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The Significance of Business History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

R. Richard Wohl
R. Richard Wohl
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, at the University of Chicago
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Abstract

The study of business history should not be restricted to investigating the development of internal administration in specific firms. The history of business is indivisibly linked to the history of mankind, and business historians should aim at understanding the interplay between the actions of individual companies and changes in the total society. This topic can be illuminated by studying a group of firms in the same industry, by studying business in a certain region, or by relating business policies and methods to such characteristics of the population as the American willingness to work hard in pursuit of a higher standard of consumption.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 1954 , pp. 128 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1954

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References

1 I refer, of course, only to the formal, systematic study of business history in universities. The study was carried on much earlier, in an informal fashion, by journalists.

2 Gras, N. S. B., “The Rise and Development of Economic History,” Economic History Review, I (1927), 29Google Scholar; Gras, N. S. B., “Economic History in the United States,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1931), V, 327.Google Scholar

3 These six articles are: “Stages in Economic History,” and “the Business Man and the Economic System,” both by N. S. B. Gras; Allan Nevins, “Recent Progress in American Social History”; Frank Knight, “Historical and Theoretical Issues in Modern Capitalism”; R. M. Hower, “Boston Conference on Business History”; and K. W. Porter, “Trends in American Business Biography.”

4 For example, Gras, N. S. B., “Business History,” Economic History Review, IV (1934), 385CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, Gras, N. S. B., Business and Capitalism (New York, 1939), vii–viii, 28.Google Scholar

5 Gras, N. S. B., “Past, Present and Future of the Business Historical Society,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, XXIV (1950), 10.Google Scholar

6 Redlich, Fritz, The Molding of American Banking (New York, 1951), 2 vols., cp. esp. Vol. II.Google Scholar

7 Professor Ralph Hidy tells me that two volumes, of the five which are projected, are now in manuscript, and being reviewed for early publication.

8 Cochran, Thomas C., Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action (Cambridge, 1953).Google Scholar

9 Overton, Richard C., Burlington West, A Colonization History of the Burlington Road (Cambridge, 1941)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gates, Paul W., The Illinois Central and its Colonization Work (Cambridge, 1934).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Kirkland's, Edward C.Men, Cities, and Transportation, A Study in New England History, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1948) is a magnificent tour de force in this genre.Google Scholar

11 Wright, Chester W., The Economic History of the United States (New York, 1941), ix-xi.Google Scholar

12 I am indebted for many insights into Veblen's thinking to David Riesman's brilliant and searching analysis of that thinker, Thorstein Veblen, A Critical Interpretation (New York, 1953).

13 Lilienthal, David E., Big Business, A New Era (New York, 1952), 182, 183.Google Scholar Cp. the discussions of these points in Allen, Frederick Lewis, The Big Change, America Transforms Herself, 1900–1950 (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, esp., “The Dynamic Logic of Mass Production,” 109–20; and Adams, James Truslow, Our Business Civilization, Some Aspects of American Culture (New York, 1929)Google Scholar, esp., “A Business Man's Civilization,” 9–34.

14 Seligman, E. R. A., The Economies of Installment Buying (New York, 1927), I, 28.Google Scholar

15 French, Walter B., “Consumer Installment Credit in Commercial Banks,” in Prochnow, H. V., American Financial Institutions (New York, 1951), 679.Google Scholar

16 An excellent beginning at writing this fascinating story has been made by Phelps, Clyde William, The Role of Sales Finance Companies in the American Economy (Baltimore, 1952).Google Scholar This interesting monograph marshalls a great mass of evidence which supports the points made above.

17 Holt, W. Stull, “Historical Scholarship,” in Curti, Merle, ed., American Scholarship in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1953), 105–6.Google Scholar