{"id":3386,"date":"2008-11-09T22:02:33","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T22:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3386"},"modified":"2008-11-09T22:02:33","modified_gmt":"2008-11-09T22:02:33","slug":"the_crisis_last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3386","title":{"rendered":"The Crisis Last Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Parker:<\/a> <\/p>\n

For writers who seek to influence public affairs, timing plays a paramount role. And few writers have had better timing than Adolf Augustus Berle<\/a>.


\nIn the summer of 1932, with America trapped in the greatest financial crisis in its history, Berle published \u201cThe Modern Corporation and Private Property<\/a>,\u201d a scholarly yet readable analysis of America\u2019s largest companies and their managers. Berle is largely forgotten today, yet with that book he succeeded in persuading Americans to see their economic system in a new way \u2014 and helped set the stage for the most fundamental realignment of power since abolition.
\n


\nThe stock market had plunged vertiginously three years earlier, and by 1932 Americans were desperate to reverse the much wider collapse that had ensued \u2014 and to make sure it wouldn\u2019t happen again. The New Republic was soon hailing \u201cThe Modern Corporation\u201d as the book of the year, while The New York Herald Tribune pronounced it \u201cthe most important work bearing on American statecraft\u201d since the Federalist Papers. Louis Brandeis would cite its arguments in a major Supreme Court ruling on corporate power. Running for president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt recruited Berle \u2014 a Republican Wall Street lawyer who had supported Hoover \u2014 to join his \u201cbrain trust,\u201d and that fall entrusted him with drafting what became the most important speech of the campaign. After the election, Berle remained in New York, yet his connection to the president he audaciously addressed as \u201cDear Caesar\u201d was such that Time would characterize \u201cThe Modern Corporation\u201d as \u201cthe economic bible of the Roosevelt administration.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fascinating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Parker:<\/a> <\/p>\n

For writers who seek to influence public affairs, timing plays a paramount role. And few writers have had better timing than Adolf Augustus Berle<\/a>.


\nIn the summer of 1932, with America trapped in the greatest financial crisis in its history, Berle published \u201cThe Modern Corporation and Private Property<\/a>,\u201d a scholarly yet readable analysis of America\u2019s largest companies and their managers. Berle is largely forgotten today, yet with that book he succeeded in persuading Americans to see their economic system in a new way \u2014 and helped set the stage for the most fundamental realignment of power since abolition.
\n


\nThe stock market had plunged vertiginously three years earlier, and by 1932 Americans were desperate to reverse the much wider collapse that had ensued \u2014 and to make sure it wouldn\u2019t happen again. The New Republic was soon hailing \u201cThe Modern Corporation\u201d as the book of the year, while The New York Herald Tribune pronounced it \u201cthe most important work bearing on American statecraft\u201d since the Federalist Papers. Louis Brandeis would cite its arguments in a major Supreme Court ruling on corporate power. Running for president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt recruited Berle \u2014 a Republican Wall Street lawyer who had supported Hoover \u2014 to join his \u201cbrain trust,\u201d and that fall entrusted him with drafting what became the most important speech of the campaign. After the election, Berle remained in New York, yet his connection to the president he audaciously addressed as \u201cDear Caesar\u201d was such that Time would characterize \u201cThe Modern Corporation\u201d as \u201cthe economic bible of the Roosevelt administration.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fascinating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,21,39,8,33,35,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}