McCarthyism and Television

McCarthyism and Television: In the early 1950s, the U.S. government embarked on a witch hunt to cleanse itself and American society of potential communists. Led by Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the witch hunt developed into a full-fledged ideology, as the -ism that bore his last name became a culture war (Second Red Scare). And it's important not to divorce McCarthyism from its impact on television. For cultural historian Thomas Doherty, television signaled a "cool medium" in the midst of an emerging Cold War, as it was largely a passive activity that required little interaction. But the first televised hearings of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which should not be confused with Senator McCarthy, had enormous ramifications for the entertainment industry. Suspected communists in Hollywood were often brought before the Committee to testify about their political beliefs. And HUAC had help, especially from the anti-communist pamphlet Red Channels, which in 1950 published the names of 151 suspected communists in the entertainment industry. McCarthy, however, focused his attention on identifying potential communists in the U.S. government, particularly in the Army and State Departments. In what became the most famous televised exchange of the McCarthy era (June 9, 1954), he was publicly rebuked by the Army's lead attorney Joseph Welch with the question, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

Railroads: America's First Big Businesses

Railroads: America's First Big Businesses: According to business historian Alfred Chandler, railroads became America's first big businesses in the latter half of the 19th century. In general, there were four major socioeconomic outcomes that grew from the emerging American railroad industry, and they included eminent domain for corporations, massive organizational bureaucracies for data collection, the selling of a service instead of a product, and lastly, the standardization of time. Perhaps more than any other industry in the 19th century, railroads proved the most difficult to manage precisely because they required a vast amount of debt financing. With high fixed costs for servicing the debt, determining a fair price for customers became nearly impossible, at times. Railroad managers had to figure out ways to control the operations of a business which they could not always observe in action. Even though Samuel Morse's electric telegraph greatly enhanced communication between railroad employees, the need for large-scale data collection still remained. With hundreds of thousands of workers in the American railroad industry by the 19th century's end, a company like the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) had bigger budgets and more employees than the entire U.S. government.