Small Business in American Life

"This is an excellent and much needed collection on a relatively neglected aspect of American economic life…It is an exceptionally effective presentation."

This volume contains seventeen scholarly essays that provide insights into the role small business has played in United States history, particularly in manufacturing, retail, and banking. The essays show how small business has formed an integral part of American life. Its influence was not confined to the economic sector, but also affected social mobility, urban power structures, the legal system, and the formation of values shared by Americans. The breadth of this approach ensures engrossing reading.

This collection of seventeen essays, mostly by professors of history or economics, were written at the invitation of Bruchey to compose an "American Report" during the International Commission on the History of Social Movements and Social Structures convened in Bucharest, Romania, in 1980. Bruchey's twenty-seven page "Introduction" constitutes the Report he delivered, while the seventeen essays are included as they were submitted to him to enable him to create the overall Report.

Bruchey's Report and the supporting essays reflect the American view that small business is a special, much-valued opportunity offered by American society and its economy. At the same time, it is an expression of the society's prized values of individuality, enterprise, ambition, and vision. As Bruchey states, "The urge to be an entrepreneur, to be one's own boss, is virtually universal."

The essays elaborate on the variety of ways this urge has played out in society and the economy in the course of American history. With the small population of Colonial times removed from the centuries-old society of England, the entrepreneurial-minded and talented stood out both as exemplars and originators of the American economy.

An essay entitled, "The Revolutionary Charleston Mechanic" by Richard Walsh, a Professor of History at Georgetown University, is a fascinating depiction of the role of small businessmen such as saddlers, cabinetmakers, and shoemakers. The Charleston mechanic is described as one of the "three influential classes in Charleston during the Colonial and Revolutionary periods." The mechanics were found in all sectors of the local economy: shipbuilding, barrel-making, tanning, candle making, and others. At first, they were regarded as below the merchants in social status, with the British administrators and aristocrats the top class. But the mechanics bristled at their low status and the competition from English goods. They were kept from participating in public affairs. But eventually, they elected representatives to the city Assembly, gained favorable laws for their own goods with respect to imports and taxes, improved their social status by becoming owners of large homes, and influenced Colonists beyond Charleston by trade with other colonies. The aims and activities of the Charleston mechanics in the 1700s became a blueprint for the activism of later generations of Americans.

Essays on "Economics and Culture in the Gilded Age Hatting Industry" and "The Role of Small Business in the Process of Skill Acquisition" represent the approach of the other essays in using a relatively specialized topic to illustrate the broader and lasting place or effects of small business in American economy and society. Their themes reflect how even modest skills, such as shoe repair or needlework, indicate an aptitude and a desire for improvement that contributes to the economy and overall social progress.

With its varied, solid insights by knowledgeable academics, Bruchey's collection of essays evidences the value of small business and entrepreneurialism in America.

Bruchey, a former professor of history at Columbia University, presents 17 essays, by contributors in history, economics, and labor studies, on the role small business has played in US history, particularly in manufacturing, retail, and banking. Material originated at the 1980 convention, held in Bucharest, Romania, of the International Commission on the History of Social Movements and Social Structures. The book was first published in 1980 by Columbia University Press. Annotation ©2003

Stuart W. Bruchey received a Ph.D. in history in 1956 from the John Hopkins University. He held the Allan Nevins chair in American Economic History for twenty years at Columbia University, where he also taught in the graduate executive MBA program of the business school and in the law school. He has published a number of scholarly studies, and has served as President of the Economic History Association and as Co-President of the International Commission on the History of Social Movements and Social Structures (Paris).

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	1
1.	Independence and Enterprise: Small Business in the American Dream	28
	Rowland Berthoff

2.	The Revolutionary Charleston Mechanic	49
	Richard Walsh

3.	From Artisan to Manufacturer: Industrialization and the Small Producer in Newark	80
	Susan E. Hirsch

4.	Black Coats to White Collars: Economic Change, Nonmanual Work, and the Social Structure of Industrializing America	100
	Stuart M. Blumin

5.	Small Business and Occupational Mobility in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Poughkeepsie	122
	Clyde and Sally Griffen

6.	The Position of Small Business in the Structure of American Manufacturing, 1870-1970	142
	Harold G. Vatter

7.	Master Printers Organize: The Typothetae of the City of New York, 1865-1906	169
	Irene Tichenor

8.	Origins of Small business and the relationships Between Large and Small Firms: Metal Fabricating and Machinery Making in New England, 1890-1957	192
	James H. Soltow

9.	The Effects of Industrialization on Small Retailing in the United States in the Twentieth Century	212
	Stanley C. Hollander

10.	Small-Business Banking in the United States, 1780-1920	240
	Richard Sylla

11.	Labor and Small-scale Enterprise During Industrialization	263
	David Brody

12.	The Financing of Small Business in the United States	280
	Roland I. Robinson

13.	Law and Small Business in the United States: One Hundred Years of Struggle and Accommodation	305
	Lawrence M. Friedman

14.	Small Business and Urban Power: Some Notes on the History of Economic Policy in Nineteenth-Century American Cities	319
	David C. Hammack

15.	Lilliputians in Brobdingnag: Small Business in Late-Nineteenth-Century America	338
	Harold C. Livesay

16.	Economics and Culture in the Gilded Age Hatting Industry	352
	David Bensman

17.	The Role of Small Business in the Process of Skill Acquisition	366
	Eli Ginzberg

	Index	381