Were banks in the Jacksonian era merely bastions of privilege or were they vehicles of upward mobility for those without capital? The authors attempt to answer these questions by analyzing changes in the wealthholdings of directors of banks in Providence, Rhode Island, during the period 1830 to 1845. They find that bank charters granted in the 1830s did tend to benefit men with relatively little property and that they provided a rising group of entrepreneurs with the financial wherewithal to challenge the established elite.

In this article, Professor Dintenfass reexamines entrepreneurial efficiency in the interwar British coal industry. Using previously neglected company documents, he shows that cost-reducing and price-enhancing innovations in coal extraction, organizational practice, and marketing were not widely diffused, though neither geology, finance, nor industrial relations inhibited their adoption. He concludes that mismanagement was an important cause of the British coal industry's misfortunes in the 1920s and 1930s, but that the coalowners' failure to employ the new techniques cannot be attributed to the structure of the industry or to the survival of outmoded forms of business organization.

This article explores the contentious U.S. State Department–Foreign Bondholders Protective Council relationship in the context of interwar foreign economic policy and bureaucratic competition. U.S. officials created the council in 1933 to represent the interests of U.S. investors in the settlement of the numerous dollar bond issues that had gone into default. The article shows why the council failed to perform as U.S. officials expected and outlines the process by which they increasingly interposed themselves in debt negotiations. In doing so, it considers the limitations of using private organizations to accomplish the objectives of public policy.

During World War II, the organization Training Within Industry (TWI) developed programs to help industry cope with the flood of new and unskilled war workers. Guided by representatives of the new profession of personnel management and assisted by university-based social scientists, the organization developed innovative methods of industrial training that drew on both the scientific management tradition and the newer human relations approach fostered by the Hawthorne experiments. The introduction of the human relations approach was severely criticized in the postwar era for its manipulative potential, but the wartime training program on which it wasbased did not exhibit that tendency. Moreover, management, which theoretically should have embraced TWI programs, was unsupportive, and organized labor, which had reason to be suspicious, wasvery responsive. Workplace reform, not the psychological conditioning of workers, drove the TWI programs.

The computer-services and software industry used to be conveniently divided into three main sectors: mass-market software vendors, enterprise software vendors, and computer services. The three sectors were distinct, because personal computers, corporate mainframes, and online computer networks operated in relative isolation. The arrival of the Internet effectively connected everything, facilitating the entry of mass-market vendors into enterprise software and of both mass-market and enterprise software vendors into computer services. As the turbulence of the first decade of the Internet era subsides, a gradual transition from traditional software products to “Web services” is taking place.

In the early twentieth century, companies relied on advertising to inform international audiences about their products and services, just as they do today. The J. Walter Thompson Company, a New York–based advertising agency, entered the global stage early, and by 1928 Thompson advertisements had appeared in twenty-six languages in over forty countries. Reaching international audiences and expanding their tastes required an understanding of local cultures and the ways in which they conducted their businesses, and advertisers often had to act as mediators for their clients. The J. Walter Thompson Company's efforts in Argentina provide an excellent case study of how both “local” and “global” messages of consumption were understood–and often misinterpreted–when they were transmitted to other countries from the United States.

More than forty years ago (in the autumn of 1974), Business History Review had a special issue on multinational enterprise (MNE). With two exceptions, the authors in this new special issue were not yet born or were toddlers when that issue was published. Whereas in 1974 relatively few individuals were writing on topics directly related to the history of multinational enterprise, in 2015 numerous authors are considering subjects that fall under this rubric. Still, by the mid-1970s the study of the history of multinationals was not virgin territory. Glenn Porter, then editor of Business History Review, wrote in a preface to the 1974 issue, “Most of the contributions here underscore the deep historical roots of multinational business and point to the importance of an awareness of the past in understanding the present.”

First National City Bank (FNCB) of New York launched the Everything Card in the summer of 1967. A latecomer in the field of credit cards, FNCB nonetheless correctly recognized a promising business model for retail banking. FNCB attempted not only to ride the wave of mass consumption but also to capitalize on the profit-generating potential of buying on credit. Although the venture soon failed, brought down by the losses that plagued the bank due to fraud, consumer discontent, and legislative action, this final attempt by a major single commercial bank to launch its own plan did not signify the end of credit cards. On the contrary, the Everything Card was a harbinger of the era of the universal credit card.

The Draper Company's commitment to research and development was unparalleled among other nineteenth-century American manufacturers in older industries. This innovative drive, coupled with a strategy of patent defense and control, carried the firm to the top of the cotton textile machine industry by the end of the century. The company's 1907 decision to follow a less innovative path seemed sensible in light of its secure position in a volatile market, but the costs in long-term competitive strength were high.

Few would deny that British and American bankers played a large and often controversial role in the western imperialism that reached its zenith in China during the early years of the twentieth century. China had always seemed to be a country where large investments would bring handsome returns; many individuals hoped to take advantage of the situation; and capital invested there did indeed have far-reaching, unforeseen ramifications. Among the many contentious issues in the bankers' story, however, is the question of intent and motivation. Reduced to its simplest terms, did the bankers seek to manipulate national policy in an unbridled quest for profit? Or were they the willing, even altruistic agents of governments bent upon imperial ventures? Professor Davis assesses this question from the western perspective. Having based his research on financial, diplomatic, and personal records, he suggests that the objectives and activities of the bankers, vis-à-vis govenment policymakers, were far more shifting and complex than has been generally perceived.

As a host country for foreign direct investment, conventional measures suggest that Italy is not a very attractive location. However, based upon a new database of the one hundred largest multinationals in the country, this article shows that foreign firms consistently played a crucial role in Italy's industrial activities throughout the twentieth century. A detailed analysis of investment patterns, distribution across industries, and entry modes reveals that they concentrated their investment in sectors of high technological and scale intensity, such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals, where domestic capabilities and competition remained weak during much of the period.

The managerial revolution drove the rise of business schools in the United States and business schools contributed by graduating professional managers. Before World War II, however, the effect of an MBA degree was modest, causing great concern to leading business schools. Harvard Business School—in order to increase this impact—began in the mid-1920s to develop nondegree programs for potential top executives. In 1945, by drawing on the experiences of certain short-lived programs and the extraordinary situation during the war, Harvard Business School launched its Advanced Management Program, which became a global role model for executive education.

The production of perfumery articles became an industry in the nineteenth century, and their broader social diffusion invites questions about the accuracy of perfume's identification at that time as a luxury product. The innovations generated or adopted by perfumers, whether they involved new extraction methods or the use of synthetic compounds, not only introduced new creative possibilities but also allowed wider margins on sales. The shift from artisanal fabrication to industrial manufacturing accompanied relatively steep increases in the price of perfumes. Nineteenth-century perfumers developed marketing strategies to build the value of their products and to position them as luxury goods.

Following a review of the early period of British investment in Latin America (1822–1865) and a discussion of previous estimates of British capital exports to South and Central America before World War I, Professor Stone presents new and revised data concerning the composition and distribution of British holdings by amount, industry, and region.

In interwar Germany, the overall economic importance of big business rapidly increased, as concentration was seen as a suitable means of coping with Germany's post–First World War problems. Growing and integrating vertically and laterally, Germany's big combines had to adjust their organization to deal with these amalgamations. In the following article, Professor Feldenkirchen takes a close look at the measures employed at Vereinigte Stahlwerke, IG Farben, and Siemens, Germany's three largest combines during the interwar period.

A remarkable instance of the interaction of business, society, and government unfolds in this study of the origins and effects of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century restrictions on luxury.

This article examines the nuances and complexities of business-government relations in the British paper-pulp industry between 1950 and 1980 through the prism of interactions between Wiggins, Teape & Co., a paper company, and various U.K. government departments in the postwar period. It highlights the complexity of business-government and interdepartmental relations and tensions, set against the global and domestic paper industry competition and the United Kingdom's international economic position. Long-standing industry underinvestment and interdepartmental tensions in government are identified as principal contributors to the failing competitiveness of the industry and of British businesses more generally in the twentieth century.

In July of 1826, a financial panic on Wall Street caused several companies to fail abruptly and precipitated runs on two of New York City's fifteen banks. Life and Fire Insurance became the largest of the bankruptcies. In violation of New York's banking statutes, the firm had engaged in lending on a massive scale during the speculative boom that prevailed in 1824–25. Innovative lending techniques had been developed outside the traditional banking sector—in this case, in the insurance industry. These lending practices, based on an instrument known as a post note, were initially sound, but were later extended to riskier borrowers and ultimately proved ruinous. In the credit crisis that began in late 1825, the value of the Life and Fire's assets fell dramatically, and in a desperate effort to raise cash, the directors resorted to fraud.

This study analyzes the differing managerial behavior of the three dominant firms in the steam locomotive oligopoly as diesel locomotives replaced steam.