The attitudes and preoccupations of businessmen at any given time are deemed important by historians both as clues to and reasons for business action. The year 1900 is a promising one in which to probe those attitudes and preoccupations because at that time a great many important characteristics of the business community were undergoing rapid change. Examination of business literature of the day suggests that the businessman of 1900 was preoccupied with the merger movement and with labor agitation, with shifting distribution patterns, and with trade association activity. His concern with financial techniques and public relations was intense, if erratic, and he was preoccupied with problems of administrative structure. He was, in short, concerned with those developments commonly emphasized by historians, but with so much more besides as to suggest several new research avenues. Surprising results emerge when business attitudes and preoccupations of 1900 are compared with those of 1956.

This article goes beyond the usual easy generalization that the coming of the railroad brought profound economic and social changes. Here a broad panorama is revealed, but with specific features in sharp focus, These features include the conflicting impact of the railroads on local craftsmen and tradesmen; the initial stimulus to extreme concentration and then to dispersion of population; the influence upon industrial decentralization; the changing railroad attitude toward passenger traffic; the rise of dormitory suburbs and their conversion into integrated communities; the social implications of the new mode of conveyance; the significance in labor reform of the railroads as large employers. Students of American transportation will find much of interest in this British pattern and in the method by which it is set forth.

J.J Cole, of Indianapolis, was one of the small group of entrepreneurs who successfully passed from carriage manufacture to automobile assembly. His initial success in the new field derived from technical competence, style consciousness, and marketing ability. These three attributes were not, however, subsequently exercized with equal and consistent effectiveness, and Cole, the talented individualist, did not survive the era of integration and combination in the 1920's. His firm passed from the scene, not as a bankrupt but as a typical founder-dominated organization that seemingly spent its energies in surviving one major transition and was unwilling or unable to face up to another.

The distinguishing aspect of business in modern times, particularly in the United States, is that it has permeated the entire fabric of civilization. Historical interpretations of this circumstance have been in sharp conflict and have tended toward extremes. The wave of national self-criticism of the early twentieth century focused attention on the shortcomings of business, ignoring its constructive aspects. On the other hand, the modern revisionist school of historians, depicting the businessman not as a “robber baron” but as an “architect of material greatness,” has been prone to stress ends ahead of means and to overlook the deeper implications of the businessman's role in society as a whole. True perspective is not afforded by either of these opposing academic positions, nor is it likely to be gained by further blind amassing of facts-in-isolation on the part of business historians. A general theory of business evolution is needed — one that neither praises nor blames the businessman but seeks to locate him in the larger context of human experience.

This article traces the birth and early growth of a major industry. Before Imperial Leduc No. 1 brought in the Edmonton field in 1947, Canadian oil producing operations had been sporadic. The Edmonton and subsequent discoveries in western Canada created an industrial giant overnight, providing historians and economists with a remarkable, documented, accessible case study of the process of industrial growth. Imperial Leduc No. 1 generated economic impulses that surged through a nation. The immediate effects were felt by the Canadian oil industry itself, which crystallized into a new pattern of integration. The domestic consumer of petroleum products was vitally affected, and his counter-reactions created new necessities. Canadian economic development in general was immediately and largely influenced; the flow of oil touched off a chain reaction in state and national fiscal affairs, in agriculture, in population trends, in education, in public expenditures, and in Dominion politics. Nor was the end here. The impulse for change swept across international boundaries, affecting monetary exchange and the competitive alignments of the world petroleum industry.

This article deals with development of basic management structures of large American corporations. In general, the problem has been one of growing operational complexity; the solution commonly adopted has been operational decentralization. This solution, however, has raised difficult questions of control, and various administrative answers have been evolved. These have fallen into recognizable patterns, for an examination of case histories graphically illustrates the close connection between the nature of a company's business and its administrative structure. Those firms whose activities cross established industry lines have tended toward product decentralization. Companies producing a relatively restricted line have decentralized on a functional or a geographic basis. Market-oriented firms have tended to decentralize on a geographic basis. Among the fifty companies studied, however, other variations are discernible. Historical analysis of the decentralization trend also suggests the importance of management personalities in governing the timing of structural changes and indicates clearly the reasons why some companies have yet to find decentralization a meaningful answer for their prevailing administrative problems.

The widespread advent of money-back guarantees and one-price policies were symptomatic of a major transition in merchandising history. As trade grew and retail stores multiplied, standardization of terms and practices became apparent. Before 1864 Champaign-Urbana merchants had made little progress in developing a policy of standard prices. The postwar years brought increasing competition at the retail level, and the use of the money-back guarantee spread. When this practice became widespread, a one-price-to-all policy became essential. Some old-time merchants continued to haggle with customers, and barter trade in country produce created complications, but by the early 1870's the integration of one-price policies and money-back guarantees had been generally accomplished and the way paved for the advent of mass distribution.