Assaults on the “money power” had a profound influence on public policies in twentieth-century America. Tracing the history of the “money trust” controversy through the first half of this century, Professor Carosso concludes that the attacks were largely unjustified, either on economic or legal grounds.

Professor Gitelman suggests that the causes of industrial violence were similar in the United States and Europe, and that the apparently higher incidence of strike violence in this country was due to the greater willingness and/or ability of American management to utilize strategies of replacing striking workers and deploying armed men.

An examination of the chief executives of leading British railways from 1850 through 1922 indicates that they emerged from predominantly upper-middle and upper class origins, and that they represented a new kind of bureaucratic business elite which enjoyed rising incomes and growing social status. In addition, available evidence reveals nothing to suggest that “executive immobility” was characteristic of British railway management, or that the railways were particularly inefficient or unprogressive in their choice of senior managers.

Canadian history has traditionally received relatively little study outside Canada itself, despite the fact that the Canadian past is a fascinating and rich story indeed, one which has generated an admirable body of historical literature. And, as those interested in the history of business and the historical interaction of business and society would expect, within Canadian historiography there has traditionally been relatively little emphasis on business history The publication of the present collection of essays has a twofold purpose – to increase, however modestly, non-Canadians' knowledge of Canadian history, and to extend the body of scholarly work devoted to Canadian business and economic history.

This study examines the complex process of the transfer of technology in the early stages of industrialization. The manner and timing of the selective acquisition of portions of Britain's new textile technology by entrepreneurs in the Philadelphia region were determined by the subtle interplay of market forces, technological constraints, and active efforts to encourage or discourage the transfer.

Two opposing groups of business interests — large, internationally-oriented financiers on the one hand and local businessmen and small manufacturers on the other — engaged in economically-based political conflict over the proper nature of the federal system in early twentieth-century Canada. The national financial community proved unable to protect its conception of private property rights by legal and political means at the national level, and the resulting victory of provincial rather than federal control over property rights made possible the creation of a publicly owned hydro-electric system in Ontario.

The za was a leading medieval Japanese economic institution, often likened to the European guild. Professor Yamamura analyzes the rise and subsequent decline of za from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, paying special attention to their influence on the development of commercial activity.

Professor Morris' investigation of American railway management indicates that the railroads, which had been such innovative institutions in the nineteenth century, clung to ossified and outmoded managerial practices after the industry reached maturity. Inbred and inflexible systems of recruitment and promotion, he argues, were a noteworthy aspect of the economic decline of American railroads in the twentieth century.

The 1920's and early 1930's witnessed the beginnings of federal oil regulation in the United States. Professor Nordhauser argues that oil executives rather than government officials led the way in the movement for regulation and that their dominant goals were the stabilization of prices and profits.

Intimate cooperation between American investment bankers and the diplomats of the Department of State occurred in the early 1920s because both groups shared similar goals and interests in Mexico. The resulting exercise in dollar diplomacy achieved some immediate ends but proved very short-sighted and self-defeating in the end.

Recent diplomatic historians have explained much of American expansionism at the end of the nineteenth century as the product of domestic industrial overcapacity and the resulting need to seek foreign markets. Evidence of business behavior, however, indicates that overseas expansion and exports were not a very important avenue through which U.S. businessmen sought to control prices and output. Indeed, in most of the industries which did engage in significant foreign activities, their expansion was usually the result of genuine competitive advantages rather than a sign of economic ill health.

Professor Bliss suggests that the Canadian anti-trust tradition was much more similar to the British experience than to the policies adopted in the United States. At no time, he argues, did Canadian legislation significantly expand the common law prohibition of undue or unreasonable restraints of trade, and the few prosecutions after 1900 had no significant effect in inhibiting the thrust of business resistance to market forces.

Professor Acheson presents the collective social portraits of two groups of leading Canadian industrialists, one from the years 1880–1885 and the other from 1905–1910. He considers such factors as ethnic and religious traditions, birthplaces, education, family backgrounds, career patterns, political and social activities, economic mobility, and regional differentials in analyzing the changing composition of the two elites.

The adoption in 1972 of a new name by a major American oil company had deep historical roots reaching back to the 1911 Supreme Court decision in the Standard Oil antitrust case and to subsequent marketing conflicts between the Standard companies.

Professor Abrahams edits a record of a 1913 conversation between reformer Louis Brandeis and Thomas W. Lamont of J. P. Morgan & Co. In the wake of the Pujo investigation of the “money trust,” the two discussed the nature and extent of economic power wielded by investment bankers as well as some specific issues such as interlocking directorates, competitive bidding for security issues, and greater publicity about securities transactions. This document reflects the long-run, fundamental conflict between social critics fearful of the concentration of economic power in America and businessmen who disclaim power because they believe their behavior is controlled by objective business considerations which operate for the good of society as a whole.

While events of major significance for banking occurred on the national scene in the populist and progressive years, noteworthy changes also materialized on the state level. Like their brethren elsewhere in the country, California bankers struggled through their organizations with such problems as how to achieve “sound banking,” how to influence the political process in their state, and how to give banking more of the trappings of professionalism.

The growth of the United States' economic influence in twentieth-century Canada was intimately related to the continuation of the “National Policy” of protectionist tariffs. Professor Scheinberg argues that Canadians initially welcomed America's consciously expansionist thrust, and that they eventually became entangled in the problems of seeking rapid economic growth along with economic independence from both the older imperialism of Great Britain and the newer variety represented by the United States.