THE CONCEPT OF BUSINESS ETHICS REFLECTED IN AMERICA’S LITERARY AWAKENING,1820-1835

688 Pages·031.338 MB·English

by  BRENNAN, LAWRENCE DAVID

Sponsoring Committee: Professor Herbert A. Tonne,
Professor Julian C. Aldrich and
Professor George R. Cerveny.
THE CONCEPT OP BUSINESS ETHICS REFLECTED
IN AMERICA’S LITERARY AWAKENING
1820 1835
-
LAWRENCE D. BRENNAN
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy in the School of Education of
New York University
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The student hereby guarantees that no part of the
dissertation or document which he has submitted for
publication has been heretofore published and (or)
copyrighted in the United States of America, except
in the case of passages quoted from other published
sources; that he is the sole author and proprietor of
said dissertation or document; that the dissertation
or document contains no matter which, if published,
will be libelous or otherwise injurious, or infringe
in any way the copyright of any other party; and that
he will defend, indemnify and hold harmless New York
University against all suits and proceedings which
may be brought and against all claims which may be
made against New York University by reason of the
publication of said dissertation or document.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chaxit er Page
I THE PROBLEM AND RELATED STUDIES 1
Heed for the Study 3
Delimitations 11
Definition of Terms 13
Basic Assumptions 13
Related Studies 14
Procedure 20
Sub-Problem #1
Overview of Business, 1820-1835 20
Sub-Problem #2
The Concept of Business Ethics
Presupposed in the Literature
of the Period 21
Sub-Problem #3
Evolutionary and Moral Background 22
Sub-Problem #4
Conclusions 23
II BUSINESS MORALITY IN THE PERIOD AS SEEN
BY INDEPENDENT OBSERVERS 24
General Remarks About the Period 25
Criticism of Business Traditions 34
Barbarous Practices in Business Background 34
Abuses Arising from Economic Advantages 39
Summary and Comment on Criticism of
Business Traditions 55
The Businessman as a Moralist 56
General Business EthicB 57
Practical Virtues and Religion 59
Summary and Comment on the Businessman
as a Moralist 61
Crucial Moral Areas in Business Practice 61
Moral Problems Attending the Use of
Capital 62
Marketing and Crucial Areas of Business
Morality 89
Summary of Crucial Moral Areas in
Business Practice 103
Conclusions on Business Morality in the
Period as Seen by Independent Observers 104
ii
Ill BUSINESS ETHICS AS REFLECTED IN THE
LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD 108
General Remarks on Literary Reflections 110
Criticism of Business Traditions 111
Barbarous Practices in Business Background 111
Abuses Arising from Economic Advantages 148
Summary and Comment on Criticism of
Business Traditions 231
The Businessman as a Moralist 234
General Business Ethics 235
Practical Virtues and Religion 241
Summary and Comment on the Businessman
as a Moralist 266
Crucial Moral Areas in Business Practice 268
Moral Problems Attending the Use of
Capital 268
Marketing and Crucial Areas of Business
Morality 343
Summary of Crucial Moral Areas in
Business Practice 392
Conclusions on Business Ethics as Seen
Horizontally in Literature 403
IY THE LITERARY MAN AS A BUSINESS MORALIST 409
Criteria for Judging the Literary Man
as a Business Moralist 412
Comment on Business Morality Expected
from a Writer 413
Standards for Judging Literary
Reflections of Business Morality 414
Evaluating the Literary Man as a
Business Moralist 420
Heritage of Business Ethical Concepts
of Western World Literature 421
Reactions by Major, Minor and Apprenticeship
Writers to Business Conditions in America 436
James Fenimore Cooper 437
Washington Irving 485
William Cullen Bryant 505
Minor Writers 523
Apprenticeship Writings in the 1820-1835
Period 558
Pattern of Comment Pound Among Writers
of the Day 581
iii
Artistic Literary Forms and Concepts
• of Business Morality 586
Prose Forms as Reflections of Business
Ethics 587
Poetry 589
Drama 596
Daniel Webster and Oratory 600
Summary of Artistic Literary Forms 604
Concept of Business Ethics in Periodical
Sources 611
Concept of Business Ethics in Newspaper
Sources 613
Concept of Business Ethics in Magazine
Sources 624
Summary and Conclusions on Periodicals
as a Comment on Business Ethics 634
Conclusions on the Literary Man as a
Business Moralist 638
V CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 645
Bibliography 651
iy
CHAPTER I
•THE PROBLEM AND RELATED STUDIES
The main purpose of this thesis is to inquire into the
concept of "business ethics in America’s literary awakening.
Over a century and a quarter have passed since business
America emerged from the 1819 panic and commenced to lay
down patterns of operation which marked a new epoch in the
1
evolution of American economic history. With the exception
of John Jacob As tor and Stephen Girard» the period of the
merchant prince was at an end. Business had become a matter
of specialization. What had once been the concern of a
single mercantile capitalist was now being broken down into
the distinct operations of the entrepreneur as an industrial­
ist » wholesaler* transport specialist* insurance broker or
banker. New patterns of inland marketing were being estab­
lished with primary wholesaling centers in the Northeast and
secondary depots rising in the hew West. American finance
concentrated increasingly at Wall Street and many experiments
were being made with the corporate technique. In short* much
that is characteristic of the peculiar nature of American
business today may be seen in inchoate form in the decade and
a half which lay between the depressions of 1819 and 1837.
This same period may be pointed out as epochal in many
other ways. Politically* a new concept of democracy gained
1. A fully documented view of this business revolution is
presented in Chapter III.
2
powerful expression in the nation. Concomitantly, labor
demonstrated an increased self-consciousness. Geographically,
the reduction of the frontier was accelerated as America
turned increased attention upon its own internal affairs.
Artistically, the age presented a substantial literary
dawning. A robust James Fenimore Cooper built a novel,
The Spy, which was an arresting story with universal interest.
A William Cullen Bryant was looking deeply into life and
despite his youth was fashioning some excellent verse. A
Washington Irving had attained a delicious and whimsical
style and had revealed a sensitivity to the quaint and pic­
turesque which delighted even the most hypercritical of the
foreign reviewers. Behind this woof was a well integrated
warp of secondary artists, periodical editore, and a number
of eager young men in training for an even greater literary
age ahead.
Whether or not these business and literary epochs were
fortuitous or intimately related, their interesting juxta­
position offers an excellent opportunity for exploration in
the nebulous area of economic and cultural relationships.
The interaction of material and aesthetic phenomena in American
history has attracted the attention of many critics. Un­
fortunately, these critics have very often arrived at con­
clusions founded upon data spread too extensively in time or
upon interpretation of data whieh presupposed some unwarranted
premise. The purpose of this thesis is to employ the techniques
3
of scientific scholarship to gain an insight into this single
epochal period and determine what concept of business ethics
was held by the writers of that period and what judgment these
men of letters passed upon these ethics.
Heed for the Study
There are two principal needs for a study of this kind.
First, the role of the American writer as a moral guide in
the evolution of nineteenth century capitalism is imperfectly
understood^ This faulty appreciation is due primarily to the
absence of carefully documented research into aesthetic-
economic relationships upon which a scholarly understanding
can be built. There hare been several popular economic in­
terpretations of literature such as V. F. Calverton’s The
Liberation of American Literature and Granville Hicks' The
Great Tradition, but very few have been based upon exacting
scholarship. There have also been a few theses on this sub­
ject. Among these have been Claude Reherd Flory’s Economic
Criticism in American Fiction, 1792 to 1900 and Walter Fuller
Taylor’s The Economic Hovel in America, both of which have
indicated the great need for further exploration in this field.
Even these theses, however, have had their limitations. Flory
has spread himself thin over a rather broad period of time and
has confined his investigation to fiction. Although Taylor
has concentrated upon a shorter period, the Gilded Age, he
has chosen a period in which American literature and American
business were both well advanced, and the understanding of
T~. W. F. Taylor’s The Economic Hovel in America has afforded
this investigator some valuable insight into this need.
4
aesthetic-economic relationships which he presented pre­
supposed an imperfect understanding of both these phenomena
at their roots. So abundant had literary expression become
by the end of the nineteenth century that Taylor was forced ^
to delimit his study to only one form of literature, the novel.
Notable, also, is Parrington*s work, yet even in Parrington’s
own remarks is seen the need for more precise understandings
of backgrounds in American literary history. In the intro-
I
duction to The Romantic Revolution in America, he declares
his embarrassment at the hasty generalizations and downright
guesses he was forced to make, handicapped as he was by the
inavailability of data on the history of American letters.
Yet despite the absence of any critical research into
this area, an understanding of aesthetic-economic relationships
is so crucial to a complete understanding of American letters
that many unacknowledged guesses, hasty generalizations, and
unwarranted assumptions have been made by critics of American
literary history in accounting for careers and movements.
However plausible, and even justifiable, these guesses may be
at times, for want of better information, they are still
guesses and modern scientific scholarship requires more than
hypotheses.
An assumption often detected in critical studies of
American literature is that despite the patent abuses and
TI V. L. Parrington, The Romantic Revolution in America,
pp. ix - x.
5
inhumanity attending industrial capitalism, America produced
no Carlyles, Ruskins, or Marxes. American writers instead
were carried away by the same tide of complacency, optimism,
or downright dishonesty which carried off the rest of the snug,
optimistic, bourgeois nation. Our writers met the moral
challenges of capitalistic society with blindness and lies.
Taylor protests against this attitude and counters it, insofar
as the Gilded Age is concerned, by pointing out the economic
1
novel at the latter end of the nineteenth century. But even
2
in his brief references to earlier literature he dismisses
ante-bellum authors with conventional enough conclusions. His
concern, of course, is post Civil War.
3
Lewis Mumford in The Golden Bay declares that Carlyle
4
and Ruskin were simply "unthinkable" in the course of develop­
ment American letters pursued. He is not unflattering, but
rather complimentary to American writers and their moral goals;
but he declares, nevertheless, that our literary men were carried
away on the proverbial tide of American optimism and hope, hence
no protest as in the European scene. He explains that one had
his choice of living in the life he found about him or grappling
to death with the White Whale, but those who chose to live had
to live "without distrust, without inner complaint," and even
if scorning one*s fellows as Thoreau did, "one remained among
1. W. P. Taylor, The Economic Hovel in America, -passim.
2. Ibid., p. 14.
3. pp. 86-94.
4. Ibid., p. 88.