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One perennial question people have is what the biggest companies are. Sometimes people are looking want their list for a particular industry or state. Sometimes they are looking for the biggest companies in the United States in a particular year. Often the question is harder to answer than they think.
One of the oldest regularly published lists of the biggest companies in the United States is the Fortune 500. This list was first published in the May 1955 edition of Fortune and was based on the company revenue figures. That year the top companies were General Motors, Jersey Standard, U.S. Steel, General Electric, Esmark, Chrysler, Armour, Gulf Oil, Mobil and DuPont.
For those looking for the rankings before 1955, there have been a few modern retrospective lists and some industry publications published their own rankings – often though their annual directory volumes or major trade magazines. For example, the old Polk banking directories published a list of Top 300 Banks starting in the 1940 annual directory and the AM Best had a list in their annual Property/Casualty (or Casualty Surety & Misc) edition.
Since then other magazines like Forbes created their own list in 1959, have begun to create their own top lists. Today, Fortune now has other top lists – Global 500, Future 50, 100 Fastest-Growing Companies, and others.
The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to digital content are provided when available.
American Economic Review
Big Enterprise in a Competitive System by Business History Review
Fortune : The Art of Covering Business by New York TimesThe following resources created or digitized by the Library of Congress can be used to find out more about the list as well as the events of the day.
Chronicling America, Historic American Newspapers
Digital Image Collections
Rankings & ListsThese freely available online resources provide additional information on the topic.
are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress. If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library.The subscription resources marked with a padlock are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress. If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library.
Additional works on this topic in the Library of Congress may be identified by searching the Library of Congress Online Catalog under appropriate Library of Congress subject headings. Choose the topics you wish to search from the following list of subject headings to link directly to the Catalog and automatically execute a search for the subject selected. Please be aware that during periods of heavy use you may encounter delays in accessing the catalog. For assistance in locating other subject headings that may relate to this subject, please consult a reference librarian.
