Bhu Srinivasan > Quotes

“So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft. At the same time, the ear was assailed by a most terrifying shriek. . . . The shriek was followed by another. And meantime another was sprung up, and then another, and another, and then there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy—and squealing. It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork making by machinery, pork making by applied mathematics. • • •”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“As this prospect presented a “great thing for both the country and the inventor,” Whitney let his father know that he was abandoning his career plans and “had concluded to relinquish my school to perfecting the machine.” To assure his “Dear Parent” that such a decision was neither hasty nor foolhardy, he explained how the machine worked in detail, concluding: “How advantageous this business will eventually prove to me, I cannot say. It is generally said by those who know anything about it, that I shall make a fortune by it. . . . I am now so sure of success that ten thousand dollars, if I saw the money counted out to me, would not tempt me to give up my right and relinquish the object.” His father, it could be surmised, was likely less than thrilled.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“By the following year, the rumor had been confirmed. Jefferson then spent much of 1802 contemplating the implications of neighboring a large French holding. His immediate concern was access to New Orleans, where the Mississippi River emptied into the Gulf of Mexico—small streams and rivers as far north as Pennsylvania and New York merged and flowed into the vital Mississippi. Jefferson decided to dispatch James Monroe as a special envoy to negotiate with France. Once in Paris, Monroe was to join the American minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans and territories near it. Jefferson authorized up to $10 million. Monroe and Livingston, however, were shocked at the French willingness to cede the entirety of the French holding in North America. As transoceanic communication was only as fast as that of a sailing vessel, and relaying the message back to Washington raised the risk of Napoleon changing his mind, the American negotiators went beyond their mandate and agreed in principle to pay $15 million for the territory ranging from New Orleans up to Canada, with a natural western border ending at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The news of the agreement took well over a month to reach the president. With the details finalized through the remainder of 1803, the United States more than doubled in size.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“At the same time, many of the pioneering venture capitalists were not moneymen but graduates of the semiconductor industry. One of the eight men who had formed Fairchild Semiconductor, Eugene Kleiner, would found the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in 1972, not coincidentally the year after the Intel IPO. In the same year, Don Valentine, a former Fairchild sales executive, founded Sequoia Capital. Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia would become as intrinsic to Silicon Valley as the entrepreneurs themselves—the equivalent of the grand Hollywood studios, with the entrepreneurs analogous to actors, directors, and producers. Over the next forty-five years, several of America’s most valuable corporations, including three of the top four, would be funded early on by Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia or both. This birth of venture capital—a rebirth, really—was a return to the most American of roots, older than its founders’ democracy. The organizers of the Virginia Company had called upon “adventurers” to risk capital. A few years later, the Merchant Adventurers in London coffeehouses had agreed to finance the voyage of a large molasses ship known as the Mayflower. Three hundred fifty years later, an improved concept of venture capital was being applied to the next era of American discovery.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“Yet Carnegie, for all his financial success, questioned his own commitment to commercial matters. Just three years into his independence, he had an income of $50,000 and had amassed assets of $400,000. In the waning days of 1868, he wrote himself a letter, setting a limit of two more years to secure his fortune: Beyond this never earn—make no effort to increase fortune, but spend the surplus each year for benevolent purposes. Cast aside business forever . . . settle in Oxford and get a thorough education making the acquaintance of literary men. . . . The amassing of wealth is one of the worst species of idolatry. . . . To continue much longer overwhelmed by business cares and with most of my thoughts wholly upon the way to make more money in the shortest time, must degrade me beyond hope of permanent recovery. I will resign business at thirty-five. This conflict between the ease with which he made money and what he saw as his elevated purpose would arise time and again. But the letter, in tone and content, was more pessimistic and stark than the refined, exuberant Carnegie philosophy that would ultimately emerge.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“But the Erie Canal opened in sections as it was being built. Every section became instant proof of the canal’s value as a propeller of commerce. Traffic grew immediately every time a section opened. When the full canal opened in 1825, its revenues from tolls vastly exceeded all expectations. The initial projection of 500,000 annual tons of goods within twenty years was exceeded within ten. Within twenty years of its opening, over a million tons per year were being transported on the Erie Canal. Overnight, the commercial implications were clear. Goods from Cleveland could end up in New York within days. Chicago was completely accessible by water from New York through the Great Lakes. With the Mississippi River already the conduit to New Orleans, a very large part of the United States could now be accessed by waterways. The Erie Canal’s financial success set off canal mania in other states, which saw that it had cost the state of New York nothing financially—the tolls were more than sufficient to pay off the bonds—while transforming the state economy and driving down the price of grain. It was the model of successful public infrastructure.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“From this climate emerged a new party, the Republicans. Eliminating much of the exclusionary politics of the Know Nothings while seeking common ground among the interests of free workingmen, immigrants, abolitionists, and prospective western settlers, the party’s founding platform coalesced neatly into an antislavery position. Its first presidential candidate in 1856 was California’s John Frémont, running with the slogan “Free soil and Fremont.” He lost.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“The company even drew unlikely customers. From rural Arkansas, operating just five comically cheap-looking stores—a rounding error compared with the largest retailers—Sam Walton made his way to an IBM conference for retailers. While he shied away from investing anything in any emotional aspect of retailing, delivering the lowest prices meant mastering logistics and information. To one speaker at the conference, Abe Marks, modern retailing meant knowing exactly “how much merchandise is in the store? What’s selling and what’s not? What is to be ordered, marked down or replaced? . . . The more you turn your inventory, the less capital is required.” Altering his first impression, Marks found that Walton’s simpleton comportment masked his genius as a retailer, eventually calling him the “best utilizer of information that there’s ever been.” A little over two decades later, Sam Walton would become the richest man in America; he would attribute his competitive advantage to his investment in computing systems in his early days. The small-town merchant who expected that knowing his customers’ names or sponsoring the local Little League team would give him some enduring advantage simply didn’t understand the sport. American consumers, technocrats at heart, rewarded efficiency as reflected by the prices on the shelves, not the quaint sentiments of a friendly proprietor. To gain this efficiency, information systems were seen as vital.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“At a subsequent Homebrew meeting where Wozniak showed his creation, everyone seemed impressed, including Wozniak’s friend Steve Jobs. Around that time, Jobs was given a freelance project at Atari, having altered the terms of his employment. Atari’s founder had tasked Jobs with designing a single-player version of Pong, in which the ball could be simply hit against a wall back to the player. Jobs called on Wozniak, who was working at Hewlett-Packard, to help. Over the course of less than a week, Jobs and Wozniak delivered a single-player version of Pong. Jobs was in a rush. He needed to go back to a commune in Oregon, where the apple-picking season was about to begin.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“One of the most expensive projects underwritten in the era was a computing system known as SAGE, which stood for Semi-Autonomous Ground Environment. Once a radar station picked up an enemy aircraft entering American airspace, SAGE would calculate the incoming flight path based on speed, altitude, and direction and determine which fighter jets should be dispatched to intercept the threat. Other times SAGE might advise that a surface-to-air missile be fired instead. The computers, which were the size of buildings, needed to make recommendations that generals would follow. SAGE went beyond harnessing computing power; it also introduced networking. Through telephone connections, SAGE divided the country into geographic sectors, with a facility in each sector pulling in information from ground radar, naval vessels, and surveillance aircraft. Each facility’s computer was networked with the other facilities’ computers to transmit and receive data as to which combat facilities should be deployed in the event of an attack. Getting the contract to build computing centers for SAGE accounted for fully half of IBM’s computing revenues until the late fifties, subsidizing the transition from the days of punch cards to the new era of computing.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“With the limited float and the public investor’s insatiable demand for anything electronic, Langone’s company priced the shares at $16.50 per share—a full 118 times EDS’s earnings at the time. Perot emerged at the end of the offering with a net worth close to $200 million on paper. Fortune declared him “the fastest richest Texan ever.” Within two years, his paper net worth would top $1.5 billion, making him technology’s first billionaire.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“So recently as twenty-five years ago, the blood was allowed to run into the river, and men were paid five dollars a load to cart the heads, feet, and other wasted material upon the prairie and there bury it in pits and trenches. Today, a large packing plant depends largely for its profit on the intelligent utilization of those so-called waste materials. The large packing establishments of today manipulate their own horns, hoofs, bones, sinews, hide-trimmings, etc. •”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“The sanctity of this property translated directly into political power for the Virginians. The next phase of negotiations among the colonies, to form a more perfect union through the American Constitution, allowed each slave to count as three fifths of a person for purposes of allocating representatives to each state. Propelled by the electoral math of free men and slave property, given that Virginia was nearly as black as it was white, Virginia went on to control thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of the American presidency. Washington’s eight years were followed by four years of John Adams from Massachusetts. Then three more Virginians—Jefferson, his protégé James Madison, and his neighbor James Monroe—would each serve for eight years, extending into 1825. Thirty-six years later, Virginia would again declare its independence, this time from America itself, choosing to preserve its economic interests over the Union.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“For an entire class of people to once again be involved in the political process, to directly vote on taxes and financing matters, was a level of participatory democracy at which Alexis de Tocqueville would have marveled: “To have a hand in the government of society, and to talk about it,” wrote Tocqueville in his Democracy in America in 1835, “is the most important business and so to speak, the only pleasure an American knows.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“By 1850 the two major ports of the United States were New York, with all its diversity of goods and occupations, and New Orleans, situated at the mouth of the Mississippi, with its endless supply of cotton. But unlike the organic cotton economy, the modern economy taking shape in New York City was the beneficiary of years of government intervention, from the steamboat to the canal.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“But this venture, like Virginia, got off to a rough start. The Mayflower arrived off the coast of America in late November. Compounding this late-season arrival, the ship had missed its destination. The original charter granted by the Virginia Company called for landing near the mouth of the Hudson River. Instead, the Mayflower anchored within a peninsula 220 miles to the north. After sending an expedition to explore the coastline and find a place to build the settlement, the majority of the Pilgrims remained on the Mayflower awaiting the men’s return. Simultaneously, while the Mayflower was en route, officials in England separated the northern parcel of the Virginia Company and placed it under the Council for New England. Without knowing it, the Pilgrims were preparing for the first winter in the history of New England.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“A few stations, starting with one owned by AT&T, started broadcasting messages for advertisers. Within a couple of years, AT&T’s broadcast activities had become far more professional. Baseball games and highlights, news reports, music, and other forms of entertainment soon made their way onto the air. AT&T, as the nation’s telephone company, owned an advanced wiring system that enabled small and distant radio broadcasters nationwide to pick up programming from hundreds of miles away—with this, a small station in Maine could pick up a signal from Washington DC via a wire and broadcast the signal to a local audience. Rather than have countless stations develop their own expensive programming, AT&T’s primary station, WEAF, allowed other local stations to broadcast a programming block. With its national infrastructure and early entry into broadcast advertising, AT&T’s national broadcast operation was profitable.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“that the fault has not been in the wheel, but in the ignorance of proportion, velocities, powers, and possibly mechanical combinations.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“But the start-up was the land of mercenaries, young men whose spirits ran counter to traditional corporate culture but who were vastly capitalistic in their personal financial ambitions and their sacrifices. As risky as start-ups were, given that most failed, these employees had little notion or expectation of stability. In addition, start-ups often paid less than comparable corporate jobs but required more hours. To offset the low compensation and lack of job security, start-ups offered equity in the form of stock options. And if the stock options paid off, the newly rich early employee often became difficult to manage. The dynamics were more similar to joining a pirate ship than the Royal Navy.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“In July 1969 hundreds of millions of people on Earth huddled around television screens to witness a new world come within reach, a pinnacle of human achievement. When Christopher Columbus or Vasco da Gama set off on their respective voyages to explore new worlds, there were likely no more than a few dozen spectators waving them farewell. But the moon landing was a collective journey, made awe inspiring with live images from outer space transmitted through television, putting much of humanity in a collective trance. It was so momentous that the entire first section of the New York Times was dedicated to the smallest details and broadest implications of this most highly anticipated event of the space age. At the time, people expected the moon to be settled, at the very least in some minimal way, in the not-too-distant future. Optimistic speculations suggested that shuttle services for passengers were just a decade away. This”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“WITH THE ADVENT of the computer and the dawn of the space race, the sixties brought futuristic visions of life to the mainstream consciousness. The Soviet satellite Sputnik had led to the formation of NASA to oversee America’s space program. In prime time on ABC, Americans could tune in to catch the animated cartoon The Jetsons, about a space-age family who lived with their housekeeping robot, Rosie, and dog, Astro. A couple of years later, Desilu, I Love Lucy’s production company, premiered Star Trek on CBS. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey had a near-omniscient computer named Hal manipulating its astronauts. By the midsixties, the concepts of artificial intelligence and self-driving cars were no longer in the realm of magic or science fiction—they were seen as the logical, inevitable outcome of the American trajectory.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“Yet other men came with the idea of setting up links between the East and the West. In 1850 Henry Wells and his partner, William Fargo, were operating American Express, an express company in the burgeoning city of Buffalo. An express company’s business was to ship things quickly but expensively. Messages, banknotes, and valuables were the primary goods transported by express companies. To hedge against the risks to his express company from the instant telegraph, Wells had invested in local telegraph companies, including Ezra Cornell’s. Sensing the opportunity in the West, especially as laying telegraph lines across a desolate country was a practical impossibility, Wells and Fargo proposed expanding their company, American Express, to the West. Their investors balked. So starting in 1852, Wells and Fargo set up a new company to provide express services to California. In addition to simple messages, Wells, Fargo & Co. ventured into the business of bringing gold back east. And since an express company was already entrusted with valuables, it soon made sense for Wells, Fargo & Co. to also offer banking services locally.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“Fulton’s primary mission was to invent weaponry so powerful that it would render naval warfare futile. He envisioned submarine-fired torpedoes creating a mutually assured destruction scenario among the parties that would “put a stop to maritime wars” and free the seas for peaceful, “humane” pursuits.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“Dozens of radio manufacturers raced to install radios in homes. At the same time, the Radio Dealer warned its commercial readers of an emerging scourge: “Any attempts to put over ‘advertising stunts’ should be nipped in the bud.” The industry’s assumption was that the future of the business was in the sale of transmission equipment and home radios, antennae, and installation services. The fear was that attempts to commercialize the actual content away from amateurs would destroy the airwaves and thereby the radio equipment business.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“In all, the next big things of the early nineteenth century—enabling man to travel through and over nature in new ways, with steamboats, canals, and railroads—began as intricate public/private partnerships. The government activities of setting in place the infrastructure, reconciling federal and state laws, permitting limited liability, and defining and balancing the conflicts of property rights, evolved into the operating system of its economy, upon which was placed the dynamic layer of free-market creativity and the vibrant applications of entrepreneurial activity.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“But within two years, seeing an opening with a conflicting patent, South Carolina refused to make the three installment payments and sued for recovery of the initial $20,000; it eventually backtracked and rescinded the suit, but not before Whitney was made to feel like a “felon, a swindler, and a villain.” While this was going on, Miller died, never getting the full satisfaction of the final settlements. The state of Georgia went even further. It accused Whitney’s patent rights of being the device of Yankee “extortion.” Whitney’s interests would be litigated in Georgia courts for the better part of a decade.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“One price was more predictable: As British industry became increasingly efficient at spinning cotton into yarn and weaving yarn into cloth, the price of cloth dropped dramatically decade after decade. The luxury of an occasional change of clothing became an affordable necessity for millions across the globe—industrial efficiency had turned desires into fundamental needs.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“IN THE YEAR before the landing of the Mayflower, another group made a consequential, if less than voluntary, landing on Virginia’s shores. In August 1619 Rolfe recorded that a “Dutch man of war . . . sold us twenty negars.” The first slaves had landed in what would become the American colonies.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“Stoll, judging by the tone of his editorial on his publication’s one-year anniversary, was exultant. When the act’s fruit juice exemption was finalized, “as if by magic, California became the Mecca for grape speculators.” Growers and speculators in the grape districts had already sensed the enthusiasm over the summer of 1920 when prices were a healthy $50 per ton. But by the end of the growing season, trading had produced “unheard of prices,” jumping to “$75, $100, $125, and $150 a ton for ordinary wine grapes.” The “700 wineries of California have been supplanted by millions of home manufacturers of wine,” who needed grapes and grape concentrate.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism

“THE SYSTEM in many ways was a necessary one. Each film was entirely different, but all were expensive. Unlike a factory, a lavish movie set might be used just once, especially if the scene called for a fire or explosion. The key employees, writers, actors, and directors were known to be volatile. Even an expensively produced film that got everything right, however, could not guarantee that audiences would actually pay to watch it. And if a movie was well received by audiences, very little of this knowledge could be directly applied to another film. It was art posing as business. The rise of major studios resulted from an ongoing search for an economic formula that could make the movies work as an industry.”
― Bhu Srinivasan, Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism