Author: KATHY YOU

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What I’ve learned about the history of American business is that even when businesses fail there’s always a way to get back up and reopen or open a new business to keep the economy going. Sometimes you do need assistance from the government to overcome difficult times that no one can predict. American business is part of capitalism because it drives economic activities in and out of the country. One business can bring more business into the country and provided more jobs for Citizens, for example, the railroad provided jobs but it also helps the coal and steel industries. At the same time, the railroad connected the east to the west which help open new markets and commercial farming. That created new urban areas like Chicago and Kansas City. The value of studying American history from a business or economic perspective is that we can all benefit from the business strategies that use to work for that day and age but it does work now. Which need to be many rules and laws that protect workers for example the labor movement, that protect the interest of common workers. Also, knowing American history from a business’s perspective can help develop and improve business leaders and how they should go about leading their business that is fair. Moreover, what surprised me the most is that we still use some of the laws and rules that were made long ago like social security. I didn’t know social security has been around for this long. There is always room for improvement especially when we can learn from past failures in history about how business is run.

When Roosevelt took office his goal was to tackle the situation in the United States first before dealing with oversea economic affairs. He put the New Deal into effect to hopefully solve the current crisis the country is going through and to make sure that the crisis won’t happen again in America. 

I feel like that was the best choice to make because if you can’t solve the crisis your own country is going through, then how can you tackle the situation aboard. Roosevelt sees that his country need help in recovering from this financial debt. That’s why when he won the presidency his first duty was to come up with a plan to help the people in the Unties State. The New Deal was put in place to try and end the misery that the American people is going through. The New Deal also help decrease the unemployment number by putting people back to work and climbing out of the great depression. During that time company rebranded itself and was trying to create more jobs for the people to have and support their living situation. The New deal was also trying to get young unemployed and unskilled people into the workforce because when the New Deal was put in place they figure out that the younger people are most affected by this financial crisis. 

When Civil Work Administration (CWA) was created it was meant to provide work to employees, which as jobs like fixing up city halls, docks, and public roads to rebuild the economy and the lives of Americans. It was a policy to give jobs to Americans but at the same time rebuild the country as a hold from the great depression. During the great depression, people were out of work and they didn’t have enough money to support their families. Moreover, they didn’t have enough money to pay the worker. 

Jobs that help Americans come out of the great depression were mainly repetitive. It was like an assembling line job where you do the task over and over again to finish productions. These types of jobs did give millions of people jobs after the great depression, and it drive up productions which mean it help build more economic income for the company and the country. 

In 1859 the eve of the American Civil War, Thomas Affleck, a planter and nurseryman, published the final edition of his plantation record and account book. He thinks that his Journal book of account can save him from financial debt when he realizes he doesn’t have much control over his Plantation workers. After the Civil War, the southern states were still trying to manage their control over their plantation worker knowing that they now had their right to exercise their new freedom. Mr.Affleck realized that he doesn’t have much control over his planation workers so he has to start negotiating with them. 

In 1880, a decade after Affleck’s death his son has a different view of management. When Scientific management practice started to begin, Affleck’s son Issac Dunbar Affleck published the retitled Farm Record and Account book, an improved plan from the original book. Which talked about the communication to scientific agriculture and how offering space for monitoring all kinds of data. The book also shows how much has changed from Thomas Affleck’s earlier volume. When the inventory of slaves was gone, Affleck recommended the careful calculation of human capital. It was Form C, which calculate and record the cotton that was picked, was replaced with a series of forms, C1-C6, each of which is new from negotiating with tenants, planters, and laborers. It was a new way of recording data. 

Planters’ relationship with their workers has changed due to market relationships. Now they have to recruit, maintain and pay workers. It’s a new set of rules they had to obey after slavery was illegal. The plantation owner can no longer use workers for free labor. They have to adapt to the new way of running a plantation and keep track of different data and information to create a new way of managing the plantation. The emancipation has changed the process of enabling exacting agricultural management. After a while, the planters have to restore cotton production but the labor productivity was slow, it wasn’t the same as before when they have full control over their workers.

The freedpeople were the most successful in negotiating during the year of Radical Reconstruction, But they were economically lower in the rank of class and position in society.

In Rosenthal’s Reading, she was trying to tell the readers that slaveholders were among the wealthiest businesspeople of their time. The fact is that it was not a surprise. Slaveholders have used plantation slavery as highly profitable and even innovative for the emergencies of the modern economy. At the beginning of the reading, Rosenthal was giving the reader an example of a plantation journal that was written by Thomas Peyre a Plantation slaveholder. In the journal, Mr. Peyre keeps a record of data and numerical analysis of his increased output and profit from his experiment on slave labor. They use this journal keeping to keep track of their business. Due to the high profit or progress of innovation, the extensive records also report that it reflects their experimental and often brutal management practices.

Before reading Rosenthals book, I have a feeling that slaveholders were great at doing business that’s why they were so wealthy and owned big plantations. But I didn’t know that they had kept an extensive journal report about their business data. Even though we know now that using humans as free laborer is wrong, during that time the slaveholders saw a big profit in owning slavery. In a sense, they were using slaves as working machines to make their profit. Their way of operating their business has so many flaws, which over time has taught the future generation what not to do in a business. For example brutal management practices and using humans as an experiment for business profit. The recorded journal has helped reconstruct the management practices of American and West Indian slaveholders from the late 18th century through the American Civil War. The journal from Mr. Peyre also proves how bad management and violence went hand in hand.  History has taught us so many wrongdoings to show future generations what not to repeat in the future.