Endless Novelty
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A01=Philip Scranton
Americans
ASME
Author_Philip Scranton
Business network
Capital good
Carpet
Category=KCZ
Category=KND
Clothing
Coat (clothing)
Competition
Consumer
Cost accounting
Craft unionism
Damask
Direct selling
Discounts and allowances
Downtown Hotel
Drainage
Economy
Electric generator
Employment
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Expense
Federal Trade Commission
Finance
Financier
Food distribution
Furniture
Industrial district
Institution
Intermediate product
Issuer
Jacquard loom
King Camp Gillette
Linseed oil
Machine tool
Machinist
Manufacturing
Margin (finance)
Market power
Marketing
Mass production
Metalworking
Newspaper
Official history
Organization
Printing
Production system (computer science)
Professional association
Property insurance
Rational expectations
Retail
Scale model
Scientific management
Second Industrial Revolution
Sherman Antitrust Act
Shipbuilding
Special effect
Stuffing
Sugar
Supply (economics)
Tableware
Tariff
Technology
Textile
Tonnage
Track gauge
Value added
Wage
Wholesaling
Woodworking
Workforce
Yale University
Product details
- ISBN 9780691070186
- Weight: 624g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 23 Jul 2000
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Flexibility, specialization, and niche marketing are buzzwords in the business literature these days, yet few realize that it was these elements that helped the United States first emerge as a global manufacturing leader between the Civil War and World War I. The huge mass production-based businesses--steel, oil, and autos--have long been given sole credit for this emergence. In Endless Novelty, Philip Scranton boldly recasts the history of this vital episode in the development of American business, known as the nation's second industrial revolution, by considering the crucial impact of trades featuring specialty, not standardized, production. Scranton takes us on a grand tour through American specialty firms and districts, where, for example, we meet printers and jewelry makers in New York and Providence, furniture builders in Grand Rapids, and tool specialists in Cincinnati. Throughout he highlights the benevolent as well as the strained relationships between workers and proprietors, the lively interactions among entrepreneurs and city leaders, and the personal achievements of industrial engineers like Frederic W. Taylor.
Scranton shows that in sectors producing goods such as furniture, jewelry, machine tools, and electrical equipment, firms made goods to order or in batches, and industrial districts and networks flourished, creating millions of jobs. These enterprises relied on flexibility, skilled labor, close interactions with clients, suppliers, and rivals, and opportunistic pricing to generate profit streams. They built interfirm alliances to manage markets and fashioned specialized institutions--trade schools, industrial banks, labor bureaus, and sales consortia. In creating regional synergies and economies of scope and diversity, the approaches of these industrial firms represent the inverse of mass production. Challenging views of company organization that have come to dominate the business world in the United States, Endless Novelty will appeal to historians, business leaders, and to anyone curious about the structure of American industry.
Philip Scranton is University Board of Governors Professor, History of Industry and Technology, at Rutgers University in Camden. His most recent book is Figured Tapestry: Markets, Production, and Power in Philadelphia Textiles, 1885-1941.
