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This Day in Business History

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February 1

1809		Massachusetts Senator Thomas Pickering convenes an assembly in New England demanding the demise of the Embargo Act, which effectively sealed U.S. ports, intended as a nonviolent, fiscal response to the British and French attacks, but instead aided foreign merchants at the expense of American interests. An ardent Federalist, as well as a strong British ally and staunch opponent of Jefferson's policies, Pickering helped force the president's hand. With but a few days remaining in his second term, Jefferson signed the Non-Intercourse Act on March 1, 1809; the legislation reopened U.S. ports, save for trading with the British and French.
1898		Travelers Insurance Company sells the first auto insurance policy just two years after Henry Ford unveiled his four horsepower automobile. The Hartford, CT-based insurance concern issued the policy to Dr. Truman Martin of Buffalo, NY, who paid $11.25 for $5,000 worth of liability coverage.
1926		Land at Broadway and Wall Street, NY is sold at a record $7 per square inch.
1982		Amoco Canada and Chevron Standard Ltd withdraw from the $13.5 billion Alsands oil consortium in Alberta.

February 2

1929		The Federal Reserve announces a ban on bank loans for margin trades. However, the move couldn't prevent the inevitable: in the fall of 1929, the stock markets suffered their famous crash, badly shaking the nation's faith in Wall Street.
1932		A few weeks after receiving a green light from the House, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) opens for business. Initially equipped with $500 million, as well as license to borrow up to $2 billion in tax exempt bonds, the RFC was charged with doling out loans to banks, insurance companies, and other institutions that stood to spark the nation's ravaged economy. Under the charge of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the RFC became a bulwark of the New Deal. And, when America made its entrance into World War II, the agency helped fund the country's blossoming military industry. However, a government probe in 1951 revealed that the agency was awash in corruption. The revelation signaled the downfall of the RFC: the government quickly set to redistributing the agencyıs powers and, by 1957 the RFC was forced into shut its doors.

February 3

1690		Massachusetts authorizes the first official paper currency to be ever used in the Western Hemisphere, taking what would later prove to be a crucial step in the establishment of a stable American economy.
1913		The Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which authorized the federal income tax, is ratified just a month before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration as president. The government was not shy about deploying the Sixteenth Amendment and implemented the first graduated income tax later in the year as part of the Underwood-Simmons Tariff Act, one of Wilson's key early initiatives, which slashed import duties as a means of promoting free trade and boosting the nation's industrial efforts. In turn, the tax was viewed as a necessary means of recouping some of the funds that the government would lose as a result of the tariff reform.

February 4

1841		Plagued by poor investment decisions and an uncertain economic climate, the Bank of the United States is forced to call it quits. It was a painful end for an institution that had suffered through one of the more contentious episodes in the nation's early financial history. The Bank was the direct product of U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's controversial push for a national banking system. Despite the staunch objections of Thomas Jefferson, the federal government chartered the first Bank of the United States in 1791. However, Jefferson kept up his attack, and in 1811, led his supporters in Congress in a successful attempt to block the renewal of the bank's charter. Buoyed by a confluence of conditions, including state banks' recent run of woes and political shifts in the House, pro-bank forces forged a new charter in 1816. Under the charge of Nicholas Biddle, the revived Bank of the U.S. enjoyed some healthy years. However, before long, the Bank faced another round of opposition, this time led by President Andrew Jackson, who fiercely opposed the notion of a central bank system. A nasty and protracted political battle ensued, as the president attempted to use his executive power to do away with the bank. Jackson eventually won out, and when the bank's charter expired in 1836, Biddle shifted course and reestablished the Bank of the United States as a state institution based in Pennsylvania. Biddle's bank limped on for a few more years before being finally shut down.
1964		The federal government puts an end to one of the United States' more shameful bits of legislation by authorizing the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which effectively outlawed the poll tax. The tax stemmed back to the 1880s, when members of the burgeoning Populist party began to build a potentially potent coalition of African American and lower class white voters in the South. Across the region, planters, merchants, and industrialists moved to preserve their power and pushed for the passage of a deliberately prohibitive poll tax. The legislation, adopted by a host of Southern states, proved all too effective, as scores of African-Americans, as well as the "poorer sort" of whites, simply could not afford to pay the tax and thus lost the right to vote. However, thanks in large part to the efforts of Senator Spessard L. Holland of Florida, the once recalcitrant Congress slowly came around to the cause of outlawing the tax and passed the Twenty-fourth Amendment. On January 23, 1964, the amended was ratified by the South Dakota legislature, giving it the three-fourth majority necessary to make it the law of the land.

February 5

1937		The movie Modern Times premieres. The tale of the tramp (Charlie Chaplin) and his paramour (Paulette Goddard) mixed slapstick comedy and social satire, as the couple struggled to overcome the vagaries of the machine age--strikes, riots, unemployment and the nerve wracking factory work--and get along in modern times.
1953		The American Iron and Steel Institution announces that U.S. steel concerns had produced 117,500,000 short tons of steel during the past year.

February 6

1919		Seattle strikers, who had not yet gained ground on their wage demands, heed the call of national labor leaders and go back to work, releasing the city from their grip.
1985		Walter L. Jacobs, founder of the first car rental company, dies. Although he was not exactly the founder of the Hertz Corporation, Jacobs' car rental business became the Hertz Corporation after it was purchased by John Hertz in 1923. At the age of 22, Jacobs opened a car-rental business with a dozen Model T Fords that he personally repaired and maintained. Within five years, his business generated an annual revenue of around $1 million. After he sold his business to Mr. Hertz, the president of the Yellow Cab and Yellow Truck and Coach Manufacturing Company, Jacobs remained Hertz's top executive. In addition to its innovations within the car rental industry, Hertz also maintains the unusual distinction of having been a subsidiary of both the General Motors Corporation and Ford Motor Company.

February 7

1870		The Supreme Court hands down a ruling in the case of Hepburn v. Griswold that effectively declares that the Legal Tender Acts, initially passed during the height of the Civil War in 1862 and 1863, were unconstitutional. As a result, debts piled up before 1862 or 1863 could not be paid via U.S. Treasury notes that were issued under the auspices of the acts. The ruling, which split the Supreme Court in a five to three vote, irked President Ulysses S. Grant, who used his executive power to reinstate the Legal Tender Acts. Although he didn't necessarily stack the high court in favor of the Acts, Grant was mindful to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who echoed his views on the case. During 1870, he appointed Joseph P. Bradley and William Strong, both of whom viewed the Legal Tender Acts as a viable use of the federal government's powers during a period of crisis. With the balance of opinion duly tilted, the Supreme Court reversed course and upheld the Legal Tender Acts in 1871.
1942		The federal government orders passenger car production stopped and converted to wartime purposes. In spite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's exhortation that the U.S. auto industry should become the "great arsenal of democracy," Detroit's executives were reluctant to join the war cause. However, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the country mobilized behind the U.S. declaration of war. The government offered automakers guaranteed profits regardless of production costs throughout the war years. Furthermore, the Office of Production Management allocated $11 billion to the construction of war manufacturing plants that would be sold to the automobile manufacturers at remarkable discounts after the war. What had at first seemed like a burden on the automotive industry became a boon. The production demands placed on the industry and the resources allocated to the individual automobile manufacturers during the war would revolutionize American car making and bring about the Golden Era of the 1950s.

February 8

1895		U.S. gold supplies thin out to $41 million. With the U.S. Treasury teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Cleveland intervened, and using a syndicate led by J.P. Morgan as an intermediary and U.S. bonds as bait, attempted to buy back gold from foreign investors. Cleveland sold roughly $62 million worth of bonds, valued at 3.75 percent, to Morgan's syndicate. Morgan and company in turn shopped the issues to foreign parties for a handsome profit. Although clearly borne of desperation, the deal nonetheless provided some badly needed relief: it briefly spelled the gold crunch and saved the Treasury from disaster. However, the public paid no mind to these benefits and howled in protest at Cleveland's seeming willingness to hop into bed with Big Business.
1934		The federal government steps up involvement in international finance by authorizing the Export-Import Bank. One of the many initiatives unveiled as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal legislation, the "Ex-Im Bank" was charged with propping up the nation's sagging export business. Indeed, the Great Depression had ruined the financial institutions that once served as the backbone of America's overseas trade. In order to fill this fiscal void, the Ex-Im Bank was equipped with various lending powers, as well as the license to issue insurance and guarantees. The Ex-Im Bank survived well beyond the Depression and New Deal: the bank's ability to offer a raft of credits, including loans to cash-strapped countries who conduct trade with the U.S. partners, quickly transformed it into a key instrument of the American government's international development efforts.

February 9

1922		Congress convenes, and votes in favor of establishing the World War Foreign Debt Commission. The Commission rounded the money owed to the U.S. to $11.5 billion and established a 62-year term, at 2 percent interest, for the repayment of the debts. However, by 1925, the U.S. could no longer ignore fiscal reality: the loans would never be repaid in full. Despite his initial refusal to scuttle the debts, President Calvin Coolidge relented and cancelled good chunks of various governments' outstanding debts.
1989		President George Bush submits a budget of $1.16 trillion, including an estimated deficit of $91.1 billion. While hardly small numbers, Bush's budget and defect projections seemed like improvements over his predecessor Ronald Reagan. During his last two years in office, President Reagan submitted budgets that climbed over the then unheard of trillion mark, and in 1988, he projected that the deficit would climb to $129.5 billion. However, any notions that Bush would restrain federal spending or reign in the defect proved to be wishful thinking: in 1992, the president submitted what proved to be his final budget, which estimated a deficit of $352 billion.

February 10

1966		Ralph Nader testifies before the Senate, reinforcing his earlier claims that the automobile industry was socially irresponsible and detailing the peculiar methods the industry used in attempting to silence him. Nader's 1965 book, Unsafe At Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, had become a sensation a year earlier. Nader attacked the automotive industry's unwillingness to consider the safety of the consumer, or as Nader himself put it, "insisting on maintaining the freedom to rank safety wherever it pleases on its list of considerations." Nader's heaviest criticism was leveled at the Chevrolet Corvair, which had been involved in a high number of one-car accidents. General Motors responded to Nader's criticism by investigating his personal life and accusing him of being gay and anti-Semitic. Nader filed an invasion of privacy suit against GM, and ultimately exacted $425,000 from the automotive giant. By bringing the public's right to safe automobiles into the spotlight, and by directly challenging General Motors in court, Nader created the methodology for contemporary consumer advocacy. The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, which in 1966 mandated seatbelts, owed its existence to Nader's initiative, as do the other federally regulated safety standards which are common practice today.
1997		After years of sitting out the cable television boom, network veteran CBS finally enters the fray as its parent company, Westinghouse Electric Corp., brokered a deal for The Nashville Network (TNN) and Country Music Television (CMT). Westinghouse/CBS handed over $1.5 billion in stock to TNN and CMT's owner, Gaylord Entertainment. For CBS, this was seemingly a small price to pay for gaining a sizeable, if belated, toehold in the cable industry: as of 1997, CMT reported a subscription base of over 38 million viewers, and TNN was broadcast in over 70 million homes. And, by acquiring TNN and its popular NASCAR stock car programming, CBS picked up a potentially valuable property for its sagging sports division.

February 11

1903		Fueled by a growing distaste for corporate behemoths and outright monopolies, Congress passes the Expedition Act, which prioritized anti-trust suits filed in U.S. circuit courts. The Expedition Act was seemingly another victory for President Theodore Roosevelt in his crusade against Big Business. Starting in 1902, with his decision to support disgruntled mine workers in their cause against coal operators, Roosevelt had increasingly moved to marshal his power against business interests. Under his charge, the Justice Department filed forty-five anti-trust suits; Roosevelt also led the successful crusade to break up Standard Oil's monopoly (1907). These maneuvers proved popular with the public, not only fueling a growing distaste for the practices of Big Business, but also earning Roosevelt a sterling reputation as a tough-talking "trust-buster." However, some historians have questioned Roosevelt's trust-busting credentials, pointing out that a number of the Justice Department's anti-trust suits were dropped after business leaders plead their case to the president. Roosevelt viewed "bigness" as a fait accompli; his trust-busting stance was borne of political expediency, as well as the desire to preserve the government's tacit regulatory control of corporate America.
1937		After a difficult 44-day sit-down strike at the Fisher Body plant in Flint, Michigan, General Motors president Alfred P. Sloan signs the first union contract in the history of the U.S. automobile industry. Organized by the Union of Auto Workers (UAW), the strike was intended to force the total shutdown of a working plant in order to bring company executives to the negotiating table. On New Year's Eve, 45 minutes after lunch, union leaders ordered the assembly line halted. Executives kept the belts running, but the workers wouldn't work. GM turned to the courts, winning an injunction against the workers on the grounds that the sit-down strike was unconstitutional. The injunction was overturned when it was discovered that the judge who presided in the case owned over $200,000 of GM stock. Twelve days after the strike had begun, with the workers still dug in, Sloan ordered the heat in the building turned off and barred the workers access to food from the outside. Police, armed with tear gas and guns, surrounded the building. The police fired--first tear gas and later bullets--into the plant. Sympathetic picketers outside, many of them family members of the strikers, helped to break all the windows in the plant by hurling rocks from were they stood. Others, braver still, broke the picket line with their automobiles to form a barricade that prevented the police vehicles from overrunning the building the strikers occupied. Finally, days after the Battle of the Running Bulls, as the violent confrontation came to be known, Michigan Governor Frank Murphy called in the National Guard with the intention of quelling any further violence. The presence of the National Guard bolstered the strikers' confidence. Realizing the futility of their position, GM executives came to the bargaining table. After a week of negotiations over which Governor Murphy personally presided, an agreement between GM and the UAW was reached.

February 12

1837		An irate group of unemployed New Yorkers protest skyrocketing food and fuel prices, as well as the city's rapidly escalating rents. The demonstration quickly degenerated into violence, as the workers turned their anger on a flour warehouse. The outburst was a strong indicator of the fiscal troubles that would bubble over later that year. Come that May, a host of events, including a wave of bank failures and a brewing recession, both of which stemmed from President Andrew Jackson's decision to pull all Federal deposits from the second Bank of the United States, signaled the onset of the Panic of 1837.
1880		Born in Iowa, John L. Lewis, who ruled over the United Mine Workers Association (UMWA) for 40 years, and was a frequent lightning rod for controversy and periodic blasts of public and political scorn, had hardly hit puberty when he went to work in the coal mines of Illinois. The job set Lewis on a steady track to power and prominence: by 1911, he was an organizer for the mine union's parent organization, the American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.). Eight years later, Lewis was the president of the UMWA, America's biggest and most powerful trade union. In one of his earliest moves in office, Lewis led the organization's members in a triumphant, nationwide strike. However, this moment of glory quickly faded: the economy slumped in the wake of World War I, which hurt coal prices and threatened mine workers' wages and jobs. Lewis responded with a drive to nationalize the coal industry, but his proposal was roundly dismissed. Non-unionized coal mines rose in prominence throughout the 1920s, siphoning off the UMWA's membership and gradually wresting control of a majority of the nation's coal production. Though some within the union challenged Lewis's authority, he survived the crisis of the '20s and managed to expand his power during the next few decades. He organized the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a potent group of eight unions, including the UMWA, which, though initially affiliated with the A.F. of L., later in the decade became a powerful and independent entity in its own right. And, though a staunch Republican, Lewis found a powerful new ally in President Franklin Roosevelt. Indeed, Lewis viewed Roosevelt's New Deal legislation as a tremendous boon for labor and unabashedly pushed the movement to walk in lockstep with the White House. However, Lewis was something of an autocrat and fiercely protected his place atop the labor movement. When Roosevelt won a third term in office, Lewis, fearing that the increasingly powerful president would wrest control of the unions, pulled the UMWA out of the pro-White House CIO. Throughout the rest of the 1940s, Lewis led the coal workers in a number of high-profile walkouts. However, the seeming profusion of strikes emboldened anti-union forces, who soured public support for labor and successfully pushed for the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act (1947), which restricted labor's ability to call for the closed shop. These moves prompted Lewis to adopt more conciliatory tactics during the 1950s. In 1960, Lewis finally released his grip on the UMWA's top spot. He remained involved in the organization until he died in 1969.
1987		A Texas court upholds the decision in the case against Texaco, preserving the $10.5 billion fine. During the mid-1980s, oil giants Texaco and Penzoil, engaged in a nasty, protracted battle to acquire Getty Oil. When Getty first went on the block, Penzoil made a handsome $5.3 billion offer; Getty accepted the bid and Penzoil's purchase was duly celebrated by both sides. However, the deal was never sealed with a written contract, opening the door for Texaco to make a bid that doubled Penzoil's offer. Smelling pay dirt, Getty shunned its original suitor and brokered a deal with Texaco, who wisely confirmed the acquisition with a written contract. But, Penzoil battled back, suing Texaco for proffering an illegal takeover bid. In 1985, a Texas court ruled that, despite never signing a formal contract, Penzoil and Getty had nonetheless consented to a binding deal, and Texaco was slapped with the fine. Texaco responded with a counter-suit, but the company's efforts ultimately proved futile.

February 13

1953		William C. Mack of Mack Trucks Inc. dies at age 94. Mack trucks, with their hood-mounted bulldogs, are a symbol of durability and toughness in the commercial vehicle industry.
1990		The Drexel Burnham Lambert Group files for bankruptcy after spending a good part of the 1980s wheeling and dealing its way to the top of the financial world.

February 14

1903		Congress follows the lead of President Theodore Roosevelt and passes legislation that establishes the Department of Commerce and Labor, as well as the Bureau of Corporations.
1929		The mob hit known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre takes place in Chicago. In order to perpetrate the hit, members of Al Capone's gang reportedly fitted a Cadillac touring sedan to the specifications of the Chicago Police Department and led by Capone's lieutenant Ray Nitty, they went to "Bugs" Moran's garage to kill him. Fearing the possibility of misidentifying Moran, the henchmen killed all seven of the men in the garage. Without their sedan which gang member Bryan Bolton claimed to have personally purchased from the Cadillac Car Company on Michigan Avenue in Chicago--the gang would not have been able to infiltrate Moran's garage with such ease.

February 15

1812		Charles Lewis Tiffany, who gave the world some of its most preeminent symbols of wealth and status, is born in Killingly, Connecticut. In 1837, Tiffany and partner John B. Young opened a stationery and fancy goods shop in New York. Political upheaval in Europe in 1848 caused the prices of precious stones to plummet, giving Tiffany a perfect, and profitable, opening into the jewelry business. He snapped up a passel of suddenly cheap diamonds, including a few of the French Crown Jewels, which he later sold for a tidy sum, prompting the press to dub Tiffany "The King of Diamonds." Around the same time, Tiffany set about manufacturing gold jewelry. He moved rapidly to expand his business, acquiring John C. Moore's leading silver operations in 1851. Two years later, Tiffany assumed complete control of the company and re-christened it "Tiffany & Co." During the ensuing years, he opened Tiffany branches around the world and produced special items for luminaries like First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. By the time Tiffany died in 1902, his company and its products were firmly entrenched as enduring vestiges of high culture.
1836		Nicholas Biddle obtains a Pennsylvania charter for the controversial second Bank of the United States. The move was a sad admission of defeat for Biddle, the embattled chief of the bank, who had waged war against President Andrew Jackson throughout the early 1830s to preserve the institution's Federal status.
1934		Legislators pass the Civil Works Emergency Relief Act, providing funds for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), which funneled money to states plagued by poverty and unemployment, and oversaw the subsequent distribution and relief efforts.

February 16

1852		Henry and Clement Studebaker establish H & C Studebaker, a blacksmith and wagon building business, in South Bend, Indiana. They made their fortune manufacturing during the Civil War as The Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company became the world's largest manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages. With the advent of the automobile, Studebaker converted its business to car manufacturing, becoming one of the larger independent automobile manufacturers.
1938		President Franklin Roosevelt signs the new version of the controversial Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), passed in 1933 and declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1936. The newly minted bill was designed to fulfill Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace's call for an "ever-normal granary" and thus was packed with measures intended to steady agriculture prices, as well as farmers' earnings. Along with meting out limits on planting, as well as crop sales, the legislation provided for the stockpiling of agricultural surpluses. The AAA also established the Federal Crop Insurance Corp., which offered insurance to wheat farmers in case of damage caused by "unavoidable natural causes."

February 17

1972		The 15,007,034th Volkswagen Beetle rolls out of the factory in Wolfsburg, Germany, surpassing the Ford Model T's previous production record to become the most heavily produced car in history.
1997		CompuServe chief Robert Massey resigns, ending his brief, but tumultuous run at the helm of the company.

February 18

1873		The House finds Massachusetts Representative Oakes Ames guilty of charges of bribery and recommended his expulsion from the House. But, perhaps swayed by public opinion or fears that the Credit Mobilier scandal would expose the shifty dealings of other high-ranking government officials, legislators opted instead to censure Ames. The case against Credit Mobiler lived on, eventually making it to the Supreme Court, which ruled for Ames's company on the grounds that the government couldn't marshal a lawsuit until Credit Mobilier's debt matured in 1895.
1898		Enzo Anselmo Ferrari is born in Modena, Italy. After fighting in World War I, where he lost both his brother and his father, Ferrari became a professional driver with the Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazional. The following year, Ferrari moved to Alpha Romeo, establishing a relationship that would span two decades and take Ferrari from test driver to the director post of the Alpha Racing Division. In 1929, Enzo founded Scuderia Ferrari, an organization that began as a racing club but that by 1933 had absorbed the entire race-engineering division at Alpha. For financial reasons, Alpha took back control of their racing division from Ferrari in 1939. His pride wounded, Ferrari left Alpha Romeo in 1940, transforming the Scuderia into an independent manufacturing company, the Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari.

February 19

1997

The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press accept an offer from six unions to end a 19-month strike, and announce a plan to return the former strikers to work. The agreement formally ended the tense and at times turbulent strike that began on July 13, 1995 when failed contract talks prompted roughly 2,000 union newspaper workers to hit the picket line.

February 20

1893		The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad falls into receivership. A key transporter for Pennsylvania's anthracite mine industry, the Philadelphia and Reading had run up debts totaling $125 million. At the root of its troubles was an ill-fated decision in the 1870s to purchase 30 percent of Pennsylvania's anthracite mine property. The deal forced the Philadelphia and Reading into receivership twice during the 1880s and continued to plague it throughout the early 1890s.
1993		Ferrucio Lamborghini dies. Born on his family's farm outside of Bologna, Italy, Lamborghini grew up tinkering with tractors. He enrolled in an industrial college near Bologna, where he studied machinery. Graduating just before World War II, Lamborghini then served as an engineer in the Italian Air Force. After the war he returned to his family's farm and began assembling tractors from leftover war vehicles. Lamborghini built such high-quality tractors that by the mid-1950s, the Lamborghini Tractor Company had become one of Italy's largest farm equipment manufacturers. But Ferrucio dreamt of cars. In 1963, he bought land, built an ultra-modern factory, and hired distinguished Alfa Romeo designer Giotti Bizzarini. By 1974, Ferrucio Lamborghini had sold out of the business bearing his name, but the company would never deviate from his initial mission to create exquisite vehicles at whatever cost.

February 21

1946

President Harry Truman creates the Office of Economic Stabilization (OES) charged with keeping a watchful eye over prices, and generally ensuring a smooth transition to a peacetime economy.

February 22

1879

Frank Winfield Woolworth opens the Great 5 Cents Store in Utica, New York. Pledging to sell "nothing" that cost more than a nickel, Woolworth packed his store with goods ranging from kitchen items to beauty products. Though the Utica store ultimately failed, Woolworth hit pay dirt the same year when he opened another discount variety store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The shop, which was expanded to include items that cost up to a dime, proved to be a fast success with Pennsylvanians and emboldened Woolworth to establish an empire of discount stores. The dawn of 1890s saw Woolworth's "five and ten" stores dot America's East Coast; by 1904 he had opened some 120 stores in 21 states, including chunks of the West and the District of Columbia. In 1911, he cemented his dominance of the burgeoning variety store field by merging with four rival companies. The move armed Woolworth with a fleet of 596 stores and, in 1912, he christened the shops with the now familiar name, F.W. Woolworth.

February 23

1743

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of Europe's most prominent banking empire, is born in Frankfurt, Germany. He was initially groomed to become a rabbi, but the early passing of his parents led him to enter high finance, first as an apprentice to a bank. He rapidly ascended to the upper regions of the banking world, and, along with his five sons who were stationed in spots around Europe, set about establishing the Rothschild name. The family exploited the French Revolution and other upheavals in Europe for their financial gain, serving as key lenders to royal families, as well as agents for the trade (both official and illegal) of various goods. By the time Mayer Rothschild died in 1812, he had laid the groundwork for his family's dominance, which became more pronounced through their growing involvement in government finance, as well as their savvy investments in assorted sectors of the Industrial Revolution.

February 24

1869

Congress passes the Morrill Tariff Act, which hiked duties on imports to an average rate of 47 percent. The legislation was also another victory for Congressman Justin Morrill, who, starting in 1861, had drafted a series of tariffs designed to protect U.S. industry from the specter of international competition. However, as some historians have noted, overseas rivals didn't pose much of a threat to American manufacturers in 1869; Morrill's latest tariff seemingly padded industrialists' pocketbooks at the expense of the poor, who were forced to pay ever-higher prices for import goods. Over the next few years, though, lawmakers reversed course and rolled back some of the protectionist duties. The Tariff of 1870 placed 130 items--primarily raw materials--on the "free list," while tariff law passed in 1872 effectively slashed rates on manufacturing goods by 10 percent.

February 25

1913		The Sixteenth Amendment, which effectively paved the path for the United States' adoption of an income tax, is ratified, although its roots can be traced back to 1895, when the Supreme Court weighed in with a decision in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co, a case that revolved around the constitutionality of income tax legislation.
1919		Oregon becomes the first state to impose a tax on gasoline. The funds collected from the one percent tax were used for road construction and maintenance.

February 26

1885		Congress heeds the call of labor leaders and gave the nod to the Contract Labor Law, which promised to clamp down on business agents who contracted abroad for immigrant labor. The passage of the Contract Labor Law represented something of a change of heart for legislators who, in 1864, had greenlighted legislation that sanctioned the practice of employers securing the services of foreign workers in return for free admission to the United States. While this legislation was designed to fuel the rapid rise of industry, as well as the nation's westward expansion, employers used the foreign workers as a potent tool to fight against the burgeoning labor movement, primarily by deploying immigrant labor to break strikes. The result was a deluge of brutal and sometimes bloody conflicts. By the 1880s, the union movement, most notably the Knights of Labor, wielded enough clout to sway legislators and force the decline of contract labor.
1993		At 12:18 p.m., a terrorist bomb explodes in a parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City, leaving a crater 60 feet wide and causing the collapse of several steel-reinforced concrete floors in the vicinity of the blast. Although the bomb did not critically damage the skyscrapers' main structure, the WTC suffered more than $500 million in damage, six people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. After the attack, authorities evacuated 50,000 people from the buildings.

February 27

1932		U.S. Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act, which expanded the powers of the Federal Reserve Board, thus extending credit, as well as enabling the agency to "release" some of the government's gold to business as a response to the flood of foreign withdrawals from the gold standard.
1934		Ralph Nader is born in Winsted, Connecticut. Nader would revolutionize consumer advocacy with his 1965 book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, in which he lambasted the safety standards of the Big Three automotive manufacturers.

February 28

1878		The House approves the Bland-Allison Act, which called for the coinage of silver, albeit in limited doses. Bland-Allison was another sign of the growing political power of the expanded currency movement, which blended silver forces with the burgeoning greenback movement.
1903		Henry Ford hires John F. and Horace E. Dodge to supply the chassis and running gear for his 650 Ford automobiles. The Dodge Brothers began their business careers as bicycle manufacturers in 1897, and first entered the automobile industry as manufacturers of auto parts in 1901.
1982		The J. Paul Getty Museum becomes the most richly endowed museum on earth when it receives a $1.2 billion bequest left to it by the late J. Paul Getty. The American oil billionaire died in 1976, but legal wrangling over his fortune by his children and ex-wives kept his will in probate until 1982. During those six years, what was a originally a $700 million bequest to the museum nearly doubled. By 2000, the endowment was worth $5 billion--even after the trust spent nearly $1 billion in the 1990s on the construction of a massive museum and arts education complex in Los Angeles.

February 29

1915		In South Carolina, the minimum age allowed by law for workers in mills, factories, and mines was raised from twelve to fourteen years old.
1944		United States Office of Price Administration director Chester Bowles announces that over one billion dollars in estimated profit was made by American black marketeers during 1943.
1960		The publishing firm of Holt, Rinehart, & Winston comes into being when stockholders from Henry Holt & Co., Inc. agree to merge with two other firms, Rinehart & Co., Inc., and the John C. Winston Company. A division now of Harcourt Brace & Co., Holt, Rinehart, & Winston are publishers of instructional materials, including school textbooks.