[125 years ago this week, the United States Steel Corporation was created. That was and remains one of the most striking moments of incorporation in American history, but it’s far from alone, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of moments and contexts for that subject. Leading up to a special weekend post on our own, particularly fraught moment!]
On what the controversial Early Republic corporation helps us remember, and what it risks obscuring.
Almost exactly nine years ago, as part of a weeklong series for Andrew Jackson’s 250th birthday, I dedicated a post to multiple telling moments in Jackson’s (and others’) battles against the Second Bank of the United States. In lieu of a full first paragraph I’d ask you to check out that prior post, and then come on back for more thoughts on this Early Republic entity.
Welcome back! Due especially to that extended battle and enduring controversy, it’s fair to say that the Second Bank of the United States has far outstripped the First Bank of the United States in our collective memories. But of course from its very name on the Second Bank asks us to remember the first, and thus to recognize that from our first foundational moments (the First Bank was chartered by Congress, at the request of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, in February 1791 for a twenty-year term) such financial corporations were a vital part of the fledgling U.S. government and state. While yesterday’s subject, Alan Trachtenberg’s The Incorporation of America, wasn’t wrong about the growth of private corporations in the late 19th century, that is (and while as I’ll consider tomorrow the presence and predominance of such late 19th century private corporations significantly shifted our national conversations), this type of entity itself was not only not new in the Gilded Age, but as foundationally present in the United States as anything. In some key ways, then, “corporate America” can and should be a euphemism for “America,” at least on the governmental level.
But at the same time, I would argue that the Bank of the United States was not the most exemplary foundational American corporation. I would instead bestow that honor upon Ben Franklin’s United States Postal System/Service, for one very important reason (besides the fact that I greatly prefer Franklin to Hamilton, although that’s true and not unrelated): the USPS was a non-profit corporation (or at least, if that phrase raises objections, a business that was also a public good), and indeed one designed to just barely break even while still achieving its crucial corporate objectives. For a long time the foundational American economic battle has been framed as Hamilton vs. Jefferson, but I would say that just as important, and certainly even more relevant to our 21st century moment, was the battle between national corporations as public goods (which I’d call the Franklin vision) and national corporations as financial entities (certainly the Hamilton one). If the Bank of the U.S. embodies the second, the Postal System exemplifies the first, and I’d argue we can’t remember the former without also focusing on the latter.
Next incorporation context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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