UC Berkeley

Abstract

Courteous Capitalism: Customer Relations, Public Opinion, and the Defense of Utility Monopolies

by

Daniel Martin Robert

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Robin Einhorn, Chair

In the beginning of the twentieth century, as Americans erupted in righteous indignation over the flagrant abuses of monopolies, utility executives responded by launching four major public relations strategies. First, in a strategy I call courteous capitalism, executives compelled their clerks to exude “courtesy,” “sunshine,” and “patience” whenever these workers interacted with customers. By the late-1920s, public opinion toward corporate utilities had improved, but the cost to low level workers was high. Their plastered smiles and scripted pleasantries represented a great loss of emotional autonomy and a new level of managerial control.

Utility officers also sought to dissipate antimonopoly sentiment by remodeling the customer-service centers where most courteous interactions took place. To do this, executives tore down the bars, high counters, and frosted glass, which utilities had inherited from bank designs, and replaced these “closed offices” with new “open offices,” as managers called them. In doing so, executives hoped to architecturally communicate to customers the supposedly open and above-board operating practices for which utilities now wanted to be known.

Streetcar, electricity, and telephone executives also tried to improve public opinion and thwart government ownership by introducing “customer ownership.” To do this, managers required their employees to sell stock directly to customers. Since these customers were also likely voters, the dividends customers received were likely to pay dividends of their own, back to the company, whenever measures regarding utilities came up at the ballot box. By the crash of 1929, utility employees had directly sold stock to twenty percent of the total number of shareholding Americans.

Finally, utility officers produced immense amounts of publicity, including print matter, speeches, and movies. Yet executives never believed that publicity, or the other strategies of open architecture and customer stock ownership could replace courteous capitalism in terms of its public relations effectiveness. While historians have credited print and finance with everything from forming nations to fashioning consumers, in the case of forming enduring corporate monopolies, courtesy mattered most.