Corporations, Corruption, and the Modern Lobby:
A Gilded Age Story of the West and the South in Washington, D.C.
A Gilded Age Story of the West and the South in Washington, D.C.
Richard White, Stanford University
Overview:
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Arguing that "we cannot fully
understand our system of governance or the economic world we have
created
without understanding how corporations have comandeered the political
process in order to compete with each other," Richard White
revisits the late nineteenth century railroad wars between Tom
Scott and
Collis P. Huntington. He discusses how these powerful and
desperate men created strategies of finance, communication, and
politics, as well as "friendship" networks in order to shape beneficial
relationships with the federal government — practices
that continue in the present. |
Presentation Sections:
Corporations, Corruption, and the Modern Lobby:
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Part 1
(8:35 min.) |
Railroad baron Tom Scott's failed
effort to manipulate the 1876 election reveals dramatic changes
in governance that affect us to the present day. Scott and his
rival Collis P. Huntington invented the modern corporate lobby
and turned Congress into a place where corporations compete. |
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Part 2
(8:53 min.) |
Resembling "two large and
angry men fighting while on life support," Scott's
Texas and Pacific and Huntington's Southern Pacific sought
government subsidies and credit while deploying networks of lobbyists,
agents, journalists, and sub-contractors across a wide geographical
web. |
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Part 3
(12:47 min.) |
The elimination of affection from corporation and political "friendship"
was the genius of the Gilded Age. Homosocial friendship networks
of
favors and information exchange in business and public life between
lobbyists and politicians led to the framework of corporate influence
in the federal government that persists today. Scott and Huntington
cultivated friends in Congress, winning control of key committees
and influencing the choice of House Speaker through tactics that
included payment for goods and services, the exchange of valuable
information, and bribery. Most ironic was the enlisting of forces
of reform into the camp of the railroad monopolists. |
Excerpt from the Question and Answer Session:
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(14:33 min.)
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Prof. White addresses questions about the significance of transcontinental railroads and competition; the lack of "sentiment" in "friendship" networks, the role of anti-monopolist shippers and the public in these debates; and C. Vann Woodward's as well as his own perceptions about the personalities of Scott and Huntington. White also discusses how this work fits into his larger project on North American railroads.
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About Richard White:
Richard White is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American
History at Stanford University. He has written widely about
the American West, Native American History and environmental history.
He has won numerous awards including a Pulitzer Prize
nomination, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, and the Kahn Award for
Distinguished Teaching from Stanford University. Prof. White is a former
president of the Western Historical Association and the Organization
of American Historians. "Corporations, Corruption, and the Modern Lobby," was presented on March 19, 2009 as the J. Harvey Young Lecture sponsored by Emory University's Department of History.
Presentation Sections:
