The Reading Railroad 1892-1893: Combination to Collapse

Submitted to the Undergraduate Library Research Award scholarship competition: (2015-2016). 24 pagesWhen the Reading Railroad combined with two other railroad companies in 1892, it controlled more than half of New York City’s market for anthracite coal. Twelve months later, the company collapsed. This paper tracks the events of those twelve months, particularly the actions of the Reading’s president, Archibald A. McLeod, or as his contemporaries called him, “the Napoleon of Railroads.” Though state and federal government committees proposed legislation to curb the Reading’s burgeoning power, the source of the Reading’s troubles was more clandestine. Ultimately, John Pierpont Morgan played the decisive role in the collapse, usurping McLeod’s ambitions to regain control of the Reading. The story displays important features of American railroad business during the 1890’s: the role of government, monopolistic discourse, and divergent meanings of a company. But more fundamentally, the collapse harmed all Americans, as it began the Panic of 1893

Banks on Board

As part of a series of related papers, the authors examine the conceptual foundations of German and American corporate governance, specifically highlighting the role of banks' relationships to corporations and the stock market. This paper focuses on how the regulatory and macroeconomic environments of the two countries helped shape how banks, especially money-centred bankers, actually interacted with their clients. Prior to 1914, despite many regulatory obstacles, American banks wielded more power over U.S. corporations than the legendary German ones because they had more “opportunities” for intervention. The U.S. suffered larger booms and busts (“panics” and bankruptcies), had more foreign investment, as well as saw more corporate consolidation than in Germany. By contrast, German companies seemed to have less need for active bank management and largely maintained their distance from activist banks, although German banks could potentially wield great power through board membership and proxy voting. Additionally, German regulators and investors turned more readily to banks to bolster controls on equity and debt capital markets to dampen dangerous speculation of “productive assets.” They encouraged banks to play a crucial intermediary role in solving the agency problem in firms and correcting the perceived weaknesses of financial markets—unlike U.S. regulators. Germans also expected banks to save companies from financial distress, but these occasions were more rare in Germany than in the United States. Surprisingly, the debates in Germany and the U.S. about the role of banks had many common features, yet the two countries increasingly found alternative solutions to classic corporate governance dilemmas. Whereas American regulators tended to suspect banks' insider relationship with companies and stock markets, and then endeavored to destroy this “money trust,” German regulators turned to banks as institutional stabilizers to tame market turbulence and speculation. Over time, they bolstered rather than undermined banks' special relationship to firms and capital markets. Key institutional choices set the stage for a much greater divergence during the interwar period.banking ; corporate governance

The Morphogenesis Of Evolutionary Developmental Biology

The early studies of evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo) come from several sources. Tributaries flowing into Evo-Devo came from such disciplines as embryology, developmental genetics, evolutionary biology, ecology, paleontology, systematics, medical embryology and mathematical modeling. This essay will trace one of the major pathways, that from evolutionary embryology to Evo-Devo and it will show the interactions of this pathway with two other sources of Evo-Devo: ecological developmental biology and medical developmental biology. Together, these three fields are forming a more inclusive evolutionary developmental biology that is revitalizing and providing answers to old and important questions involving the formation of biodiversity on Earth. The phenotype of Evo-Devo is limited by internal constraints on what could be known given the methods and equipment of the time and it has been framed by external factors that include both academic and global politics

Guns, Inc.: Citizens United, McDonald, and the Future of Corporate Constitutional Rights

The Supreme Court began its 2009 Term by addressing the constitutional rights of corporations. It ended the Term by addressing the incorporated rights of the Constitution. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a five-member majority of the Court held that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend their own money on political advocacy. A corporation generally is no different than a natural person when it comes to the First Amendment - at least as it relates to political speech. In McDonald v. City of Chicago, a plurality of the Court held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is incorporated through the Due Process Clause and applies to states and municipalities. Neither the federal government nor states may prevent persons from keeping and bearing arms in their homes for self-defense. Given this new world in both senses of incorporation, the time has come to explore the issue of Second Amendment rights and the corporate form. This Article will offer an analysis of the potential Second Amendment rights of the corporation. And it will, in the process, offer a more systematic critique of corporate constitutional rights in general

Was the Emergence of the International Gold Standard Expected? Melodramatic Evidence from Indian Government Securities

The emergence of the gold standard has for a long time been viewed as inevitable. Fluctuations of the gold-silver exchange rate in world markets were accused to lead to brutal and unsustainable switches of bimetallic countries’ money supplies. However, more recent work has shown that the option character of bimetallism provided a stabilizing feedback loop. Using original data, this paper provides support to the new view. Using quotation prices for Indian Government bonds, we analyze agents’ expectations between 1860 and 1890. The intuition is that the spread between gold and silver bonds issued by the same entity (India) and backed by a credible agent (Britain) is a “pure” measure of the silver risk. The analysis shows that up until 1874 markets were expecting bimetallism to last. It is only after this date that markets gradually started requiring a premium to hold silver bonds indicating their belief that gold would eventually become the only metallic standard.Exchange rate regime, gold standard, bimetallism, credibility, silver risk

Was the Emergence of the International Gold Standard Expected? Melodramatic Evidence from Indian Government Securities.

The emergence of the gold standard has for a long time been viewed as inevitable. Fluctuations of the gold-silver exchange rate in world markets were accused to lead to brutal and unsustainable switches of bimetallic countries’ money supplies. However, more recent work has shown that the option character of bimetallism provided a stabilizing feedback loop. Using original data, this paper provides support to the new view. Using quotation prices for Indian Government bonds, we analyze agents’ expectations between 1860 and 1890. The intuition is that the spread between gold and silver bonds issued by the same entity (India) and backed by a credible agent (Britain) is a “pure” measure of the silver risk. The analysis shows that up until 1874 markets were expecting bimetallism to last. It is only after this date that markets gradually started requiring a premium to hold silver bonds indicating their belief that gold would eventually become the only metallic standard.Exchange rate regime, gold standard, bimetallism, credibility, silver risk

Sociology

Sociology emerged in response to the problem of social order in modern society in the wake of the American and French Revolutions and the rise of industrialism and market capitalism. Sociology had its roots in the theories of August Comte and Herbert Spencer and in empirical work previously conducted by census bureaus, state labor boards, and reform organizations. By the 1880s, sociologists had perceived a threat in the alliance with biology: It undercut the need for a separate discipline and, in Spencer\u27s laissez-faire version, tainted the discipline among social reformers and other constituencies crucial to its success. In Dynamic Sociology, the American Lester Frank Ward addressed both issues. On the surface, American and European sociology during the interwar decades was a study in contrasts. The 1960s spelled the end of \u27modern\u27 sociology. In the United States, Parsons\u27s hegemony and Merton\u27s \u27middle range\u27 compromise gave way to a politically charged humanist/positivist divide

Primary Sector Shocks and Early American Industrialization

Primary Sector Shocks and Early American Industrialization Recent advances in the measurement of US manufacturing activity over the long nineteenth century have opened up new possibilities for exploring the dynamics of American economic growth. Building on the pioneering work of J. Davis (2003) which assembled a new annual dataset on industrial production from 1790-1915, this paper uses VAR techniques to investigate the impact of shocks (both real and in terms-of-trades) in the primary product sector on fluctuations of manufacturing activity over early U.S. business cycles. This analysis tests the conventional hypothesis (reflected in the work of D. North) asserting changing export demand for primary products was the dominant force driving economic fluctuations during America?s industrial revolution. This analysis is of further interest because during this period when agriculture represented a large share of the economy, episodes of technological regression (due, for example, to adverse weather shocks or to outbreaks of productivity-sapping pests and diseases) could plausibly have significant effects on aggregate economic performance. In addition, this investigation sheds light on the long-standing debate about whether agricultural and manufacturing growth were competing (as historically B. Franklin asserted) or complementary (as A. Hamilton and recently D. Meyer have argued). Finally by comparing the structural relationships across the antebellum and post-bellum periods, this research contributes to the literature treating the Civil War as a break in the volatility of the US macro-economy.Industrialization, economic history