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Geographical Differences in the Use of the Corporation in American Manufacturing in 1899
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2011
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Exploration of the data on the character of the ownership of manufacturing establishments presented in the 1900 Census volumes has revealed some challenging phenomena. Buried in this material, for example, is the somewhat unexpected information that the corporation was used extensively in manufacturing establishments in such localities as Arizona, Nevada, Washington, and California, but to a much smaller degree in places like New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, where by 1900 the corporation might be assumed to have become well established as a form of business organization.
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References
1 See, for example. United States Bureau of the Census, Manufactures, 1905 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), Part I, p. liv,Google Scholar particularly the note to Table VIII.
2 In addition to the hand trades, the Census of 1900 used fourteen major industrial groups.
The following are illustrative of fifteen subcategories of these other fourteen groups that, for present purposes particularly, might also have been taken out of the total data in order to make the remainder conform closer to a present-day definition of manufacturing: photography, electrical construction and repair, hand-knit goods, and tin ???? wood. The fifteen subcatcgories, however, form but a small part of the 335 subcategories that make up the fourteen major groups, exclusive of the hand trades. Since the additional effort required to eliminate these fifteen subcategories would have far outweighed the additional gain, the hand trades alone were removed.
3 Derived from data in Moody, John, The Truth About the Trusts: A Description and Analysis of the American Trust Movement (New York: Moody Publishing Company, 1904), pp. 453–68, 478Google Scholar.
4 Loc. cit.
5 Census Reports, Vol. VII, Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, 7: Manufactures, Part I, clxxxi and clxxix–clxxx.
6 Cook, William W., The Corporation Problem (New York: G. P. Putn'am's Sons, 1891), pp. 110–13.Google Scholar
7 See Table 6 (pp. 484–500) of the 1900 Census volume cited in note 5.
8 Here and elsewhere in the study where a simple correlation coefficient was calculated ranked data, use was made of Spearman's formula:
where D is the difference in rank and n the number of pairs of items.
A rank correlation of the absolute numbers of actual and theoretical corporation-owned establiihments for the 51 areas yielded a coefficient of +.97, but that correlation has a spurious element—the actual and the theoretical numbers for each state (or territory) are related to total number of establishments in the same jurisdiction. A ξ2 test confirmed the spurious character of this correlation coefficient.
9 The national percentages were computed from the data of Table 9 of the 1900 Census volume cited in note 5.
10 The significance of this coefficient is indicated by the fact that rank correlations greater than .29 are observed only about 5 per cent of the time in cases of forty-nine sample observations from populations in which there is no real relation between the variables in question.
11 See Table a (pp. 20–55) of the 1900 Census volume cited in note 5. In that Census table the data on three small industries of the original 335 were merged with three other unimportant industries; so these six were excluded from this portion of the study.
12 The percentages were computed from Table 9 (pp. 511–80) of the 1900 Census volume cited in note 5.
13 A rank correlation was run for the forty-nine areas (those set forth in Table I with Oklahoma and the Indian Territory combined, but without Alaska) between the residuals referred to above and the date of statehood—the latter being used as a rough index of the age of an area. The rank correlation was only +.53. It must be remembered, however, that the date of statehood is not a very delicate measure of age: each of the original thirteen sates had to be given the same rank (7); and the three territories of 1899 (Oklahoma and the Indian Territory being treated as a single unit), likewise, had to be given the same rank (48). Moreover, statehood is really more a matter of political development or maneuvering than an index of economic maturity.
14 For semiannual earnings of the national banks, by locality, from September I, 1895, to September I, 1900, see Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Gurrency…December 3, 1900, House of Representatives, 56th Cong., ad Sess., Doc. No. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900), pp. 422–23Google Scholar.
15 Evans, G. Heberton Jr, “A Sketch of American Business Organization, 1832–1900,” The Journal of Political Economy, LX, No. 6 (12 1952), 475–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Loc. cit.