Hagley Center program officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Lara Freidenfelds about her research into the history of marketers’ and advertisers’ intense targeting of pregnant women, and its implications for early pregnancy loss. In support of her project, Freidenfelds, a historian of science, received a research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society.   

Pregnant women today face a barrage of advertising designed to lock-in brand loyalty during an emotionally and culturally sensitive time. The pressure to buy and consume and participate in the market may begin with the first hint of pregnancy. This was not always the case. Dr. Freidenfelds discovered that it took decades of deliberate effort to develop the techniques and infrastructures that pregnant women and new parents face today in American consumer culture. The story of one brand of baby bottle unlocked the fascinating tale. 

For more Hagley History Hangouts, and to learn more about the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, visit us online at hagley.org.

The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America with Lara Freidenfelds

In Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain explores how fast food restaurants saturated black neighborhoods and became, as well, a focal point in the development of “black capitalism.” To tell this story, she charts a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who―in the troubled years after King's assassination―believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality. With the discourse of social welfare all but evaporated, federal programs under presidents Johnson and Nixon promoted a new vision for racial justice: that the franchising of fast food restaurants, by black citizens in their own neighborhoods, could finally improve the quality of black life. Synthesizing years of research, Franchise tells a troubling success story of an industry that blossomed the very moment a freedom movement began to wither. 

 

Marcia Chatelain is a professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University, and is a leading public voice on the history of race, education, and food culture. The author of South Side Girls, Chatelain lives in Washington, DC. Franchise was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History and the Hagley Prize for the best book in business history.

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America with Marcia Chatelain

Americans love cows. The United States possesses an entire economic sector geared for rearing, feeding, slaughtering, shipping, and eating the big-eyed ruminants. So all-encompassing is the American cattle-industrial complex that it helps determine what crops are grown on what land, what is done with the waste materials from chemical and food processing, the composition of soils, the purity of air and water, and the health effects of eating your dinner. How has the American love of cows come to shape our world so profoundly?

Historian and anthropologist Nicole Welk-Joerger seeks answers in her research on cattle and sustainability in the United States. Taking a dual approach that involves ethnographic fieldwork and historical research in the archive, Dr. Welk-Joerger traces the growth of the livestock feed industry from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century, to its dominance of the economic scene in the early twenty-first century. Key to this history is the changing ideas Americans had about their cattle, from hooved factories to sacred objects, which demonstrates how we became a ruman nation.

In support of her research, Dr. Welk-Joerger received the NEH-Hagley post-doctoral fellowship. For more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society and the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at www.hagley.org.

Ruman Nation: An Environmental History of American Cattle with Nicole Welk-Joerger

Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández’s book Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850–1940 explores how the gender-specific cultures of sewing and embroidery shaped the US Singer Sewing Machine Company’s operations. Using the cases of Spain and Mexico, Fernandez details how the cultural, everyday realm of female use of sewing machines for family or business purposes influenced corporate organization and marketing strategy. In those places local agents, both men and women, developed and expanded Singer’s selling system such that this American-based multinational company assumed a domestic guise because of its focus on the private sphere of the home. In this way Fernandez genders the corporation, especially the intersection between feminine domesticity, commerce, and corporate strategy.  

Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández is the Digital Editor of the Business History Conference and Digital Heritage Manager at the University of Florida. She received her Ph D in history from Florida International University in 2013.  

For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at www.hagley.org.

Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines & Business in Mexico & Spain with Paula de la Cruz-Fernandez

Imagine an office without walls or hierarchies, a space that allows for the free and open exchange of ideas and a way to work… better. How would one implement this? More importantly, what happens when design ideals collide with workplace reality? Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler’s new book, Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office answers these questions. Kauffman-Buhler traces the evolution of the brightly colored officescapes of the 1960s and 1970s to the cubicles of the 1980s and 1990s and analyzes these changing office spaces as design concepts promoted by architects, designers, and furniture makers, and as work space used by organizations and their employees.  

Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler is an Assistant Professor at the Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Her research focuses on the interactions and intersections of people, space, and things in everyday life. To support her work, Dr. Kaufmann-Buhler received research funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more, visit hagley.org.

Open Plan: A Design History of the American Office with Jennifer Kaufmann-Buhler

During the 1920s, major American corporations established in-house labor unions to address worker agitation. Labor historian Alex John Fleet, PhD candidate at Wayne State University, explores the phenomenon in his dissertation research. Seeking to uncover how company unions intersected with changing labor-management relations, and broader changes in the workplace social environment, Fleet explored the archives of several large firms of the era, notably Goodyear rubber held in Ohio, and Bethlehem Steel held at the Hagley Library. Both companies established in-house labor unions, and organized means for worker representatives to air and possibly seek redress of grievances. 

Company unions were not all made the same. Goodyear based its “industrial assembly” on the United States Congress, and endowed it with the capacity to discuss wages and other matters critical to worker satisfaction. Nevertheless, assembly representatives received additional pay from the company, locking them into a conflict of interests between representing labor and representing management. Bethlehem Steel’s company union was more limited, acting as a space for the discussion of a limited range of matters absent enforcement mechanism. While some of these company unions allowed workers to bargain for better wages and conditions, they all allowed employers to stave off organizing attempts by independent labor unions. The era of company unions ended with 1930s New Deal-era reforms, although some company unions lived on under the guise of independent entities.  

In support of his research, Alex Fleet received a grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit hagley.org.

Company Unions & Worker Identity with Alex Fleet

In "A Medicated Empire," Dr. Timothy Yang, associate professor at the University of Georgia, explores the history of Japan's pharmaceutical industry in the early twentieth century through a close account of Hoshi Pharmaceuticals, one of East Asia's most influential drug companies from the late 1910s through the early 1950s. Focusing on Hoshi's connections to Japan's emerging nation-state and empire, and on the ways in which it embraced an ideology of modern medicine as a humanitarian endeavor for greater social good, Yang shows how the industry promoted a hygienic, middle-class culture that was part of Japan's national development and imperial expansion.

Yang makes clear that the company's fortunes had less to do with scientific breakthroughs and medical innovations than with Japan's web of social, political, and economic relations. He lays bare Hoshi's business strategies and its connections with politicians and bureaucrats, and he describes how public health authorities dismissed many of its products as placebos at best and poisons at worst. Hoshi, like other pharmaceutical companies of the time, depended on resources and markets opened up, often violently, through colonization. Combining global histories of business, medicine, and imperialism, A Medicated Empire shows how the development of the pharmaceutical industry simultaneously supported and subverted regimes of public health at home and abroad (from the publisher, Cornell University Press).

For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library, visit us online at hagley.org.

A Medicated Empire: The Pharmaceutical Industry & Modern Japan with Timothy Yang

DuPont was in the fashion business. The industrial giant cultivated markets for its novel synthetic textiles, such as Rayon, by interfacing with the wider world of fashion. This process brought one Alexis Ureyvitch Sommaripa, later known as “The Mad Russian,” to prominence. This elegant, cultured man was born in the Russian Empire in Odessa, Ukraine, fled the revolution as a teenager, and migrated to the United States with the goal to become “a rich American.” From there, his path led him through Harvard, Alabama, Lowell, Buffalo, to New York City. Along the way, he shaped the ways in which DuPont did business, and how American women preferred to dress.

Professor Regina Blaszczyk, business historian at the University of Leeds, tells the story of Sommaripa as part of her book project, The Synthetics Revolution. Sommaripa developed statistical methods to describe the textile and fashion markets, used this information to influence production techniques, and eventually headed the DuPont Fabric Development Service. The FDS was a corporate organ designed to triangulate between DuPont, textile makers, and American consumers. During the 1930s, its influence and its significance of synthetic materials to the fashion industry grew, until by 1940 the “average American woman” wanted not silk, but a Rayon dress. 

In support of her research, professor Blaszczyk received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. For more Hagley History Hangouts and for more information on the Hagley Museum & Library visit us online at hagley.org.

Synthetic Fashion & the Mad Russian with Regina Blaszczyk

Historians of technology once famously asked, “does technology drive history?” Their answer was, “it depends.” The phenomena of history do not float atop of the changes within material practices and technology, but neither do they stand apart from them; the two are intimately entwined in the contingent, intermittent unfolding of history. The challenge for the historian is to open the black box of technology, and to make its social setting and connection explicit to allow for a better understanding of its role in continuity and change over time. 

Alexander Liebman, geographer and PhD candidate at Rutgers University, asks how this complicated set of interrelated factors have ramified upon the ground in agricultural spaces as twentieth-century engineers, planners, and others applied the technologies of computation and automation to farming. Among the major figures in this story was Arthur Hall, an engineer at Bell Laboratories and innovator in computerized agriculture. His patented 1970s-era “autofarm” aimed to save the small family farm by promoting the farmer from laborer to manager, and equipping him or her with a system of computerized, automated tools to grow, harvest, and process crops from a central indoor terminal. While Hall’s particular system did not change the world of agriculture, his ideas were part of a wider turn toward computer technologies as a solution to problems in American farming. In that regard, the “autofarm” is still with us, and is a touchstone in the history that has led to self-driving tractors and drone fleets of twenty-first-century American farms.   

In support of his research Liebman received funding form the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information, visit us online at hagley.org.

Agroecological Farming: Prehistories of Agriculture’s Digital Turn with Alexander Liebman

Long before automobiles roll off the assembly line, their many components are manufactured by a sprawling constellation of smaller businesses that supply the makers of finished automobiles. This automobile supply chain began in the 1920s within the Detroit metropolitan area, and by the 1960s had swollen to embrace an area roughly 600 miles in radius with its core remaining in southeast Michigan. The story of how the automobile supply chain developed during the first half of the twentieth century, and why it took the specific spatial and economic form that it did, are the subjects of a dissertation project by Kevin Moskowitz, PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington.

To uncover his story, Moskowitz dug into the archives of the American Iron & Steel Institute and the National Bronze & Aluminum Company at the Hagley Library. The latter firm supplied cast cylinder heads and other engine components to Detroit automakers from its location in Cleveland. The company boomed when orders were large, but struggled during the automotive industry’s periodic downturns. While WWII gave the firm a boost, rampant racism, white supremacy, and nativism lead to attacks against the company, its integrated workforce, and its German-American management. The ups and downs of this firm, while unusually well-documented, offer insight into the wider world of the twentieth-century automobile supply chain.

In support of his work Kevin Moskowitz received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information, visit hagley.org.

Detroit Muscle: Automobile Manufacturing and the Middle West with Kevin Moskowitz

From humble beginnings wholesaling at a small tobacconist-hairdresser shop in 1915, the London Rubber Company rapidly became the UK's biggest postwar producer and exporter of disposable rubber condoms. A first-mover and innovator, the company's continuous product development and strong brands (including Durex) allowed it to dominate supply to the retail trade and family planning clinics, leading it to intercede in the burgeoning women's market. 

When oral contraceptives came along, however, the company was caught in a bind between defending condoms against the pill and claiming a segment of the new birth control market for itself. In this first major study on the company, Jessica Borge shows how, despite the "unmentionable" status of condoms that inhibited advertising in the early twentieth century, aggressive business practices were successfully deployed to protect the monopoly and squash competition. Through close, evidence-based examination of LRC's first fifty years, encompassing its most challenging decades, the 1950s and 1960s, as well as an overview of later years including the AIDS crisis, Borge argues that the story of the modern disposable condom in Britain is really the story of the London Rubber Company, the circumstances that befell it, the struggles that beset it, the causes that opposed it, and the opportunities it created for itself. 
 
LRC's historic intervention in and contribution to female contraceptive practices sits uneasily with existing narratives centered on women's control of reproduction, but the time has come, Borge argues, for the condom to find its way back to the center of these debates. Protective Practices thereby re-examines a key transitional moment in social and cultural history through the lens of this unusual case study. 

Dr. Jessica Borge is a research associate , at Archives and Research Collections, King's College, London and a  researcher in the private sector.

Protective Practices: A History of the Condom Business with Jessica Borge

The early history of satellite broadcast has a Gemini aspect: twin origins in the research and development laboratories of major American corporations, and in the homes and workshops of legions of grassroots tinkerers across North and South America, notably in the Caribbean. These two streams crossed in the 1980s. Companies like RCA tried to build the infrastructure and market for satellite television but failed to find cost-effective designs for consumer satellite dishes. Meanwhile grassroots innovators and activists found ways to mass-produce inexpensive satellite dishes but were blocked from accessing the corporate broadcast signal. “Pirated” satellite television was born.

Fabian Prieto-Nañez, assistant professor of Science, Technology, & Society at Virginia Tech University, uncovers this history in his latest research. Using the RCA collection held in the Hagley Library and pairing its “institutional voice” with the voices of small-time innovators he has discovered in the Caribbean, Prieto-Nañez argues that the modern market for satellite television rests upon the twin foundations of corporate investment and individual creativity. This network of social and technical actors combined over time to produce a new market. 

In support of his work Prieto-Nanez received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Pirates of the Caribbean: U.S. Satellites & Media in the 1980s Americas with Fabian Prieto-Nañez

The history of American electricity is often told through the experiences of engineers and managers, but these were only a handful of the many thousands of workers who built, maintained, and ran electrical utility systems in the Unites States. The linemen, clerks, pipe fitters, marketers, secretaries, and many, many others who do the work to keep the power on have little space in the literature. In fact, we have collectively learned not to see these workers and the work that they do even when they are right in front of our eyes. 

	That’s where the research of energy historian Trish Kahle enters the picture. Dr. Kahle, former NEH-Hagley postdoctoral fellow and current assistant professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University – Qatar,  researches the social relations that develop within and around energy systems. Her current project examines the development of the American electrical grid through major episodes in its history: early forays into the construction process in the late-nineteenth century; rural electrification and segregation; deindustrialization and civil rights agitation. 

	In support of her work, Kahle received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Power Up: A Social History of American Electricity with Trish Kahle

Americans love coffee, but the coffee in American cups has changed a lot over the years. Three waves of coffee consumer culture washed over the twentieth-century United States: the mass commodity wave, the differentiation wave, and the aficionado’s wave. With each wave came changes to the way Americas bought, prepared, and consumed coffee. Present throughout the decades, however, has been the Chemex coffeemaker designed in the 1930s by chemist and industrial designer Peter Schlumbohm.
	Uncovering the story of the Chemex coffeemaker is Clark Barwick, cultural historian and teaching professor of business communication at Indiana University. Using the Schlumbohm collection of scrapbooks and papers held in the Hagley Library, Barwick discovered how a desire for a cleaner cup of coffee, and a knack for marketing and promotion, led Schlumbohm to create and share the Chemex with the world. More than eighty years later, the device is still a beloved standard piece of equipment among coffee lovers everywhere.
	In support of his work, Barwick received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Tasteful Design: Peter Schlumbohm & the Chemex Coffeemaker with Clark Barwick

In the 1970s, the National Association of Manufacturers organized a subsidiary, the Council for a Union-Free Environment, to provide member firms and managers with tools to prevent labor organization and union activity in their business operations. The council remained active into the 1990s, when it was dissolved.

As part of her dissertation research, Moeko Yamazaki, a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon, dug into the NAM collection and the CUE records in particular. Here research was supported by the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org/hhh.

The Council for a Union Free Environment with Moeko Yamazaki

In this episode Roger Horowitz interviews University of Pennsylvania historian Brent Cebul about his new book Illusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century. In the interview Cebul explains his book’s core notions of “supply-side liberalism” and “business producerism” to explain how local elites, often quite conservative, made peace with and actually administered liberal New Deal programs including public works, urban redevelopment, and housing. Ranging between a close look at small town Georgia and urban Cleveland, Cebul explains how the New Deal built on older liberal traditions of using state resources to boost capitalist enterprises that needed capital resources in order to grow. In doing so, in essence binding national visions of progress to the local interests of regional business elites, liberals often entrenched the very inequalities of power and opportunity they imagined their programs solving. 

For more Hagley History Hangouts and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library visit us online at hagley.org.

llusions of Progress: Business, Poverty, and Liberalism in the American Century with Brent Cebul

The Weberian definition of the state is an institution with a monopoly over legitimate violence within a defined territory. Eager to explain the genesis of European nation states, Weber’s model is a poor fit for the history and experience of American statehood. What might explain the marked failure of the United States government to monopolize violence within its territory, and the historical and contemporary prevalence of violence in American civil society?

In his dissertation research, Hugh Wood, PhD candidate at Cambridge University seeks to find an answer. Using three case studies of private violence sanctioned by the state, expropriation and murder of indigenous people in the West, corporate policing and labor discipline in the industrial North, and the night riders and lynchings of the Jim Crow South, Wood explores the long history of bloodletting in American civil society. Wood’s project explores an essential element of American history with profound implications for the present.

In support of his work, Wood received a grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Freedom to Harm: Private Violence and the American State, 1860-1895 with Hugh Wood

Work tires folks, and if fatigue is allowed to continue unabated, it can wear them right out. Studies of industrial and workplace fatigue during the first half of the twentieth century sought to address this pressing social and economic problem. But for whose benefit: labor or capital?

The dissertation research of Tina Wei, PhD candidate at Harvard University, demonstrates that this matter was of real concern to labor unions, business owners, management, and research scientists. Using multiple sources, including the records of the National Industrial Conference Board held at the Hagley Library, Wei explores how concept of industrial fatigue changed over time from a primarily physical matter to one focused on mental and emotional states. 

In support of her work, Wei received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Tired!: Industrial and Workplace Fatigue, 1900-1950 with Tina Wei

When miners go underground, they enter a spiritual realm distinct from that aboveground. Across time, places, and cultures, miners have made religious observance part of their work, building shrines, making offerings, and naming places after sacred personages. What connects these practices, and how can we access the meaning behind them?

The latest research of Rebecca Janzen, professor of Spanish and comparative literature at the University of South Carolina, addresses this cultural phenomenon as it has been manifested by miners in the Americas from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Studying cases in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and others, Janzen pulls together numerous kinds of sources, including church documents, public records, and corporate archives such as the Bethlehem Steel collection held at the Hagley Library. Janzen offers us a glimpse underground and into the hearts of miners and mining communities.

In support of her work Dr. Janzen received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and for more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Holy Holes: Mining and Religion in the Americas with Rebecca Janzen

The self-employed have many motivations for choosing or accepting their working arrangements. A business model that taps into the desire for people to “work for themselves” can mobilize the capital, networks, and labor of large numbers of people at comparatively low cost. Whether through franchising, direct-selling, or other methods, major firms became enablers, advocates, and beneficiaries of self-employment. 

The latest research by Dr. Amy Edwards, senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, focuses on the tangle of personal and corporate interests around self-employment. While the top-down element of the franchise or direct-sales relationship is evident, the personal motives of the self-employed franchisee or direct-sales representative could make the arrangement mutually profitable. Bringing her family’s story into conversation with archival materials, including the Avon collection at the Hagley Library, Edwards explores the cultural as well as political and economic aspects of self-employment in late twentieth-century Britain.

In support of her work, Dr. Edwards received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Tehcnology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org

The Only Way Is Up:  Self-Employment in Britain, 1950-2000 with Amy Edwards

Nitrogen is the most abundant element in the Earth’s atmosphere, it is essential to life and biological processes, and yet it is virtually impossible to access nitrogen absent the mediation of something or someone that can “fix” gaseous atmospheric nitrogen into a stable form. Historically, these mediators were biological organisms, such as cyanobacteria, that can fix nitrogen and make it available in the ecosystem and economy. Not until the advent of modern chemistry and chemical industries did a method for synthetically fixing nitrogen exist, but once developed, it became an essential component of the human economies of agriculture and warfare. 

In his latest research, Chris Morris, professor of history at the University of Texas – Arlington, explores the long history of nitrogen, from the guano islands of Peru to its modern re-creation as an industrially-produced, globally-traded commodity. Using Hagley Library collections including the DuPont Company archives, Morris reveals a hidden history that connects sharecroppers in Alabama, soldiers on World War battlefields, chemists in laboratories, and diplomats in world capitals. 

In support of his work, Morris received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Chemistry, Capitalism, & the Commodification of Nitrogen with Chris Morris

Even the standard railroad of the world had limits. At the dawn of the twentieth century the Pennsylvania Railroad was at the most powerful it had been. As they began to learn, even that power could only reach so far.  

Albert Churella’s The Pennsylvania Railroad Volume 2: The Age of Limits 1917-1933 is the recently released middle volume in his trilogy on the history of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In this interview Churella discusses how the railroad grew and changed in the early twentieth century as it faced increasing competition from other methods of transit, government oversight, and the realities of a world that was rapidly changing. Churella does this by interweaving corporate with personal history tracing the life and career of WW. Atterbury who began his career in the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Altoona shops and retired as president in 1935. Atterbury oversaw many projects during his time leading the railroad ranging from the development of the M1 steam locomotive to electrification between New York City and Washington D.C. He also pioneered early experiments in intermodal shipping while advocating for railroad consolidation and abandoning lesser used railines.  

Churella also describes his writing and research process explaining how his railroad history became a trilogy. He also offers his thoughts on writing that a text of interest to academic and general audiences.   

Dr. Albert Churella is a professor of history at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, prior to consolidation he taught at Southern Polytechnic State University. Dr. Churella’s other books are The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume I: Building an Empire, 1846-1917 and From Steam to Diesel: Managerial Customs and Organizational Capabilities in the Twentieth-Century American Locomotive Industry. 

In support of his work, Churella received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information and more Hagley History Hangouts visit us online at hagley.org.

The Pennsylvania Railroad: The Age of Limits, 1917-1933 with Albert Churella

In this episode Roger Horowitz interviews Vilja Hulden (University of Colorado-Boulder) about her new book, The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor before the New Deal. Her book explores how business organizations, especially the National Association of Manufacturers, sought to weaken labor unions in the first quarter of the 20th century. Inventing the term closed shop, employers mounted what they called an open-shop campaign to undermine union demands that workers at unionized workplaces join the union and thereby depict labor as tyrannical and anti-democratic. These efforts continued through the 1910s and especially following the First World War.  Over time employer organizations developed more nuanced strategies and publicity methods than in the early days of the century, but their inveterate opposition to organized labor persisted underneath. Hulden especially shows how the attacks on the closed shop formed the centerpiece of NAM’s anti-union strategy throughout.  

The book is available for a free download on the University of Illinois site. The link to the book page is https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p086922. 

For more Hagley History Hangouts, and more information on the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, visit us online at hagley.org.

The Bosses' Union: How Employers Organized to Fight Labor before the New Deal with Vilja Hulden

In this episode, Ben Spohn Interviews Kevin Kenny on his book Making Sense of the Molly Maguires which recently had a special 25th anniversary release.  The Molly Maguires were a secret organization operating in Pennsylvania’s Coal Region during a period of labor unrest in the 1860s and 1870s. This period culminated in the execution of twenty suspected members of the Molly Maguires executed for the murder of sixteen men during this period. Since then there has been disagreement, over who the Molly Maguire’s were, what they did, and their motivations. Kenny argues that this is an inadequate understanding of the Molly Maguires and points out that most of the histories describing the Molly Maguires in this light, as some sort of sinister, secret organization were written by their detractors. 

Kenny’s work offers a new explanation of the Molly Maguires drawing from American and Irish sources and traces the labor unrest in the pattern of the Molly Maguires back to similar groups in Ireland that operated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Keeping that in mind, Kenny’s work is a history of labor and immigration in America. While there is no denying the Molly Maguire’s involvement in violent labor unrest, this adds context to their motivations and provides an explanation for why they embraced the methods of protest that they did. 

Kevin Kenny is the Glucksman Professor of History and Director of Glucksman Ireland House at NYU. For  some of his research Kenny consulted the Reading Company records at Hagley, which included material related to James McParland’s investigation of the Molly Maguires and other materials related to the Molly Maguire trials. 

In support of his work, Kenny received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library. For more information on our funding opportunities, and more Hagley History Hangouts, visit us online at hagley.org.

Making Sense of the Molly Maguires with Kevin Kenny

THE TVS OF TOMORROW: RCA AND THE INVENTION OF THE FLAT SCREEN TELEVISION with Benjamin Gross

In the wide-open American economy, some people fake it ‘til they make it. Historically, American impostors realized the promise of social mobility. Identifying freely with different ethnic, racial, class, gender, or professional groups allowed some Americans to challenge social norms, and to reinvent themselves in an environment of rapid and disorienting change. 

In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historian Clifton Hood, professor at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, discusses the macro-history of the American impostor as a social phenomenon. Hood situates his project in the context of his life’s work, suggesting that it may be a way of accessing subaltern perspectives on social hierarchies by locating and interrogating their attempted transgressions of its strictures. 

Using Hagley Library collections, including Empire Steel & Iron, Reading Company, Pennsylvania Railroad, Penn Virginia Corporation, and Brandywine Oral Histories, Hood discovered that business and government elites tried a variety of methods to identify and eliminate impostors. These methods included systematic surveillance and documentation of subject groups. Hood highlights identification papers and reports from industrial spies as particularly fascinating documents.

To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Hood received a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.

For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.

Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.

Image: Mr. Clash wearing a mask at Bushkill, 1915-1925, 2017239_07_228, Series V., ‘Personal and biographical,’ Box 7, Folder 228, Frank E. Schoonover negatives (Accession 2017.239), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.

People Would Fake Being Everything: American Impostors with Clifton Hood

Americans value equality, but have competing visions of what it should look like. The twentieth-century women’s movement was riven by class divisions. Elite women within the movement favored the uncompromising Equal Rights Amendment; while working women feared that it would undermine gains they had made in gendered workplace protections, and so favored the Women’s Status Bill, which would preserve regulation against exploitation of women workers. This division opened the possibility of business interests appealing to and splitting off a segment of organized American women.
 
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, labor historian Emily Twarog, associate professor in the School of Labor & Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses how business interests appealed to the women’s movement with explicit validation of women’s socio-economic importance, and calls to rally women to the cause of free enterprise and the defense of the American way of life. 

Using Hagley Library collections, including the National Association of Manufacturers collection, Twarog discovered that business interests organized systematic efforts to cultivate a pro-business, politically conscious and activated segment of women to deploy as a force for conservatism. At a time of record-high unionization, labor organizations made limited efforts to organize and empower women’s groups. Meanwhile, business interests successfully coopted the momentum of women’s organizations, and turned it to their own purposes.

To support her use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Twarog received an Exploratory Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.

For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.

Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.

Image: NAM staff, 1969, 1973418_079_20_004, National Association of Manufacturers photographs & audiovisual materials (Accesion 1973.418), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.

We Think You're Important: Big Business & the Women's Movement with Emily Twarog

In the 1950s, Vladimir K. Zworykin, an engineer recently retired from research at RCA, looked at the rising cost of health care and the shortage of medical personnel in America, and decided to do something about it. His solution was to apply computer engineering techniques to the problems of health care and medical diagnosis. To do so, Zworykin established an interdisciplinary research group of engineers, statisticians, and physicians, and tasked them with developing computer programs capable of aiding medical diagnosis. 

In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Andrew Lea, PhD candidate in the history of science and medicine at the University of Oxford, discusses the work of Zworykin and company, tracing the origins of the push for bio-medical computing, its uneven reception in the medical world, and the unfolding legacy the movement has left. The Zworykin project focused on hematology, and worked on diagnostic software to assist the identification of blood diseases. Translating a vast and incomplete body of organic conceptions of disease into objective, numerical, and standardized concepts legible to machines proved to be an almost insuperable challenge. Paper technologies, such as the Cornell Medical Index, that standardized medical data gathering, aided computerization.

Using Hagley Library collections, including the Vladimir K. Zworykin papers, and the David Sarnoff Research Center records, Lea discovered that the advent of computer-aided diagnosis elicited mixed reactions from the medical profession. The first demonstration of the technology, which took place in 1957 at the RCA labs in Camden, NJ, sparked decades of debate over the art versus the science of medicine. Does computerization dehumanize health care, or does it rationalize and thereby improve health care? Is there a need for diagnostic programming when the majority of health care involves not diagnosis but ongoing disease management? Is human cognition reducible to computerized functions, or do computers undermine the clinical authority of the physician? Initially debated in the twentieth century, these questions continue to shape the twenty-first-century conversation about health care. 

To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Lea received a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.

For more Stories from the Stacks, go to www.hagley.org, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.

Interview by Amrys Williams. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.

Image: “Two of RCA Victor's famous staff of television research engineers, Dr. V.K. Zworykin (left) and E.W. Engstrom, examine a new piece of equipment at the Camden Laboratories.” Television, 1945-1950, PC20110303_456, Box 46, Chamber of Commerce of the United States photographs & audiovisual materials, Series II. Nation’s Biusiness photographs (Accession 1993.230.II), Audiovisual Collections & Digital Initiatives Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.

Programming Health: Early Bio-Medical Engineering & Computer Diagnosis with Andrew Lea

Attitudes toward intoxication can be unstable. The government of Turkey, for example, within a single generation went from producing alcohol and promoting its consumption as civil and modern, to restricting the consumption of alcohol and prohibiting its advertisement, right down to cellphone ringtones that sound like beer bottles opening. A culture once known for its Bektashi Sufis and Janissary soldiers, both famous for enjoying alcohol, now faces increasing pressure to dry out. This remarkable turnaround is indicative of the ways in which societies regulate alcohol by cultural norms and legal statues that are all subject to change. 
    
In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historical geographer Kyle Evered, associate professor at Michigan State University, discusses the culture and regulation of alcohol in Turkey, from the late Ottoman Empire through the early Republican period and up to the present day. Religion, ethnic & sectarian identity, and political ideals all played a role in shaping attitudes toward alcohol. While the Ottomans tolerated alcohol, the early Turkish republic positively promoted it, while the twenty-first century rise of the AKP (Justice & Development Party) has led to increasing restrictions on alcohol in the name of tradition and public health. 

Using Hagley Library collections, including the Seagram Collections, Dr. Evered discovered that Turkish alcohol producers, such as the global firm Efes Beverage, face similar pressures as did North American firms during prohibition of alcohol in the United States. Strategies deployed by Seagram in attempting to remain economically viable in the face of prohibition, included retooling and relocation of production facilities, and making concerted efforts to push back against the regulatory regime. By studying the Seagram experience, Dr. Evered gained new perspective with which to compare the regulation of alcohol in Turkey.

To support his use of Hagley Library collections, Dr. Evered received an Exploratory Research Grant from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. More information on funding opportunities for research at Hagley can be found at www.hagley.org/research/grants-fellowships.

For more Stories from the Stacks, visit www.hagley.org/research/programs/stories-stacks, or subscribe on your favorite podcatcher.

Interview by Michael Forino. Produced by Gregory Hargreaves.

Image: From the cover of Nation’s Business, August 1921, nationsbiz_081921, Nation’s Business (f HF1.N38), Published Collections Department, Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807.

Şerefe: The Culture & Regulation of Alcohol in Turkey with Kyle Evered

In her book, The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism, Jennifer A. Delton traces the history of the National Association of Manufacturers—NAM—from its origins in 1895 to today. She argues that NAM—an organization best known for fighting unions, promoting “free enterprise,” and defending corporate interests—was also surprisingly progressive. Delton shows how it encouraged companies to adopt innovations such as safety standards, workers’ comp, and affirmative action, and worked with the US government and international organizations to promote the free exchange of goods and services across national borders. While NAM’s modernizing and globalizing activities helped to make American industry the most profitable and productive in the world by midcentury, they also eventually led to deindustrialization, plant closings, and the decline of manufacturing jobs. The Industrialists is the story of a powerful organization that fought US manufacturing’s political battles, created its economic infrastructure, and expanded its global markets—only to contribute to the widespread collapse of US manufacturing by the close of the twentieth century. 

In the interview, Delton traces the long history of NAM’s concern with globalization, as it sought to influence government policy and to assist manufacturing companies’ efforts to sell products to other nations. While careful to avoid taking formal positions on tariff’s, NAM nonetheless found itself more in line with Democratic administrations than Republican on trade issues, even as most of its members were Republican. She also emphasizes NAM’s enduring concern to limit unions, a commitment that varied in its policy implications but nonetheless was important to its its members throughout NAM’s existence. Delton closes by exploring NAM’s complex attitude towards the Donald Trump presidency, including its criticism of Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection against the US Capital in Washington, DC. 

Jennifer A. Delton is professor of history at Skidmore College. Her previous books include Rethinking the 1950s: How Anticommunism and the Cold War Made America Liberal; Racial Integration in Corporate America, 1940–1990; and Making Minnesota Liberal: Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party.

Popular tracks by Hagley Museum and Library