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Dalzell, Robert F., Jr. Enterprising Elite: the Boston Associates and the World They Made Document generated on 09/24/2021 4:37 a.m. Urban History Review Revue d'histoire urbaine Dalzell, Robert F., Jr. Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Pp. xviii, 298. Illustrations David G. Burley Volume 18, Number 1, June 1989 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1017836ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1017836ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine ISSN 0703-0428 (print) 1918-5138 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this review Burley, D. G. (1989). Review of [Dalzell, Robert F., Jr. Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Pp. xviii, 298. Illustrations]. Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 18(1), 98–99. https://doi.org/10.7202/1017836ar All Rights Reserved © Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, 1989 This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Book Reviews/Comptes rendus latest addition to the fleets. Ironically, the too small and the contextual information too classes and class consciousness. piers into the Hudson River had become so laconic. In fact, when one sits to read this Entrepreneurial innovation and class long and the strait so narrow by the book one would be well advised to have at formation, thus, expressed a cultural and continuous infilling of the waterlots to create hand a good, large tourist-style map of social conservatism. more docklands that larger ships could not Manhattan Island, especially if one does not be manoeuvred into the births on the Upper have a detailed grasp of Manhattan's fairly In examining the industrial espionage of West Side. logical street system. There are many textual Francis Cabot Lowell, the promotion of references that would be rather befuddling to America's first modern factory, the A large section of this book is devoted to the the non-New Yorker. introduction of the Waltham-Lowell system of plans for the west side of the Island of labour, and the application of the corporate Manhattan known in the book as the West In literary terms, the work, though pleasantly model to various forms of capital mobilization, Wall. Beginning with the struggle for written, lacks something of the romanticism Dalzell has wrought a careful synthesis of a Riverside Park and leading ultimately to the and earthiness that one would hope for in an well-developed fund of secondary literature. contemporary development proposals of the account of what is surely one of the more Yet, in so doing, he disputes the conventional likes of Donald Trump and Associates, this colourful and picturesque parts of a colourful interpretation found in the work of Caroline section of the book provides a glimpse of the and picturesque city. Instead, the people in Ware, Robert Sobel, and Francis W. Gregory, social and political ferment that this book are primarily drawn from the New among others, that the declining profitability accompanied physical planning and York elite, and although some of the offical of mercantile enterprise promoted the development. intrigue reported provides interesting reading, migration of merchant capital into one cannot help but get the impression that manufacturing investments in early 19th- Plans for the West Wall began in an era of this is a much sanitized or at least innocent century New England. Manufacturing, he growing prosperity and during a period of version of the planning and development of contends, did not offer more profitable fervent urban reform. The clash between the Manhattan waterfront. returns than commerce, and indeed shipping mercantile interests and reformers provides a figures reveal no evidence of a flight of rewarding case study of the groups and the Bruce Krushelnicki Boston investment from mercantile individual personalities who contributed to Institute of Urban and Environmental Studies enterprise. If this was the case, what then the moulding of the waterfront in this part of Brock University explains such calculated diversification? the city. Dalzell presents another dimension to the It is also interesting here to note how history Dalzell, Robert F., Jr. Enterprising Elite: familiar theme of New England inter- can be influenced by the historian. The Boston Associates and the World generational mobility; the enterprising elite Buttenwieser has a nice passage on the They Made. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard might well be identified — after Philip Greven importance of women in the cause of urban University Press, 1987. Pp. xviii, 298. in his work on colonial Andover, reform, recounting the efforts of progressive Illustrations. Massachusetts — as the fifth and sixth women's groups in imagining and securing a generations. Perpetuation of social position more humane built environment for the many Enterprising Elite, by R. F. Dalzell, offers an required new forms of business. Whereas who were resigned to inhabit the squalor of important and provocate interpretation of the commerce had provided both the financial the waterfront slums. social origins of industrial capitalism and the wherewithal and leisure for Boston's pre- ability of capitalism to reconstruct and Revolutionary elite to exercise political and For such a small book on such a large topic, consolidate a passing social order. The cultural leadership, early 19th century Manhattan Water-Bound does an admirable author argues that a desire to preserve their merchants confronted a no less profitable, job. Complete with abundant figures, social positions and that of their children but far more risky and stressful, field of photographs, and tables to guide the reader motivated the Boston Associates, already endeavour. Moreover, republican politics through what could be rather tedious factual successful as merchants, to assemble demanded more time, just when the press of matters, the text is very readable. between 1810 to 1860 a business complex business made freeing one's energies for of textile manufacturing, transportation public life more difficult. To play a public role The only sharp criticism that can be made of companies, and financial institutions. More as their fathers had done, the Boston the presentation has to do with the maps. than this, the sum of individual efforts to Associates needed to find some new Though abundant and much appreciated, the assert social leadership and to protect their enterprise, less time-consuming, less maps are virtually unreadable. The print is heirs throughout this period, created layers of psychologically absorbing, and more 98 Urban History Review/Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XVIII, No. I (June 1989) Book Reviews/Comptes rendus predictable in its operations. Beyond strove to sustain at least the pretence of question and advances a provocative thesis, personal ambitions lay concerns for the community action. The major example of this both of which cry out for the sophisticated generation to follow. The danger of was their support for Massachusetts General methodologies long associated with the partitioning a life's capital into bequests too Hospital. A conviction that the community study of the New England family. small to sustain one's progeny economically should solve its own problems led the or socially worried Boston merchants, as it Associates to seek a wide participation in the David G. Burley had New England farmers before them. The subscription of hospital stock. Later Department of History Boston Associates willed their heirs the philanthropic causes displayed no such University of Winnipeg corporation and the trust. sensitivity to the appearance of social consensus and accepted social division. The solution may have been suggested to Francis Cabot Lowell, a successful Their subsequent generosity carefully merchant, during a trip to Scotland in 1810. balanced charitable donations for the relief of Textile manufacturing, and the transportation "the deserving poor" with contributions to and financial institutions which facilitated its those institutions that offered services from operations, afforded dependable returns on which they themselves and their heirs might investment with decentralized management. benefit. Harvard University, for example, The corporation, with shares that were easily became an especially favoured recipient. divided, and the trust, preventing an inept heir Perhaps nothing revealed a more rigid social from squandering his inheritance and outlook than their unsuccessful resistance to weakening the pool of capital which enriched the campaign to convert the Boston himself and his relatives, solved the problem Atheneum, their private reading club, into a that had so troubled earlier generations. Yet, public library. Similarly, the electoral this strategy gave children far less control consensus that the Associates had over their patrimony than their fathers had assembled in the 1830s behind the received. Dalzell might have more directly Massachusetts Whig Party failed in the addressed the factors which explained one 1850s. generation placing less confidence in the next generation than it had
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