Business, Government, and Congressional Investigation in the Revolution

A NORMAL aftermath of war is the exposure of the inefficiency and graft that occurred in waging it. Among the wars of the United States, the Revolution was notable for the degree to which there was a general public awareness of the sins of administration. The common opinion was that government officials were corrupt. More responsible than anything else for this feeling was the fact that procurement services were staffed with merchants who remained in private trade. The ordinary person found it hard to believe they did not take advantage of their position, and it is still hard not to think so. Certainly an arrangement which allowed a merchant to transfer his private business into the administration and to conduct it as his official duty would not now be tolerated. It should be borne in mind, however, that such practices were less shocking at a time when the concept of a distinct professional functionary of the state had not emerged, except, perhaps, in the military service. Administrative tasks having to do with money or commerce were usually assigned to merchants, who were but half servants of the government. Their status must be described in terms of the contemporary development of mercantile capitalism. Commercial enterprise in the eighteenth century was only beginning to acquire an institutional character. The typical American merchant was still a solitary adventurer who performed the whole range of functions involved in the movement and marketing of goods, acting as banker, shipper, wholesaler, retailer, and sometimes as insurer. There had been only a partial development of that regularity in the economic world which allows business to be conducted impersonally. Merchants still proceeded on the basis of personal acquaintance and trust.1

Business · Government (linguistics) · Linguistics · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Philosophy · Public Administration

• Silas Deane

  Open Access•Kalman Goldstein•Historian•1980

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• Entrepreneurial Activity in New York during the American Revolution

  Open Access•Bernard Mason•The Business History Review•1966

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