Platt Brothers and Company: Small Business in American Manufacturing

This is a superb, meticulously researched history of 19th-century small businessmen seeking to survive and prosper in a hostile environment. Roth ( Connecticut: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites ) describes how Alfred Platt and his children and relatives built a viable button-making manufacturing concern while remaining deeply entrenched in the Yankee customs of Connecticut's Naugatuck Valley. Material on the years before the Civil War is richly embellished with finely woven details about Naugatuck Valley's metalworking traditions, business cycles, politics and social issues. Roth excells in his analysis of small businesses coping with the nation's rapid industrialization; material on New York City's merchants, the Civil War and the Gilded Age also receive attention. While the 20th-century discussions could have been more detailed, the book is nevertheless a major scholarly work. Illustrations. (Jan.)