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Chapter 6. Capitalism, Power, and the Historian: (1934–40)
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C H A P T E R 6 Capitalism, Power, and the Historian (1934–40) In emphasizing the connection between economic strength and military security, Nevins sought to challenge public skepticism about the ability of American business to manage the nation’s productive and distributive resources without substantial government intervention. Nevins took the position that Americans needed to discard their moral outrage and begin to recognize the contribution business leaders had made and were making to America’s economic growth and development. It was also time to acknowledge, he would write in his biography of John D. Rockefeller, that the modern corporation , specifically, and economic concentration, generally, were no longer the threats to individual freedom and economic opportunity that writers had once portrayed them.1 Though not excusing its abuses, he contended that there was evidence by the late thirties that business had become more socially responsible, particularly in its acceptance, albeit sometimes forced by government action, of labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively. To bring these developments to light, Nevins began during the thirties an effort that carried over to the rest of his career of encouraging historians and journalists to devote more attention to the writing of business history . Such studies, he suggested, would relieve Americans of their impression of businessmen as robber barons. It was a call to arms for historians and journalists to play a role in safeguarding the country against the threats to capitalism from the pernicious influences of both fascism and communism.2 Ironically, though he appreciated the New Deal’s emphasis on the need for structural changes affecting the legal and financial arrangements of conducting business and promoting economic growth and competition in the marketplace, he 113 consistently found his way back to a moralistic interpretation of business that reflected his belief in the Progressive-era values of fair play and ethical behavior. I Nevins had often expressed his admiration of America’s businessmen and inventors in the editorials he wrote for the New York Evening Post and the New York World. He took particular interest in lesser-known figures. He might praise the genius of Edison, but he also recognized the accomplishments of Jacob Haish, the inventor of barbed wire, which enabled Western settlers to fence in their property to withstand turbulent weather and stampeding herds of cattle and horses. “A few strands,” Nevins wrote, “converted the open range into a closed preserve.”3 Such inventors not only contributed to America’s economic development, but helped to increase its military security as well, as demonstrated by John Bausch, who built up an American optics industry that during the First World War furnished instruments for the army.4 Given their contribution to America ’s economic growth and military security, Nevins wondered why historians had shied away from writing about these figures. In a review in McNaught’s Monthly in 1925, he asked, “[W]here is the life of a great merchant like A. T. Stewart, of the founder of a great industry like Philip D. Armour, or of an outstanding inventor like Elias Howe?”5 Though he saw some evidence that writers were beginning to look at this phenomenon—he cited biographies of Charles Steinmetz and John Wanamaker, among others—he considered most of the efforts aimed, as in some political biography, more at entertaining than at educating. Nevins was not alone in his criticism of the way historians and writers approached the study of America’s economic leaders. The economic historian Harold Faulkner argued that most books on this subject were “either unctuous and unsatisfactory ,” like George Harvey’s biography of Henry Frick, or “savagely debunking and unsatisfactory,” like Ida Tarbell’s life of Elbert Gary.6 Nevins believed historians writing about business leaders should examine their subjects in the same way as they would if they were studying political figures. That is, rather than focus on personality, they should place their subjects against the background of the historical period in which they lived and the larger policy and social issues of those times. He criticized the journalist Burton Hendrick for failing in his biography of Andrew Carnegie (1932) to take a “more critical at114 Immersed in Great Affairs [3.19.31.73] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 07:19 GMT) titude toward the whole structure of which Carnegie’s business became so prominent a part.” He wrote, “Was the great quasi-monopoly which he built up, and which by 1900 overshadowed the steel trade of the world, a healthy...