The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise

Corporations are as much a creation of war, depression, and government fiat as of scientific management, according to this sweeping history. University of Connecticut economist Langlois (The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism) examines the factors that contributed to the 20th-century rise of centrally planned corporations, distinguished by their integration of multiple business functions in a single firm (Ford, for instance, was a mining company, steel maker, electric utility, parts manufacturer, auto assembler, and retailer). These factors include antitrust laws that criminalized forms of cooperation between independent companies yet were legal within a single corporation’s business divisions (bicycle maker Schwinn was hit with an antitrust lawsuit in the 1960s for cutting exclusive deals with regional distributors, a practice that would have been legal if Schwinn owned the distributors) and the Great Depression, during which government regulation of competing ways of organizing business left the corporation as an increasingly attractive option. Langlois embeds his sharp analysis within a searching, unconventional survey of economic history, arguing, for example, that most New Deal policies did little to alleviate the Great Depression and that government coordination of war production mainly flopped. Chock-full of sophisticated economic theory rendered in lucid prose, this adds up to a bracing evaluation of a consequential and once dominant commercial entity. (June)