Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made

by Dazelle, Robert F. Dalzell

Overview

'A wonderful little book superbly written, chronicling with great sophistication the way a group of 19th-century shipping magnates turned industrial capitalists went about staging the first Massachusetts industrial revolution.' -David Warsh, Boston Globe

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393310795
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/01/1993
Series:	Studies in Business History
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	5.53(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.82(d)

Editorial Reviews

This is first-rate business history, combining the stories of the pioneer entrepreneurs of the Massachusetts textile industry and their self-conscious effort to solidify the place of the upper class in a democracy. Francis C. Lowell, Nathan Appleton, and others formed a group of ``Boston Associates'' that first erected mills at Waltham and then in the 1820s at the planned community of Lowell. Dalzell takes pains to stress that these men were risk-averse entrepreneurs; they fled the shipping business for the safer business of manufacturing. Dalzell offers as well a fine history of how the Associates invested in ancillary fields, e.g., insurance, and how they invented the model of philanthropy as the justification for unequal wealth. Highly recommended for college and public libraries. James W. Oberly, History Dept., Univ. of WisconsinEau-Claire

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