![]() And no matter that economists at the time began to suggest that businesses became large because of the economies of scale they could provide. In the popular press of the late 19th century, big businesses were depicted in cartoons as obese men whose waistlines rivaled the globe. What was worse, the lower rates for long hauls often induced farmers to ship produce into unknown markets, thereby exacerbating their own special problems of overproduction and falling prices of their goods. To farmers who had no notion that fixed costs would fall more proportionately on short hauls than long hauls, such ratemaking appeared scandalous. The tariff for hauling a farmer's goods from point A to point B, a distance of 100 miles, might be 10 cents per unit, whereas the distance from point A to point C, a 200 -mile haul, might be only 15 cents. And even when the large-scale enterprises practiced modern management concepts, they found that the popular interpretation could be negative. Their corporate form, with its increasing hierarchy of personnel, confirmed the popular view of bigness based on impersonality. ![]() The nation's first industrial units, for example, were big to the average American's eye: They were smokestack industries such as Carnegie's steelworks or railroads that dwarfed viewers, making them feel powerless against such giants. The dilemma of Carnegie and other businessmen in terms of their perception by the public was that big business came to be equated with bad business. to produce the most beneficial results for the community.īoth Carnegie and Rockefeller even devised a system of scientific philanthropy - getting the most use from each charitable dollar - that is the model of sophisticated benevolence today. to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer. In an 1889 article entitled ''Wealth'' in the North American Review, Carnegie stated that it was ''the duty of the man of wealth. Indeed, it is well-known that Carnegie as well as Rockefeller made enormous contributions to society. Nor is the matter related to the perception that big-business men were stingy in returning some of their vast wealth to society. Morgan, or other businessmen who dominated the age of industrialism. To be sure, this untoward reaction is not attributable to Carnegie personally or to John D. This might be one reason Americans do not observe the anniversaries of magnates such as the Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie, whose birth 150 years ago would be observed in the coming year. AMERICA has viewed its famous businessmen of the 19th century with suspicious eyes - a strange phenomenon for the most capitalistic country of the world.
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