Bedaux, Charles Eugene (10 October 1886–18 February 1944), scientific manager, entrepreneur, and fascist collaborator, was born in Charenton-le-Pont, France, a suburb of Paris, the son of Charles Emile Bedaux, a railroad engineer, and Marie Eulalie, a dressmaker. Bedaux spent his first twenty years on the streets of Paris, doing odd jobs and usually avoiding school. He attended the Lycée Louis LeGrand in Paris but did not receive a regular degree. In 1906 he left Paris to seek his fortune across the Atlantic. In the United States Bedaux worked as a dishwasher, an insurance salesman, and a sandhog with the crews building the Hudson River tunnels. He also had a stint at the New Jersey Worsted Mills in Hoboken. He became a naturalized citizen in 1908....
Article
Bedaux, Charles Eugene (1886-1944), scientific manager, entrepreneur, and fascist collaborator
Steven Kreis
Image
Bedaux, Charles Eugene (1886-1944)
In
Article
Estes, Billie Sol (20 January 1925–14 May 2013)
William Howard Moore
Estes, Billie Sol (20 January 1925–14 May 2013), business entrepreneur, was born in Gray County, Texas, the second of six children of Lillian Coffman and John Levi Estes, struggling farmers. His parents raised their children in the fundamentalist Church of Christ. Young Billie attended local public schools near Clyde, Texas, and as a teenager wrote to President ...
Image
Estes, Billie Sol (20 January 1925–14 May 2013)
In
Image
Genovese, Vito (1897-1969)
In
Article
Genovese, Vito (1897-1969), criminal entrepreneur
William Howard Moore
Genovese, Vito (21 November 1897–14 February 1969), criminal entrepreneur, was born in Ricigliano, Italy, the son of Philip Anthony Genovese, a building trades worker, and Nancy (maiden name unknown). Genovese received the equivalent of a fifth-grade education in Italy before following his father to New York City in 1913. A petty thief and street tough in the Greenwich Village area of Little Italy, Genovese soon established a reputation for unusual cunning and violence. Frequently arrested on charges of assault and homicide, he was twice convicted of carrying a concealed weapon. More important, he became a collector for the illegal Italian lottery, an indication that he had attracted the attention of locally prominent underworld figures....
Article
Hilton, Edward (1596–1670?), entrepreneur and judge
David E. Van Deventer
Hilton, Edward (1596–1670?), entrepreneur and judge, was baptized at Witton chapelry in Northwich, Chester County, England, on 9 June 1596, the son of William Hilton, a gentleman farmer. His mother’s name is unknown. Very little is known about Hilton’s childhood and early adult years. Sometime after his father’s death in 1605, he was apprenticed to a fishmonger’s widow, Marie Hilton, in London. In 1621 he was admitted to the aristocratic Fishmongers Guild—the same year his brother William, who had been admitted to the guild in 1616, immigrated to the Plymouth colony in New England....
Article
Johnson, William (1809-1851), diarist and entrepreneur
Devorah Lissek
Johnson, William (1809–17 June 1851), diarist and entrepreneur, was born in Natchez, Mississippi, the son of William Johnson, a slaveholder, and Amy Johnson, a slave. When William was five years old his mother was emancipated and established her household in Natchez. In 1820 the eleven-year-old William was freed by the Mississippi legislature at the request of his owner. Once emancipated, he apprenticed with his brother-in-law, James Miller, in his barber business in Natchez. Johnson became proprietor of the business—reportedly the most popular barber shop in Natchez—when Miller moved to New Orleans in 1830. Johnson and his African-American staff ran the shop, which served a predominantly white clientele. Johnson’s barbers not only offered haircuts and shaves, they also fitted wigs, sold fancy soaps and oils, and, beginning in 1834, operated a bathhouse at the Main Street location....
Article
Kane, Thomas Leiper (1822-1883), lawyer, soldier, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and defender of the Mormons
David J. Whittaker
Kane, Thomas Leiper (27 January 1822–26 December 1883), lawyer, soldier, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and defender of the Mormons, was born in Philadelphia, the son of John Kintzing Kane, a jurist, and Jane Duval Leiper. He attended school in Philadelphia and from 1839 to 1844 traveled in England and France, studying and visiting relatives. While in Paris he served for a time as an attaché of the American legation. Small in stature and never robust, he would spend most of his life struggling with ill health. In Paris he met Auguste Comte and others who surely encouraged his social conscience, which would be manifested later in his concern for philanthropic causes. In 1844 Kane returned to Philadelphia, where he studied law with his father. Although he was admitted to the bar in 1846 and clerked briefly for his father, who was a federal judge, his interests and activities generally moved in other directions....
Article
Mandelbaum, Fredericka (1827-1894), criminal entrepreneur
Rona L. Holub
Mandelbaum, Fredericka (27 February 1827–26 February 1894), criminal entrepreneur, was born Friederike Weisner in Hessen-Kassel, Germany to Regine (Rahel Lea) Weisner (nee Solling) and Samuel Abraham Weisner, a merchant. Their occupations are unknown. Nothing specific is known of her early life and education....
Article
Napier, James Carroll (1845-1940), politician, attorney, and businessman
Maceo Crenshaw Dailey
Napier, James Carroll (09 June 1845–21 April 1940), politician, attorney, and businessman, was born on the western outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee. His parents, William C. Napier and Jane E., were slaves at the time of his birth but were freed in 1848. After manumission and a brief residency in Ohio, William Napier moved his family to Nashville, where he established a livery stable business. James attended the black elementary and secondary schools of Nashville before entering Wilberforce University (1864–1866) and Oberlin College (1866–1868), both in Ohio....
Article
Ogden, Aaron (1756-1839), soldier, public official, and entrepreneur
Paul G. E. Clemens
Ogden, Aaron (03 December 1756–19 April 1839), soldier, public official, and entrepreneur, was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, the son of Robert Ogden II, a lawyer, and Phebe Hatfield. He attended the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) and graduated with the class of 1773. Over the next three years he taught school, first in Princeton, then in Elizabethtown, but with the outbreak of hostilities between Great Britain and its American colonies, he was quickly drawn into the revolutionary confrontation....
Article
Rice, Isaac Leopold (1850-1915), attorney and entrepreneur
Joseph W. Slade
Rice, Isaac Leopold (22 February 1850–02 November 1915), attorney and entrepreneur, was born in Wachenheim, Bavaria, the son of Mayer Rice, a language tutor, and Fanny Sohn. The family emigrated to Philadelphia about 1855. A brilliant student, Rice at sixteen left Philadelphia’s famed Central High School to study music and literature in Paris; at eighteen he became the Paris correspondent for the Philadelphia ...
Image
Schultz, Dutch (1902-1935)
In
Article
Schultz, Dutch (1902-1935), gangster and underworld entrepreneur
William Howard Moore
Schultz, Dutch (06 August 1902–24 October 1935), gangster and underworld entrepreneur, was born Arthur Flegenheimer in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Herman Flegenheimer, a glazier and baker, and Emma Neu. Before the boy completed the sixth grade, his father either deserted the family or died. Arthur’s mother then took in laundry to support the family, and he quit school to sell newspapers, run errands, and work as an office boy, printer’s apprentice, and roofer. While he proudly retained his roofers’ union card as evidence of his working-class respectability, he was pulled into the gang world of the Bronx slums. In 1919 he was convicted on a burglary charge and was sent to a reformatory for fifteen months. This police record, plus his cultivation of a reputation as a hardened tough, led to his calling himself Dutch Schultz, the name of a well-known former street brawler in the area....