,10Google Scholar; “Tregoe the Busy Man,” Washington Post, 4 June 1905, F6Google Scholar; “Dead, J. H. Tregoe: Credit Authority,” New York Times, 6 Oct. 1935, 47.Google Scholar

¹⁵ “Boosters Rule at Devils Lake,” Aberdeen Weekly American, 12 Mar. 1913, 4Google Scholar; “Would Discard ‘Caveat Emptor’: Kenner, H. J. of Minneapolis Speaks to Duluth Ad Men and Retail Merchants,” Duluth News Tribune, 3 Feb. 1915, 12Google Scholar; “Truth is the Rule in Ads,” Kansas City Times, 10 Nov. 1915, 5Google Scholar; “Kenner Acts As a Watchman,” Duluth News Tribune, 8 Feb. 1920, Convention Section, 9Google Scholar; Auchincloss, James, The Better Business Bureau: Its Growth and Work (New York, 1927), 7–8Google Scholar; Kenner, Fight for Truth in Advertising, 44–59; “Kenner, H. J., Ex-Head Here of Better Business Bureau,” New York Times, 9 Jan. 1973, 42.Google Scholar

¹⁶ “They're Blazing Trails for Publicity,” Duluth News Tribune, 8 Feb. 1920, Convention Section, 4Google Scholar; “Expert to Talk on Advertising,” Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 1923, I4Google Scholar; “Business Convention Ends,” Los Angeles Times, 6 Sep. 1924, A5Google Scholar; “Tighter Curbs on Advertising Adopted for Enforcement by Business Itself,” New York Times, 15 Jan. 1935, 7Google Scholar; “Chief of B.B.B. Is Set to Retire,” Chicago Tribune, 12 Apr. 1963, C9Google Scholar; “Retirement of Ken Barnard,” Association of Better Business Bureaus Service Bulletin, 4 Oct. 1963.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The literature on professionalization in this period is enormous. See, for example, Nelson, Daniel, Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management (Madison, 1980)Google Scholar; Miranti, Paul, Accountancy Comes of Age: The Development of an American Profession, 1886–1940 (Chapel Hill, 1990)Google Scholar; Tone, Andrea, The Business of Benevolence in Industrial America (Ithaca, 1997)Google Scholar; Duffy, John, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health (Urbana, 1992)Google Scholar; Kunzel, Regina, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945 (New Haven, 1993).Google Scholar

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¹⁹ “Share Fakers Set a Record,” New York Sun, 23 May 1920Google Scholar, in Scrapbook on Stock Frauds, 1918–1920Google Scholar, New York Stock Exchange Archives; Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, The Most Dangerous Enemy of the Oil Industry (New York, 1919?)Google Scholar; Dewey, Charles, Federal Cooperation to Prevent Fraud (St. Louis, 1926), 2–4Google Scholar; “Are You an Easy Mark,” Kansas City Better Business Bureau, Better Business Bulletin (31 May 1926)Google Scholar; Tregoe, J. H., “Credit Protection and Financial Statements,” Credit Monthly 28 (Feb. 1926): 23Google Scholar; Circular from Simmons, E. H. H., president of the New York Stock Exchange, to all Exchange employees, 3 May 1927Google Scholar, Records of the New York City Better Business Bureau, New York Stock Exchange Archives. David Hochfelder shows that the emergence of the retail investor also resulted in large measure from widespread popular engagement with bucket shops in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: “‘Where the Common People Could Speculate’: The Ticker, Bucket Shops, and the Origins of Popular Participation in Financial Markets, 1880–1920,” Journal of American History 93 (2006): 335–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²⁴ Guenther, Louis, “The Pirates of Promotion: The Wreckage,” World's Work 37 (Mar. 1919): 512Google Scholar; “Preventing Stock Frauds,” Cheyenne Tribune, 29 Jan. 1923, in Cromwell Scrapbooks, vol. 2.Google Scholar

²⁵ For overviews of t h e publicity campaigns in particular cities, and by the National Better Business Bureau, see Priestly, Bernard G., “Checkmating the Get-Rich-Quick Promoter,” Bankers’ Magazine 111 (Mar. 1925): 317–23Google Scholar; “War Declared!” Buffalo Better Business Bureau Bulletin, 12 Aug. 1925Google Scholar; Greene, Edward L., Activities of the National Better Business Bureau, 1927–28 (New York, 1928), 15–16Google Scholar; Kansas City Better Business Bureau, Protecting Legitimate Business and the Public: Annual Report (Kansas City, 1928): 15–19Google Scholar; Columbus Better Business Bureau, Annual Report (Columbus, 1929), 1Google Scholar; Better Business Bureau of Los Angeles, Second Annual Report (Los Angeles, 1931).Google Scholar

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²⁷ For a representative indication of a local Better Business Bureau's warnings about specific fraud activity, see the publication of the New York City Better Business Bureau, Accuracy, published from 1925 through 1935. See also “Making Loss Prevention a Systematic Business,” Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company, The Netopian, 1 Mar. 1927Google Scholar; “The Road to Safe Investment,” Newark Call, 13 Jan. 1924Google Scholar; Smith, Edson B., “Investors Must Learn to Patronize Reliable Firms,” Boston Traveler, 30 Mar. 1924, all in Historical Clippings Files.Google Scholar

²⁸ For concise overviews of these efforts, see Gregg, William, “Help the Doctor! Increasing the Curative Work of Credit Protection Fund,” Credit Monthly 28 (1926): 9Google Scholar; Tregoe, J. H., “A Dozen Rules for Sound Credit,” Bankers’ Magazine 112 (Mar. 1926): 384Google Scholar; Affiliated Better Business Bureaus, A Guide for Retail Store Advertising (Boston, 1932). This public-relations onslaught preceded the business establishment's concerted-campaign to blunt t h e critique of the 1930s consumer movement by more than a decade, and surely helps to account for the rapid conceptualization and implementation of that latter initiative. On the later publicrelations effort by large-scale American marketers, see Stole, Advertising on Trial.Google Scholar

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³⁰ Brown, Richard Maxwell, Strains of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; Higgins, Cindy, “Frontier Protective and Social Network,” Journal of the West 42 (2003): 63–73Google Scholar; Mihm, Nation of Counterfeiters; Beisel, Nicole, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America (Princeton, 1997)Google Scholar; Tone, Andrea, Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America (New York, 2001): 4–25.Google Scholar

³¹ On the status of these corporate moves into private policing as models for NACM's approach to credit fraud, see Cotter, Garrett W., “New Styles in Credit Crime,” Credit Monthly 27 (Feb. 1925): 44Google Scholar; Abelson, Elaine, When Ladies Go-A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (New York, 1992), 145–46.Google Scholar On the anticrime ventures of middle-class reform organizations, see Willrich, Michael, City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era Chicago (New York, 2003), 133–71.Google Scholar

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³⁶ “Credit Protection Counsels,” Credit Monthly 28 (Sept. 1928): 36Google Scholar; “A New Rogue's Gallery,” Credit Monthly 30 (1928): 32Google Scholar; Simmons, Security Frauds, 14. For examples of the nationwide character of BBB investigations, see: Letter from Henry Jay Case, Director, New York Stock Exchange Committee on Records and Investigations, to Collis, W. P., Manager, New York Better Business Bureau Finance Division, 29 May 1928Google Scholar; letter from Collis, W. P. to Henry Jay Case, 25 June 1928Google Scholar, both in records of the New York City Better Business Bureau, New York Stock Exchange Archives; and Columbus Better Business Bureau Financial Bulletin, 22 Sept. 1930.Google Scholar

³⁷ Better Business Bureau of New York City, Safeguarding the Integrity of Business: The Sixth Annual Report (New York, 1928), 9.Google Scholar By the mid-i92Os, many bulletins and press releases from local BBBs read like police blotters, chronicling the arrests, indictments, convictions, and cease-and-desist orders resulting from BBB investigations. Credit Monthly similarly highlighted the successes of its Prosecution Department, especially through the regular column of C. D. West, its longtime manager. On the publicity value of fund-raising and its connection to deterrence, see National Association of Credit Men, About the National Fund for Credit Protection (New York, 1925), 7Google Scholar; “Suppressing Credit Crime,” Credit Monthly 27 (Jan. 1925): 8.Google Scholar

³⁸ “Would Broaden Work of Better Business Bureaus,” Printer's Ink, 11 Sept. 1924Google Scholar, in Historical Clippings Files; Kansas City Better Business Bureau, Protecting Legitimate Business and the Public: 1928 Annual Report (Kansas City, 1928), 3–5, 10 - 11Google Scholar; Better Business Bureau of New York City, Facts, Then Action: A Merchandise Report, 1925–1930 (New York, 1930).Google Scholar

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⁴⁹ Seymour Cromwell's Scrapbooks at the New York Stock Exchange furnish abundant evidence of the Stock Exchange's antagonism to “blue sky” proposals in the New York State Legislature. The eventual creation of the New York City Better Business Bureau followed a wave of failures among marginal brokerage firms in 1921, which heightened political pressure for greater oversight of the securities markets. Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, Most Dangerous Enemy, 4.

⁵⁰ Ellis Hawley, “Three Facets of Hooverian Associationalism: Lumber, Aviation, and Movies, 1921–1930,” in Regulation in Perspective, ed. McCraw, 95–123; Kenner, H. J., Business Self-Discipline (New York, 1927), 1.Google Scholar

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⁶⁷ ”Wallbrook Presbyterians,” Baltimore Sun, 14 Jan. 1898, 10Google Scholar; “Tregoe the Busy Man;” “Booze Worst Foe to Business: Whiskey Makes Liars, National Credit Association Secretary Says,” Kansas City Times, 18 Jan. 1917, 2Google Scholar; “Warns of Alien Bandits in Trade,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 Oct. 1920,18Google Scholar; “Tregoe Rebukes Gompers,” New York Times, 13 June 1922, 4.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Sidener, “Promoting the Avenues of Publicity,” 638.

⁶⁹ Williams, “Keep Crooks out of Business,” 8; Smith, “The Credit Trimmers,” 92; West, C. D., “Commercial Crook Meets His Waterloo,” Credit Monthly 25(1923): 32Google Scholar; F.Lamb, Edward, “An Honest Commercial Crusade,” Credit Monthly 28 (Aug. 1926): 18Google Scholar. On the antagonism toward immigrants that characterized much of the public-health movement in the early twentieth century, see Kraut, Alan, Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the Immigrant Menace (Baltimore, 1995).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ The best overviews of these corporate scandals remain: Pecora, Ferdinand, Wall Street under Oath: The Story of Our Modern Moneychangers (New York, 1939)Google Scholar; Galbraith, John Kenneth, The Great Crash (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; McDonald, Forrest, Insull (Chicago, 1962)Google Scholar; and Brooks, John, Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street (New York, 1969).Google Scholar

⁷¹ “The Better Business Bureau and Investment Trusts,” Journal of Commerce, 20 July 1927, Historical Clippings Files. Although the Journal of Commerce deferentially printed Kenner's letter, it also asserted that the previous story included the attributions to the Bureau after “the explicit and reiterated assurances” from the quoted employee that “he was an officer of that organization and authorized to speak for it.”Google Scholar

⁷² “Business Bureau Elects,” New York Times, 20 June 1930, 44. On Whitney's fall from grace, see Galbraith, The Great Crash, 161–65.Google Scholar

⁷³ Braithwaite, John, “Enforced Self-Regulation: A New Strategy for Corporate Crime Control,” Michigan Law Review 80 (1982): 1466–1507, quote at 1469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁴ Quoted in “Department Store Has Accuracy Meeting.”