Commentary from the Age of Sail & Steam
Welcome to the Business Parade
On February 22, 1864, Harvey Gridley Eastman, founder, president, and proprietor of his namesake Business College in Poughkeepsie, NY, threw a business
Practically “Actual” Business
Imagine you’re young, ambitious, and living in the hinterland of Gilded Age Chicago. Once burned (but never shy), Nature’s Metropolis is booming beyond a booster’s wildest dreams. It’s a gigantic, thudding piston, pumping the heart of North America’s capitalist machine. Every day the buildings are getting taller, the sky’s getting blacker with smoke, and the bellows from the…
Many Historians, One Myth
Or, How Many Beards (er, Ritters) Does It Take to Make George Washington a Businessman? #BizManBook Research Note #3 I mentioned in my last post that many of the arguments Sol Bloom’s arguments in his essay “Washington the Businessman” were first published – at enormous and tedious length – in Halsted Lockwood Ritter’s book, Washington as a Business…
George Washington, Businessman?
Or, Why did an 18th-century planter become a load-bearing symbol for the New Deal? #BizManBook Research Note #2 In 1932, the Hon. Sol Bloom (D-NY) staked a bold claim on the public reputation of George Washington. Director of the U.S. George Washington Bicentennial Commission, the experienced Congressman declared Washington a “business man,” par excellence. In a prominent…
The Labor of Organizing Capitalists
So who was this new, harried man – and what was his business? As he was described and then theorized in the business print culture of the 1910s and 1920s, this busy, multifarious figure was the “commercial secretary.” Sometimes also styled the “commercial executive” – when he was feeling presumptuous – his work was to…
Hope and the Worldly Historian
The last few days, I’ve been turning Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent post about the place of hope in the practice of history – or rather, his contention that the latter leads to a lack of the former – over in my mind.
A Collection of Altered States
Fun facts from this morning’s research: Harvard has on deposit “the world’s largest private collection of material documenting altered states of mind,” The Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. The archive was compiled and donated (well, loaned) by an investment advisor(Julio Mario Santo Domingo), whose interests “centered on sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” In addition…
From Friend Barnum to Friend Greeley
Or, For the “Sources Whose Stories I Wish I Had More Time To Pursue, But Never Will” File An excerpt from the September 29, 1847 edition of the New-York Daily Tribune: “We were rejoiced at receiving the other day the following note from our friend P. T. Barnum, renouncing henceforth the indulgence of misnamed Temperate…
The Fraught Freight of Transcontinentals
Or, You Make a Better Road Than A Destination, America It’s been a busy week for the appreciation of the promise and perils of transcontinental, or if you prefer, inter-oceanic, travel. Allow me to explain…
Fabrics of Our (Historical) Lives
Or, A Mini-Museum Review, In Three Parts Or, I came, I marveled, I exited through the gift shop I. The current Met Exhibit on early modern textile trading is FANTASTIC. If you’ve got the means and the opportunity, I heartily recommend getting out to “Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800.” And do it quickly!…
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Dael A. Norwood 