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24 results

Page 1 of 2

  • RHETORIC OF THE STANDARDS: THE DEBATE OVER GOLD AND SILVER IN THE 1890s

  • Wyatt Wells
  • Journal:
    The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era / Volume 14 / Issue 1 / January 2015
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    19 December 2014, pp. 49-68
    Print publication:
    January 2015

  • In the 1890s, questions about whether to base the American currency upon gold or silver dominated public discourse and eventually forced a realignment of the political parties. The matter often confuses modern observers, who have trouble understanding how such a technically complex—even arcane—issue could arouse such passions. The fact that no major nation currently backs its currency with precious metal creates the suspicion that the issue was a “red herring” that distracted from matters of far greater importance. Yet the rhetoric surrounding the “Battle of the Standards” indicates that the more sophisticated advocates of both sides understood that, in the financial context of the 1890s, the contest between gold and silver not only had important economic implications but would substantially affect the future development of the United States.

  • Public Power in the Eisenhower Administration

  • Wyatt Wells
  • Journal:
    Journal of Policy History / Volume 20 / Issue 2 / April 2008
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    27 April 2009, pp. 227-262

  • In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the White House determined to reverse twenty years of federal policy toward electric utilities. His predecessors, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, had aggressively expanded public power, but Eisenhower considered this “creeping socialism,” and he intended to restrict it.

  • Counterpoint to Reform: Gilbert H. Montague and the Business of Regulation

  • Wyatt Wells
  • Journal:
    Business History Review / Volume 78 / Issue 3 / Autumn 2004
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 December 2011, pp. 423-450
    Print publication:
    Autumn 2004

  • During a career that stretched from the Progressive Era through the 1950s, Gilbert H. Montague served businesses as a lawyer and lobbyist, managing relations between companies and the government. In this capacity he had a significant impact on the evolution of regulation, particularly antitrust law. Just as important, his career provides valuable insight into the activities and attitudes of the class made up of corporate lawyers and lobbyists, which constituted an important part of the system of regulated capitalism that emerged in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century.

  • Certificates and Computers: The Remaking of Wall Street, 1967 to 1971

  • Wyatt Wells
  • Journal:
    Business History Review / Volume 74 / Issue 2 / Summer 2000
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    13 December 2011, pp. 193-235
    Print publication:
    Summer 2000

  • Events in the late 1960s reshaped the securities industry. Trading volume increased sharply, with the number of shares changing hands on the New York Exchange growing from five million a day in 1965 to twelve million a day in 1968. This expansion overwhelmed the mechanisms brokers used to transfer securities and keep records, which relied heavily on paper and pen. They responded by purchasing computers, but these machines were expensive and demanded more sophisticated management than most firms could provide. Accordingly, many companies botched the process. Moreover, trading volume declined sharply in 1969 and 1970, cutting deeply into brokerage revenue. These factors combined to create a crisis that had, by the end of 1970, forced nearly a sixth of the nation's brokerage firms out of business. Yet this crisis also opened the way for large, integrated companies, which, by the 1990s, dominated the securities industry and conducted business on a scale unimagined thirty years earlier.

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