TY - BOOK ID - 80828612 TI - Western Union and the creation of the American corporate order, 1845-1893 PY - 2013 SN - 9780511998041 9781107012288 9781107480902 9781107247499 1107247497 051199804X 9781461936466 1461936462 9781107249981 1107249988 1107012287 1107480906 1139890565 1107241200 1107250811 1107248329 PB - Cambridge DB - UniCat KW - Telegraph KW - Telecommunication KW - Monopolies KW - Corporations KW - Business corporations KW - C corporations KW - Corporations, Business KW - Corporations, Public KW - Limited companies KW - Publicly held corporations KW - Publicly traded corporations KW - Public limited companies KW - Stock corporations KW - Subchapter C corporations KW - Business enterprises KW - Corporate power KW - Disincorporation KW - Stocks KW - Trusts, Industrial KW - Combinations in restraint of trade KW - Commercial corners KW - Corners, Commercial KW - Engrossing KW - Forestalling KW - Commercial crimes KW - Trade regulation KW - Competition KW - Monopolistic competition KW - Monopsonies KW - Restraint of trade KW - Electric communication KW - Mass communication KW - Telecom KW - Telecommunication industry KW - Telecommunications KW - Communication KW - Information theory KW - Telecommuting KW - Electric telegraph KW - Postal telegraph KW - Telegrams KW - Ciphers KW - Communication and traffic KW - History KW - Management KW - Western Union Telegraph Company. KW - Western Union KW - E-books KW - Arts and Humanities UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:80828612 AB - This work chronicles the rise of Western Union Telegraph from its origins in the helter-skelter ferment of antebellum capitalism to its apogee as the first corporation to monopolize an industry on a national scale. The battles that raged over Western Union's monopoly on nineteenth-century American telecommunications - in Congress, in courts, and in the press - illuminate the fierce tensions over the rising power of corporations after the Civil War and the reshaping of American political economy. The telegraph debate reveals that what we understand as the normative relationship between private capital and public interest is the product of a historical process that was neither inevitable nor uncontested. Western Union's monopoly was not the result of market logic or a managerial revolution, but the conscious creation of entrepreneurs protecting their investments. In the process, these entrepreneurs elevated economic liberalism above traditional republican principles of public interest and helped create a new corporate order. ER -