Making American Corporate

Oliver Zunz. Making America Corporate 1870-1920. University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Zunz opens this study by acknowledging the anxieties unleashed by the rise of corporate power in the late nineteenth century. This era was, as many scholars and observers have noted, characterized by the sense of a loss of autonomy and virtue, in the face of the seemingly inexorable growth of corporations and their ability to influence and even control social, economic, and political developments.

He then points out that by the middle of the twentieth century, "the corporate reorganization of American society was a fait accompli." (1) The transition from the former to the latter has been the subject of a great deal of study; much of the Introduction consists of a review of various attempts to interpret and understand how and why America ended up with a corporate culture that was opposed and feared by so many. Arthur Miller and Richard Hofstadter make an appearance, as does C. Wright Mills and Alfred Chandler. Much has been written about the rise of corporate bureaucracies, but Zunz is interested in "the social characteristics and values of people who participated in the formation of corporate bureaucracies." (10) Zunz is interested in the growth of the white-collar middle-class at the turn of the last century; he regards these people as active, and largely satisfied, participants in the creation of modern corporate culture.

While he recognizes that there was a loss of agency, then, Zunz also notes that the people we would now describe as "management" more often than not took satisfaction in creating large institutions and modes of production and supply. They might not have been free to control their own economic destiny at the local level as previous generations of merchants and brokers had been, but in compensation they were able to work on a much larger and more national scale than their forebears.

His study is enhanced by a comparative approach; for example, an examination of the Ford Company in the early years contrasts Henry Ford's esoteric approach to that followed by DuPont and General Motors, the better to bring the latter (which became the standard) in sharper relief. Working his way down from ownership and management to more humble office workers (particularly in the Metropolitan Insurance Company's then-staggeringly huge skyscraper), Zunz also details how the middle class was broadened as it absorbed many children of blue-collar families, and simultaneously refined the work culture of the middle class in order to accommodate a growing population of female office workers.

Zunz's account provides an interesting counterpoint to studies of the era which emphasize the degree to which the rise of corporate capitalism affected both the working class as well as the older mercantile interests.