American Labor And Economic Citizenship: New Capitalism From World War I To The Great Depression
by Professor Mark Hendrickson /
2013 / English / PDF
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Once viewed as a distinct era characterized by intense bigotry,
nostalgia for simpler times, and a revulsion against active
government, the 1920s have been rediscovered by historians in
recent decades as a time when Herbert Hoover and his allies worked
to significantly reform economic policy. In American Labor and
Economic Citizenship, Mark Hendrickson both augments and amends
this view by studying the origins and development of New Era policy
expertise and knowledge. Policy-oriented social scientists in
government, trade union, academic, and nonprofit agencies showed
how methods for achieving stable economic growth through increased
productivity could both defang the dreaded business cycle and
defuse the pattern of hostile class relations that Gilded Age
depressions had helped to set as an American system of industrial
relations. Linked by emerging institutions such as the Social
Science Research Council, the National Urban League, and the
Women's Bureau, social investigators attacked rampant sexual and
racial discrimination, often justified by fallacious biological
arguments, that denied female and minority workers full economic
citizenship in the workplace and the polity. These scholars
demonstrated that these practices not only limited productivity and
undercut expanded consumption, but also belied the claims for
fairness that must buttress policy visions in a democracy.
Once viewed as a distinct era characterized by intense bigotry,
nostalgia for simpler times, and a revulsion against active
government, the 1920s have been rediscovered by historians in
recent decades as a time when Herbert Hoover and his allies worked
to significantly reform economic policy. In American Labor and
Economic Citizenship, Mark Hendrickson both augments and amends
this view by studying the origins and development of New Era policy
expertise and knowledge. Policy-oriented social scientists in
government, trade union, academic, and nonprofit agencies showed
how methods for achieving stable economic growth through increased
productivity could both defang the dreaded business cycle and
defuse the pattern of hostile class relations that Gilded Age
depressions had helped to set as an American system of industrial
relations. Linked by emerging institutions such as the Social
Science Research Council, the National Urban League, and the
Women's Bureau, social investigators attacked rampant sexual and
racial discrimination, often justified by fallacious biological
arguments, that denied female and minority workers full economic
citizenship in the workplace and the polity. These scholars
demonstrated that these practices not only limited productivity and
undercut expanded consumption, but also belied the claims for
fairness that must buttress policy visions in a democracy.