Adolf Berle and the Modern Corporation

The industrializationBerle, Adolf and corporatization of the American economy produced immense wealth and transformed the United States into a global economic powerhouse. Just during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the volume of industrial production, the number of workers employed in industry, and the number of manufacturing plants all more than doubled. By 1899, the aggregate annual value of all manufactured goods in the United States stood at approximately $13 billion, compared to $5.4 billion in 1879. Over the same period, the annual production of steel in the United States increased almost nine-fold, from 1.4 million to more than 11 million tons.