Chapter 10. Purifying the Competition

Cronyism: Rise of the Corporatist State, 1849–1929

09/16/2026 Patrick Newman

Three campaigns waged in the name of public health. Patrick Newman covers the Beef Trust turning federal meat inspection into taxpayer-subsidized cartelization, the pure-food coalition in which sugar producers, straight-whiskey distillers, and a cream-of-tartar baking powder maker each sought to handicap a cheaper rival, and the American Medical Association’s drive to restrict the supply of doctors and suppress homeopathic and eclectic competitors.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.