Louis Brandeis, three years before joining the U.S. Supreme Court, authored a series of influential articles for Harper’s Weekly in 1913. These pieces were later collected as Other People’s Money and How the Bankers Use It (1914), underscoring his early role as a financial reformer during the Progressive Era.

Research indicates that all but one of these articles appeared between November 22, 1913, and January 17, 1914, with the outlier, “The Failure of Banker-Management,” published on August 16, 1913. A notable installment, “What Publicity Can Do,” ran on December 20, 1913, introducing Brandeis’s famous maxim that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

In these essays, Brandeis vigorously critiqued the economic dominance of large banks and trusts, arguing that interlocking directorates and unchecked financial conglomerates stifled competition and bred inefficiency. He championed transparency—public scrutiny of banking behavior—and regulatory oversight as antidotes to what he termed a “financial oligarchy.”

These arguments resonated deeply in the public sphere, helping to shape Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom platform and laying intellectual groundwork for the Federal Trade Commission in 1914. Brandeis’s call for “sunlight” in financial affairs endures as a foundational principle of modern antitrust and transparency policies.

Articles within this series include: