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91-758: Even before academic studies began, Americans were enthralled by the Robber baron debate . As the United States industrialized very rapidly after the Civil War, a few hundred prominent men made large fortunes by building and controlling major industries, such as railroads, shipping, steel, mining and banking. Yet the newer who gathered the most attention was railroader Cornelius Vanderbilt . Historian Stephen Frazier argues that probably most Americans admired Vanderbilt; they agreed with biographer William Augustus Croffut who wrote in 1886: However, Fraser goes on, there

182-447: A Darwinist age, Vanderbilt developed a reputation as a plunderer who took no prisoners." Hal Bridges said that the term represented the idea that "business leaders in the United States from about 1865 to 1900 were, on the whole, a set of avaricious rascals who habitually cheated and robbed investors and consumers, corrupted government, fought ruthlessly among themselves, and in general carried on predatory activities comparable to those of

273-583: A Sunday School teacher, teaching high school age students. The family made substantial contributions to the congregation. Walton worked the concept of “service leadership” into the corporate structure of Walmart based on the concept of Christ being a servant leader and emphasized the importance of serving others based in Christianity . Walton was diagnosed and treated for Hairy cell leukemia . Walton died on Sunday, April 5, 1992 (three months shy of Walmart's thirtieth anniversary), of multiple myeloma ,

364-791: A comparative history of the global beauty industry entitled Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry (Oxford, 2010). More recently, Jones and the Business History Initiative at the Harvard Business School has sought to facilitate research and teaching on African, Asian and Latin American business history in a project called Creating Emerging Markets, which includes interviews with long-time leaders of firms and NGOs in those regions. A trend in recent years has been to compare

455-408: A dislike of market discipline, openly sought government assistance to keep market forces at bay. Lamoreaux et al. (2003) offers a new synthesis of American business history during the 19th-20th centuries. Moving beyond the markets-versus-hierarchies framework that underlies the previously dominant interpretation of Chandler, the authors highlight the great variety of coordination mechanisms in use in

546-442: A distinction between robber barons and captains of industry. Students will uncover some of the less honorable deeds as well as the shrewd business moves and highly charitable acts of the great industrialists and financiers. It has been argued that only because such people were able to amass great amounts of capital could our country become the world's greatest industrial power. Some of the actions of these men, which could only happen in

637-522: A final visit and $ 20,000 to secure the lease. He had just enough left from the sale of the first store to close the deal, and reimburse Helen's father. They opened for business with a one-day remodeling sale on May 9, 1950. Before he bought the Bentonville store, it was doing $ 72,000 in sales and it increased to $ 105,000 in the first year and then $ 140,000 and $ 175,000. With the new Bentonville "Five and Dime" opening for business, and 220 miles away,

728-480: A helpless democracy." Hostile cartoonists might dress the offenders in royal garb to underscore the offense against democracy. The first such usage was against Vanderbilt, for taking money from high-priced, government-subsidized shippers, in order to not compete on their routes. Political cronies had been granted special shipping routes by the state, but told legislators their costs were so high that they needed to charge high prices and still receive extra money from

819-593: A month. Walton spent approximately 18 months with J. C. Penney. He resigned in 1942 in anticipation of being inducted into the military for service in World War II . In the meantime, he worked at a DuPont munitions plant near Tulsa, Oklahoma . Soon afterwards, Walton joined the military in the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps , supervising security at aircraft plants. In this position he served at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City , Utah . He eventually reached

910-554: A period of economic laissez faire, resulted in poor conditions for workers, but in the end, may also have enabled our present day standard of living. This debate about the morality of certain business practices has continued in the popular culture, as in the performances in Europe in 2012 by Bruce Springsteen , who sang about bankers as "greedy thieves" and "robber barons". During the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011,

1001-568: A pilot in the war, he decided to buy a small second-hand airplane. Both he and his son John would later become accomplished pilots and log thousands of hours scouting locations and expanding the family business.). In 1954, he opened a store with his brother Bud in a shopping center in Ruskin Heights, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri . With the help of his brother and father-in-law, Sam went on to open many new variety stores. He encouraged his managers to invest and take an equity stake in

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1092-647: A pretext to insist that increased planning and increased regulation is the appropriate remedy. Individuals identified in Josephson's Robber Barons (1934): Identified as "robber barons" by other sources: Contemporary: Sam Walton Samuel Moore Walton (March 29, 1918 – April 5, 1992) was an American business magnate best known for founding the retailers Walmart and Sam's Club , which he started in Rogers, Arkansas , and Midwest City, Oklahoma , in 1962 and 1983 respectively. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. grew to be

1183-670: A profession. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession (2007) by Rakesh Khurana traces the rise and development of American management as a profession and argues that its promise has been unfulfilled. A key event was the publication of the Gordon-Howell report , Higher Education for Business (1959), by economists Robert Aaron Gordon and James Edwin Howell . Funded by

1274-461: A reassessment of American industrialization and its leaders. She writes: Historians have followed Nevins' lead in writing biographies of the major industrialists of the Gilded Age . These include: Though these later biographers did not confer heroic status on their subjects, they used historical and biographical investigations to establish a more complex understanding of the American past, and

1365-451: A result, the authors can situate the "New Economy" of the late 20th century in broad historical context without succumbing to the temptation to view it as a climactic stage in the process of economic development. They thus provide a particularly persuasive example of the importance of business history to the understanding of national and international history. A number of sources address the history of business management as it has developed as

1456-452: A staple, featuring into the wider economic histories of nations, regions, and communities. For many, this transition was first achieved by Alfred D. Chandler . Chandler's successors as Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at Harvard Business School continued to emphasize the importance of comparative research and course development. In 1995 Thomas K. McCraw published Creating Modern Capitalism (Cambridge, MA 1995) This book compared

1547-467: A strategic alliance between the state and business. In Brazil The key policy was privatization of nationalized industries especially steel through the 'Programa Nacional de Desestatizção' (National Program of Destatization) during the early 1990s. It aimed to implement a new industrial policy by restructuring the industry and reforming labor-business relations. The Common Market of the South, or Mercosur ,

1638-502: A town and its surrounding areas, other merchants would be discouraged from entering the market. To make his model work, he emphasized logistics , particularly locating stores within a day's drive of Walmart's regional warehouses, and distributed through its own trucking service. Buying in volume and efficient delivery permitted sale of discounted name brand merchandise. Thus, sustained growth—from 1977's 190 stores to 1985's 800—was achieved. Given its scale and economic influence, Walmart

1729-478: A type of blood cancer, in Little Rock, Arkansas . A few days earlier, according to his son, Walton was still reviewing sales data in his hospital bed. The news of his death was relayed by satellite to all 1,960 Walmart stores. At the time, his company employed 400,000 people. Annual sales of nearly $ 50 billion flowed from 1,735 Walmarts, 212 Sam's Clubs, and 13 Supercenters. His remains are interred at

1820-486: A year left on the lease in Newport, the money-strapped young Walton had to learn to delegate responsibility. After succeeding with two stores at such a distance (and with the postwar baby boom in full effect), Walton became enthusiastic about scouting more locations and opening more Ben Franklin franchises . (Also, having spent countless hours behind the wheel, and with his close brother James "Bud" Walton having been

1911-564: Is a South American commerce pact started in 1991 among Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay at the instigation of Argentina and Brazil. Mercosur's purpose is to promote free trade and the fluid movement of goods, people, and currency. Since its foundation, Mercosur's functions have been updated and amended many times; it currently confines itself to a customs union , in which there is free intra-zone trade and common trade policy between member countries. Business history in Britain emerged in

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2002-700: Is a term first applied as social criticism by 19th century muckrakers and others to certain wealthy, powerful, and unethical 19th-century American businessmen. The term appeared in that use as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly magazine. By the late 19th century, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used exploitative practices to amass their wealth. Those practices included unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources , influencing high levels of government , wage slavery , squashing competition by acquiring their competitors to create monopolies and/or trusts that control

2093-453: Is much less politicized and has moved beyond entrepreneurial biography to histories of companies and industries. However, Latin American business historians have still not devoted enough attention to agricultural enterprises or comparative histories between the many countries. Probably most importantly, Latin American business historians have to become much more versed in business history theory and methodology so as to get beyond mere summation of

2184-527: Is noted to significantly impact any region in which it establishes a store. These impacts, both positive and negative, have been dubbed the "Walmart Effect". Walton married Helen Robson on Valentine's Day, February 14, 1943. They had four children: Samuel Robson (Rob) born in 1944, John Thomas (1946–2005), James Carr (Jim) born in 1948, and Alice Louise born in 1949. Walton supported various charitable causes. He and Helen were active in 1st Presbyterian Church in Bentonville; Sam served as an Elder and

2275-570: The Ford Foundation , the report gave detailed recommendations for treating management as a science and improving the academic quality of business schools. Another influential report, that same year, was The Education Of American Businessmen: A Study Of University-College Programs In Business Administration (1959) by Frank Cook Pierson . The next thirty years are sometimes referred to as a “Golden Age” in which quantitative social science research became an established part of business schools. By

2366-762: The Great Depression . He and his family (now with another son, James , born in 1921) moved from Oklahoma . They moved from one small town to another for several years, mostly in Missouri. While attending eighth grade in Shelbina, Missouri , Sam became the youngest Eagle Scout in the state's history. In adult life, Walton became a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America . Eventually

2457-681: The Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration , starting in 1927. He defined the field's subject matter and approach, wrote the first general treatise in the field, and helped Harvard build a tradition of scholarship as well as the leading library in the field. He edited a series of monographs, the Harvard Studies in Business History. He also served as editor of the Bulletin of

2548-523: The Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-President George H. W. Bush . Forbes ranked Sam Walton as the richest person in the United States from 1982 to 1988, ceding the top spot to John Kluge in 1989 when the editors began to credit Walton's fortune jointly to him and his four children. ( Bill Gates first headed the list in 1992, the year Walton died.) Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. also runs Sam's Club warehouse stores. Walmart operates in

2639-594: The Rhine river. Some of the most notorious of these were Thomas von Absberg and Götz von Berlichingen , who both made a career out of highway robbery and brigandry. The metaphor appeared as early as February 9, 1859, when The New York Times used it to characterize the business practices of Cornelius Vanderbilt . Historian T. J. Stiles says the metaphor "conjures up visions of titanic monopolists who crushed competitors, rigged markets, and corrupted government. In their greed and power, legend has it, they held sway over

2730-625: The replication crisis . Anne S. Tsui has suggested that business and management should not treat the issues of rigor (credibility of evidence) and relevance (usefulness of knowledge) separately, but see them as related. Understanding the development of business history as a discipline meriting its own aims, theories and methods is often understood as a transition from dominating themes of 'company biography', toward more analytical 'comparative' approaches. This 'comparative' trend enabled practitioners to underline their work with 'generalist' potential. Questions of comparative business performance have become

2821-821: The "managerial class" in America because they needed to coordinate the increasingly complex and interdependent system. This ability to achieve efficiency through coordination, not some anti-competitive monopolistic greed by robber barons, explained the high levels of concentration in modern American industry. Chandler's work was somewhat ignored in history departments, but proved influential in business, economics, and sociology departments. In sociology, for example, prior to Chandler's research, sociologists assumed there were no differences between governmental, corporate, and nonprofit organizations. Chandler's focus on corporations clearly demonstrated that there were differences, and this thesis has guided organizational sociologists' work since

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2912-492: The 1950s following the publication of a series of influential company histories and the establishment of the journal Business History in 1958 at the University of Liverpool. The most influential of these early company histories was Charles Wilson (historian) ’s History of Unilever , the first volume of which was published in 1954. Other examples included Coleman's work on Courtaulds and artificial fibers, Alford on Wills and

3003-447: The 1970s. It also motivated sociologists to investigate and critique Chandler's work more closely, turning up instances in which Chandler assumed American corporations acted for reasons of efficiency when they actually operated in a context of politics or conflict. Other historians, such as Gabriel Kolko , challenged the very notion of "efficiency through coordination", arguing instead that big business had, for reasons of inefficiency and

3094-925: The 1980s, with research work conducted at the LSE's Business History Unit, led first by Leslie Hannah , then by Terry Gourvish. Other research centres followed, notably at Glasgow and Reading, reflecting an increasing involvement in the discipline by Business and Management School academics. More recent editors of Business History , Geoffrey Jones (academic) (Harvard Business School), Charles Harvey (University of Newcastle Business School), John Wilson (Liverpool University Management School) and Steven Toms (Leeds University Business School) have promoted management strategy themes such as networks, family capitalism, corporate governance, human resource management, marketing and brands, and multi-national organisations in their international as well as merely British context. Employing these new themes has allowed business historians to challenge and adapt

3185-602: The 1990s, however, there was a gap between theory-oriented business school faculty and the more applied interests of students and business practitioners. In 1993, Donald C. Hambrick 's presidential address to the Academy of Management (AoM). “What if the Academy Actually Mattered?”, drew attention to this relevance crisis. The theme has been repeatedly visited since then, including by president Anita M. McGahan in 2017. Another major focus of concern has been

3276-538: The American model; a conclusion similar to Chandler's synthesis of a number of comparative case studies. Studies of British business leaders have emphasized how they fit into the class structure, especially their relationship to the aristocracy, and the desire to use their wealth to purchase landed estates, and hereditary titles. Biography has been of less importance in British business history, but there are compilations. British business history began to widen its scope in

3367-615: The Bentonville Cemetery in his longtime home of Bentonville, Arkansas . Samuel Moore Walton was born to Thomas Gibson Walton and Nancy Lee, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma . He lived there with his parents on their farm until 1923. However, farming did not provide enough money to raise a family, and Thomas Walton went into farm mortgaging. He worked for his brother's Walton Mortgage Company, which was an agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance, where he foreclosed on farms during

3458-534: The Bentonville Cemetery. He left his ownership in Walmart to his wife and their children: Rob Walton succeeded his father as the Chairman of Walmart, and John Walton was a director until his death in a 2005 plane crash. The others are not directly involved in the company (except through their voting power as shareholders), however his son Jim Walton is chairman of Arvest Bank. The Walton family held five spots in

3549-566: The Business Historical Society (1926–1953), a journal which later became the Business History Review (1954-date). N.S.B. Grass and Henrietta M. Larson, Casebook in American business history (1939) defined the field for a generation. Business history in the U.S. took off in the 1960s with a high volume of products and innovative methodologies. Scholars worked to develop theoretical explanations of

3640-565: The Octopus, devouring all in its path. In the twentieth century and the twenty-first they became entrepreneurs, necessary business revolutionaries, ruthlessly changing existing practices and demonstrating the protean nature of American capitalism. Their new corporations also transmuted and became manifestations of the "Visible Hand," managerial rationality that eliminated waste, increased productivity and brought bourgeois values to replace those of financial buccaneers. Historian John Tipple examined

3731-591: The United States and China and encourages scholars to collaborate internationally and to study leadership as it is practiced in China. American historians working in French business history led by Rondo Cameron argued that most of the business enterprises in France were family-owned, small in scale, and managed conservatively. By contrast, French business historians emphasized the success of national economic planning since

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3822-464: The United States and in more than fifteen international markets, including: Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Chile , China , Costa Rica , El Salvador , Guatemala , India , South Africa , Botswana , Ghana , Malawi , Mozambique , Namibia , Tanzania , Uganda , Zambia , Kenya , Lesotho , Eswatini (Swaziland), Honduras , Japan , Mexico , Nicaragua and the United Kingdom . At

3913-589: The Wal-Mart Discount City store, it was located at 719 West Walnut Street. He launched a determined effort to market American-made products. Included in the effort was a willingness to find American manufacturers who could supply merchandise for the entire Walmart chain at a price low enough to meet the foreign competition. As the Meijer store chain grew, it caught the attention of Walton. He came to acknowledge that his one-stop-shopping center format

4004-552: The business histories of Britain, Germany, Japan, and the United States since the Industrial Revolution, and was used as the text of a new year MBA course at Harvard Business School . Geoffrey Jones , who was McCraw's successor as Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, also pursued a comparative research agenda. He published a comparative study of the history of globalization called Multinationals and Global Capitalism (Oxford, 2005). In 2010, Jones also published

4095-518: The business histories of individual countries. Geoffrey Jones (academic) and Andrea Lluch have published a comparative study of the historical impact of globalization on Argentina and Chile. In 2011 Jones and his co-editor Walter A. Friedman published an editorial in Business History Review which identified comparative research as essential for the future of business history as a discipline. Anne S. Tsui has studied business in both

4186-552: The business, often as much as $ 1000 in their store, or the next outlet to open. (This motivated the managers to sharpen their managerial skills and take ownership over their role in the enterprise.) By 1962, along with his brother Bud, he owned 16 stores in Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas (fifteen Ben Franklins and one independent, in Fayetteville). The first true Walmart opened on July 2, 1962, in Rogers, Arkansas . Called

4277-504: The class. Furthermore, he elaborated that he learned from a very early age that it was important for them as kids to help provide for the home, to be givers rather than takers. Walton realized while serving in the army, that he wanted to go into retailing and to go into business for himself. Walton joined J. C. Penney as a management trainee in Des Moines, Iowa , three days after graduating from college. This position paid him $ 75

4368-674: The cultural persuasion of which it was an expression, drew on a deeply rooted feeling that was partly religious and partly egalitarian and democratic, a sensibility stretching back to William Jennings Bryan, Andrew Jackson, and Tom Paine. However, contrary opinions by academic historians began to appear as the Depression ended. Business historian Allan Nevins advanced the "Industrial Statesman" thesis in his John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise (2 vols., 1940), arguing that while Rockefeller engaged in unethical and illegal business practices, he also helped to bring order to

4459-403: The day. Gilded Age capitalists, according to Nevins, sought to impose order and stability on competitive business, and that their work made the United States the foremost economy by the 20th century. Business journalist Ferdinand Lundberg later criticized Nevins for confusing readers. By contrast, historian Priscilla Roberts argues that Nevins' studies of inventors and businessmen brought about

4550-446: The development of the field of Latin American business history, from the 1960s to 2007. Latin American business history developed in the 1960s, but until the 1980s it was dominated by either highly politicized debates over Latin American underdevelopment or biographies of Latin American entrepreneurs. Since the 1980s, Latin American business history has become a much more professionalized and an integrated part of Latin American academia. It

4641-581: The earlier conclusions of Chandler and others about the performance of the British economy. There is a growing body of work of business history in Africa. In one of the recent works Ebimo Amungo chronicled the birth, growth and contributions of indigenous African multinationals to the economic development of Africa with his book "The Rise of the African Multinational Enterprise". Robber baron (industrialist) Robber baron

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4732-619: The economic decline. For economic historians, the loss of British competitive advantage after 1870 could at least in part be explained by entrepreneurial failure, prompting further business history research into the individual industry and corporate cases. The Lancashire cotton textile industry, which had been the leading take-off sector in the industrial revolution, but which was slow to invest in subsequent technical developments, became an important topic of debate on this subject. William Lazonick for example argued that cotton textile entrepreneurs in Britain failed to develop larger integrated plants on

4823-399: The economy at any given time. Drawing on late-20th-century theoretical work in economics, they show how the relative advantages and disadvantages of these different mechanisms have shifted in complex and often unpredictable ways as a result of changing economic circumstances. One advantage of this perspective is that it avoids the teleology that has characterized so much writing in the field. As

4914-495: The end of World War II. They argued that the economic development in this period stemmed from various phenomena of the late 19th century: the corporation system, the joint-stock deposit and investment banks, and the technological innovations in the steel industry. To clarify the contributions of 19th-century entrepreneurs to the economic development in France, French scholars support two journals, Enterprises et Histoire and Revue d'Histoire de la Siderurgie. Barbero (2008) examines

5005-566: The family moved to Columbia, Missouri . Growing up during the Great Depression, he did chores to help make financial ends meet for his family as was common at the time. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus, and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver Columbia Daily Tribune newspapers on a paper route. In addition, he sold magazine subscriptions. Upon graduating from David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, he

5096-421: The growth of the business enterprise, the study of strategy and structure by Alfred Chandler being a prime example. The relationship between business and the federal government became a focal point of the study. On the whole, the 1960s affirmed the conclusions of the earlier decades regarding the close interrelationship between government and business enterprise. A 2002 survey of 58 business history professors gave

5187-475: The history of American economic development in particular. In 1958 historian Hal Bridges finds that "The most vehement and persistent controversy in business history has been that waged by the critics and defenders of the 'robber baron' concept of the American businessman." In terms of the Robber Baron model, by the end of the 20th-century scholars had mostly discarded it although it remained influential in

5278-453: The industrial chaos of the day. According to Nevins, it was Gilded Age capitalists who, by imposing order and stability on competitive business, made the United States the foremost economy by the 20th century. In 1958 Bridges reported that, "The most vehement and persistent controversy in business history has been that waged by the critics and defenders of the "robber baron" concept of the American businessman." Richard White , historian of

5369-440: The industrialists who were called robber barons have a complicated legacy in the history of American economic and social life. In the book's original foreword, he claims the robber barons: "more or less knowingly played the leading roles in an age of industrial revolution. Even their quarrels, intrigues and misadventures (too often treated as merely diverting or picturesque) are part of the mechanism of our history. Under their hands

5460-475: The machinations of an easily located set of villains—in this case, the big businessmen of America. This assumption was clearly implicit in almost all of the criticism of the period. American historian Matthew Josephson further popularized the term during the Great Depression in his book, published in 1934. Josephson's view was that, like the medieval German princes, American big businessmen had amassed huge fortunes immorally, unethically, and unjustly. This theme

5551-574: The market , and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors . The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (“baron”) in a republic. The term robber baron derives from the Raubritter ( robber knights ), the medieval German lords who charged nominally illegal tolls (unauthorized by the Holy Roman Emperor ) on the primitive roads crossing their lands, or larger tolls along

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5642-410: The most influential scholar was Alfred D. Chandler Jr. (1918-2007) at the Harvard Business School . In a career that spanned over sixty years, Chandler produced numerous groundbreaking monographs, articles, and reviews. Intensely focused on only a few areas of the discipline, Chandler nonetheless succeeded in establishing and developing an entirely new realm of business history. Chandler's masterwork

5733-450: The new business operations made possible by the rail system in mass distribution, such as jobbers, department stores and mail order. A quick survey (ch 8) review mass innovation in mass production. The integration of mass distribution and mass production (ch 9-11) led to many mergers and the emergence of giant industrial corporations by 1900. Management for Chandler was much more than the CEO, it

5824-561: The nickname for their sports teams. However, school administrators disallowed it, saying it was disrespectful to the school's founder, Leland Stanford . In academia, the education division of the National Endowment for the Humanities has prepared a lesson plan for schools asking whether "robber baron" or " captain of industry " is the better term. They state: In this lesson, you and your students will attempt to establish

5915-401: The part of the new captains of industry . To organize and exploit the resources of a nation upon a gigantic scale, to regiment its farmers and workers into harmonious corps of producers, and to do this only in the name of an uncontrolled appetite for private profit—here surely is the great inherent contradiction whence so much disaster, outrage and misery has flowed. Charles R. Geisst says, "in

6006-489: The popular culture. Richard White , historian of the transcontinental railroads, stated in 2011 he has no use for the concept because it had been killed off by historians Robert H. Wiebe and Alfred Chandler . He notes that "Much of the modern history of corporations is a reaction against the Robber Barons and fictions." Meanwhile, business history as an academic discipline was founded by Professor N. S. B. Gras at

6097-404: The purchase of a new location on the downtown square of Bentonville, Arkansas . Walton negotiated the purchase of a small discount store, and the title to the building, on the condition that he get a 99-year lease to expand into the shop next door. The owner of the shop next door refused six times, and Walton gave up on Bentonville when his father-in-law, without Sam's knowledge, paid the shop owner

6188-790: The rank of captain . In 1945, after leaving the military, Walton took over management of his first variety store at the age of 26. With the help of a $ 20,000 loan from his father-in-law, Leland Robson , plus $ 5,000 he had saved from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas . The store was a franchise of the Butler Brothers chain. Walton pioneered many concepts that became crucial to his success. According to Walton, if he offered prices as good or better than stores in cities that were four hours away by car, people would shop at home. Walton made sure

6279-591: The region's economic past. In the 1980s, numerous governments in Latin America adopted neoliberal policies. In Mexico, for example, under presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) and Ernesto Zedillo neoliberalism became the basis for state-private sector relationships. The new policy allowed for close cooperation with United States and Canada as exemplified by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) solidified

6370-400: The renovation of our economic life proceeded relentlessly: large-scale production replaced the scattered, decentralized mode of production; industrial enterprises became more concentrated, more “efficient” technically, and essentially “coöperative,” where they had been purely individualistic and lamentably wasteful. But all this revolutionizing effort is branded with the motive of private gain on

6461-419: The robber barons of medieval Europe." Historian Richard White argues that the builders of the transcontinental railroads have attracted a great deal of attention but the interpretations are contradictory: at first very hostile and then very favorable. White writes that they were depicted as: Robber Barons, standing for a Gilded Age of corruption, monopoly, and rampant individualism. Their corporations were

6552-438: The shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods. His second store, the tiny "Eagle" department store, was down the street from his first Ben Franklin and next door to its main competitor in Newport. With the sales volume growing from $ 80,000 to $ 225,000 in three years, Walton drew the attention of the landlord, P. K. Holmes, whose family had a history in retail. Admiring Sam's great success, and desiring to reclaim

6643-460: The shrinking middle class. In contrast, conservative American historian Burton W. Folsom Jr. argues that the robber barons were either political entrepreneurs (who lobby government for subsidies and monopoly rights), or market entrepreneurs (who innovate and reduce costs to provide the best good or service at the lowest price). Political entrepreneurs do long-term harm to the economy with their monopolies and subsidies. This provides politicians with

6734-457: The store (and franchise rights) for his son, he refused to renew the lease. The lack of a renewal option, together with the prohibitively high rent of 5% of sales, were early business lessons to Walton. Despite forcing Walton out, Holmes bought the store's inventory and fixtures for $ 50,000, which Walton called "a fair price". With a year left on the lease, but the store effectively sold, he, his wife Helen and his father-in-law managed to negotiate

6825-492: The taxpayers as funding. Vanderbilt's private shipping company began running the same routes, charging a fraction of the price, making a large profit without taxpayer subsidy. The state-funded shippers then began paying Vanderbilt money to not ship on their route. A critic of this tactic drew a political comic depicting Vanderbilt as a feudal robber baron extracting a toll. In his 1934 book The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists 1861-1901 , Matthew Josephson argued that

6916-430: The term was used by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in his attacks on Wall Street. The metaphor has also been used to characterize Russian oligarchs allied to Vladimir Putin . The leaders of Big Tech companies have all been described as being modern-day robber barons, particularly Jeff Bezos because of his influence on his newspaper, The Washington Post . Their rising wealth and power stands in contrast with

7007-480: The tobacco industry, Barker on Pilkington's and glass manufacture. These early studies were conducted primarily by economic historians interested in the role of leading firms in the development of the wider industry and therefore went beyond mere corporate histories. Although some work examined the successful industries of the industrial revolution and the role of the key entrepreneurs, in the 1970s scholarly debate in British business history became increasingly focused on

7098-498: The top five pioneers in management ideas were: Frederick Winslow Taylor ; Chester Barnard ; Frank Bunker Gilbreth ; Elton Mayo ; and Lillian Moller Gilbreth . An emphasis on expertise can be seen as defining an era of management work, shown in the works of Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, Mary Parker Follett , Max Weber , Chris Argyris , and Peter Drucker . Drucker introduced the term " knowledge work " in 1959 and has been described as "the founder of modern management". After 1960

7189-508: The top spot in the history of American business entrepreneurs to Henry Ford , followed by Bill Gates ; John D. Rockefeller ; Andrew Carnegie , and Thomas Edison . Also included were Sam Walton ; J. P. Morgan ; Alfred P. Sloan ; Walt Disney ; Ray Kroc ; Thomas J. Watson ; Alexander Graham Bell ; Eli Whitney ; James J. Hill ; Jack Welch ; Cyrus McCormick ; David Packard ; Bill Hewlett ; Cornelius Vanderbilt ; and George Westinghouse . A 1977 survey of management scholars reported

7280-504: The top ten richest people in the United States until 2005. Two daughters of Sam's brother Bud Walton — Ann Kroenke and Nancy Laurie —hold smaller shares in the company. In 1998, Walton was included in Time ' s list of 100 most influential people of the 20th Century . Walton was honored for his work in retail in March 1992, just one month before his death, when he received

7371-399: The transcontinental railroads, stated in 2011 he has no use for the concept, which has been killed off by historians Robert Wiebe and Alfred Chandler . He notes that "Much of the modern history of corporations is a reaction against the Robber Barons and fictions." In the popular culture the metaphor continues. In 1975 the student body of Stanford University voted to use "Robber Barons" as

7462-405: The world's largest corporation by revenue as well as the biggest private employer in the world. For a period of time, Walton was the richest person in the United States. His family has remained the richest family in the U.S. for several consecutive years, with a net worth of around $ 240.6 billion US as of January 2022. In 1992 at the age of 74, Walton died of blood cancer and was laid to rest at

7553-406: The writings of the 50 most influential analysts who used the robber baron model in the 1865–1914 period. He argued: The originators of the Robber Baron concept were not the injured, the poor, the faddists, the jealous, or a dispossessed elite, but rather a frustrated group of observers led at last by protracted years of harsh depression to believe that the American dream of abundant prosperity for all

7644-505: Was The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977). His first two chapters looked at traditional owner-operated small business operations in commerce and production, including the largest among them, the slave plantations in the South. Chapters 3-5 summarize the history of railroad management, with stress on innovations not just in technology but also in accounting, finance and statistics. He then turned to

7735-456: Was a hopeless myth. ... Thus the creation of the Robber Baron stereotype seems to have been the product of an impulsive popular attempt to explain the shift in the structure of American society in terms of the obvious. Rather than make the effort to understand the intricate processes of change, most critics appeared to slip into the easy vulgarizations of the "devil-view" of history which ingenuously assumes that all human misfortunes can be traced to

7826-584: Was a minority who vehemently dissented: By the Great Depression of the 1930s, Fraser continues: However a counterattack by academic historians began as the Depression ended. Business historian Allan Nevins challenged this view of big businessmen by advocating the "Industrial Statesman" thesis. Nevins, in his John D. Rockefeller: The Heroic Age of American Enterprise (2 vols., 1940), took on Josephson. He argued that while Rockefeller may have engaged in some unethical and illegal business practices, this should not overshadow his bringing order to industrial chaos of

7917-405: Was also tapped by QEBH , the well-known secret society on campus honoring the top senior men, and the national military honor society Scabbard and Blade . Additionally, Walton served as president of Burall Bible Class, a large class of students from the University of Missouri and Stephens College . Upon graduating in 1940 with a bachelor's degree in economics, he was voted "permanent president" of

8008-411: Was based on Meijer's original innovative concept. Contrary to the prevailing practice of American discount store chains, Walton located stores in smaller towns, not larger cities. To be near consumers, the only option at the time was to open outlets in small towns. Walton's model offered two advantages. First, existing competition was limited and secondly, if a store was large enough to control business in

8099-557: Was popular during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when the public often expressed scorn for big business . Historian Steve Fraser notes that the mood was sharply hostile toward big business: Biographies of Mellon, Carnegie and Rockefeller were often laced with moral censure, warning that "tories of industry" were a threat to democracy and that parasitism, aristocratic pretension and tyranny are an inevitable consequence of concentrated wealth, whether accumulated dynastically or more impersonally by faceless corporations. This scholarship, and

8190-481: Was the whole system of techniques and included middle management (ch 11) as well as the corporate structure of the biggest firms, Standard Oil, General Electric, US Steel, and DuPont (ch 13–14). Chandler argued that modern large-scale firms arose to take advantage of the national markets and productive techniques available after the rail network was in place. He found that they prospered because they had higher productivity, lower costs, and higher profits. The firms created

8281-515: Was voted "Most Versatile Boy". After high school, Walton decided to attend college, hoping to find a better way to help support his family. He attended the University of Missouri as an ROTC cadet. During this time, he worked various odd jobs, including waiting tables in exchange for meals. Also during his time in college, Walton joined the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He

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