Continuity and Change in the Employment and Promotion of Japanese White-Collar Employees: The Case of the House of Mitsui

Lifetime employment is one of the most conspicuous featuresof contemporary large Japanese corporations. The employmentpractices of merchant houses in the Edo period (1603–1868)are sometimes proposed as one origin of such lifetime commitment.Little attention has been paid, however, to the connectionsbetween long-term employment in the Edo period and its practicein the twentieth century. This article examines how Edo employmentpractices were adapted to the environment of the early twentiethcentury within a new context of modern educational institutionsand the need for professional managers.     

Railway Imperialism: The Example of the Pereires' Paris–Saint-Germain Company, 1835–1846

Trade marks are, and have been since the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, vital business assets. The paper argues that they (along with brand names, trade names, and company names) have been of crucial importance to the rise of the modern corporation. US law and the courts have protected these property rights at the same time as the value of these assets to the modern firm has increased. The paper explains the significant role of trade marks in the evolution of the modern enterprise; provides historical data on US laws and court rulings; compares the trade mark and the patent; and indicates how, over time, the trade mark has contributed to efficiency gains in the modern firm.     

How modern banking originated: The London goldsmith-bankers' institutionalisation of trust

London goldsmith-bankers' development of paper credit-money in the seventeenth century ushered in the era of modern banking. This essay argues that this innovation of paper credit-money by goldsmith-bankers was the institutionalisation of the double-ownership scheme known as trust. This trust scheme was at the centre of the custom or morality that underlay the political struggle between the Crown, landowners, and the bourgeoisie in early modern England, the struggle from which goldsmith-banking and, later, joint-stock banking developed. This double ownership remains a central feature of the present banking system. Also during the financial boom of the late twentieth century, which ended in the present world financial crisis, the trust scheme was used extensively by many financial firms, such as mutual funds, pension funds, and asset-securitisation trusts.     

浅论近现代出版集团小说期刊广告经营

19世纪末20世纪初,小说繁荣的一个突出表现是为数众多的小说期刊的出现,而具有相当实力的近现代出版集团常常是这些小说期刊编辑出版和发行的主体。近现代出版集团办刊具有的资金、人才、稿源和组织结构等诸多方面的优势,有力保证了小说期刊定时和高质量的出版;广告文本和小说文本内容和形式上的有机联系,大大提升了广告效果。广告效果的提升反过来又促进了小说期刊广告收入的增加,近现代出版集团小说期刊的广告经营有效促进了小说的传播与发展。     

The emergence of winemaking cooperatives in Catalonia

This article traces the emergence of winemaking cooperatives in Catalonia, one of southern Europe’s main winegrowing regions. It analyses the stimuli that led to the creation of winemaking cooperatives in the early twentieth century and the difficulties that they faced in a depressed wine market, such as financing the construction of winemaking facilities, the governance and organisation of cooperative services, and marketing their produce. I explore the reasons why many more wine cooperatives were created in Catalonia in early twentieth century than in Spain’s other winegrowing regions and I try to identify the obstacles that hindered their further development.     

民族的力量——1912年--1949年中国品牌发展

民潮时期，中国的民族资本主义如雨后春笋般地破土而出，成为了支撑国家力量的支柱之一，那些成长于19世纪末20世纪初的民族资本家在与外资的资本搏杀中逐渐强大起来，凭借着实业救国的决心，在不断的失败与探索中摸索出一套适合近代中国的商业制度和产业模式，最终夯实了中国制造业的基础，为近现代中国打开了现代化的商业传播大门。     

Stuck on gold: Real exchange rate volatility and the rise and fall of the gold standard, 1875-1939

Did the gold standard diminish macroeconomic volatility? Supporters thought so, critics thought not, and theory offers ambiguous messages. Hard regimes like the gold standard limit monetary shocks by tying policymakers' hands; but exchange-rate inflexibility compromises shock absorption in a world of real disturbances and nominal stickiness. A model shows how lack of flexibility affects the transmission of terms-of-trade shocks. Evidence from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century exposes a dramatic change. The classical gold standard did absorb shocks, but the interwar gold standard did not, supporting the view that the interwar gold standard was a poor regime choice.     

Consuming desires: Performing gender in Virginia Woolf's Orlando,Neil Jordan's the crying game and sally potter's Orlando

This essays examines how twentieth century queer practices— such as queer literature, queer theory, and queer film— attempt to resist and reconfigure the historical legacy of compulsory homosexuality and the commodification of gender. I begin by tracing the ways in which the eighteenth century discourse on masquerade offered resistance to the limited, culturally sanctioned array of gendered subject positions of the time in order to evaluate the effectiveness of postmodern modes of resisting and reconfiguring gender construction and consumption at the close of the twentieth century. I argue that the postmodern discourse on gender performance improves upon the eighteenth century discourse on masquerade as a strategy for reconceiving resistance to the hegemonic legitimation of compulsory homosexuality, and that by queering our conception of gender construction in this way we may consummate our desire for a wider array of social/ sexual desiring positions without reinscribing them within an unself‐critical consumerism.     

Marina Moskowitz. Standard of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class in Modern America. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xii + 300 pp. ISBN 0-8018-7947-7, $45.00.

In Standard of Living: The Measure of the Middle Class in ModernAmerica, Marina Moskowitz seeks to elucidate a term that cameinto broad usage at the turn of the twentieth century but seemedto have no clear definition. Sociologists, journalists, novelists,and government officials alike all referred to the "standardof living," yet they did not necessarily agree on just whatthat standard was. Moskowitz argues that the standard of livingwas a measure not of how     

Bearing ‘the burden and heat of the day’: The experience of business failure in Douglas & Grant Ltd.

This article looks at the role of business culture in a business failure. Using the extensive records of the Scottish engineering firm of Douglas & Grant Ltd., it explores how the choices made by the firm's leaders were shaped by their values and assumptions. The article argues that the failure of the firm to manage expansion in the first decades of the twentieth century was rooted in these values, which both encouraged its leaders to take risks and constrained their ability to manage change.     

From Artisans to "Factories": The Interpenetration of Craft and Industry in English Cheese-Making, 1650-1950

This article traces the uneven development of English cheese-makingfrom its early commercialization to the eventual triumph ofthe "cheese factory." The narrative shows how contemporary actorsinitiated and adapted to changes in technology, distribution,consumption, and regulation. It indicates that artisanal practiceshave both borrowed from and become integrated with industriallogics and strategies, exemplifying a process that Charles F.Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin termed the "recombinablility andinterpenetration" of different forms of economic organization[World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production inWestern Industrialization (Cambridge, U.K., 1997), 2–3].International comparisons are introduced to clarify the reasonsfor England’s halting and idiosyncratic transition toindustrial-scale cheese-making.     

《良友》画报的品牌化经营策略探析

《良友》画报是近代上海一份完全按照商业化模式经营的中产阶级的市民时尚杂志。在其创始人伍联德的全力打造下,《良友》在观念经营、内容经营、发行经营及广告经营等方面都有突出表现,并创造了二十世纪上半叶期刊杂志商业化经营模式的范例。     

David M. Young. The Iron Horse and the Windy City: How Railroads Shaped Chicago. DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005. ix + 270 pp. ISBN 0-87580-334-2, $39.95 (cloth).

Since their initial development, railroads have always beencentral to the development of Chicago as the transportationhub of the Midwest and the nation. Indeed, they remain centralin the twenty-first century. Although the number of trains andtrackage declined precipitously as consolidations and deregulationtook hold in the twentieth century, the actual tonnage hauledand the number of trains have grown. Consequently, Chicago founditself "as inundated with railroad trains in 2001 as it hadbeen a century earlier" (p. 220). Young     

Book Reviews

The history of music in the workplace is a neglected area of study. This article explores the policies towards music in the paternalist Rowntree and Cadbury confectionery factories from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century. We argue that the two firms were pioneering in their early use of music before becoming key players in the industrial welfare movement following the First World War. The broadcasting of music by Rowntree and Cadbury in the mid to late twentieth century is then placed in the context of a widespread adoption of tannoyed music in factories. We argue that music was employed as a means of easing the monotony of factory work whilst simultaneously aiming to improve productivity levels. However, as we demonstrate through oral history, women workers experienced music in ways not always in tune with management objectives.     

Dealing with globalisation: the Nordic countries and inward FDI, 1900–1939

This article examines the different ways in which the four Nordic countries chose to regulate the inflow of foreign direct investments (FDI). By studying the laws regulating foreign ownership, as well as their implementation, it becomes clear that the four countries followed a pragmatic and tolerant policy towards inward FDI, but that the resource rich countries actively tried to prevent foreign ownership of their most important natural resources. The article also shows how the countries’ stricter policy on foreign ownership in the early twentieth century was not a casualty of World War I, but more predominantly a reaction to the increasing international economic integration before the war.     

The professionalisation of selling and the transformation of a family business: Kenrick & Jefferson, 1878–1940

Abstract

This article shows that innovation in sales management at a West Midlands SME in the early twentieth century matched contemporary best practices, and that it occurred in parallel with significant developments in sales education at both the University of Birmingham and the region’s colleges. In looking not only at a smaller company than those examined previously by historians of selling but also at what is referred to as the surrounding sales ecosystem, the article contributes to our understanding of a more dynamic sales environment, supported by a more purposeful educational provision, than has hitherto been understood to have existed.     

Madeleine Zelin. The Merchants of Zigong: Industrial Entrepreneurship in Early Modern China

This is a detailed study of the merchants and their entrepreneurshipin the salt industry of Zigong, Sichuan, from the early nineteenthcentury to the 1930s, with passing references to developmentsthereafter. Zigong was made up of two districts, Ziliujing andGongjing. As the largest industrial center in the country upto the early twentieth century, and as one not influenced byforeign management and technology until the very tail end ofthe period, Zigong, which by the     

Correspondence sales education in the early twentieth century: The case of The Sheldon School (1902–39)

Correspondence education has received very little attention from business historians. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to draw attention to The Sheldon School and the work of its entrepreneurial founder, Arthur Frederick Sheldon. Sheldon's correspondence course was studied by thousands of students in the early twentieth century. His interests, as reflected in his correspondence course materials and related articles, range from a focus on facilitating exchange relationships through to concerns with distributive justice, sales ethics and the promotion of an American economic and political vision across the globe. As a key figure in the sales education industry, Sheldon had a major impact on the social environment of the twentieth century via his involvement with the Rotary Club. Courtesy of his influence at Rotary, his ideas continue to shape the way prominent scholars have reflected on the consumer and marketing concept.     

“The Unbearable Lightness of Cleaning”: Representations of Domestic Practice and Products in Good Housekeeping Magazine (UK): 1951–2001

In this paper we begin to open the black box that constitutes the organisation of domestic cleaning and consumption in the latter half of the twentieth century. We focus specifically on change and continuity in the manner in which cleaning practices and cleaning products are represented in the UK woman's magazine Good Housekeeping, in the late modern period. After a discussion of the modern history of cleanliness, we proceed with a rationale for why this magazine was chosen for our analysis, followed by a summary of our methodology. We then argue that three phases of representation may be delineated in the time period we investigated. The first phase, which is apparent in the 1951 and 1961 issues, we have named “pride in domestic practice” and it covers a period when, what we call “the women's lobby”, speaks in a uniform voice about the tasks of the housewife and the purpose of domestic cleaning. The second phase, manifest in the 1971 and 1981 issues, is termed “domestic dreaming”, and it heralds a period when Good Housekeeping calls its readership to dream about the potentials of a transformed consumer culture. The third phase, which is evident in some respects in 1981, but which is more clearly present in 1991 and 2001, we have called “modern advising in a late modern world”. During this period, Good Housekeeping settles into a new role as a modern advisor of cleaning products and practices within the context of a world that poses significant complexities. Our discussion also focuses on how three values of cleanliness; that associated with germs, aesthetics and efficiency/ease are present in the magazine. Our analysis is contextualised in relation to the cultural silencing of cleanliness in this period and related to social and cultural changes associated with feminism and consumer culture.     

Piercing the Corporate Veil: Cape Industries and Multinational Corporate Liability for a Toxic Hazard, 1950-2004

The ‘corporate veil’ refers to the separation oflegal identity between parent firms and their subsidiaries,which gives the parent protection against the liabilities ofits subsidiaries. Fearing that such liability protection wouldfacilitate illicit activity, early twentieth century courts,especially in America, would sometimes ‘pierce’the corporate veil. This article explores Adams v. Cape (1990),in which American plaintiffs attempted to persuade the Englishcourts to lift the corporate veil and impose liability for industrialdisease on Cape Industries, a leading U.K. asbestos manufacturer.This landmark case shows how corporate strategy can be closelyintertwined with international corporate law and occupationalhealth and safety issues. It also highlights how limited liabilitylaw and separate legal personality can result in significantinjustice to claimants against multinational enterprises.