This paper grew out of a joint project which the authors have undertaken with the support of a Sloan Foundation grant to the Center for the Study of Recent American History, The Johns Hopkins University. Louis Galambos has also received support from Rice University's Center for the Study of Social Change and Economic Development; this part of the work was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency under ARPA Order No. 738 and monitored by the Office of Naval Research, Group Psychology Branch, under Contract Number N00014–67–A–0145–0001, NR 177–909. Harry Magdoff and David Landes commented upon this paper and the authors have used several of.their suggestions, as well as those of Robert Cuff, in preparing this final draft.

¹ Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1947), especially pp. 324–41.Google Scholar

² See, for example: Blau, Peter M., Bureaucracy in Modern Society (New York: Random House, 1956)Google Scholar. Boulding, Kenneth E., The Organizational Revolution (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953)Google Scholar. Merton, R. K., et al., eds., Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe:. The Free Press, 1952).Google Scholar

³ This interpretation is discussed in Gouldner, Alvin W., “Metaphysical Pathos and the Theory of Bureaucracy,” American Political Science Review, XLIX (June 1955), 496–507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ The business histories are surveyed in Galambos, Louis, “American Business History” (Washington: Service Center for Teachers of History, 1967)Google Scholar. Also, see, Taft, Philip, The A. F. of L. in the Time of Gompers (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957).Google Scholar

⁵ Many of the organizations which we discuss do not meet all of Weber's criteria for a bureaucratic organization. But as Weber so strongly emphasized, his was an intellectual construct—an ideal type. All bureaucracies had some of the characteristics that he outlined, but none had all. In the U.S. the large corporations and government agencies come closest to the Weberian ideal type; die unions, trade organizations, and professional associations fall short of this type, in varying degree. The unions developing during these years certainly did not possess in full measure all of the characteristics of Weber's ideal bureaucracy: in particular, the unions did not create formidable administrative staffs. Nevertheless, the process of systematization which went, on within the evolving nationals meets most of Weber's standards for this type of organization. Furthermore, the unions were developing along lines which gradually brought them closer to the ideal type. On these grounds, then, we have included the national unions as primary organizations with bureaucratic attributes. Ulman, Lloyd, The Rise of the National Trade Union (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), especially ch. 4–11.Google Scholar

⁶ Edwards, Edgar O. and Bell, Philip N., The Theory and Measurement of Business Income (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), p. 35Google Scholar, discusses the “expectational horizon.” Of course men's actions are always constrained by ideas they inherit; our concern is to define, more specifically, the special way ideas affected organizational development in the American economy at this time.

⁷ The professional association was thus a primary unit insofar as it directly organized its individual members and provided them (and others) with services. By contrast, the normal trade association was a secondary organization because it brought together representatives of businesses in order to coordinate the actions of their firms. Nominally, the members of the trade associations often joined the organizations as individuals, but in reality, they, were representing their firms. In the early twentieth century, many of these associations acknowledged this fact by changing the form of their membership, from individual to corporate representation.

⁸ Philip Taft, The A. F. of L. in the Time of Gompers, pp. 163–83, 185–210.

⁹ The literature on this subject is conveniently reviewed in Lively, Robert A., “The American System: A Review Article,” Business History Review, XXIX (March 1955), 81–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ This theme is developed in Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Stephen Salsbury's forthcoming biography of Pierre S. duPont.

¹¹ This problem has been tentatively explored in Galambos, Louis, “The Agrarian Image of the Large Corporation, 1879–1920,” Journal of Economic History, XXVIII (Sept. 1968), 341–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in “The A. F. of L.'s Concept of Big Business” (forthcoming).

¹² Lubove, Roy, The Professional Altruist (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹³ Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967), provides the best general study of this shift in values.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942), pp. 131–4, 139–42.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., Strategy and Structure (Cambridge: The M. I. T. Press, 1962)Google Scholar. Robert Cuff has suggested that one of the important developments of the thirties was the tendency of some government agencies to perform both primary and secondary functions (TVA, for instance). This, in turn, may well have sharpened the hostile reactions of those who could approve of the government as a coordinating agent, but not as a primary organization.

¹⁶ Link, Arthur S., American Epoch (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), p. 208.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Cuff, Robert D., “Bernard Baruch: Symbol and Myth in Industrial Mobilization,” Business History Review, XLIII (Summer 1969), 115–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cuff further develops this interpretation in a paper delivered at the 1969 meeting of the Canadian Historical Association; the paper is entitled “Organizing for War: Canada and the United States During World War I.”

¹⁸ Smith, R. Elberton, The Army and Economic Mobilization (Washington, D. C: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1959), ch. 25.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Ibid., pp. 567–70.

²⁰ Sawyer, John E., “The Entrepreneur and the Social Order: France and the United States,” in Miller, William, ed., Men in Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 7–23Google Scholar. Landes, David S., “French Business and the Businessman: A Social and Cultural Analysis,” in Earle, E. M., ed., Modern France (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961), pp. 334–53Google Scholar. Landes, David S., The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge: The University Press, 1969), pp. 131–3Google Scholar, 209–10.

²¹ Cochran, Thomas C., “Cultural Factors in Economic Growth,” Journal of Economic History, XX (Dec. 1960), 513–30.Google Scholar