business

Posted on by katie_shore1 Uncategorized

Davis Brothers Publishing Company

Katie Shore

If at First, You Don’t Succeed: The three Davis brothers – James, Earl, and J. Clair – refused to let the tornado in 1953 shut them down. They stand outside of their new facility at Jefferson Street in 1954, which was paid for using a disaster loan. Image from Waco Tribune-Herald, Feb. 12, 1978.

When people think of Waco, they usually don’t think of printing or publishing firms, but here is where Davis Brothers Publishing Company found success and made a name for itself. By the time it was acquired by a larger media company in 2016, Davis Brothers Publishing Company had been a part of the community for almost ninety years. What started out as a family-run business became a large-scale printing and publishing operation in Waco and the surrounding areas, and its journey as a business is rather fascinating.

In 1927, brothers Earl and J. Clair Davis bought a printing press and formed what would eventually become Davis Brothers Publishing Company. The two brothers operated their infantile business out of a small building on their mother’s property until they were able to move to a different location in 1928.

The Davis brothers slowly started to gain respectability in the printing industry in Waco. The company became especially known for producing and publishing the Waco Record newspaper with their partner Mr. B. G. McKie starting in 1932. Soon after, with James, the third Davis brother, joining the company and the move to a new location in the heart of downtown Waco, the business was making strides towards success. Unfortunately, all of that came to a halt on May 11, 1953.

On that day, a terrible tornado hit Waco. As a result, the Davis brothers lost their manufacturing facility and nearly all of their machinery. Sadly, the tornado also put the Waco Record out of publication, but all hope was not lost for the printing company. The brothers applied for and received a disaster loan a few months later, which allowed them to purchase another printing company, Israel Printing Company, and use it as a stepping stone to break back into the commercial printing industry. The company acquired a new location and added Earl Davis’s son Bob to the staff in 1959 to manage sales.

Davis Brothers Publishing Company especially contributed to the publishing realm in Texas through the creation of the Texian Press, which was established in 1961 by Bob Davis and Frank Jasek of Library Binding Co. In its prime in the 1980s, the Texian Press was the largest independent publisher in Texas, cranking out an average of eight to ten books each year. As the name suggests, this operation focused on publishing books and literature related to Texas. Specifically, they served schools and even did some publishing for the Texas State Library.

Publishing Done the Texas Way: Bob Davis hands archivist Dorman H. Winfrey his newly published book A History of Rusk County. Davis Brothers Publishing Company released its first hardcover book and its first novel as part of their Texian Press publishing company in 1961. Image from Waco News-Tribune, May 16, 1961.

By 1980, the company had moved to a new location at 4500 Speight Avenue, where they built a large, state-of-the-art facility. At the time, the company was technologically advanced due to the addition of a few web printing presses and computerized equipment that was purchased in the seventies. This technology allowed Davis Brothers Publishing Company to serve many groups with many different printing needs. During the 1980s, some of the top printing jobs of the Davis Brothers Publishing Company included the Texas Register, issues of Texas Agriculture, state and local directories, and even the Baylor Lariat.

Tech Savvy: Pictured above is an employee at Davis Brothers Publishing Company using a web press machine to print the Baylor Lariat and the Texas Register in the 1980s. Davis Brothers Publishing Company was very advanced for the time in that they had several of these high-powered machines at their disposal. Image from Waco Tribune-Herald, Feb. 12, 1978.

Technology and Teamwork: Workers make use of another piece of technology at the Davis Brothers Publishing Company facility. This machine is used to trim, stitch, and collate any and all of the company’s bound items. Image from Waco Tribune-Herald, Feb. 12, 1978.

The company kept plugging along into the 1990s and 2000s. It continued its printing and publishing work while trying to compete with larger, better-equipped firms. In 2016, Davis Brothers Publishing Firm was acquired by Integ, a company based in Waco that focuses on delivering quality content with a heavy emphasis on customer service. In purchasing Davis Brothers Publishing Company, Integ desired to improve its ability to provide web press services and to provide for the printing needs of local customers.

While Davis Brothers Publishing Company now no longer exists as an independent business, the impacts of this company cannot be ignored. In its ninety-year history, Davis Brothers Publishing Company proved that small businesses are still mighty and that providing people with a quality product is the key to success.

A Dream Team: Pictured above are General Manager Bill Shirley (left), President Bob Davis (middle), and Vice President Earl Ray Davis (left). By 1986, Davis Brothers Publishing Company still employed members of the Davis family; Earl Ray Davis was the son of President Bob Davis. Family values were clearly important at Davis Brothers Publishing Company. Image from Waco Tribune-Herald, April 20, 1986.

 

 

Tabloid Gold: Eighty-nine-year-old Joe L. Ward, a Waco native and businessman, discusses how Davis Brothers Publishing Company’s publication the Waco Record had a reputation for publishing articles about scandals and eye-catching headlines rather than actual news.

 

1 Comment Posted on by haley_beard2 Uncategorized

Man vs. Machine

For many years there has been a debate regarding being on “Team Human” or being on “Team Machine”. It is an issue that questions whether we need to stick to doing things the way humans have been acting or have an unfair advantage over others by using and inventing new technology. An article that helped me gain more information over this subject is “Business Does Not Need the Humanities – But Humans Do” by Gianpiero Petriglieri.

The article talks about how a few years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lost a game of Scrabble to a friend’s teenage daughter. Zuckerberg decided to write a computer program that would look up his letters in the dictionary so that he could see and choose from all the letter combinations before he played a second game with her. After the game, the teenage daughter of Zuckerberg’s friend talked about how“during the game in which [she] was play[ed] the program, everyone around [them] was taking sides: Team Human and Team Machine” (Petriglieri). This brings in the main topic of discussion within the article which is whether the machines are doing more good than harm and if it is really the machines people are rallying against.

Image result for man vs machine

image from sysomos.com

An unintended consequence of this assumption of there being teams for humanity and machine is that people believe we are up against the physical machine itself. In actuality, we are up against the people who create them. Petriglieri claims that the truth is there is no “Team Machine.” The contest is always between humans. Some humans havemachines, but those machines are not always a gift. The concerns about what technology will do to humanity cover up the problem of what powerful humans will do to the rest. If there is a “Team Machine,” it is not on the side of machines, instead it is just humans who have machines on their side. The main issue is what the machines do for leaders and to leaders, because soon enough they will be doing it for and to the rest of the population.

The complexity of the fight between people who are against machines and those who are for it, makes people wonder if any solution could be met. A solution proposed to help settle the score in the Scrabble match against the algorithm is to counter the corruption of “consciousness, community, and cosmopolitanism by a blind faith in instrumentality” (Petriglieri). By establishing the case that consciousness is more than a state of mindful composure in the present, there is consideration of the consequences of a person’s work whether that be in a private setting or in a broad space. Countering the belief of some people that a community is not just a tribe that reinforces our performances, it can be said that it is a group of people who are committed to our well-being and learning. Lastly, laying down the groundwork that cosmopolitanism is not an elite identity, introduces an attitude of curiosity regarding what lies beyond the boundaries of our territories, cultures, and faiths.

What is feared in regards to fearing the machines is that the fight might become uneven. We fear the loss of emotions humans have whether that be doubt or the feeling that there is more to humans than being productive, rational, objective, and effective. People fear losing the paradox that comprises humanity. Humans want to live and try to control the future, yet to feel alive they must be free to imagine it. By siding with machines, that paradox and all emotions associated with humans are thrown out the window. People need to keep in mind all of the gains and losses that goes with team machine, rather than think being progressive is always good.

1 Comment Posted on by katie_shore1 Uncategorized

Silverware and Sharing Spouses

Katie Shore

(Image of Julliard Flatware from Oneida)

The silverware pictured above is the exact set of silverware my parents received as a wedding gift nearly twenty years ago, and it is sitting in a drawer in my kitchen. Before listening to an episode of NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast, I had no idea what Oneida was, let alone that my family’s silverware was manufactured by the company.

Oneida silverware has an interesting and complex history. Before Oneida became a successful flatware company, it was just a “free love” commune. How did a group of people in a spouse-swapping commune become owners of a multimillion dollar company?

During the Industrial Revolution and the Second Great Awakening in the 1840s, a man named John Humphrey Noyes decided that he and some of his companions were going to start a commune in upstate New York. This community was composed of Christian Perfectionists. Perfectionists sought to perfect themselves by eliminating fear, sin, and other impure things from their lives.

Initially, the commune began producing animal traps since fur was in high demand. They mechanized this process and built nearly 200,000 fur traps per year. The commune also worked in other industries to see which would bring them the most income, and this eventually led them to the flatware industry.

Clearly, the Perfectionists had capitalist tendencies. Ellen Wayland-Smith, the great-great-great-grandniece of Noyes, describes his views about capitalism and Perfectionism in the podcast: “He thought capitalism was going to be a way of uniting humans into one sort of global market and that this can only bring good.” Contrastingly, the author of Major Problems in American Business History, Philip B. Scranton, defines capitalism as “a relentless drive for improvement, expansion, and control, defined and channeled through economic institutions (usually firms) and their interactions, and involving technological change” (9). The Oneida commune was a fusion of both of these ideas: the commune desired expansion and was innovative for the sake of profits, but capitalism also united the people to work together for the success of the company.

Despite his capitalist views, Noyes also avidly supported “Bible communism,” meaning that the business’s profits were shared, and everything was owned by everyone. Essentially, it was a form of religious socialism. This idea of “Bible commune-ism” was implemented because Perfectionists had to be unselfish; sharing was caring. Members of the commune even shared spouses!

The idea of “free love” made people uncomfortable. The podcast discusses America becoming more religiously conservative around this time too. In the late 1800s, the government became more suspicious of so-called unconventional religious groups, including the Mormons and Perfectionists. Rumors also got out that Noyes was having sex with and raping underage girls. Before any charges could be brought against him, he fled to Canada in 1879.

Without their fearless leader, the Perfectionists decided to close the commune and stop sharing spouses beginning in 1880. Since everyone owned part of the business, they decided to establish a joint stock company called Oneida Company Limited in which the adult members had stock.

Not only did these men and women have to adjust to a new way of life, but this new company had to succeed as many changes took place in the United States economy because of the Gilded Age. Luckily, Noyes’s son Pierrepont emerged and decided that Oneida needed to specialize. With the growth of the middle class, he thought that producing silver-plated flatware was the best option; it looked nicer than steel utensils and wasn’t as expensive as those made of sterling silver. Additionally, he engraved many of the pieces to increase their perceived value. Pierrepont also heavily emphasized marketing and advertising, selling his flatware using innovative new ads that included artwork and images.

A silverware advertisement from Oneida, New York. (Photo/The Oneida Community House)

(Image of a 1924 Oneida Advertisement from The Oneida Community House)

As time went on, Oneida struggled as tastes altered and cheaper imports began to emerge. The company even went public in the 1960s, despite its history of being family-operated. About ten years ago, Oneida filed for bankruptcy, but today, you can still buy Oneida silverware. The brand now exists within a group known as The Oneida Group.

Throughout Oneida’s history, we can see the interactions between business, state, and society. Oneida went from being just a spiritual-based commune to forming a very lucrative business within this community. The state and society significantly affected Oneida’s behavior from causing them to abandon their practices of “free love” due to governmental suspicions to causing the company to respond and adapt to consumer demand. In particular, Oneida Company Limited’s success came from understanding society’s desire – especially the middle class’s desire – for attractive, yet affordable, silverware and their ability to market their products to the masses.

It’s fascinating to think that one man’s desire for spiritual perfection led to the creation of a socialist commune and a brand of flatware. The next time I eat using our Oneida silverware, you can bet I’ll be thinking about Oneida’s intriguing past…

 

1 Comment Posted on by noah_roberts1 business, state, and society, unacknowledged assumptions

The Private Business of the Public Government

Noah Roberts

To an extent, almost every American values, or is at least told to value, the free market society. We often hear references to Adam Smith and his proclamation for a free market and automatically pair it to the idea of no government interference in corporations. Many will often argue, “Let the government deal with the issues of the government, and businesses deal with the issues in business.” But, what if we shift our perspective on the relationship between innovative corporations and the government? We often look at the relationship as a black and white issue; government regulation or no government regulation. However, we should be focusing on the degree to which the government helps innovate, not regulate.

On her Freakenomics podcast “Is the Government More Entrepreneurial Than You Think?”, Mariana Mazzucato, a professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London, further explains this relationship. At the very start of the Podcast, Mazzucato completely flips the argument that Adam Smith wanted a free market separate from the state. She mentions how he actually wanted a free market from rent-seeking, which were activities that would extract value. This sets the foundation for the rest of the podcast where Mazzucato shows how the government is actually very involved in the innovation and investment of new companies. The state has been involved in many startup companies and industries. They are often the first to invest in the innovation of risky and uncertain technologies that private firms don’t want to invest in. This fuels her stance that the state shouldn’t be thought of as a last resort, but as a “first resort investor”. They have had plenty of successful investments, as well as plenty of failures. She brings to light, however, that the failures are always talked about and not the successes. This led to Mazzucatos’s point that the government has done a poor job of making returns on their successful investments, and that the private companies are benefiting the most of these tax funded loans given to them from the government.

The big idea most evident throughout this podcast, is the relationship between business, state, and society. Mazzucato mentions how many people think that to be more innovative we need less government. However, she disagrees. One of the most innovative parts of the U.S. economy is Silicon Valley. Most would assume that this is because of the private companies’ own research and advancement. What most fail to realize is that the government was deeply involved in investing in innovative research with programs like DARPA and ARPA-E. The government was also a leader in the exploration of fracking in the late 1920s, spending more than $130 million on extraction techniques. This point alone shows how essential the governments involvement with business innovation is. Other private companies didn’t want to take the risk of investing that much money into a business that may fail, but the government’s leadership into that field led to a very essential part of our economy. The government has also loaned money to, and invested in, multiple outside corporations. A successful company that most of the public fails to realize was given state funding is Tesla, which was given a $465 million loan. On the other hand, when the state funded company Solyndra failed after receiving a $500 million loan, every taxpayer was told about it on the news and as a result, angry with the government. The question is why was the success drowned out and the failure brought to the attention of everyone? The answer lies within the governments poor marketing of themselves. They don’t publicize their affiliation with companies like Tesla enough, which results in heavier criticism when they invest in a failing company.

The government also makes the unacknowledged assumption that having businesses give them stock when they can’t pay off the loan will cover the debt of the money given. Mazzucato mentions that the government will ask for 3 million shares of stock when a company does not completely pay off its loan. This policy doesn’t make much sense to enforce, however, when the stock is most likely not going to be worth very much. The government actually needs to be doing the exact opposite. Every time the company is able to pay off their loan, they need to give the government 3 million shares of stock. If we revisit Tesla, their stock was worth 9 dollars in 2009 and increased to 90 dollars by 2013. Mazzucato noted that this increase multiplied by 3 million would be able to pay off the debts of other loans that were not paid back in full, like Solyndra. Instead, Elon Musk has made a profit of $5 billion, while the government is left with the debts of their unreceived money.

Lastly if we revisit the relationship between business, state, and society and the capitalist nature of corporations, we can see why industries like the pharmaceutical industry are able to charge such high prices. Like the companies mentioned earlier, the state is loaning money to pharmaceutical companies for research. These loans of course come from the tax payer. Then, in the capitalist ideal of maximizing profit, the company will charge outrageous prices for new pharmaceuticals. People then have the choice to either let themselves or a family member stay ill or pay the price set before them. Essentially, this results in the customer paying for the drug twice. Once through the tax funded loan, and again on the overpriced market. The most frustrating part about the high prices may be that even though the government has the right to set a price cap for publicly funded products, they choose not to in fear of pushback saying they are anti-free market.

Overall, these points are not trying to prove that we need more government investments in the business world. What they do prove though is that the government needs be recognized as more than a by-stander waiting for things to go awry. As Mazzucato put it, “it is to be an active co-creator and co-shaper.”

 

(Picture found on politicalcartoons.com)

 

 

 

2 Comments Posted on by haley_beard2 20th century

Big Government Cheese

When reading about President Trump’s promise to the farmers, the article kept mentioning how it will bring back the “government cheese” event from Jimmy Carter’s campaign. Prior to reading this article, I had not even heard of the term “government cheese”. To hear about more on the subject, I listened to the Planet Money podcast on Big Government Cheese.

Within this podcast, I was informed about how in 1976, Jimmy Carter was running for president and proposed to give farmers an equal break. He planned to do this by raising milk prices by 6 cents per gallon every 6 months. Carter followed through on his promise to the farmers and tried to figure out a way the government can step into the market to make it happen. They figured out they can either make demand greater or lower supply. USDA decided to go down supply the chain one step to find milk products that could store well. They came to the conclusion of cheese, specifically cheddar cheese. The government sent out sheet of paper to farmers that states they will buy as much butter, cheese or nonfat dry milk they are willing to sell at certain prices. By the government buying more cheese, cheesemakers buy more milk which in turn drives milk prices up.

Consequently, the government had an issue with storing cheese and had to store cheese in caves in Kansas because they had no other place to store the cheese. By early 1980s, the dairy support plan for cheese was costing tax payers around 2 billion and the government was buying 1 in every 4 pounds of the country’s cheddar cheese. This dilemma reached the point where the Agricultural Secretary held up hunk of cheese in a press conference and talked about the mold deteriorating cheese and how there wasn’t a market for it. A new program was created to give cheese away through food banks so that the market for cheese wouldn’t take a huge hit.

Government cheese became a symbol of crappy government handout as well as a parable in how government intervention in markets can have a butterfly effect, Jimmy Carter makes an innocuous announcement to help farmers and then the government ends up spending billions of dollars filling caves with cheese they couldn’t get rid of fast enough. The most prominent “Big Idea” for this course that is brought to our attention within this podcast is unintended consequences. Failing to acknowledge what might happen to the markets or the fact there will eventually be a large surplus for cheese came come back to bite the government. After finding the solution of food banks, the caves slowly emptied and the price for milk automatically froze every 6 months. The government did not foresee that price controls would be hard to unwind once they are started. Because of this, the government pondered how to get out of cheese business without harming the farmers too much. They ended up paying money to the farmers to encourage them to stop producing milk.

Due to the argument that our country has to be able to produce its own food because if our farmers go out of business, then we become reliant on other countries for food which is a security risk. It’s one thing for the government to provide stability and it is another to step into the market in a big way and possibly the wrong time because playing with price controls is like playing with fire.

 

(image on the left from twitter and image on the right from the podcast)

1 Comment Posted on by katie_shore1 20th century, business, state, and society

It Ain’t Easy Being Cheesy

Katie Shore

(Image from NPR: “Uncle Cheese”)

Who would have thought that the government cared about cheese? Believe it or not, they did. The government and cheese have interacted in the past and affected our country’s economy and society.

Let’s go back to when it all started: Jimmy Carter’s campaign promise to give farmers what he called “an equal break.” It makes sense that Carter would want to help the farmers because he knew what it was like to be a struggling farmer: in 1954, his farm’s net profits were a mere $187. After winning the election, Carter went to work trying to fulfill his promise. First, he raised the price of a gallon of milk by six cents. The interaction here between business, state, and society is quite remarkable. The government came into the dairy industry and raised prices by using a price floor. I wonder how other businesses felt about this decision by the government. They must have been asking why the dairy industry was getting bailed out; surely, the dairy industry wasn’t the only struggling industry at the time. The state’s involvement in the pricing of dairy clearly shows Carter’s bias towards the farmers. While these dairy farmers and their businesses might have benefited from the government’s help, the rest of society was stuck paying more for their milk.

Let me pull out my notes from my Economics class (thank you, Dr. North). Because of the government-instituted price floor, dairy farmers were ramping up production; at a higher price, producers wanted to make and sell more goods to earn more money. Consumers, however, didn’t want to pay this higher price and demanded less than the producers were producing. This led to a surplus, which led to more government intervention.

The government started buying and trying to store lots of milk, but milk has a short shelf life. The solution then was to turn this milk into products that didn’t expire as quickly, such as powdered milk, butter, and cheese. Next, the government told dairy farmers that it would set a price and purchase as much as the farmers were willing to sell. Unfortunately, farmers took advantage of the situation and tried to sell the government their worst cheese. That’s where cheese graders – not graters – came into play. These people traveled the country evaluating cheese based on specific criteria including its flavor, acidity, fruitiness, and so on. The government bought cheese that met all of the grading requirements and then stored it in caves.

This whole cheese-buying extravaganza was costing billions of dollars, and the government needed to find a way to get rid of its cheese. Rather than flood the market with the cheese, destroy it, or send it overseas, the government decided that it would process the cheese, package it, and then give it away. These blocks of government cheese – pictured below – were given to schools and food banks to try to provide for the hungry.

(Image of a Block of Government Cheese from a magazine titled Rolling Out)

Government cheese often gets a bad rap, primarily because of its unintended consequences. First, the government’s efforts to help the farmers led to very expensive cheese for consumers. Second, the government’s supposedly beneficial price controls were actually harmful and very difficult to undo. Third, the government had to start paying farmers to stop producing milk while simultaneously instituting campaigns to convince people to buy milk. Got milk? Today, instead of directly buying farmers’ products, strategies such as direct subsidies work much better – and don’t require the government to store billions of dollars worth of cheese in caves.

You would think that we had learned our lesson from the past, but it appears the government is going back to its old ways. As of August 31, there are plans to purchase $85 million worth of dairy for schools and food banks. I’ll leave you with a quote by philosopher George Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

If you have time to listen to the NPR episode of “Planet Money” about the history of government cheese, I would recommend that you do so. Who knows? We might have another cheesy situation on our hands very soon…