ABSTRACT
The diversity of the business was partly deliberate, partly accidental. Thus, the reason the combine got into the retail fish business was that Lord Leverhulme had a private interest in helping the fishermen of the islands of W. Arthur Lewis and Harris, off the west coast of Scotland, and Mac Fisheries was started as a retail outlet for the catch. The case histories that follow relate to four firms that have pioneered in big business: an oil company, a milling company, a soap company, and a chemicals company. It is not supposed that four illustrations, or even forty, will wholly validate a thesis. James Gray has written Business Without Boundaries: The Story of General Mills. The phase of the corporate growth of General Mills extended from the time of the merger in 1928 to 1937, a period during which it was found that to centralize advertising and other functions at the top did not work well.
