American entry into World War I presented complex problems in the adjustment of the private economy to the needs of a nation in crisis. Professors Cuff and Urofsky analyze the process by which the steel industry and the Wilson Administration reached a pragmatic accommodation on the regulation of wartime prices.

The effort to establish a cotton factory in South Carolina in 1808 was aborted by inexperience, lack of capital, and unfavorable economic circumstance, but the episode provides a few more bits of evidence to add to the fragmentary history of early textile manufacturing in America.

From the mid-nineteenth century onward, governments across Latin America founded departments of fomento, or development, to promote economic growth and modernization. This article looks at the evolution of this department in Mexico and the ways in which it integrated infrastructure, migration, land policy, science, and education into a rural economic and social project. For Department of Fomento leaders, agriculture became the connective tissue linking peace to prosperity. Though many failed, initiatives aimed at increasing the diversity of Mexico's rural production illustrate a concerted effort to avoid top-heavy monoculture and use scientific planning to stabilize and unify the nation.

From its beginnings in the private library of Pierre S. du Pont, the Hagley Museum and Library has grown into a leading resource for business historians, particularly for those interested in the development of the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. In this thorough description of the Hagley's collections, Dr. Nash demonstrates the breadth and depth of its holdings, from the papers of the eighteenth-century Physiocrats to those of New Deal and post-World War II companies and business leaders.

The First World War presented the newly formed Federal Reserve System with issues that were crucial in defining its future institutional character and operational strategies and priorities. From 1914 to 1917 disputes over the relationship between the U.S. and belligerent European nations divided competing groups of New York bankers who had helped to create the Federal Reserve System and who otherwise shared many of the same objectives for its future purpose and functions. These divisions grew particularly acrimonious over policies concerning acceptances, a new financial instrument that could substantially affect the Allied powers' ability to obtain war funding in the United States. Despite these wartime splits, the rival financial groups, led by Benjamin Strong and Paul M. Warburg, generally concurred in assigning a higher priority to the international implications of Federal Reserve policies than to domestic consequences. Likewise, after the war both united in using the Federal Reserve System to facilitate Europe's economic recovery.

Durant has been described as “the most picturesque, spectacular, and aggressive figure in the chronicles of American automobiledom” but he was much more than this. His career is a chssic study in the dual abilities, promotional and administrative, that created and nourished big business in America. Ultimate personal disaster grew out of Durant's failure to strike a balance between the two, yet his genius left imperishable marks, and his luster as the symbol of an era is untarnished.

In the decade prior to the Civil War, southern manufacturing was surprisingly similar to that of the non-South. In the latter portion of the nineteenth century, however, a wide divergence developed between that region and the rest of the nation.

The foundries and forges of Decazeville were among the most important in France during the July Monarchy. Extensive company correspondence reveals that the nature of relations between the board of directors and the local managers, and between the firm and its clients, were important factors in shaping the tenor of labor relations at Decazeville. The interference of the board and clients limited the manager's authority over his subordinates. Once freed from this, the manager reformed the administration of labor at Decazeville. He tested the allegiance of his foremen to the company and emphasized to them the importance, when paying by piece-rate, of going beyond inspection of the completed products to supervision of the work as it was being done.

Business history as a separate field of academic study and research came into being twenty years ago this autumn. At its beginning it was little more than a name, but in those twenty years notable progress has been made in the development of research and teaching in the history of business. Basic research in business records has created a considerable fund of information. Wide preliminary explorations of the field have been made and a systematic concept of business genesis and evolution has been formulated. Courses of instruction in business history, whether nominal or real, have been established in several American universities. And increasingly over the years business men have been taking an interest in the subject.

Professor Abrahams edits a record of a 1913 conversation between reformer Louis Brandeis and Thomas W. Lamont of J. P. Morgan & Co. In the wake of the Pujo investigation of the “money trust,” the two discussed the nature and extent of economic power wielded by investment bankers as well as some specific issues such as interlocking directorates, competitive bidding for security issues, and greater publicity about securities transactions. This document reflects the long-run, fundamental conflict between social critics fearful of the concentration of economic power in America and businessmen who disclaim power because they believe their behavior is controlled by objective business considerations which operate for the good of society as a whole.

Two recent acquisitions of the Kress Library, a part of Baker Library of the Harvard Business School, will be of particular interest to business historians. The Kress Library, rich in the history of economic institutions and business life, as well as in material on the progress of economic thought, has a strong and varied collection on bookkeeping, to which it has recently added two rare volumes.

The late nineteenth century was a critical epoch in the history of French industry. During this period, many French industrialists adopted, for the first time, entrepreneurial attitudes towards business. At the same time, however, traditional skilled trades continued to play an important role in the national economy. In this article, Professor Weissbach explores the attitudes and practices of nineteenth-century entrepreneurs in the French luxury trade. By focusing specifically on the Patronage industriel des enfants de l'ébénisterie—an organization established to assist, educate, and moralize children apprentices in the French furniture industry—Weissbach reveals that traditional and entrepreneurial attitudes and practices coexisted throughout the nineteenth century.

This article assesses the “business of development” in the post-colonial age, when bilateral and multilateral aid regimes offered businesses new opportunities. It uses the case study of Britain and the European Economic Community (EEC), from Britain's accession to the EEC in 1973 to the early 1980s, to demonstrate that the British government viewed multilateral aid instruments, in particular the European Development Fund (EDF), as offering commercial opportunities for British firms. Based on records of the EEC, business associations, and the French and British states, the article analyzes business-state relationships between national governments, corporations, and supranational institutions. As the UK government tried to redirect EEC aid toward places where its firms had the most to gain, it met the opposition of other member states and European institutions as well as the disinterest of its own businesses.

Rarely does a relatively unknown professor of economics publish a book that sells more than 200,000 copies in a few months. When critics accuse the same economist of being normative, political, of manipulating data, of misunderstanding basic economic theory, and of wanting to impoverish everyone, surely it must be because he is on to something. Other commentators, perhaps a bit prematurely, are claiming that his book is the economics book that will define twenty-first-century debate.

General Motors (GM) became the world's dominant automaker in the 1920s and 1930s thanks in part to a dynamic, centralized public relations operation. The intended audience of this marketing included GM's own overseas employees. As the company opened new plants in foreign countries, it used media such as General Motors World, an employee newspaper, to communicate that it understood the needs of different foreign consumers and to advocate against protectionist economic policies that hindered its ability to sell cars. The messages of General Motors World shaped global perceptions of GM's corporate structure and brand, and were a core element of the automaker's overseas activity.

In the late 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled the bubble policy as a central part of Jimmy Carter's plan to reform environmental regulations that many believed had grown too proscriptive and too costly for American industry. Since the EPA's formation, regulators had dictated method and means for reducing air pollution. The bubble returned the prerogative to business. But despite bipartisan support, the bubble never took off. Drawing on EPA records and interviews, this article shows how skeptical regulators intentionally made the bubble unwieldy, driving away businesses wary of uncertainty. Though Ronald Reagan's election seemed to lift the bubble's fortunes, his undiscerning assault on the administrative state ironically deflated the EPA's development of a viable alternative to the proscriptive model.

Like many other American corporations, Intel was outcompeted in manufacturing by Japanese firms in the late 1970s and the first half of the 1980s. By 1985, it became clear that the corporation's weakness in production endangered its long-term survival. Responding to the Japanese challenge, Intel's upper management instigated a fundamental reform of manufacturing. At their behest, production engineers and managers adopted Japanese manufacturing technologies and operating procedures. They put microchip fabrication on a scientific footing. They developed new ways of transferring processes from development to production and standardized the firm's factories. This major transformation enabled Intel to reach manufacturing parity with Japanese chipmakers by the early 1990s.