Small Merchants Research Articles

"The Best Side of a Case of Crime": George Lippard, Walt Whitman, and Antebellum Police Reports

"The Best Side of a Case of Crime":George Lippard, Walt Whitman, and Antebellum Police Reports Carl Ostrowski (bio) Many nineteenth-century American authors spent part of their careers writing for newspapers. Some authors whose literary reputations are now founded on works that had little to do with journalism found it expedient to be connected with newspapers, where they began to build careers as professional writers. In such cases, how did apprenticeship on a newspaper affect a writer's subsequent literary work in terms of subject matter, tone, or ideology? One answer to this question emerges from a look at the early writings of two authors whose careers follow a similar trajectory, beginning as journalists and moving on to more self-consciously literary forms of publication: George Lippard and Walt Whitman. In the 1840s, both Lippard and Whitman were working journalists, Lippard writing for Philadelphia's Spirit of the Times and Citizen Soldier and Whitman for a number of publications, most notably as editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Moreover, they both worked in the same staple format of the an tebellum daily paper: the police report. Finally, critics praise both Lippard and Whitman for sympathizing in their literary work with outcast elements of society, a position that would have been particularly hard to reconcile with the demands of crime reporting. In this essay, I examine the police reports of Lippard and Whitman to see how they handled the form and where their reporting anticipated the racially and socially progressive perspectives of their later works. Such an inquiry requires familiarity with the police report as it appeared in two of the pioneering penny papers of the period, the New York Sun and the New York Herald, since the content, purpose, and ideological import of such reporting had been firmly established by the time Lippard and Whitman came to the format. A number of scholars have analyzed in broad terms newspaper crime reporting of the antebellum period. In Dan Schiller's account, news about crime was the arena in which penny papers staked their claim as defenders of the interests of the common man. Appropriating the rhetoric of the labor press that died out after the Panic of 1837, [End Page 120] penny papers appealed to a wide audience of mechanics and laborers by exposing corruption in a criminal justice system weighted in favor of the social elite: "Modified and adapted, crime news in the penny press focused not only on the integrity of the state but also on the unequal effect of social class on the political nation and, specifically, in the law." 1 Schiller devotes sustained attention to coverage of the murder of prostitute Helen Jewett. The New York Sun criticized the acquittal of Jewett's accused killer Richard Robinson, claiming that his wealth allowed him to purchase a favorable verdict, while New York Herald editor James Gordon Bennett saw revealed in the trial a conspiracy to cover up the misdeeds of the wealthy brothel patrons who set up Robinson as their fall guy. Either way, the editors wielded class-based rhetoric to impugn an anti-egalitarian legal system. 2 Also focusing on the Jewett murder, among other cases, David Ray Papke hears in antebellum crime reporting a voice for the working and middle classes: "the crime journalism in The Sun and The Herald championed mechanics, artisans, clerks, and small merchants over the traditional landed and mercantile elites, which well into midcentury held power in the modernizing nation." 3 Adding to this consensus, Alexander Saxton observes that "crime and sex were not politically neutral" in the penny press, whose ideological origins he identifies in the urban workingmen's movement of the period. 4 Together, these commentators make a convincing case that certain kinds of sensationalized crime news allowed editors to deploy the language of artisan republicanism. Alongside the occasional coverage of spectacular crimes and ensuing trials, however, the antebellum paper featured a more prosaic variety of crime news in its daily anecdotes about the activities of city police. Analyzing the daily police report, one finds a set of reportorial conventions with different ideological implications, and this was the format in which Lippard's and Whitman's commitments to defending...

Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941 (review)

Reviewed by: Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941 Laurel Sefton Macdowell (bio) Michiko Midge Ayukawa . Hiroshima Immigrants in Canada, 1891-1941. UBC Press. xxii, 186. $24.95 The word Hiroshima evokes visions of the mushroom-shaped cloud that was created by the atomic bomb dropped on this Japanese city. But this monograph is about Japanese citizens from that community who came [End Page 586] to Canada years earlier. One of the book's strengths lies in the specific details about these people, their names, marriages and divorces, families, their reasons for leaving Japan and goals in their new country, their work, and their adjustment to Canada. The first ones to arrive were men who worked in the resources industries, particularly mining. Later some Japanese settled in urban communities, and wherever they did, small merchants set up shop. The author particularly discusses Powell Street in Vancouver around which a Japantown area emerged. More settled immigrants began to purchase land and develop farms, often supplying the market with many kinds of berries. Japanese women came to Canada to join their husbands or to marry. The 'picture brides' often were selected carefully by the men's families back home, as partners. Their motives for coming to Canada differed. Some were divorced and starting over. Some were older and needed to marry, as that remained a requirement of being a Japanese woman. Some were adventurous or straining at the strictures Japanese society. In Canada they worked hard on farms, in canneries, cooked and washed in camps, worked as domestics, and managed their households and families. They had large families, often in isolated circumstances where only their husbands could assist at the births. Japanese immigrants to Canada faced discrimination in law and from non-Asian Canadians every day, but though it is mentioned, the book focuses on the lives of these people. Another strength of the book is the author's thorough research; she has interviewed people and found old documents such as diaries from the period, but she also knows the language and understands the culture and therefore the outlook of those who are the subject of her writing. As a result, they come alive as individuals and provide the reader with interesting accounts of their work and home experiences, as they raise their children, educate them, seek to maintain their culture and think of returning to their home country. Sometimes the author is repetitive and not as analytical as she might be. Also with her in-depth knowledge, one wonders why she concentrated only on the people arriving from the Hiroshima district. But this book's strengths outweigh these weaknesses. The content of the monograph is sandwiched between a delightful prologue, in which the author explains how she came to write the book, and a conclusion. Originally she was in search of her own roots as her grandfather and later her father came to Canada, and, like many from the Hiroshima district, stayed. She herself travelled to Japan to do research and conduct interviews, driven by her own curiosity. In her conclusion, she repeats that substantive social and economic problems in Japan motivated these hardy souls to emigrate. They formed communities in Canada and helped each other, but within their neighbourhoods were [End Page 587] also disagreements between Japanese 'bosses' and workers. Within Canadian society, they were not docile in the face of discrimination. They preserved their culture, and as their children became 'Canadian' they taught them pride in their Japanese culture. Sadly this prewar society was destroyed by the internment of Japanese during the Second World War and they had to rebuild their communities in the postwar period, which was a long process assisted by the government apology in 1988. As most Japanese Canadians marry persons from other backgrounds, the new Japanese community is very different from the one depicted here, and thus the book has contributed to Canadian history by describing early Japanese society in Canada. [End Page 588] Laurel Sefton Macdowell Laurel Sefton MacDowell, Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto at Mississauga Copyright © 2010 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

Corporate Frauds in the World of Corporate Sector: A Critical Analysis

Corporate Frauds in the World of Corporate Sector: A Critical Analysis

Die Sprache der Auricher Juden: Zur Rekonstruktion westjiddischer Sprachreste in Ostfriesland. (Jüdische Kultur, 16) by Gertrud Reershemius

MLR, 104.2, 2009 585 counter-argument much further than has hitherto been thought necessary. She ar gues that,farfrombeing a tool of the regime, the comedia of the corrales had proved, well before Lope's death, impossible to eliminate or even to control. Campbell goes so faras to suggest thatTirso could actually count himself unlucky tobe exiled by the Juntade Reformacion, while even thispowerful body failed to alter thenature or tra jectory of the comedia. Ultimately, it was simply too popular, and thispopularity, as Campbell so ably demonstrates, iswhat won itboth itspower and its independence. Indeed, popularity is the notion that structures this study, forCampbell has de liberately sought out those authors of the second generation of comedia dramatists, those of the so-called age of Calderon, whose popularity is confirmed by the sheer weight of publication theirplays enjoyed once initial runs in the theatreswere over. By this criterion, itwould appear that the four playwrights most appreciated in the second half of the seventeenth centurywere Calderon himself, Rojas Zorrilla, Matos Fragoso, and Diamante. Lope's philosophy, sketched in theArte nuevo, was to give thepublic what it wanted, and of course honour was a safebet: it would always excite interestand get the audience into the corrales and initiallyon your side. IfCampbell is right,hemight well have gone on to say thatkingship had a similar effect.Camp bell merely comments, judiciously, that the plays of her four playwrights seemed calculated to satisfya thematic demand in the Spanish capital between roughly 1630 and 1680. The narrative of the struggle between the regime and the comedia is as amusing as it is absorbing; and once it is disposed of,Campbell proceeds to study kingship inher chosen dramatists, demonstrating with impressive scholarship that, with the fall ofOlivares, the comedia could and did go on to present an even more directly critical view of kings. In the second half of her book Campbell is in a posi tion toblow away the time-honoured notion of the comedia as supporting absolutist monarchy. She does this in a series of analyses of plays written by her four drama tists,beginning with Calderon's Saber del mal y del bien (1636) and ending with Diamante's Irpor el riesgo a la dicha (1674). Finally, she demonstrates how themati cally sensitivewere her chosen dramatists to thehard realities of political change, so that it isno surprise, forexample, todiscover after thedeath of Philip IV a pervading concern with the issue of royal succession early in the age ofCharles theBewitched. University of Birmingham R. j. Oakley Die Sprache der Auricher Juden: Zur Rekonstruktion westjiddischer Sprachreste in Ostfriesland. By Gertrud Reershemius. (Judische Kultur, 16)Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 2007. 247 pp. 68. ISBN 978-3-447-05617-5. With this book, Gertrud Reershemius makes a welcome contribution to the dis covery ofWestern Yiddish remnants and the study of German Landjuden in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Investigating the language and history of Jews in the East Frisian town of Aurich, which was home to a Jewish community from themid-seventeenth century until declared 'judenrein' inApril 1940, she sets out fourmain claims. First, historical multilingualism inEast Frisia comprised not only Dutch, Frisian, Low German and Standard German but also Yiddish. Second, the 586 Reviews Yiddish variety spoken inAurich was a form ofNorthwestern Yiddish, as suggested by the phonological and lexical correspondences with Dutch Yiddish. Third, the use of Yiddish in Aurich persisted well into the twentieth century; thus Aurich Yiddish resisted longer the obsolescence process which engulfedWestern Yiddish in thenineteenth century.Yiddish language maintenance and loyalty among Aurich Jewswas probably due to the rural character and social fabric of the community, which was dominated by small merchants living 'das Leben des Kleinen Mannes' (p- 79)> as well as the structural distance between Yiddish, cognate to East Central German and Bavarian, and Low German as the surrounding non-Jewish and domi nant spoken language inAurich. Fourth, in its linguistic development theYiddish variety inAurich underwent a gradual shiftfrom a Jewish from the peasantry) were seldom allowed tomarry and thereforepresented amajor unsettling factor to sexual stability in European society.His solution was to allow marriages but to require the state to provide for the offspring, in particular to prepare...

Building buzz to beat the big boys: word-of-mouth marketing for small businesses

Thousands of small, retail stores open every year, but 70 to 80 percent of them close within five years. Many are done in by the big box and Internet retailers who crush competition with low prices and convenience. But smaller retail stores and service providers have distinct competitive advantages: They are local. They can connect on a personal level with customers in a way the big guys can't. And they can add immense value to the customer experience. To capitalize on these advantages, marketing experts Steve O'Leary and Kim Sheehan offer dozens of inexpensive Word of Mouth marketing methods small businesses can use right away. Done well, these efforts will help smaller merchants do more than survive-they'll prosper. For independent retailers to succeed, it is no longer enough to create a loyal customer base. Local store marketers need to put their loyal customers to work, encouraging them to talk about the store to their friends, family members, and others in their social networks. When they do, the result is Word of Mouth (or Buzz) marketing, a powerful tool that creates an army of advocates who become even more loyal and help attract new customers. Besides learning how to leverage the power of word of mouth marketing, readers will learn: -How to understand their customers better. -How to increase customer loyalty to their store. -How to communicate with customers to maintain loyalty. -How to encourage loyal customers to talk to others about their store. -How to create a customer community, both in the store and on line. -How to measure results. The book also includes numerous examples from current businesses, as well as thought-provoking ideas and templates to help readers generate their own successful buzz marketing plans. Most resources available today on buzz marketing focus on techniques for large companies and online retailers. This book offers something priceless for the little guy by showing ways to increase loyalty and gain new customers.

Merchant Networks in the Greek World: The Impact of Rome

This article suggests that the expansion of maritime commerce in the eastern Mediterranean in the first to second centuries AD was accompanied by the emergence of new networks which facilitated the business of shippers and merchants. Although data are few and scattered, possible patterns can be discerned. Sporadic evidence suggests that agents of the Roman state such as contractors (publicani) for shipping supplies and collecting indirect taxes, soldiers and veterans, and slaves and freedmen of the imperial household, sometimes, perhaps often, engaged in private commercial ventures in which they were helped by their local and empire-wide professional networks. Small independent merchants, who probably carried out the bulk of maritime commerce, were aided by the spread of banks, which increasingly offered a standard range of services, including advice on Roman legal forms, and basically formed a loose but effective network of support.

The Elting and Hasbrouck store accounts: a window into eighteenth-century commerce

During the eighteenth century, the rural community of New Paltz, located in New York's mid-Hudson River valley, was served by two general stores, one run by the Hasbrouck family and the other by the Elting family. Using archival data, this study compares the operations of these two stores in the late 1790s. The results indicate that the two stores had similar operations but different customer bases. The accounting records illustrate the key role played by small town merchants in facilitating commerce, providing financing, and supporting the social structure of the community. The accounts also illuminate issues of power and control during the era, and provide evidence of the unequal treatment accorded to local residents based on gender. Using the experiences of ordinary people, the study expands our understanding of the role of accounting in fostering business life and competition in early America.

South Carolina Scalawags (review)

Reviewed by: South Carolina Scalawags Charles J. Holden South Carolina Scalawags. By Hyman Rubin III. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006. Pp. 232. Cloth, $29.95.) In South Carolina Scalawags, Hyman Rubin III focuses on a frequently overlooked segment of the state's population during the tumultuous post–Civil War era. Those native-born white South Carolinians who became Republicans and supported the Reconstruction regime, dubbed "Scalawags," are often forgotten in all the attention normally reserved for freedmen, "carpetbaggers," and the unreconstructed. To the extent that historians have considered these native white Republicans, they usually are quick to conclude that they were either political opportunists or men without status acting out class resentment. Rubin argues that a composite picture of native white Republicans is difficult to draw; though small in numbers, they nonetheless represented the up-country and low-country, large farmers, small farmers, small merchants, and urban artisans. Rubin instead stresses that their commitment to democratic principles, rare in that notoriously undemocratic state, compelled these native white Republicans originally to join in the cause of creating a new, biracial polity in South Carolina. Rubin marks the state constitutional convention of 1868 as a pivotal moment in the formation of the Republican party in South Carolina. In the long sweep of the state's conservative history, the convention, as Rubin notes, was "radical" in that its representatives reflected the state's racial composition; over half were African American. But, he notes astutely, this same racial composition presented white Republicans with the complicated dynamic that dogged them over the next decade. The enthusiastic embrace of [End Page 295] African American political rights infuriated local white Democrats, sparked a wave of Klan-on-black violence, and consequently made white Northern allies nervous. Those white Republicans who hoped to navigate their way through all three groups to create a more democratic, yet still stable, South Carolina had their work cut out for them. A relentlessly violent insurgency and internal factionalism marred South Carolina Republicans' efforts to govern through the early and mid-1870s. The Scalawags themselves eventually split between those who hoped to reach out to the allegedly more genteel members of the old elite in the name of order (as Rubin points out, Scalawags' loud worries over the lack of which became a self-fulfilling prophecy) and those who understood that to stay close to the African American base was the only way for South Carolina Republicanism to survive. Explaining the Scalawags' ongoing predicament, Rubin does a good job of showing also how local events were shaped by national political developments. For instance, once the national Republican Party lost control of the House of Representatives in 1874, Reconstruction in South Carolina was effectively on the road to extinction. Violence against Republicans continued with little fear of legal repercussions, culminating in the Hamburg Riot of 1876. Here, as Rubin chillingly recounts, white members of the Edgefield "rifle club" cornered members of the Hamburg black militia in "an upstairs room" and eventually laid siege with artillery until most were captured. Then these white South Carolinians and Georgians "began to choose captives, one at a time, to be shot through the head in cold blood" (105). Rubin is especially effective at demonstrating the link between white-inspired violence and the ultimate defeat of the Republican Party. Scalawags were not inclined, nor were they able, to counter this method of murderous politics. From 1868 to 1876, Scalawags and South Carolina Republicans generally endured several seasons of violence linked to political campaigns, as in the final 1876 campaign, where, as Rubin observes tartly, "votes were only incidental to Democratic plans" (106). Rubin has also rescued from obscurity the personal stories of native white Republicans such as the redoubtable Simeon Curley and John Winsmith (who survived seven gunshot wounds from a Klan attack), whose commitment to a biracial democracy in South Carolina is worth remembering. That the commitment waned among some after Reconstruction fell should not come as a surprise, as historians going back to C. Vann Woodward noted a similar dynamic after the fall of Southern Populism later. What might be a surprise to some readers is the extent to which it was there in the...

A Positive Model for Corporate Governance

Corporate governance in this country is heading in the wrong direction. The primary reason is that the governance strategies put in place, particularly the independent board required by Sarbanes-Oxley Act, may create turmoil, even animosity or adversarial relationship, in the boardroom. For instance, a strategic proposal that appears risky to an independent board member who believes that he/she has the force of law, may be opposed or denied approval. In addition, the present governance structure is founded on the agency theory of 'classical' economics whereby the relationship between shareholders and management is that of principal and agent. As agent of the shareholders, management is supposed to promote the interest of the principal. 'Classical' economists lead by such luminaries as Nobel Prize laureate, Milton Friedman, believe that management's responsibility to the shareholders is to obtain the maximum profit possible. Unfortunately, this relationship does not exist in the era of large modern corporations where investors, not owners, abound. The foundation of the agency theory are the small English merchants during the pre-Industrial Revolution where ownership is clear and well-defined. This environment has been gone since the turn of the 20th Century. Our proposal calls for a positive approach to corporate governance; a cooperative and supportive, not independent, board; the recognition of employees as key participants in the corporate process and serving as countervailing force in the boardroom against management fraud; the recognition of public trust as a social charter of the corporation and as a shared vision among the key participants of the corporate process - shareholders, management and employees; and making the profitability and success of the corporation as shared vision by these key corporate participants.

Online credit card processing models: Critical issues to consider by small merchants

Electronic commerce is continuing as a thriving business for those companies that streamlined their online business processes; however, making payments over the Internet is still fearsome to customers. Although a variety of payment mechanisms have been developed, payment by credit cards remain the leading mechanism for online payments. For real-time online credit card processing, a merchant needs to install a third-party proprietary software in the merchant e-commerce server. However, many issues need to be resolved before integrating a third-party payment solution to a merchant e-commerce system. In this paper, we attempt to address the current state of the online credit card processing system, especially we discuss the available models of online real-time credit card processing systems. We also discuss several factors such as cost, complexity and security issues related to implementing such a system. The results can be extremely valuable to small businesses that are venturing into Internet commerce.

The Development of the Kamioka Mine Tochibora District in the Late Edo Era

Most of the famous mines were developed on a large scale in the late 16th century and the early 17th century, but began to decline in the late 17th century and were no longer able to meet the domestic demand for mineral resources. Mine development, once rich in mineral deposits, moved to poorer areas that had scarcely been developed previously. Therefore, after the 19th century, mine development began to flourish in several other places in Japan. The Kamioka mine Tochibora district (located at Mt. Nijugo-yama around central Kamioka-cho, Gifu Prefecture) is one of those mines. It was developed and prospered in the late 19th century. This study clarifies the development of the Kamioka mine from the 1830s to 1860s and examines the regional factors involved in its development, focusing on the acquisition of funds and techniques. In the late 19th century, many small developers mined their own drift or alit independently at Mt. Nijugo-yama. The landscape of this mining district was different from the typical form of Japanese mining districts, including all the mining facilities within the district. Only the minimum facilities for mining (smelters, works for crushing the ore, workers' cabins, the administrative office, etc.) were located in the open space around the entrance of the drifts or adits, and the other facilities (developers' houses, stores, refining works, etc.) were spread throughout the mining district to Funatsu-machi village (the central town around the Kamioka mine) and Takayama (the administrative and economic center of the domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Hida area, currently the northern part of Gifu Prefecture). These characteristics developed through the following process. In the early 1830s, when the redevelopment of old mines began at Mt. Nijugo-yama, the Kanayama-shi (the mining engineer as well as the operator of a small mine) who came from Echizen (currently Fukui Prefecture) led the exploitation. The funds and equipment for exploitation were provided by merchants in Funatsu-machi village and Takayama. In the late 1830s, when the copper merchants under government patronage who lived in Edo (the metropolis of the Tokugawa Shogunate, present-day Tokyo) began to participate, the exploitation improved greatly. However, they pulled out of the Kamioka mine shortly thereafter. The mining engineer who had been sent from Edo by the copper merchants took over the exploitation of that mine and operated it for about the next 10 years. In the late 1840s, a group of wealthy merchants who lived in Funatsu-machi village began to operate the mine, recruiting engineers and laborers. In 1855, the official smelter that was organized by the wealthy merchants who lived in Takayama was established next to the government building of the Hida domain at Takayama, and all mineral resources produced in the Hida area were smelted at this facility. After that, the number of shitakasegi-nin (mining subcontractors) increased significantly. They included many small merchants and kanayama-shi who could not secure sufficient funds. However, they were able to receive payment for mineral resources in advance after establishing the smelter, thus procuring operating funds. It has been thought that the active development of the Kamioka mine in the late Edo era was due to the mining policy of the government of the Hida domain. Actually this development was closely related to the positive participation of the inhabitants around the mine and the characteristics that were developed throughout the history of mine exploitation in the Hokuriku and Tokai areas. Since the last years of the 16th century, many mines have been exploited and settlements of kanayama-shi appeared in Hida, Mino (currently in Gifu Prefecture), Echizen and Ecchu (Toyama Prefecture), and Echigo (Niigata Prefecture).

Prologue to revolution: Cuba, 1898-1958

Jorge Ibarra, Prologue to Revolution: Cuba, 1898-1958 (trans. Marjorie Moore. Boulder and London: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 1998), 229pp.This is the first work by Jorge Ibarra, Cuba's most distinguished social historian, to appear in English. First published in Cuba in 1995 (Editorial de Ciencias Sociales), it appears now in Reinner's Studies in Cuban History Series, edited by the Cuban-American historian Louis A. Perez, Jr. It is a welcome addition to the slowly growing list of works by Cuban historians now available to anglophone readers in a field hitherto dominated by US and Cuban-American writers. This is more particularly the case, since it provides us for the first time with a Cuban historian's perspective on a period which has already attracted worldwide as well as much Cuban scholarly attention.The book presents a forceful, rigorously documented and keenly analytical interpretation of the economic, social and political circumstances which produced the 1959 Cuban Revolution. It is densely written and comprehensively conceived. Building on a swathe of carefully critiqued Cuban statistical, periodical and secondary sources, Ibarra investigates the shifting economic and political conditions of each class and stratum within the class: its composition is carefully defined and its history is then traced across the whole period. This innovative approach establishes that the impetus for revolution derived not, as other writers (Blackburn, 1963; Sabbatini, 1968) have suggested, solely from the proletarianization of the middle class, but from the proletarianization of the people, middle class, peasant, proletarian and youth as a whole.Central to this process was the operation of US capital which moved into the island on a substantial scale in the wake of the 1895-1898 War of Independence and, assisted by US tariff policies and reciprocal trade treaties (1902, 1934), siphoned off Cuba's national surplus. It dominated sugar, tobacco, transport, utilities and, increasingly from 1934, the Cuban import market. Cuban governments depended on loans from US banking houses (they were not allowed to borrow in Europe) and, from 1927, on US government bodies which could exert (like the IMF) even closer control of Cuban government policies.Within this framework, however, elements of Cuban and Spanish capital survived and one of Ibarra's most interesting findings is that among the import and export merchants, traditionally considered simply as pillars of US neocolonialism, there were some who played a dual role as merchants and industrialists. They maintained significant interest in sugar and tobacco, expanded into paper and textile mills, cement and crackers, beer and footwear, and also into banking.This trend accelerated, as in most of Latin America, in World War II when US imports were reduced. Most enterprises, however, were small scale (almost 50 percent had five workers), so a nationwide working class did not develop. And although large-scale Cuban landlords and leaseholders maintained and expanded (1932-1959), their hold on agricultural production - more than 50 percent of sugar production in 1958 came from Cuban-owned mills - they did not use their profits to modernize production. Cuban capital gains, instead, increasingly took refuge in foreign banks, real estate investments and illicit activities. These investments generated what Ibarra calls an absentee bourgeoisie whose interests were allied with international capital and the US mafia. This was the economic structure which under the impact of the 1930s world depression resulted in the unfinished 1933 revolution and the successful 1959 uprisings.In the first decades of the Republic the middling classes (small merchants, manufacturers, proprietors and professionals) joined forces to defend their political interests, opposing US exploitation and its corrupt Cuban government agents, and playing a leading role in the movement to topple Machado. …

The changing role of builders merchants in the construction supply chain

Builders merchants are an integral part of the construction industry, yet rarely are they consulted when discussions take place on the future of the construction industry. Throughout history, builders merchants have played a dominant role in the construction industry, initially as an intermediary between the artisan and the buyer, and more recently as a source of working capital for contracting firms. The merchanting industry currently is undergoing considerable change. The depressed construction market and the failure of the housing repair and maintenance sector to recover in the first half of the 1990's as activity in the private non-housing repair and maintenance sector has increased, has raised competition between merchants. The major building merchants are becoming larger by acquisition and merger, the smaller merchants are seeking niche areas, and the medium-size firms are under serious threat from acquisition by the larger merchanting firms. The trend towards consolidation in the sector, driven by the need to reduce costs, has meant that the large merchanting firms now control around 60% of the building materials market sales. Factoring is a growing trend, particularly with smaller companies sourcing goods from the cheapest source. The larger merchants have to respond by sourcing goods from the lowest cost base, irrespective of whether they buy from overseas markets. This paper analyses the UK builders merchants sector and evaluates the important role played in the supply chain.

Locking the e-safe

A variety of cryptographic techniques are being used to minimize threats to electronic financial transactions. The explosion of the Internet has permitted even small merchants to sell goods and services to a worldwide market, yet it has also exposed them to the depredations of a large pool of attackers whose motives range from greed to boredom. Fear of these risks has created a demand for security features built directly into electronic commerce systems. The good news is that existing security mechanisms can be combined to minimize a wide range of threats to electronic commerce. Security isn't the only problem. European banks will soon have electronic stored value cards that are as good as cash. Forgetting the password for a stored value card could be as troublesome as losing a wallet. The mechanisms used to solve security problems can be divided into four areas-privacy, authentication, integrity, and scalability-though a single mechanism can often mitigate more than one kind of problem. The cornerstone of all privacy mechanisms is encryption. An encryption algorithm transforms a plaintext message into an unreadable ciphertext using a key. The correct key can reverse the process, permitting anyone who knows it to get the plaintext message.

Insecure Prosperity: Small Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890- 1940 (review)

Reviewed by: Insecure Prosperity: Small-Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890–1940 Lee Shai Weissbach Insecure Prosperity: Small-Town Jews in Industrial America, 1890–1940. By Ewa Morawska. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. pp. xxv, 370. Ewa Morawska’s superb study of the Jewish community of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the half century before World War II represents social history at its best, for while it tells a very interesting story of specific people in a specific place, it is always careful to consider that story in a larger context. In many cases, for example, the book introduces statistical analyses to help clarify how the experiences of various individuals fit into a more general pattern, and the study repeatedly discusses the nature of Johnstown’s Jewish history in terms of significant trends in American Jewish life more generally, especially as they were manifested in major urban areas. One of the principal points made in the book is that, just like their counterparts in big cities, early twentieth-century Jews in Johnstown were engaged in creating a new way of life that borrowed both from Old World Jewish values and traditions, and from modern American mores and lifestyles, but that in Johnstown this process proceeded less rapidly than it did in metropolitan areas. Older patterns of employment and education were more slowly altered in Johnstown, for example, as were older patterns of religious observance and family relations. Morawska’s book covers a wide range of interesting and important topics, often in great detail. It discusses the European origins of Johnstown’s Jews; the migration patterns that led them to the city; their residence patterns within the city; their economic life; the structure and function of their families; the role of women within the household and within the community; the place of the synagogue in local Jewish affairs; and the participation of Jews in the larger social and political arena. Fundamentally, this book is the story of how first- and second-generation Johnstown Jews, constituting their own ethnic entrepreneurial niche in a town dominated by steel production and coal mining, attempted to achieve the twin goals of securing a certain material comfort, and of creating a satisfactory communal existence in which their ethno-religious identity as Jews figured prominently. The title of Morawska’s book refers both to the precarious nature of the economic success achieved by Johnstown’s early twentieth-century Jews, and to their sociocultural marginality within their small-town milieu. Morawska is apologetic about leaving out of her story some matters that she might have investigated more fully (conflicts between congregational [End Page 274] factions, for example, or between larger and smaller merchants), and she laments that as an inquiry into the role of gender, at least, her analysis remains “unsatisfactory.” But Morawska’s contrition is quite unnecessary, for her book is so chocked full of well-presented information and insightful analysis that problems such as the ones she mentions are hardly noticed. The success of her book is strengthened by the inclusion of thirty-one photographs and various maps, and it is generally very well written, although historians may find disconcerting Morawska’s decision to follow a practice common in sociology and refer to her subjects only by their first name and the initial of their last. Insecure Prosperity is based on an extraordinary amount of research. The author spent nearly a decade and a half on her project and has brought to bear on her subject a truly prodigious amount of secondary reading on a wide array of related topics; her bibliography would have run to sixty-five pages had there been room to publish it. Morawska’s research on the Jewish community of Johnstown itself involved the mining of just about every resource that can be imagined, from East European memorial books to U.S. census materials, from synagogue minutes to court and tax documents, from Dun and Bradstreet credit reports to college records. In addition, Morawska conducted hundreds of interviews, and, indeed, certain sections of her volume, such as the chapter on the worldviews of Johnstown’s Jews, rely more heavily on what she was told by her informants than on any other material...

MARRIAGE AS A FAREWELL TO YOUTH: REGIONAL AND SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION IN THE AGE AT MARRIAGE IN THE NINETEENTH‐CENTURY NETHERLANDS∗

During the period 1812‐1912, there were substantial differences in the age at marriage in the different social classes. Upper‐class males and farmers married at a later age, while the working classes got married a few years earlier. Among females, the differences between the social classes were less clear with the highest ages at marriage among females who married casual and unskilled labourers. Marrying late was especially characteristic of the rural areas in the south and east of the country. The age at marriage dropped rapidly after 1860‐1870, particularly among casual and unskilled labourers, craftsmen and agricultural labourers. In the upper classes, only the age of males showed a decline, while the age development among farmers varied a lot according to the region. The age at marriage of farmers and shopkeepers, small entrepreneurs and merchants, and self‐employed artisans did not drop until after 1890. The author wishes to thank O. Hoogerhuis, G.A. Kooy, J. van Lieshout, P. Meurkens, A. Nienhuis, N...

TELCOT: An Application of Information Technology for Competitive Advantage in the Cotton Industry

This paper describes the strategic use of information technology by the Plains Cotton Cooperative Association (PCCA). TELCOT, a computer-based system developed by PCCA, provides cotton traders with functions much like those available to NYSE or AMEX traders. TELCOT transformed PCCA from a small cotton merchant to a major cotton broker. Handing 115,000 to 240,000 computer transactions per day, TELCOT provides over 20,000 cotton producers, 40 buyers, and 200 gin operators with an electronic marketing service that has helped PCCA grow from a $50 million to a $500 million enterprise in just 15 years.

A Revolution of Scale in Overseas Trade: British Firms in the Chesapeake Trade, 1675–1775

In seventeenth-century England the relatively open trades to America attracted ventures by hundreds of small merchants and shopkeepers. This ease of entry was checked after 1685 by very high customs duties on tobacco and intense regulation. Between 1685 and 1775 the number of firms in that trade was radically reduced and the size of the average firm increased ten to thirtyfold. Comparable if less extreme trends can be detected in the sugar, slave, and Levant trades. Insurance enabled large firms to use shipping more efficiently. The increased availability of credit also benefited larger and more secure firms.

Bank Interchange of Transactional Paper: Legal and Economic Perspectives

Bank Interchange of Transactional Paper: Legal and Economic Perspectives

The passage, settlement, and occupational characteristics of Louisiana's Italian immigrants

This paper explores the general pattern of Italian immigration to Louisiana and describes the occupational attributes of the immigrants in five settlements in the state. The data indicate that unlike the national scene Italian immigration to Louisiana peaked before the 20th century and drew immigrants mainly from Sicily. The great majority of these immigrants were recruited for work on the sugar plantations of southern Louisiana. However, in New Orleans the majority soon became small merchants involved in every aspect of the food industry. This comparatively rapid entrance of Sicilian peasants into the lower ranks of the middle class is explained by the size of the immigrant population, by their distinctive cultural values and social experiences in southern Italy and Sicily, by the custom of gambling, and by the friendly compatability of the host culture in southern Louisiana. Also, tight incontestable family loyalties, hard work, and the custom of thrift made it possible for these economic individualists to make their niche in the social and economic life of Louisiana.