An examination of the chief executives of leading British railways from 1850 through 1922 indicates that they emerged from predominantly upper-middle and upper class origins, and that they represented a new kind of bureaucratic business elite which enjoyed rising incomes and growing social status. In addition, available evidence reveals nothing to suggest that “executive immobility” was characteristic of British railway management, or that the railways were particularly inefficient or unprogressive in their choice of senior managers.

Professor Morris' investigation of American railway management indicates that the railroads, which had been such innovative institutions in the nineteenth century, clung to ossified and outmoded managerial practices after the industry reached maturity. Inbred and inflexible systems of recruitment and promotion, he argues, were a noteworthy aspect of the economic decline of American railroads in the twentieth century.

Intimate cooperation between American investment bankers and the diplomats of the Department of State occurred in the early 1920s because both groups shared similar goals and interests in Mexico. The resulting exercise in dollar diplomacy achieved some immediate ends but proved very short-sighted and self-defeating in the end.

The adoption in 1972 of a new name by a major American oil company had deep historical roots reaching back to the 1911 Supreme Court decision in the Standard Oil antitrust case and to subsequent marketing conflicts between the Standard companies.