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Private Cops on the Fraud Beat: The Limits of American Business Self-Regulation, 1895-1932

Part of: Henrietta Larson Award Winner

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Edward J. Balleisen
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Abstract

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From the late 1890s through the 1920s, a new set of nonprofit, business-funded organizations spearheaded an American campaign against commercial duplicity. These new organizations shaped the legal terrain of fraud, built massive public-education campaigns, and created a private law-enforcement capacity to rival that of the federal government. Largely born out of a desire among business elites to fend off proposals for extensive regulatory oversight of commercial speech, the antifraud crusade grew into a social movement that was influenced by prevailing ideas about social hygiene and emerging techniques of private governance. This initiative highlighted some enduring strengths of business self-regulation, such as agility in responding to regulatory problems; it also revealed a key weakness, which was the tendency to overlook deceptive marketing when practiced by firms that were members of the business establishment.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 83 , Issue 1: A Special Issue on Scandals and Panics , Spring 2009 , pp. 113 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Harvard Business School 2009

References

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.

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74 Quoted in “Department Store Has Accuracy Meeting.”