British free trade has been variously attributed to the importuning of business interests, to the advanced state of manufacturing, to politicians acting on improper or unworthy motives, or to imperialism. Professor Grampp examines a critical event in the history of free trade: Parliament's declaration in 1820 that future commercial policy should be guided by that principle. By 1850, all major restrictions had been abolished. The decision of 1820, according to Thomas Tooke, a principal in the event, was made by the Tory Government with the concurrence of the Whig Opposition, both of which had come to believe free trade would increase per capita real income: that is, both acted in what they and others since have understood to be the public interest.

That restrictions on real-estate-mortgage lending by banks chartered under the National Banking Act of 1864 seriously restricted availability of long-term financing before 1913, has long been accepted. Professors Keehn and Smiley explain some ways in which resourceful national banks could circumvent this restriction. They find that lending within the letter but outside the spirit of the Act of 1864 was greater than published figures on direct lending indicate.

The U.S. banking holiday of March 1933 was a pivotal event in twentieth-century political and economic history. After closing the nation's banks for nine days, the administration of newly inaugurated president Franklin D. Roosevelt restarted the banking system as the first step toward national recovery from the global Great Depression. In the conventional narrative, the holiday succeeded because Roosevelt used his political talents to restore public confidence in the nation's banks. However, such accounts say virtually nothing about what happened during the holiday itself. We reinterpret the banking crises of the 1930s and the 1933 holiday through the lens of bank supervision, the continuous oversight of commercial banks by government officials. Through the 1930s banking crises, federal supervisors identified troubled banks but could not act to close them. Roosevelt empowered supervisors to act decisively during the holiday. By closing some banks, supervisors made credible Roosevelt's claims that banks that reopened were sound. Thus, the union of FDR's political skills with the technical judgment of bank supervisors was the key to solving the banking crisis. Neither could stand alone, and both together were the vital precondition for further economic reforms—including devaluing the dollar—and, with them, Roosevelt's New Deal.

Recognizing the importance of the woolen industry in Japan's industrial development, this article explores the impetus given that industry by the gradual Westernization of Japanese tastes in clothing.

This study traces the origins of the twentieth-century Greek shipping tycoons and their global business to the nineteenth-century Greek diaspora traders. It examines the distinct characteristics of a diaspora firm, which can be treated partially as a multinational or “free standing firm” with distinctive features. Based in the main European financial centers, diaspora traders were international operators who developed ethnic-religious networks with their own unofficial international market, enabling them to operate independently of the countries or states in which they were established. The Vagliano house is a prime example of a diaspora trading house that transformed itself into a major shipping and ship-management firm, paving the way for the global success of twentieth-century Greek-owned shipping. The Vagliano network integrated the Greek shipping sector into the international shipping production system by creating an institutional framework based on trust that minimized transaction costs and entrepreneurial risk and provided information flow.

This study reports interest rates on New York Bankers' balances and argues that their stability in periods of generally falling interest rates was a sign of a highly competitive financial system.

The 1884 receivership of the Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway is widely regarded as a turning point in the development of corporate insolvency law. It is said to have created a “new-fashioned receivership,” which enabled debtors to initiate and, to a great extent, control receiverships. It is said that these new-fashioned receiverships facilitated reorganization of the insolvent firm at the expense of creditors' rights. An examination of the history of railroad receiverships reveals that for decades before 1884 judges allowed managers to initiate receiverships, appointed managers as receivers, and forced creditors to accept changes in their contractual rights. Judges also refused to extend reorganization procedures to corporations outside the railroad industry, justifying their special treatment of railroads on the grounds that the foremost obligation of railroads was to serve the public. Analysis of railroad bond prices supports the conclusion that creditors' rights were not transformed by the courts in the mid-1880s.

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., has maintained that the persistence of the personally managed firm in Britain may be a cause of that nation's long-run industrial decline. This article contributes to the debate over decline through a detailed exploration of the business role of personally managed firms in a strategic sector of the Second Industrial Revolution: the metal and metal-making trades of Sheffield. Our study shows that the business strategies of Sheffield firms, based on quality production and flexible technology, had close similarities to those of American companies described by scholars such as Philip Scranton. Many of the Sheffield firms were not lacking in enterprise; they demonstrated tenacity and, in certain key segments of the metal trades, enjoyed a high degree of business success. Our examination of personal capitalism in Sheffield suggests that the terms of the debate over Britain's industrial decline may require further refinement.

Scholars have recommended taking a closer look at firms that raise funds from the financial system as a way of understanding the relation between finance and growth. This article explores the role of the U.S. financial system in providing funds to two prominent American firms, General Electric and Westinghouse Electric, over the course of the last century. The financial system's support was important for both companies, but there were important differences, as well as changes over time, in their patterns of financial dependence and autonomy. Two factors—investments in working capital and dividend policies—are important for explaining the financing patterns of both firms, suggesting clear hypotheses about the determinants of demand for corporate finance that can be tested in further financial histories. The findings also highlight the importance of looking at working, as well as fixed, capital in studies of enterprises' relations with the financial system, and of examining the money that flows out of companies as well as the funds that flow into them.

This study examines the complex process of the transfer of technology in the early stages of industrialization. The manner and timing of the selective acquisition of portions of Britain's new textile technology by entrepreneurs in the Philadelphia region were determined by the subtle interplay of market forces, technological constraints, and active efforts to encourage or discourage the transfer.

In tracing the work of Edwin Gay in the mobilization effort during the First World War, this article presents an intriguing picture of the wartime administration's gradual realization of its need for more accurate information for central economic and political decision making. Although Gay's specific agency was short-lived, the work he did, and the viewpoint he represented, contributed significantly to the search for coherent administration in the executive branch.

A neglected trade and its commodities are emphasized in Professor Lydon's consideration of the colonial merchants' search for profitable returns to England.

Everybody in this group will be aware of the fact that business history is neither of American nor of recent vintage. The first full-fledged company history was published in 1825 to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Lauchhammer Iron Works in Saxony; and Professor Herman Freudenberger has recently been able to trace the beginnings of company history to the eighteenth century. His research will be published this spring. As early as the 1900's, Professor Richard Ehrenberg of the University of Rostock was the first to see that what we call business history could be developed into an academic discipline, and his book on the enterprises of the Siemens Brothers marks the beginning of company history satisfying the most rigid modern scientific standards. In fact, Ehrenberg's work had an influence on the thinking of Professor N. S. B. Gras.

This article examines the marketing practices of the Soviet state trust for cosmetics, TeZhe, in the 1930s. Drawing on company records, industry reports, and popular press, we show that TeZhe used an array of marketing tactics, which were similar to those of the Western manufacturers. However, TeZhe's marketing was aligned with the state's economic and sociocultural initiatives and shaped by the ideological dictates of the Soviet system.

After assuming sole ownership of the Ford Motor Company in 1919, Henry Ford transformed his business into a mission-driven organization that prioritized improvements in production and engineering over investment returns. At the same time, the company programmatically rejected bureaucratic management in favor of informal procedures and ingrained collective protocols, both in administration and on the shop floor. This article references Max Weber's view of “charismatic” authority to explain the company’s organizational structure, its culture, its ambivalence toward Henry Ford’s worst tendencies and prejudices, and its resilience during the decline of his leadership in the 1930s and 1940s.

There is, on an average, annually wrecked upon the Florida coast, about fifty vessels…. The great destruction of property consequent upon this state of things, and the hope of gain, have induced a settlement at Key West, where, to adjudicate upon the wrecked property, a court of admiralty has been established. A large number of vessels, from 20 to 30, are annually engaged as wreckers, lying about this coast to “help the unfortunate,” and to help themselves. These vessels are in many instances owned in whole or in part by the merchants of Key West; the same merchant frequently acts in quadruple capacity of owner of die wrecker, agent for the wreckers, consignee of the captain, and agent for the underwriters. Whose business he transacts with most assiduity, his own, or that of others, may be readily inferred.

—“Wrecks, Wrecking, and Wreckees, on Florida Reef,” Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 6 (1842): 349.

What was Alfred D.Chandler's significance in the study of business history throughout the world? How did his views evolve? Why was his approach so influential? How did his thinking contribute to comparative business history and to the history of international business? This essay is designed to answer these questions.

Little has been written about urban property investment in seventeenth-century London. Market norms for investors were developed in a relatively unregulated environment, and in response to surging urban growth. “Pattern books” (manuals of design, measuring, and building) provided information to investors, helping them to evaluate an assorted set of properties. While the methods of investment described in these books were initially rudimentary, there is evidence of increased sophistication in the latter part of the century. The gradual institutionalizing of real estate practices helped to attract the necessary capital to finance London's remarkable physical growth.

Scholars have recommended taking a closer look at firms that raise funds from the financial system as a way of understanding the relation between finance and growth. This article explores the role of the U.S. financial system in providing funds to two prominent American firms, General Electric and Westinghouse Electric, over the course of the last century. The financial system's support was important for both companies, but there were important differences, as well as changes over time, in their patterns of financial dependence and autonomy. Two factors—investments in working capital and dividend policies-are important for explaining the financing patterns of both firms, suggesting clear hypotheses about the determinants of demand for corporate finance that can be tested in further financial histories. The findings also highlight the importance of looking at working, as well as fixed, capital in studies of enterprises' relations with the financial system, and of examining the money that flows out of companies as well as the funds that flow into them.

John Herbert Orr (1911-84) was an Alabama entrepreneur who formed Orradio Industries, Inc., a pioneering hightechnology firm that made magnetic recording tape. In 1945, Orr was among the U.S. Army Intelligence officials who investigated this technology, which was originally developed in Germany during the 1930s. Orr's early knowledge allowed him to establish Orradio in 1949 on a shoestring budget and to make it competitive with larger firms. When, after some uncertainty, tape became the standard medium for magnetic recorders, and as other uses such as data storage and videotape appeared, Orradio's sales expanded rapidly in the late 1950s. The company was purchased by a larger competitor, the Ampex Corporation, in 1959. The history of Orradio illustrates some of the technological, organizational, and locational problems associated with the establishment of a small high-technology firm in a new industry.