The DJIA Through History

Derek Thompson:

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average launched in 1896, it smelled like a turn-of-the-century factory farm -- nothing but oil, iron, cows, and cotton. You know. America. (Or as some folks prefer, 'Merica!)
Today, practically all of these companies -- Tennessee Coal & Iron, American Cotton Oil, Distilling & Cattle Feeding -- have been gobbled up by conglomerates that you have and haven't heard of. Only GE remains. Only the U.S. Leather trust is essentially defunct.
But I like that. We had an industrial-dominated economy, and now we don't. New time, new index. DJIA II for the auto and aerospace economy. DJIA III for the computer/financial economy. And so on.

 I really find the list fascinating.  And I think it deserves a little more attention than Thompson gave it.  The reason is that to kind of paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, "The history of the United States is the history of United States business (and probably religion)."  Almost all of the companies above are monopoly trusts (the Sugar trust, the Tobacco trust, the Whiskey trust (Distilling & Cattle Feeding), the Leather trust, the Rubber trust, etc.).  This was a very distinct period of time in the nation's history, and led to the modern state we now have.  There is a lot of interesting history in there.

For instance, Tennessee Coal & Iron:

The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (1852–1952), also known as TCI and the Tennessee Company, was a major American steel manufacturer with interests in coal and iron ore mining and railroad operations. Originally based entirely within Tennessee, it relocated most of its business to Alabama in the late nineteenth century. With a sizable real estate portfolio, the company owned several Birmingham satellite towns, including Ensley, Fairfield, Docena, Edgewater and Bayview.
At one time the second largest steel producer in the USA, TCI was listed on the first Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896. However, in 1907, the company was merged with its principal rival, the United States Steel Corporation. The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company was subsequently operated as a subsidiary of U. S. Steel for 45 years until it became a division of its parent company in 1952.....
The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company was one of the largest users of convict leasing for coal mining labor in Alabama following Reconstruction. The number of convicts employed increased after U.S. Steel acquired TCI in 1907, as did the brutality of the conditions in which they labored. In 1908, the first full year of U. S. Steel's ownership of TCI, almost 60 convict workers died from workplace-related accidents.
In the 1910s, TCI undertook a comprehensive program to stabilize its labor force by developing rigorously-planned "model villages", thereby improving worker health, welfare and loyalty. This paternalistic approach carried with it obvious benefits for workers and their families, but also drew criticism for limiting the free movement and organization of labor....The last relic of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, the Fairfield Plant, continues to be operated by U. S. Steel as one of its five integrated steel mills in the USA. It is the largest steel-making plant in Alabama, employing 2000 workers as of September 2006, down from a peak of 45,000 during World War II. With a single blast furnace and three basic oxygen process furnaces, amongst other various mills and production facilities, the plant produces 2.4 million tons of raw steel per annum and 640,000 tons of seamless tubular and sheet products, mainly for purchase by the booming oil industry in the region.

So one of the steel mills from a company that disappeared from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1907 is still in operation, even though it employs 43,000 fewer people than at its peak.  There is a lot of interesting shit in there.  Company towns, forced convict labor, largest corporation in the country at the time, etc.  In the next week or two, I'll try to pull up a few more interesting tidbits I found when I got bored at work today.

Update: A full listing of changes to the Dow.