Hagley History Hangout

Artists bring a unique perspective to historical archives. Like any other researchers, they examine documents and collections to learn about their subject. Where their methods diverge is to use archival sources to shape the form and meaning of art created in two and three dimensions. The experiences of past people, accessed through the documents they left behind, can breathe life into the material...

The American tobacco oligopoly of five firms loomed large in the mid-twentieth century thanks to the addictive qualities of their products and the massive investment they made in broadcast marketing communications, influencing the media experience of millions of Americans and the wider landscape of American media for generations. Media historian Peter Kovacs is conducting research on the influence...

In this episode of Hagley History Hangout Roger Horowitz sits down with Alex Taylor to discuss his new book, Forms of Persuasion: Art and Corporate Image in the 1960s, the first dedicated history of corporate patronage in post-war art. Taylor’s book considers how a wide range of artists were deeply immersed in the marketing strategies of big business during the 1960s and explored with multinationa...

What archive could possibly give you a total view of American business practice in the twentieth century? What industry touched and participated in nearly every other industry? What firm yields insight into a cavalcade of firms in one fell swoop? The answer to all of these questions is the BBD&O advertising agency archive held in the Hagley Museum & Library. Cynthia Meyers, professor emerita of Co...

Cognitive changes occur across the human lifespan, with consequences for economic conditions. How people have understood these changes, and managed their interaction with life and work has changed over time. As industrialization sped up work, and enhanced the wealth of society, social scientists and business leaders struggled to better understand the aging process, and to address its implications...

How does a movement unite the disparate interests of producer and consumers? By directing their shared ire against a powerful middleman. That is how opponents of the Standard Oil monopoly on kerosene refining and distribution joined forces to take on the corporate giant. In his dissertation project, Minseok Jang, PhD candidate at the University of Albany, explores the materiality of kerosene and i...

Joe Plasky talks about his efforts interviewing as many people as he can who worked for DuPont’s Textile Fibers Department between 1950 and 2000. Joe Plasky is a retired engineer from DuPont’s Textile Fibers Department and he has been collecting oral histories from former DuPont Textile Fibers employees for well over a decade. Every year, sometimes multiple times per year, Mr. Plasky deposits a ba...

Even the most favored workers of the New Deal order, white male heads of households with unionized industrial jobs, faced economic uncertainty in the form of irregularity of work and earnings. These workers and their families made ends meet with a variety of “casual” work arrangements; seasonal labor, barter, family interdependence, etc. Much of the rest of the American labor force in the post-Wor...

In this edition of Hagley History Hangout, Hannah Farber discusses her new prize-winning book, Underwriters of the United States, with Roger Horowitz. Her book traces how American maritime insurers used their position at the pinnacle of global trade to shape the formation of the United States. During American Revolution, they helped the U.S. negotiate foreign loans, sell state debts, and establish...

The distinctive landscape of south Florida has its roots in the attempt by mid-twentieth century developers to transform the “last frontier” in America into piles of cash. Where they succeeded there now reigns an over-developed suburban landscape of leisure dominated by residential spaces and amenities like golf courses and parks. The decades-long process has had profound consequences for the envi...

This special edition of the Hagley History Hangout features Dr. Margaret Mulrooney presenting her work on the DuPont Irish and celebrating the 20th Anniversary re-release of her book at an Author Talk event hosted by the Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society at the Hagley Museum & Library. Twenty years ago, Margaret Mulrooney’s history of the community of Irish immigrant worker...

Young urban professional (yuppies for short) emerged as an archetype close to the heart of transformations taking place in American society during the 1970s and 1980s. These highly-educated individuals were products and architects of a new American economy geared toward financial services and willing cannibalize much of the rest of the economy for short-term profit. While elite universities had on...

Yugoslavian planners considered themselves to be architects of a third way “between the blocs,” aligned neither with the capitalist West nor the Communist East, but rather masters of their own socio-economic destiny. This ramified in the economy and on the streets of Yugoslav cities in the form of supermarkets and their larger kin department stores. Ivana Zimbrek, PhD candidate in history at Centr...

Since World War II the old industrial cities of the northeast and Midwest USA have repeatedly sought to end periods of decline by seeking to renew their downtowns. Convention centers, sports stadiums, hospitals, and tourist-oriented investment have all been deployed in an effort to restore a tax base and reinvigorate urban areas. Just as repeatedly the efforts have failed to bring benefits to the...

Hilton Hotels started in Texas and swelled into a globe-straddling hospitality behemoth. Along the way company founder Conrad Hilton kept ideas about affordable luxury at the center of his business model. Among the affordable luxuries on offer in Hilton Hotels was an “eclectic modernist” design sensibility that placed the American consumer at the apex of a global cultural hierarchy. In her book pr...

America at the dawn of the twentieth century ran on anthracite coal. Burning the hard, lustrous fossil fuel heated millions of homes and powered locomotives, steamships, foundries, and factories. Nearly all of this coal came out of the hills of eastern Pennsylvania, mined by an army of workers who labored in the most dangerous industry in American for the lowest wages in the country. At about $1/d...

Railroads unite. Across time and space the railroad has tied together diverse peoples and places with literal and figurative bonds. An outstanding example of this historical process is the transfer and elaboration of a railroad technocracy from origins in the United States to efflorescence in the People’s Republic of China. In his dissertation project, Benjamin Kletzer, PhD candidate in modern Chi...

Sometimes, oral history makes up for a shortfall in the archival record, or adds depth and greater context to existing archival records. RCA had many short-lived projects in the 1960s and 1970s which aren’t as well documented as some of their other developments. Kevin Bunch is a writer and communications specialist for the International Joint Commission and an independent researcher of video game...

Historians of technology once famously asked, “does technology drive history?” Their answer was, “it depends.” The phenomena of history do not float atop of the changes within material practices and technology, but neither do they stand apart from them; the two are intimately entwined in the contingent, intermittent unfolding of history. The challenge for the historian is to open the black box of...

Long before automobiles roll off the assembly line, their many components are manufactured by a sprawling constellation of smaller businesses that supply the makers of finished automobiles. This automobile supply chain began in the 1920s within the Detroit metropolitan area, and by the 1960s had swollen to embrace an area roughly 600 miles in radius with its core remaining in southeast Michigan. T...

Scholars have written histories of public relations. Scholars have written histories of labor. Scholars had yet to bring the two histories into conversation with one another, that is until Patricia Curtin, professor at the University of Oregon, started her latest book project. Dr. Curtin’s research illustrates the many connections between public relations and American labor in the early twentieth...

DuPont was in the fashion business. The industrial giant cultivated markets for its novel synthetic textiles, such as Rayon, by interfacing with the wider world of fashion. This process brought one Alexis Ureyvitch Sommaripa, later known as “The Mad Russian,” to prominence. This elegant, cultured man was born in the Russian Empire in Odessa, Ukraine, fled the revolution as a teenager, and migrated...

Corporate futurists made a living with their imaginations. These professional prognosticators spent their time looking at the world around them, observing its apparent changes and trends, and reporting to business and political leaders proscribed methods for interpreting and preparing for the future. Dr. Gavin Benke, senior lecturer at Boston University, dug into multiple Hagley Library collection...

The Empire of Bethlehem Steel stretched from a small eastern-Pennsylvania city across the United States and down to Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, and Brazil. It encompassed dozens of plants, concerns, and subsidiary firms, and touched the lives of millions of people across multiple continents. During a century (1880s-1980s) of involvement in Latin America, Bethlehem Steel Company imported cheap...

From humble beginnings wholesaling at a small tobacconist-hairdresser shop in 1915, the London Rubber Company rapidly became the UK's biggest postwar producer and exporter of disposable rubber condoms. A first-mover and innovator, the company's continuous product development and strong brands (including Durex) allowed it to dominate supply to the retail trade and family planning clinics, leading i...