Small businesses have held a paradoxical position in U.S. history: their particular forms and structures have received little scholarly attention compared to that devoted to big business, yet they have always been a significant part—social and cultural, as well as economic and political—of American life. This essay discusses the changing views on the role of small-scale enterprise in the United States, outlines the current state of historical research, and suggests profitable areas for future study.

The following case studies and analysis of the machine tool and jewelry manufacturing industries attempt to set the stage for a reconsideration of “the other side of industrialization” in the United States during the Second Industrial Revolution—the custom and batch production sectors. Recognizing that much work remains to be done in this area, the author nevertheless concludes that the diversity of circumstances and responses characterizing these industries makes it unlikely that one theory can be adduced to explain their highly contingent world.

The following case studies and analysis of the machine tool and jewelry manufacturing industries attempt to set the stage for a reconsideration of “the other side of industrialization” in the United States during the Second Industrial Revolution—the custom and batch production sectors. Recognizing that much work remains to be done in this area, the author nevertheless concludes that the diversity of circumstances and responses characterizing these industries makes it unlikely that one theory can be adduced to explain their highly contingent world.

The clothing trade in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provides examples across the spectrum of industrial organization, and it thus offers an opportunity to compare activities and to account for the adoption of different systems. This article, based on extensive archival research in the records of corset-making companies, shows clearly the relationship between the corset industry's ability to standardize production and the adoption of operations on a larger scale than was possible in other sectors of the women's garment industry.

The following article examines the creation and development of a unique American business institution, the dime store chain. The essay focuses on the store managers—their ethnic, social, and educational background, the rules under which they worked, and the promotion ladder they climbed. It attempts to assess the advantages and disadvantages to the chains of relying on a system of “organization men.”