I think it's time to summon Wheylous to the thread!

You called? :P

Actually, I came to this thread to be informed a little bit, not do much informing.

big corporations lobbying government to enact legislation that drives smaller competitors out of business
For a source: Essentially anything by Gabriel Kolko. Start with his Wikipedia page:

Kolko was considered a leading historian of the early New Left, joining William Appleman Williams and James Weinstein in advancing the corporate liberalism idea whereby the old Progressive historiography of the "interests" versus the "people" was reinterpreted as a collaboration of interests aiming towards stabilizing competition [Novick, 439]. According to Grob and Billias, "Kolko believed that large-scale units turned to government regulation precisely because of their inefficiency" and that the "Progressive movement - far from being antibusiness - was actually a movement that defined the general welfare in terms of the well-being of business" [Grob and Billias, 38]. Kolko, in particular, broke new ground with his critical history of the Progressive Era. He suggested that free enterprise and competition were vibrant and expanding during the first two decades of the 20th century; meanwhile, corporations reacted to the free market by turning to government to protect their inherent inefficiency from the discipline of market conditions. In other words, "the corporate elite—the House of Morgan, for example—turned to government intervention when it realized in the waning 19th century that competition was too unruly to guaranteemarket share."[4] This behavior is known as corporatism, but Kolko dubbed it "political capitalism." Kolko's thesis "that businessmen favored government regulation because they feared competition and desired to forge a government-business coalition" is one that is echoed by many observers today [Grob and Billias, 39].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko

The specific books I know of (but haven't read) include

The Triumph of Conservatism

Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916

He discusses railroads, meatpacking, and others. Essentially, the free market was too much for the "capitalists" who wanted government help.