American Economic Policy from the Revolution to the New DealWilliam Letwin Transaction Publishers - 406 pages The documents in this volume reflect the great debates that have shaped this country's economic life. Covering a wide variety of problems, they show how each was treated at a moment when it was politically urgent. Since they were efforts at persuasion, usually addressed to a wide audience, they are coherent and self-contained and avoid technical jargon. They therefore present clear and vivid evidence of what men have desired and hoped to achieve, and explain not only much that is critical about how Americans lived in the past but much also about the inheritance of the present. From the overwhelming mass of available documents, a representative group has been chosen here. Among the twenty-nine included are: Hamilton's Report on Manufactures, which helped set the American attitude on economic growth; Andrew Jackson's veto message on the bill to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States; the first annual report of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which put the railroads under federal regulation; William Jennings Bryan's famous Cross of Gold speech, which helped him win the Democratic nomination in 1896; the conclusions of the Pujo Committee's report on the money market, which were instrumental in setting up the Federal Reserve System; and key documents on the National Recovery Administration, one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's major moves in his fight against the depression. In his introductory essay, the editor summarizes the forces and movements that helped to make American economic policy "exceedingly confused and therefore very annoying to historians and economists," But, he insists, this very confusion reduced "the extremism and disorder potentially so great in the United States . . . to remarkable moderation." William Letwin is professor emeritus at the London School of Economics. He has published many articles and reviews in learned and popular journals. He took his undergraduate work at the University of Chicago and did graduate work there and at the London School of Economics. After receiving the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago, he stayed on at the university as Research Associate in the Law School and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Economics. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 69
... industry, banking, regulation of public utilities, public control of natural resources, and other general questions of economic policy. These problems become clearest when one of them erupts, for the moment, as a major political issue ...
... Industrial Recovery Act (1933) 366 27. Codes of Fair Competition (1933) 376 28. The Schechter Case (1935) 385 M. REGULATION OF THE FINANCIAL MARKET 395 29. Securities and Exchange Commission, Opinion in National Educators (1935) 396 ...
... industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. This statement of creed, much as it reflected ...
... industry. No longer would it leave men "free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement"; instead it would tax the citizens in order to benefit them, in order to finance the improvements— build the canals and stimulate ...
... industry plea. But the infant industries of 1789, which were supposed to need protection only until they learned to stand on their own feet, were not infants thirty or forty years later, and yet tariff protection was still requested and ...
Contents
3 | |
B INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS | 53 |
CORPORATION LAW | 85 |
CENTRAL BANKING | 112 |
E REGULATION OF RAILROADS | 157 |
F ANTITRUST POLICY | 199 |
G MONETARY POLICY | 247 |
H CONSERVATION | 273 |
INCOME TAXATION | 292 |
J IMMIGRATION POLICY | 323 |
1923 | 332 |
K AGRICULTURAL PRICE SUPPORTS | 342 |
THE NATIONAL RECOVERY ADMINISTRATION | 362 |
REGULATION OF THE FINANCIAL MARKET | 395 |
Other editions - View all
American Economic Policy from the Revolution to the New Deal William Letwin No preview available - 2007 |