American Labor and Economic Citizenship
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Reprint, 6/25/2015
EAN 9781107559677, ISBN10: 1107559677
Paperback, 338 pages, 22.8 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
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. 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.
Introduction
1. 'Hoovering' in the twenties
efficiency, wages, and growth in the 'new economic system'
2. Wages and the public interest
economists and the wage questions in the new era
3. Enlightened labor? Labor's share and economic stability
4. A new capitalism? Interrogating employers' efforts to cultivate a 'feeling of partnership' in industry
5. Gender research as labor activism
the women's bureau in the new era
6. The new 'Negro problem'
7. Promising problems
working toward a reconstructed understanding of the African American and Mexican worker
Conclusion.