The pursuit of progress: Corning Glass Works, Alanson B. Houghton, and America as world power.

摘要

Set in the context of America's industrial advance before World War I, the first part of this dissertation is a history of the origins and early development of the Houghton family's renowned Corning Glass Works. Amory Houghton, his son Amory Jr., and eldest grandson Alanson Bigelow, were pioneers of American capitalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In building one the world's premier glass manufacturing companies, they contributed to the country's industrial development, and their story embodies the pursuit of material progress that underpinned America's rise as a global power.; The Houghton family's business experience demonstrates the instrumental role of small and mid-sized firms in America's emergence as a great power. It refutes the popular conception that "typical" business leaders of nineteenth and early twentieth century were immigrants, sons of farmers, raised in poverty, uneducated, and forced to join the workforce as young boys. It also reveals the necessity of dedicated, resilient, and far-sighted leadership in the field of business enterprise.; The dissertation's second and larger section is a study of Alanson Bigelow Houghton, the glass firm's third president. A Harvard graduate, he was instrumental in transforming the glass company into a large modern enterprise. As a result of his dedication to industrial research and engineering, Corning Glass successfully systematized process and product innovation, which enhanced the firm's ability to compete in a dynamic marketplace. What also makes him the most intriguing of the early executives at Corning Glass Works is his subsequent career in the public sector.; Houghton became an influential Republican politician and diplomat in the decade after the First World War. From 1922 to 1929, no American official was more actively involved in European affairs, and he became the world's most influential ambassador. He was a key figure in U.S.-German and U.S.-British relations and played an influential role in the major diplomatic achievements of his era, including the Dawes Plan (1924), the Locarno Treaties (1925), and the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928). Perhaps as important as his diplomatic record, was his progressive vision for U.S. leadership, which promoted a pragmatic middle course between Wilsonian and Republican internationalism.