Boosters Hustlers And Speculators

Download or read book Boosters, Hustlers, and Speculators written by Jocelyn Wills and published by Minnesota Historical Society Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1849, when settlers arrived in the newly formed Minnesota Territory, they disembarked at the rough shantytown known as St Paul, home to fur traders and a handful of merchants. Nearby was Fort Snelling, its soldiers charged with keeping peace in the wilderness, its territory later transferred to the burgeoning settlement at Minneapolis. Less than four decades later, St Paul had emerged as a mercantile, banking, and railroading centre, and Minneapolis had matured into the world's largest flour-milling centre. The story of how this came to be involves assorted visionaries, savvy entrepreneurs, and government-supported expansion that combined to make St Paul -- Minneapolis the region's undisputed business, political, and educational centre. Historian Jocelyn Wills offers a business and entrepreneurial study of the Twin Cities during its early years, with particular focus on the individuals who took chances on and promoted the Cities' development. Boosters, Hustlers, and Speculators shares the successes and failures of a host of colourful characters who saw in the Twin Cities opportunities for financial gain and regional fame: early fur trader Norman Kittson, who built a lucrative trading network reaching to the Red River Valley; speculator Franklin Steele, who over-reached at the Falls of St Anthony and was virtually bankrupt after the panic of 1857; milling visionary William D Washburn, whose confident investments catapulted Minneapolis's milling district to international renown; railroad magnate James J Hill, whose calculated business decisions helped him realise his dream of building a rail line to the Pacific. Most arrived with limited means, and only some managed to realise their dreams, but all contributed to the development of Minneapolis and St. Paul as the region's leading manufacturing, banking, and transportation centre. This exhaustively researched book provides a firm foundation for understanding the role the Twin Cities have played in the development of the region and the nation from their earliest days.

Download or read book Headquarters Economy written by J. Myles Shaver and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metropolitan areas with a high concentration of headquarters from diverse industries stand out as influential, dynamic economies. However, there is little discussion about the characteristics of these 'headquarters economies'. Why do some regions develop vibrant headquarters economies, whereas others do not? The answer lies in understanding the essence of headquarters - the managerial talent pool that guides and governs these companies. By investigating an exemplar headquarters economy - Minneapolis-St. Paul - this volume demonstrates that the talent pool (managers), its movement among companies and industries in a region (mobility), and the nature of its inflow and outflow from a region (migration), can create a virtuous cycle that strengthens regional companies, and draws in additional talent. Comparing the migration pattern of educated, high-earning individuals across metropolitan areas in the United States, and drawing upon a proprietary survey of thousands of headquarters employees in Minneapolis-St. Paul, this book provides supportive evidence for this dynamic. A central insight of the research is that professional managerial talent is a determinant of regional vitality that has largely been overlooked. The underlying factors of managers, mobility, and migration, here identified in the context of Minneapolis-St. Paul, exist in metropolitan areas around the world, demonstrating the scope of application of the research findings, and highlighting the benefit of focusing on these underlying factors.

Download or read book The Correspondence of Charles Darwin: Volume 25, 1877 written by Charles Darwin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 1074 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers. Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person. The letters are published chronologically: volume 25 includes letters from 1877, the year in which Darwin published Forms of Flowers and with his son Francis carried out experiments on plant movement and bloom on plants. Darwin was awarded an honorary LL.D. by Cambridge University, and appeared in person to receive it. The volume contains a number of appendixes, including two on the albums of photograph sent to Darwin by his Dutch, German, and Austrian admirers.

Download or read book The Populist Vision written by Charles Postel and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major reinterpretation of the Populist movement, this text argues that the Populists were modern people, rejecting the notion that Populism opposed modernity and progress.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to the History of Retailing written by Jon Stobart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 620 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Retail history is a rich, cross-disciplinary field that demonstrates the centrality of retailing to many aspects of human experience, from the provisioning of everyday goods to the shaping of urban environments; from earning a living to the construction of identity. Over the last few decades, interest in the history of retail has increased greatly, spanning centuries, extending to all areas of the globe, and drawing on a range of disciplinary perspectives. By offering an up-to-date, comprehensive thematic, spatial and chronological coverage of the history of retailing, this Companion goes beyond traditional narratives that are too simplistic and Euro-centric and offers a vibrant survey of this field. It is divided into four broad sections: 1) Contexts, 2) Spaces and places, 3) People, processes and practices and 4) Geographical variations. Chapters are written in an analytical and synthetic manner, accessible to the general reader as well as challenging for specialists, and with an international perspective. This volume is an important resource to a wide range of readers, including marketing and management specialists, historians, geographers, economists, sociologists and urban planners.

Download or read book California and Hawai'i Bound written by Henry Knight Lozano and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-08 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry Knight Lozano explores how U.S. boosters, writers, politicians, and settlers promoted and imagined California and Hawai'i as connected places, and how this relationship reveals the fraught constructions of an Americanized Pacific West from the 1840s to the 1950s.

Download or read book Nature and Revelation written by Jeanne Halgren Kilde and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nature and Revelationis an absorbing history of Macalester College, from its origins as a Presbyterian secondary school in frontier St. Paul to its current presence as a nationally prominent liberal arts college. Detailing the college’s history, Jeanne Halgren Kilde tells stories of the college’s influential leaders, its defining moments, its rapidly changing student life, and the sometimes controversial evolution of the school’s curriculum and reputation, exploring its transformation from a modest evangelical college into a progressive, secular institution. By highlighting the college’s balancing act between nature and revelation—between the pursuit of empirical knowledge and religious conviction—Kilde traces the impact of changing perceptions of religion and education over Macalester’s more than century-long history. As once-religious colleges gradually shed their church ties and negotiated tensions between religious, vocational, and liberal arts missions, they both mirrored and affected the development of education and the trajectory of American Protestantism itself. Placing Macalester College in a national context, Kilde explores the cultural, political, and pedagogical challenges and shifts experienced by most U.S. institutions of higher education during this turbulent period. While so doing, Kilde uncovers a number of little-known aspects of the college’s history and explores the facts behind such persistent Mac myths as whether its most generous supporter,Reader’s Digestfounder DeWitt Wallace, actually coaxed a cow into a college building as an undergraduate or later terminated his financial support of the college in objection to what he considered its leftist political sympathies, or whether the college’s initiative to attract minority students during the 1970s drove its operating budget into an enormous deficit. An enlightening and rich history,Nature and Revelationdocuments Macalester College’s unique story and reveals its significance to higher education and religion in the United States.