Harold C. Livesay

Entrepreneurial Persistence Through the Bureaucratic Age

Taking issue with such earlier theorists as Schumpeter, who believed that the rise of bureaucratic structures would stifle the innovative process that lies at the heart of capitalism and thus lead on to socialism, Professor Livesay discusses the careers of three innovative leaders who used the bureaucratic form of organization to keep innovation alive and to realize its implications. He argues that with shrewd leaders like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford II (and less well-known ones like Howard Stoddard) at the helm, bureaucratic organizations have been the mechanism of highly dynamic policies rather than the agency of socialistic stasis.

The Lobdell Car Wheel Co., 1830-1867

While the growth of American railroads and textile mills from their beginnings through the Civil War has been extensively studied, much less attention has been given to smaller manufacturing firms which grew at the same time from job-shops to major units in the industrial structure. This paper studies one such firm, whose growth was a function of the skills of its proprietors, the benefits of its location, and the demand for manufactured items created by the growth of agricultural and transport sectors of the economy.

Oligopoly in small manufacturing industries

Throughout this century students of American industrial structure have labored to explain the concentration of production among a few large firms in major industries and the rise and evolution of the giant firm itself. Such scholars as Adolf A. Berle, Gardiner C. Means, J. S. Bain, M. A. Adelman, Carl Kaysen, Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, and Edith Penrose have done much to increase our understanding of the most important factors in the development of the twentieth-century American economy. Very little attention, however, has been focused on the question of whether concentration came exclusively in the major industries which are the preserve of the corporate giants. We undertook this study to determine if concentration existed in any small scale manufacturing industries in the twentieth century and, if so, in what kinds of industries and for what reasons. Our findings show that oligopoly has indeed occurred in many minor industries and that these small oligopolies fit discernible patterns. In addition, we found that in many cases the oligopolies existed in the latter decades of the nineteenth century as well.