Malefactors of great wealth.

Theodore Roosevelt popularized the phrase during his presidency as part of his broader Progressive-era critique of corporate abuses and political corruption. In the early 1900s, amid public anger over trusts, railroad monopolies, and financial scandals, Roosevelt argued that concentrated economic power could be as dangerous as traditional criminality when it subverted law and democracy. He used the expression to describe certain powerful financiers and industrialists who, in his view, enriched themselves through manipulation, fraud, or the distortion of government policy—conduct that might evade prosecution but still inflicted social harm. The phrase fit Roosevelt’s “Square Deal” politics and his push for regulation and antitrust enforcement.

“Malefactors of great wealth” reframes elite wrongdoing as a form of criminality, challenging the assumption that riches confer respectability. Roosevelt’s wording suggests that the scale of harm matters: when vast fortunes are amassed through predatory practices, the damage spreads across markets, workers, and democratic institutions. The phrase also implies a moral critique—wealth can magnify both capacity and temptation to abuse power—and it supports the Progressive argument that modern economic life requires public oversight. In quotation, it has become shorthand for Roosevelt’s belief that law should restrain not only street crime but also sophisticated, high-status forms of exploitation.