Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T22:55:07.447Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

History and the Businessman*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

W. Woodruf
W. Woodruf
Affiliation:
Professor of Economic History at University of Illinois
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The distinguishing aspect of business in modern times, particularly in the United States, is that it has permeated the entire fabric of civilization. Historical interpretations of this circumstance have been in sharp conflict and have tended toward extremes. The wave of national self-criticism of the early twentieth century focused attention on the shortcomings of business, ignoring its constructive aspects. On the other hand, the modern revisionist school of historians, depicting the businessman not as a “robber baron” but as an “architect of material greatness,” has been prone to stress ends ahead of means and to overlook the deeper implications of the businessman's role in society as a whole. True perspective is not afforded by either of these opposing academic positions, nor is it likely to be gained by further blind amassing of facts-in-isolation on the part of business historians. A general theory of business evolution is needed — one that neither praises nor blames the businessman but seeks to locate him in the larger context of human experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 1956 , pp. 241 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1956

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 I will not detain the reader by discussing the changing concept of the businessman. The whole article might well be given up to this topic. I shall simply say that while we normally identify the businessman with the concept of private gain and capital accumulation, a study of European literature reveals many different social and historic categories of businessmen whose economic behavior has not always been the same. To apply the characteristics of present-day business life to earlier civilizations is, of course, to provide ourselves with a most unsatisfactory explanation of the past.

2 Beard, Miriam, A History of the Business Man (New York, 1938).Google Scholar

3 Levitt, Theodore, The Twilight of the Profit Motive (Washington, D. C., 1955).Google Scholar

4 “The Moral History of U. S. Business,” Fortune, Vol. 40 (Dec, 1949), 143. There are too many references to be set down here. The best guide to the materials for the study of American business history remains the one prepared by Larson, Henrietta M., Guide to Business History (Cambridge, 1948).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Spencer, Herbert, Social Statics; Or, the Conditions Essential to Human Happiness (New York, 1866)Google Scholar; and Sumner, William G., What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (New York, 1883).Google Scholar See also, Hofstadter, Richard, Social Darwinism in American Thought (Rev. ed.; Boston, 1955), pp. 31–66.Google Scholar

6 Josephson, Matthew, The Robber Barons (New York, 1934)Google Scholar; and Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes (New York, Modem Library Edition).

7 Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of Business Enterprise (New York, 1912), pp. 27–49, 268–301.Google Scholar

8 Brooks, Van Wyck, The Confident Years: 1885–1915 (New York, 1952), p. 384.Google Scholar

9 Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston, 1918)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Charles F. Adams, 1835–1915. An Autobiography (New York, 1916); Adams, Brooks, The Law of Civilization and Decay (New York, 1943)Google Scholar; Beard, Charles A., An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1913)Google Scholar; Parrington, Vernon L., Main Currents in American Thought (3 Vols.; New York, 1927)Google Scholar; Curti, Merle, The Growth of American Thought (New York, 1943).Google Scholar

10 Tarbell, Ida M., The History of the Standard Oil Company (2 Vols.; New York, 1904)Google Scholar; Steffens, Joseph Lincoln, Autobiography (New York, 1931)Google Scholar; Lawson, Thomas W., Frenzied Finance (New York, 1905).Google Scholar

11 Saveth, Edward N., “What Historians Teach About Business,” Fortune, Vol. 45 (April, 1952), 168–70.Google Scholar

12 A call to do otherwise has recently been sounded by the President of United States Steel Corporation, Clarence B. Randall, in his book: A Creed for Free Enterprise (New York, 1952).

13 Theodore Levitt, op. cit.; de Jouvenel, Bertrand, The Ethics of Redistribution (Cambridge, England, 1951), pp. 16–17Google Scholar; also, Fortune, Vol. 40, (Dec, 1949), 146–58.

14 Excerpts from Professor Nevins' work come from one of two sources: either from a speech given before the Society of American Archivists, reported by the New York Times, Sept. 20, 1953, or from a debate between Nevins, Allan and Josephson, Matthew, The Saturday Review, Vol. 37, Nos. 1–13 (Feb. 6, 1954).Google Scholar

15 The Saturday Review, Vol. 37, Nos. 1–13 (Feb. 6, 1954), 44–45.

16 Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Irony of American History (New York, 1952), p. 33Google Scholar; also, Hook, Sidney, “Bread, Freedom, and Businessmen,” Fortune, Vol. 44 (Sept., 1951), 174.Google Scholar

17 Niebuhr, Reinhold, Reflections on the End of an Era (New York, 1934), pp. 63–74.Google Scholar

18 For which, of course, there are plenty of precedents. Take, for instance, Brooks Adams when offering a second edition of The Law of Civilization and Decay in 1896: “… I take the opportunity to say emphatically that such value as the essay may have lies in its freedom from any preconceived bias. All theories contained in the book, whether religious or economic, are the effect, and not the cause, of the way in which the facts unfolded themselves. I have been passive….” See Salvemini, Gaetano, Historian and Scientist (Cambridge, 1939), p. 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also, Cohen, Morris R., The Meaning of Human History (La Salle, 1947)Google Scholar, and Trevelyan, George M., An Autobiography and Other Essays (London, 1949), pp. 68–82.Google Scholar

19 Cohen, Morris R. and Nagel, Ernest, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (New York, 1934), p. 380.Google Scholar

20 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945)Google Scholar.

21 Dawson, op. cit., p. 221.

22 Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (New ed.; London, 1892), p. 70.Google Scholar

23 As one of Britain's pioneering economic historians put it: “A great nation is not a mere machine for producing the greatest amount of wealth with the greatest amount of speed, it is an organism which cannot be healthy unless the conditions of distribution are satisfactory as well as those of production.” Cunningham, William, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce (2d ed., 2 Vols.; Cambridge, England, 1890–1892), p. 3.Google Scholar

24 Stamp, Josiah, The Christian Ethic as an Economic Factor (London, 1926), p. 88.Google Scholar

25 Tawney, R. H., “A History of Capitalism,” Economic History Review, I–II (1948–1950), Ser. 2, 307–16.Google Scholar

26 Wilson, Charles, The History of Unilever: A Study in Economic Growth and Social Change, II (London, 1954), 392.Google Scholar

27 Larson, Henrietta, “Business History: Retrospect and Prospect,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, XXI (Dec, 1947), esp. 186–92.Google Scholar

28 Brunswik, Egon, “The Conceptual Framework of Psychology,” International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. 1, Part 2, p. 706.Google Scholar

29 A problem now receiving increasing attention. See Capital Formation and Economic Growth, National Bureau of Economic Research (Princeton University Press, 1955).

30 Either we neglect to study the productive process or we attach to it a supreme value. Even as sensitive and experienced a businessman as David E. Lilienthal has not escaped the problem of false primacy in these matters. See his Big Business: A New Era (New York, 1953).

31 A thought expressed by the distinguished Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt in his Welgeschichtliche Betrachungen, and quoted by Geyl, Peter in his Use and Abuse of History (New Haven, 1955), p. 84.Google Scholar