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Deals with the coming of the mechanized textile industry to the United States, and with it, the nation's first factories. Considers the introduction of small spinning mills in Rhode Island, and the appearance of large integrated spinning and weaving mills in Massachusetts. These basic business and technological innovations are best presented by comparing ways in which each set of enterprises were financed, carried out processes of production, marketed goods, trained labor, and managed their enterprises. Based partly on cases by N.S.B. Gras and T.R. Navin.

Explores the general history of slavery in the United States. Through detailed exhibits and a text consisting of excerpts from six first-hand observations of slavery, this note is designed to present the ethics, economics (especially the perverse incentive systems), and sociology of slavery, the worst single stain on the nation's history.

A vehicle for a discussion of the growth of organized labor between the World Wars.

Why has Britain declined? The case provides three interpretations: from a neoclassical economist, two institutional economic historians, and a sociologist. Their explanations partly overlap and partly conflict over such areas as technology, national culture, and social class.

Provides a vehicle for discussing the problems caused by the Great Depression.

Astor, the wealthiest American of his time, engages in fur trading, shipping, real estate investment, and general merchandise trading. Astor's career illustrates the immediate pre-modern management era: types of decisions, time horizons, and number of transactions.

Makes possible a discussion of the growth of the railroads in the nineteenth century and the impact of that growth on the American economy.

Examines the coming of mass production (continuous and large-batch processes and those involving fabricating and assembling of interchangeable parts), and relates the beginnings of modern factory management to the needs and opportunities created by the new technology. Besides focusing on the interrelatedness of technology and management, it examines issues created by the responses of management and labor to the new machines and methods.

A vehicle for the discussion of early antitrust legislation in the United States from 1890 to 1914.

The rise of Standard Oil and its relation to the development of the American oil industry and new form of business organization.

Consists of three selections by the most innovative of the early American railroad managers describing the organizational structures and control systems they created. Questions to be asked are: why and how such managerial techniques were created, how well they worked, and how they differ from present-day techniques.

The rise of Standard Oil and its relation to the development of the American oil industry and new form of business organization.

Concerns the role of Jay Gould in causing the creation of large regional rail systems after the Civil War in the United States. In class it will be used to show the inevitability of consolidation in that industry.

Describes the problems of early banking, early attempts at central banking, achieving a sound uniform currency, and economic growth. Illustrates the problems of developing a sound money economy in a developing country and shows the difficulties of branch management in an era of primitive communication.

Describes the issues and priorities involved in countries' use of the gold standard as the basis for managing their money supply. The setting of the United Kingdom in 1925 permits a real-world exploration of the important tradeoffs in "going back on gold" versus moving toward flexible "floating" exchange rates.

Supplements the case.

Keynes, in excerpts from a 1933 pamphlet, outlines his recommendations for recovery from the Depression. He emphasizes the need for public works expenditures financed by government borrowing and discusses the "multiplier" effect of deficit spending on gross national product. The case introduces Keynesian methods of macroeconomic analysis.