Corporate Connections
Business charts became an important technology of corporate integration. These graphics were not merely technical, however. They told a story about how individual corporations functioned. Note how over time, the connections they depicted became more directional and self-contained, presenting the large firm as a complex machine with interlocking parts in constant motion. Consider the myriad purposes such presentations served - clarifying relationships between different corporate actors, yet also conveying to investors, regulators, and the general public a vision of stability and coherence. Indeed, as corporations stretched themselves across the national canvas, these charts began to tell a story about the rational workings of the economy generally. Economic events in one place – a spike in Texas oil prices or a dip in New York employment – could be understood as the consequence of a subtler disruption earlier along the pathway of a tangled but ultimately logical economic chain.