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Wall Street to Main Street, first published in 1999, focuses on the
spectacularly successful career of financier Charles Merrill
(1885-1956), the founder of Merrill Lynch & Co., the world's
largest brokerage and investment firm. Merrill was the most
innovative entrepreneur in the United States financial services
sector in the twentieth century and the most important figure in
promoting common stocks as a prudent long-term investment vehicle
for members of the American middle class. With more than 100 branch
offices across the nation, his firm solicited millions of
middle-class households and became famous for bringing Wall Street
to Main Street in the post-World War II era. Today, American
investors hold, either directly or indirectly through mutual funds,
a greater percentage of common stocks in their financial portfolios
than do the citizens of any other country. Based on archival
sources, this book is the first biography published about the
career of this major Wall Street figure.
Wall Street to Main Street: Charles Merrill and Middle-Class Investors focuses on the spectacularly successful career of financier Charles Merrill (1885-1956), the founder of Merrill Lynch & Co., the world's largest brokerage and investment firm. Merrill was the most innovative entrepreneur in the United States financial services sector in the twentieth century. He was the most important figure in promoting common stocks as a prudent long-term investment vehicle for members of the middle class across the United States. Opening more than 100 branch offices across the nation by 1950, his firm solicited millions of middle-class households and became famous for bringing "Wall Street to Main Street" in the post-World War II era. Today, American investors hold, either directly or indirectly through mutual funds, a greater percentage of common stocks in their financial portfolios than do the citizens of any other country. Based on archival sources, this book is the first biography published about the career of this major Wall Street figure. Edwin Perkins is a professor of history and an expert on the development of American financial services. Author of five books and several journal articles, Professor Perkins has testified before the U.S. Congress about proposed reforms to U.S. financial laws.
This edited volume includes a broad sample of scholarly
publications of Professor Edwin J. Perkins on U.S. financial
history and related topics in the fields of economic and business
history. Included are journal articles, excerpts from his prominent
books, plus three previously unpublished manuscripts. The content
is organized chronologically, starting with the colonial era and
ending with the second half of the twentieth century. A major
highlight of the book is the key role stockbroker, Charles Merrill,
founder of Merrill Lynch & Co., played in the evolution and
expansion of the nation's equity markets in the twentieth century.
The colonial era is especially appealing in regard to economic
history because it represents a study in contrasts. The economy was
exceptionally dynamic in terms of population growth and
geographical expansion. No major famines, epidemics, or extended
wars intervened to reverse, or even slow down appreciably, the tide
of vigorous economic growth. Despite this broad expansion, however,
the fundamental patterns of economic behavior remained fairly
constant. The members of the main occupational groups -- farmers,
planters, merchants, artisans, indentured servants, and slaves --
performed similar functions throughout the period. In comparison
with the vast number of institutional innovations in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, structural change in the colonial economy
evolved gradually. With the exception of the adoption of the
pernicious system of black slavery, few new economic institutions
and no revolutionary new technologies emerged to disrupt the
stability of this remarkably affluent commercial-agricultural
society. Living standards rose slowly but fairly steadily at a rate
of 3 to 5 percent a decade after 1650. (Monetary sums are converted
into 1980 dollars so that the figures will be relevant to modern
readers.) For the most part, this book describes the economic life
styles of free white society. The term "colonists" is virtually
synonymous here with inhabitants of European origin. Thus,
statements about very high living standards and the benefits of
land ownership pertain only to whites. One chapter does focus
exclusively, however, on indentured servants and slaves. This book
represents the author's best judgment about the most important
features of the colonial economy and their relationship to the
general society and to the movement for independence. It should be
a good starting point for all -- undergraduate to scholar --
interested in learning more about the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
This popular study, lauded by professors and scholars alike, has
been diligently revised to reflect the tremendous amount of new
research conducted during the last decade, and now includes a
totally new chapter on women in the economy. Presenting a great
deal of up-to-date information in a concise and lively style, the
book surveys the main aspects of the colonial economy: population
and economic expansion; the six main occupational groups (family
farmers, indentured servants, slaves, artisans, great planters, and
merchants); women in the economy; domestic and imperial taxes; the
colonial monetary system; living standards for the typical
family
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