by Gary Hoover | Aug 23, 2022 | Articles, Articles, Business in General, Newsletters, Other Industries
(Photo above: Guardian Building, Detroit, Michigan) America’s great skyscrapers, museums, hotels, train stations, churches, and other structures reflect the ambitions and dreams of our society. Funded by the wealth generated by our economic system, they are...
by Gary Hoover | Dec 21, 2021 | Articles, Articles, Business in General, Demography and Geography, Newsletters
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards” – Steve Jobs The American Business History Center wishes happy holidays to all of our readers. As another year comes to a close, it’s a great time to think back over time,...
by Gary Hoover | Oct 21, 2021 | Articles, Articles, Business in General, Newsletters, Retailing, Share Your History
Today I write a more personal note, which we don’t often do in these newsletters. My lifelong study of businesses, working in them and starting them, has led me to think about how one sees the future clearly. The many great business leaders we profile on...
by Gary Hoover | Sep 23, 2021 | Articles, Business in General, Newsletters
One of our key goals at the American Business History Center is to learn lessons from the successes and failures of the past. In most of our weekly articles, we leave it to our readers to draw their own lessons, although we occasionally touch on what can be...
by Gary Hoover | Jun 13, 2021 | Articles, Articles, Biographies, Books, Business in General, Newsletters
July 9 is the deadline for our high school essay contest, with $7500 in prizes, including $3000 for the best essay. PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD! …. and, by the way, this is the 100th issue of our free weekly newsletter! Today we recommend two books for our fellow...
by Gary Hoover | May 20, 2021 | Articles, Business in General, Newsletters
On May 8, 2019, two years ago, four of us launched the American Business History Center. As enumerated below, we are pleased with the growth of our weekly newsletter and our website traffic (shown above). Your donations have helped us continue our work and will help...
by Gary Hoover | May 12, 2021 | Articles, Business in General, Data, Newsletters
Last week, the Census Bureau published their annual estimates of population, as of July 1, 2020. Population trends underly all economic activity, so we study that data as soon as it is released. The fastest growing and shrinking cities and metropolitan areas...
by Gary Hoover | May 6, 2021 | Articles, Business in General, Data, Newsletters
Few business subjects fascinate people as much as the very wealthy. Our obsession with celebrity goes back centuries but seems to have accelerated in recent decades. Forbes produced its first list of the richest Americans in 1982 and later started publishing it...
by Gary Hoover | Apr 29, 2021 | Articles, Articles, Articles, Business in General, Consumer Products, Newsletters, Retailing
While most big companies disappear over time (as shown in our recent newsletter), some figure out how to survive and prosper decade after decade, even century after century. But is the journey from founding to long-term durability a straight path? Today...
by Gary Hoover | Apr 23, 2021 | Articles, Articles, Books, Business in General, Newsletters
Big Rich Forbes magazine just released their annual list of the richest people in the world, topped by Jeff Bezos at $177 billion and Elon Musk at $151 billion. Computer scientist and founder of the incubator Y Combinator Paul Graham has written an excellent...
by Gary Hoover | Apr 15, 2021 | Articles, Business in General, Data, Newsletters
One of the most significant shifts in American business over the last several decades has been the shrinking number of big corporations headquartered in New York City. At first, some moved “upstate” to the New York suburbs and to Connecticut. But more...
by Gary Hoover | Apr 1, 2021 | Articles, Business in General, Data, Newsletters
A careful study of this week’s list will show you the huge American industries which once dominated stock markets, employment, and community life, but which are not as important in the age of Amazon and Google. Our readers know we love lists. There are few other...
by Gary Hoover | Feb 26, 2021 | Articles, Articles, Articles, Biographies, Business in General, Newsletters, Other Industries, Technology
We are all familiar with the visionary entrepreneur Charles R. Schwab who pioneered the discount stock brokerage industry in the 1970s. But almost no one remembers the unrelated Charles M. Schwab, one of the most important business leaders in American history....
by Gary Hoover | Oct 9, 2020 | Articles, Business in General, Newsletters
We wrote this five years ago, before the American Business History Center was founded, but we stand by our choices. For the last 52 years, I have been obsessed with understanding what makes a company great. What leads to success; what leads away. This led me to...
by Gary Hoover | Sep 18, 2020 | Articles, Business in General, Data, Newsletters
Fifty-seven years ago, meatpacking giant Swift was the 15th largest public company in the world. Today that 15th spot is held by American health insurer UnitedHealth. Apple sits in the 12th position formerly held by Texaco, now part of Chevron. ...
by Gary Hoover | Sep 3, 2020 | Articles, Business in General, Newsletters
Fortune Magazine, the Wonder of the 1930s In February 1930, the greatest American magazine publisher, Harry Luce, produced the first issue of Fortune magazine. His seven-year-old Time magazine had become a huge success. Luce and his company then created...
by Gary Hoover | Aug 27, 2020 | Articles, Business in General, Newsletters
Mergers and acquisitions have been common throughout business history. Three major waves were particularly important: the building of the trusts, trying to dominate each industry, in the 1890s; another round of industry consolidations in the roaring 1920s; and...
by Gary Hoover | Aug 20, 2020 | Articles, Business in General, Data
An updated 2022 version of this chart can be seen here. On Market Capitalization as a Measure of Size or Success Your history reporter has been studying big business for fifty-seven years (I started subscribing to Fortune magazine in 1963, when I was twelve years...
by Gary Hoover | Jul 16, 2020 | Articles, Business in General, Data
An updated 2022 version of this chart can be seen here. This week we present another of our animated charts based on Fortune magazine’s annual lists of the 500 largest US public companies (based on revenues). This time, our focus is on the largest employers...
by Gary Hoover | Jul 2, 2020 | Articles, Business in General, Data, Newsletters
“Last week we brought you an unprecedented animated chart of the Fortune 500 list since 1994. Here we go back another 40 years, when steel companies and meatpackers were still giants. Taken together, you can learn a lot from 65 years of history.” Last...
by Gary Hoover | Jun 25, 2020 | Articles, Business in General, Data, Newsletters
An updated 2022 version of this chart can be seen here. The saga of American business in one chart! The fall of Enron, the rise of Apple and Amazon, the enduring legacy of John Rockefeller in Exxon and Chevron – see the years fly by! Below the two charts...
by Gary Hoover | Jun 19, 2020 | Articles, Articles, Business in General, Consumer Products, Newsletters
America has hundreds of thousands of privately-held, family-owned businesses. Thousands of them are large. The list of the largest ones is topped by the hundred-billion-dollar grain and commodities dealer Cargill, the diversified Koch Industries, and candy...
by Gary Hoover | Apr 9, 2020 | Articles, Biographies, Business in General, Newsletters
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Over the last two-and-one-half years, we at the American Business History Center, in conjunction with the Archbridge Institute, have written and published...
by Gary Hoover | Sep 12, 2019 | Articles, Articles, Articles, Articles, Biographies, Business in General, Foodservice and Lodging, Other Industries
This article first appeared on June 24, 2019 in The Archbridge Institute’s ‘American Originals’ series. Despite being often forgotten today, Henry J. Kaiser was one of the most unusual and diverse entrepreneurs in American history. Quitting school at...
by Gary Hoover | Sep 4, 2019 | Articles, Business in General, Newsletters
The rise, fall, and disappearance of America’s largest companies tells us much about business and our economy. Since 1955, Fortune magazine has published a list of the 500 largest U.S. companies, ranked by sales (revenues). Until 1995, this list only included...
by Gary Hoover | Jul 11, 2019 | Articles, Articles, Business in General, Data, Data, Demography and Geography
History lovers, Today we present something a little different….an animated chart showing the rise and fall of American cities. If you play (or replay) the graphic linked here, you will see the rise and fall of the thirty most populous metropolitan areas in the...
by Gary Hoover | Jun 6, 2019 | Articles, Business in General
Join others around the country who have donated $9,000. Thank you! Donate today .Management and strategy thinkers continually try to understand what makes for success and failure. Why do some companies stand the test of time, while others disappear into the...
by Gary Hoover | May 29, 2019 | Articles, Business in General
There have been many great two-person leadership teams in the annals of business history. My favorite might be Walt and Roy Disney, two brothers who laid the foundation for one of the world’s greatest and most beneficial enterprises. Walt was the...
by Gary Hoover | Mar 8, 2019 | Articles, Business in General
Originally published on Hooversworld.com on July 28, 2016 I was working on a newsletter about Melville Shoe, a retailer I covered as a securities analyst at Citibank in the mid-70s. It was a great company with some unique approaches to opportunity discovery,...