Abstract
By the 1920s, Americans accepted big business. They enjoyed the tide of new consumer goods, especially electric appliances. The new gospel that “ethics pays” gained credence during the early decades of the twentieth century. A concurrent movement was industry self-regulation. Many businesspeople smugly congratulated themselves over the elevated level of business ethics; they characterized the unscrupulous as petty vendors, who would never prosper because of the forces of competition and industry self-regulation. Complacency regarding business ethics largely dissipated during the Great Depression.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Conwell is almost too delicious a pun to pass up in a book on business ethics, but there is no evidence that he was insincere.
- 3.
One wonders how palatable such observations were to early twentieth-century business executives; it seems doubtful that many twenty-first-century businesspeople would entertain such a rigorous precept.
- 4.
The idea that ethics instructors are not necessarily arbiters of right and wrong is useful.
- 5.
For a more recent opinion, see Kleiner (2014, no page numbers).
- 6.
Although the technology changes, almost a century later, many of the same practices still persist.
- 7.
American law enforcement struggled to track serial killers until the 1980s, so the ineffective tracking of fraudsters is not a surprise.
- 8.
These publicized efforts and recurrent stoking of fears were tactics used again and again by do-gooders, such as the Public Broadcasting Stations. Pledge drives rely upon touted successes, Downton Abbey, for instance, and fears of no more Downton Abbey’s, if viewers failed to send in enough money.
- 9.
- 10.
Illinois probably leads the nation in the number of its ex-governors serving time in prison, four of the last seven.
- 11.
Had the muckrakers been around in 1928, they might have characterized Insull’s efforts as “Robber baron with a smile.”
- 12.
Presumably small investors would have faced a learning curve. Today’s small investor, having access to mutual funds and index funds, might fare better.
- 13.
This resembles the Enron collapse 80 years later.
- 14.
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis was among those bemoaning an alleged bank trust (centered in New York). After much political posturing and a lengthy court case led by Roosevelt lackey Arsene Pujo, Presiding Judge Harold Medina dismissed the case with prejudice and scolded the government attorneys. Historian Vincent Carosso detailed the ill-founded allegations, politically motivated of course (Carosso 1973, 431–432, but also 423–437; U.S. v. Henry S. Morgan, et al., Corrected Opinion of Harold R. Medina, 3:63; Hofstadter 1965, 215; U.S. Congress 1912, L:4931). It is probably redundant to mention that 2016 Presidential candidate Bernard Sanders voiced concerns about Wall Street bankers’ undue influence; again, such concerns are easy to understand and may be true this time around. Espouse a conspiracy theory enough times and one time it will stick.
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Surdam, D.G. (2020). Early Twentieth-Century Aspects. In: Business Ethics from the 19th Century to Today. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37169-2_8
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