Abstract
Americans of the mid-nineteenth century struggled with a volatile economy. Attitudes toward bankrupts changed from moral reproach to widespread acceptance. Purveyors of quack medicines have thrived for millennia. The desire to be cured of illness and debility has proved enduring. Food vendors, too, faced temptations to adulterate their products, often with their customers’ knowledge and consent. Wars raised different aspects of business ethics. The Civil War corruption was a continuation and amplification of previous corruption and a harbinger of the widespread shenanigans of the Gilded Age.
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Notes
- 1.
Thomas Safley referred to banca rotta, or “brokenbank,” whereby the tables on which merchants transacted their business were broken (Safley 2009, 56).
- 2.
The Equifax debacle occurred during the writing of this manuscript. Since consumers never gave Equifax and its two competitors expressed permission to collect information, one could argue that Equifax had an elevated duty to protect consumers’ information.
- 3.
Marion Crane, the woman on the lam in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho would have been better served stopping at a national-brand motel instead of the Bates Motel.
- 4.
The same author, in reviewing a previous article, “Death in the Pot!,” excoriated chemists who, “are always defending adulteration of food, especially when it is done by large corporations which are able to pay fat fees for expert (?) testimony on the witness stand (Independent 1901, 1149).”
- 5.
Benjamin Brandreth tried to cultivate a persona of public-spirited citizen through acts of charity, lack of ostentation, and willingness to keep his workers on the payroll during slack times (Young 1961, 88). Of course, paying for charity from funds acquired through selling dubious products raises troubling ethical questions.
- 6.
- 7.
Edward Glaeser and Claudia Goldin reported that “gifts of railway stock given to congressmen and others during the Credit Mobilier scandal were perfectly legal at the time (Glaeser and Goldin 2006, Introduction, 11).”
- 8.
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Surdam, D.G. (2020). Examples of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Business Ethics in America. In: Business Ethics from the 19th Century to Today. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37169-2_3
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