Americans Vote with Their Feet
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...
Superwealth: A Historical Perspective
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...
Success Lost & Found: Sherwin-Williams
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...
Big Rich, Big News, & A Short Book
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...
Bye Bye, New York
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...
What Became of That Railroad?
On March 21, 2021, the Canadian Pacific Railroad announced that it was buying the Kansas City Southern Railroad for $25 billion. To understand the strategic and geographic implications of this very important business deal, we must first go back in time. ...
Giant Companies Rarely Survive
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...
Retailing Trends 1992 through 2020
The $6.3 trillion US retailing industry has evolved continuously since the end of the Civil War, when the first chain grocery stores and first department stores began to develop. This chart, based on data from the US Census, shows how the different types of...
Business History Podcast and Video
Friends of Business History, I have been doing a lot of podcasts and interviews recently. I always make plenty of historical references. But when they are primarily about the present and future, I put them up on my other website, https://hooversworld.com/ and...
Student Essay Contest $3,000 First Prize
The American Business History Center is proud to introduce our first annual Business History Essay Contest for High School Students. This is a chance for students to learn about businesses and how they are built, that they are human ventures and have human stories and...
Upcoming Event on Sun March 7 at 9 PM EST
Tune in to the History Channel on Sunday, March 7, at 9 PM Eastern time, to see my appearance in their series The Food That Made America in an episode about “the Cola Wars.” I will see it at the same time you do, so I make no predictions about how nice I will look or...
Forgotten Business Giant: Charles M. Schwab
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....
American Business History Center On the History Channel
We at the American Business History Center are delighted to announce that we will soon make our first appearance on national television! Last year, the producers of the History Channel series “The Food that Built America” approached us for research on several stories...
Tech Wars: RCA and the Television Industry
From the telegraph to the modern age, high technology has seen continuous innovation, followed by the rise of numerous competitors, then consolidation into fewer companies, and finally decline. Here is one of our favorite stories. The advent of television rivals...
What Became of My Stockbroker?
Few industries have seen as many acquisitions, mergers, and name changes as the American stock brokerage and investment banking industries. Perhaps only the equally old railroad industry has seen more such activity. These firms have been called wire houses...
From Hero to Hated: America’s Most Tragic Entrepreneur
This article was first published on the Archbridge Institute website. Few business leaders or entrepreneurs in American history have done more to enable progress and prosperity than Samuel Insull, a name little known today. Yet eighty years ago, he was one of the most...
Office Machines, Forerunners of the Computer
Welcome to 2021! In 2020, our first full calendar year of operation, these American Business History newsletters have been read over 90,000 times. The number of pages viewed on our website rose from 1,500 per month at the beginning of 2020 to 4-5,000 a...
Two Entrepreneurs Who Helped Create Florida
Every state has a fascinating history, including the role of business and entrepreneurship. The swamp that was much of Florida did not develop until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Two men, both named Henry, were perhaps the most important in that...
Venture Capital: A History
This post was originally published by Advisor Perspectives, http://www.advisorperspectives.com, under the title, “The History and Future of Venture Capital Investing,” on July 8, 2019. Is venture capital a good investment? For long periods in the past, the best VC...
Music for the Millions: The Wurlitzer Story
Rudolph Wurlitzer and his sons Howard and Farny Wurlitzer The Wurlitzer Company is one of the most interesting companies we have studied. At their peak, their slogan was “Music for the Millions.” Here is the story of this formerly great company, based on...
Giving Tuesday: Help Us Encourage the Next Generation
Today is Giving Tuesday, a national event to support non-profit organizations like ours. Many of America’s young people have had little or no exposure to free enterprise beyond buying things. High school students seldom know the real stories of...
Help Us Engage Young People!
It has never been a more important time to engage young people in the free enterprise system, for them to learn about businesses and how they are built, that they are human ventures and have human stories and attributes. Big businesses grow from small seeds. Even...
The Drugstore Shelf and the Stewardship of Brands
“Big pharma” and “biotech” are in the news these days. Politicians attack the industry and the price of drugs. At the same time, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and others hurry along to develop a COVID vaccine. These companies have been among the...
The Unsung 20th Century Technology That Disrupted an Industry
Business history is full of stories of “disruptors” and “disruption,” especially with regard to new technologies (as well as new ways of retailing, lodging, dining, transportation, journalism, and other fields). Many books have been written on innovation, how it...
Forgotten Giant: General Foods
For decades America’s largest food company, General Foods was one of the most highly regarded marketing companies in the world. Formed in the roaring twenties by consolidating companies that led the way in convenience foods, GF became an industry giant. ...
Billiards, Bowling, and Boating: 175 Years of Brunswick
A current buzzword is “pivoting,” which means changing your company’s strategy and direction, often into entirely new businesses. Pivots are frequent in young companies trying to find the best markets and a footing for future opportunities. Here we look at...
The Three Greatest American Companies of All Time
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...
Three Fun Books on Business History
Some of us still have too much time alone and at home, so it is a good time to get some reading in. In a prior newsletter, we recommended Alfred Chandler’s Visible Hand as the single most important book to read on business history. Anyone who is literate about...
Battle of the Giant Watchmakers
Every industry tells a story of competition: the rise and fall of companies. Technological industries often see more “changing of the guard” than more stable businesses like food, soap, and beverages. One of the first high-tech industries in America...
The Biggest Companies in the World
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. ...
What Became of My Bank?
No industry has seen more name changes and mergers and acquisitions than America’s banking industry. Many people don’t realize that BankAmerica, Chase Manhattan, JP Morgan, and Wells Fargo – all among the ten largest banks thirty years ago – were each absorbed...
Business Stories 90 Years Ago
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...
What If These Planned Mergers Had Happened?
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...
Walt Disney: Entrepreneur without Peer
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Preface: A Most Controversial Man In this story, we address the life and work of Walter Elias Disney, one of the most famous men in the world. Telling this story brings...
How Chattanooga Brought Coca-Cola to the World
Here is an unsung but key part of the long and illustrious history of Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most successful and well-known brands. Few realize the links between the company and the patent medicine (quack) products of the 19th century, which connect it to...
America’s Highest Profit Companies 1994-2019
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 companies which made...
125 Free Downloadable Books on Business History!
At the American Business History Center, we continually seek new sources of information on business history. We have put a lot of links to other history websites on our links page. This week, we introduce our big selection of 125 free books in PDF form which you...
Milton Hershey: Chocolate King, Confectioner, and Creator
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. Born in rural Pennsylvania in 1857, Milton Hershey attended seven different schools and never made it beyond the fourth grade. At fifteen, he found his passion in a...
Dinosaur Age: Charting Giant Companies 66 Years Ago
“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...
25 Years of the Fortune 500 Animated Chart
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...
Beyond Wall Street: Great Family Businesses
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...
Workingman’s Friend, Industry Disruptor: The Walter Chrysler Story
This article first appeared in the Archbridge Institute’s American Originals Series. The year 1921 was one of the worst years in the history of the American automobile business. Many companies folded in a brief but severe post-war recession as prices dropped...
Who Makes Our Balls?
In these troubling times, it’s important to remember something called “fun.” Our weekly newsletters tend to cover big industries like retailing and automobiles. But we also find smaller, niche industries fascinating. Here is a look at who makes the balls used by...
Forgotten Empire Builders: Cleveland’s Van Sweringen Brothers
This week we present another very brief “bullet point biography.” A classic story of shattered dreams. At the American Business History Center, we focus our energies on those companies (and their founders and leaders) which became household names or large...
Forgotten Industrial Giant: The Allis-Chalmers Story
Our business history articles often focus on the consumer products and services industries with which we all interact – from auto companies to department stores. Yet it’s important not to forget the industrial companies that lie in the background, and make all...
Our Great Department Stores 40 Years Ago
Here is the article closest to my heart, which I had never intended to publish this soon, but once I got rolling on it, I could not stop.Gary Hoover Today, America’s great old department stores are under siege. The reasons for their decline are manifold,...
The Non-Profit Where the World Sleeps: Best Western
The lodging industry is one of the oldest industries on earth, and one of the most important. No one can do business, trade, spread ideas, practice diplomacy, explore the world, or migrate without temporary lodgings. From the lowliest hostel to the finest...
Required Reading for Those Who Want to Understand How We Got Where We Are
Although little-known outside academia and students of management, the late Alfred Chandler, Jr., was the greatest business historian we have yet seen. His Pulitzer-Prize-winning 1977 book The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business is the...
Baseball, Broadcasting, & Compact Cars: Forgotten Mr. Crosley
Over the last two years or so, we in conjunction with the Archbridge Institute have produced a series of “long-form” biographies of great entrepreneurs. Each of these runs five to seven thousand words and takes twenty to thirty minutes to read. In this...
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