In 1872, Montgomery Ward founded America's first mail-order house with $1,600. By 1913, Ward and Sears received more than half of US parcels. The 1906 Sears IPO via Goldman-Lehman pioneered modern equity pricing; the 2024 Tempus AI IPO from inside the Ward Catalog House inherits the playbook.
Gustavus Franklin Swift turned $25 at a Cape Cod kitchen table in 1855 into a company posting $160 million in annual sales by 1903 (~$6 billion today). The butcher who built the cold-chain architecture JBS and Lineage Logistics still run 146 years later.
Chicago's Union Stock Yards (1865–1971) and Gustavus Swift's dressed beef system created America's first national supply chain, the disassembly line Ford reversed into mass production, and a regulatory capture template that Stigler formalized and hyperscalers now exploit.
In 1842, Philadelphia iron agent Joseph Turner Ryerson arrived in Chicago and founded J.T. Ryerson & Son. A CBOT founder, his firm survived the 1871 Fire, merged with Inland Steel in 1935, and in 2026 became the 2nd-largest North American metals service center. 184 years. Same city.
October 1871: the Great Chicago Fire destroyed 17,500 buildings and $200M in property. CBOT reopened the next day. The mechanism: Incumbency Erasure, eliminating every firm's accumulated advantages simultaneously, creating conditions for Jenney's first skyscraper and Thoma Bravo's $184B PE empire.
CBOT founder Matthew Laflin's 1840 gunpowder partnership with Solomon Smith created a dynasty spanning Northern Trust ($18.7T AUC), Illinois Tool Works ($86.6B), and Briar Hall. In 2025, BNY Mellon tried to buy Northern Trust. The family said no.
Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard arrived in Chicago in 1818 as a teenage fur trader. By 1848, he was the first name on the Chicago Board of Trade charter. How one man bridged two incompatible economies and built the institutions that made Chicago.
In April 1848, 82 Chicago merchants founded the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), creating standardized grain grading and futures contracts that became the foundation for CME Group's $846 trillion global derivatives market.