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From the 1930s to the 1960s, America had a planned economy. Industrial corporations were stable employers.

After the stock market crash of 1929, the old industrial economy disintegrated. Fresh regulations and laws, complete with new job descriptions, emerged from the wreckage. Management consultants, unionists, accountants and migrant labor helped create the 20th-century corporation that built postwar America. In the 1920s, industrial giants like US Steel and General Motors devised the blueprint for the modern corporation: vertically integrating supply chains for seamless production and hiring accountants to manage the financial complexity of multiple divisions.

The Great Depression challenged the supply-and-demand economy and reduced trust in the market. With the New Deal, new government-protected unions guaranteed a “comfortable life” for workers in exchange for reliability. Industrialists had invested millions in expensive production lines, so disruption could ruin them. Unskilled workers had little individual value, but those who could organize found they gained unprecedented power as part of a group.