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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
I have seen America spread out from th' Atlantic to th' Pacific, with a branch office iv th' Standard Ile Comp'ny in ivry hamlet. I've seen the shackles dropped fr'm th' slave, so's he cud be lynched in Ohio … An' th' inventions … th' cotton-gin an' th' gin sour an th' bicycle an' th' flyin'-machine an' th' nickel-in-th'-slot machine an' th' Croker machine an' th' sody-fountain an' – crownin' wurruk iv our civilization – th' cash raygister.
– Mr. Dooley (Finley Peter Dunne) 1897The metaphor of the economic hothouse is misleading in at least one important respect. The image suggests a tidy, neatly ordered landscape when in fact the opposite proved to be the case. Rapid growth turned both the business world and society itself into tangled jungles. Bitter competition helped weed out the business environment and organize it around the triumphant giant enterprises that came to dominate it. Their power and focus contrasted sharply with the sprawling, unruly social institutions surrounding them. Gradually their influence and power compelled the rest of society to follow their example. In this way the organizational revolution did more than reshape the structure of American business. By influencing nearly every aspect of national life, it created the corporate society as well. As the organizational revolution spread beyond the economy to the social system, it transformed a society of individuals into one of organizations.
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