2025/03/01 by Jennifer Delton · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #American History and Culture #Media Studies and Communication
paper · doi:10.1215/15476715-11552821
openalex publication_date 2025/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
This unexpectedly fascinating book is about much more than its title and argument convey. The author’s main question: Why did public utilities (electricity, public transport, and telephone/telegram companies) invest so heavily in public relations and customer service? After all, they were monopolies; it was not like they could lose customers to competing firms. Robert argues that in fact there was a competing “firm” in the form of government ownership, which was a distinct political possibility in the Progressive Era. To avert the calamity of public ownership, utility executives sought to win the support of their customers by improving customer service, offering customer stock options, redesigning offices, issuing educational books and films, and otherwise rebranding themselves as good corporate citizens. By so doing, these utility executives managed to subvert the antimonopoly impulse and survive as corporate monopolies.Each chapter provides a history of a particular ploy to dampen public ownership, as well as the effects such strategies had on workers, customers, and public opinion. Central to the book’s thesis is the strategy of “courteous capitalism.” The new monopolists sought to replace the attitude “The public be damned” with the new, more enlightened directive “The public be pleased” (22). And it was the clerk’s job to do the pleasing. Clerks were expected to learn, internalize, and deliver this superior customer service. Here the author draws on the literature of emotional labor, associated most prominently with sociologist Arlie Hochschild. It wasn’t enough to just smile: since smiling could be (and was) perceived as fake, clerks had to convey sincerity and genuine good feeling toward the customer. And how were bosses supposed to ensure that clerks were properly sincere and helpful? Here Robert details the various surveillance techniques (many still in use today), such as customer surveys, complaint desks, open floor plans, and mystery shoppers, who were essentially spies.Selling stock to customers has its own fascinating history and historiography. Roberts argues that this practice was not just a way to give customers “public ownership” in a private enterprise but that it also helped raise money for utilities in states that restricted financing to private power companies (in order to protect municipally owned companies). These restrictions meant companies were forced to issue additional stock, which they chose to sell to customers rather than large investors. Indeed, they induced their long-suffering clerks to sell this stock to their friends, neighbors, and customers, holding monthly sales competitions and awarding pennants and kudos for top-selling teams. The author finds evidence that many employees and customers were turned off by the practice but that it persisted because customer-shareholders generally appreciated the dividends, which offset company rate hikes.Most readers will be familiar with the ways monopolists used newspapers and public relations to improve their reputations and sow doubt about anti-monopolists and socialists. Private utilities planted apparently neutral “articles” in small-town newspapers in exchange for buying ads, a practice that, again, is still with us today. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigated this practice after World War I in what was once described as “the most expensive and exhaustive investigation of private industry in American history” (190). The author exploits their extensive data and interviews to good effect. One unexpected thing we learn from these sources is that Bell System emerged from the FCC investigation with more public respect and goodwill because the hearings allowed Bell to “tell its story” (190).In making his claims, Robert stops and assesses whether the particular ploy he is discussing actually worked. Did open offices work? Did customer stock ownership work? Were these strategies effective in achieving utility execs’ political ends? So often historians assume that if business leaders deployed a strategy, the strategy “worked” as intended, so it was refreshing to have the author consider evidence of whether this was actually the case. Similarly, the author explicitly addresses counterarguments that help the reader identify his historiographical interventions. For instance, previous work identifies the rise of customer stock ownership with the Liberty Bond campaigns of World War I. Robert’s evidence shows that it originated with utility companies in 1914.The book’s scope and research is truly impressive, providing fascinating information on how customers were treated before “courteous capitalism,” as well as dress codes, customer complaints, and survey forms. In addition, the book provides useful minihistories of public utilities, building design, and more, throwing the reader interesting tidbits, such as how the Bell System in 1929 was the second-largest employer in the United States outside the federal government.After describing the ploys and strategies designed to nullify the antimonopoly and public ownership movements, the author concludes that none of those strategies could have worked without courteous clerks and customer service reps. This is a significant finding in terms of business and labor history. While historians are familiar with the various strategies Progressive Era capitalists deployed to win public favor, this book reminds us how much they depended on the emotional labor of service workers.