American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open
spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half
the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or
more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this
institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological
forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued? In this
book, the first organizational history of nineteenth-century
America, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow says no. He shows that
there was nothing inevitable about the surge in corporate size
and power by century's end. Critics railed against the
nationalizing of the economy, against corporations' monopoly
powers, political subversion, environmental destruction, and
"wage slavery." How did a nation committed to individual
freedom, family firms, public goods, and decentralized power
become transformed in one century? Bountiful resources, a mass
market, and the industrial revolution gave entrepreneurs broad
scope. In Europe, the state and the church kept