Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation
Published by EH.Net (September 2016) Michael Brem Bonner, Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016. x + 260 pp. $48 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-8071-6212-5. Reviewed for EH.Net by Gary M. Pecquet, Department of Economics, Central Michigan University. Historian Michael Bonner examines how the government, bureaucrats, industrial […]
The Economic History of Mexico
The Economic History of Mexico Richard Salvucci, Trinity University Preface[1] This article is a brief interpretive survey of some of the major features of the economic history of Mexico from pre-conquest to the present. I begin with the pre-capitalist economy of Mesoamerica. The colonial period is divided into the Habsburg and Bourbon regimes, although […]
The National Recovery Administration
Barbara Alexander, Charles River Associates This article outlines the history of the National Recovery Administration, one of the most important and controversial agencies in Roosevelt’s New Deal. It discusses the agency’s “codes of fair competition” under which antitrust law exemptions could be granted in exchange for adoption of minimum wages, problems some industries encountered in […]
The US Coal Industry in the Nineteenth Century
Sean Patrick Adams, University of Central Florida Introduction The coal industry was a major foundation for American industrialization in the nineteenth century. As a fuel source, coal provided a cheap and efficient source of power for steam engines, furnaces, and forges across the United States. As an economic pursuit, coal spurred technological innovations in mine […]
The American Economy during World War II
Christopher J. Tassava For the United States, World War II and the Great Depression constituted the most important economic event of the twentieth century. The war’s effects were varied and far-reaching. The war decisively ended the depression itself. The federal government emerged from the war as a potent economic actor, able to regulate economic activity […]
An Economic History of Weather Forecasting
Erik D. Craft, University of Richmond Introduction The United States Congress established a national weather organization in 1870 when it instructed the Secretary of War to organize the collection of meteorological observations and forecasting of storms on the Great Lakes and Atlantic Seaboard. Large shipping losses on the Great Lakes during the 1868 and 1869 […]
Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth-Century America
Daniel B. Klein, Santa Clara University and John Majewski, University of California – Santa Barbara 1 Private turnpikes were business corporations that built and maintained a road for the right to collect fees from travelers.2 Accounts of the nineteenth-century transportation revolution often treat turnpikes as merely a prelude to more important improvements such as canals […]
The 1929 Stock Market Crash
Harold Bierman, Jr., Cornell University Overview The 1929 stock market crash is conventionally said to have occurred on Thursday the 24th and Tuesday the 29th of October. These two dates have been dubbed “Black Thursday” and “Black Tuesday,” respectively. On September 3, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a record high of 381.2. At […]
Slavery in the United States
Jenny Bourne, Carleton College Slavery is fundamentally an economic phenomenon. Throughout history, slavery has existed where it has been economically worthwhile to those in power. The principal example in modern times is the U.S. South. Nearly 4 million slaves with a market value estimated to be between $3.1 and $3.6 billion lived in the U.S. […]
Economic History of Retirement in the United States
Joanna Short, Augustana College One of the most striking changes in the American labor market over the twentieth century has been the virtual disappearance of older men from the labor force. Moen (1987) and Costa (1998) estimate that the labor force participation rate of men age 65 and older declined from 78 percent in 1880 […]