Dighe on Malsberger and Marshall, eds., _The American Economic History Reader: Documents and Readings_

[Book Reviews in Economic and Business History]

Published by EH.NET (December 2008)

John W. Malsberger and James N. Marshall, editors, _The American 
Economic History Reader: Documents and Readings_.  New York: Routledge, 
2008.  xiv + 556 pp. $55 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-415-96267-4.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Ranjit S. Dighe, Department of Economics, State 
University of New York College at Oswego.


Malsberger and Marshall, a historian and an economist at Muhlenberg 
College, have produced a different kind of course book.  While 
supplemental readers of primary documents or recent scholarship are 
nothing new, this book combines the two and weaves them together with 
impeccably concise yet informative introductory essays on each topic. 
Although this book seems designed to be used in conjunction with a 
standard American economic history textbook, it could conceivably work 
well as a stand-alone text, especially for more advanced students who do 
not require a lot of background.

The book appears to have been organized for a one-semester course in 
American economic history from the colonial period to the present. 
Altogether, the book consists of 65 primary documents and 33 essays, 
grouped into 13 chapters, i.e., about one for each full week of the 
semester.  Notably, just over half of the chapters cover post-1900 
topics.  The chapter topics are as follows: mercantilism and the 
colonial economy; the economy of the new nation; railroads; slavery; 
labor in industrializing America; the rise of big business; the New Era 
of the 1920s; the Great Contraction; the New Deal, World War II, and 
Keynes; the postwar Keynesian consensus; the collapse of that consensus 
in 1969-1980; Reaganomics; Clintonomics.  (The book also contains Robert 
Whaples’s 1995 article “Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic 
Historians?” as an appendix.)  The average chapter is about forty pages 
long, so depending on one’s students’ capacity for assigned reading, the 
instructor might be better off using the book as a stand-alone text or 
omitting some of the topics.

Indeed, considering the editorial choices that go into any economic 
history course, I am guessing the editors would expect and encourage 
other instructors to omit a topic or two and perhaps supplement the 
reader with favorite topics and readings of their own.  For example, one 
might want to cover the economics of the Civil War and the Populist 
movement.  Or one might want to spend more time on productivity growth, 
which receives scant mention here.  (Neither the post-World War II 
productivity boom nor the post-1973 slowdown gets much more than a 
passing acknowledgment, and productivity does not appear in the book’s 
index.)  The same goes for the great migrations of African-Americans and 
women into the nonagricultural work force in the twentieth century, and 
the great waves of immigration in American history.  But the editors can 
hardly be criticized for omitting some vital topics, in view of the 
space limitations of a one-volume reader and the idiosyncratic nature of 
these choices.

  The primary documents are generally well chosen.  They include some 
familiar ones (such as the U.S. Constitution, Alexander Hamilton’s 
“Report on Manufactures” and “Plan for Supporting Public Credit,” and 
Ida Tarbell’s Standard Oil history); contemporary articles, including 
many by famous economists (such as Adam Smith on the colonies, John 
Maynard Keynes on the Great Depression, and Milton Friedman and Walter 
Heller on much of the twentieth century); statements by U.S. presidents 
(from Andrew Jackson to George W. Bush); and some obscure gems (such as 
two reward listings for runaway apprentices in the 1830s, which are 
oddly similar to reward listings for runaway slaves).  Many of these 
documents have been excerpted for easier reading, and the editors 
further aid the reader with a half-page introduction to each chapter’s 
set of documents, providing needed context and explanation.  With such a 
large number of primary documents, virtually all scholars will encounter 
at least a few that they have not read before.

The book’s greatest strength is probably the historiography it provides, 
especially as it moves from contemporary accounts in each chapter’s 
Documents section to classic and more current economic history research 
in the Essay section.  For example, the chapter on the colonial economy 
includes Smith’s “Of Colonies” as a Document and then, as Essays, Robert 
Paul Thomas’s 1965 article on the Navigation Acts and Larry Sawers’s 
1992 article on the same.  The chapter on railroads, instead of focusing 
on Robert Fogel and his critics, goes back further, beginning its Essays 
section with Leland Jenks’s 1944 article “Railroads as an Economic Force 
in American Development,” Fogel’s original straw man.  The chapter on 
the Great Contraction includes Irving Fisher’s classic 1933 
debt-deflation article as a Document, then moves on in the Essays 
section to Milton Friedman’s monetarist account and then Christina 
Romer’s more eclectic account.  As with the Documents, the Essays 
sections all begin with concise half-page introductions that provide a 
perfect road map for the reader.

The book is not so strong on cosmetics.  There are a number of 
proofreading errors, especially in names (among the misspelled names are 
Jonathan Hughes and E. Cary Brown).  One of the excerpted documents on 
the Great Contraction includes a passing reference to the untimely death 
of Governor Strong of the New York Fed, but it appears to have no 
antecedent in this book, leaving the inexpert reader to wonder who 
Strong was and what his policies were.  Also, considering the large 
number of primary documents, a bit more attentiveness to dates and 
timelines would help.  Case in point: Thomas Whately’s “The Regulations 
Lately Made,” originally published in 1765 as a defense of the Stamp 
Act.  The only date listed for it here is 1775, which may be correct as 
regards the particular reprint used but which could easily lead students 
astray if they assume it was written during the Revolution and that 
England was publicly talking about reviving that long-since-repealed act.

Another cosmetic problem is the less-than-user-friendly layout, a likely 
result of having to cram almost a hundred documents and essays, plus the 
editors’ introductory essays, into a single volume.  Even the paperback 
edition is heavy, and each page looks like a chore: tall, wide, 
small-font text, no pictures or graphs.  Perhaps the publisher would be 
willing to try lighter, less dense, and cheaper split editions (say, one 
for pre-1900 and one for post-1900) in the future?

A cautionary note:  Expect the vast majority of college students to 
struggle with the older primary documents, which reflect a different, 
more rococo style of writing.  A humanities professor (whose students 
might have been expected to have some exposure to older writings) once 
tested his students’ comprehension of the long opening sentence of the 
Declaration of Independence and found that it eluded the majority of 
them.[1] An economics professor (the reviewer) repeated this experiment 
and found an even larger majority that missed the gist of the sentence. 
  Teachers should anticipate spending a good bit of time walking their 
students through these primary documents.

With these caveats in mind, the book is a godsend to American economic 
historians and their students.  For the right group of students and the 
right course, it offers a great way to organize the material.  Even for 
professors who would not assign the book, it is an excellent desk 
reference and a helpful source of background and color for one’s 
lectures.  As a tool for beginning literature reviews, the book is an 
outstanding reference.  Its strength in historiography makes it a must 
for virtually any academic library.

Reference:
1. David Mulroy, _The War Against Grammar_.  Portsmouth, NH: 
CrossCurrents, 2003.


Ranjit S. Dighe is associate professor of economics at the State 
University of New York College at Oswego.  His research interests 
include wages and Keynesian economics in the Great Depression, monetary 
populism, and the political economy of Prohibition.  He is the author of 
“The U.S. Business Press and Prohibition,” _Social History of Alcohol 
and Drugs_ 22(2): 6-20 (Spring 2008).

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