The Federal Trade Commission

By 1914 the great trusts of the Gilded Age had convinced many Americans that unchecked corporate power threatened both the economy and democracy itself. President Woodrow Wilson answered with a pair of laws, and one of them created the Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency charged with policing unfair methods of competition. It was a central piece of the Progressive project of using the federal government to discipline big business.

The commission was built to act where the courts were slow. Rather than wait for antitrust lawsuits to grind through the judiciary, the FTC could investigate industries, issue rules, and order companies to stop deceptive or anticompetitive practices. Over time its mandate broadened from guarding competition to protecting consumers directly, taking on false advertising, fraud, and deceptive selling alongside the Justice Department's antitrust work.

The agency evolved with the economy it watched. It policed the advertising of the broadcast age, the fine print of consumer credit, and, in the twenty-first century, the data-collection practices of technology companies and the market power of the digital giants. Its fortunes rose and fell with the political mood, aggressive in eras that distrusted big business and restrained in those that favored deregulation.

More than a century after its founding, the Federal Trade Commission remains one of the principal instruments through which the United States tries to keep markets both competitive and honest. Its history traces the long American argument over how much the government should referee the marketplace — an argument that began with the trusts and continues with the tech platforms.