Western Union and the creation of the American corporate order, 1845-1893 / Joshua D. Wolff, Columbia University.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wolff, Joshua D., 1976- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Western Union Telegraph Company.

Telegraph--United States--History--19th century.

Telegraph.

Telecommunication--United States--Management--History--19th century.

Telecommunication.

Monopolies--United States--History--19th century.

Monopolies.

Corporations--United States--History--19th century.

Corporations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 305 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Other Title:

Western Union & the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This work chronicles the rise of Western Union Telegraph from its origins in the helter-skelter ferment of antebellum capitalism to its apogee as the first corporation to monopolize an industry on a national scale. The battles that raged over Western Union's monopoly on nineteenth-century American telecommunications - in Congress, in courts, and in the press - illuminate the fierce tensions over the rising power of corporations after the Civil War and the reshaping of American political economy. The telegraph debate reveals that what we understand as the normative relationship between private capital and public interest is the product of a historical process that was neither inevitable nor uncontested. Western Union's monopoly was not the result of market logic or a managerial revolution, but the conscious creation of entrepreneurs protecting their investments. In the process, these entrepreneurs elevated economic liberalism above traditional republican principles of public interest and helped create a new corporate order.

Contents:

The meanest property in the world

Midwife to monopoly

"An entering wedge" against monopoly

"A very big thing"

No middle ground

The specter of competition

First time tragedy, second time farce

Octopus of the wires.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

ISBN:

1-139-89056-5

1-107-24120-0

1-107-25081-1

1-107-24998-8

1-107-24832-9

1-107-24749-7

0-511-99804-X

OCLC:

852154641