Socializing Capital : : The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America / / William G. Roy.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Roy, William G.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [1999]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 1999
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.) :; 8 line illus. 10 tables

Ever since Adolph Berle and Gardiner Means wrote their classic 1932 analysis of the American corporation, The Modern Corporation and Private Property, social scientists have been intrigued and challenged by the evolution of this crucial part of American social and economic life. Here William Roy conducts a historical inquiry into the rise of the large publicly traded American corporation. Departing from the received wisdom, which sees the big, vertically integrated corporation as the result of technological development and market growth that required greater efficiency in larger scale firms, Roy focuses on political, social, and institutional processes governed by the dynamics of power. The author shows how the corporation started as a quasi-public device used by governments to create and administer public services like turnpikes and canals and then how it germinated within a system of stock markets, brokerage houses, and investment banks into a mechanism for the organization of railroads. Finally, and most particularly, he analyzes its flowering into the realm of manufacturing, when at the turn of this century, many of the same giants that still dominate the American economic landscape were created. Thus, the corporation altered manufacturing entities so that they were each owned by many people instead of by single individuals as had previously been the case.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Preface -- CHAPTER ONE. Introduction -- CHAPTER TWO. A Quantitative Test of Efficiency Theory -- CHAPTER THREE. The Corporation as Public and Private Enterprise -- CHAPTER FOUR. Railroads: The Corporation's Institutional Wellspring -- CHAPTER FIVE. Auxiliary Institutions: The Stock Market, Investment Banking, and Brokers -- CHAPTER SIX. Statutory Corporate Law, 1880-1913 -- CHAPTER SEVEN. Prelude to a Revolution -- CHAPTER EIGHT. American Industry Incorporates -- CHAPTER NINE. Conclusion: A Political Sociology of the Large Corporation -- Notes -- References -- Index