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“What Is My Prospects?”: The Contours of Mercantile Apprenticeship, Ambition, and Advancement in the Early American Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Brian P. Luskey
Brian P. Luskey
Affiliation:
BRIAN P. LUSKEY is advanced research fellow in the Program in Early American Economy and Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia.
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Abstract

This essay examines the origins of a managerial class in American business by exploring the dynamic economic and cultural milieu in which merchants and clerks forged apprenticeship and employment relations in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury northeastern cities. Apprenticeship unraveled as an institution in countinghouses and stores throughout this period, a casualty of the Revolutionary-era narrative touting economic opportunity and independence through the cultivation of character. Increased competition for clerkships in the early republic led to the establishment of waged relationships shorn of traditional obligations. Yet in an uncertain economic climate, apprenticeship endured in idealized form within an antebellum cultural debate about the meanings of success and the ways to achieve it. As clerks' work tasks, social status, and economic prospects changed, many attempted to hitch their hopes for advancement to the coattails of merchants with capital instead of starting their own businesses, decisions that foreshadowed the formation of corporate hierarchies in the late nineteenth century.

Type
Special Forum: Reputation and Uncertainty in Early America
Information
Business History Review , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , Winter 2004 , pp. 665 - 702
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2004

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References

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13 Strong relationships between merchants and clerks constituted a careful means of raising honest mercantile men, and as Toby Ditz has shown, merchants interpreted the fraud and dishonesty perpetrated upon them by competitors in symbolic gender and class terms. They situated their foes outside the bounds of the social group by referring to them as “harpies” or by emphasizing their “extraordinary,” and thus inappropriate, social mobility. Yet merchants could not elude figurative emasculation and “social subordination” if they failed, because the “vile” parvenus who defrauded them would take their places in the commercial world. Terms like “friend” and “friendship” thus garnered special connotations, as merchants recognized each other as allies who valued character and trust and tried to help each other advance across a risky economic landscape. As apprentice clerks were becoming men, it was crucially important that they not be “unmanned” by their commercial experiences, separated from commercial friendships before their careers had truly begun. As Ditz has concluded, the letters that passed between merchants were efforts “to recuperate a fragile masculinity.” See Ditz, “Shipwrecked,” 51, 53–54, 58–63, 66, 68, 70–71, 79; and Ditz, Toby, “Secret Selves, Credible Personas: The Problematics of Trust and Public Display in the Writing of Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia Merchants,” in Blair, RobertGeorge, St., ed., Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America (Ithaca, 2000), 228Google Scholar. For more on friendship or patronage ties, see Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 58. For more on Franklin's and Hamilton's experiences as clerks, see Masur, ed., Autobiography, 64–66; Syrett, and Cooke, , eds., Papers of Alexander Hamilton. Vol. I: 4, 8Google Scholar. I discuss the varieties of eighteenth-century clerking in “Marginal Men,” 22–56. Eighteenth-century Americans ordered their society along the lines of traditional European political divisions, but a parallel set of distinctions—“better,” “middling,” and “lower”—separated people into different “sorts” or “ranks” “that made explicit connections between social position and prestige.” See Burke, Martin J., The Conundrum of Class: Public Discourse on the Social Order in America (Chicago, 1995), 4Google Scholar.

14 The importance of writing and bookkeeping skills in eighteenth-century counting-houses is delineated in Patricia Cohen, Cline, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America (Chicago, 1982), 16, 26–28, 148Google Scholar; Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 41; Monaghan, E. Jennifer, “Reading for the Enslaved, Writing for the Free: Reflections on Liberty and Literacy,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 108 (1998): 314–15Google Scholar; Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 42; Baxter, House of Hancock, 195–96; Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House, 93; Hunt, Margaret R., The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley, 1996), 56–62Google Scholar; Thornton, Tamara Plakins, Handwriting in America: A Cultural History (New Haven, 1996), 6–12, 39–40Google Scholar; Dierks, Konstantin, “Letter Writing, Gender, and Class in America, 1750–1800” (Ph. D. diss., Brown University, 1999), 108–09Google Scholar; Ditz, “Secret Selves, Credible Personas,” 223; Ditz, “Shipwrecked,” 51, 54. Brief descriptions of clerks' work duties, organization, and the counting-house environment can be found in Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, 71; Porter, , Jacksons and the Lees, I: 5Google Scholar; Berg, “Organization,” 161; Hancock, David, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (New York, 1995), 91–94, 98, 101–4Google Scholar. An image taken from an earlier English publication of a mercantile apprentice assisting his master on the wharf can be found in The Book of Trades, or Library of Useful Arts (Whitehall, Pa., 1807), Vol. II, between pp. 128 and 129Google Scholar.

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17 Daniel Flexney to John Reynell, 26 Aug. 1737, Coates-Reynell Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, quoted in Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House, 93. For the customary payment of merchants to take on apprentices in Philadelphia, see Berg, “Organization,” 160. For parents making payments to secure apprenticeships for their sons in “the most attractive trades,” see Frasca, Ralph, “From Apprentice to Journeyman to Partner: Benjamin Franklin's Workers and the Growth of the Early American Printing Trade,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 114 (1990): 233Google Scholar. Apprentices in the trades also worked under “formal” and “informal” terms. Consult Miller, Maria R., “Gender, Artisanry, and Craft Tradition in Early New England: The View through the Eye of a Needle,” William and Mary Quarterly 60 (2003): 758–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19 John Reynell to Joseph Ingram, 17 June 1743, in John Reynell Letterbook, Oct. 1741-Apr. 1744, Coates-Reynell Papers, 2nd Floor, Case 62, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

20 John Reynell to John Bland, dated Philadelphia, 21 June 1743; in ibid., Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

21 Ibid.

22 John Reynell to Elias Bland, 22 June 1743, in Coates-Reynell Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Also see Tolles, Meeting House and Countinghouse, 60.

23 John Reynell to Elias Bland, 2 Oct. 1743. Also see John Reynell to Elias Bland, dated 9th of 5th Mo. 1743; Coates-Reynell Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

24 For Bland's career as a merchant and his economic troubles, see John Bland to Samuel Coates, 16 Sept 1774, in “Correspondence of John Reynell & Josiah & Samuel Coates, Letters written from England, 1730–1802,” in Coates-Reynell Papers, Case 17, Box 1, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Doerflinger, Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise, 60; and Luskey, “Marginal Men,” 37–43.

25 Sklansky, Jeffrey, The Soul's Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820–1920 (Chapel Hill, 2002), 15–16 (quotation on 15)Google Scholar.

26 Quoted in Rock, Artisans of the New Republic, 79.

27 Quoted in Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 340.

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29 Quoted in Rock, Artisans of the New Republic, 79. Also see ibid., 242, 248–57, 264 94; Laurie, Bruce, Working People of Philadelphia, 1800–1850 (Philadelphia, 1980), 5–6Google Scholar; Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 28–35, 48–60; Rorabaugh, Craft Apprentice, 64, 69; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Black Gothic: The Shadowy Origins of the American Bourgeoisie,” in St. George, ed., Possible Pasts, 244–45.

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31 Ibid., 31, 33–34. Publicly, in civic processions like the 1788 Philadelphia march to celebrate the federal Constitution, “a train of clerks and apprentices” followed their merchant employers in line. See Hopkinson, Francis, “An Account of the Grand Federal Procession,” in The Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional Writings (Philadelphia, 1792), Vol. II: 370–71Google Scholar. Horlick surmises that apprenticeship ties and clerical obedience held firm until the antebellum period, though he neglects to explore the Revolution's ideological impact on earlier generations of clerks. See Horlick, Country Boys and Merchant Princes, 67–74.

32 Siskind, Rum and Axes, 34.

33 Quoted in Ibid., 35.

34 Quoted in Ibid., 37.

35 Ibid., 34. While Horlick claims that clerks often remained obedient to merchants and the traditional institutions of apprenticeship in the early republic, many shifted to new clerk-ships. See Horlick, Country Boys and Merchant Princes, 70; Lowitt, Richard, A Merchant Prince of the Nineteenth Century: William E. Dodge (New York, 1954), 5–7, 10–11, 18–19Google Scholar; Dodge, David Low, Memorial of David Low Dodge (Boston, 1854), 85Google Scholar; and Rorabaugh, , Craft Apprentice, vii, 27, 209Google Scholar.

36 Opportunities for clerks to become supercargoes can be found in “3/6” [H. K. Toler] to James Colles, 30 June 1812; front matter in printed vol. 1; 3/6 to Colles, 2 July 1812; 3/6 to Colles, 22 July 1812, Box 1, Folder 3; and Abraham Bailey to Colles, New York, 3 Dec. 1813, Box 1, Folder 4, all in James Colles Papers, New York Public Library. For more on social fluidity in the revolutionary era and the ways in which it might reflect negatively upon clerks, see Dudden, Faye E., Women in the American Theatre: Actresses and Audiences, 1790–1870 (New Haven, 1994), 17Google Scholar; Countryman, Edward, “‘To Secure the Blessings of Liberty’: Language, The Revolution, and American Capitalism,” in Young, Alfred F., ed., Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (Dekalb, Ill., 1993), 134Google Scholar. For the rise of banking and real-estate speculation in the early republic and the fears it engendered, see Watts, Republic Reborn, 23–24.

37 William Page Diary, l, 13, 14, 27 July, 1, 9, 25 Sept., 2 Oct., 25, 26, 29 Nov. 1808; 24 Mar., 24 Apr., 5 May, 14 Aug. 1809 (quotation), Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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39 For changes in clerks' relationships with their employers, work experiences, and the cultural responses to those alterations, see Luskey, “Marginal Men,” 105–229. Also see Spears, 100 Years on the Road, 23–49; and Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 68–83. Blumin places clerks solely on the nonmanual, and thus middle-class, side of the labor divide, though overwhelming evidence shows that clerks' work and leisure experiences placed them on the margins of the middle class. See Luskey, “Marginal Men,” and Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 112–13, 140, 216–17. Other historians have noted that manual/nonmanual labor designations remained blurry throughout the nineteenth century. See Glickstein, Jonathan A., Concepts of Free Labor in Antebellum America (New Haven, 1991), 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Devault, Ileen, “‘Give the Boys a Trade’: Gender and Job Choice in the 1890s,” in Baron, Ava, ed., Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (Ithaca, 1991), 210Google Scholar. It is also important to acknowledge that some men who exchanged physical for mental labor never relinquished social and emotional connections to their trade. See Kornblith, Gary J., “Becoming Joseph T. Buckingham: The Struggle for Artisanal Independence in Early-Nineteenth-Century Boston,” in Rock, Howard B., Gilje, Paul A., and Asher, Robert, eds., American Artisans: Crafting Social Identity, 1750–1850 (Baltimore, 1995), 128Google Scholar.

40 Thomas Augst links this transformation in the ways clerks obtained education to the development of a middle class defined by literacy in The Clerk's Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago, 2003)Google Scholar.

41 Foster, B. F., Foster's System of Penmanship: or, The Art of Rapid Writing Illustrated and Explained (Philadelphia, 1835), viGoogle Scholar.

42 Henry A. Patterson Diary, 2 Sept. 1836, New-York Historical Society.

43 Ibid., 18 Oct. 1836.

44 For Patterson's references to menial work by day and bookkeeping by night, see Luskey, “Marginal Men,” 149–51. For trade apprentices' concern that they were doing menial work instead of learning their trade, see Rorabaugh, Craft Apprentice, 11, 43, 74–75. For the clerical employment of Brady, Lincoln, Barnum, and Melville, see Elias, Stephen N., Alexander T. Stewart: The Forgotten Merchant Prince (Westport, Conn., 1992), 50Google Scholar; Trachtenberg, Alan, Reading American Photographs: Images as History from Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (New York, 1989), 35Google Scholar; Barnum, P. T., Struggles and Triumphs: Or, Forty Years' Recollections of P. T. Barnum ed. Bode, Carl ([1869]; repr. New York, 1981), 61–66Google Scholar; Wilson, Douglas L., Honor's Voice: The Transformation of Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1998), 58–65Google Scholar; and Parker, Hershel, Herman Melville: A Biography Vol. 1: 1819–1851 (Baltimore, 1996), 104Google Scholar.

45 Hoffman Diary, undated entry [likely July 1850], 228. For information on how clerks found work, how much they were paid, and the work they did in stores during the antebellum era, consult Luskey, “Marginal Men,” 120–36,146–229.

46 The Mechanic's Free Press [Philadelphia], 11 Sept. 1830Google Scholar (italics in original—my thanks to Josh Greenberg for alerting me to this source).

47 M[athew]. Carey, , Appeal to the Wealthy of the Land, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 1833), 8Google Scholar; and New York Evening Post, 12 Apr. 1848 (I thank Paul O'Grady for this citation).

48 New-York Daily Tribune, 20 July 1850, 4.

49 Ibid., 28 Feb. 1850. Further evidence of clerks' unemployment can be found in Carey, M., Essays on the Public Charities of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1830), 19Google Scholar; Free Enquirer [New York], 16 Sept. 1829Google Scholar; letter from Catharine Maria Sedgwick to Katharine Maria Sedgwick Minot, 24 Apr. 1837, in Life and Letters of Catharine Maria Sedgwick (New York, 1871), 446Google Scholar; letter from Emily Chubbuck Judson to Sarah Catherine Chubbuck, 18 Jan. 1843, in The Life and Letters of Mrs. Emily C. Judson (New York, 1860), 426Google Scholar [last two sources found at North American Women's Letters and Diaries Web site, http://www.alexanderstreet2.com/NWLDlive]; Stampp, Kenneth M., America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (New York, 1990), 225–26Google Scholar; Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 18, 201–19. For more on clerks' labor organization, see Luskey, “Marginal Men,” 298–346.

50 The roles played by the self-made-man tradition, evangelical Christianity, and transcendentalism in shaping how Americans thought about capitalism are discussed in Sklansky, Soul's Economy, 39, 44, 47; Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 69–99; Richard W. Pointer, “Philadelphia Presbyterians, Capitalism, and the Morality of Economic Success,” and Noll, Mark A., “Protestant Reasoning about Money and the Economy, 1790–1860: A Preliminary Probe,” in Noll, , ed., God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790–1860 (New York, 2002), 171–91, 269–70Google Scholar; Noll, , America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York, 2002), 222–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moore, R. Laurence, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York, 1994), 119Google Scholar; Corrigan, John, Business of the Heart: Religion and Emotion in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 2002), 62, 77, 79Google Scholar; Richard Carwardine, “‘Antinomians’ and ‘Arminians’: Methodists and the Market Revolution,” in Stokes and Conway, eds., Market Revolution in America, 287, 291–94; Davenport, Stewart, “Liberal America/Christian America: Another Conflict or Consensus?” Journal of the Early Republic 24 (2004): 195Google Scholar; Tucker, Barbara M. and Tucker, Kenneth H. Jr., “The Limits of Homo Economicus: An Appraisal of Early American Entrepreneurship,” Journal of the Early Republic 24 (2004): 218Google Scholar; Cawelti, Apostles of the Self-Made Man, 48–55, 72; Casper, Constructing American Lives, 88–91; and Augst, Clerk's Tale. While the scope of this essay does not permit it, I have explored how these ideological developments were part of a broader transformation by which class, race, and gender identities and relationships were recalibrated in the antebellum period in “Marginal Men.”

51 Hunt's Merchant's Magazine and Commercial Review [hereafter Hunt's] 5 (1841): 231Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., 1(1839): 325.

53 Hunt's depiction of virtues as transparent manifestations of the inner self place him within a developing antebellum middle class anxiously trying (with varying success) to cordon the family from work and a public sphere overwhelmingly staffed by strangers. See Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class; Amy Dru Stanley, “Home Life and the Morality of the Market,” in Stokes and Conway, eds., Market Revolution in America, 74–96; Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven, 1982), esp. 33–55Google Scholar; Howe, Daniel Walker, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 108–12, 122–28, 137Google Scholar; Dorsey, Bruce, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (Ithaca, 2002), 129–30Google Scholar.

54 For Hunt's emphasis on character as the means to obtain success, see Hunt's, 5 (1841): 359Google Scholar; 7 (1842): 260; 8 (1843): 57–61; 9 (1843): 167–68; 19 (1848): 63–64; 25 (1851): 31; 32 (1855): 67; 34 (1856): 37–38.

55 Ibid., 1(1839): 325.

56 Ibid., 12 (1845): 357.

57 Ibid., 9 (1843): 167.

58 Stephen Thernstrom discusses the “promise of mobility” in Poverty and Progress, 57–79. Also see Hunt's, 11 (1844): 57–58Google Scholar; 14 (1846): 168; 19 (1848): 63–64; 20 (1849): 358; 34 (1856): 306. For a much more complete (though seemingly unique) description of a clerk becoming a merchant, including salary data alongside the obligatory character assessment, see Ibid., 34 (1856): 37–38. For the variety of paths available to those wanting to become a merchant, see Ibid., 3 (1840): 424, 521; 4 (1840): 359–60; 5 (1841): 531–32; 6 (1842): 262–63; 8 (1843): 57, 390, 551; 13 (1845): 153–56, 264; 15 (1846): 582–84; 21 (1849): 41; 25 (1851): 31.

59 Edward Tailer Jr., Diary, 1 April 1849, New-York Historical Society.

60 Boardman, Henry A., Piety Essential to Man's Temporal Prosperity (Philadelphia, 1834), 18Google Scholar. Also see Bellows, Henry W., The Christian Merchant. A Discourse: Delivered in the Church of the Divine Unity, on Occasion of the Death of Jonathan Goodhue (New York, 1848), 7–10, 15Google Scholar. The problems clerks encountered when assessing character, earning confidence, and acting morally in countinghouses and stores owned by potentially “Dishonest Principals” are discussed in fictional accounts, such as “A Counting-House Man,” Herbert Tracy; or the Trials of Mercantile Life, and the Morality of Trade (New York, 1851)Google Scholar; and advice literature, such as Boardman, , The Bible in the Counting-House: A Course of Lectures to Merchants (Philadelphia, 1853), 14–15, 18, 59–61, 211–13, 216–17, 220–21, 223, 229–30, 234–35, 238–39, 250Google Scholar; Alexander, James W., The Merchant's Clerk Cheered and Counselled (New York, 1861), esp. pp. 18–24, 42–44, 53–55, 61–62Google Scholar. Also see Pointer, “Philadelphia Presbyterians,” 176, 180, 182.

61 Boardman, Piety Essential to Man's Temporal Prosperity, 9 (italics in original).

62 Alexander, Merchant's Clerk, 20.

63 Ibid., 18.

64 Ibid., 20.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid., 21.

67 Ibid.

68 Kornblith, Gary J., “Hiram Hill: House Carpenter, Lumber Dealer, Self-Made Man,” in Morrison, Michael A., ed., The Human Tradition in Antebellum America (Wilmington, De., 2000), 63Google Scholar.

69 Sklansky, Soul's Economy, 39. Also see Augst, Clerk's Tale, 119, 127, 133–34.

70 Augst, Clerk's Tale, 56.

71 Ibid., 3 (quotation), 149. For the continued importance in this period of independence through property ownership, see Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 13; and Berthoff, Rowland, “From Republican Citizen to Free Enterpriser, 1787–1837,” in Republic of the Dispossessed: The Exceptional Old-European Consensus in America (Columbia, Mo., 1997), 131–54Google Scholar.

72 [Greene, Asa], The Perils of Pearl Street, Including a Taste of the Dangers of Wall Street, by a Late Merchant (New York, 1834), 17Google Scholar.

73 Ibid., 13.

74 Ibid., 14.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid., 35.

77 Ibid., 98.

78 Ibid., 229.

79 Francis Bennett Diary, 28 Aug. 1854, American Antiquarian Society.

80 Augst, Clerk's Tale, 19–61, 150, 266–67.

81 Hoffman Diary, 31 Aug. 1850. For an interpretation of this passage that argues that Hoffman and other clerks were under the “social control” of writers like Hunt and Alexander, see Horlick, Country Boys and Merchant Princes, 118.

82 Tailer's experiences are charted in Winzer, Tailer, & Osbrey, New York, vol. 199, p. 276; vol. 203, pp. 700N, 700QQ, R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.; and Tailer Diary, 20 Dec. 1855–11 Jan. 1856.

83 Arnold, Constable & Co., New York, vol. 364, p. 35; Calvin W. Howe, New York, vol. 189, p. 202, R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

84 For examples of clerks entering firms with “small means” (between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars) or “no means,” see entries for R. W. Howes & Co., New York, vol. 189, p. 202; Ubsdell, Peirson & Co., New York, vol. 209, p. 37; John Slade & Co., vol. 197, p. lv; A. & G. & H. Brown, New York, vol. 197, p. 2; Hunt, Daniels & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 4; P. A. & J. Curtis & Sons, New York, vol. 197, p. 63; John T. S. Smith, New York, vol. 224, p. 25. There were instances in which former clerks brought as much as seven to twelve thousand dollars into their first partnerships, though it is not clear whether they came by the money through their savings or the assistance of others. In one firm, several clerks pooled their money together to enter into partnership with their employer. See entry for Hamlin, Rushmore & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 1. Also consult entries for Bellamy, Bradley & McMahon, New York, vol. 209, p. 24; Hall, Ruckel & Co., New York, vol. 224, p. 32. Entries that emphasize the new partners' business skills, influence on trade, or character are S. B. Chittenden, Bro., & Co., New York, vol. 197, pp. 5, 22; Petit, Harris, England & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 28; Eli Mygatt Jr. & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 29; Carleton & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 33; A. Thomas & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 76; Martin & Lawson, New York, vol. 197, p. 89; Furman, Davis & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 71; Clements & Hayden, New York, vol. 198, p. 103; Hitchcock & Lead better, New York, vol. 209, p. 1. For junior partners who apparently were given salaries or limited interests in their firms, see entries for Alexr. Frear & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 32; Lathrop & Ludington, New York, vol. 197, p. 35; Furman, Davis & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 71; Thomas & W. A. McLaughlin, New York, vol. 209, p. 85; J. W. Scudder & Co., New York, vol. 209, p. 91; S. & M. E. Fowle & Co., New York, vol. 209, p. 93, all in R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

85 For credit reports that note loans, gifts, inheritance or other financial assistance coming to merchants from family members, friends, or employers, see entries for Post & Young, New York, vol. 197, p. 53; Cameron, Edwards & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 84; A. Travers & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 85; J. G. Dudley & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 10; Solomon Levi, New York, vol. 198, p. 107; Cassin & Daniels, New York, vol. 209, p. 86; Richard Brown, New York, vol. 209, p. 97; John Clark, New York, vol. 209, p. 99; George Keys, New York, vol. 209, p. 100; Andrew G. Colby, New York, vol. 210, p. 138; Andrew Little, Jr., New York, vol. 210, p. 151; Abner Bartlett, New York, 224, p. 33; W. Watson & Co., New York, vol. 224, p. 44; Childs & Dougherty, New York, vol. 224, p. 71; Heye Brothers, New York, vol. 224, p. 72; A. G. Waterbury & Co., New York, vol. 224, p. 74; John Gaynor, New York, vol. 264, p. 5; Charles S. Benson, New York, vol. 264, p. 11; Michael Hughes, New York, vol. 264, p. 48; Charles Meyer, Jr., New York, vol. 264, p. 49; Edward Crolius, New York, vol. 316, p. 43. Clerks who exploited family ties to enter firms can be found in entries for John Slade & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. lv; S. B. Chittenden, Bro. & Co., New York, vol. 197, pp. 5, 22; W. H. Blashfield & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 26; Martin & Lawson, New York, vol. 197, p. 89; Halsted, Stiles & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 16; Rich & Blish, New York, vol. 210, p. 126. For clerks who bought out their employers, see entries for John Divine, New York, vol. 198, p. 104; T. C. & D. D. Foote, New York, vol. 198, p. 105; McConkey & Jones, New York, vol. 209, p. 75; Charles Mason, New York, vol. 209, p. 98; Richard Moore, New York, vol. 209, p. 99; J. M. Averill, New York, vol. 264, p. 52; John Quinn, New York, vol. 264, p. 64; Frederick Horner, New York, vol. 264, p. 65; Carrington & Orvis, vol. 364, p. 98. Firms that were bankrolled by special, silent, or general partners can be found in entries for Melliss & Ayers, New York, vol. 197, P. 97; James Goodeve & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 99; James B. Smith & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 75; E. S. Chadsey, New York, vol. 209, p. 7; Byrne Bros., New York, vol. 209, pp. 8–9; Joseph Cowperthwaite, New York, vol. 209, p. 18; Henry Haviland, New York, vol. 224, p. 92, all entries in R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. For Patterson's career, see Patterson Diary, 16 Mar. 1846 and 10 Sept. 1848; New York, vol. 316, pp. 78,100N, 100 a/3,100 a/17, 100 a/40, 100 a/58,1 a/7, 100 a/85, R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. For the rise of credit-reporting and the attendant focus on commercial character, see Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, “God and Dun & Bradstreet, 1841–1851,” Business History Review 40 (1966): 432–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 146–51; Sandage, Scott A., “Deadbeats, Drunkards, and Dreamers: A Cultural History of Failure in America, 1819–1893” (Ph. D. diss., Rutgers University, 1995)Google Scholar.

86 E. S. Chadsey, New York, vol. 209, p. 7, R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

87 Joseph Cowperthwaite, New York, vol. 209, p. 18, R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

88 Knight & Withers, New York, vol. 210, p. 111. These “patronage” relationships between senior and junior merchants, as Balleisen has called them, did not necessarily “constitute… a class-based scheme of mutual insurance.” Rather, they reflected the growing economic divide between senior and junior merchants. See Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 175. The detrimental effects of being unable to gather capital, the webs of credit that tied together family, friends, and competitors, and merchants trading under others' names or giving their prop-erty to others to protect it from creditors are examined in Ibid., 17, 26, 29, 50, 53, 72, 95–96, 135, 168, 174, 179, 194. For former clerks using these strategies and falling into cycles of failure and reentry into the commercial world, see entries for G. Van Cleef, New York, vol. 197, p. lw; Caleb B. Le Baron, New York, vol. 197, p. 57; David Morriset, New York, vol. 197, p. 57; Giles S. Ely, New York, vol. 197, p. 81; Chase, Goodridge, & Walker, New York, vol. 197, p. 84; Hellman & Stadeker, New York, vol. 197, p. 90; Benjamin Poor & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 91; Charles Ferguson, New York, vol. 197, p. 91; James Copeland & Bros., vol. 198, p. 106; Ezekiel K. Finch, New York, vol. 209, p. 11; James H. Lipsett, New York, vol. 209, p. 54; Thomas J. Thompson, New York, vol. 209, p. 84; Charles Mason, New York, vol. 209, p. 98; Crowell & Stratton, New York, vol. 210, p. 108; John Pine, New York, vol. 210, p. 115; David & Owen Griffith, New York, vol. 210, p. 116; William Warner, New York, vol. 210, p. 122; Henry Arnold, New York, vol. 210, p. 127; Childs & Dougherty, New York, vol. 224, p. 71; A. G. Waterbury & Co., New York, vol. 224, p. 74; Horton & Tweedy, New York, vol. 264, p. 13; William S. Hall, New York, vol. 264, p. 16; Frederick S. Bogue, New York, vol. 264, p. 22; J. T. Carpenter, New York, vol. 264, p. 23; Haviland & Niles, New York, vol. 264, p. 53; L. D. Simons, New York, vol. 316, p. 5; Hull & McMullen, New York, vol. 316, p. 6; George B. Farrer, New York, vol. 364, p. 87; Ira Beard, New York, vol. 197, p. 64; vol. 324, pp. 901C, 987, 1000 a/38; Henry C. Southworth, New York, vol. 216, p. 800 a/86; Robert McC. Graham, New York, vol. 343, p. 400L; all in R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

89 Elizabeth and Nathaniel Moore, New York, vol. 209, pp. 42, lookk. For other clerk-merchants, consult entries for Consider Parish, New York, vol. 197, p. IX; Bernard Lowethal, New York, vol. 197, p. 1; D. C. Clapp, New York, vol. 197, p. 55; James B. Smith & Co., New York, vol. 197, p. 75; Nicholas S. Ludlum, New York, vol. 209, p. 57; William T. Anderson, New York, vol. 209, p. 68; Thomas Bailey, New York, vol. 209, p. 83; Thomas Rumney, New York, vol. 209, p. 91; Andrew Little, Jr., New York, vol. 210, p. 151; Robert Boyd, New York, vol. 264, p. 50; all in R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. For women working in or owning stores and shops before the Civil War, see Luskey, “Marginal Men,” 51–56, 65, 163–64, 167, 177–78, 193, 217–29, 338–39; Cleary, Patricia A., “‘She Merchants’ of Colonial America: Women and Commerce on the Eve of the Revolution” (Ph. D. diss., Northwestern University, 1989)Google Scholar; Cleary, Patricia A., “‘She Will Be in the Shop’: Women's Sphere of Trade in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia and New York,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 119 (1995): 181–202Google Scholar; Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York, 1982), 35–50Google Scholar; Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: ‘Woman's Sphere’ in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, 1977), 42Google Scholar; Boydston, Jeanne, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York, 1990), 37–38Google Scholar.

90 New York, vol. 319, p. 469; vol. 322, p. 752, R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

91 Hoffman, William, The Monitor; or, Jottings of a New York Merchant during a Trip Round the Globe (New York, 1863), vi–viiGoogle Scholar.

92 Ibid., 45. For a representative passage describing Hoffman's spiritual life, see Ibid., 73–82.

93 Ibid., 77.

94 Ibid., 68–69.

95 Ibid., 42.

96 Ibid., 113–14.

97 For more about the triumphant narrative of the self-made man in the prescriptive literature of the late nineteenth century, see Hilkey, Judy, Character Is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill, 1997)Google Scholar.

98 Hoffman's failure did not stop him from starting a new business less than two months later. But he and his new partner had to confront old verdicts about their character. “They are s[ai]d to be tricky & untrustworthy,” credit reports affirmed in 1874, “& in doing bus[iness] with them transactions sh[oul]d be detailed in such a manner that no possible cavil can arise.” The credit agent's sources considered Hoffman an “English Jew,” associating him with an ethnic group thought to be suspect in commercial dealings. Even though he had recuperated a reputation as “a careful straightforward man” by 1880, his commercial career, begun over thirty years before, had taken startling turns for the worse. New York, vol. 322, pp. 758, 800N, 800V, 800 a/11, 800 a/34, R. G. Dun & Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School.

99 Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 205–6, 211–12, 214–15, 219 (quotation); Clyde Griffen and Sally Griffen, Natives and Newcomers, 136. A. T. Stewart was particularly well known for hiring failed merchants to staff his corporate hierarchy of buyers and salesmen. See Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 226–27; and Elias, A. T. Stewart, 42–43, 53.

100 For the development of this class, see Zunz, Making America Corporate, 125–48; Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 258–97; Wills, “Respectable Mediocrity”; and Aron, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service. Sven Beckert has studied the formation of a post-bellum elite consisting of merchants, bankers, and manufacturers in The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896 (New York, 2001)Google Scholar.