ABSTRACT
The rise of corporate capital in the harvesting-machinery industry is usually explained as an outworking of the U.S.A.’s national advantage. The reaper is usually seen as a distinctive U.S. invention, which, on the back of unprecedented national demand, was developed into a mass produced item of capital equipment, aimed first at the U.S. market and, subsequently, with the merger to form IHC in 1902, made into a transnational product by foreign direct investment. Thus, the giant corporation emerged as an ingenious harnessing of science and technology to solve production problems, and as a rational solution to the problems associated with the worst forms of unregulated competition that emerged as independent firms developed from small-scale, artisanal production to large-scale manufacturers, on their own and within the separate and isolated U.S. economy. The quote from David Noble, with which this book began, captures the thrust of this explanation.
