The Not-So-Industrial Average

When the Dow Jones industrial average was first expanded to 30 companies in 1928, it was almost entirely a list of companies that made or mined things. American Can, General Railway Signal, Victor Talking Machine â€" it was an era when boys were named Robert, girls were named Mary, and companies were not ashamed to be named for the things they made.

That era, of course, is history. Manufacturing no longer drives the economy, companies that still make things now hide behind names like 3M, Alcoa and Intel â€" and the Dow Jones long ago started replacing industrial bellwethers with banks and big-box retailers.

As of Sept. 20, there will be a reasonable argument to be made that for the first time in its history, the index won’t even comprise primarily companies that make or mine things, thanks to the planned additions of Visa, Nike and Goldman Sachs, announced on Tuesday.

(The Dow is evicting Bank of America and two industrials: Alcoa and Hewlett-Packard.)

It’s not so easy to decide what constitutes an industrial company. Perhaps you’re under the impression that Nike makes shoes, just like the International Shoe Company, a member of the Dow in the 1930s. Actually, the only thing Nike makes is money. “Our principal business activity,” the company says in its regulatory filings, “is the design, development and worldwide marketing of high-quality footwear, apparel, equipment and accessory products.” Those products are made by contractors, meaning that Nike has more in common with Sears Roebuck than American Can. McDonald’s has a better claim to being an industrial company: It actually makes a lot of sandwiches.

So this is not science, but by my count, there will be 15 nonindustrial companies in the new version of the index.

Finance: American Express, Goldman Sachs, Visa, JPMorgan Chase and Travelers.

Retail: Nike, Home Depot, McDonald’s, Wal-Mart and the Walt Disney Company.

Services: AT&T, I.B.M., UnitedHealth Group and Verizon Communications.

And Microsoft, which mostly sells software.

Of course, I could have written something similar last year, when UnitedHealth replaced Kraft Foods. Or I could have waited until a dot-com made the cut. The point is the pattern. And seen through the prism of the Dow, that pattern also has a symbolic starting point: Aug. 30, 1982.

The only nonindustrial companies among the original Dow 30 were a pair of retailers, Sears Roebuck and Woolworth. (There was also a movie studio, Paramount Publix.)

Half a century later, the Dow Jones index still included just three nonindustrial companies: Sears, Woolworth and AT&T.

And then, in 1982, the Dow added American Express. It’s as good a moment as any to mark the arrival of finance and services as our dominant economic sectors. Three decades later, for better and worse, we are living with the consequences.