May 1, 2006   link to syllabus   Link to handout on paper topics!        New! Link to Midterm Exam!

History 363: American Business History

Note: The take-home midterm is due at class time Monday, May 8.  (You can turn it in earlier if you wish.)  After class this Wednesday, I can stay around awhile longer to do a brief review session with those who want it.

I. Horizontal Integration        (a website about John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil)
        A. "Ropes of Sand"
        B.  Tight combinations--Merger Wave of 1897-1904

II. Controlling Big Business: Anti-Trust and its Limitations

    A. "Good" and "Bad" Big Business?
        1. Supreme Court and the "rule of reason"
        2. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and the Election of 1912

    B. Impact of Anti-Trust
        1. From Monopoly to Oligopoly
        2. From Establishing Competition to Protecting Competitors

                   
                 Teddy Roosevelt Hunts the "Bad Trusts"

III. Tycoon of the Week: James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke (1856-1925)
   brief history of Duke and American Tobacco Co.
        A. Breakthrough in production--Bonsack Machine
        B. New forms of advertising and marketing--forward vertical integration
        C. Horizontal integration--The American Tobacco Company
        D. The problem with cigars
        E. Anti-trust and its limits: 1911--from monopoly to oligopoly

                       
                        James B. Duke                                    Bonsack Cigarette Rolling Machine

            tobacco card               
                Hand-Roller --Advertising Card
                        1880s

IV. Big Business: Movement or Destiny?

        A. Industrial Patterns: Where Big Business Appeared
            1. Perishables-Meat, Bananas
            2. Packaged consumer products-soap, cigarettes, canned food
            3. Mass-produced Machinery-sewing machines, typewriters
            4. Large-scale machinery-elevators, boilers, generators

        B. The Survival of Smaller Firms

C. International Comparisons

D. Permanence

E. Technological Determinism?