Owen D. Young and American Enterprise

Owen D. Young (1874-1962) belonged to a unique American generation: the last to know a country where the majority made their living from the land and the first to feel the full impact of modernization. Born on an upstate New York farm, educated at St. Lawrence, a small college nearby, and armed with a Boston University law degree, Young made a large difference in that transforming change. His early career dealt mainly with the new and sprawling utilities, and brought him to the attention of the General Electric Company. Joining it in 1913 as vice president and general counsel, and becoming chairman in 1922, with Gerard Swope as president, he soon transformed, with Swope's impressive aid, a large national enterprise into a dominant international one. They were a singularly effective team, enterprising at home and abroad, and notably progressive in labor relations. Always the entrepreneur, in 1919 Young saw the possibilities of the 'wireless' and so set up the Radio Corporation of America.

This is a large-scale biography of a major figure in American enterprise.