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American Institutional Studies: Present Knowledge and Past Trends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

James H. Soltow
Affiliation:
Michigan State University

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
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1971

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References

1 Cole, Arthur H., “A report on Research in Economic History,” The Journal of Economic History, IV (May 1944), pp. 4972CrossRefGoogle 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. 323Google Scholar.

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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.

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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.

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25 Goodrich, Carter, “Internal Improvements Reconsidered,” The Journal of Economic History, XXX (June 1970), p. 311Google Scholar.

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27 Goodrich, “Internal Improvements Reconsidered,” p. 296.

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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.

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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. 1747Google 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.

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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. 201217CrossRefGoogle 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. 382443CrossRefGoogle 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. 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williamson, Harold F. et al. , The American Petroleum Industry, 2 vols. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 19591963)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.

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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. 3868Google 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.

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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. 286328CrossRefGoogle 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. 5082CrossRefGoogle 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. 189214CrossRefGoogle 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.