A new online exhibit at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (Harlem, NY) is called "In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience," and one section of it deals with the domestic slave trade, a topic, as I noted in an earlier post, that has been much neglected by business historians. The site offers images, maps, graphs, and text on various facets of the slave trade.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Monday, February 07, 2005
Text adventure game -- World's Columbian Exhibition, 1893
Here it is, only the fourth week of the semester, and I'm (still) totally backlogged (sigh). Maybe I'll take up historian Patricia Limerick's funny idea of setting up an "apologies" booth at one's professional society 's annual meeting (Western Historical Quarterly 32 (Spring 2001): 5-23). In any case, from now on, when I don't have time for anything more, I'll make only the briefest notes about items of interest (rather than letting the newspapers pile up on the coffee table). Example:
Review of a "text adventure game" set at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893: Brendan I. Koerner, "The Goods: A Game with a Low Body Count," New York Times, 1/30/05, sec. 3: 2.
Review of a "text adventure game" set at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893: Brendan I. Koerner, "The Goods: A Game with a Low Body Count," New York Times, 1/30/05, sec. 3: 2.
Counter-factual history
Cynthia Crossen's columns ("Déjà Vu") in the Wall Street Journal are always a pleasure to read. (Of course, when I finish it, I hope she'll find my book on the history of shareholder voting rights -- how and why one-vote-per-share voting rights came to dominate in the U.S. during the 19th century but not in Europe [= British, France, or Germany] -- interesting enough to warrant a column!)
On Wednesday last week, her column concerned "alternative history" or what is sometimes called counter-factual history. It's true that a few rather far-fetched counter-factual histories gave the genre a bad name, but in one sense counter-factual history is like comparative history: we (historians and everyone else) engage in them all the time on a casual basis, almost as a reflex. It's hard to imagine arriving at any new insight into past events without either measuring those events against other events we know about or speculating about what might have happened instead, had certain (apparently causal) events taken a different course.
On Wednesday last week, her column concerned "alternative history" or what is sometimes called counter-factual history. It's true that a few rather far-fetched counter-factual histories gave the genre a bad name, but in one sense counter-factual history is like comparative history: we (historians and everyone else) engage in them all the time on a casual basis, almost as a reflex. It's hard to imagine arriving at any new insight into past events without either measuring those events against other events we know about or speculating about what might have happened instead, had certain (apparently causal) events taken a different course.
Cynthia Crossen, "Déjà Vu: 'What Ifs' Don't Thrill Historians, but They Raise Intriguing Issues," Wall Street Journal, natl. ed., 2/2/05, B1.
Comparing unemployment rates
"The number of unemployed people in Germany rose to five million last month, the most in the post-World War II period, as the government transferred some longtime welfare recipients to the jobless rolls," reports Mark Landler in the New York Times. As a result the German unemployment rate stands at 11.4 percent. Last year's unemployment rate in U.S., he notes, was only 5.4 percent.
But how much better is not as obvious as it might seem. As Porter goes on to observe, the latest drop in the U.S. rate came "because hundreds of thousands of people stopped looking for jobs and dropped out of the labor force." (Porter, B1) Meanwhile, the German rate rose because some long-term unemployed workers not previously counted were added to its unemployment rolls. Both the numerator (numbers of "unemployed") and the denominator (size of the labor force) matter, and how they are defined varies by country. On the intricacies of such comparisons, see Constance Sorrentino, "International Unemployment Rates: How Comparable Are They?" Monthly Labor Review, June 2000, 3-20.
Wouldn't it be nice if the major media developed some rule of thumb for translating unemployment rates across countries, rather than merely citing the numbers as if they measured exactly the same thing?
Mark Landler, "German Joblessness Rises as Benefits Are Reduced," New York Times, 2/3/05, C5.What a striking contrast, further enhanced if one goes by the German rate of 12.1 percent reported in the International Herald Tribune and by the news that the U.S. "unemployment rate dropped to a three-year low of 5.2 percent in January" 2005.
Carter Dougherty, "Jobless Rate in Germany Hits Record," International Herald Tribune: The IHT Online, 2/3/05; Eduardo Porter, "Labor Market Expanded at Modest Rate in January," New York Times, 2/5/05, B: 1,4.The obvious inference is that the U.S. economy is doing much better than the German, since its unemployment rate is less than half of the German rate.
But how much better is not as obvious as it might seem. As Porter goes on to observe, the latest drop in the U.S. rate came "because hundreds of thousands of people stopped looking for jobs and dropped out of the labor force." (Porter, B1) Meanwhile, the German rate rose because some long-term unemployed workers not previously counted were added to its unemployment rolls. Both the numerator (numbers of "unemployed") and the denominator (size of the labor force) matter, and how they are defined varies by country. On the intricacies of such comparisons, see Constance Sorrentino, "International Unemployment Rates: How Comparable Are They?" Monthly Labor Review, June 2000, 3-20.
Wouldn't it be nice if the major media developed some rule of thumb for translating unemployment rates across countries, rather than merely citing the numbers as if they measured exactly the same thing?
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Ultra-ultralight laptop
Last month I thought my principal choices for an ultra-ultralight laptop (as close to 2 lbs. as possible) were the IBM Thinkpad X40 and the Panasonic Toughbook W2. But the Thinkpad X40 doesn't have a touchpad, and the W2 has limited RAM and a built-in optical drive, which I don't particularly care about and which therefore just adds unwanted weight.
The resolution? I got a Toshiba R100 instead. Don't know how I initially overlooked it, except perhaps that it just wasn't being reviewed as much. In any case, what a gem -- 12.x" screen, very spacious keyboard, and it weighs 2.2 lbs. (sic) with one battery or, with a second battery that gives a total of 6.5 hours of uptime, 3.03 lbs. Extraordinary.
The resolution? I got a Toshiba R100 instead. Don't know how I initially overlooked it, except perhaps that it just wasn't being reviewed as much. In any case, what a gem -- 12.x" screen, very spacious keyboard, and it weighs 2.2 lbs. (sic) with one battery or, with a second battery that gives a total of 6.5 hours of uptime, 3.03 lbs. Extraordinary.
Organized labor in the U.S. - back to the early 1900s
The percentage of American workers who are members of unions dropped to 12.5% in 2004, the New York Times reported the other day. That includes public-sector workers. The rate for private-sector workers is a mere 7.9%, "the lowest level since the early 1900s."
American unionization levels peaked at nearly 35% in 1945. This compared favorably with the West German peak of 36% in 1951, it should be noted, although the U.S. and Germany have obviously diverged on this dimension since the 1950s.
American unionization levels peaked at nearly 35% in 1945. This compared favorably with the West German peak of 36% in 1951, it should be noted, although the U.S. and Germany have obviously diverged on this dimension since the 1950s.
Steven Greenhouse, "Membership in Unions Drops Again," New York Times, 1/28/05. For the American peak: Paul Boyer, ed., The Oxford Companion to United States History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 429; for the West German peak: Wendy Carlin, "West German Growth and Institutions, 1945-90," in Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945, ed. Nicholas Crafts and Gianni Toniolo (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 467.
Friday, January 28, 2005
Concentration begets concentration
The proposed Proctor & Gamble-Gillete merger illustrates the historical tendency of concentration in one line of business to foster defensive concentration as suppliers or customers try to restore a balance of power. As the New York Times' reporters put it this morning, "The friendly transaction reflects just how much the balance of power has shifted from consumer products makers to the giant discount retailers, mainly Wal-Mart, in recent years. The deal is a bid by two venerable consumer-products giants to strengthen their bargaining position with the likes of Wal-Mart, which can now squeeze even its largest suppliers."
Andrew Ross Sorkin and Steve Lohr, "Proctor Is Said to Reach a Deal to Buy Gillette," New York Times [natl. ed.], 1/28/05, A1, C14 (quotation from A1).
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Mercantilism and IBM-Lenovo
In talking in lecture the other day about the set of 18th-century policies that constituted what came to be called "mercantilism," I pointed out that, except for the matter of establishing formal colonies, the policies actually look very familiar to us today--for example, the U.S. has sought for most of the twentieth century to keep specific technologies out of foreign hands, generally on national-security grounds. In this sense, it's more accurate to think of mercantilism not as a historical phenomenon confined to the 18th century, but as a set of policies that have great attractions in times of intense international rivalry.
So here's the IBM-Lenovo deal in the news again: turns out that three House Republicans are asking the Bush administration to investigate whether the deal "poses a risk to national security" (reporter Steve Lohr's words).
So here's the IBM-Lenovo deal in the news again: turns out that three House Republicans are asking the Bush administration to investigate whether the deal "poses a risk to national security" (reporter Steve Lohr's words).
Steve Lohr, "I.B.M. Deal in China Faces Scrutiny Over Security Issue," New York Times [natl. ed.], 1/27/05, C5.
revision 2/8/05: see also Steve Lohr, "Is I.B.M.'s Lenovo Proposal a Threat to National Security?" New York Times [natl. ed.], 1/31/05, C6.
Synergy redux
The concept of "synergy" outlived the conglomerate movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Recent example of contemporary usage comes from stock analyst Timothy Horan, discussing the Cingular -AT&T Wireless merger: "Investors are going to give them the benefit of the doubt because the synergies are ahead of them."
Matt Richtel, "Drop in Quarterly Earnings for Cingular," New York Times [nytimes.com], 1/25/05.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Airlines = railroads?
When is an airline really just a railroad? When its industry is de-regulated. "Airline executives say they never anticipated that deregulation would precipitate a crisis as deep or as long as the present one," Micheline Maynard reported in the New York Times on Sunday. But anyone familiar with the "cut-throat" competition that prevailed in the American railroad industry in the late 19th century wouldn't be surprised by it. What is interesting is that it took so long back then for expert observers outside of the industry to understand the peculiar competitive dynamics induced by high fixed costs--and that they are hardly any better understood today.
Micheline Maynard, "Coffee, Tea or Regulation? As Grumbling Grows About Airlines, Some Eyes Turn to Washington," New York Times, 1/23/05, sec. 3, pp. 1, 4, 12 (quotation from p. 4).
Speaking of govt-bus partnership
Speaking of the U.S.'s long tradition of government-business partnership in matters technological, . . . Stevel Lohr reports in the New York Times this morning that six technology companies are "forming a consortium [called Globus Consortium] to accelerate the adoption of utility-like grid computing in the corporate world." As with so much of twentieth-century technology, the federal government served as incubator and midwife of Globus Consortium's software for grid computing. "The government provided most of the early finances to develop the software," he writes, "which is freely shared, open-source code."
Steve Lohr, "New Group Will Promote Grid Computing for Business," New York Times, 1/24/05, C7.Who provided that early financing? Based on past history, the likeliest candidate would be the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, and sure enough, as it reported in 2002 (go to http://www.darpa.gov and search for "grid computing"), it was involved, along with the Department of Energy and IBM.
Shareholder democracy?
From the Wall Street Journal, 1/18/05, B2, yet another indication that the more democratic voting rights that predominated in the early nineteenth century--yes, even in the United States--still prevail in some companies in Europe, in this case, an Austrian company. The WSJ reports that "German engineering company Siemens AG failed to persuade the required number of VA Technologie AG shareholders to change a rule that limits investors' voting rights to 25% regardless of the size of their stake." Dropping the proportional cap on total votes, which had been a condition of Siemens' takeover offer, required a 75% majority (also typical of earlier practice) and Siemen's motion received only 73.2% of the votes cast.
Lessons of history - #2, the dynamics of a federal system
Re. Laura Mansnerus, "New Jersey Faces Tough Competition for Stem Cell Scientists," NYT, 1/17/05, A16: From a historical perspective, one of the fascinating developments since 1980 (the end of the New Deal era, it seems) has been the revivial of state governments as potent policymakers. This story is about the competition among some American states--most recently, New Jersey--to develop stem-cell research capabilities, now that the Bush administration has removed the federal government from this field of activity. Interstate competition will prove to be a boon for stem-cell research, at the same time that it produces, in the words of Daniel Perry, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, "duplication and splintering in research," hence, "a crazy-qult pattern across the U.S." The dynamic here is the same as that in the history of incorporation policy in the U.S., one of the few policy areas not to have been federalized between the 1880s and the 1970s. In incorporation policy, interstate competition brought about the (in)famous "race to the bottom" (that is, towards ever laxer regulation) and it's hard to see how a similar result can be avoided in this case.
Lessons of history - #1, govt-bus partnership
"Is less government really better for business? Not if history provides a reliable guide." So reads the subtitle of Jeff Madrick's column, "Economic Scene," in Thursday's New York Times (NYT, 1/20/05, C2).
Madrick is absolutely right. The only problem is that he doesn't sort out differences over time in the roles of the federal and state government. As a result, he neglects to mention that "an active partnership between government and business" actually generated enormous controversy before the Civil War when the government in question was the federal government. This was largely because acceding to an activist federal role in promoting internal (transportation) improvements, banking, or domestic manufacturing threatened to open the door to federal abolition of slavery. "An active partnership between government and business" did indeed characterize the U.S. in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the locus of government action shifted from the state to the national level in the nineteenth century as the biggest businesses crossed state lines with increasing frequency. Regulation of steam boilers on interstate waters (1850s - if I remember right) and creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate interstate railroad rates (1886) marked the first steps, and the decisive movement came during the New Deal.
Madrick is absolutely right. The only problem is that he doesn't sort out differences over time in the roles of the federal and state government. As a result, he neglects to mention that "an active partnership between government and business" actually generated enormous controversy before the Civil War when the government in question was the federal government. This was largely because acceding to an activist federal role in promoting internal (transportation) improvements, banking, or domestic manufacturing threatened to open the door to federal abolition of slavery. "An active partnership between government and business" did indeed characterize the U.S. in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the locus of government action shifted from the state to the national level in the nineteenth century as the biggest businesses crossed state lines with increasing frequency. Regulation of steam boilers on interstate waters (1850s - if I remember right) and creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate interstate railroad rates (1886) marked the first steps, and the decisive movement came during the New Deal.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Capita, capital, capitalism
What do capita (as in per capita) and capital (as in capital punishment) have to do with capitalism, wonders a friend in northern MN. Up there it's been really cold--serious double-digits below zero--which gives people lots of time to think up questions like this. His answer: capita is the plural of caput, which mean "head," and capital means wealth. So if you own many coins with the ceasar's head on them, you have much capital. Well, maybe, but it's clearly time to refresh my memory of the history of the words capital and capitalism.
Wordorigins.com: "The . . . term, capital, has various senses, meaning punishable by death, principal, a seat of government, and wealth used in an investment. This word derives from the Latin caput, meaning head. It made its way into English from Old French via the Normans."
OED Online: Among its definitions of capital as a noun is the following: "3. A capital stock or fund. a. Commerce. The stock of a company, corporation, or individual with which they enter into business and on which profits or dividends are calculated; in a joint-stock company, it consists of the total sum of the contributions of the shareholders. Also, the general body of capitalists or employers of labour, esp. with regard to its political interests and claims (cf.
It defines capitalism as: "The condition of possessing capital; the position of a capitalist; a system which favours the existence of capitalists." First use: "1854 THACKERAY Newcomes II. 75 The sense of capitalism sobered and dignified Paul de Florac."
Finally, a small extract from the entry on capitalism in Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed (Oxford, 1983), 50-51 (original emphasis):
More coming soon -- life has been exceptionally hectic in the last week or two with the beginning of the semester, a kitty with diarrhea, and local rezoning issues coming to a head.
Wordorigins.com: "The . . . term, capital, has various senses, meaning punishable by death, principal, a seat of government, and wealth used in an investment. This word derives from the Latin caput, meaning head. It made its way into English from Old French via the Normans."
OED Online: Among its definitions of capital as a noun is the following: "3. A capital stock or fund. a. Commerce. The stock of a company, corporation, or individual with which they enter into business and on which profits or dividends are calculated; in a joint-stock company, it consists of the total sum of the contributions of the shareholders. Also, the general body of capitalists or employers of labour, esp. with regard to its political interests and claims (cf.
It defines capitalism as: "The condition of possessing capital; the position of a capitalist; a system which favours the existence of capitalists." First use: "1854 THACKERAY Newcomes II. 75 The sense of capitalism sobered and dignified Paul de Florac."
Finally, a small extract from the entry on capitalism in Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, rev. ed (Oxford, 1983), 50-51 (original emphasis):
Capitalism as a word describing a particular economic system began to appear in English from eC19 [early 19th century], and almost simultaneously in French and German. Capitalist as a noun is a bit older . . . [he then cites Thomas Hodgskin's use of it in Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825).] This is clearly the description of an economic system.
The economic sense of capital had been present in English from C17 and in a fully developed form from C18. Chambers Cyclopaedia (1727-51) has 'power given by Parliament to the South-Sea company to increase their cpaital' and definition of 'circulating capital' is in Adam Smith (1776). The word had acquired this specialized meaning from its general sense of 'head' or 'chief': fw [immediate forerunner word] capital, F[rench], capitalis, L[atin], rw [root or ultimately traceable word], caput, L -- head.
More coming soon -- life has been exceptionally hectic in the last week or two with the beginning of the semester, a kitty with diarrhea, and local rezoning issues coming to a head.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Diminishing varieties of capitalism?
Yesterday's Handelsblatt reported that Allianz, Münchener Rück, and Commerzbank just sold their shares of MAN (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg). Their combined holdings amounted to 25% of MAN's capital (valued at more than a billion euros), and they had held the shares for more than thirty years. "The sale [translating roughly] constitututes one more step down the road to dismantling the close relationship between financial and industrial firms in Germany," the article observes. MAN now has only one major shareholder (the insurance firm Axa), which has 5% of its shares; the other 95% are widely dispersed (= "Streubesitz"), which is more in line with U.S. conditions.
"Großaktionäre steigen aus -- MAN jetzt allein unterwegs," Handelsblatt, 13 January 2005, 1.By the way, newspaper readers, if you haven't checked out Pressdisplay.com, do so! It offers (for a modest price) access to some 200 newspapers from around the world, and the resolution is fabulous.
Worldly history
Yesterday's New York Times carried an obituary for Robert Heilbroner, author of The Worldly Philsophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. Currently in its seventh edition, the book has been in print continuously since 1953. What an amazing achievement (not to mention that he wrote it as a twerp, academically speaking).
Teaching "worldly history"--that is, the history of capitalism or any of the subfields that compose it: business, economic, political economic, technological, etc. history--is always a challenge because most students who are attracted to history gravitate to social, political, or cultural history and are put off by anything smacking of the "economic." This semester I will be teaching a comparative history seminar on the U.S. and German political economies since the 1870s. I'm using Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers as one of the course's foundation stones in hopes that it will get the students past their fears of the economic and give them a basic knowledge of the historical range of perspectives on economic change before we delve into the details of the U.S. and German political economies.
The seminar should be a lot of fun since the U.S. and Germany, industrial upstarts that they were, looked more similar than different in the 1870s but ended up in our own time as exemplars of opposing models of capitalism (liberal vs. coordinated market economies--see, for example, Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism).
Teaching "worldly history"--that is, the history of capitalism or any of the subfields that compose it: business, economic, political economic, technological, etc. history--is always a challenge because most students who are attracted to history gravitate to social, political, or cultural history and are put off by anything smacking of the "economic." This semester I will be teaching a comparative history seminar on the U.S. and German political economies since the 1870s. I'm using Heilbroner's Worldly Philosophers as one of the course's foundation stones in hopes that it will get the students past their fears of the economic and give them a basic knowledge of the historical range of perspectives on economic change before we delve into the details of the U.S. and German political economies.
The seminar should be a lot of fun since the U.S. and Germany, industrial upstarts that they were, looked more similar than different in the 1870s but ended up in our own time as exemplars of opposing models of capitalism (liberal vs. coordinated market economies--see, for example, Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism).
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Corporate governance has arrived?
As a New York Times editorial observes today: "corporate governance, a relatively obscure issue a few years ago, has now grown big enough to generate its own scandals."
Why so little attention by historians? One reason is that business historians tend to conflate the history of big business, on which a great deal of research has been done, with the history of corporations. As a result, most of my colleagues don't realize how little we actually know about the history of corporations per se.
"New Twist on Corporate Goverance," NYT, 1/11/05, A26, emphasis added--the rest of piece is about the "forced resignation" of the director of Yale's International Institute for Corporate Governance.The creation of Yale's institute in 1999 was one sign that corporate governance had become a recognized "issue" in the academy, its importance affirmed by the corporate scandals of recent years. But business historians have been much slower on the uptake. Aside from a few works by legal historians and the 1932 classic, Private Property and the Modern Corporation by Berle and Means, there are hardly any studies of the history of corporate governance, especially in the years before the 1930s.
Why so little attention by historians? One reason is that business historians tend to conflate the history of big business, on which a great deal of research has been done, with the history of corporations. As a result, most of my colleagues don't realize how little we actually know about the history of corporations per se.
Monday, January 10, 2005
More on Yukos and jurisdiction shifting
Is it me or the season? Doesn't seem like there's much of interest these days in the business pages -- or maybe it's just that I'm too swamped with the approaching semester and a variety of other obligations to keep up.
In any case, here's the only item of note recently: More on Yukos' efforts to shift its battle with the Russian government to U.S. terrain in Simon Romero and Erin E. Arvedlund, "U.S. Court to Hear Arguments for Dismissal of Yukos Case," NYT, 1/7/05, C5.
In any case, here's the only item of note recently: More on Yukos' efforts to shift its battle with the Russian government to U.S. terrain in Simon Romero and Erin E. Arvedlund, "U.S. Court to Hear Arguments for Dismissal of Yukos Case," NYT, 1/7/05, C5.
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