State regulators played a large part in constructing the American regulatory system from the late nineteenth century to the midtwentieth. They faced an adversary relationship not only with businesses but also, beginning with passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, with national regulators. Shaping a process of “pragmatic federalism,” the state regulators forged a cooperative regulatory regime in which they and national regulators controlled the nations's railroads. In the 1930s and 1940s, state regulators extended the cooperative approach to numerous other regulated industries. These findings challenge the argument that the Shreveport case ended meaningful state regulation and suggest that the rise of big government included a continued commitment to the federalist framework of the U.S. Constitution, at least to the mid-twentieth century.

Chambers of commerce were the main pressure groups serving as intermediaries between the business elite and the government in Great Britain and Brazil in the nineteenth century. The most important problem they faced in both nations was promoting a legal and institutional framework that would facilitate economic expansion. In both nations, the critical factors affecting this task were the need of the state for the expert advice that business pressure groups could offer, the traditional relationship between business and government, and especially the attitude of a historically dominant landed elite.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) played an important role in the emerging conservative movement in the United States, both before and after World War II, but its contribution to the increasing militarism of that movement has received little scrutiny. Between 1958 and 1975, a combination of organizational changes peculiar to NAM and political pressures from both the right and the left led NAM to adopt and maintain a militaristic posture. In the late 1950s, a decline in the organization's membership resulted in a take over by larger corporations, which purged the board of its ultraconservative leadership. The reorganized board established a National Defense Committee (NDC) in order to promote defense industry membership and, by 1962, had selected a new permanent president, Werner Gullander. Under Gullander, the NDC moved NAM in the direction of support for defense expansion during the early 1960s.

At the time these photographs originated in an unspecified location in late-nineteenth-century China, the Chinese had been cultivating tea (Camellia sinensis) and processing it for almost two millennia. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, after decades of false starts and ceaseless experimentation, British entrepreneurs in India and Ceylon and the Dutch in Java successfully initiated plantation cultivation, pioneered the mechanized processing of black tea, and launched vigorous advertising campaigns to foster corporate sales worldwide.