HISTORY 464
American Economic and Business History
FALL SEMESTER, 1996
Instructor: Dr. Jonathan Bean
Course description: This course examines the growth of the
American economy, the evolution of the firm, economic thought, and
the changing place of women and minorities in American business
society. It also explores the intersection between business and
other institutions in American life, including labor, law,
literature, government, education, and religion.
Required Readings: All of the following are available on reserve
in Morris Library
Books (available at University Bookstore):
Stanley Lebergott, The Americans: An Economic Record (1983)
Edward Kirkland, Dream and Thought in the Business Community,
1860-1910 (1956)
Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the
Growth of American Government (1987)
"American Economic and Business History" (readings packet
available at Kopies and More)
Office Hours: My office is in Faner 3266. Office hours are
Monday 9:00-10:30 a.m., Thursday 9:30-11:00 a.m., and by
appointment. I can also be reached via e-mail at jonbean@siu.edu.
Please try to stop by at least once during the semester.
Assignments: See syllabus for schedule of assignments
Class attendance: Regular class attendance is expected. Missing
more than four classes will result in a deduction (two points per
absence) from your final grade. Absence is excused in the case of
emergency (please stay home and get well if you are ill!). If for
any family or medical reason you find it necessary to miss an
exam, you must contact me before the exam and get my consent to
your absence if you wish to take a make-up exam.
Mini-exams (20%): Unannounced mini-exams ("quizzes") will be given
on discussion days. This assignment is designed to ensure that
you keep up on your reading. Generally, the questions will not be
difficult: If you have read that day's assignment, you should do
very well.
Research paper (40%): See attached guidelines.
Final examination (40%) There will be a comprehensive exam. I will
give you possible essay questions in advance. This examination
will be "open book."
Suggestions to help you in the course:
1. If you do not understand a course requirement or course
material, please ask about it. I am here to help and welcome
opportunities to answer your questions.
2. If you do not understand the grading of your assignments,
please seek clarification at the earliest opportunity.
3. Remember that the prime concern of history is to analyze
change or changes through a period of time. When, why, and how
the changes occurred and the significance of the changes to
American history are concerns at the center of each question you
will be asked. As you study along throughout the semester, try to
use this framework as you read the assigned material and review
your notes. When exam time comes, you then will be thinking along
the right lines.
THE COLONIAL ECONOMY
Aug.19 Introduction: What is Economic and Business History?
21 The Economy of Pre-Columbian America
The European Inheritance
23 Discussion: "The Economics of Indian-White Relations"
26 The Government Habit: Regulating the Economy
28 Business and culture
30 Discussion: "Colonial Business and Society: North and South"
Sept.2 NO CLASS (Labor Day)
4 Economics of Womanhood: Housewifes and Businesswomen
6 Economics of Resistance and Revolution
THE ANTEBELLUM ECONOMY, 1790-1860
9 Revolutions in Transportation, Manufacturing, Finance, and
Law
11 Revolutions in Transportation, Manufacturing, Finance, and
Law
13 Economics of Gender: Myth of the Self-Made Man and the "Cult
of Domesticity"
16 Slavery and the South
18 Civil War: An Economic "Revolution"?
INDUSTRIAL AMERICA, 1865-1915
20 Blacks in Business: An "Economic Detour"
23 The Rise of Big Business: Transportation and Manufacturing
25 The Rise of Big Business: Transportation and Manufacturing
27 The Rise of Big Business: Mass Marketing and the Consumer
Culture
30 Women and Department Stores: Workers and Shoplifters
Oct. 2 Movie: "Mr. Sears Catalogue"
4 Economic Thought: Social Darwinism and the Self-Made Man
7 Business and Literature: The Search for a Capitalist Hero
9 Discussion: Looking Backward, 2000-1887
11 Movie: "Instant America"
14 Discussion: "Was the Nineteenth Century the 'Age of Laissez-
Faire?"
16 Discussion: "Is Big Government the Result of Economic
Crises?" (Progressivism and WWI)
18 "Prosperity Decade"? The American Economy during the 1920s
21 "Prosperity Decade"? The American Economy during the 1920s
23 Movie: "The Crash of 1929"
25 The "Great Contraction": Is There an Explanation for 1929-
1933?
28 Discussion: "Economics of the New Deal"
30 The New Deal: Did it Prolong the Great Depression?
Nov. 1 NO CLASS (Halloween break)
4 Roosevelt's War on Business
6 Discussion: "Did World War II End the Great Depression?"
8 1950s: Triumph of Big Business
11 1960s: The "Great Society" and the "War on Poverty"
13 Discussion: "The Economics of 'Black Capitalism' and 'Women's
Liberation'"
15 1970s: Which Way is Up?
18 Movie: The Hudsucker Proxy [Night showing T.B.A.]
20 Reagan Years: What Went Right (and Wrong) in the 1980s
22 Review
25 NO CLASS (Thanksgiving break)
27 NO CLASS (Thanksgiving break)
29 NO CLASS (Thanksgiving break)
Dec. 2 Discussion: "Is Economic Inequality Inevitable: The Bell
Curve Debate"
4 Review
6 Review
READINGS PACKET:
American Economic and Business History
1. THE ECONOMICS OF INDIAN-WHITE RELATIONS
Chamberlain, Alexander F. "The Contributions of the American
Indian to Civilization," Selection 8 in Jack Blicksilver, ed.
Views on U.S. Economic and Business History (Atlanta: Georgia
State University Press), 75-84.
King James I. "A Counterblaste to Tobacco." Selection 10 in
Blicksilver, Views on U.S. Economic and Business History, 105-106.
Axtell, James. "The First Consumer Revolution." Chap. 5 in
Beyond 1492: Encounters in Colonial North America (New York:
Oxford University Press), 125-51.
See also: Lebergott, Stanley. The Americans: An Economic Record,
7-24.
2. "COLONIAL BUSINESS AND SOCIETY: NORTH AND SOUTH"
Diamond, Sigmund. "From Organization to Society: Virginia in the
Seventeenth Century," Selection 9 in Blicksilver, Views on U.S.
Economic and Business History, 85-103.
Bailyn, Bernard. "New England Merchants in the Seventeenth
Century," Selection 11 in Blicksilver, Views on U.S. Economic and
Business History, 107-12.
Griswold, A. Whitney. "Three Puritans on Prosperity." In Nash,
ed. Issues in American Economic History (Boston: Heath, 1964), 22-
28.
Johnson, Edgar A.J. "Economic Ideas of John Winthrop." In Nash,
Issues, 28-31.
3. "DID BIG BUSINESS IMPROVE ETHICS?"
Matthew Josephson, "The Robber Barons," in Nash, Issues in
American Economic History, 311-21.
"Jay Gould," Selection 25 in Blicksilver, Views on U.S. Economic
and Business History, 275-79.
Engelbourg, Saul. "Power and Morality: American Business Ethics,
1840-1914," Selection 29 in Blicksilver, Views on U.S. Economic
and Business History, 298-303.
4. THE INTELLECTUAL WORLD OF BUSINESS: "DREAM AND THOUGHT IN THE
BUSINESS COMMUNITY, 1860-1910"
5. "BUSINESS-GOVERNMENT RELATIONS: WAS THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY THE
'AGE OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE?"
Cleveland, Grover. "Presidential Veto of House Bill No. 10203,
February 16, 1887." Selection 26 in Blicksilver, Views on U.S.
Economic and Business History, 281-82.
See also: Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the
Growth of American Government Lebergott, Stanley. The Americans:
An Economic Record
6. IS BIG GOVERNMENT THE RESULT OF ECONOMIC CRISES? (Progressivism
and WW I)
See: Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critcial Episodes in the Growth
of American Government
7. "ECONOMICS OF THE NEW DEAL"
Tugwell, Rexford Guy. "Planning Must Replace Laissez Faire."
Selection 13 in Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 84-91.
Douglas, Paul H. "The Roosevelt Program and Organization of the
Weak." Selection 8 in Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 53-56.
Chase, Stuart. "The Age of Distribution." Selection 4 in Howard
Zinn, New Deal Thought (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 21-27.
Swope, Gerard Swope. "A Business Approach to Economic Planning."
Selection 14 in Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 91-95.
Filene, Edward A. "Business Needs the New Deal." Selection 10 in
Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966),
63-68.
Brandeis, Louis B. "'Keep Open the Path of Opportunity': Louis D.
Brandeis on the Problems of Bigness." Selection 12 in Rollins,
ed., Depression, Recovery and War, 1929-1945 (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1966), 71-75.
Roosevelt, Franklin D. "Stop Collectivism in Business." Selection
19 in Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1966), 121-31.
Keynes, John Maynard. "The Maintenance of Prosperity is Extremely
Difficult." In Howard Zinn, New Deal Thought (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 403-409.
8. WORLD WAR II: CHALLENGING THE MYTHS
Higgs. "Wartime Prosperity?: A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in
the 1940s." Journal of Economic History 52 (March 1992): 41-60.
Bean, "World War II and the `Crisis' of Small Business: The
Smaller War Plants Corporation, 1942-1946," Journal of Policy
History, vol. 6, no. 3 (Summer, 1994): 215-43.
9. THE ECONOMICS OF "BLACK CAPITALISM" AND "WOMEN'S LIBERATION"
Brimmer, Andrew. "The Negro in the National Economy." In Nash,
Issues, 529-38.
Innis, Roy. "Separatist Economics: A New Social Contract." In
Nash, Issues, 538-47.
Bergmann, Barbara R. "The Economics of Women's Liberation,"
Selection 44 in Blicksilver, Views on U.S. Economic and Business
History, 475-84.
10. "IS ECONOMIC INEQUALITY INEVITABLE? THE BELL CURVE DEBATE"
Brimelow, "For whom the bell tolls," Forbes, 24 October 1994: 153-
58.
Gould, Stephen Jay. "Ghosts of Bell Curves Past." Natural
History February 1995: 12-19.
ESSAYS IN ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS HISTORY
Assignment:Your major assignment this semester is to research and
write a 10-15 page paper analyzing an important issue or
development in American economic or business history. There are
several ways to approach this assignment. You may:
1) Focus on an individual's contribution to the American economy
(biography),
2) Write the history of a firm (company biography), or
3) Explore some economic issue in depth (issue paper).
The following instructions should aid in your research and
writing, but if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to
see me.
Step 1: Topic Selection:
Choose an issue that you find both interesting and important. The
topic should be narrow enough to complete in a semester. For
example, a history of the American economy in the twentieth
century would be too broad, but you could focus on a single issue,
such as the increase in the number of working women or the decline
of the steel industry.
The following list of topics is suggestive of the wide range of
interests pursued by economic and business historians, but it is
not meant to be complete. Choose one of these topics or come up
with one of your own. All topics must be approved by the
instructor.
Issues in Economic and Business History
The Search for a Capitalist Hero: Business and
Literature in Twentieth-Century America
Democratizing Death: A History of Industrial Life
Insurance
The Growth and Evolution of the Mail Order Business
"Palaces of Consumption": Department Stores in America,
1880-1920
Consumer Advocacy: A Brief History
"Black Capitalism": Myth or Reality?
A History of Housewifery in Nineteenth-Century America
The History and Development of the Credit Card
The Origin of the Welfare State: The Legacy of the New
Deal
History and Effects of the Minimum Wage
The Rise of Foreign Competition in the American
Automobile Market
The Crisis in Social Security: Looking Backward to See
Ahead
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation: An Overview
of Its Creation and Function
The Airline Industry: From Regulation to Deregulation
The Decline of Labor Unions Since the 1960s
The Development of the Interstate Highway System
The Growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers
Union
Taking Stock on Wall Street: The First 100 Years
The Communist Movement and the Great Depression
An Economic History of Prohibition
Scientific Philanthropy: Andrew Carnegie and the "Gospel
of Wealth"
Social Darwinism and Its Impact on Economic Thought
Singer Sewing: Pioneering in Mass Marketing
Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin: Its Impact on the
Southern Economy
Step 2: Research
At a minimum, you should consult several secondary sources
(including at least one scholarly journal article). You will be
judged on your ability to integrate class material with your
research findings so be aware of broader trends in the economy.
For example, if you are writing a biography of a black businessman
in the nineteenth century, you should comment on the legal and
economic barriers faced by African-American entrepreneurs at that
time.
Taking notes: I strongly recommend that you take your notes on
4X6 cards, with the appropriate publication information contained
on each card. Then, when it comes time to write your paper, you
can simply shuffle your cards into the format you have outlined.
Reference guides
Use the following reference works as a starting point for your
research.
Items with an asterisk ("*") are particularly useful.
Bibliographies and Encyclopedias
Kirkland, comp. American Economic History since 1860 (1971)
Larson, Guide to Business History (1964)
Lovett, American Economic and Business History: A Guide to
Information Sources (1971)
Orsagh, The Economic History of the United States Prior to 1860:
An Annotated Bibliography (1975)
*Porter, ed. Encyclopedia of American Economic History (1980)
Hutchison, American Economic History; a Guide to Information
Sources (1980)
Taylor, George Rogers. American Economic History Before 1860
(1969)
Periodical indexes
Business press
ABI/Inform
Barron's Index
*Business Periodicals Index (Before 1958 B.P.I. was known as the
Industrial Arts Index)
F&S Index of Corporations
InfoTrac--Business Index
Wall Street Journal Index
Scholarly journals
*America: History and Life
Journal of Economic Literature
Scholarly Journals (economic and business history)
Business and Economic History
Business History
Business History Review
Essays in Economic and Business History
Explorations in Economic History
Journal of Economic History
Journal of Policy History
Biographical references
Business leaders
American Women Managers and Administrators: A Selective
Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Leaders (1985)
*Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders (1983)
Business Biography Master Index (1987)
Current Biography (1940- )
*Dictionary of American Biography
Notable American Women, 1607-1950 (1975)
Notable American Women: The Modern Period (1980)
Company biographies
Corporate America: A Historical Bibliography
International Directory of Company Histories (1988)
Orbell, John. A Guide to Tracing the History of a Business (1987)
Step 3: Writing
1. Allow enough time to write a good paper. In general, good
writing is rewritten writing.
You will probably need to prepare an outline and several drafts of
your paper before you finish. Be sure to proofread your paper
carefully. Papers with many misspellings or typographical errors
will be returned as unacceptable and will have to be reworked.
2. Provide your readers with a structure for the paper--an
introduction, main body, and conclusion.
3. Make sure that each paragraph includes a topic sentence
(experienced writers often make the first sentence in a paragraph
the topic sentence).
4. Avoid string-of-quotation writing. Use some evidence and
examples to support your arguments; but do not litter your paper
with one quotation after another. Let your own ideas shine
through.
5. Avoid run-on sentences that are too long. Be precise and
succinct.
6. Avoid jargon. You may incorporate economic and business
concepts into your paper, but do not overwhelm the reader with
scholarly jargon. Assume you are writing for an audience of
intelligent lay people.
7. Footnoting: Direct quotations must be put in quotation
marks and footnoted. You must also provide footnotes when you are
using someone else's ideas. Footnotes can appear at the bottom
of each page or collected at the end of the paper as endnotes.
Each note should identify the author of the work, its title, place
of publication, date of publication, and page number. Example:
1. Harold G. Vatter, The U.S. Economy in World War II (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1985).
Citations to reference works should include the name of the
reference, the title of the entry, and the author (if any).
Example:
1. Current Biography (1954), "Patman, Wright," by John Carr.
7. Warning!: I will not tolerate academic misconduct in this
class.
You must research and write your papers yourself. You may not
have a friend write your paper. You may not hire someone to write
your paper.
You may not turn in a paper previously used in a different class.
Avoid plagiarism. Plagiarism consists of using someone else's
ideas as your own without properly acknowledging them.
Step 4: Peer Review Several weeks into the semester you will be
assigned a peer reviewer, another student in the class who will
read and evaluate a rough draft of your essay. In turn, you will
be asked to evaluate his/her essay.
Historians focus their research and hone their writing by
submitting it to peer review. You too should benefit from the
constructive criticisms of your fellow students. Be constructive:
Note the strengths and weaknesses of the student's paper. How
could the paper be improved? Avoid the temptation to uncritically
praise the paper you are reviewing; the author deserves to benefit
from your helpful advice.
As a peer reviewer, you must hand in two copies of your
evaluation: one to the author of the essay and one to me. Your
evaluation is worth 10% of your essay grade.
Step 5: Final paper: Along with your final paper, you should
include:
1. A photocopy of your essay
2. Research notes
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