Corporations and big business: structure and impact

¶ … Emergence of the Corporation in America

The United States is a world center for commerce and capital development, owing to an expansive and entrenched corporate culture. But as the article by C.W. Carey denotes, this identity was all but nonexistent at the turn of the 19th century. In an article entitled Corporations and Big Business, Carey details the inflection point when the events of history converged to create the economic orientation after which much of the world's economy is now modeled.

Using the railroad industry as a point of reference -- primarily because it was really the first industry to necessitate corporate structure in the U.S. -- the article describes an intercession of legal and technological changes which dictated the emergence of the corporation. First and foremost, the United States government had begun to recognize the commercial importance of easing trade and enterprise limitations between states. As the Carey text tells, the streamlining of the process by which businesses could become incorporated would help to significantly increase the capital available to companies, who could now be funded by outside investors.

In addition to transforming the nature of business orientation from strict private orientation to engagement in public trading, this would increase the capital available for projects of an ever-greater scale. The infrastructural demands of the railroad systems, for instance, would require a legal context in which finances could be drawn from a wider array of sources. This would bear a reciprocal relationship with the evolution of industrial practices and technological capabilities, which would feed into the growing ambition of American corporations to engage in and profit from the building of the nation. By the turn of the following century, America would enter into one of its most prolific periods of economic growth, incited by the sometimes ruthless expansion of corporate rule.