President Calvin Coolidge captured the spirit of the 1920s when he announced …
President Calvin Coolidge captured the spirit of the 1920s when he announced in a speech before the Society of American Newspaper Editors that "the chief business of the American people is business." Coolidge's aphorism revealed the centrality of commerce to the nation and its culture in the 1920s, even while it concealed some of the wrenching cultural changes required to accommodate a commercial civilization. An even more forceful publicist for the view that business and spirituality were compatible was Bruce Barton. The son of a Congregational minister, Barton cofounded one of the nation's largest and best-known advertising agencies. Barton's greatest fame, however, came from the best-selling book that he published in 1925, The Man Nobody Knows, in which he crafted a new vision of Christ and Christianity that was not simply compatible with, but organically connected to, the business-oriented 1920s. Barton's aggressive efforts to merge business and Christianity may seem comical in the late 20th century, but his exertions were sincerely felt by him and sincerely received by many Americans. The Jaqua Way, a business publication, offered on its first page the hymn, "A Man's Thanksgiving," in the which author thanked the "God of business men" for "my customers and for the power to serve them faithfully."
Introduces tools from strategy and economics to look systematically at marketing strategy. …
Introduces tools from strategy and economics to look systematically at marketing strategy. Topics include how to find profit opportunities, how to create competitive advantage, and how to challenge competitive advantage. Taught as a mix of cases and lectures. The course is aimed at helping you look at the entire marketing mix in light of the strategy of the firm. It will be most helpful to students pursuing careers in which they need to look at the firm as a whole. Examples include consultants, investment analysts, entrepreneurs, and product managers. Objectives 1. Identify, evaluate, and develop marketing strategies. 2. Evaluate a firm's opportunities. 3. Anticipate competitive dynamics. 4. Evaluate the sustainability of competitive advantages.
Railroads were among the earliest U.S. industries to apply modern management principles …
Railroads were among the earliest U.S. industries to apply modern management principles to their operations. Beginning in the 1850s and 1860s, railroads were the first American businesses to have a large number of salaried managers and an internal organizational structure with clear lines of communication, responsibility, and authority. These managerial innovations, standard by the 1880s, were necessary to control a large number of employees and offices scattered over a vast geographical area. With the growing professionalization of railroad management came a burgeoning professional literature. Marshall M. Kirkman wrote prolifically about railroad management. This excerpt from his multi-volume The Science of Railways: Organization and Forces (1896) extolled the virtues of military-like discipline in the running of American railroads.
In the winter of 1876, testimony from a Pinkerton Detective Agency operative …
In the winter of 1876, testimony from a Pinkerton Detective Agency operative was used to destroy the Pennsylvania miners union, as 20 miners were accused of membership in a militant Irish organization called the Molly Maguires, convicted of murder, and hanged. The negative publicity from the trial effectively killed unionism in Pennsylvania mining for twenty years. This picture illustrated The Mollie Maguires and the Detectives, Allan Pinkerton's self-serving account of his detective agency's infiltration of the secret society of miners. Pinkerton's work in the service of the Reading Railroad typified the widespread use of private police and organized violence by railroads and other businesses to suppress unions.
When Boston native Benjamin Franklin entered Philadelphia in 1723, he had few …
When Boston native Benjamin Franklin entered Philadelphia in 1723, he had few coins in his pocket and scarce entrepreneurial skills. However, Franklin did have valuable training as a printer, and he came armed with some significant introductions to local printers. Printers and other craftsmen relied upon a network of masters, journeymen, and patrons to learn the craft and support themselves. Colonial printers needed expensive imported equipment, yet they had to make do with a limited market for their services--perhaps publishing a newspaper, an occasional pamphlet, or government publication. Franklin wrote his autobiography, from which this account is excerpted, many years after his career as an active printer had ended and his renown as a statesmen, scientist, and moral philosopher had spread.
The purpose of the lesson is to provide students with a brief …
The purpose of the lesson is to provide students with a brief history of the impetuous for the early 1900’s labor movement then contrast it with comparative labor and societal issues today. Retrieve the story of “My Cotton Dress” from https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/childlabor/cottondress
Topics and Learning Activities:
Labor laws, for people less than 18 years old, today will be presented,
The Industrial Revolution’s effects on society, the economy, emigration, and education will be presented.
Students will read “My Cotton Dress.”
Students will identify the Industrial Revolution’s societal issues that are being addressed in “My Cotton Dress.”
Students will identify the current labor laws that address the working conditions the children of the Industrial
Revolution experienced.
Students will be asked to identify similarities the 4 areas affected by the Industrial Revolution with those of the
information/technological revolution that America is currently experiencing.
The urban workplace changed dramatically in the early decades of the nineteenth …
The urban workplace changed dramatically in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The American Revolution, with its rampant egalitarianism, dissolved much of the paternalistic control once wielded by fathers, masters and other authority figures, as the anonymous author "Old Apprentice" made clear in his set of three letters to the New York Observer in 1826. But significant blame for this erosion rested with the manufacturers themselves. Eager to seize upon new markets with expanded production, they divided up tasks to produce cheaper clothing or shoes. Semiskilled and unskilled women and children performed this labor rather than apprentices or other workingmen of the traditional artisanal system. These changes also dissolved the traditional residential patterns, pushing working men out into the housing market. A loss of reciprocity and responsibility occurred on both sides.
Early nineteenth-century workers followed traditional workshop practices with a limited pace and …
Early nineteenth-century workers followed traditional workshop practices with a limited pace and intensity to their labor. Breaks for drink and food punctuated the workday in these recollections of a ship's captain of a New York City shipyard from 1835 (published in George McNeill's late nineteenth-century history of the labor movement). However, employers challenged these customs with the goal of obtaining greater efficiency and profit. Mechanics and artisans responded collectively by organized strikes or "turnouts." Despite the obstacles of planning these early collective actions, the ship carpenters 'strike for a ten-hour day proved successful in the mid-1830s. Even as new manufacturing complexes rose in Lowell and other factory towns, work patterns remained irregular in many trades; some craftsmen faced a growing division of labor and accompanying loss of independence. Irregular hours and unemployment always loomed, while cold winters would thrust many of those working outdoors out of work for the harshest season.
This capstone course is a group design project involving integration of nuclear …
This capstone course is a group design project involving integration of nuclear physics, particle transport, control, heat transfer, safety, instrumentation, materials, environmental impact, and economic optimization. It provides opportunities to synthesize knowledge acquired in nuclear and non-nuclear subjects and apply this knowledge to practical problems of current interest in nuclear applications design. Each year, the class takes on a different design project; this year, the project is a power plant design that ties together the creation of emission-free electricity with carbon sequestration and fossil fuel displacement. Students taking Graduate / Professional version complete additional assignments. This course is an elective subject in MIT’s underGraduate / Professional Energy Studies Minor. This Institute-wide program complements the deep expertise obtained in any major with a broad understanding of the interlinked realms of science, technology, and social sciences as they relate to energy and associated environmental challenges.
Coal mining and railroad work were the two most dangerous trades in …
Coal mining and railroad work were the two most dangerous trades in the United States in the early 20th century. Coal miners frequently died in spectacular explosions and cave-ins that could kill dozens or even hundreds at a time. Although most testimony about coal mining disasters came from survivors and observers, the men who suffocated to death in the Fraterville, Tennessee mines in May 1902 left behind their own grim account. Trapped in the mine after an explosion and with their air rapidly depleting, they wrote letters to their loved ones describing their final moments.
The most visible signs of industrialization in mid nineteenth-century America occurred in …
The most visible signs of industrialization in mid nineteenth-century America occurred in mushrooming factory towns such as Lowell, Massachusetts, but changes in manufacturing also took place in metropolises like New York City. Waves of immigrants entered the port cities 'small workshops, sites of intense craft activity. Cabinetmaking resisted mechanization and unskilled labor because the trade required intricate work on complex pieces of furniture. In his unpublished memoir German immigrant Ernst Hagen recalled that many of the leading names in nineteenth-century furniture, well represented today in museum collections, presided over large shops of toiling workers. Some employed over two hundred hands. The post-Civil War rise of western factories disrupted this urban system; skilled workers either found other employment or were relegated to margins of the trade such as repair work.
Farming was not the only occupation in early nineteenth-century rural America. Many …
Farming was not the only occupation in early nineteenth-century rural America. Many young entrepreneurs were able to take advantage of the countryside's increasing commercial activity and growing consumer desires by taking to the road to work. Chester Harding, born in Conway, Massachusetts, survived by working in a variety of country crafts as he related in his 1866 autobiography My Egotistigraphy. His early skill in painting signs led to his painting faces, and he grew more expert in portraiture as he practiced on his business patrons, providing them with a rare likeness to display in their homes. Initially far more artisan than artist, Harding, unlike most of his fellow itinerant and self-taught colleagues, ended up one of the most renowned academic artists in antebellum America.
Organizational Leadership and Change focuses on practical experience that blends theory and …
Organizational Leadership and Change focuses on practical experience that blends theory and practice. Students reflect on prior leadership experiences and then apply lessons learned to further develop their leadership capabilities. The course requires active participation in all leadership classes and/or activities as well as short deliverables throughout the program.
On September 19, 1873 the nation plunged into the longest and most …
On September 19, 1873 the nation plunged into the longest and most severe economic depression up to that time. Thousands of businesses, large and small, went bankrupt, and the human toll was immense: fully a million workers were unemployed by 1874, and in some cities, unemployment levels reached 25 percent. The depression delivered a fatal blow to Reconstruction, as northern businessmen shifted their attention away from the rights of African Americans. It also nearly destroyed the labor movement, as pre-depression wage gains were erased and union membership plummeted. Despite the ghastly appearance of the figure representing financial panic, this New York Daily Graphic cover cartoon of September 29, 1873, subscribed to the belief that such financial busts" cleansed the economy
Many travelers made their way to Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic colonies in …
Many travelers made their way to Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic colonies in the eighteenth century in search of economic opportunity, but not all experienced the fabulous success of Benjamin Franklin. William Moraley, born in 1699 into a modest artisanal family, was more typical. Economic cycles were often critical in determining migration patterns; approximately 73,000 people left for the British colonies in the1730s, twice the average of earlier in the century (17,000 arrived in Philadelphia). Like half of all European emigrants to North America in the eighteenth-century, Moraley faced grim conditions at home. After the death of his father, a journeyman clockmaker, Moraley possessed scarce resources and was imprisoned for debt. The thirty-year-old Moraley bound himself for five years as a servant in the British North American colonies. He titled his picaresque account of life in Britain and America The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant.
Shirley Young is President of Shirley Young Associates, LLC, a business advisory …
Shirley Young is President of Shirley Young Associates, LLC, a business advisory company for companies. Read about a successful Chinese-American woman who is an international trade specialist.
This course explores policy and planning for sustainable development. It critically examines …
This course explores policy and planning for sustainable development. It critically examines concept of sustainability as a process of social, organizational, and political development drawing on cases from the U.S. and Europe. It also explores pathways to sustainability through debates on ecological modernization; sustainable technology development, international and intergenerational fairness, and democratic governance.
During the last fifteen years, nations across the globe embarked on a …
During the last fifteen years, nations across the globe embarked on a historic transformation away from centrally planned economies to market-oriented ones. However, in the common pursuit for economic growth, these transition economies implemented widely different reform strategies with mixed results. With over a decade of empirical evidence now available, this new course examines this phenomenon that has pushed the discourse in a number of disciplines, requiring us to reconsider fundamental issues such as: - the proper relationship between business, government, and the public interest; - the possible synergies and tensions between economic growth and equity; and - how economic transition has reshaped cities. The premise of the course is that the primary issue in transition involves institution-building and re-building in different contexts.
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