Sublime

At the time, of course, no one could know the potential value of these securities. On the face of it, the associates had laid out a total of $10 to $11 million and become primary owners of a corporation capitalized at $31,486,000. As the road developed under expert management, though, it naturally increased sharply in value and earned handsome prof

The Valley’s venture investors were typically Boston merchant princes, men such as Israel Thorndike, S. A. Eliot, Samuel Cabot, Francis Stanton, and Harrison Gray Otis. Edmund Dwight, a Morgan cousin on his mother’s side, wasn’t in the same financial stratum as a Cabot, but gained access through his work at the law firm of Fisher Ames, the old Mass

JAMES J. Hill ranks among the great organizers and managers of the American West. Born in Canada in 1838, Hill moved nearly two decades later to the Twin Cities, where he quickly exhibited the tireless energy and foresight that characterized his entire career. By his early forties he had helped organize major new transportation systems in Canada an

FINANÇA E INDÚSTRIA Estamos, porém, antecipando a nossa história. Neste capítulo quero apenas frisar que o predomínio da finança é que mata a produção útil, porque a finança só vê o lucro imediato. Quando o único interesse é ganhar uma certa soma, a menos que uma tacada da sorte não intervenha permitindo que um excesso de capital possa consagra-se

A common strategy was to buy up stretches of the riverbank as mill sites, build a dam, some worker housing and amenities, then organize a textile mill and a machine company to supply the mill, often with a second round of investors, perhaps a successful mill manager putting up his life savings for the chance to own his own mill. The hope was that w

A word on Rockefeller as a manager, for he has a claim to be not only the first great corporate executive but one of the greatest ever.

Although the reorganization of the Standard did not involve any new capital—shareholders simply exchanged one form of security for another—its imitators, like the Cotton Oil Trust, the Linseed Oil Trust, the Lead Smelting Trust, the Whiskey Trust, and others, usually needed cash and issued large volumes of new shares, as did a later series of nontr

As Ivar explained, the desires of the three parties were clear: American investors wanted high returns, European governments wanted US dollars, and the match industry wanted monopoly power. The resources also were clear: American investors had dollars, European governments had the power to grant monopolies within their territories, and the match in

Pratt hired Gould to survey a tanning site, but was sufficiently impressed that he made him a partner and manager of the projected new tannery. So the pint-sized Gould, barely out of his teens, led fifty workmen into the woods and built virtually a full-scale town, including living and food service quarters, a mule-powered bark crushing plant and c