Rulers of the Ruhr: Leadership and Authority in German Big Business Before 1914

1979 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elaine Glovka Spencer
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Steel Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Iron And Steel Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
Professional Management ◽  
The Social

The rise of heavy industry and its managerial elite in the German Empire and in the United States provides stimuhting parallels and contrasts. Professor Spencer discusses the social constraints under which a professional management class developed in the German coal, iron, and steel industry during the generation before World War I. Ranking distinctly below the landed aristocracy and the governmental bureaucracy (both of which they would gladly have emulated), and preoccupied with the maintenance of order in the midst of rapid economic and social change, German managers used their power and influence to sustain and manipulate existing systems of authority, and came to play no broader role in the development of their commonwealth than did their American counterparts.

The Engineer in Society

1968 ◽  
Vol 183 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antony Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Steel Industry ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Gross National Product ◽  
Iron And Steel Industry ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Economic

The paper is in three parts. The first concerns the social and economic implications of technological progress with particular reference to electric power generation, the iron and steel industry and transportation. The second part relates to the fundamental principles of money as a means of payment and a measure of value; also explains the controlling factors which regulate the purchasing power of money. In the third part the author suggests what might be achieved if, by more modern economic policies, redundant resources were to be transformed into national assets and increased gross national product.

scholarly journals Doing It for Themselves: The Steel Company of Wales and the Study of American Industrial Productivity, 1945–1955

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
LOUISE MISKELL
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Steel Industry ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Iron And Steel Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Steel Company ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
Industrial Productivity ◽  
Steel Sector ◽  
Anglo American

This article examines the efforts of one British steel company to acquire knowledge about American industrial productivity in the first post-World War II decade. It argues that company information-gathering initiatives in this period were overshadowed by the work of the formal productivity missions of the Marshall Plan era. In particular, it compares the activities of the Steel Company of Wales with the Anglo-American Council on Productivity (AACP), whose iron and steel industry productivity team report was published in 1952. Based on evidence from its business records, this study shows that the Steel Company of Wales was undertaking its own international productivity investigations, which started earlier and were more extensive and differently focused from those of the AACP. It makes the case for viewing companies as active participants in the gathering and dissemination of productivity knowledge in Britain’s steel sector after 1945.

Charles Wolfe, “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna”

Heart Beats ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Robson
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
John Moore

This chapter resurrects “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna.” Charles Wolfe's poem, a reimagining of the hasty interment of a fallen general after one of the land battles in the Napoleonic wars, was repeatedly quoted by soldiers and other individuals during the American Civil War when they found themselves having to organize, or witness, the burials of dead comrades. In recent years, cultural historians of Great Britain have tried to account for the massive shift in burial and memorial practices for the common soldier that occurred between 1815 and 1915. The chapter argues that the presence of Wolfe's poem in the hearts and minds of ordinary people played its part in creating the social expectations that led to the establishment of the National Cemeteries in the United States, and thus, in due course, the mass memorialization of World War I.

The Myth of the Pro-Colonialist SPD: German Social Democracy and Imperialism before World War I

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 452-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens-Uwe Guettel
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
World War ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Domestic Reform

In his seminalThe German Empire, published in German in 1973, historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler posited that in respect to the German Empire's colonial policies only the SPD, unlike all other political parties, “retained its capacity to take a critical view on matters of principle.” Moreover, in Wehler's view, the SPD's critical stance on this and many other political questions along with the party's massive electoral gains in the 1912 parliamentary elections precipitated a situation in the years immediately preceding the Great War that prompted the German Empire's “old elites” to bet increasingly on a major military conflict to solve the Empire's internal political tensions (“leap into darkness”). Thus in Wehler's view the Social Democrats contributed in no small part to Imperial Germany's perceived domestic crisis, which prompted the infamous “old elites” to choose war over domestic reform in 1914.

Welfare State and Labor Mobility: The Impact of Bismarck's Social Legislation on German Emigration before World War I

2008 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID KHOUDOUR-CASTÉRAS
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
World War ◽  
Emigration Rate ◽  
Labor Earnings ◽  
Wage Rates ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

The rapid decline of German emigration before World War I constitutes a puzzle that traditional explanations have difficulty in solving. The article shows that the social legislation implemented by Bismarck during the 1880s—the most developed at the time—played a key role in this process. Indeed, candidates for migration considered not only the gap between “direct wages” (labor earnings) in the United States and Germany, but also the differential in “indirect wages,” that is, social benefits. In that way, Bismarck's insurance system partly offset low wage rates in Germany and furthered the fall of the emigration rate.O sprecht! warum zogt ihr von dannen?Das Neckartal hat Wein und Korn;Der Schwarzwald steht voll finstrer Tannen,Im Spessart klingt des Ålplers Horn.Wie wird es in den fremden WäldernEuch nach der Heimatberge Grün,Nach Deutschlands gelben Weizenfeldern,Nach seinen Rebenhügeln ziehn!Ferdinand Freiligrath1

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael K. Rosenow
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
World War ◽  
Common People ◽  
Attitudes Toward Death ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Accidents

This book examines the rituals of dying and the politics of death among the working class during the period 1865–1920. It considers how wageworkers and their families experienced death in the United States between the Civil War and the end of World War I by focusing on John Henry—one of the hundreds of thousands of workers who died in service to industrialization—and the lack of surviving accounts about what happened to his dead body. The book draws on case studies to investigate how workers used the rituals of death to interpret, accommodate, and resist their living and working conditions; the ways social class shaped Americans' attitudes toward death; and the social and cultural contexts that shaped interpretations of workers' deaths resulting from work accidents. The book shows how rituals of death reflected the ways that working communities articulated beliefs about family, community, and class and negotiated social relationships—how common people interpreted their roles in the industrial republic.

Progress in Iron and Steel: 1870–1913

1961 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Orsagh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Steel Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Iron And Steel Industry ◽  
Iron And Steel ◽  
The United Kingdom

At the beginning of the period 1870–1913 the United Kingdom was the acknowledged leader in the iron and steel industry; at its end she was in some sense or other a third-rate iron and steel producer, surpassed by the United States and Germany. The first section of this paper will formulate definitions of “loss of leadership” which are statistically verifiable and economically significant, and will determine whether or not, for a given sense of the term, it is true that the United Kingdom fell behind the other countries. The second section considers some of the factors which led to the U. K.'s “loss of leadership”.

scholarly journals "Memorization and Memorialization: 'The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna' "

2009 ◽  
pp. 0 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Robson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Test Case ◽  
World War ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Good Proportion ◽  
John Moore

Abstract This article addresses the rubric of "memory and materiality" by considering how works of literature held within individual minds might have contributed to material changes in the world at large. For a good proportion of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the most important relationship between literature and millions of English-speaking people was created by one particular pedagogical regimen: the memorization and recitation of short poetic pieces. I take as my test case a single work from the schoolroom canon—Charles Wolfe's 1817 poem, "The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna"—and examine the various ways in which lines and phrases from these verses were explicitly or implicitly cited by people caught up in the bloody turmoil of the American Civil War, the conflict which first witnessed the widespread development of state-sponsored practices to commemorate the corpses of common soldiers. I argue here that the presence of Wolfe's poem in the minds of ordinary individuals played its part in creating the social expectations that led to the establishment of the National Cemeteries in the United States, and thus, in due course, the mass memorialization of World War I.

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