Eric Gardner

I am a management consultant that works in consumer goods. I write about the intersection of politics, retail, and technology.

Yelp, Antitrust, and Google

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Google, Amazon, and Facebook are modern-day railroads. The technology companies are three of the few organizations that own and control our modern infrastructure. Connor Dougherty published a nice look at how Google’s monopolist position impacts the businesses that rely on the infrastructure it owns. Like farmers and railroads before, web service providers like Yelp are effectively … Read more

Why did FDR drop Henry Wallace from the 1944 Presidential Ticket?

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Henry Wallace

In July 1944, a little over a year before WW2 ended, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked tired and sick. Publicly, he was taking a month-long rest under the guise of war planning. Privately, he was diagnosed with severe hypertension, heart disease, cardiac failure, and acute bronchitis.

The stress of leading a nation at war, rehabilitating a depressed economy, and a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit had turned his heart into a ticking time bomb. It wasn’t a question of if, but when FDR would succumb to a major stroke. Most insiders knew in the upcoming election, a Democratic vote for President was really a vote for the Vice President. Under these conditions, FDR made a decision that transformed the next fifty years of American history. He removed Vice President Henry Wallace from the Presidential ticket.

Before the rise of Bernie Sanders, Henry Wallace was the last true Progressive leader to wield national power. A scientist farmer, and capable administrator, Wallace revolutionized American farming as the Secretary of Agriculture. He spearheaded the New Deal’s most revolutionary and innovative programs, fought concentrations of power, and transformed the Federal Government into a leading incubator of scientific research. He spoke openly about the need to end racial segregation, the benefits of international cooperation, and the importance of economic development. When Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize for developing disease-resistant wheat–it’s estimated that the hybrid grain saved over 1 billion lives—he credited Wallace as his inspiration.

He was also popular. At the time of FDR’s decision, a Gallop poll showed Democratic voters overwhelmingly backed Wallace. “Nationwide,” wrote biographers, John Culver and John Hyde, “Wallace’s support equaled the next three (Vice-Presidential) candidates’ combined.” The man who ultimately replaced him, Harry Truman, a generic Democratic Party loyalist, earned 2 percent.

The question is, why? Why did FDR drop Henry Wallace from the 1944 Presidential ticket? Why did FDR want Henry Wallace, the consummate New Dealer, with vast popularity and support among key voting-blocs removed? It’s one of the greatest “what-ifs” in American history.

Critics argue that Wallace’s sympathetic view towards the Soviet Union would have weakened American interests. Supporters argue he would have ended the Cold War before it started. I don’t think there will ever be a clear answer to this question, but I wanted to illuminate 8 key drivers.

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Review: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

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The Warmth of Other Suns

With a scope wide as it is personal, Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns paints a historical picture of one of the largest, but least reported events in the 21st century: the mass northern migration of African Americans.

Despite losing the Civil War, an open caste system remained in the South. Blacks were restricted in both their opportunities and possibilities. Most were relegated to sharecropping—in practice a form of pseudo-slavery. Voting was technically legal but practically unheard of. Lynchings were common.  At the turn of the 20th century, 90% of African Americans lived in the south. By the end of the 1960s, roughly half called the North home.

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Book Review: How Not to Network a Nation

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How Not to Network a Nation

In the thirty-some years since it fell, American analysis of the Soviet Union has been reduced to one sentiment: communism failed because capitalism is superior. Professional people—especially ones employed by media companies—spend an awful lot of time and energy attempting to rationalize its downfall through clichéd ideological arguments. They bring up the work of Hayek, stories about full grocery aisles, or simply argue that people are too self-interested for mass collectivism to work.

And yes, I understand and even agree with many of these arguments, but it’s also lazy. It’s like analyzing the most recent Super Bowl and concluding that the New England Patriots won because they wanted it more. In How Not To Network a Nation Benjamin Peters provides an exhaustive look at one of the functional problems that plagued the Soviet experiment: information.

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Book Review: The Most Powerful Idea in the World by William Rosen

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Most Powerful Idea in the World

I read The Most Powerful Idea in the World, William Rosen’s book about the invention of the steam engine, for two reasons, one of which was Bill Gates’ glowing recommendation. In his review, he raved about how Rosen was one of the first people to successfully argue that patent law had a large impact on innovation.

Since I am working on a project that looks at the impact of legal systems on innovation it only seemed natural. But I had a reservation. Not about the time period, I’d read a few books about the industrial revolution this year. It’s the simple fact that most books on innovation suck. They’re filled with bland platitudes and offer generic advice that is obvious to anyone with five years of business experience and a subscription to Harvard Business Review.

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It’s 2017 and the impossible has happened. I agree with Ross Douthat.

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It’s 2017 and the impossible has happened. I agree with Ross Douthat.

Douthat is an op-ed writer for the New York Times. He shouldn’t be. He once argued that people waiting longer to have children is “a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe.” He spent most of 2016 arguing that Trump would not be the Republican nominee, nor would he win the Presidency. After Donald Trump won the Presidential election and explicitly campaigned against Republican policies, Douthat thought to himself, “Democrats need to become more like Republicans.” He wrote anti-gay marriage columns as recently as 2013. For some reason, people take him seriously.

Today he told a Friedman-esq story about a friend’s theory on Trump shaming businesses into not leaving.

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Ranking the 29 best books I read in 2016

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2016 was a bizarre year. Donald Trump won the Presidential election. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series. Uber grew its revenue and still lost $3 billion. It’s been 1,000 days since a major American suburb has poisonous water--and nothing has been done. General Electric re-made itself–again. A 74-year-old socialist almost won a major party’s Presidential nomination. The long-awaited digital revolution is finally happening. Solar power is now cheaper than fossil fuels. Thirty years of social change seemed to hit at once.

Like I said. 2016 was a bizarre year. Thankfully, books can help us make sense of what’s happening and what’s driving the trends. In a recent interview with the New York Times, President Obama remarked that reading allowed him to better digest the constant bombardment of information pointed at the office. It slowed the assault, helped separate the signal from the noise, and gave him perspective. Here are the books I read in 2016 along with a quick recap of the context they provide to the ever changing landscape. If reading recommendations are your thing, here are my recommendations for 2014 and 2015.

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Classic Read: How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul

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Matt Stoller’s How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul is the best political analysis I’ve read all year. It offers a solid argument to how economic populism fell out of the national narrative—and accelerated the decline of the American middle class.

It’s hard to believe today, but seventy years ago Bernie Sander’s ideas were fairly common on the left. Stoller traces how they became rare. He examines the forces that moved the Democratic party from one in fierce opposition to monopoly power to one that embraced it. I really do hope Stoller has a larger thesis in mind, because I’d love to read a book on it.

I’d recommend reading the entire piece. However, I wrote up some highlights for the lazy below.

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The Forgotten Falk Corporation

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Like many great companies, today the Falk Corporation is forgotten. At its height, it perfected the silicon chips of the industrial era. Falk designed and manufactured fat gears and thin gears, cheap gears and expensive gears, gears that could open the Panama Canal, and gears that fit on a small desk. It made gears for engines, dams, trains, conveyor belts, subway systems—any industry that needed to transfer power probably used Falk Gears.

There’s a good argument to be made that after a century of dominating the industrial era, it fell victim to the innovator’s dilemma. Falk’s corpse was sold for $295 million in 2005. Today it doesn’t even have a proper Wikipedia page.

I began researching the Falk Corporation because I wanted to learn more about the innovation network of Silicon Valley. It may seem odd to research a defunct Milwaukee-based gear manufacturer for this, but it makes sense when you ponder the history. By every conceivable measure Silicon Valley is the epic center of modern innovation. The bulk of the software and algorithms that power the world are designed inside the 20 mile region. Its evolution is also fairly straightforward: government subsidies, elite education system, solid business support and infrastructure, etc. In the early 1900s, as crazy as it sounds, that innovation epic center may have been Milwaukee. The industry was industrial metal fabrication, and in a span of about twenty years 10-15 companies that would dominate the mid 1900s sprouted within few miles. Six came from a 3-4 block radius in what is now known as Walker’s Point: Pawling & Harnischfeger (cranes), Kearney & Trecker (milling), A.O. Smith (car frames), Allis-Chalmers (everything), Nordberg and Chain Belt (mining equipment).

That’s what set me down the Falk Corporation’s path. I was trying to discover why it came to be, and what it means for today’s world–specifically building an innovation based economy. Here’s a super annotated version of my notes on the early history of the Falk Corporation. They’re primarily derived from the Milwaukee Public Library’s vast resources and the work of Milwaukee historian John Gurda.

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