Master craftsmen played a critical role in launching the Industrial Revolution in America. In this case study of artisan entrepreneurship, Professor Kornblith analyzes the career of Jonas Chickering (1798–1853), the foremost American piano manufacturer before the emergence of the Steinways. By revolutionizing the way in which pianos were made, Chickering—with the help of others—turned a modest craft operation into a major industrial enterprise. Yet, Kornblith contends, he remained true to the craftsman's goal of artistic excellence and won the respect of his employees as well as of the public at large. By the force of his example, Chickering contributed to the acceptance of technological change within the trade and, more broadly, to the legitimation of industrial capitalism within American culture.

Sensing the opportunity to reap great profits by selling fruit to hungry urban consumers back East, nineteenth-century entrepreneurs flocked to California to establish commercial orchards and citrus groves. Invasions of fruit pests, however, threatened years of investment and patient cultivation, and made the public wary of the uneven quality of California fruit. In this article, Mr. Seftel describes how fruit growers organized and called on government to check the menace. Between 1880 and 1920, orchard owners created an elaborate regulatory network, linking local, state, federal, and academic institutions with their enterprise. These fruit-growing capitalists came to believe that only compulsory compliance with government-enforced pest control regulations could ensure their success. During these four decades, the growing horticultural bureaucracy helped transform California fruit growing from an entrepreneurial venture of uncertain promise into the state's second largest industry.

The 1906 Food and Drug Act is widely believed to be an early example of federal legislation designed entirely to protect consumers. Professor Wood shows that in fact many Progressive Era food and drug manufacturers had substantial interests in achieving passage of such a law and that they worked actively toward this end. In particular, the desire of businesspeople to secure advantage over domestic competitors and to expand markets to interstate and foreign commerce played a significant role in businesses' support for federal food and drug regulations. The article shows that the strategic use of public policy by business—a relatively recent development in theories of business-government relations—is by no means a new development in practice.

Thomas Edison's achievements as an inventor-entrepreneur tend to overshadow the fact that his knowledge and interests extended well beyond the applied sciences. In 1891, a crucial and busy year of his life, Edison took time to set forth his views on one of the most important issues of the day, government regulation of business. Edison's notebook remained almost untouched for nearly one hundred years until Professor Rubin began a careful examination of its contents. His editing and annotation of the manuscript reveal the considerable depth of Edison's intellect and his capacity to probe economic issues in the same thorough manner with which he approached research problems in the laboratory.

In this note on the history of automobile distribution methods in the United States, Dr. Marx examines the development of franchised dealerships. He traces the changes in the nature of consumer demand and the growing complexity in relations between manufacturers and their sales force that led to the predominance of the independent dealer franchise in the automobile “distribution channel.”

The preservation and study of unpublished business records has long been one of business history's most distinctive contributions to scholarship. To provide a forum for archivists and historians to share their knowledge of specific archival collections, the Review has commissioned a series of essays on archival history and research opportunities. In this essay, the first in the series, Ms. Florence Bartoshesky, curator of manuscripts and archives at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library, reviews the history of this major collection of business records.