Five uproarious plays that chronicle the rise of the modern American business model through the impudent lens of late 19th and early 20th century Broadway . This collection introduces the satirical examinations of business, found in American theatre through the 20th and 21st centuries. In many ways, these plays serve as a template for later works of art like the hit series Mad Men , Billy Wilder's The Apartment , and Meredith Willson's The Music Man : comedies of business, hustlers, and the hustled. These plays range in theme and era from the volatility and dumb luck of late 19th century Wall Street (Bronson Howard's The Henrietta , 1887); to the farcical feverishness of making and losing money in business quickly (Winchell Smith and Byron Ongley's Brewster's Millions , 1906); to the practice of modern business scams (George M. Cohan's Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford , 1910); to the growing prominence of advertising (Roi Cooper Megrue and Walter Hackett's It Pays to Advertise , 1914); and implementing a seat-of-the-pants business model based on the popular idea of Scientific Management (Harry James Smith's A Tailor-Made Man , 1917). The comedy, satire, and farce of these plays provides not only a portrait of the beginnings of modern American business, but a surprisingly timely examination of business morality (or lack of it). Accompanied by a scholarly introduction for the plays and time periods as a whole, as well as brief introductions to each play, Staging American Corporate Culture is a hugely entertaining and utterly interesting introduction to these late 19th and early 20th century attitudes.