Corporate Liberalism in the American Business Community, 1920–1940

1978 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim McQuaid
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
American Business ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
World War ◽  
Big Business ◽  
Corporate Business

Contrasting with the resentment of other power structures, especially corporate business, that democratic governments display is the obvious need of the powerful and the productive for each other in times of stress. Professor McQuaid follows the activities of a group of “corporate liberals” (i.e., big business leaders who believed that intelligent collaboration between business, government, and organized labor was an attainable goal) from World War I through the prosperous 1920s, the despondent 1930s, and the busy and prosperous years of World War II. He concludes that corporate liberal opinion grew more influential in both corporate and governmental circles during and after the period.

When Business Is Not “Businesslike”

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-221
Author(s):  
Emily J. Charnock
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Business Groups ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Free Enterprise ◽  
World War ◽  
Initial Resistance ◽  
Conservative Coalition

This chapter explores the initial resistance to the PAC concept within the business community and among conservatives more generally in the 1940s and 1950s. Though major business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and United States Chamber of Commerce had not entirely ignored elections to this point, they concentrated their energies following World War II on lobbying and publicity campaigns promoting “free enterprise,” while criticizing labor and liberal PACs as coercive, collectivist, and antidemocratic. They also placed faith in the “conservative coalition” of Republicans and Southern Democrats to protect their interests, reflecting their strong belief that both parties should and could promote business aims. As fears grew that labor had successfully “infiltrated” the Democratic Party, however, conservative activists urged business groups to be “businesslike” and respond to labor electioneering in kind. Business leaders thus began to contemplate a partisan electoral counterstrategy centered on the Republican Party.

Management's Crisis of Confidence and the Origin of the National Industrial Conference Board, 1914–1916

1984 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.M. Gitelman
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
American Business ◽  
World War ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Source Materials ◽  
The Way

In this essay, Professor Gitelman draws upon new primary source materials to help clarify the outlook of American business leaders in the years immediately preceding U.S. entry into World War I. He shows how business leaders brooded, at periodic private conferences, over the profound loss in public esteem they believed business had suffered. This “crisis of confidence,” he concludes, precipitated defensive associational efforts. The creation of conference boards—the brainchild of Magnus W. Alexander—provided an institutional base for these efforts, and pointed the way to the creation of the National Industrial Conference Board.

Divergent Responses to Identical Problems: Businessmen and the Smoke Nuisance in Germany and the United States, 1880–1917

1999 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Uekoetter
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
National Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Community ◽  
American Business ◽  
Air Pollution Control ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Misconception ◽  
Additional Costs ◽  
General Desire

This article counters a common misconception that business was universally opposed to air pollution control at the beginning of the twentieth century. In comparing the reaction of German and American businessmen to smoke abatement efforts before World War I, it shows that behavior was primarily shaped by national culture, rather than by a general desire to “externalize costs.” German smoke abatement did not meet significant resistance from industrialists, with regulation being based on a general consensus of all parties involved—a process which turned out to be as much a chance for abatement as it was an impediment for reforms. The American business community was split into two factions: those opposed to smoke abatement because they feared additional costs and the intrusion of factories by officials, and others, frequently organized in Chambers of Commerce or similar civic associations, who took a broader perspective and argued that the economic prospects of their city were at stake. The ultimate success of the latter group was largely due to changes in strategy, which allowed businessmen to develop a more positive attitude toward smoke abatement while simultaneously increasing the effectiveness of regulation. Business, therefore, should not be viewed as an inevitably “negative force” in environmental regulation.

The Origins of Republican War Debt Policy, 1921–1923

2019 ◽  
pp. 28-46
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
American Business ◽  
World War ◽  
European Currency ◽  
Debt Policy

This chapter argues that elite factions of the American business, banking, and farm sectors grasped that war debt payments were intimately related to the controversies over German reparations, the restoration of European currency stability, the promotion of American exports, the alleviation of unemployment, and the revival of agricultural prosperity. In short, they were far from ignorant about the needs of European reconstruction after World War I. The chapter studies the origins of war debt legislation in a microscopic way. In doing so, it reveals the complexity of the policymaking process and the diversity of motives bearing on decision-makers. Here, the chapter demonstrates the role of business and economics in the making of U.S. foreign policy, as well as the pluralism within the business community, the messiness of the legislative process, and the salience of organizational pressures within executive branch departments.

Cinema's Military Industrial Complex

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
World War ◽  
Film Exhibition ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
The Military

Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex examines how the American military has used cinema and related visual, sonic, and mobile technologies to further its varied aims. The essays in this book address the way cinema was put to work for purposes of training, orientation, record keeping, internal and external communication, propaganda, research and development, tactical analysis, surveillance, physical and mental health, recreation, and morale. The contributors examine the technologies and types of films that were produced and used in collaboration among the military, film industry, and technology manufacturers. The essays also explore the goals of the American state, which deployed the military and its unique modes of filmmaking, film exhibition, and film viewing to various ends. Together, the essays reveal the military’s deep investment in cinema, which began around World War I, expanded during World War II, continued during the Cold War (including wars in Korea and Vietnam), and still continues in the ongoing War on Terror.

The Fascist Turn in the Dance of Serge Lifar

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Franko
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
World War ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Critical Discourses

This book is an examination of neoclassical ballet initially in the French context before and after World War I (circa 1905–1944) with close attention to dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar. Since the critical discourses analyzed indulged in flights of poetic fancy a distinction is made between the Lifar-image (the dancer on stage and object of discussion by critics), the Lifar-discourse (the writings on Lifar as well as his own discourse), and the Lifar-person (the historical actor). This topic is further developed in the final chapter into a discussion of the so-called baroque dance both as a historical object and as a motif of contemporary experimentation as it emerged in the aftermath of World War II (circa 1947–1991) in France. Using Lifar as a through-line, the book explores the development of critical ideas of neoclassicism in relation to his work and his drift toward a fascist position that can be traced to the influence of Nietzsche on his critical reception. Lifar’s collaborationism during the Occupation confirms this analysis. The discussion of neoclassicism begins in the final years of the nineteenth-century and carries us through the Occupation; then track the baroque in its gradual development from the early 1950s through the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Investing in a Wealthy Resource-Based Colonial Economy: International Business in Australia before World War I

2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-346
Author(s):  
Simon Ville ◽  
David Tolmie Merrett
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
World War I ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
International Business ◽  
Business Community ◽  
Foreign Firms ◽  
Portfolio Investment ◽  
World War ◽  
Multinational Activity ◽  
Colonial Economy

The article is a rare investigation into multinational activity in a wealthy resource-based colonial economy toward the end of the first wave of globalization. It challenges the conventional wisdom that multinationals had a limited presence in pre-1914 Australia, where government loans and portfolio investment from Britain into infrastructural and primary industries dominated. Our new database of nearly five hundred foreign firms, from various nations and spread across the host economy, shows a thriving and diverse international business community whose agency mattered for economic development in Australia. Colonial ties, natural resources, stable institutions, and high incomes all attracted foreign firms.

Dr Joseph Dudley ‘Benjy’ Benjafield: Microbiologist, soldier and Bentley Boy racing driver

2019 ◽  
pp. 096777201987609
Author(s):  
Liam McLoughlin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Clinical Course ◽  
World War ◽  
Civilian Life ◽  
College Hospital ◽  
Army Medical ◽  
Consultant Physician ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
Bacteriological Laboratory

Dr Joseph Dudley ‘Benjy’ Benjafield qualified from University College Hospital Medical School, London in 1912. He joined the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I and was in charge of the 37th Mobile Bacteriological Laboratory serving with the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force when the Spanish flu struck in late 1918. He observed the features and clinical course of the pandemic and published his findings in the British Medical Journal in 1919. On return to civilian life, he was appointed as Consultant physician to St George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London where he remained in practice for the rest of his career. He was a respected amateur gentleman racing driver frequently racing at the Brooklands circuit from 1924 after buying a Bentley 3-litre and entering the Le Mans 24 h race seven times between 1925 and 1935, winning in 1927. He was one of an elite club of young men known as The Bentley Boys and went on to become a founding member of the British Racing Drivers Club (BRDC) in 1927. He rejoined the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II, serving briefly again in Egypt. He died in 1957.

Morality for the “Democracy of God”: George Albert Coe and the Liberal Protestant Critique of American Character Education, 1917–1940

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Setran
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Character Education ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
World War ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
American Character

AbstractIn the years between World War I and World War II in the United States, public and religious educators engaged in an extended struggle to define the appropriate nature of character education for American youth. Within a post-war culture agonizing over the sanctions of moral living in the wake of mass violence and vanishing certitudes, a group of conservative educators sought to shore up traditional values through the construction of morality codes defining the characteristics of the “good American.” At the same time, a group of liberal progressive educators set forth a vigorous critique of these popular character education programs. This article analyzes the nature of this liberal critique by looking at one leading liberal spokesperson, George Albert Coe. Coe taught at Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College, Columbia University, and used his platform in these institutions to forge a model of character education derived from the combined influences of liberal Protestantism and Deweyan progressive education. Coe posited a two-pronged vision for American moral education rooted in the need for both procedural democracy (collaborative moral decision making) and a democratic social order. Utilizing this vision of the “democracy of God,” Coe demonstrated the inadequacies of code-based models, pointing in particular to the anachronism of traditional virtues in a world of social interdependence, the misguided individualism of the virtues, and the indoctrinatory nature of conservative programs. He proposed that youth be allowed to participate in moral experimentation, adopting ideals through scientific testing rather than unthinking allegiance to authoritative commands. Expanding the meaning of morality to include social as well as personal righteousness, he also made character education a vehicle of social justice. In the end, I contend that Coe's democratic model of character education, because of its scientific epistemological hegemony and devaluing of tradition, actually failed to promote a truly democratic character.

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