American business history

Most important, colonial legislatures set up a legal system that was conducive to business enterprise by resolving disputes, enforcing contracts, and protecting property rights.

[6] Jefferson supporters never stop complaining of the dangers provided by the special interests behind a private national Bank, and block the renewal of its charter in 1811.

President James Madison, despite his Jeffersonian heritage of anti-banking rhetoric, realized the need for a replacement, and the Second Bank of the United States was opened in 1816.

It flourished, promoting a strong financial system across the country, until it was challenged and destroyed by President Andrew Jackson, Jefferson's successor, in the Bank War of 1832.

Brown next expanded into packet ships, extended his lines to Philadelphia, and began financing Baltimore importers, specializing in merchant banking from the late 1820s to his death in 1834.

By 1830 his company rivaled the Bank of the United States in the American foreign exchange markets, and the transition from the "traditional" to the "modern" merchant was nearly complete.

In 1827, twenty-five merchants and bankers studied the best means of restoring "that portion of the Western trade which has recently been diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation."

The famous Erie canal, 300 miles long in upstate New York, cost $7 million of state money, which was about what private investors spent on one short railroad in Western Massachusetts.

[26] After a serious accident, the Western Railroad of Massachusetts put in place a system of responsibility for district managers and dispatchers keep track of all train movement.

Decision-making powers had to be distributed to ensure safety and to juggle the complexity of numerous trains running in both directions on a single track, keeping to schedules that could easily be disrupted by weather mechanical breakdowns, washouts or hitting a wandering cow.

[27] As the lines grew longer with more and more business originating at dozens of different stations, the Baltimore and Ohio set up more complex system that separated finances from daily operations.

The Erie Railroad, faced with growing competition, had to make lower bids for freight movement, and had to know on a daily basis how much each train was costing them.

Educated young men started in clerical or statistical work and moved up to station agents or bureaucrats at the divisional or central headquarters.

The mechanical size, scope and efficiency of the railroads made a profound impression; people who dressed in their Sunday best to go down to the terminal to watch the train come in.

Historians Gary Cross and Rick Szostak argue: The engineers became model citizens, bringing their can-do spirit and their systematic work effort to all phases of the economy as well as local and national government.

[40] The idea of establishing a strong rate fixing federal body was achieved during the Progressive Era, primarily by a coalition of shipping interests.

Farmers and ranchers depended on general stores that had a limited stock and slow turnover; they made enough profit to stay in operation by selling at high prices.

[44][45] In the South the general store was especially important after the Civil War, as the merchant was one of the few sources of seasonal credit available until the cash crops (usually cotton or tobacco) were harvested in the fall.

The keys to success were a large variety of high-quality brand-name merchandise, high turnover, reasonable prices, and frequent special sales.

The larger stores sent their buyers to Chicago or other big wholesale centers once or twice a year to evaluate the newest trends in merchandising and stock up on the latest fashions.

Beauty and elegance were central themes, the department stores hired attractive upscale young women to deal with the customers, while the back rooms the men made practically all the decisions.

[58] During Great Depression, chain stores became the targets of angry local merchants, who secured the Robinson–Patman Act of 1936; it was a federal law that required all retailers to charge the same price for certain items.

In urban areas, North and South, the size and income of the black population was growing, providing openings for a wide range of businesses, from barbershops [64] to insurance companies.

[75][76] Indeed, there were only a small number of wealthy blacks ; overwhelmingly they were real estate speculators in the fast-growing cities, such as Robert Reed Church in Memphis.

Numerous smaller companies when operation before the Civil War the British innovation of making inexpensive steel, which is much stronger than traditional ironwork, cause the radical transformation.

He was not an engineer, but he gave experts in the mills in Pittsburgh their lead, and he moved to New York City to sell large quantities of steel for the new bridges, railways and skyscrapers.

In 1888, Carnegie bought the rival Homestead Steel Works, which included an extensive plant served by tributary coal and iron fields, a 425-mile (685 km) long railway, and a line of lake steamships.

Carnegie, through Keystone, supplied the steel for and owned shares in the landmark Eads Bridge project across the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri (completed 1874).

In 1907, it received federal permission to buy out its largest competitor, the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, To end a panic on Wall Street.

But it was classes, and year-by-year watched its share of the market decline has been competitors entered the steel industry to provide warships, building materials and supply railroad same consumer products.