Building Trust and Managing Business Over Distance: A Geography of Reaper Manufacturer D. S. Morgan’s Correspondence, 1867

How did mid-nineteenth-century manufacturers establish trust and manage business affairs over long distance? The 1867 correspondence of a senior partner in a small reaper manufacturing company offers insights into the geography of nineteenth-century business networks and trust. Dayton Morgan managed key reaper patents, sales agents, and personal business. His letters reveal business relations with lawyers, bankers, brokers, manufacturers, politicians, some employees, agents, and dealers. Both the geographic spread of this correspondence and of his railroad travel are remarkable. Although New York bankers and lawyers in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago dominate his address list, Morgan corresponded widely. He also made repeated trips to Chicago and New York to meet with agents. Personal connections and face-to-face meetings backed much of the correspondence, but so did legal contracts. Thus Morgan combined process-, characteristic-, and institutional-based modes of trust production. From his base in a small town, Morgan organized a variety of networks, using railway and postal services. Through his network activity he made every part of the network “local.”