agree that before World War II the United States was molded by business
interests to a much greater extent than Europe.

This basic difference between Europe and America has been explained by
the relative absence in the latter of traditional social patterns and hereditary
institutions, that is, of a "feudal" European system characterized by aristocratic
values, a strong centralized state, a petty-bourgeois economy, and peasant ag-
riculture. ³ Some have proposed that Calvinism and its work ethic had a greater
impact in the United States than in Europe; that the migration to America and
within the country led to innovation and modification of traditional values; and
that the geography of America, with its vast areas of rich soil, turned people
more into real estate operators than farmers. ⁴

According to John Sawyer, the European "feudal" system, at least in France,
affected business recruitment, motivation, and behavior. As Bryce had also
observed, in Europe the ablest were discouraged from going into business, and
preferred to go into the diplomatic or military services, the civil service, the
professions, politics, or the arts. ⁵ European businessmen became less motivated
in their enterprises because their societies did not regard material progress as
a primary goal and because the accumulation of money gave less prestige than
on the other side of the Atlantic. The European entrepreneur was never allowed,
like his American counterpart, to feel that his work was a "calling" or a "mis-
sion." ⁶ The manorialism of Europe, as Sawyer calls the system, also left its
imprint on business behavior by making it more static, more afraid to take risks
and to sacrifice unprofitable enterprises, less willing to enter into mergers and
mass production. ⁷

By comparison, America from the start adopted a system that was favorable
to industrial capitalism, and during the nineteenth century business molded an
institutional pattern that forwarded its interests. American society favored, as
Sawyer states,

not only the more abstract patterns such as universalism, rationality, specialization,
transferability of resources, worldly orientation, and the like; but also those most directly
related to entrepreneurship--individualism; competitive economic activity within an
impersonal market; mobility, social and geographical; achieved as against ascribed sta-
tuses, with economic achievement the main ladder of advancement; emphasis on "suc-
cess" in a competitive occupational system as the almost universally prescribed goal;
money income as a primary reward and symbol of success; the institutionalization of
innovation, risk-taking, change and growth. ⁸

Even when the comparison to Europe is left aside, the United States has
been seen as a business civilization in the sense that business has had such a
prominent position in American society that it has often exerted considerable
influence over other social sectors. Historians have made clear that entrepre-
neurism had great impact as early as in the colonial period and that since around
1815 business values have been dominant at the expense of other value systems. ⁹

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