Article contents
American Institutional Studies: Present Knowledge and Past Trends
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2010
Extract
The production of economic history, like that in many fields of scholarly endeavor, increased sharply in the past quarter-century, compared to the rate of output in earlier eras. While the “new” economic history, with its emphasis on economic theory and measurement, has attracted considerable attention during the last decade, “traditional” economic history, written along institutional lines, has continued to be significant, both quantitatively (in terms of numbers of books and articles) and qualitatively (as assessed by contributions to our understanding of economic processes.)
- Type
- Economic History: Retrospect and Prospect. Papers Presented at the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Economic History Association 1971
References
1 Cole, Arthur H., “A report on Research in Economic History,” The Journal of Economic History, IV (May 1944), pp. 49–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 See Arthur H. Cole, “Economic History in the United States: Formative Years of a Discipline,” ibid., XXVIII (Dec. 1968), pp. 556–89; Cochran, Thomas C., “Economic History, Old and New,” American Historical Review, LXXIV (June 1969), pp. 1561–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a survey of writing in the 1920's and 1930's, see Cochran, Thomas C., “Research in American Economic History: A Thirty Year View,” Mid-America, 29 (Jan. 1947), pp. 3–23Google Scholar.
3 See Soltow, James H., “The Entrepreneur in Economic History,” American Economic Review, LVIII (May 1968), pp. 84–85Google Scholar.
4 Cole, “Research in Economic History,” p. 60. Study of the role of business in society had also been urged by Cochran, Thomas C., “The Social History of the Corporation in the United States,” The Cultural Approach to History, Ware, Caroline F., editor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940)Google Scholar.
5 Schumpeter, Joseph A., “The Creative Response in Economic History,” The Journal of Economic History, VII (Nov. 1947), p. 151Google Scholar.
6 Cole, Arthur H., “An Approach to the Study of Entrepreneurship: A Tribute to Edwin F. Gay,” The Journal of Economic History, Supplement, VI (1946), pp. 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See Hidy, Ralph W., “Business History,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, VI (New York: Macmillan, 1968) pp. 474–480Google Scholar. For a summary of some of the significant findings of entrepreneurial historians, see Cole, Arthur H., Business Enterprise in Its Social Setting (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959)Google Scholar. Aitken, Hugh G. J., Explorations in Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contains a selection of articles that had appeared originally in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, published from 1948 to 1958 by The Research Center in Entrepreneurial History.
8 Sawyer, John E., “Entrepreneurial Studies: Perspectives and Directions, 1948–1958,” Business History Review, XXXII (Winter 1958), p. 440Google Scholar.
9 See Denison, Edward F., Why Growth Rates Differ; Postwar Experience in Nine Western Countries (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1967), p. 281Google Scholar.
10 Wright, Chester W., “The Nature and Objectives of Economic History,” in New Views on American Economic Development, Andreano, Ralph, editor (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1965), p. 36Google Scholar. The article appeared originally in 1938.
11 Hutchins, John G. B., “Recent Contributions to Business History: The United States,” The Journal of Economic History, XIX (March 1959), p. 106Google Scholar; and “Business History, Entrepreneurial History, and Business Administration,” ibid., XVII (Dec. 1958), p. 463. William P. Glade, “Approaches to a Theory of Entrepreneurial Formation,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd ser., 4 (Spring/Summer 1967), pp. 245–59, states these general propositions in a more formal way.
12 Easterbrook, Thomas, “Uncertainty in Economic Change,” The Journal of Economic History, XIV (1954), pp. 350–51Google Scholar.
13 Cochran, Thomas C., “The Entrepreneur in Economic Change,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd ser., 3 (Fall 1965), pp. 25–38Google Scholar.
14 Arthur H. Cole, “Meso-Economics: A Contribution from Entrepreneurial History,” ibid., 2nd ser., 6 (Fall 1968), pp. 3–33.
15 Cole, “Research in Economic History,” pp. 54–57.
16 Callender, G. S., “The Early Transportation and Banking Enterprises of the States in Relation to the Growth of Corporations,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, XVII (Nov. 1902), p. 114Google Scholar.
17 Aitken, Hugh G. J., review of Harry N. Scheiber, Ohio Canal Era, in Business History Review, XLIV (Summer 1970), pp. 249–251Google Scholar.
18 Lively, Robert A., “The American System: A Review Article,” Business History Review, XXIX (March 1955), p. 84Google Scholar.
19 Salsbury, Stephen, The State, the Investor, and the Railroad: The Boston & Albany, 1825–1867 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. ii, “The Issue of State Aid.”
20 Scheiber, Harry N., Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820–1861 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1969), pp. 353–56Google Scholar.
21 Callender, “State Enterprise and Corporations,” p. 150.
22 Lively, “American System,” p. 91.
23 Scheiber, Harry N., “Entrepreneurship and Western Development: The Case of Micajah T. Williams,” Business History Review, XXXVII (Winter 1963), pp. 345, 368CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Scheiber contends that “Williams was a precursor of an entrepreneurial type usually associated with a later period of American development” and compares his subject “to such magnates of a later era as James F. Joy or Henry Villard.” But one may question the implication that Williams was atypical of entrepreneurs of his time.
24 Cochran, Thomas C., “The History of a Business Society,” Journal of American History, LIV (June 1967), p. 12Google Scholar. Decker's recent essay on land speculation in the West shows how businessmen employed government as a utility: “… the borrowing power of precinct and county governments [was used] to finance as many desirable public improvements (schools, roads, bridges) and to attract as many desirable services (railroads, commercial centers) as possible to the lands' vicinity. Thus it was that schools with capacities far in excess of the need were immediately built, that county and precinct bonds for railroads and related promotions were voted by the firstcomers, that local debts mounted sharply during the first surge into any area.” Decker, Leslie E., “The Great Speculation: An Interpretation of Mid-Continent Pioneering,” in The Frontier in American Development: Essays in Honor of Paul Wallace Gates (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 378Google Scholar.
25 Goodrich, Carter, “Internal Improvements Reconsidered,” The Journal of Economic History, XXX (June 1970), p. 311Google Scholar.
26 Broude, Henry W., “The Role of the State in American Economic Development, 1820–1890,” in The State and Economic Growth, Aitken, Hugh G. J., editor, (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1959), p. 5Google Scholar.
27 Goodrich, “Internal Improvements Reconsidered,” p. 296.
28 Hurst, James Willard, Law and Economic Growth: The Legal History of the Lumber Industry in Wisconsin, 1836–1915 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 285Google Scholar.
29 Hurst, James W., Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century United States (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Law and Social Process in United States History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960)Google Scholar; The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation in the Law of the United States 1780–1970 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1970)Google Scholar. See also Scheiber, Harry N., “At the Borderland of Law and Economic History: The Contributions of Willard Hurst,” American Historical Review, LXXV (Feb. 1970), pp. 744–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Hurst, Law and Economic Growth, p. 49.
31 Hurst, Law and the Conditions of Freedom, p. 6. If one regards, as does Hurst, law as a form through which “facts of social structure and value bore directly on the making of economic decisions,” significant importance attaches to the development of ideology and social structure during the American colonial period, a point stressed by Diamond, Sigmund, “Values as an Obstacle to Economic Growth: The American Colonies,” The Journal of Economic History, XXVII (Dec. 1967), pp. 561–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 Easterbrook, W. T., “The Climate of Enterprise,” American Economic Review, XXXIX (May 1949), pp. 322–35Google Scholar.
33 Cochran, Thomas C., The American Business System: A Historical Perspective, 1900–1955 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 Destler, Chester M., “Entrepreneurial Leadership Among the ‘Robber Barons’: A Trial Balance,” The Journal of Economic History, Supplement, VI (1946), pp. 28–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Solganik, Allen, “The Robber Baron Concept and Its Revisionists,” Science & Society, XXIX (Summer 1965), pp. 257–69Google Scholar.
35 Allan Nevins and Matthew Josephson, “Should American History be Rewritten?” Saturday Review, 6 Feb. 1954. Kirkland, Edward C., “The Robber Barons Revisited,” American Historical Review, LXVI (Oct. 1960), pp. 68–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36 Miller, William, “The Realm of Wealth,” in The Reconstruction of American History, Higham, John, editor (New York: Harper, 1962), p. 153Google Scholar.
37 Kolko, Gabriel, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916 (New York: Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar, and Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965)Google Scholar.
38 Sklar, Martin J., “Woodrow Wilson and the Political Economy of Modern United States Liberalism,” Studies on the Left, I (1960), pp. 17–47Google Scholar. See also Weinstein, James, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State: 1900–1918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968)Google Scholar.
39 However, a critique of the liberal interpretation, more meaningful and effective than that of the New Left, is contained in Hays, Samuel P., “The Social Analysis of American Political History, 1880–1920,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXX (Sept. 1965), pp. 373–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 Caine, Stanley, “Why Railroads Supported Regulation: The Case of Wisconsin, 1905–1910,” Business History Review, XLIV (Summer 1970), pp. 175–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Purcell, Edward A. Jr., “Ideas and Interests: Businessmen and the Interstate Commerce Act,” Journal of American History, LIV (Dec. 1967), pp. 561–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kerr, K. Austin, American Railroad Politics, 1914–1920: Rates, Wages, and Efficiency (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Harbeson, Robert W., “Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916: Conspiracy or Public Interest?” The Journal of Economic History, XXVII (June 1967), pp. 230–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
41 Galambos, Louis, “Parsonian Sociology and Post-Progressive History,” Social Science Quarterly, L. (June 1969), pp. 25–45Google Scholar. See also, Greenbaum, Fred, “The Progressive World of Gabriel Kolko,” Social Studies, LX (Oct. 1969), pp. 224–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
42 Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., and Galambos, Louis, “The Development of Large-Scale Economic Organizations in Modern America,” The Journal of Economic History, XXX (March 1970), pp. 201–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contains useful middle-level generalization about organizational development.
43 See Sears, Marian V., “The American Businessman at the Turn of the Century,” Business History Review, XXX (Dec. 1956), pp. 382–443CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a survey of the problems as seen by business and the range of proposed solutions at one point during the history of the modern corporation.
44 Averitt, Robert T., The Dual Economy: The Dynamics of American Industry Structure (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968)Google Scholar distinguishes between a center economy of large corporations and a periphery economy of smaller firms.
45 Eichner, Alfred S., The Emergence of Oligopoly: Sugar Refining as a Case Study (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1969)Google Scholar. Also valuable are Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., “The Beginnings of ‘Big Business’ in American Industry,” Business History Review, XXXIII (Spring 1959), pp. 1–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williamson, Harold F. et al. , The American Petroleum Industry, 2 vols. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1959–1963)Google Scholar; Passer, Harold C., The Electrical Manufacturer's, 1875–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tennant, Richard B., The American Cigarette Industry: A Study in Economic Analysis and Public Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Panschar, William G., Banking in America: Economic Development (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1956)Google Scholar; Scoville, Warren C., Revolution in Glassmaking: Entrepreneurship and Technological Change in the American Industry, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948)Google Scholar.
46 Hidy, Ralph W. and Hidy, Muriel E., Pioneering in Big Business, 1882–1911 (New York: Harper, 1955)Google Scholar. Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1962)Google Scholar. Various aspects of administrative history are detailed in articles which appeared in the Business History Review in the 1950's and 1960's. The following are intended only as examples: Litterer, Joseph A., “Systematic Management: The Search for Order and Integration,” XXV (Winter 1961), pp. 461–76Google Scholar, and “Systematic Management: Design For Organizational Recoupling in American Manufacturing Firms,” XXXVII (Winter 1963), pp. 369–91Google Scholar; Hawkins, David F., “The Development of Modern Financial Reporting Practices among American Manufacturing Corporations,” XXXVII (Autumn 1963), pp. 135–68Google Scholar; Wood, Norman, “Industrial Relations Policies of American Management, 1900–1933,” XXXIV (Winter 1960), pp. 403–20Google Scholar.
47 Galambos, Louis, Competition & Cooperation: The Emergence of a National Trade Association (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1966)Google Scholar. See Hawley, Ellis W., The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of trade association activity during the period of the National Recovery Administration.
48 Rosenberg, Nathan, “The Economic Consequences of Technological Change, 1830–1880,” in Technology in Western Civilization: The Emergence of Modern Industrial Society, I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 515–32Google Scholar. Jewkes, J., “Are the Economies of Scale Unlimited?” in Economic Consequences of the Size of Nations, Robinson, E.A.G., editor (New York: St. Martin's, 1960)Google Scholar. Soltow, James H., Origins of Small Business: Metal Fabricators and Machinery Makers in New England, 1890–1957 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1965)Google Scholar.
49 Examples include Brody, David, “The Emergence of Mass-Production Unionism,” in Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America, Braeman, John et al. , editor (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, and “The Expansion of the American Labor Movement: Institutional Sources of Stimulus and Restraint,” in Institutions in Modern America: Innovation in Structure and Process, Ambrose, Stephen E., editor (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Gutman, Herbert G., “The Worker's Search for Power: Labor in the Gilded Age,” in The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal, Morgan, H. Wayne, editor (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1963), pp. 38–68Google Scholar; Galenson, Walter, The C I O Challenge to the A F L: A History of the American Labor Movement, 1935–1941 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.
50 Kerr, American Railroad Politics, p. 4.
51 See Letwin, William, Law and Economic Policy in America: The Evolution of the Sherman Antitrust Act (New York: Random House, 1965)Google Scholar. Thorelli, Hans B., The Federal Antitrust Policy: Organization of an American Tradition (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)Google Scholar. Arthur M. Johnson, “Continuity and Change in Government-Business Relations,” in Change and Continuity in Twentieth-Century America, pp. 191–220. Hurst, Legitimacy of the Business Corporation, especially pp. 58–111.
52 Wiebe, Robert H., “The House of Morgan and the Executive, 1905–1913,” American Historical Review, LXV (Oct. 1959), p. 60Google Scholar. See also Wiebe, , Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.
53 Weidenbaum, Murray, The Modern Public Sector: New Ways of Doing the Government's Business (New York: Basic Books, 1969), p. 4Google Scholar.
54 Cuff, Robert D., “Bernard Baruch: Symbol and Myth in Industrial Mobilization,” Business History Review, XLIII (Summer 1969), pp. 115–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Paul A. C. Koistinen, “The ‘Industrial-Military Complex’ in Historical Perspective: World War I,” ibid., XLI (Winter 1967), pp. 378–403. Urofsky, Melvin I., Big Steel and the Wilson Administration (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1969)Google Scholar. Clayton, James L., editor, The Economic Impact of the Cold War (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1970)Google Scholar points up some of the issues in military economic policy since 1945.
55 The following suggest the variety of approaches by historians. Woodward, Calvin, “Reality and Social Reform: The Transition from Laissez-Faire to the Welfare State,” Yale Law Journal, LXXII (Dec. 1962), pp. 286–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rimlinger, Gaston V., “Welfare Policy and Economic Development: A Comparative Historical Perspective,” The Journal of Economic History, XXVI (Dec. 1966), pp. 556–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lubove, Roy, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968)Google Scholar and The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880–1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. Friedman, Lawrence M., Government and Slum Housing: A Century of Frustration (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968)Google Scholar. Friedman, and Ladinsky, Jack, “Social Change and the Law of Industrial Accidents,” Columbia Law Review, LXVII (Jan. 1967), pp. 50–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Korman, Gerd, Industrialization, Immigrants, and Americanizers: The View from Milwaukee, 1866–1921 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967)Google Scholar, for a case study of welfare capitalism. Bell, Winifred, Aid to Dependent Children (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. Stambler, Moses, “The Effect of Compulsory Education and Child Labor Laws on High School Attendance in New York City, 1898–1917,” History of Education Quarterly, VIII (Summer 1968), pp. 189–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Hagen, Everett E., “The Internal Functioning of Capitalist Organizations,” The Journal of Economic History, XXX (March 1970), p. 232Google Scholar.
57 Cochran, “Economic History, Old and New,” p. 1572. Aitken, Hugh G. J., “On the Present State of Economic History,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXVI (Feb. 1960), p. 89Google Scholar.
58 See the discussion of Fritz Redlich, “Potentialities and Pitfalls in Economic History,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd ser., 6 (Fall 1968), especially pp. 105–07.
- 3
- Cited by