Over a century ago, the United States entered the Progressive Era, which came on the heels of what Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner dubbed the Gilded Age. The latter was marked by the rise of large corporate interests, fabulously wealthy “robber barons,” and technological innovation. The former, in some sense a reaction to perceived Gilded Age excess, spawned an array of political and legal reforms, including antitrust attacks on ubiquitous business trusts. In his 1901 novel “The Octopus,” Frank Norris played to the public’s fears of these trusts and their surreptitious and growing influence:

[T]he Trust was silent, its ways inscrutable, the public saw only results. It worked on in the dark, calm, disciplined, irresistible. Abruptly Dyke received the impression of the multitudinous ramifications of the colossus. Under his feet the ground seemed mined; down there below him in the dark the huge tentacles went silently twisting and advancing, spreading out in every direction, sapping the strength of all opposition, quiet, gradual, biding the time to reach up and out and grip with a sudden unleashing of gigantic strength.

These days, one need only pick up most any newspaper to read we’ve entered a second Gilded Age countered by a new Progressive Era. Just last year, we learned the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, Congress, and numerous states attorneys general had opened investigations of large technology companies, including Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Nothing has come of these investigations so far, but the sheer number of the investigations harkens back to early 20th century assaults on Standard Oil, American Tobacco, and U.S. Steel.