American business history: Difference between revisions

In the South, by far the major business center was [[History of Baltimore|Baltimore, Maryland]]. It had a large port to handle imports and exports, and a large hinterland that included the tobacco regions of Maryland and Virginia. It dominated the flour trade. [[Alexander Brown (banker)|Alexander Brown]] (1764–1834) arrived in 1800 and set up a linen business and his firm [[Alex. Brown & Sons]] expanded into cotton and shipping, with branches in [[Liverpool|Liverpool, England]], Philadelphia, and New York. The firm Helped finance the [[Baltimore and Ohio Railroad]] to tap its own hinterland as far as Pennsylvania and Ohio. Brown was a business innovator after 1819 when cash and short credits became the norms of business relations. By concentrating his capital in small-risk ventures and acquiring ships and stock in the [[Second Bank of the United States]] he came to monopolize Baltimore's shipping trade with Liverpool by 1822. Brown next expanded into packet ships, extended his lines to Philadelphia, and began financing Baltimore importers, specializing in merchant banking from the late 1820s to his death in 1834. The emergence of a money economy and the growth of the Anglo-American cotton trade allowed him to escape Baltimore's declining position in trans-Atlantic trade. His most important innovation was the drawing up of his own bills of exchange. By 1830 his company rivaled the Bank of the United States in the American foreign exchange markets, and the transition from the "traditional" to the "modern" merchant was nearly complete. It became the nation's first investment banking.<ref>Gary L. Browne, "Business Innovation and Social Change: the Career of Alexander Brown after the War of 1812," ''Maryland Historical Magazine'' (1974) 69#3 pp: 243-255.</ref><ref>Stuart Bruchey, ''Robert Oliver, Merchant of Baltimore, 1783-1819'' (1956).</ref>