Gentlemen Capitalists

A Stanford University Press classic.

The period when the British were establishing political and commercial hegemony in Southeast Asia also saw the foundation of the present-day 'Asian tiger' economies. Webster traces the steps leading to the consolidation of British interest.

An expert on ethical leadership analyzes the complicated history of business people who tried to marry the pursuit of profits with virtuous organizational practices—from British industrialist Robert Owen to American retailer John Cash Penney and jeans maker Levi Strauss to such modern-day entrepreneurs Anita Roddick and Tom Chappell. Today’s business leaders are increasingly pressured by citizens, consumers, and government officials to address urgent social and environmental issues. Although some corporate executives remain deaf to such calls, over the last two centuries, a handful of business leaders in America and Britain have attempted to create business organizations that were both profitable and socially responsible. In The Enlightened Capitalists, James O’Toole tells the largely forgotten stories of men and women who adopted forward-thinking business practices designed to serve the needs of their employees, customers, communities, and the natural environment. They wanted to prove that executives didn’t have to make trade-offs between profit and virtue. Combining a wealth of research and vivid storytelling, O’Toole brings life to historical figures like William Lever, the inventor of bar soap who created the most profitable company in Britain and used his money to greatly improve the lives of his workers and their families. Eventually, he lost control of the company to creditors who promptly terminated the enlightened practices he had initiated—the fate of many idealistic capitalists. As a new generation attempts to address social problems through enlightened organizational leadership, O’Toole explores a major question being posed today in Britain and America: Are virtuous corporate practices compatible with shareholder capitalism?

A revolution took place in the City in the 80s and 90s. The cosy club of British merchant banking collapsed in a series of sell-outs, closures and scandals. This left the City dominated by US and European giants. Was this the inevitable result ofglobalization or did mismanagement play a part? This is the first book to look at how and why the British merchant banks and brokers sold out, and where that leaves us. Augar tells this fascinating story with pace and drama, taking us through the Thatcher years, the crash of 1987, Big Bang, and the aggressive invasion of the American banks. He looks at why the British banks failed to keep pace with the Americans, what this says about the way they were run, and what this means for the future.

Noam Maggor shows how the moneyed elite in Gilded Age Boston leveraged their wealth to forge transcontinental networks of commodities, labor, and transportation. With the decline of cotton-based textile manufacturing, these gentleman bankers found new business opportunities in the mines, railroads, and industries of the Great West.

Listen to a short interview with Stephen MihmHost: Chris Gondek | Producer: Heron & Crane Few of us question the slips of green paper that come and go in our purses, pockets, and wallets. Yet confidence in the money supply is a recent phenomenon: prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Instead, countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs--more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. Their success, Stephen Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by a freewheeling brand of capitalism over which the federal government exercised little control. It was an era when responsibility for the country's currency remained in the hands of capitalists for whom "making money" was as much a literal as a figurative undertaking. Mihm's witty tale brims with colorful characters: shady bankers, corrupt cops, charismatic criminals, and brilliant engravers. Based on prodigious research, it ranges far and wide, from New York City's criminal underworld to the gold fields of California and the battlefields of the Civil War. We learn how the federal government issued greenbacks for the first time and began dismantling the older monetary system and the counterfeit economy it sustained. A Nation of Counterfeiters is a trailblazing work of history, one that casts the country's capitalist roots in a startling new light. Readers will recognize the same get-rich-quick spirit that lives on in the speculative bubbles and confidence games of the twenty-first century.

Aimed at both the intelligent layman and the professional economist, the two volumes of this book are the most comprehensive and intellectually powerful explanation of the nature and value of laissez-faire capitalism that has ever been written. They represent a twofold major integration of truths previously discovered by other writers, combined with numerous original contributions made by the author himself. Within economic theory, they integrate leading ideas of the Austrian school with needlessly abandoned doctrines of the British classical school. They further integrate such reconstituted economic theory with essential elements of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. On the foundation of these integrations, Dr. Reisman is able to develop the numerous major original contributions that his book presents on the subjects of profits, wages, saving, capital accumulation, aggregate economic accounting, monopoly, and natural resources, among other vital subjects. Based on the same foundation, his book presents the most powerful critiques of Marx, Keynes, the pure-and-perfect competition doctrine, and environmentalism to be found anywhere. A leading part of its trenchant analyses is a consistent demonstration of the natural harmony of the rational self-interests of all men under capitalism-of capitalists and wage earners, of consumers and producers, of men and women of all races and nationalities, including immigrants and the native born, and of competitors of all levels of ability-consonances most will find astonishing, given the prevailing misunderstandings of capitalism. The book's importance and appeal to a general audience are evident in its description of prevailing attitudes toward capitalism and its challenge to learn why they are all completely wrong and the cause of self-destructive political behavior on a massive scale. For those with the intellectual courage to accept a challenge of having many of their firmest and most cherished beliefs reduced by unanswerable logic to the status of Dark-Age superstitions, here are some of the beliefs that Reisman's book demolishes: The profit motive is the cause of starvation wages, exhausting hours, sweatshops, and child labor; of monopolies, inflation, depressions, wars, imperialism, and racism. Saving is hoarding. Competition is the law of the jungle. Economic inequality is unjust and the legitimate basis for class warfare. Economic progress is a ravaging of the planet and, in the form of improvements in efficiency, a cause of unemployment and depressions. War and destruction or additional peacetime government spending are necessary to prevent unemployment under capitalism. Economic activity other than manual labor is parasitical. Businessmen and capitalists are recipients of "unearned income" and are "exploiters." The stock and commodity markets are "gambling casinos"; retailers and wholesalers are "middlemen," having no function but that of adding "markups" to the prices charged by farmers and manufacturers; advertisers are inherently guilty of fraud-the fraud of attempting to induce people to desire the goods that capitalism showers on them, but that they allegedly have no natural or legitimate basis for desiring. Reisman's book flies in the face of all anticapitalistic ideas and demands. Its thesis is that never have so many people been so ignorant and confused about a subject so important, as most people now are about economics and capitalism. It argues that in its logically consistent form of laissez-faire capitalism-that is, with the powers of government limited to those of national defense and the administration of justice-capitalism is a system of economic progress and prosperity for all, and is a precondition of world peace. Following an exhaustive economic analysis of virtually every aspect of capitalism, the book's concluding chapter is devoted to the presentation of a long-range political-economic program for the achievement of a fully capitalist society.