The Age of Big Business

Writing in the early part of the 20th century, author Burton Hendrick noted that his father and grandfather probably wouldn't understand his business vocabulary. The terms "trust," "subsidiaries," and "syndicates" simply meant nothing to earlier generations. But they are important to the remarkable development of the post-Civil War American economy and industry, the topic of The Age of Big Business. As Hendrick noted, "The industrial story of the United States in the last fifty years is the story of the most amazing economic transformation that the world has ever known." To understand this period, Hendricks looks at the lives of the captains of industry, but most closely at the career of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who Hendricks believes best personifies this period. Hendricks also discusses the steel industry, the spread of the telephone, public utilities, agricultural machinery, and the democratization of the automobile. BURTON JESSE HENDRICK (1870-1949) was a respected American author and historian. He won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for biography for Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, and The Victory at Sea, which he co-wrote with Admiral William S. Sims, and won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1921. The Training of an American earned him a third Pulitzer in 1929. Hendrick also wrote Bulwark of the Republic, Statesmen of the Lost Cause, and Lincoln's War Cabinet.