Jan

22

Morris Ranger: The Rise and Fall of the Liverpool Cotton Market’s Greatest Speculator, 1835 to 1887
by Nigel Hall

In the period 1878 to 1883 there was heavy speculation in the Liverpool raw cotton market associated with a trader named Morris Ranger. Little has previously been written about Ranger and his background. Ranger was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1855. He initially traded in tobacco but branched out into cotton during the American Civil War. He settled in Liverpool in 1870. His cotton speculations were enormous, but he fell bankrupt in 1883. The speculations associated with Ranger involved other Liverpool traders and drew heavy criticism from the spinning industry. The speculations played a part in a reorganisation of the Liverpool market and attempts to circumvent it, including the building of the Manchester Ship Canal.

This caught my eye because it was a parallel to what happened in NY during the Crews era with the railroads and the Adams' brothers Chapters of Erie.

In the late 1860s, the spectacular growth of the American economy created an unprecedented concentration of power. The corporate directors that emerged possessed tremendous amounts of economic leverage, and often they flagrantly abused it. The Adams brothers, Charles and Henry, were appalled by this unscrupulous behavior and sought to expose the financial machinations behind it. Charles examined the practices of those running the Erie Railroad while Henry focused on the efforts of Jay Gould and Jim Fisk to corner the gold market. The results of their work are the articles presented in Chapters of Erie. While the term "investigative journalism" did not exist in the Adams brothers' time, their essays show fine examples of it. The Adams brothers' well-researched, perceptive, and sometimes sardonic writing will appeal to anyone interested in the history of big business in the United States and how it affected economics and politics. Students of journalism, especially those with an interest in early muckraking, also will appreciate this groundbreaking work. All readers cannot help but notice a striking similarity between the corporate leaders of the 1860s and the financial power brokers who dominate today's headlines.


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