American Economic History: A Dictionary And Chronology [1 ed.] 1610696972, 9781610696975, 1610696980, 9781610696982, 1786845628, 9781786845627

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American Economic History: A Dictionary And Chronology [1 ed.]
 1610696972, 9781610696975, 1610696980, 9781610696982, 1786845628, 9781786845627

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Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
A
ACT TO REGULATE COMMERCE OF 1887
ADAIR v. UNITED STATES (208 U.S. 161)
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY
ADAMSON ACT
ADAMS–ONÍS TREATY
ADDYSTON PIPE AND STEEL COMPANY v. U.S. (175 U.S. 211)
ADJUSTED COMPENSATION ACT OF 1936
ADKINS v. CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL (261 U.S. 525)
ADVERTISING
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
AFFORDABLE CARE ACT
AFGHANISTAN WAR AND THE WAR ON TERROR
AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
AGRIBUSINESS
AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT OF 1933
AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT OF 1938
AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ADMINISTRATION
AGRICULTURAL CREDITS ACT OF 1923
AGRICULTURAL MARKETING ACT OF 1929
AGRICULTURAL MARKETING AGREEMENT OF 1937
AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
AGRICULTURAL TRADE DEVELOPMENT AND ASSISTANCE ACT OF 1954
AGRICULTURE, DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURE ACT OF 1948
AGRICULTURE ACT OF 1954
AGRICULTURE ACT OF 1970
AGRICULTURE ACT OF 1973
AGRICULTURE ACT OF 1981
AID TO FAMILIES WITH DEPENDENT CHILDREN
AIR MAIL ACT OF 1925
AIR MAIL ACT OF 1934
AIRLINE DEREGULATION ACT OF 1978
AIRLINE PILOTS ASSOCIATION
ALASKA COMMERCIAL COMPANY
ALASKA PIPELINE
ALDRICH, WINTHROP WILLIAMS
ALDRICH–VREELAND ACT OF 1908
ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS
ALTMEYER, ARTHUR JOSEPH
AMALGAMATED ASSOCIATION OF IRON, STEEL, AND TIN WORKERS
AMALGAMATED CLOTHING WORKERS OF AMERICA
AMERICAN AGRICULTURAL MOVEMENT
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR OLD AGE SECURITY
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF RETIRED PERSONS
AMERICAN BIMETALLIC LEAGUE
AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH (AEI)
AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR–CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS
AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION
AMERICAN MOTORS CORPORATION
AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION
AMERICAN REVOLUTION
AMERICAN STOCK EXCHANGE
AMERICAN SYSTEM
AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH
AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY FOUNDATION (AFP)
AMTRAK
ANNAPOLIS CONVENTION
ANTITRUST
APPALACHIAN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 1965
APPLE
ARAB OIL EMBARGO OF 1973–1974
ARBITRAGE
ARMOUR, PHILIP DANFORTH
“ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY”
ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
ASHWANDER ET AL. v. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (297 U.S. 288)
ASSOCIATIONALISM
ASSUMPTION OF STATE DEBTS
ASTOR, JOHN JACOB
ASTOR, WILLIAM VINCENT
ATCHISON, TOPEKA & SANTA FE RAILWAY
ATLANTIC COAST LINE RAILROAD
ATOMIC ENERGY ACT OF 1954
AUTOMOBILE
AWALT, FRANCIS GLOYD
B
BAILEY v. DREXEL FURNITURE (259 U.S. 20)
BAILOUT
BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD
BANK HOLIDAY
BANK OF AMERICA
BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
BANK WAR
BANKHEAD COTTON CONTROL ACT OF 1934
BANKHEAD–JONES FARM TENANCY ACT OF 1937
BANKING ACT OF 1933
BANKING ACT OF 1935
BARTON, BRUCE
BARUCH, BERNARD MANNES
BEARD, CHARLES AUSTIN
BECHTEL, STEPHEN DAVISON
BECK, DAVID
BEEF TRUST CASES
BEER TAX ACT
BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM
BENEFITS
BERING SEA CONTROVERSY
BERLE, ADOLF AUGUSTUS
BERNANKE, BEN
BERRY, GEORGE LEONARD
BIDDLE, NICHOLAS
BIMETALLISM
BIRDSEYE, CLARENCE
BITCOIN
BLACK, EUGENE ROBERT
BLACK, JOHN DONALD
BLACK BELT
BLACK CODES
“BLACK MONDAY”
“BLACK MONDAY”
“BLACK THURSDAY”
“BLACK TUESDAY”
BLAND, RICHARD PARKS
BLAND–ALLISON ACT OF 1878
BLUE-COLLAR
BOEING, WILLIAM EDWARD
BOLL WEEVIL
BOLSHEVISM
BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION
BONUS ARMY
BORDEN, GAIL
BOSTON POLICE STRIKE OF 1919
BOSTON TEA PARTY OF 1773
BOULDER CANYON PROJECT ACT OF 1928
BOYER, JOSEPH
BOYLE, WILLIAM ANTHONY
BRACEROS
BRAIN TRUST
BRANDEIS, LOUIS DEMBITZ
BREADLINES
BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCE
BROOK FARM
BROOKINGS, ROBERT SOMERS
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
BROTHERHOOD OF SLEEPING CAR PORTERS
BROWN, HARVEY WINFIELD
BRYAN, WILLIAM JENNINGS
BRYCE, JAMES
BUCARELI AGREEMENT OF 1923
BUCKMASTER, LELAND STANFORD
BUDGET AND ACCOUNTING ACT OF 1921
BUFFALO
BUFFETT, WARREN
BULKELEY, MORGAN GARDNER
BULL MARKET
BURLINGTON NORTHERN RAILROAD
BURNS, ARTHUR FRANK
BUSH, GEORGE H. W.
BUSH, GEORGE W.
BUSINESS ADVISORY COUNCIL
BUSINESS CONFERENCES OF 1929
BUSINESS CYCLE COMMITTEE
BUSINESS–INDUSTRY POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
BUTTERFIELD, JOHN
C
CAPONE, ALPHONSE
CAPPER, ARTHUR
CAPPER–TINCHER ACT OF 1921
CAPPER–TINCHER ACT OF 1922
CAPPER–VOLSTEAD ACT OF 1922
CAREY ACT OF 1894
CARNEGIE, ANDREW
CARNEGIE STEEL COMPANY
CARRIER, WILLIS HAVILAND
CARSON, RACHEL
CARTER, JIMMY
CARTER v. CARTER COAL COMPANY (298 U.S. 238)
CATO INSTITUTE
CELLER–KEFAUVER ACT OF 1950
CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
CHANDLER, HARRY
CHANDLER ACT OF 1938
CHAPIN, ROY DIKEMAN, JR.
CHARLES RIVER BRIDGE V. WARREN BRIDGE
CHASE MANHATTAN BANK
CHAVEZ, CESAR ESTRADA
CHESAPEAKE AND DELAWARE CANAL
CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL
CHESAPEAKE & OHIO RAILWAY
CHESTER, COLBY MITCHELL
CHEVRON
CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY RAILROAD
CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE, ST. PAUL & PACIFIC RAILROAD
CHICAGO & NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY
CHILD LABOR
CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT OF 1882
CHISHOLM TRAIL
CHRYSLER, WALTER PERCY
CHRYSLER CORPORATION
CIGARMAKERS’ INTERNATIONAL UNION OF AMERICA
CITIZENS’ RECONSTRUCTION ORGANIZATION
CIVIL AERONAUTICS ACT OF 1938
CIVIL AERONAUTICS AUTHORITY
CIVIL AERONAUTICS BOARD
CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
CIVIL WAR
CIVIL WORKS ADMINISTRATION
CIVILIAN CONSERVATION CORPS
CLARK, JOSHUA REUBEN, JR.
CLAY, HENRY
CLAYTON, WILLIAM LOCKHART
CLAYTON ANTITRUST ACT OF 1914
CLEAN AIR ACT OF 1970
CLEVELAND, STEPHEN GROVER
CLINTON, BILL
CLOSED SHOP
CLUB OF ROME
COAL ARBITRATION BOARD
COAL STRIKE OF 1919
COFFIN, HOWARD EARLE
COHEN, BENJAMIN VICTOR
COINAGE ACT OF 1792
COINAGE ACT OF 1834
COINAGE ACT OF 1873
COINAGE ACT OF 1878
COINAGE ACT OF 1890
COIN’S FINANCIAL SCHOOL
COLD WAR
COLUMBIA RIVER BASIN ANTI-SPECULATION ACT OF 1937
COMMERCE, DEPARTMENT OF
COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
COMMITTEE FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION
COMMITTEE FOR THE NATION
COMMITTEE FOR THE NATION TO REBUILD PRICES AND PURCHASING POWER
COMMITTEE OF FORTY-EIGHT
COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC SECURITY
COMMODITY CREDIT CORPORATION
COMMODITY DOLLAR
COMMODITY EXCHANGE ACT OF 1936
COMMODITY EXCHANGE AUTHORITY
COMMONS, JOHN ROGERS
COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA
COMPANY UNION
COMPARABLE WORTH
COMPROMISE OF 1850
COMPROMISE TARIFF OF 1833
COMSTOCK LODE
CONFERENCE FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION
CONGLOMERATE
CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS
CONNALLY ACT OF 1935
CONOCOPHILLIPS
CONRAIL
CONSERVATION OF FISH ACT OF 1934
CONSORTIUM CHINESE LOAN OF 1911
CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
CONSUMER FEDERATION OF AMERICA
CONSUMER RIGHTS
COOKE, JAY
CORCORAN, THOMAS GARDINER
CORN BELT
CORPORATE BANKRUPTCY ACT OF 1934
CORPORATION
COTTON BELT
COTTON GIN
COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS
COUNCIL OF ENERGY RESOURCE TRIBES
COWBOY
COXEY’S ARMY
CRASH OF 1929
CRASH OF 1987
CREDIT CARDS
CREDIT MOBILIER
CREDIT UNIONS
CRIME OF 1873
CROCKER, CHARLES
CROLY, HERBERT DAVID
“CROSS OF GOLD SPEECH”
CROWDSOURCING
CRUDE OIL WINDFALL PROFITS TAX ACT
CUBA
CUMBERLAND PIKE
CUMMINGS, WALTER J.
CURRENCY ACT OF 1900
CURRIE, LAUCHLIN
CURTIS, CYRUS HERMANN KOTZSCHMAR
D
DANBURY HATTERS CASE (208 U.S. 274)
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE v. WOODWARD (4 Wheaton 122)
DAVIS, HAL C.
DAVIS, JAMES JOHN
DAVIS, JOHN WILLIAM
DAWES, CHARLES GATES
DAWES PLAN
DAWES SEVERALTY ACT OF 1887
DAY, DOROTHY
DEBOW, JAMES DUNWOODY BROWNSON
DEBS, EUGENE VICTOR
DEERE, JOHN
DEFENSE PLANT CORPORATION
DEFENSE SUPPLIES CORPORATION
DELAWARE AND HUDSON CANAL
DELAWARE AND RARITAN CANAL
DEMING, W. EDWARDS
DEPOSIT ACT OF 1836
DEPOSITORY INSTITUTIONS DEREGULATION AND MONETARY CONTROL ACT OF 1980
DEPRESSION OF 1837
DEPRESSION OF 1857
DEPRESSION OF 1873
DEPRESSION OF 1893
DEPRESSION OF 1920–1921
DEREGULATION
DESERT LAND ACT OF 1877
DESKILLING
DEWSON, MARY WILLIAMS
DIGITAL CURRENCY
DINGLEY TARIFF OF 1897
DOAK, WILLIAM NUCKLES
DODD–FRANK WALL STREET REFORM AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT
DODGE, WILLIAM EARL
DOHENY, EDWARD
DOHERTY, HENRY LATHAM
DOLLAR DIPLOMACY
DOMESTIC ALLOTMENT PLAN
DORRANCE, JOHN THOMPSON
DOT-COM BUBBLE
DOUGLAS, DONALD WILLS
DOUGLAS, LEWIS WILLIAM
DOUGLAS, WILLIAM ORVILLE
DOW, HERBERT HENRY
DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE
DOWNSIZING
DRED SCOTT v. SANDFORD (19 Howard 393, 1857)
DRYDEN, JOHN FAIRFIELD
DU PONT, PIERRE SAMUEL
DUBINSKY, DAVID
DUKE, JAMES BUCHANAN
DUPLEX PRINTING PRESS COMPANY v. DEERING (254 U.S. 443)
DURANT, WILLIAM CRAPO
DUST BOWL
E
EASTMAN, GEORGE
EASTMAN, JOSEPH BARTLETT
E-COMMERCE
ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1964
ECONOMY ACT OF 1933
EDGE ACT OF 1919
EDISON, THOMAS ALVA
EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT
ELECTION OF 1800
ELECTION OF 1828
ELECTION OF 1896
ELECTION OF 1912
ELECTION OF 1924
ELECTION OF 1928
ELECTION OF 1932
ELECTION OF 1964
ELECTION OF 1980
ELECTION OF 1992
ELECTION OF 2000
ELECTION OF 2008
ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ACT OF 1965
ELKINS ACT OF 1903
ELY, RICHARD T.
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
EMBARGO ACT OF 1807
EMBARGO ACT OF 1812
EMERGENCY BANKING ACT OF 1933
EMERGENCY CREDITS ACT OF 1921
EMERGENCY FARM MORTGAGE ACT OF 1933
EMERGENCY FEED GRAIN ACT OF 1961
EMERGENCY QUOTA ACT OF 1921
EMERGENCY RAILROAD TRANSPORTATIONACT OF 1933
EMERGENCY RELIEF AND CONSTRUCTION ACT OF 1932
EMERGENCY RELIEF APPROPRIATION ACTS
EMERGENCY TARIFF ACT OF 1921
EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT INCOME SECURITY ACT OF 1974
EMPLOYMENT ACT OF 1946
END POVERTY IN CALIFORNIA
ENERGY, DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY CRISIS
ENRON
ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT OF 1969
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION
“EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK”
EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
ERDMAN ARBITRATION ACT OF 1898
ERIE CANAL
ESCH–CUMMINS ACT OF 1920
ESSEX DECISION
EUROPEAN UNION
“EVER-NORMAL GRANARY”
EXPORT–DEBENTURE PLAN
EXPORT–IMPORT BANK
EXXON MOBIL
F
FACEBOOK
FAIR DEAL
FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES COMMISSION
FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938
FARM ACT OF 1970
FARM ACT OF 1981
FARM BLOC
FARM CREDIT ACT OF 1933
FARM CREDIT ACT OF 1953
FARM CREDIT ACT OF 1971
FARM CREDIT ADMINISTRATION
FARM LABOR SUPPLY ACT OF 1943
FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
FARMER–LABOR PARTY
FARMERS’ ALLIANCES
FARMERS HOME ADMINISTRATION
FARMERS HOME ADMINISTRATION ACT OF 1946
FEATHERBEDDING
FEDERAL AID ROAD ACT
FEDERAL AID ROAD ACT OF 1916
FEDERAL ANTI–PRICE DISCRIMINATION ACT OF 1936
FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION
FEDERAL BUDGET
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
FEDERAL COORDINATOR OF TRANSPORTATION
FEDERAL CROP INSURANCE ACT OF 1938
FEDERAL CROP INSURANCE CORPORATION
FEDERAL DEFENSE SPENDING
FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION
FEDERAL EMERGENCY RELIEF ADMINISTRATION
FEDERAL FARM BANKRUPTCY ACT OF 1934
FEDERAL FARM BOARD
FEDERAL FARM LOAN ACT OF 1916
FEDERAL HIGHWAY ACT OF 1921
FEDERAL HIGHWAY ADMINISTRATION
FEDERAL HOME LOAN BANK ACT OF 1932
FEDERAL HOUSING ADMINISTRATION
FEDERAL INTERMEDIATE CREDIT BANK SYSTEM
FEDERAL MARITIME COMMISSION
FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE ASSOCIATION
FEDERAL OPEN MARKET COMMITTEE
FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION
FEDERAL RADIO COMMISSION
FEDERAL RESERVE ACT OF 1913
FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM
FEDERAL SAVINGS AND LOAN INSURANCE CORPORATION
FEDERAL SURPLUS COMMODITIES CORPORATION
FEDERAL SURPLUS RELIEF CORPORATION
FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
FEDERAL WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION ACT OF 1916
FEDERALIST PARTY
FIRESTONE, HARVEY SAMUEL
FISHER, FREDERICK JOHN
FISHER, IRVING
FISK, JAMES
FITZGERALD, ALBERT
FITZSIMMONS, FRANK EDWARD
FLETCHER v. PECK (6 Cranch 87, 1810)
FLORIDA BOOM
FOOD ADMINISTRATION
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ACT OF 1962
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ACT OF 1965
FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION
FOOD CONTROL ACT OF 1917
FOOD, DRUG, AND COSMETIC ACT OF 1938
FOOD FOR PEACE ACT OF 1965
FOOD PRODUCTION ACT OF 1917
FOOD STAMP ACT OF 1964
FOOD STAMP PROGRAM
FORBES, JOHN MURRAY
FORBES, MALCOLM
FORD, GERALD
FORD, HENRY
FORD, HENRY, II
FORD MOTOR COMPANY
FORDNEY–MCCUMBER TARIFF OF 1922
FOREIGN MINERS ACT OF 1850
FOSTER, WILLIAM ZEBULON
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
FOX, WILLIAM
FRASER, DOUGLAS ANDREW
FRAZIER–LEMKE ACT OF 1934
FRAZIER–LEMKE ACT OF 1935
“FREE SHIPS, FREE GOODS”
FREE SILVER
FREE-SOIL PARTY
FREE TIMBER CUTTING ACT OF 1878
FREE TRADE
FREEDMEN’S BUREAU
“FREEDOM OF THE SEAS”
FRICK, HENRY CLAY
FRIEDMAN, MILTON
FRONTIER
FUEL EFFICIENCY
FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT OF 1850
FULLER, ALFRED CARL
FULTON, ROBERT
FUNDING THE NATIONAL DEBT
G
GADSDEN PURCHASE
GALBRAITH, JOHN KENNETH
GALLATIN, ABRAHAM ALFONSE ALBERT
GARVEY, MARCUS MOSIAH
GARY, ELBERT HENRY
GATES, BILL
GENEEN, HAROLD SYDNEY
GENERAL AGREEMENT ON TARIFFS AND TRADE (GATT)
GENERAL ELECTRIC CORPORATION
GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION
GENERAL SURVEY ACT OF 1824
GENTRIFICATION
GEORGE, HENRY
GERBER, DANIEL FRANK, JR.
GETTY, JEAN PAUL
G.I. BILL OF RIGHTS
GIANNINI, AMADEO PETER
GIBBONS v. OGDEN (9 Wheaton 1)
GILDED AGE
GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS
GIMBEL, BERNARD
GIRDLER, TOM MERCER
GLASS, CARTER
GLASS–STEAGALL ACT OF 1932
GLOBAL WARMING
GLOBALIZATION
GOLD RESERVE ACT OF 1934
GOLD RUSH
GOLD STANDARD ACT OF 1900
GOLD STANDARD JOINT RESOLUTION REPEAL OF 1933
GOLDMAN, EMMA
GOLDWATER, BARRY MORRIS
GOMPERS, SAMUEL
GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY
GOODNIGHT, CHARLES
GOODYEAR, CHARLES
GOOGLE
GORDY, BERRY, JR.
GORMAN, FRANK J.
GOULD, JAY
GRACE, EUGENE GIFFORD
GRACE, WILLIAM RUSSELL
GRADUATION ACT OF 1854
GRANGE
GRANGER CASES
GRANGER LAWS
GRANT, WILLIAM THOMAS
GRAPES OF WRATH
GRAY PANTHERS
GREAT DEPRESSION
GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY
GREAT RECESSION
GREAT SOCIETY
GREEN, WILLIAM
GREENBACK PARTY
GREENBACK–LABOR PARTY
GREENSPAN, ALAN
GREEN TECHNOLOGY
GRIFFITH, DAVID LEWELYN WARK
GROUP OF EIGHT (G-8)
GUGGENHEIM, DAVID
H
HALL, JOYCE CLYDE
HAMILTON, ALEXANDER
HAMMER, ARMAND
HAMMER v. DAGENHART (247 U.S. 251)
HANSEN, ALVIN
HARD MONEY
HARRIMAN, EDWARD HENRY
HARRINGTON, MICHAEL
HARRIS TREATY OF 1858
HARRISON, GEORGE
HARTFORD, GEORGE HUNTINGTON
HARTFORD CONVENTION
HATCH ACT OF 1887
HAWAII
HAWAIIAN RECIPROCITY TREATY OF 1875
HAWLEY–SMOOT TARIFF
HAY, JOHN MILTON
HAYMARKET
HAYWOOD, WILLIAM DUDLEY
HEARST, WILLIAM RANDOLPH
HEINZ, HENRY JOHN
HELLER, WALTER
HEPBURN ACT OF 1906
HERITAGE FOUNDATION
HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING ACT OF 1991
HIGHWAY ACT OF 1916
HIGHWAY ACT OF 1956
HILL, GEORGE WASHINGTON
HILL, JAMES JEROME
HILLMAN, SIDNEY
HILLQUIT, MORRIS
HILTON, CONRAD NICHOLSON
HOFFA, JAMES RIDDLE
HOLDING COMPANY
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, JR.
HOME OWNERS’ LOAN CORPORATION
HOMESTEAD ACT
HOMESTEAD STRIKE OF 1892
HOOSAC MILLS CASE
HOOVER, HERBERT CLARK
HOOVER, HERBERT WILLIAM
HOOVER DAM
HOOVER MORATORIUM
HOOVERVILLES
HOPKINS, HARRY L.
HOPKINS, MARK
HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION
HOUSING ACT OF 1954
HUGHES, CHARLES EVANS
HUGHES, HOWARD ROBARD, JR.
HULL, CORDELL
HUMPHREY, WILLIAM EWART
“HUNDRED DAYS”
HUNT, HAROLDSON LAFAYETTE
HUNTINGTON, COLLIS POTTER
HURRICANE KATRINA
HYDRAULIC FRACTURING (FRACKING)
I
IACOCCA, LEE
ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL
ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD
IMMIGRATION
IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1924
IMPERIALISM
IMPRESSMENT
IN RE DEBS (158 U.S. 564)
INCOME TAX
INDEPENDENT TREASURY
INDEPENDENT TREASURY ACT OF 1846
INDIAN REMOVAL ACT OF 1830
INDIAN REORGANIZATION ACT OF 1934
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD
INFORMATION REVOLUTION
INGERSOLL, ROBERT STEPHEN
INJUNCTIONS
INSTALLMENT BUYING
INSULL, SAMUEL
INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
INTERLOCKING DIRECTORATES
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS
INTERNATIONAL BANK FOR RECONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES
INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION
INTERNATIONAL LADIES’ GARMENT WORKERS UNION
INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN’S ASSOCIATION
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
INTERNATIONAL TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH
INTERNET
INTERSTATE AND DEFENSE HIGHWAY SYSTEM ACT OF 1956
INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION
INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION ACT OF 1887
INVESTMENT ADVISERS ACT OF 1940
INVESTMENT COMPANY ACT OF 1940
IRAQ WAR
J
JACKSON, ANDREW
JAY’S TREATY OF 1794
JEFFERSON, THOMAS
JIM CROW
JOB CORPS
JOBS, STEVE
JOHNSON, HIRAM WARREN
JOHNSON, HUGH
JOHNSON, LYNDON BAINES
JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS
JOINT STOCK COMPANY
JONES, JESSE HOLMAN
JONES, MARY HARRIS
JONES–CONNALLY FARM RELIEF ACT OF 1934
JONES–COSTIGAN SUGAR ACT OF 1934
K
KAISER, HENRY JOHN
KANAGAWA, TREATY OF
KEATING–OWEN ACT OF 1916
KEITH, MINOR COOPER
KELLEY, FLORENCE
KELLEY, OLIVER HUDSON
KELLOGG, WILL KEITH
KENNEDY, JOHN FITZGERALD
KENNEDY ROUND
KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD
“KING COTTON”
KNIGHTS OF LABOR
KNOX, PHILANDER CHASE
KNUDSEN, WILLIAM
KOREAN WAR
KRAFT, JAMES LEWIS
KRESGE, SEBASTIAN SPERING
KROC, RAY
KRUGMAN, PAUL
KUHN, MAGGIE
L
LA FOLLETTE, ROBERT MARION
LA FOLLETTE, ROBERT MARION, JR.
LABOR, DEPARTMENT OF
LABOR MANAGEMENT REPORTING AND DISCLOSURE ACT OF 1959
LABOR’S LEAGUE FOR POLITICAL EDUCATION
LAFFER, ARTHUR
LAISSEZ-FAIRE
LAMONT, THOMAS WILLIAM
LAND, EMORY SCOTT
LAND ACT OF 1796
LAND ACT OF 1800
LAND ACT OF 1804
LAND ACT OF 1820
LAND ACT OF 1832
LAND MANAGEMENT, BUREAU OF
LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785
LANDRUM–GRIFFIN ACT OF 1959
LANE, DENNIS
LATHROP, JULIA
LAUSANNE CONFERENCE OF 1932
LEGAL TENDER ACT OF 1862
LEGGE, ALEXANDER
LEND–LEASE
LEVER FOOD AND FUEL CONTROL ACT OF 1917
LEWIS, JOHN LLEWELLYN
LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION
LIBERALISM, CLASSICAL
LIBERTARIANISM
LIBERTY LOAN ACT OF 1917
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM
LITTON INDUSTRIES
LOBBYING
LOCHNER v. NEW YORK (198 U.S. 45)
LOCKOUT
LODGE COROLLARY
LOEW, MARCUS
LONDON ECONOMIC CONFERENCE OF 1933
LONG, HUEY
LOUISIANA PURCHASE
LOWELL, FRANCIS CABOT
M
MACON’S BILLS
MACY, ROWLAND H.
MADISON, JAMES
MAHAN, ALFRED THAYER
MANHATTAN PROJECT
MANIFEST DESTINY
MANN–ELKINS ACT OF 1910
MARCY–ELGIN TREATY OF 1854
MARGIN BUYING
MARKET REVOLUTION
MARRIOTT, JOHN WILLARD
MARSHALL, JOHN
MARSHALL PLAN
MARTIN, WARREN HOMER
MASS PRODUCTION
MAYER, LOUIS BURT
MAYSVILLE ROAD
MAYTAG, FREDERICK LEWIS
MCCORMICK, CYRUS HALL
MCKINLEY, WILLIAM
MCKINLEY TARIFF ACT OF 1890
MCNARY–HAUGEN PLAN
M’CULLOCH v. MARYLAND
MEANS, GARDINER COIT
MEANY, GEORGE
MEAT INSPECTION ACT OF 1906
MEDICARE
MELLON, ANDREW WILLIAM
MERCANTILISM
MERCHANT MARINE ACT OF 1920
MERCHANT MARINE ACT OF 1936
MERIAM REPORT
MESABI RANGE
METALS RESERVE COMPANY
METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
MEXICAN CESSION
MEXICAN LAND ACT OF 1951
MEXICAN WAR
MEYER, EUGENE, JR.
MICROSOFT
MILITARY–INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
MILLER–TYDINGS ACT OF 1937
MILLS, OGDEN LIVINGSTON
MINES, BUREAU OF
MINIMUM WAGE
MISSOURI COMPROMISE
MISSOURI PACIFIC RAILROAD
MITCHELL, CHARLES EDWIN
MITCHELL, JOHN
MODEL T
MOLLY MAGUIRES
MONETARY ACT OF 1939
MONROE DOCTRINE
MONSANTO
MONTGOMERY WARD AND COMPANY
MORGAN, JOHN PIERPONT
MORGAN, JOHN PIERPONT, JR.
MORGENTHAU, HENRY, JR.
MORGENTHAU PLAN
MORRILL ACT OF 1862
MORRILL TARIFF ACT OF 1861
MORROW, DWIGHT WHITNEY
MORSE, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE
“MOST-FAVORED-NATION”
MOTHERS’ PENSIONS
MOTOR CARRIER ACT OF 1935
MOTOR CARRIER ACT OF 1980
MUCKRAKERS
MULLER v. OREGON (208 U.S. 412)
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION
MUNICIPAL BANKRUPTCY ACT OF 1934
MUNN v. ILLINOIS
MURRAY, PHILIP
MUSCLE SHOALS
N
NADER, RALPH
NASDAQ
NATIONAL AERONAUTIC AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF BUSINESSMEN
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS
NATIONAL BANKING ACT OF 1864
NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE
NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION
NATIONAL CREDIT CORPORATION
NATIONAL DEBT
NATIONAL DEFENSE EDUCATION ACT OF 1958
NATIONAL ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION
NATIONAL ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT OF 1970
NATIONAL FARMERS ORGANIZATION
NATIONAL FARMERS’ UNION
NATIONAL FOREIGN TRADE COUNCIL
NATIONAL GRANGE
NATIONAL HOUSING ACT OF 1934
NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RECOVERY ACT OF 1933
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT OF 1935
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORPORATION (301 U.S. 1)
NATIONAL LABOR UNION
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN
NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION
NATIONAL RECOVERY ADMINISTRATION
NATIONAL RESOURCES PLANNING BOARD
NATIONAL ROAD
NATIONAL SMALL BUSINESS MEN’S ASSOCIATION
NATIONAL TRAFFIC AND MOTOR VEHICLE SAFETY ACT OF 1966
NATIONAL WAR LABOR BOARD
NATIONAL YOUTH ADMINISTRATION
NEOLIBERALISM
NEUTRALITY
NEUTRALITY ACTS
NEW CONSORTIUM
NEW DEAL
NEW DEMOCRATS
NEW ECONOMIC POLICY
NEW FREEDOM
NEW NATIONALISM
NEW SOUTH
NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD
NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE
NEWLANDS RECLAMATION ACT OF 1902
NIXON, RICHARD MILHOUS
NIXONOMICS
NOBLE, EDWARD JOHN
NON-IMPORTATION ACT OF 1806
NON-INTERCOURSE ACT OF 1809
NON-PARTISAN LEAGUE
NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
“NORMALCY”
NORQUIST, GROVER
NORRIS, GEORGE WILLIAM
NORRIS–LA GUARDIA LABOR RELATIONS ACT OF 1932
NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT
NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILWAY
NORTHERN SECURITIES COMPANY
NORTHWEST ORDINANCE
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
NULLIFICATION CONTROVERSY
NYE, GERALD PRENTICE
NYE COMMITTEE
O
OBAMA, BARACK
OCALA PLATFORM
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ACT OF 1970
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION
OFFSHORING
OHIO AND ERIE CANAL
OIL, CHEMICAL, AND ATOMIC WORKERS INTERNATIONAL UNION
“OKIES”
OLD AGE REVOLVING PENSIONS, LTD.
ONLINE EDUCATION
OPEN DOOR POLICY
OPEN SHOP
OREGON TRAIL
OREGON TREATY OF 1846
ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES
ORGANIZATION OF PETROLEUM EXPORTING COUNTRIES
OUTSOURCING
OWEN, ROBERT DALE
OWENS–GLASS ACT OF 1913
P
PACKERS AND STOCKYARDS ACT OF 1921
PALEY, WILLIAM SAMUEL
PANAMA CANAL ZONE
PANAMA REFINING COMPANY v. RYAN
PANIC OF 1819
PANIC OF 1837
PANIC OF 1857
PANIC OF 1873
PANIC OF 1893
PANIC OF 1907
PARITY
PATMAN, WRIGHT
PATMAN BONUS BILL OF 1935
PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY
PATTERSON, JOHN HENRY
PATTERSON, WILLIAM ALLEN
PAYNE–ALDRICH TARIFF OF 1909
PEACE CORPS
PECORA, FERDINAND
PEEK, GEORGE NELSON
PENDLETON ACT OF 1883
PENNEY, JAMES CASH
PENNSYLVANIA CANAL
PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD
PEOPLE’S PARTY
PERKINS, FRANCES
PERKINS, GEORGE W.
PEROT, HENRY ROSS
PERRY, MATTHEW CALBRAITH
PERSIAN GULF WAR
PFIZER
PHELPS, ANSON GREENE
PHILLIPS, FRANK
PIECEWORK
PINCHOT, GIFFORD
PINCKNEY’S TREATY OF 1795
PINK COLLAR
PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE
PLATT AMENDMENT
PLUMB PLAN
POLK, JAMES KNOX
PONY EXPRESS
POOLS
POPULIST PARTY
POTOFSKY, JACOB SAMUEL
POWDERLY, TERENCE VINCENT
PREEMPTION ACT OF 1841
PRESIDENT’S EMERGENCY COMMITTEE ON UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF
PRESIDENT’S ORGANIZATION ON UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF
PRODUCTION CREDIT ASSOCIATIONS
PROFESSIONALIZATION
PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
PROHIBITION
PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION
PUBLIC DEBT ACT OF 1941
PUBLIC UTILITY HOLDING COMPANY ACT OF 1935
PUEBLO LAND ACT OF 1924
PUJO COMMITTEE
PULLMAN STRIKE
PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT OF 1906
PUTTING-OUT SYSTEM
Q
QUITRENT
R
RADIO
RAIL ACT OF 1980
RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS
RAILROAD LAND GRANTS
RAILROAD RETIREMENT ACT OF 1934
RAILROAD RETIREMENT ACT OF 1937
RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1877
RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1922
RAILWAY LABOR ACT OF 1926
RAILWAY LABOR ACT OF 1934
RAND CORPORATION
RANDOLPH, ASA PHILIP
RASKOB, JOHN JACOB
“READING FORMULA”
REAGAN, RONALD
REAGANOMICS
REAPER
REBATE
RECESSION OF 1937–1938
RECESSION OF 1982
RECESSION OF 1991
RECESSION OF 2002–2003
RECESSION OF 2008
RECIPROCAL TRADE AGREEMENTS ACT OF 1934
RECLAMATION, BUREAU OF
RECLAMATION ACT OF 1902
RECLAMATION PROJECT ACT OF 1939
RECONSTRUCTION
RECONSTRUCTION FINANCE CORPORATION
REPARATIONS
REPORT ON MANUFACTURES
REPORT ON THE PUBLIC CREDIT
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (R&D)
RESETTLEMENT ADMINISTRATION
RESUMPTION ACT OF 1875
REUTHER, WALTER PHILIP
REVENUE ACT OF 1861
REVENUE ACT OF 1864
REVENUE ACT OF 1921
REVENUE ACT OF 1924
REVENUE ACT OF 1926
REVENUE ACT OF 1932
REVENUE ACT OF 1935
REVENUE ACT OF 1936
REVENUE ACT OF 1937
REVENUE ACT OF 1938
REVENUE ACT OF 1940
REVENUE ACT OF 1964
REVENUE ACT OF 1971
REVENUE-SHARING
REYNOLDS, RICHARD JOSHUA
RHODE ISLAND SYSTEM
“RIGHT-TO-WORK”
ROARING TWENTIES
ROBBER BARONS
ROCKEFELLER, JOHN DAVISON
ROCKEFELLER, JOHN DAVISON, JR.
ROOSEVELT, ANNA ELEANOR
ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN DELANO
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE
ROOSEVELT COROLLARY
ROOSEVELT–LITVINOV AGREEMENTS OF 1933
ROSENWALD, JULIUS
ROSIE THE RIVETER
ROSTOW, WALT WHITMAN
RUBBER RESERVE COMPANY
RURAL ELECTRIFICATION ADMINISTRATION
RURAL FREE DELIVERY
RURAL POST ROADS ACT OF 1916
RUSSIAN AMERICAN COMPANY
RUST BELT
RYAN, JOHN AUGUSTINE
S
SACHS, SAMUEL
SAFETY VALVE
ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY
SANDERS, HARLAND
SANTA FE TRAIL
SARNOFF, DAVID
SAVINGS AND LOAN CRISIS
SCAB
SCHECHTER POULTRY CORPORATION v. UNITED STATES (295 U.S. 495)
SCHWAB, CHARLES MICHAEL
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
SEABOARD AIR LINE RAILROAD
SEARS, ROEBUCK AND COMPANY
SEATTLE GENERAL STRIKE OF 1919
SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES
SECOND IMPORT–EXPORT BANK
SECURITIES ACT OF 1933
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
SECURITIES INVESTOR PROTECTION CORPORATION
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, TERRORIST ATTACKS
SERVICE INDUSTRY
SERVICEMEN’S READJUSTMENT ACT OF 1944
SHARE OUR WEALTH MOVEMENT
SHARECROPPER
SHAYS’S REBELLION
SHEPPARD–TOWNER ACT OF 1921
SHERMAN, JOHN
SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT OF 1890
SHERMAN SILVER PURCHASE ACT OF 1890
SHIPPING ACT OF 1984
“SICK CHICKEN CASE”
SILICON VALLEY
SILVER ACT OF 1963
SILVER DEMOCRATS
SILVER PURCHASE ACT OF 1934
SILVER REPUBLICAN PARTY
SINCLAIR, UPTON BEALL
SINGLE TAX MOVEMENT
SIT-DOWN STRIKE
SLAUGHTERHOUSE CASES
SLAVE TRADE
SLAVERY
SLOAN, ALFRED PRITCHARD, JR.
SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
SMALL BUSINESS CONFERENCE OF 1938
SMARTPHONES
SMITH, ALFRED EMMANUEL
SMITH–LEVER ACT OF 1914
SMOOT, REED
SOCIAL DARWINISM
SOCIAL GOSPEL
SOCIAL MEDIA
SOCIAL SECURITY ACT OF 1935
SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION
SOCIALISM
SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY
SOCIALIST PARTY OF AMERICA
SOIL CONSERVATION ACT OF 1935
SOIL CONSERVATION AND DOMESTIC ALLOTMENT ACT OF 1936
SOUTHERN HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1866
SOUTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD
SOUTHERN TENANT FARMERS’ UNION
SPANISH–AMERICAN WAR
SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON FARM TENANCY
SPECIE CIRCULAR OF 1836
SPECIE RESUMPTION ACT OF 1875
STAGFLATION
STAGGERS RAIL ACT OF 1980
STANDARD OIL COMPANY OF NEW JERSEY
STANDARD OIL COMPANY OF NEW JERSEY ET AL. v. U.S
STANFORD, LELAND
STEAGALL, HENRY BASCOM
STEEL COMPANY SEIZURE OF 1952
STEEL STRIKE OF 1919
STEEL WORKERS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
STEINBECK, JOHN
STEPHENS, URIAH SMITH
STOCK-RAISING HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1916
STONE, HARLAN FISKE
STONE, WARREN STANFORD
SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRISIS
SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADS
SUBTREASURY PLAN
SUBURBS
SUNBELT
SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS
SWEATSHOP
SWIFT, GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN
SWOPE, GERARD
SYLVIS, WILLIAM
T
TAFT, WILLIAM HOWARD
TAFT–HARTLEY ACT OF 1947
TANEY, ROGER BROOKE
TARIFF COMMISSION ACT OF 1916
TARIFF OF ABOMINATIONS
TARIFF OF 1789
TARIFF OF 1816
TARIFF OF 1824
TARIFF OF 1828
TARIFF OF 1842
TARIFF OF 1846
TARP
TAX PAYMENT ACT OF 1943
TAX REFORM ACT OF 1986
TAYLOR, FREDERICK WINSLOW
TAYLOR GRAZING ACT OF 1934
TEA ACT OF 1773
TEA PARTY MOVEMENT
TEAPOT DOME
TECHNOCRACY
TELECOMMUTING
TEMPORARY EMERGENCY RELIEF ADMINISTRATION
TEMPORARY NATIONAL ECONOMIC COMMITTEE
TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY
TEXTILE WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA
THREE-FIFTHS COMPROMISE
TIMBER AND STONE ACT OF 1878
TIMBER CULTURE ACT OF 1873
TIMBER CUTTING ACT OF 1878
TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
TOWNSEND, FRANCIS EVERETT
TOXIC SUBSTANCES CONTROL ACT
TRADE DEFICIT
TRADE EXPANSION ACT OF 1962
TRADE RELATIONS COUNCIL OF THE UNITED STATES
TRADING WITH THE ENEMY ACT OF 1917
TRANSCONTINENTAL TREATY
TRANS-MISSISSIPPI WEST
TRANSPORTATION, DEPARTMENT OF
TRANSPORTATION ACT OF 1920
TRANSPORTATION ACT OF 1940
TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE
TRIANGULAR TRADE
TRICKLE-DOWN THEORY
TROUBLED ASSET RELIEF PROGRAM (TARP)
TRUMAN, HARRY S.
TRUMAN DOCTRINE
TRUMP, DONALD JOHN
TRUST
TUGWELL, REXFORD GUY
TURNPIKE
U
UNDERWOOD TARIFF OF 1913
UNEMPLOYED COUNCILS
UNEMPLOYED LEAGUES
UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD
UNITED AUTOMOBILE WORKERS
UNITED FARM WORKERS UNION
UNITED FRUIT COMPANY
UNITED MINE WORKERS
UNITED RUBBER WORKERS
UNITED STATES CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
UNITED STATES COMMERCIAL COMPANY
UNITED STATES RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION
UNITED STATES RAILWAY ASSOCIATION AND CONSOLIDATED RAIL CORPORATION
UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION
UNITED STATES v. BUTLER (297 U.S. 1)
UNITED STATES v. E. C. KNIGHT COMPANY (156 U.S. 1)
UNITED STATES v. TRANS-MISSOURI FREIGHT ASSOCIATION (166 U.S. 290)
UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA
V
VAN DYKE, JOHN WESLEY
VAN SWEARINGEN BROTHERS
VANDERBILT, CORNELIUS
VANDERBILT, CORNELIUS, III
VEBLEN, THORSTEIN BUNDE
VERTICAL INTEGRATION
VIETNAM WAR
VOLUNTARY DOMESTIC ALLOTMENT PLAN
W
WABASH, ST. LOUIS & PACIFIC RAILROAD v. ILLINOIS OF 1886
WABASH AND ERIE CANAL
WAGE STABILIZATION BOARD
WAGES AND HOURS ACT OF 1938
WAGNER, ROBERT FERDINAND
WAGNER ACT OF 1935
WAGNER–PEYSER ACT
WAGNER–STEAGALL HOUSING ACT OF 1937
WALGREEN, CHARLES RUDOLPH
WALKER TARIFF OF 1846
WALL STREET
WALLACE, HENRY AGARD
WALMART
WALTHAM SYSTEM
WANAMAKER, JOHN
WAR DEBTS
WAR FINANCE CORPORATION
WAR INDUSTRIES BOARD
WAR LABOR POLICIES BOARD
WAR MANPOWER COMMISSION
WAR OF 1812
WAR PRODUCTION BOARD
WARBURG, JAMES PAUL
WARBURG, PAUL MORITZ
WARD, AARON MONTGOMERY
WARNER BROTHERS
WARREN, GEORGE FREDERICK
WASHINGTON, BOOKER TALIFERRO
WASHINGTON, GEORGE
WATER POWER ACT OF 1920
WATSON, THOMAS JOHN
WEALTH TAX ACT OF 1935
WEAVER, JAMES BAIRD
WEBB–POMERENE ACT OF 1918
WEBSTER, DANIEL
WEIR, ERNEST TENER
WELFARE REFORM ACT OF 1996
WELLS FARGO BANK
WEST COAST HOTEL v. PARRISH (300 U.S. 379)
WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORPORATION
WHEAT BELT
WHEAT CONTROVERSY OF 1972
WHEELER, BURTON KENDALL
WHEELER–LEA ACT OF 1938
WHIP INFLATION NOW
WHISKEY REBELLION
WHISKEY TAX
WHITE-COLLAR
WHITNEY, ELI
WHITNEY, RICHARD
WICKHAM, CARL ERIC
WIGGIN, ALBERT HENRY
WILBUR, RAY LYMAN
“WILDCAT STRIKE”
WILDERNESS ROAD
WILEY, HARVEY
WILSON, CHARLES ERWIN
WILSON, MILBURN LINCOLN
WILSON, THOMAS WOODROW
WILSON–GORMAN TARIFF OF 1894
WISCONSIN IDEA
WOMEN’S TRADE UNION LEAGUE
WOOD, ROBERT ELKINGTON
WOODRUFF, ROBERT WINSHIP
WOODWARD, ELLEN SULLIVAN
WORK RELIEF
WORKERS’ COMPENSATION
WORKERS’ EDUCATION
WORKFARE
WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION
WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION
WORLD TRADE CENTER AND PENTAGON ATTACKS
WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO)
WORLD WAR I
WORLD WAR II
WRIGLEY, WILLIAM, JR.
Y
YAHOO!
YAZOO LAND FRAUDS
YELLEN, JANET LOUISE
YELLOW-DOG CONTRACT
YOUNG, OWEN D.
YOUNG PLAN
Z
ZYNGA
Chronology of U.S. Economic History
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

American Economic History

American Economic History A Dictionary and Chronology

JAMES S. OLSON AND ABRAHAM O. MENDOZA

Copyright © 2015 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olson, James Stuart, 1946– American economic history : a dictionary and chronology / James S. Olson and Abraham O. Mendoza. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-61069-697-5 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-61069-698-2 (e-book) 1. United States—Economic conditions—Dictionaries. I. Title. HC102.O56 2015 330.973003—dc23 2014048826 ISBN: 978-1-61069-697-5 EISBN: 978-1-61069-698-2 19 18 17 16 15

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Greenwood An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Preface Adair v. United States (208 U.S. 161) Adams, John Quincy Adamson Act Adams–Onís Treaty Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. U.S. (175 U.S. 211) Adjusted Compensation Act of 1936 Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (261 U.S. 525) Advertising Affirmative Action Affordable Care Act Afghanistan War and the War on Terror Agency for International Development Agribusiness Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 Agricultural Adjustment Administration Agricultural Credits Act of 1923 Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929 Agricultural Marketing Agreement of 1937 Agricultural Revolution Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 Agriculture, Department of Agriculture Act of 1948 Agriculture Act of 1954 Agriculture Act of 1970 Agriculture Act of 1973

xxxix 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 6 6 11 12 12 13 14 16 16 17 17 17 18 18 18 19 19

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Aid to Families with Dependent Children Air Mail Act of 1925 Air Mail Act of 1934 Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 Airline Pilots Association Alaska Commercial Company Alaska Pipeline Aldrich, Winthrop Williams Alliance for Progress Altmeyer, Arthur Joseph Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Amazon American Agricultural Movement American Association for Old Age Security American Association of Retired Persons American Bimetallic League American Colonization Society American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) American Farm Bureau Federation American Federation of Labor American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations American Federation of Teachers American Medical Association American Motors Corporation American Railway Union American Revolution American Stock Exchange American System American Telephone and Telegraph Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) Amtrak Annapolis Convention Antitrust Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 Apple

19 20 21 21 22 22 22 23 23 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 27 28 29 29 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 35 35 35 36 37 38 38 39 39

Contents

Arab Oil Embargo of 1973–1974 Arbitrage Armour, Philip Danforth “Arsenal of Democracy” Articles of Confederation Ashwander et al. v. Tennessee Valley Authority (297 U.S. 288) Associationalism Assumption of State Debts Astor, John Jacob Astor, William Vincent Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Atomic Energy Act of 1954 Automobile Awalt, Francis Gloyd Bailey v. Drexel Furniture (259 U.S. 20) Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Bank Holiday Bank of America Bank of the United States Bankhead Cotton Control Act of 1934 Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act of 1937 Banking Act of 1933 Banking Act of 1935 Barton, Bruce Baruch, Bernard Mannes Beard, Charles Austin Bechtel, Stephen Davison Beck, David Beef Trust Cases Beer Tax Act Bell, Alexander Graham Benefits Bering Sea Controversy Berle, Adolf Augustus Bernanke, Ben

40 40 41 41 41 42 43 43 44 44 45 45 46 46 48 49 49 50 51 52 52 53 54 55 56 57 57 58 58 58 59 59 59 61 61 62

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Berry, George Leonard Biddle, Nicholas Bimetallism Birdseye, Clarence Bitcoin Black, Eugene Robert Black, John Donald Black Belt Black Codes “Black Monday” “Black Monday” “Black Thursday” “Black Tuesday” Bland, Richard Parks Blue-Collar Boeing, William Edward Boll Weevil Bolshevism Bonneville Power Administration Bonus Army Borden, Gail Boston Police Strike of 1919 Boston Tea Party of 1773 Boyer, Joseph Boyle, William Anthony Braceros Brain Trust Brandeis, Louis Dembitz Breadlines Bretton Woods Conference Brook Farm Brookings, Robert Somers Brookings Institution Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Brown, Harvey Winfield Bryan, William Jennings

64 65 65 66 66 67 67 67 68 68 68 68 69 69 70 70 70 70 71 71 71 72 72 73 73 74 74 75 76 76 76 77 77 78 78 79

Contents

Bryce, James Bucareli Agreement of 1923 Buckmaster, Leland Stanford Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 Buffalo Buffett, Warren Bulkeley, Morgan Gardner Bull Market Burlington Northern Railroad Burns, Arthur Frank Bush, George H. W. Bush, George W. Business Advisory Council Business Conferences of 1929 Business Cycle Committee Business–Industry Political Action Committee Butterfield, John Capone, Alphonse Capper, Arthur Capper–Tincher Act of 1921 Capper–Volstead Act of 1922 Carey Act of 1894 Carnegie, Andrew Carrier, Willis Haviland Carson, Rachel Carter, Jimmy Carter v. Carter Coal Company (298 U.S. 238) Cato Institute Celler–Kefauver Act of 1950 Central Pacific Railroad Chamber of Commerce Chandler, Harry Chandler Act of 1938 Chapin, Roy Dikeman, Jr. Chase Manhattan Bank Chavez, Cesar Estrada

80 80 81 81 81 82 82 83 84 84 85 87 88 89 89 90 90 91 91 92 92 93 93 94 95 95 99 99 100 100 100 101 102 102 103 103

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Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Chester, Colby Mitchell Chevron Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad Chicago & North Western Railway Child Labor Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 Chisholm Trail Chrysler, Walter Percy Chrysler Corporation Cigarmakers’ International Union of America Citizens’ Reconstruction Organization Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 Civil Aeronautics Board Civil Rights Act of 1964 Civil Rights Movement Civil War Civil Works Administration Civilian Conservation Corps Clark, Joshua Reuben, Jr. Clay, Henry Clayton, William Lockhart Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 Clean Air Act of 1970 Cleveland, Stephen Grover Clinton, Bill Closed Shop Club of Rome Coal Arbitration Board Coal Strike of 1919 Coffin, Howard Earle Cohen, Benjamin Victor Coinage Act of 1792 Coinage Act of 1834

104 104 105 105 105 106 106 107 107 109 109 109 110 111 111 111 112 113 113 114 115 116 116 117 117 118 118 119 119 120 120 121 121 122 122 123 124

Contents

Coin’s Financial School Cold War Columbia River Basin Anti-Speculation Act of 1937 Commerce, Department of Committee for Economic Development Committee for the Nation Committee of Forty-Eight Committee on Economic Security Commodity Credit Corporation Commodity Dollar Commodity Exchange Act of 1936 Commons, John Rogers Communications Workers of America Company Union Comparable Worth Compromise of 1850 Comstock Lode Conference for Progressive Political Action Conglomerate Congress of Industrial Organizations Connally Act of 1935 ConocoPhillips Conrail Conservation of Fish Act of 1934 Consortium Chinese Loan of 1911 Constitutional Convention Consumer Federation of America Consumer Rights Cooke, Jay Corcoran, Thomas Gardiner Corn Belt Corporate Bankruptcy Act of 1934 Corporation Cotton Belt Council of Economic Advisers Council of Energy Resource Tribes Cowboy

124 125 126 127 127 127 128 128 129 130 130 131 131 132 132 132 133 133 134 135 136 136 137 137 137 138 138 138 139 139 140 140 141 141 141 141 142

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Coxey’s Army Crash of 1929 Crash of 1987 Credit Cards Credit Mobilier Credit Unions Crime of 1873 Crocker, Charles Croly, Herbert David “Cross of Gold Speech” Crowdsourcing Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act Cuba Cummings, Walter J. Currie, Lauchlin Curtis, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Danbury Hatters Case (208 U.S. 274) Dartmouth College v. Woodward (4 Wheaton 122) Davis, Hal C. Davis, James John Davis, John William Dawes, Charles Gates Dawes Plan Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 Day, Dorothy DeBow, James Dunwoody Brownson Debs, Eugene Victor Deere, John Defense Plant Corporation Defense Supplies Corporation Delaware and Hudson Canal Delaware and Raritan Canal Deposit Act of 1836 Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 Depression of 1893 Depression of 1920–1921

142 143 143 144 145 146 147 147 147 148 148 148 149 150 150 151 153 153 153 154 154 155 155 156 157 157 158 158 158 159 159 159 160 160 161 161

Contents

Deregulation Desert Land Act of 1877 Deskilling Dewson, Mary Williams Dingley Tariff of 1897 Doak, William Nuckles Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Dodge, William Earl Doheny, Edward Doherty, Henry Latham Dollar Diplomacy Dorrance, John Thompson Dot-com Bubble Douglas, Donald Wills Douglas, Lewis William Douglas, William Orville Dow, Herbert Henry Dow Jones Industrial Average Downsizing Dred Scott v. Sandford (19 Howard 393, 1857) Dryden, John Fairfield du Pont, Pierre Samuel Dubinsky, David Duke, James Buchanan Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deering (254 U.S. 443) Durant, William Crapo Dust Bowl Eastman, George Eastman, Joseph Bartlett E-commerce Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 Economy Act of 1933 Edison, Thomas Alva Election of 1800 Election of 1828 Election of 1896

162 162 163 163 164 164 165 165 165 166 166 167 167 168 168 169 170 170 171 171 172 172 173 173 174 174 175 177 177 178 178 178 179 179 180 180

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Election of 1912 Election of 1924 Election of 1928 Election of 1932 Election of 1964 Election of 1980 Election of 1992 Election of 2000 Election of 2008 Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 Elkins Act of 1903 Ely, Richard T. Emancipation Proclamation Embargo Act of 1807 Embargo Act of 1812 Emergency Banking Act of 1933 Emergency Credits Act of 1921 Emergency Farm Mortgage Act of 1933 Emergency Feed Grain Act of 1961 Emergency Quota Act of 1921 Emergency Railroad Transportation Act of 1933 Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932 Emergency Relief Appropriation Acts Emergency Tariff Act of 1921 Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 Employment Act of 1946 End Poverty in California Energy, Department of Energy Crisis Enron Environmental Movement Environmental Policy Act of 1969 Environmental Protection Agency Equal Employment Opportunity Commission “Equal Pay for Equal Work” Equal Rights Amendment

181 181 183 184 184 184 185 185 185 186 186 187 187 188 188 189 190 190 191 191 192 193 193 194 194 195 195 196 196 197 197 198 198 198 199 199

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Erdman Arbitration Act of 1898 Erie Canal Essex Decision European Union “Ever-Normal Granary” Export–Debenture Plan Export–Import Bank Exxon Mobil Facebook Fair Deal Fair Employment Practices Commission Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 Farm Act of 1981 Farm Bloc Farm Credit Act of 1933 Farm Credit Act of 1971 Farm Credit Administration Farm Labor Supply Act of 1943 Farm Security Administration Farmer–Labor Party Farmers’ Alliances Farmers Home Administration Featherbedding Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 Federal Anti–Price Discrimination Act of 1936 Federal Aviation Administration Federal Budget Federal Communications Commission Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1938 Federal Defense Spending Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Federal Emergency Relief Administration Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act of 1934 Federal Farm Board Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 Federal Highway Act of 1921

200 201 201 202 202 203 204 205 207 207 207 208 209 209 210 210 211 211 212 212 213 213 214 214 214 215 215 216 217 217 218 219 219 220 221 221

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Federal Highway Administration Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932 Federal Housing Administration Federal Intermediate Credit Bank System Federal Maritime Commission Federal National Mortgage Association Federal Open Market Committee Federal Power Commission Federal Radio Commission Federal Reserve System Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation Federal Surplus Relief Corporation Federal Trade Commission Federal Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1916 Federalist Party Firestone, Harvey Samuel Fisher, Frederick John Fisher, Irving Fisk, James Fitzgerald, Albert Fitzsimmons, Frank Edward Fletcher v. Peck (6 Cranch 87, 1810) Florida Boom Food Administration Food and Agriculture Act of 1962 Food and Agriculture Act of 1965 Food and Drug Administration Food Control Act of 1917 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 Food for Peace Act of 1965 Food Production Act of 1917 Food Stamp Act of 1964 Forbes, John Murray Forbes, Malcolm Ford, Gerald Ford, Henry

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Ford, Henry, II Ford Motor Company Fordney–McCumber Tariff of 1922 Foreign Miners Act of 1850 Foster, William Zebulon Fourteenth Amendment Fox, William Fraser, Douglas Andrew “Free Ships, Free Goods” Free Silver Free-Soil Party Free Trade Freedmen’s Bureau “Freedom of the Seas” Frick, Henry Clay Friedman, Milton Frontier Fuel Efficiency Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Fuller, Alfred Carl Fulton, Robert Funding the National Debt Gadsden Purchase Galbraith, John Kenneth Gallatin, Abraham Alfonse Albert Garvey, Marcus Mosiah Gary, Elbert Henry Gates, Bill Geneen, Harold Sydney General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) General Electric Corporation General Motors Corporation General Survey Act of 1824 Gentrification George, Henry Gerber, Daniel Frank, Jr.

243 243 244 245 245 246 246 247 247 247 248 249 249 249 250 250 251 251 251 252 252 253 255 255 256 256 257 257 258 258 259 260 261 261 261 262

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Getty, Jean Paul G.I. Bill of Rights Giannini, Amadeo Peter Gibbons v. Ogden (9 Wheaton 1) Gilded Age Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Gimbel, Bernard Girdler, Tom Mercer Glass, Carter Glass–Steagall Act of 1932 Global Warming Globalization Gold Reserve Act of 1934 Gold Rush Gold Standard Act of 1900 Goldman, Emma Goldwater, Barry Morris Gompers, Samuel Good Neighbor Policy Goodnight, Charles Goodyear, Charles Google Gordy, Berry, Jr. Gorman, Frank J. Gould, Jay Grace, Eugene Gifford Grace, William Russell Graduation Act of 1854 Granger Laws Grant, William Thomas Great Depression Great Northern Railway Great Recession Great Society Green, William Greenback Party

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Greenback–Labor Party Greenspan, Alan Green Technology Griffith, David Lewelyn Wark Group of Eight (G-8) Guggenheim, David Hall, Joyce Clyde Hamilton, Alexander Hammer, Armand Hammer v. Dagenhart (247 U.S. 251) Hansen, Alvin Hard Money Harriman, Edward Henry Harrington, Michael Harris Treaty of 1858 Harrison, George Hartford, George Huntington Hartford Convention Hatch Act of 1887 Hawaii Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 Hawley–Smoot Tariff Hay, John Milton Haymarket Haywood, William Dudley Hearst, William Randolph Heinz, Henry John Heller, Walter Hepburn Act of 1906 Heritage Foundation High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 Hill, George Washington Hill, James Jerome Hillman, Sidney Hillquit, Morris Hilton, Conrad Nicholson

282 283 283 284 284 285 287 287 288 288 289 290 290 291 291 291 292 292 292 293 293 293 294 295 295 296 297 297 297 298 298 299 299 300 301 301

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Hoffa, James Riddle Holding Company Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Homestead Act Homestead Strike of 1892 Hoover, Herbert Clark Hoover, Herbert William Hoover Dam Hoover Moratorium Hoovervilles Hopkins, Harry L. Hopkins, Mark Horizontal Integration Housing Act of 1954 Hughes, Charles Evans Hughes, Howard Robard, Jr. Hull, Cordell Humphrey, William Ewart “Hundred Days” Hunt, Haroldson Lafayette Huntington, Collis Potter Hurricane Katrina Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking) Iacocca, Lee Illinois and Michigan Canal Illinois Central Railroad Immigration Immigration Act of 1924 Imperialism Impressment In re Debs (158 U.S. 564) Income Tax Independent Treasury Indian Removal Act of 1830 Indian Reorganization Act of 1934

302 302 303 303 304 304 305 307 307 308 308 309 310 310 310 311 312 312 313 313 314 314 315 316 319 319 319 320 321 321 322 322 323 323 324 324

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Industrial Workers of the World Information Revolution Ingersoll, Robert Stephen Injunctions Installment Buying Insull, Samuel Inter-American Development Bank Interlocking Directorates Internal Improvements International Bank for Reconstruction and Development International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers International Brotherhood of Teamsters International Business Machines International Labor Organization International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union International Longshoremen’s Association International Monetary Fund International Telephone and Telegraph Internet Interstate and Defense Highway System Act of 1956 Interstate Commerce Commission Investment Advisers Act of 1940 Investment Company Act of 1940 Iraq War Jackson, Andrew Jay’s Treaty of 1794 Jefferson, Thomas Jim Crow Job Corps Jobs, Steve Johnson, Hiram Warren Johnson, Lyndon Baines Joint Stock Company Jones, Jesse Holman Jones, Mary Harris Jones–Connally Farm Relief Act of 1934

325 325 325 326 326 326 327 328 328 329 329 329 330 330 331 331 332 332 333 333 333 335 335 336 341 341 342 343 343 344 344 345 346 346 347 347

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Jones–Costigan Sugar Act of 1934 Kaiser, Henry John Kanagawa, Treaty of Keith, Minor Cooper Kelley, Florence Kelley, Oliver Hudson Kellogg, Will Keith Kennedy, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Round Keynes, John Maynard “King Cotton” Knights of Labor Knox, Philander Chase Knudsen, William Korean War Kraft, James Lewis Kresge, Sebastian Spering Kroc, Ray Krugman, Paul Kuhn, Maggie La Follette, Robert Marion La Follette, Robert Marion, Jr. Labor, Department of Labor’s League for Political Education Laffer, Arthur Laissez-Faire Lamont, Thomas William Land, Emory Scott Land Act of 1796 Land Act of 1800 Land Act of 1820 Land Management, Bureau of Land Ordinance of 1785 Landrum–Griffin Act of 1959 Lane, Dennis Lathrop, Julia

348 349 349 350 350 351 351 352 352 353 354 354 355 356 356 357 357 358 358 359 361 362 362 363 363 364 364 365 365 366 366 366 367 367 368 368

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Lausanne Conference of 1932 Legal Tender Act of 1862 Legge, Alexander Lend–Lease Lever Food and Fuel Control Act of 1917 Lewis, John Llewellyn Lewis and Clark Expedition Liberalism, Classical Libertarianism Liberty Loan Act of 1917 Lincoln, Abraham Litton Industries Lobbying Lochner v. New York (198 U.S. 45) Lockout Lodge Corollary Loew, Marcus London Economic Conference of 1933 Louisiana Purchase Lowell, Francis Cabot Macon’s Bills Macy, Rowland H. Madison, James Mahan, Alfred Thayer Manhattan Project Manifest Destiny Mann–Elkins Act of 1910 Marcy–Elgin Treaty of 1854 Margin Buying Market Revolution Marriott, John Willard Marshall, John Marshall Plan Martin, Warren Homer Mass Production Mayer, Louis Burt

369 370 370 371 371 371 372 372 373 373 373 374 374 374 375 375 375 376 377 377 379 379 379 380 381 381 381 382 382 383 383 383 384 384 385 385

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Maysville Road Maytag, Frederick Lewis McCormick, Cyrus Hall McKinley, William McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 McNary–Haugen Plan M’Culloch v. Maryland Means, Gardiner Coit Meany, George Meat Inspection Act of 1906 Medicare Mellon, Andrew William Mercantilism Merchant Marine Act of 1920 Merchant Marine Act of 1936 Meriam Report Mesabi Range Metals Reserve Company Mexican Cession Mexican War Meyer, Eugene, Jr. Microsoft Military–Industrial Complex Miller–Tydings Act of 1937 Mills, Ogden Livingston Mines, Bureau of Minimum Wage Missouri Compromise Missouri Pacific Railroad Mitchell, Charles Edwin Mitchell, John Molly Maguires Monetary Act of 1939 Monroe Doctrine Monsanto Morgan, John Pierpont

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Morgan, John Pierpont, Jr. Morgenthau, Henry, Jr. Morgenthau Plan Morrill Act of 1862 Morrill Tariff Act of 1861 Morrow, Dwight Whitney Morse, Samuel Finley Breese “Most-Favored-Nation” Motor Carrier Act of 1935 Motor Carrier Act of 1980 Muckrakers Muller v. Oregon (208 U.S. 412) Multinational Corporation Municipal Bankruptcy Act of 1934 Murray, Philip Nader, Ralph NASDAQ National Aeronautic and Space Administration National Alliance of Businessmen National Association of Manufacturers National Banking Act of 1864 National Child Labor Committee National Civic Federation National Credit Corporation National Debt National Defense Education Act of 1958 National Economic and Social Planning Association National Economic Association National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 National Farmers Organization National Farmers’ Union National Foreign Trade Council National Grange National Housing Act of 1934 National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 National Labor Relations Act of 1935

403 404 404 405 405 406 406 407 407 408 408 409 409 410 410 413 413 414 414 415 415 416 416 416 417 417 418 418 419 419 419 420 420 421 422 422

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National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation (301 U.S. 1) National Labor Union National Organization for Women National Recovery Administration National Resources Planning Board National Road National Small Business Men’s Association National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 National War Labor Board National Youth Administration Neoliberalism Neutrality Neutrality Acts New Consortium New Deal New Democrats New Economic Policy New Freedom New Nationalism New South New York Central Railroad New York Stock Exchange Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 Nixon, Richard Milhous Nixonomics Noble, Edward John Non-Importation Act of 1806 Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 Non-Partisan League Nonprofit Organizations “Normalcy” Norquist, Grover Norris, George William Norris–La Guardia Labor Relations Act of 1932

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North American Free Trade Agreement Northern Pacific Railway Northern Securities Company Northwest Ordinance Nuclear Regulatory Commission Nye, Gerald Prentice Obama, Barack Ocala Platform Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 Office of Management and Budget Office of Price Administration Offshoring Ohio and Erie Canal Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union “Okies” Online Education Open Door Policy Open Shop Oregon Trail Oregon Treaty of 1846 Organization of American States Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Outsourcing Owen, Robert Dale Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 Paley, William Samuel Panama Canal Zone Panama Refining Company v. Ryan Panic of 1819 Panic of 1837 Panic of 1857 Panic of 1873 Panic of 1907 Parity Patman, Wright Patterson, John Henry

440 440 441 441 442 442 445 445 446 446 447 447 448 448 448 449 450 450 450 450 451 451 452 453 455 455 456 457 457 458 459 459 459 460 460 461

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Patterson, William Allen Payne–Aldrich Tariff of 1909 Peace Corps Pecora, Ferdinand Peek, George Nelson Pendleton Act of 1883 Penney, James Cash Pennsylvania Canal Pennsylvania Railroad Perkins, Frances Perkins, George W. Perot, Henry Ross Perry, Matthew Calbraith Persian Gulf War Pfizer Phelps, Anson Greene Phillips, Frank Piecework Pinchot, Gifford Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795 Pink Collar Planned Obsolescence Platt Amendment Plumb Plan Polk, James Knox Pony Express Pools Populist Party Potofsky, Jacob Samuel Powderly, Terence Vincent Preemption Act of 1841 President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief Professionalization Progressive Movement Prohibition Protective Legislation

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Public Debt Act of 1941 Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 Pueblo Land Act of 1924 Pujo Committee Pullman Strike Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 Putting-Out System Quitrent Radio Railroad Brotherhoods Railroad Land Grants Railroad Retirement Act of 1934 Railroad Retirement Act of 1937 Railroad Strike of 1877 Railroad Strike of 1922 Railway Labor Act of 1926 Railway Labor Act of 1934 Rand Corporation Randolph, Asa Philip Raskob, John Jacob “Reading Formula” Reagan, Ronald Reaganomics Rebate Recession of 1937–1938 Recession of 1982 Recession of 1991 Recession of 2002–2003 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934 Reclamation, Bureau of Reclamation Project Act of 1939 Reconstruction Reconstruction Finance Corporation Reparations Report on Manufactures Report on the Public Credit

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Research and Development (R&D) Resettlement Administration Reuther, Walter Philip Revenue Act of 1861 Revenue Act of 1864 Revenue Act of 1921 Revenue Act of 1924 Revenue Act of 1932 Revenue Act of 1935 Revenue Act of 1940 Revenue Act of 1964 Revenue Act of 1971 Revenue-Sharing Reynolds, Richard Joshua “Right-to-Work” Roaring Twenties Robber Barons Rockefeller, John Davison Rockefeller, John Davison, Jr. Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Corollary Roosevelt–Litvinov Agreements of 1933 Rosenwald, Julius Rosie the Riveter Rostow, Walt Whitman Rubber Reserve Company Rural Electrification Administration Rural Free Delivery Russian American Company Rust Belt Ryan, John Augustine Sachs, Samuel Safety Valve St. Lawrence Seaway

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Sanders, Harland Santa Fe Trail Sarnoff, David Savings and Loan Crisis Scab Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States (295 U.S. 495) Schwab, Charles Michael Seaboard Air Line Railroad Sears, Roebuck and Company Seattle General Strike of 1919 Second Bank of the United States Securities Act of 1933 Securities and Exchange Commission Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Securities Investor Protection Corporation Service Industry Share Our Wealth Movement Sharecropper Shays’s Rebellion Sheppard–Towner Act of 1921 Sherman, John Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 Shipping Act of 1984 Silicon Valley Silver Act of 1963 Silver Democrats Silver Purchase Act of 1934 Silver Republican Party Sinclair, Upton Beall Single Tax Movement Sit-Down Strike Slaughterhouse Cases Slave Trade Slavery Sloan, Alfred Pritchard, Jr.

526 526 527 527 528 528 529 530 530 531 531 532 533 534 534 535 535 536 536 536 537 537 538 538 539 539 539 540 541 541 541 542 542 542 543 544

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Small Business Administration Smartphones Smith, Alfred Emmanuel Smith–Lever Act of 1914 Smoot, Reed Social Darwinism Social Gospel Social Media Social Security Act of 1935 Social Security Administration Socialism Socialist Labor Party Socialist Party of America Soil Conservation Act of 1935 Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936 Southern Homestead Act of 1866 Southern Pacific Railroad Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union Spanish–American War Special Committee on Farm Tenancy Specie Circular of 1836 Specie Resumption Act of 1875 Stagflation Staggers Rail Act of 1980 Stanford, Leland Steagall, Henry Bascom Steel Company Seizure of 1952 Steel Strike of 1919 Steinbeck, John Stephens, Uriah Smith Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916 Stone, Harlan Fiske Stone, Warren Stanford Subprime Mortgage Crisis Subsistence Homesteads Subtreasury Plan

545 545 546 547 547 547 548 548 549 551 551 552 552 553 553 554 554 555 556 556 557 557 557 558 558 559 560 560 561 561 562 562 563 563 564 564

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Suburbs Sunbelt Supply-Side Economics Sweatshop Swift, Gustavus Franklin Swope, Gerard Sylvis, William Taft, William Howard Taft–Hartley Act of 1947 Taney, Roger Brooke Tariff Commission Act of 1916 Tariff of 1789 Tariff of 1816 Tariff of 1824 Tariff of 1828 Tariff of 1842 Tax Payment Act of 1943 Tax Reform Act of 1986 Taylor, Frederick Winslow Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 Tea Party Movement Teapot Dome Technocracy Telecommuting Temporary Emergency Relief Administration Temporary National Economic Committee Tennessee Valley Authority Textile Workers Union of America Three-Fifths Compromise Timber Culture Act of 1873 Timber Cutting Act of 1878 Total Quality Management Townsend, Francis Everett Toxic Substances Control Act Trade Deficit Trade Expansion Act of 1962

564 565 565 566 566 567 568 569 570 570 571 572 572 573 573 573 574 574 574 575 575 577 578 579 579 579 580 581 581 581 582 582 583 584 584 584

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Trade Relations Council of the United States Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 Trans-Mississippi West Transportation, Department of Transportation Act of 1920 Transportation Act of 1940 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Triangular Trade Trickle-Down Theory Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Truman, Harry S. Truman Doctrine Trump, Donald John Trust Tugwell, Rexford Guy Turnpike Underwood Tariff of 1913 Unemployed Councils Unemployed Leagues Union Pacific Railroad United Automobile Workers United Farm Workers Union United Fruit Company United Mine Workers United Rubber Workers United States Chamber of Commerce United States Commercial Company United States Railroad Administration United States Steel Corporation United States v. Butler (297 U.S. 1) United States v. E. C. Knight Company (156 U.S. 1) United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association (166 U.S. 290) United Steelworkers of America Van Dyke, John Wesley Van Swearingen Brothers Vanderbilt, Cornelius

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Vanderbilt, Cornelius, III Veblen, Thorstein Bunde Vertical Integration Vietnam War Wabash and Erie Canal Wage Stabilization Board Wagner, Robert Ferdinand Wagner–Peyser Act Wagner–Steagall Housing Act of 1937 Walgreen, Charles Rudolph Walker Tariff of 1846 Wall Street Wallace, Henry Agard Walmart Waltham System Wanamaker, John War Debts War Finance Corporation War Industries Board War Manpower Commission War of 1812 War Production Board Warburg, James Paul Warburg, Paul Moritz Ward, Aaron Montgomery Warner Brothers Warren, George Frederick Washington, Booker Taliferro Washington, George Watson, Thomas John Wealth Tax Act of 1935 Weaver, James Baird Webb–Pomerene Act of 1918 Webster, Daniel Weir, Ernest Tener Welfare Reform Act of 1996

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Wells Fargo Bank West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (300 U.S. 379) Westinghouse Electric Corporation Wheat Belt Wheat Controversy of 1972 Wheeler, Burton Kendall Wheeler–Lea Act of 1938 Whip Inflation Now Whiskey Tax White-Collar Whitney, Eli Whitney, Richard Wickham, Carl Eric Wiggin, Albert Henry Wilbur, Ray Lyman “Wildcat Strike” Wilderness Road Wilson, Charles Erwin Wilson, Milburn Lincoln Wilson, Thomas Woodrow Wilson–Gorman Tariff of 1894 Wisconsin Idea Women’s Trade Union League Wood, Robert Elkington Woodruff, Robert Winship Woodward, Ellen Sullivan Work Relief Workers’ Compensation Workers’ Education Workfare Works Progress Administration World Trade Center and Pentagon Attacks World Trade Organization (WTO) World War I World War II Wrigley, William, Jr.

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Yahoo! Yellen, Janet Louise Yellow-Dog Contract Young, Owen D. Young Plan Zynga

645 645 646 646 647 649

Chronology of U.S. Economic History Selected Bibliography Index

651 667 675

xxxvii

Preface

In 2009, as the Great Recession began, politicians, policymakers, and pundits began to scrutinize and point fingers across the aisle over what led to the economic collapse. Liberals and progressives argued that the George W. Bush administration’s lax regulation of the financial sector allowed for the subprime mortgage crisis. Fiscal conservatives alleged that the incoming Barack Obama administration’s attempt to curtail the free market and Wall Street’s autonomy would increase, rather than stop, the bleeding. If anything, they alleged, government regulation would only get in the way of the hustle and bustle of economic growth. Moreover, new policies such as “Obamacare” and increased stimulus spending by the federal government were viewed by the nascent Tea Party movement as indicative of a creeping central government that endangered economic expansion and, by extension, personal liberty. Years later, after the lingering effects of the bursting of the housing bubble, the spread of the financial crisis, and prolonged high unemployment rates, the economy continues to be in the national and international headlines. News about the unemployment rate, international conflicts, immigration reform, government regulations, and the role of the federal government in regard to corporations shows the importance of understanding the significance of the economy in U.S. history. From the inception of the republic, Americans have viewed economic opportunity, the acquisition of new markets, the developments of new products and services, and the political and social issues around these changes with intense interest—and scrutiny. American Economic History provides a comprehensive reference tool for students, scholars, and librarians hoping to find basic information about major economic events, organizations, and policies, as well as key individuals, that can help them better understand the central place of the economy in U.S. history. Rather than provide long essays on the historical development of the economy, this one-volume reference tool provides basic and succinct information on more than 1,200 topics in U.S. economic history. It focuses on prominent captains of industry and labor leaders, the development of industry and the organizations and policies to counter corporate abuses, the relationship of economics to political organizations and ideologies, and major historical events that triggered reforms. Moreover, the text also includes newer developments related to changes in technology, most notably the primacy of the Information Revolution, the Internet, and the emergence of Silicon Valley in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The text also includes a chronology of major events in the economic history of the United States and a selected bibliography of U.S. economic history. Asterisks appearing after an item in the book indicate that a corresponding main entry appears in the dictionary.

A A C T T O R E G U L AT E C O M M E R C E O F 1 8 8 7 See INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION. A D A I R v. U N I T E D S TAT E S ( 2 0 8 U . S . 1 6 1 ) In 1898, Congress passed the Erdman Arbitration Act* to bring an end to the industrial unrest that had plagued the United States during the 1890s. The legislation allowed the federal government to mediate labor management disputes. It also prohibited railroads that were engaged in interstate commerce from blacklisting or otherwise discriminating against employees who were members of labor unions. The railroads sued the government on the grounds that the legislation violated Fifth Amendment property rights and the rights of contract. The Supreme Court, in Adair v. United States, agreed with them. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred H. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY John Quincy Adams was born in Braintree (later Quincy), Massachusetts, on July 11, 1767, the eldest son of John Adams, lawyer, patriot, and future president, and Abigail Adams, an outspoken early advocate of women’s rights. From his earliest days, John Quincy and his family were immersed in the politics of founding and governing the new United States. Before he was 20, he had served as his father’s private secretary during diplomatic missions to Europe, an experience that would stand him in good stead during his own diplomatic career. That career held several successes, including the Peace of Ghent with Britain after the War of 1812* and the Adams–Onís Treaty* with Spain in 1819. Still more important, he formulated the basic policy embodied in the Monroe Doctrine* (1823), which demanded the cessation of further European colonization in the Western Hemisphere and declared firmly for the sister republics that had recently won their independence from Spain. His vision of the United States as a continental power inspired his actions as a diplomat, as secretary of state under President James Monroe (1817–1825), and as president in his own right. His presidency (1825–1829), however, proved remarkably unsuccessful. A committed National Republican, he favored policies in line with Henry Clay’s* American System*: tariffs to encourage “infant industries,” internal improvements* to be supported by the sale of public lands, a national university and observatory, and

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ADAMson ACt

national support for the arts and sciences. Congress rejected virtually all his initiatives, although it did pass the extremely unpopular Tariff of 1828* (also known as the Tariff of Abominations). Alienating powerful supporters by refusing to use his patronage power as an incumbent, he lost the election of 1828* to Andrew Jackson*. Not deterred by this setback, he returned to Washington in 1831 as a congressman from Massachusetts, a capacity in which he served for the next seventeen years. In Congress, he was most notable for his staunch opposition to the expansion of slavery*, even though he was not an abolitionist himself. In particular, he fought the so-called “gag rule” passed by Congress in 1836 to stop the presentation of petitions favoring the abolition of slavery and opposing the annexation of Texas; in 1844, he finally succeeded in winning its repeal. He also opposed Jackson’s policy on the Second Bank of the United States* and the Mexican War*. In spite of the failures of his presidency, Adams left a valuable legacy to the country in the form of his continental vision and his commitment to the civil rights of blacks and women. He died on February 23, 1848. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Expansion, 1949. Worthington Chauncey Ford, “John Quincy Adams,” in Dictionary of American Biography, 1956.

ADAMSON ACT By 1916, the railroad brotherhoods were insisting on the implementation of the eight-hour day throughout the industry; when the railroad czars refused, labor leaders threatened a nationwide strike. President Woodrow Wilson* decided to intervene and asked Congressman William C. Adamson of Georgia to introduce the necessary legislation. The Adamson Eight-Hour Act was passed by both houses of Congress and became law on September 3, 1916. The law mandated an eighthour day in the industry and prohibited any reductions in wages. The railroads challenged the law but in 1917, in Wilson v. New, the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality. Reference K. Austin Kerr, American Railroad Politics 1914–1920: Rates, Wages, and Efficiency, 1968.

A D A M S – O N Í S T R E AT Y The Adams–Onís, or Transcontinental, Treaty of 1819 was negotiated by John Quincy Adams*, the American secretary of state under President James Monroe, together with Luis de Onís y Gonzales, the Spanish minister to the United States. The negotiations came to a head after General Andrew Jackson* invaded Spanish Florida, ostensibly to quash depredations by Seminole Indians along the American

A D J U s t e D C o M P e n s At I o n A C t o F 1 9 3 6

border. In the process, Jackson arrested two British subjects (for inciting the Indians), put them on trial, and executed them. Under pressure from Britain, Onís demanded reparations—or, at the very least, an apology. Adams turned the tables completely. Far from apologizing for Jackson, he insisted that Spain was to blame for the incident for failing to maintain order. If Spain could no longer quell unrest, it should cede the Floridas to the United States. Spain, which could not defend Florida while the rest of its empire in the Americas was in rebellion, agreed, with the proviso that the American government pay on Spain’s behalf $5 million worth of claims by American citizens against Spain. Just as important, the treaty established the boundary between the Louisiana Territory and Spain’s North American possessions. The line followed the Sabine, Red, and Arkansas rivers to the Rocky Mountains and then to the forty-second parallel, then west to the Pacific Ocean. In exchange for yielding its claim to Texas (under the Louisiana Purchase*), the United States now claimed the Pacific Northwest, which it had agreed to occupy jointly with Great Britain in 1818. As a result of this treaty, U.S. territory spanned the continent from sea to sea. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Expansion, 1949.

A D D Y S T O N P I P E A N D S T E E L C O M PA N Y v. U . S . (175 U.S. 211) With the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890, the U.S. government began working to eliminate monopolistic practices so that the benefits of competition— falling prices and improved product quality—would continue in the American economy. Large manufacturing corporations had used a variety of techniques to stifle competition, including fixing prices, controlling supplies, allocating markets, and forming pools*, holding companies*, and trusts*. The U.S. government accused the Addyston Pipe and Steel Company of conspiring to create a monopoly by allocating markets for its products. The Supreme Court decided in 1899, in Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. U.S., that such arrangements were in restraint of trade and thus violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred H. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

A D J U S T E D C O M P E N S AT I O N A C T O F 1 9 3 6 At the end of World War I, military veterans were given bonus certificates allowing them to collect small pensions beginning in 1945. When the Great Depression* struck in 1929 and unemployment rose dramatically, some veterans began to demand early payment of those bonuses. President Herbert Hoover* refused to make such payments, leading to the famous “Bonus Riot” of 1932. Hoover’s

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v.

C H I L D R E N ’ S H O S P I TA L ( 2 6 1 U . s . 5 2 5 )

breakup of the so-called “Bonus Army*” was a political disaster. In 1936, Congress passed the Adjusted Compensation Act, providing for federal issuance of nine-year interest-bearing bonds that veterans could convert into cash at any time. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* vetoed the measure, but Congress overrode the veto. On June 15, 1936, bonus bonds worth more than $1.5 billion were distributed to more than 3 million World War I veterans. Reference James S. Olson, Historical Dictionary of the New Deal, 1985.

A D K I N S v. C H I L D R E N ’ S H O S P I TA L ( 2 6 1 U . S . 5 2 5 ) In 1918, Congress passed legislation permitting the Wage Stabilization Board* of the District of Columbia to set a minimum wage for women. The Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., employed women on the general cleaning and labor staff and paid them at a rate lower than the established minimum wage. A supervisor fired a female elevator operator to avoid a penalty under the act; the operator filed suit and won. Children’s Hospital then countered in the federal courts, and the case reached the Supreme Court in 1923 as Adkins v. Children’s Hospital. In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled the original act unconstitutional. Writing for the majority, Justice George Sutherland argued that the act violated the Fifth Amendment property rights of business owners by forcing them to pay each worker a minimum wage regardless of whether the employee needed that level of compensation. Typical of the prevailing judicial philosophy of the 1920s, the case of Adkins v. Children’s Hospital outlawed minimum wage contracts until 1937, when the Supreme Court upheld such arrangements in the case of West Coast Hotel v. Parrish*. References Alpheus Thomas Mason, The Supreme Court from Taft to Warren, 1958. Joel Francis Paschal, Mr. Justice Sutherland: A Man against the State, 1951.

ADVERTISING The idea of trying to inform consumers about the value of certain products and services is as old as economic life, but it was not until the fifteenth-century invention of the printing press that the possibility of mass distribution of such information became real. Printed advertisements began to appear in American newspapers in the 1760s. By the mid-1800s, with improved highways and railroads providing for even more widespread distribution of information, the advertising industry boomed. N. W. Ayer & Son was established in Philadelphia in 1869 as the first advertising agency in the United States but generally confined its work to placing advertisements designed by manufacturers and retailers and negotiating rates with newspapers and magazines. It was not until the early twentieth century that such firms as J. Walter Thompson Company in New York began to actually design and prepare, as well as place and price, advertisements for their clients.

A F F I R M At I V e A C t I o n

During the 1920s, the rise of the radio industry provided a huge boost for the advertising industry. By 1922, more than 500 radio stations broadcast throughout the United States, and the rise of such nationwide networks as the Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company, complete with local affiliate stations and continuous programming, produced an advertising boom. By the late 1950s, more than 5,000 radio stations broadcast in the United States. When it arrived on the scene, television only magnified advertising opportunities. From its humble beginnings in the late 1940s, television soon permeated American culture, and soon every home in the country featured a television set. Advertising was the lifeblood of the industry. By the 1980s, advertising was a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States. By the 2000s and the 2010s, advertising had expanded its focus to newer technologies, particularly those reliant on the Internet* and social media*, to expand companies’ consumer base. Reference Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of Twentieth-Century American Advertising, 1984.

A F F I R M AT I V E A C T I O N The term “affirmative action” refers to a series of rules and regulations that evolved throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in an attempt to counteract the effects of historical discrimination against certain designated minority groups. With the Civil Rights Act* of 1964, most forms of formal legal discrimination had been eliminated, but civil rights advocates soon realized that a host of other practices and traditions, such as seniority rights and aptitude tests, continued to militate against hiring and promoting minority workers. On September 24, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson* responded to that problem by issuing an executive order requiring all federal contractors to use “affirmative action” to ensure that minority workers were hired in numbers consistent with their ratio in the population. In Griggs v. Duke Power Company in 1971, the Supreme Court invalidated the use of intelligence tests that had the effect of limiting minority hiring and promotion. Companies began to use a variety of criteria, not just intelligence tests, in making their hiring decisions. The Equal Employment Act of 1972 then extended “affirmative action” requirements to educational institutions. Critics charged, however, that in many instances, affirmative action requirements rigidified into hiring and promotion quotas that then constituted reverse discrimination against white males, violating their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. Those claims became politically significant in the mid-1970s when the American economy stagnated. A number of cases wended their way through the federal courts, protesting affirmative action. In 1978, the Supreme Court heard Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Allan Bakke had been denied admission to the University of California at Davis medical school. Yet, because of the school’s quota system for admission, several minority students who had lower grade point averages and lower test scores had nevertheless been admitted. Bakke claimed that the practice constituted reverse discrimination. After

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Bakke, in which the court held that rigid special preference admission programs were unconstitutional, quotas were dead, though affirmative action programs that actively sought to hire or admit minority workers were still legal. During the Reagan* years of the 1980s, affirmative action continued to be a divisive political issue, with minority groups’ charging that President Ronald Reagan was gutting civil rights programs and with conservative whites’ praising him for ending reverse discrimination. The real meaning of affirmative action continued to be muddled. In 1980, in Fullilove v. Klutznick, the Supreme Court upheld federal legislation requiring that 10 percent of all federal public works projects be reserved for minority contractors, regardless of whether they were low bidders on a project. By the early 1990s, with the American economy in a recession, criticisms of affirmative action programs surfaced again, generally with Democrats defending them and Republicans opposing them. In 2003, the Supreme Court, adjudicating a case stemming from an admissions office at the University of Michigan, ruled specific quotas unconstitutional. However, a form of affirmative action was later upheld in Grutter v. Bollinger. Reference Katharine Greene, Affirmative Action and Principles of Justice, 1990.

AFFORDABLE CARE ACT The Affordable Care Act of 2010, most formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), and more commonly known as “Obamacare,” was a federal statute signed by President Barack Obama* on March 23, 2010. Along with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, it constitutes the most significant overhaul of the healthcare system in the United States. Enacted with the goal of increasing the quality and affordability of health insurance through the expansion of public and private health insurance coverage, it seeks to reduce the costs of healthcare for individuals and for the federal government. Despite being posited as a way of lowering costs by the Democratic Party, many Republicans insist that it not only infringes on the flexibility afforded by the insurance free market, but also represents an expanding federal government. As a result, Congressional Republicans have voted to overturn it and made its removal a key element of their platform for the 2010 and 2012 elections. Reference Josh Blackman, Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare, 2013.

A F G H A N I S TA N WA R A N D T H E WA R O N T E R R O R The 9/11 Attacks

On September 11, 2001, the worst terrorist attacks ever committed against the United States occurred. The terrorists, who had received some flight training in the United States, seized control of four fully loaded commercial airliners on the morning of September 11, flying two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade

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Center* in New York City and crashing one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Passengers on the fourth aircraft, informed by cell phone of what had transpired on the other three planes, battled with the hijackers; their plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field before it could reach its target, believed to be the White House or the Capitol Building. All but one of the nineteen terrorists who carried out the deadly attacks were originally from Saudi Arabia, as was Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden. A total of 2,995 people died in the attacks: the 19 hijackers; 246 passengers on the four planes (there were no survivors); 2,605 in the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York City; and 125 at the Pentagon, of whom 55 were military personnel. The terrorists’ actions crippled not only the city and economy of New York City, but also the U.S. economy. Particularly hard hit were the airline and insurance industries, both of which suffered billions of dollars in losses. The death toll of the September 11 attacks surpassed that of the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks came an outpouring of international sympathy and outrage. The United Nations (UN) Security Council denounced the attack on September 12 and called on all member states to assist in apprehending those responsible. Also, for the first time in its fifty-two-year history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) invoked its collective security mechanism, by which an attack on any NATO member nation is treated as an attack on them all. On September 11 at Camp David, President George W. Bush* used the phrase “war on terror” in an unscripted conversation, likening it to a “crusade” that would take some time. However, the word “crusade” carried unfortunate connotations in the Middle East; it was not used again. After an intensive intelligence investigation to determine the identities of the terrorists who had carried out the attacks, on September 20, President Bush announced, in the course of a televised address to a joint session of Congress: “Our ‘war on terror’ begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” Bush demanded that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan immediately turn over bin Laden or risk military action by the United States and its allies. Within a few weeks, France, Great Britain, and other NATO members—including Turkey, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia—become part of an American-led antiterrorist coalition. Bush administration objectives in the War on Terror included destroying terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, denying state sponsorship of terrorist activities, working with other nations to create an antiterrorist network, and seeking to diminish conditions in nation-states that are ripe for terrorist exploitation. Although the Global War on Terror was truly global, including operations as far flung as the Philippines, its centerpiece was the U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan, known as Operation Enduring Freedom. Operation Enduring Freedom

On October 7, 2001, with the Taliban intransigent, and building on a month of planning by United States Central Command (CENCTOM), U.S. forces headed by U.S. Army general Tommy Franks commenced air attacks against Afghanistan

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with some NATO support. This marked the opening of Operation Enduring Freedom, whose goals included toppling the Taliban regime and rooting out terrorist enclaves in Afghanistan. High on the list was the capture or death of bin Laden. Throughout history, Afghanistan has posed major challenges for any invader, not least because of its physical environment, comprising deserts, high plateaus, and mountain ranges. The military operation called for the employment of the most advanced military and communications technology in the world in what was certainly one of the world’s most primitive battlefields. Special operations played a key role in allowing the anti-Taliban forces to seize and maintain the battlefield initiative. From the beginning, U.S. forces constituted the bulk of the NATO forces committed. Cruise missiles and bombs from B-2 Spirit and B-52 Stratofortress military jet aircraft flying from the United States and from the Diego Garcia atoll concurrently quickly reduced the number of viable military targets while, on the ground, U.S. and allied special forces (especially British and Australian), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives, and units of the 10th Mountain Division (Light) and Marine Expeditionary Unit 15 worked with Afghan soldiers of the Northern Alliance opposing the Taliban. Initial operations were surprisingly easy, with some 15,000 members of the Northern Alliance and allied air power defeating some 45,000 Taliban troops along with an estimated 3,000 Al Qaeda fighters. Critical to their success was American close air support (CAS) called in by the CIA and special forces teams. To win the struggle of “hearts and minds,” the military campaign was accompanied by a large-scale humanitarian effort, with cargo planes dropping food to starving Afghans in remote locations. Logistics problems, which were immense, prompted the seizure of airfields inside Afghanistan at earlier stages of the campaign. Despite a variety of difficulties, the Afghan capital of Kabul was secured by mid-November. Coalition forces suffered a major failure in military operations in the mountainous region of Tora Bora in December, however. Remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, among them bin Laden, had taken refuge in this area in extensive cave base complexes. Although U.S. aircraft pounded the region, the failure to provide a sufficient number of U.S. troops on the ground led to the escape into Pakistan of much of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda leadership, including bin Laden. In March 2002, U.S. and other NATO and non-NATO forces launched Operation Anaconda, designed to destroy any remaining Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in the Shah-i-Kot Valley and Arma Mountain regions. Although the Taliban sustained heavy casualties in this operation, it was able to regroup in the tribal regions of northwestern Pakistan and by late 2002 was carrying out traditional guerrilla operations against NATO forces. Meanwhile, the Bush administration had shifted resources. With the war not yet won in Afghanistan, it opened a larger military effort in the form of war with Iraq in 2003. There can be little doubt that this decision prolonged the war in Afghanistan and made it much more costly in the long run. In Afghanistan, although U.S., NATO, and Afghan government forces responded to the Taliban and Al Qaeda with military offensives and increased numbers of

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troops, they failed to halt the insurgents, who were able to take advantage of the porous Pakistani–Afghan border to regroup, recruit, train, and resupply in areas of northwestern Pakistan controlled by the Pakistani Taliban. Endemic and widespread Afghan government corruption and tribalism plagued the coalition military effort, even after the Obama* administration implemented a major troop surge in 2010. About 33,000 additional American troops were inserted into Afghanistan but were withdrawn by September 2012. Even as reports surfaced of potential peace talks between NATO and some Taliban leaders, NATO and other coalition partners announced plans to withdraw their forces from the country by the end of 2014, with security turned over to the Afghan army and police. The Afghan government, meanwhile, has shown little willingness to stop Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents, and as violence against Afghan civilians mounted during 2013 and 2014, Afghan president Hamid Karzai actually blamed the growing unrest on NATO—and, particularly, U.S.—troops. By early 2014, the likelihood that Karzai would agree to a bilateral security pact with the United States had dimmed drastically. This meant that U.S. troops, along with other NATO troops, would be withdrawn completely from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. This development has been troubling to many, because violence and unrest in Afghanistan have been steadily increasing. The United Nations estimated that 3,000 civilians were killed in the country in 2013, with another 5,500 injured. These statistics matched those in 2011, which had been the high mark of civilian casualties in Afghanistan since 2001. Horn of Africa and the Middle East

In October 2002, the Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was established at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. Numbering some 2,000 personnel, it includes both U.S. military and special operations forces and coalition forces. It operated in conjunction with Combined Task Force 150, composed of ships hailing from a variety of nations that monitored and inspected ships entering the Horn of Africa region and that might be carrying cargos that could affect operations in Iraq. The Horn of Africa operation also involved training some armed forces units of Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency tactics. CJTF-HOA personnel also carried out humanitarian work, such as by building schools and clinics and providing medical assistance to countries whose forces were receiving training. This program was expanded under the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative to include training selected military personnel of Chad, Niger, Mauritania, and Mali. It did not, however, include Sudan, where an ongoing civil war that had killed more than 400,000 people would ultimately result in the division of the country into two separate states. In recent years, considerable attention has focused on Somalia. Long dominated by warlords, it is considered a “failed state” because its central government wields virtually no power. Somali pirates have seized ships in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, holding them and their crews for ransom. By late 2006, an Islamic faction

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secured control of much of the southern part of the country, including the capital of Mogadishu, and endeavored to impose Sharia law. Ethiopian armed forces intervened on the side of the government when the Islamists launched an offensive against the government stronghold of Baidoa; the Ethiopian troops blunted the Islamists, pushing them back north. On January 8, 2007, U.S. forces employed AC-130 Spectre gunships to attack Ras Kambon. Reportedly, U.S. and French forces were also involved in bringing about the death of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a leader of Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group affiliated with Al Qaeda, sought in connection with the 2002 Mombasa attacks. In 2012 and again in 2013, U.S. Navy SEALs and American commandos conducted small-scale operations against Somali militants and terrorists. U.S., French, and allied anti-terrorism efforts continue in Somalia and were still active as of 2014. The Americans have also conducted a number of unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) strikes against suspected terrorists in Somalia. Since 2009, when the American and Saudi governments urged the Yemeni government to step up its efforts to eradicate Al Qaeda from its borders, the War on Terror has taken on new urgency in Yemen. From 2009 to 2012, the U.S. government greatly increased its financial assistance to the Yemeni government, and it has undertaken a number of anti-terror operations in the country, including unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) strikes against suspected terrorists. Philippines

U.S. Special Forces have also been ordered to the Philippines. In January 2002, the Special Operations Command, Pacific, aided Philippine government forces fighting Islamic insurgents, most notably the Abu Sayyaf group and Jemaah Islamiyah on the island of Basilan. This operation saw Special Forces teams working with the Philippine Army in disrupting guerrilla activities as well as providing medical and other humanitarian assistance (Operation SMILES). In September 2009, two American Special Forces soldiers were killed on Jolo Island by a roadside bomb. As of 2014, U.S. Special Forces remained in the Philippines, but their numbers were relatively small. Pakistan

Meanwhile, Washington has been applying pressure on Pakistan to move against the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan’s northern Waziristan region. In 2004, the Pakistani government finally sent into the region some 80,000 troops, with the goal of removing Al Qaeda and Taliban forces that had long enjoyed a haven there with the support of elements of the Pakistani intelligence service. The Pakistani Army captured or killed numerous Al Qaeda operatives, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, wanted for his involvement in the U.S.S. Cole bombing and the killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. At the same time, the United States mounted drone aircraft attacks in Pakistan’s semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas. On May 2, 2011, U.S. Special Forces carried out a spectacular attack, killing bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But this action won the United States no friends in

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Pakistan, being carried out without the knowledge or support of Pakistani authorities. The United States also questioned how bin Laden could have hidden in plain sight in Pakistan for so long without assistance from at least the Pakistani intelligence services. Under the Obama administration, U.S. drone strikes increased substantially in Pakistan’s tribal areas and its border areas with Afghanistan. However, some of these attacks resulted in the inadvertent deaths of innocent civilians, increasing tensions between Washington and Islamabad. Meanwhile, violence against Pakistani civilians has generally been on the rise in recent years. By early 2014, there were clear signs that Al Qaeda influence was on the upswing in Pakistan, as was sectarian-based violence. Spencer C. Tucker References Alex Alexiev, The United States and the War in Afghanistan, 1988. Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, 2004. Catherine Dale, War in Afghanistan: Strategy, Military Operations, and Issues for Congress, 2009. Michael DeLong, with Noah Lukeman, Inside CENTCOM: The Unvarnished Truth about the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 2004. Robert B. Satloff, ed., War on Terror: The Middle East Dimension, 2002.

A G E N C Y F O R I N T E R N AT I O N A L D E V E L O P M E N T Congress established the Agency for International Development (AID) in 1961. Its purpose was to administer the economic development programs that were included in U.S. foreign aid. At the time, American policymakers were deeply worried about the spread of Communism, especially in the Third World, and they believed economic development to be one way of preventing Communists from getting a foothold. President John F. Kennedy* named Fowler Hamilton to head AID. The key AID program in the early 1960s was the Alliance for Progress*. In addition to long-term development programs, AID also became involved in the counterinsurgency programs of the Kennedy administration, especially in Latin America and Indochina. By the time of the Lyndon B. Johnson* administration (1963–1969), AID was spending $2 billion a year on its programs and had missions in seventy countries. Because of the Vietnam War*, AID became increasingly unpopular in the late 1960s and 1970s, with Congress steadily limiting its authority and cutting its budget. AID programs became less political and more humanitarian in focus, emphasizing refugee assistance, food production, population control, and health. AID personnel dropped from 20,000 in 1968 to only 6,000 in 1978, after which its size and mission stabilized. In more recent decades, it has been a prominent player in providing relief aid subsequent to major natural disasters, notably the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Reference Paul G. Clark, American Aid for Development, 1972.

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AGRIBUSINESS The term “agribusiness” is used today to describe the process by which agricultural marketing and processing firms have vertically integrated* themselves by purchasing land and raising crops, thereby becoming huge national and international corporations. By the early 1990s, the Department of Agriculture* estimated that more than 25 percent of all food raised in the United States was produced, processed, and marketed by agribusiness concerns. Agribusiness in the United States has continued to expand as larger operations have absorbed smaller farms. Reference Ray A. Goldberg, Agribusiness Coordination, 1968.

A G R I C U LT U R A L A D J U S T M E N T A C T O F 1 9 3 3 Ever since the late nineteenth century, the major problem facing American agriculture had been overproduction. Commodity prices were usually low, with supplies’ consistently exceeding domestic demand. During the 1920s, the problem became especially acute. Farm leaders proposed a variety of solutions—including marketing cooperatives, foreign dumping, and government-financed surplus storage— but nothing worked. In 1929, Professor John Black* of Harvard University wrote Agricultural Reform in the United States, suggesting payments to farmers for reducing their acreage, funded by a tax at the processing level. His idea was called the “Voluntary Domestic Allotment Plan.” Henry A. Wallace*, editor of Wallace’s Farmer, converted to the idea in 1930 and began publicizing it widely. In 1931 and 1932, Wallace helped convene a conference of farm leaders and farm economists, including Rexford G. Tugwell* of Columbia University. In both years, the group endorsed the voluntary domestic allotment plan. After the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, with Wallace now secretary of agriculture and Tugwell the assistant secretary, the allotment plan became a New Deal priority. The American Farm Bureau Federation* and the National Farmers’ Union* endorsed the basic concept. Introduced on March 16, 1933, the Agricultural Adjustment Act became law on May 12 of that year. Title I of the act stated its goal of “relieving the existing national economic emergency by increasing agricultural purchasing power.” The act designated wheat, cotton, tobacco, corn, hogs, rice, and milk as basic commodities, calling on the secretary of agriculture to enter into “marketing agreements” with individual farmers to reduce their production. The law appropriated $100 million to finance the program initially; thereafter, it imposed a tax on processors to sustain the program. Title II focused on the problem of rural credit, primarily the question of mortgage debt; it therefore incorporated into the law the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act*. Title III gave the president power, when he saw it necessary, to inflate the money supply by issuing up to $3 billion in paper currency, reducing the gold content of the dollar, or freely minting silver. Reference Van L. Perkins, Crisis in Agriculture: The Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the New Deal, 1933, 1969.

AGRICULtURAL ADJUstMent ACt oF 1938

A G R I C U LT U R A L A D J U S T M E N T A C T O F 1 9 3 8 From the nineteenth century on, the most consistent problem affecting American agriculture had been overproduction and its associated depressed prices. Farmers had approached the problem from a number of directions, asking the federal government to expand the money supply, to inflate the currency, to dump surpluses on foreign markets, to purchase surpluses, to make loans to allow farmers to store crops during bumper years, and to pay farmers not to grow, thereby cutting surpluses. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933* had paid farmers to reduce production and had used a tax on processors to finance the program, but in 1936, in United States v. Butler*, the Supreme Court declared the Agricultural Adjustment Administration* (AAA) unconstitutional. Congress responded with the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act* of 1936, which paid farmers to make improvements in soil quality. The measure was financed by congressional appropriations rather than through a processor tax. But the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act proved insufficient when not enough farmers voluntarily cooperated to limit production. The 1936 cotton crop reached 18 million bales, driving prices down. Wheat, corn, and tobacco farmers faced similar problems. Farm bloc* lobbyists* demanded higher and higher subsidies, fewer production restrictions, and export dumping. In the Agricultural Adjustment Act, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt* on February 16, 1938, the farm bloc got much of what it had demanded. The law reinforced and made permanent the soil conservation features of the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act and established the “ever-normal granary*.” The secretary of agriculture could set marketing quotas whenever the price of a particular crop was threatened by surplus production. Acreage allotments for individual farmers would go into effect after two-thirds of the affected farmers approved them in referendums. The Commodity Credit Corporation* would make loans on surplus crops at prices just below the parity* levels of 1909–1914. If prices rose above the value of the loan, the farmer could sell his produce at a profit and repay the government. If prices fell below the value of the loan, the farmer surrendered the crop to the Commodity Credit Corporation, which would absorb the loss, with the individual farmer keeping a minimum income. The law also established the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation* (FCIC), providing it with capital of $100 million with which to insure wheat crops. The FCIC would accept wheat in payment for insurance premiums to cover crop losses of 50–75 percent of average yield lost to unavoidable causes. In addition, it authorized the secretary of agriculture to establish a Surplus Reserve Loan Corporation, providing it $100 million in capital to provide assistance to farmers. But even the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 did not resolve the farm problem. Crop surpluses continued to mount—so much so that large volumes of wheat and cotton had to be dumped abroad in 1938 and 1939. Despite six years of effort, the New Deal* farm program was a failure. An agricultural disaster was averted only by the outbreak of World War II. References William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940, 1963.

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Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: The Agrarian Years, 1910–1940, 1968.

A G R I C U LT U R A L A D J U S T M E N T A D M I N I S T R AT I O N On May 12, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed the first Agricultural Adjustment Act*. The long-range goal of the law was to attain ‘parity* for farmers— an economic balance between the prices received for farm commodities and the prices paid for manufactured goods equivalent to the balance that had existed from 1909 to 1914 (1919 to 1929 for cotton). The secretary of agriculture was to enter into “marketing agreements” with individual farmers to reduce their production. Wheat, cotton, corn, hogs, rice, tobacco, and milk were designated as “basic commodities.” By reducing the supply of those basic commodities, the administration hoped to raise commodity prices toward parity levels. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) was established to administer the program. The AAA was immediately embroiled in controversy, both from external criticism and internal struggles. Sows had already farrowed, and cotton had already been planted during the congressional debates over the farm program. Huge surpluses already abounded in those commodities. Another bumper year would completely undermine prices and saddle the AAA with an impossible burden. Therefore, the AAA ordered the destruction of 6 million little pigs and 200,000 sows and the plowing up of 10 million acres of cotton. The decision was a realistic one, considering the administration’s commitment to production cutbacks, but it generated a storm of protest. The AAA also encountered criticism from the left, particularly from the National Farmers’ Union* and the National Farmers’ Holiday Association. Both accused the AAA of being the tool of the American Farm Bureau Federation*, of ignoring the suffering of millions of small farmers, and of producing no tangible results. By early 1934, however, more than 3 million farmers were participating in the AAA program. Unfortunately, farmers exaggerated the size of their 1932–1933 crop, hoping to maximize their production for 1933–1934 as well as to receive government checks. Farmers protested when the AAA questioned their 1932– 1933 estimates; after negotiations, the final quotas were considerably less than 25 percent for most crops. Tens of thousands of farmers were saved from ruin by the government checks in 1934. The Jones–Connally Farm Relief Act* of 1934 added barley, rye, peanuts, flax, cattle, and grain sorghum as basic commodities covered by the AAA, and the Jones–Costigan Sugar Act* of 1934 did the same for sugar beets and sugar cane. The AAA was not nearly so successful in achieving parity, because huge surpluses still dominated agricultural markets in the United States. Because the program was voluntary, the AAA experienced a great deal of trouble getting farmers to comply with their contracts. In 1934, the AAA therefore moved to a more regulated program through the Bankhead Cotton Control Act* of 1934. Under the law, growers received tax-exempt certificates for their contracted crop. The total of all tax-exempt certificates would equal the predetermined adjusted crop quota.

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A heavy tax was imposed on cotton at the ginning level. The Kerr–Smith Tobacco Control Act of 1934 and the Warren Potato Control Act of 1935 did the same for those crops to help reduce cheating on the contracts. Many conservatives described the AAA as “socialistic agriculture,” but the real threat came from people who viewed the AAA as unconstitutional. In particular, the AAA had attempted to collect processing taxes from William H. Butler and his associates, the receivers of the bankrupt Hoosac Mills Corporation. They rejected the claim and sued in the federal courts. On January 6, 1936, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case United States v. Butler*, declared the AAA unconstitutional, claiming that agricultural problems were local, not national, issues and were therefore beyond federal control. Consequently, the AAA violated the reserve clause of the Tenth Amendment. The Court also complained that the federal program did not operate on the basis of voluntary contracts but on the basis of coercion. Enraged about the Court’s unwillingness to let the federal government deal with the economic crisis, the Department of Agriculture* prepared new legislation that became law on February 29, 1936, as the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act*. The law allowed the AAA to continue to control agricultural output by benefit payments to farmers who practiced soil conservation in cooperation with government guidelines. Farmers who joined the program leased the government the land that they had removed from the production of soil-depleting crops and received government checks for the lease. The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act proved insufficient, because not enough farmers voluntarily limited production. The cotton crop in 1936 reached an unprecedented 18 million bales, driving prices down, and similar forces were at work on wheat, corn, and tobacco. Farm lobbyists* demanded increases in subsidies, fewer production restrictions, and export dumping, but Henry A. Wallace* still wanted to achieve parity* and his idea of the “ever-normal granary*.” The Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1938 eliminated all processing taxes, funded the program from the federal treasury, allowed the AAA to set compulsory production quotas once two-thirds of the affected farmers had approved in referendum elections, and recognized the idea of the “ever-normal granary” by allowing the Commodity Credit Corporation* to make loans on surplus crops at prices slightly below the parity levels of 1909–1914. Bumper crops would be stored under government auspices, with farmers repaying the loans and selling the surpluses during low production years when prices rose above parity. The act also established a Federal Crop Insurance* Corporation. This legislation did not solve the problem, either. By putting badly needed money into the hands of farmers, the AAA greatly relieved suffering, but it did not restructure the farm economy. Farm surpluses still abounded. Only the outbreak of World War II, with its tremendous demand for food and fiber, absorbed those surpluses and achieved the goal of parity. References Dean Albertson, Roosevelt’s Farmer: Claude R. Wickard in the New Deal, 1961. Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: The Agrarian Years, 1910–1940, 1968.

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A G R I C U LT U R A L C R E D I T S A C T O F 1 9 2 3 Troubled by huge surpluses and falling prices, farmers in the 1920s searched for a solution to their economic plight. One program they focused on was the expansion of the federal farm credit establishment. Pro-business Republicans in Congress generally supported such measures because they seemed to satisfy the farm bloc* without leading to price-fixing schemes. One such measure was the Agricultural Credits Act of 1923. At the time, federal land banks made long-term loans to farmers while federal reserve banks made short-term loans. The Agricultural Credits Act of 1923 established twelve Federal Intermediate Credit Banks* (FICBs), each with $5 million in capital, to make loans of from six to thirty-six months. The FICBs lent the money to cooperative associations, which then lent it again to farmers. Although the new credit system helped farmers, it did nothing to address the real source of the agricultural crisis—gross overproduction. References Freda Baird and Claude L. Benner, Ten Years of Federal Intermediate Credit, 1933. Claude L. Benner, The Federal Intermediate Credit System, 1926. James H. Shideler, Farm Crisis, 1919–1923, 1957.

A G R I C U LT U R A L M A R K E T I N G A C T O F 1 9 2 9 During World War I*, American farmers experienced a dramatic rise in commodity prices because of the loss of agricultural production in Europe. Responding to rising prices, they increased the amount of land in production, confidently and naively assuming that demand would remain high after the war. Soon after the end of the war, however, commodity prices started down and did not recover until World War II. During the 1920s, American farmers were victims of their own success, experiencing the “poverty of abundance” as overproduction depressed prices. Farm organizations devised a number of schemes during the 1920s; one of them was government-sponsored cooperative marketing. President Herbert Hoover* adamantly opposed the McNary–Haugen* Bill and export debenture plan*. Instead, he proposed the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929 as an alternative. The bill, which became law on June 15, 1929, established a Federal Farm Board* of eight members and the office of secretary of agriculture in order to promote the sale of farm products through agricultural cooperatives and stabilization corporations. The law provided a revolving fund of $500 million to provide low-interest loans to agencies involved in the sale of farm products. The goal of the legislation was to stabilize farm prices by helping farmers establish cooperative marketing associations for each major crop and set voluntary production quotas to prevent overproduction. In 1930, the Federal Farm Board established the Cotton Stabilization Corporation, the Grain Stabilization Corporation, and the Wool Stabilization Corporation to purchase crop surpluses on the open market, hold them during cyclical price declines, and sell them when prices were higher. The Agricultural Marketing Act was too little too late. By 1931, the Federal Farm Board was so burdened with commodities that it could not sell except at a loss and at steadily declining prices. The board had spent more than $180 million by the end of 1931 and had done nothing to address the farm crisis. The Federal

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Farm Board stopped purchasing surpluses and confined its activities to short-term loans. A more dramatic approach to the agricultural depression would have to wait for the programs of the New Deal*. When those programs began in 1933, the Commodity Credit Corporation* took up where the stabilization corporations had left off, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to individual farmers to assist them in marketing their crops. References Van L. Perkins, Crisis in Agriculture: The Agriculture Adjustment Act and the New Deal, 1933, 1969. Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Midwest, 1900–1939, 1951. James Shideler, Farm Crisis, 1919–1923, 1957.

A G R I C U LT U R A L M A R K E T I N G A G R E E M E N T O F 1937 After the Supreme Court declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933 unconstitutional in 1936, Congress passed the Agricultural Marketing Agreement in 1937 to reenact its marketing agreements. In an effort to reduce crop surpluses, the legislation allowed the secretary of agriculture to enter into marketing agreements with farmers, processors, and marketers after they had agreed to the arrangement by a two-thirds vote. The Department of Agriculture* could issue marketing quotas and could fine individuals or companies that were found to be breaking them. Reference Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Midwest, 1900–1939, 1951.

A G R I C U LT U R A L R E V O L U T I O N Because of the use of crop rotation, irrigation, insecticides, soil management, fertilizers, machinery technology, and plant and animal genetics, a revolution took place in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that brought about huge increases in productivity. These hundredfold gains in production have been called the “Agricultural Revolution.” References Harold Barger, American Agriculture, 1899–1939: A Study of Output, Employment, and Productivity, 1942. Jules B. Billard, “The Revolution in American Agriculture,” National Geographic 137 (1970): 147–185.

A G R I C U LT U R A L T R A D E D E V E L O P M E N T A N D A S S I S TA N C E A C T O F 1 9 5 4 Passed by Congress in 1954, the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act authorized the Commodity Credit Corporation* to purchase annually up to

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$700 million of surplus farm products. The president could then use these to provide foreign aid, to meet disaster needs in the United States, or to acquire strategic materials. All shipments overseas had to be carried in American vessels, and no assistance could be given to Communist countries. During the John F. Kennedy* administration, the Food for Peace* program was authorized by an amendment to the original legislation. During its twenty-year existence, the legislation distributed more than $23 billion in surplus commodities. References Eleanor N. DeBlois, Twelve Years of Achievement under Public Law 480, 1967.

A G R I C U LT U R E , D E PA R T M E N T O F The Department of Agriculture was created on May 15, 1862, and it was elevated to cabinet status in 1889. Since then, it has become a huge bureaucracy that manages the federal government’s vast agricultural enterprises, including research bureaus, financial institutions, marketing agencies, international trade programs, crop subsidy programs, and scientific laboratories. Reference Wayne D. Rasmussen and Gladys Baker, The Department of Agriculture, 1972.

A G R I C U LT U R E A C T O F 1 9 4 8 Also known as the Hope–Aiken Bill of 1948, the Agriculture Act was designed to reduce government spending and increase the operation of the market in American farming by reducing federal price supports from 90 percent of parity* to as low as 60 percent. A number of products (corn, wheat, rice, tobacco, peanuts, cotton, swine, chickens, eggs, milk, and potatoes) were given temporary exemptions from the reductions. There was a storm of protest from the farming states; when Congress met in 1949, a new Agriculture Act froze all price supports at 90 percent of parity. Reference Charles M. Hardin, The Politics of Agriculture, 1952.

A G R I C U LT U R E A C T O F 1 9 5 4 When President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Ezra Taft Benson as secretary of agriculture, the government’s policy of trying to reduce federal price supports in the name of a free market became even clearer. Congress passed the Agriculture Act of 1954 to begin the transition to the market through the modernization of parity* and the use of flexible price supports. The legislation reduced the parity ratio for basic commodities from 90 percent to between 82.5 and 90 percent. After one year, the bottom dropped to 75 percent, except for tobacco, which retained its 90 percent level. The law also stopped using the traditional 1909–1914 period as the base years for figuring parity in favor of a ten-year average of the previous decade starting with 1954. The bill was a major part of the Eisenhower administration’s agricultural program.

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Reference Ezra Taft Benson, Cross Fire: The Eight Years with Eisenhower, 1962.

A G R I C U LT U R E A C T O F 1 9 7 0 The Agriculture Act of 1970 was a comprehensive measure that, among many other things, established a new formula for determining the size of acreage allotments, established marketing quotas, allowed for the continuation of set asides, and gave the secretary of agriculture new funds for research. Farmers also received greater freedom in their planning decisions. The act was also designed to blunt criticism of the large subsidy that some farmers, especially large corporate and individual landowners, received from the federal government. The law required that no payment could exceed $55,000 in one year, but that a farmer could qualify for those maximum payments for up to three crops. Reference R. L. Miller, The New Economics of Richard Nixon, 1972.

A G R I C U LT U R E A C T O F 1 9 7 3 The Agriculture Act of 1973 was an omnibus farm measure that ended the old system of determining price supports by fixed parity* ratios. The moving force behind the legislation was the desire to reduce federal crop subsidies from $3.8 to $2.8 billion. Instead, the federal government established what it called “target prices”: $2.05 a bushel for wheat, $1.38 a bushel for corn, $0.38 a pound for cotton. The price of milk was set at 80 percent of parity. The secretary of agriculture could then adjust those targets during certain periods. The law also expanded the Food Stamp* program, limited the government subsidy payment to a maximum of $20,000 per person or farm, prohibited food aid to North Vietnam, and provided for a number of conservation measures. Reference “Back to Brannan: The Concept of Direct Payments to Farmers,” New Republic 6 (June 1973): 7.

A G R I C U LT U R E A C T O F 1 9 8 1 See FARM ACT OF 1981. A I D T O FA M I L I E S W I T H D E P E N D E N T C H I L D R E N Programs to provide aid to families with dependent children (AFDC) officially began with the Social Security Act* of 1935. Designed originally to assist children (they being one relatively helpless group in society), the so-called “mothers’ pensions” also served the purpose of channeling mothers out of the workforce and back into the home. During the Great Depression*, this policy allowed more men access to scarce jobs. The law stipulated that Social Security benefits were

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available to eligible mothers who had one or more children younger than 16. Even though some mothers stated a preference to earn their federal assistance from work relief* jobs under the Works Progress Administration* (WPA), relief administrators increasingly directed them toward AFDC benefits after these became available. Over time, problems with AFDC programs have become apparent. The regulations pointedly make no provision for fathers, presumably on the grounds that able-bodied men should be able to find private-sector jobs that pay well enough to support a family. On the one hand, this assumption is not always true: Jobs at the minimum wage are often inadequate to support a family. On the other, a mother can usually be classified as eligible for AFDC only if her household does not include an employable man. This policy thus seems to encourage the separation of families for them to receive the income supplements they may need to survive. Sociological studies have shown that fatherless homes contribute to a cycle of poverty from which some children never escape. Such children do less well in school and eventually find it harder to get jobs with which to support their own children. For poor young women who have little education and few marketable skills, AFDC payments for a child may sometimes be an acceptable alternative, especially in times of high unemployment. AFDC benefits include access to medical care, whereas most minimum wage jobs do not, which contributes to the choice to go or remain on public assistance. That these problems have hit the black community especially hard makes the inequities of AFDC programs even more frustrating. Critics on both the right and the left have attacked AFDC programs. Conservatives decry “welfare queens” and a culture of dependency that seems to perpetuate itself; they favor the abolition of all public assistance and a reliance on market forces to allocate jobs, resources, goods, and benefits. Liberals dislike the punitive aspects of AFDC and that the meager benefits available are inadequate to break the cycle of poverty; they see the troubles of the poor as a common social problem that will require a more comprehensive approach than a monthly dole to solve. Originally begun to aid dependent children, AFDC programs seem as far from the goal as ever. In 1996, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a welfare reform measure created as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, replaced AFDC. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Betty Reid Mandell, ed., Welfare in America, 1975.

AIR MAIL ACT OF 1925 In 1918, the Post Office Department began air mail service, and in 1925, Congress passed the Kelly Act, or Air Mail Act. Consistent with the pro-business, anti-government atmosphere of the 1920s, the Air Mail Act turned air mail contracts over to commercial carriers holding government contracts. Although the contracts were awarded to the low bidders, government subsidies were common by the late 1920s to help companies cover huge operating costs. By 1931, the federal government

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was awarding contracts without competitive bidding. A congressional investigation led by Senator Hugo Black of Alabama revealed the scandal in 1933. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* blamed the previous administration, and, in February 1934, he turned the carrying of air mail over to the U.S. Army Air Corps. Republicans accused him of trying to “socialize” America, and their charges became more hostile when several army pilots died in crashes while carrying the mail. In May 1934, Roosevelt returned air mail to private carriers, and in June that same year, Congress passed new legislation requiring competitive bidding on all contracts. Reference Thomas T. Spencer, “The Air Mail Controversy of 1934,” Mid-America 62 (1980): 161–172.

AIR MAIL ACT OF 1934 With the introduction of air mail in 1918, the Post Office Department assumed responsibility for flying the mail. In 1925, when the Kelly (Air Mail) Act was passed, however, air mail was handed over to commercial lines holding government contracts. Government subsidies to air mail carriers became commonplace in the late 1920s and early 1930s to help companies cover high operating costs. By 1931, the Post Office was awarding contracts to a few large companies without competitive bidding, and a Senate investigation exposed the practice in 1933. As the scandal surfaced, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* blamed the previous Republican administration, cancelled all contracts, and turned air mail over to the U.S. Army Air Corps. Republicans accused Roosevelt of trying to “socialize” America, and their charges became even more hostile when several army pilots died in crashes while carrying the mail. In May 1934, Roosevelt turned air mail back to private carriers. Dozens of bills were presented to Congress to solve the crisis, some advocating complete laissez-faire* capitalism and others wanting complete federal regulation of the airline industry through an independent agency. In June, Congress passed an interim measure, the Air Mail Act of 1934. It outlawed monopolistic holding companies in the air mail business, required competitive bidding for contracts, established maximum rates and mail loads, and gave the Interstate Commerce Commission* certain regulatory powers. Reference Thomas T. Spencer, “The Air Mail Controversy of 1934,” Mid-America 62 (1980): 161–172.

A I R L I N E D E R E G U L AT I O N A C T O F 1 9 7 8 Since the late 1930s, the federal government, through the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), regulated the airline industry. The CAB determined the rates that airlines could charge and the routes that they could fly. By the 1970s, however, the regulations were simply producing high fares for consumers and high profits for the carriers. In the early 1970s, when a number of intrastate carriers that were independent of CAB control showed just how cheap air travel could be, the demands for deregulation* of the industry began to grow more intense. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter

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appointed Alfred Kahn as head of the CAB. Kahn promoted deregulation, although both the airline companies and the airline unions opposed the move. Nonetheless, in 1978, Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act, which allowed airlines to compete in fare rates and allowed new carriers to enter the market. Reference Mansel G. Blackford, Business Enterprise in American History, 1986.

A I R L I N E P I L O T S A S S O C I AT I O N In July 1919, a small group of pilots who carried mail for the Post Office formed the Air Mail Pilots of America to protest the government’s insistence that they fly regardless of weather conditions. A larger group of pilots, the National Air Pilots Association, was established in 1928. Three years later, David Behncke founded the Air Line Pilots Association and secured an American Federation of Labor charter. The union grew steadily and called its first national strike—against Trans World Airlines—in 1946. By the mid-1980s, the union had more than 50,000 members. Reference George E. Hopkins, The Airline Pilots: A Study in Elite Unionization, 1971.

A L A S K A C O M M E R C I A L C O M PA N Y In 1870, the Alaska Commercial Company received an exclusive monopoly from the U.S. government to harvest fur seals on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska. Offshore Canadian harvesting began to hurt the company’s profits in the 1880s, and in 1893, the special lease expired. Seal harvesting was then taken over by the North American Commercial Company. Reference Charles Campbell, Anglo-American Understanding, 1898–1903, 1957.

ALASKA PIPELINE Beginning in 1953, the United States became a net importer of oil, and during the rest of the decade and into the present, that trend has continued and grown more severe. The need for new domestic production was great, and the 1968 announcement of the huge oil field at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, was welcome news. The major problem was how to transport that crude oil to market because of weather and ice problems. It became clear that a pipeline was the best answer, but environmentalists* raised objections about its effects on Alaskan wildlife and the tundra. After five years of debate, however, Congress passed the Alaska Pipeline Act to finance construction. The legislation provided for the construction of a huge pipeline capable of transporting 2 million barrels of crude oil a day from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez on the Gulf of Alaska. A consortium of oil and construction companies, known as Aleyeska, completed the job by 1977.

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Reference John Blair, The Control of Oil, 1976.

ALDRICH, WINTHROP WILLIAMS Winthrop Aldrich, the son of Nelson W. Aldrich, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 2, 1885. He graduated from Harvard in 1907 and from the Harvard Law School in 1910. Aldrich began practicing law in 1912, joined the firm of Byrne, Cutcheon & Taylor in 1916, and served in the naval reserve during World War I. After the war, Aldrich returned to his law practice, this time as a partner in Murray, Aldrich & Webb, where he remained until 1929, specializing in banking and finance law. That year, he was named president of the Equitable Trust Company. One year later, he rose to the peak of American banking when he was named president of the Chase National Bank. In 1935, Aldrich became its chairman of the board, a position in which he remained until 1953. Aldrich possessed a vision of national economic planning, as long as it was part of the private sector, and in 1933 he joined the Business Advisory Council, a New Deal group of businessmen ready to advise the federal government on economic matters. Aldrich felt comfortable with the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) and urged its extension in 1934 and 1935, just before it was declared unconstitutional in the Schechter* case. After 1934, however, he grew increasingly disenchanted with the New Deal. He opposed the Banking Act of 1935*, which he viewed as a dangerous form of bureaucratic centralization. He also fought against the “court-packing” proposal in 1937, called for an end of work relief in 1936 and 1937, and resisted the reorganization plans of 1938 and 1939. President Dwight Eisenhower named him ambassador to England in 1953. Aldrich served at the Court of St. James until 1957. He died on February 25, 1974. Reference New York Times, February 26, 1974.

ALDRICH–VREELAND ACT OF 1908 See PANIC OF 1907. ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS In 1958, President Juscelino Kubischek of Brazil proposed the creation of a development fund to boost the South American economies and eliminate a breeding ground for Communism. Fidel Castro’s triumph in Cuba gave the proposal more urgency. On August 17, 1961, at the Inter-American Conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay, President John F. Kennedy* proposed an “Alliance for Progress” through which the Organization of American States would establish, over the course of ten years, a $100 billion development fund, of which the United States would supply $20 billion. Kennedy hoped to achieve a 2.5 percent annual growth in

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Gross National Product throughout Latin America, to bring about a more equitable distribution of income, to improve public health, and to provide low-cost housing for the poor. Although the Alliance for Progress was temporarily very popular in Latin America, it soon degenerated into a politically controversial program. The United States insisted on keeping control of it, while Latin American countries wanted a more multilateral approach. The United States established an Inter-American Committee for the alliance in January 1964, but this did not improve the program. During the Lyndon Johnson administration, U.S. appropriations for the alliance declined, while bilateral aid programs were increased. The alliance gradually disappeared into the general foreign aid program of the United States. Some economists and historians have argued that the alliance’s objectives of anticommunism and social and economic reform were inherently contradictory. By the 1970s, the program was widely viewed as a failure, particularly for the lack of commitment on the part of Kennedy’s successors. Reference Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onís, The Alliance That Lost Its Way, 1970.

A LT M E Y E R , A R T H U R J O S E P H Arthur J. Altmeyer was born in De Pere, Wisconsin, on May 8, 1891. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1914; after working as a teacher and principal, he accepted an appointment as statistician for the Wisconsin Tax Committee. Altmeyer became chief statistician in 1920. He wrote The Industrial Commission in 1932 and General Accident Statistics for Wisconsin in 1933, after which President Franklin D. Roosevelt* named him to head the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) Compliance Division. After the NRA was declared unconstitutional in 1935, Altmeyer went to work on Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security*, and he became the chairman of the committee in 1937. While on the committee, he advocated the coordination of unemployment insurance programs and employment agencies, as well as extending old-age and survivors’ insurance programs to cover temporary disability. He also wanted to lower the retirement age for women to sixty and to extend coverage to millions of people exempted because they were domestic workers, self-employed, or employees of religious institutions. Altmeyer also served as a member of the Social Security* Board from 1935 to 1937, as well as as chairman of its board from 1937 to 1946. His title was later changed to commissioner of Social Security, and he served in that capacity until 1953. After leaving the federal government, Altmeyer served on a number of international social insurance commissions and taught as a visiting professor at several universities, including the University of Utah, the University of Chicago, and the University of Wisconsin. Altmeyer died on October 17, 1972. Reference New York Times, October 18, 1972.

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A M A L G A M AT E D A S S O C I AT I O N O F I R O N , S T E E L , AND TIN WORKERS The first union of iron workers was established in Pittsburgh in 1858, and they called themselves the Sons of Vulcan. It was a strong local union, because its membership consisted of the highly skilled iron puddlers. Other local unions began to appear, and in 1872 several of them combined to form the Associated Brotherhood of Iron and Steel Heaters, Rollers, and Roughers. One year later, a rival union—the National Union of Rollers, Roughers, Catchers, and Hookers of the United States— was formed. The two groups merged into the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers of the United States (AA) in 1876. AA membership had increased to 25,000 by 1891, but its strike at Homestead*, Pennsylvania, against the Carnegie* Steel Works in 1892 was an unmitigated disaster for the union. Membership recovered somewhat in the early 1900s, but U.S. Steel* refused to bargain with the union at all until 1937. The steel strike of 1919 was also a failure for the AA. Membership had fallen to fewer than 10,000 members by 1936, when the new Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) formed the Steel Workers Organizing Committee to organize the steel industry. The AA had little role in what turned out to be the successful organization of the industry. In 1942, the AA dissolved and was replaced by the new CIO union—the United Steelworkers of America*. Reference Jesse S. Robinson, The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers, 1920.

A M A L G A M AT E D C L O T H I N G W O R K E R S O F AMERICA The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) was established in New York City in 1914 to represent workers in the men’s clothing industry. At the time, the United Garment Workers (UGW) dominated the labor movement, but workers, especially immigrants, were tired of its conservatism and craft union bias. The bitter Hart, Schaffner, and Marx strike of 1910–1911 exacerbated their discontent. Sidney Hillman* became the first president of the ACWA. The ACWA steadily challenged the UGW, and in 1936, Hillman led the ACWA into the newly established Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO). Over the years, the ACWA successfully organized the entire industry, and, by the early 1970s, more than 95 percent of the workers in the men’s clothing industry—a total of more than 370,000 people—were ACWA members. In 1976, it merged with the Textile Workers Union of America to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. In 1995, it merged with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). By 2004, UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE), thus becoming UNITE HERE. References Jacob Hardman, ed., The Amalgamated—Today and Tomorrow, 1959. George H. Soule, Sidney Hillman, Labor Statesman, 1959.

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AMAZON Amazon.com, Inc., is a U.S- based electronic commerce corporation headquartered in Seattle, Washington, known for being the world’s largest online retailer. Established in 1994, primarily as an online book retailer, it later diversified to include other items such as DVDs, CDs, software, video games, electronic equipment, and other retail merchandise. Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in July as Cadabra. When it went online in 1995, it was named Amazon in honor of the South American river. Since its inception, it has expanded internationally, with nationally specific retail sites in the United States, Britain, France Australia, and other major markets. More recent innovations by the company have been the Amazon Kindle e-book reader and the Kindle Fire tablet computer, both which have revolutionized the publishing industry and set the stage for Amazon as a major distributor of online publishing. It is also a major distributor of digital film and music downloads, directly competing with Netflix and Apple* in those particular markets. References Richard L. Brandt, One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com, 2011. Brad Stone, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, 2013.

A M E R I C A N A G R I C U LT U R A L M O V E M E N T During the 1970s, American farmers, especially small family farmers, found themselves caught between falling commodity prices and rising costs. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 and 1974, along with geometric increases in the price of oil throughout the decade, imposed crushing costs for fuel, fertilizers, and chemicals. In 1977, Eugene and Derral Schroder, Alvin Jenkins, and Jerry Wright established the American Agricultural Movement (AAM) in Springfield, Colorado, to address the problems faced by the farming community. In June 1978, the AAM held a convention in Washington, D.C., and asked the Carter administration to raise the parity* ratio on farm commodities to 100 percent, which would have guaranteed farmers an income equal to the cost of production, plus a reasonable profit. President Jimmy Carter refused to support their demand, arguing that such massive government subsidies would be inflationary. In the 1980s, tens of thousands of farmers went bankrupt when they could not support the high-interest working capital loans that they had taken out to maximize production. The AAM then gained some more ground. By 1983, there were more than 600 AAM chapters in forty states. To dramatize the plight of farmers and AAM demands, AAM leaders tried to sponsor production strikes and massive farm boycotts of livestock, grain, and equipment purchases, but they were unsuccessful. More spectacular and visible were the AAM “tractorcades” of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when farmers would participate in long parades of slow-moving tractors through major American cities. It was difficult for farmers to wield much political power in the United States, however. By the late 1980s, farmers constituted only 4 percent of the population, and production was increasingly dominated by large corporate concerns. Nevertheless, the American Agricultural Movement was probably the most politically visible of all farm interest groups in the 1970s and 1980s. By the twenty-first

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century, despite being out of the limelight, the organization still existed, albeit without the numbers and popularity it enjoyed in its heyday. Reference “When the Tractors Came Back to Washington,” Nation’s Business 67 (March 1979): 46–47.

A M E R I C A N A S S O C I AT I O N F O R O L D A G E SECURITY The American Association for Old Age Security was established in 1927 by Abraham Epstein* to promote comprehensive old-age social insurance at the federal level. Epstein had spent years as the director of the Pennsylvania Old Age Pension Commission, and he was convinced that federal legislation was necessary. Through research, publication, advertising, and lobbying* model bills in Congress, the American Association for Old Age Security hoped to implement a social security program for older citizens. The political atmosphere in the 1920s was inhospitable to social security legislation, but the coming of the New Deal* in the 1930s and the strength of Dr. Francis Townsend’s campaign for federal pensions gave the American Association for Old Age Security the momentum it needed to help bring about passage of the Social Security* Act of 1935. Reference Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935, 1968.

A M E R I C A N A S S O C I AT I O N O F R E T I R E D P E R S O N S The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is one of the most powerful lobbying* and interest groups in the United States. Founded in 1958 to promote the political, social, and economic interests of people older than 55, the AARP has grown dramatically as the American population has aged. In 2015 the AARP claimed a membership of more than 37 million members. It publishes a bimonthly magazine entitled AARP: The Magazine (formerly Modern Maturity). Because most of its members are middle-class and rather well-to-do, and because they have high voting rates, the AARP has enormous political clout. Generally, the AARP has lobbied strongly in favor of equal rights for the elderly, truth-in-advertising legislation for companies marketing products to the elderly, and improved health care, as well as against any cuts in Social Security or Medicare benefits. The AARP has also successfully campaigned against compulsory retirement laws and regulations in the public and private sector. Reference Richard Phelan, “Empire Builders,” Forbes 141 (February 22, 1988), 36–37.

A M E R I C A N B I M E TA L L I C L E A G U E The American Bimetallic League was established in 1889 in St. Louis, Missouri, to promote the demand for the unlimited coinage of silver. Its leading political proponent was Congressman Richard “Silver Dick” Bland*, a Democrat from Missouri,

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but its major financial supporters were silver-mining interests in the western states. Adoniram J. Wamer served as president of the American Bimetallic League. In 1890, the league played a key role in the congressional passage of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act*, which permitted the Department of the Treasury to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver every month. When the Depression of 1893* resulted in repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, the American Bimetallic League campaigned for its restitution. William H. Harvey, who wrote the best-selling book Coin’s Financial School that year, was a publicist for the American Bimetallic League. In 1896, the American Bimetallic League established the American Bimetallic Party to promote its goal of remonetizing silver. The American Bimetallic Party evolved into the Silver Republican Party*. When the Democrats nominated William Jennings Bryan* for president in 1896 and endorsed free coinage of silver, the American Bimetallic League and the Silver Republican Party endorsed him, too. But when William McKinley* and the Republicans defeated Bryan in the election of 1896, the free silver issue died a quick death, and the American Bimetallic League was dissolved. References Charles Hoffman, The Depression of the Nineties, 1970. Lawrence J. Scheidler, “Silver and Politics, 1893–1896,” Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1936.

A M E R I C A N C O L O N I Z AT I O N S O C I E T Y In 1816, Robert Finley, a Presbyterian minister, founded the American Colonization Society. He believed it would solve the problems of slavery* and the place of black people in American society. Finley proposed sending freed slaves back to Africa. Because it seemed a peaceful way of addressing the problem of slavery, the American Colonization Society attracted considerable attention and, for a time, the support of such prominent Americans as Thomas Jefferson*, Henry Clay*, and James Monroe. Most of the financial support for the American Colonization Society came from slave-owners in Kentucky, Maryland, and Virginia. They felt that large numbers of emancipated slaves living in the United States would inevitably undermine the institution of slavery. In 1821, the American Colonization Society bought a strip of land known as Cape Mesurado on the west coast of Africa. They named the region Monrovia (after President Monroe) and hoped to resettle freed slaves there. The scheme was largely stillborn, because Clay failed to secure congressional support for a compensated emancipation scheme that would have provided funds to purchase slaves and send them to Africa. Congress balked, because the scheme was too expensive. Moreover, relatively few freed slaves were interested in relocating to Africa. By 1820, most of them had been born in the United States. Throughout the 1820s, the American Colonization Society promoted the relocation idea, but by 1831, only 1,420 black people had moved to Monrovia. In 1847, the black settlers of Monrovia declared their independence from the United States and launched the Republic of Liberia. The American Colonization Society was finally dissolved in 1912.

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Reference Philip J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865, 1961.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH (AEI) The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a nonprofit* organization that conducts scholarly research with the aim of strengthening what it considers to be the most vital foundations of American freedoms: free enterprise, limited government, a strong national defense system, and a vigorous foreign policy. Founded in 1943, the AEI hosts approximately 50 resident scholars and fellows at its Washington, D.C., location and also maintains connections to an additional 100 adjunct scholars on campuses in the United States and abroad. The AEI does not take partisan positions on policy issues or pending legislation. The research conducted by AEI in support of its goals covers a wide range of topics, including domestic policy, foreign affairs, trade, economic policy, taxation, and legal policy. The findings are printed in dozens of books and hundreds of articles published by the AEI each year. In addition, the AEI publishes the journal The American Enterprise, which appears bimonthly. AEI scholars provide expert testimony to congressional committees and are frequently interviewed and cited by the media. The AEI is governed by a twenty-six-member board of trustees, and the topics selected for research are reviewed by an advisory council. ABC-CLIO References American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (www.aei.org). Guide to Careers in Child and Family Policy (www.igpa.uiuc.edu). NIRA’s World Directory of Think Tanks (http://gate.nira.go.jp/ice/tt-info/nwdtt99/c1204. html).

A M E R I C A N FA R M B U R E A U F E D E R AT I O N The American Farm Bureau Federation, under the leadership of President Edward A. O’Neal and Vice President Earl C. Smith, was the most influential farm organization in the United States during the New Deal*. By 1933, the farm bureau had evolved from a local educational agency into a national political organization. The first local bureau was formed in 1911 and the first state federation of county bureaus in 1915. These early associations were dedicated to the dissemination of scientific methods in farming and to improved standards of rural living. The Smith–Lever Act* of 1914 created the federal–state Agricultural Extension Service and provided grants for the states to support county agricultural extension agents; these generally worked in close cooperation with local farm bureaus. The formation of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) in 1919–1920 united the state organizations. The main purpose of the national federation was to influence federal agricultural policy.

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With the coming of the Great Depression*, membership in the farm bureau dropped to just 163,000, but the organization carried a firm set of tenets into the 1930s. The first was that it should speak primarily to questions of economic policy, not to social concerns. The AFBF represented commercial farmers, generally the more prosperous ones. Its chief goal was “parity*”—the reestablishment, through political lobbying*, of the purchasing power of farmers to what it had been from 1909 to 1914. The AFBF quickly swung its support to the concept of a voluntary domestic allotment program to curtail production, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture* wrote the goal of parity into its legislation. When the Agricultural Adjustment Act* went to Congress in 1933, the AFBF supported its passage. After the rejection of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration by the Supreme Court in 1936, the AFBF labored to ensure that the program’s successor, the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act* of 1936, retained effective controls over production. The AFBF continued to work for the principle of parity achieved through production controls during the passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938; it thereby obtained the issuance of “parity payments” to supplement farmers’ incomes when prices fell below parity levels. The AFBF had prospered during the 1930s. Its membership, which had stood at 163,000 in 1933, continued to grow, reaching 1.3 million by 1948. During the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, however, the AFBF, under the successive direction of Edward O’Neal, Allan B. Kline, and then Charles Shauman, changed its focus to oppose high, fixed government price controls. Because the AFBF represented the interests of large farmers who enjoyed good capitalization, the organization came to support the notion of free-market farming—that is, the reduction of the subsidies that kept marginal producers in business. In the 1960s, when the Kennedy* and Johnson* administrations increased such subsidies, the AFBF maintained its opposition. It also praised the efforts of the Eisenhower, Ford, and Reagan* administrations to increase farm exports. By the mid-1980s, the membership of the AFBF stood at 3.3 million. In 2003, the AFBF relocated to Washington D.C., from Park Ridge, Illinois. It has maintained its position as a powerful lobbying group beholden to agricultural interests. References Samuel R. Berger, Dollar Harvest: The Story of the Farm Bureau, 1971. Christina M. Campbell, The Farm Bureau and the New Deal: A Study of the Making of National Farm Policy, 1933–1940, 1962.

A M E R I C A N F E D E R AT I O N O F L A B O R The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was the first successful national labor union in American history. In 1886, thirteen national craft unions, composed of skilled workers, established the American Federation of Labor and selected Samuel Gompers* as president. Under Gompers’s leadership, which was characterized by conservative economic objectives (“bread-and-butter unionism”) and astute political timing, the AFL steadily gained ground in the late 1880s and early 1890s as the rival Knights of Labor* lost ground. The AFL organized skilled workers only,

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offered complete autonomy to its constituent unions, and launched labor strikes only when victory was assured. Membership increased from 297,000 in 1897 to 1,676,000 by 1904. William Green* took over the AFL presidency from Gompers in 1924, at which time AFL membership stood at 2,865,000. The early years of the Great Depression* hit the AFL hard. Membership dropped by 865,000 from 1930 to 1933. In addition, in 1934, John L. Lewis* and others sought to bring mass production industries under the union umbrella of the nascent Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The AFL viewed the CIO as a rival union and in 1936 expelled it, along with its 561,000 members. Nevertheless, because of the protective labor legislation passed by the New Deal* during the 1930s, AFL membership bounced back to more than 4 million members by the end of the decade. By that time, its own political agenda had become more progressive. The AFL continued to grow during the 1940s, and in 1952, George Meany* became head of the union. He then engineered its merger with the CIO in 1955. References Philip Taft, The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers, 1957. Philip Taft, The A.F. of L. from the Death of Gompers to the Merger, 1959.

A M E R I C A N F E D E R AT I O N O F L A B O R – C O N G R E S S O F I N D U S T R I A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N S In 1955, after agreeing to discontinue the practice of raiding rival unions for members, the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) under George Meany and the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) under Walter Reuther* agreed to merge into a single national union. The Teamsters Union was expelled from the AFL-CIO in 1957, and the United Automobile Workers* withdrew in 1968. But despite those losses, the AFL-CIO remains the largest labor union in the United States and one of the largest in the world. Its membership in the early 1980s exceeded 12.5 million people. By that time, however, because of the rapid transition of the American economy away from heavy manufacturing to the service, high-tech, and information industries, the AFL-CIO membership has been slowly declining. By 2010, despite its dwindling numbers, it continues to be a powerful voice for labor in Washington, D.C., as a political lobby. Reference Joseph G. Rayback, A History of American Labor, 1966.

A M E R I C A N F E D E R AT I O N O F T E A C H E R S A group of teachers formed the Chicago Federation of Teachers in 1897, and in 1902 received a charter from the American Federation of Labor*. Under the leadership of Charles B. Stillman, teachers from around the country formed the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in 1916. The new union had a struggle, and by 1930, its membership was only 5,000. The union grew, however, under the protection of the New Deal*, especially after yellow-dog contracts* had been prohibited.

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By 1940, the AFT claimed 20,000 members. After World War II, the AFT adopted a more militant, strike-oriented posture, especially as teacher wages increasingly fell behind those of the private sector. In fact, the AFT had to abandon its traditional no-strike pledge because its own locals were going out on strike. The most militant of them was the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. Led by Albert Shanker, the union won collective bargaining rights in city schools in 1962. By the 1980s, the membership of the AFT had grown to more than 500,000. References Robert I. Braun, Teachers and Power, 1972. Albert Shanker, in Labor Relations in Education, ed. Bruce Cooper, 1992.

A M E R I C A N M E D I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N During the mid-1800s, as scientific knowledge of the human body advanced, medical science emerged from the realm of quasi-science. Physicians began to organize as a means of distinguishing themselves from faith healers, homeopaths, and others who claimed healing powers. The American Medical Association (AMA) was established in 1847, and it was incorporated fifty years later as a federation of all the state medical societies. In the twentieth century, the AMA became one of the most powerful political and economic interest groups in the United States. It has been dedicated to promoting medical knowledge, establishing and maintaining high standards for medical education and physician licensing, and perpetuating the fee-for-service system in the United States. Traditionally, the AMA has opposed all proposals for national health insurance. Critics charge that the AMA’s real campaign is simply to augment the already high incomes of American physicians. Reference Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 1986.

A M E R I C A N M O T O R S C O R P O R AT I O N The American Motors Corporation (AMC) was formed in 1954 from the merger of the Hudson Motor Company and the Nash Motor Company. Only through consolidation could the smaller automobile manufacturing companies hope to compete with the Big Three: General Motors*, Ford*, and Chrysler*. George Mason became the president of the new company, and George Romney succeeded him. In 1958, Romney abandoned the Nash and Hudson models, both of which were losing large amounts of money. Romney emphasized the Rambler model, and within two years he had doubled AMC sales to more than 400,000 units a year. Romney left in 1962. The decade of the 1960s was a difficult time for the company, with sales steadily declining to about 250,000 units a year. Roy Chapin Jr.: revived AMC by introducing the idea of a subcompact car—the Hornet. The Big Three, however, soon introduced their own subcompacts, and AMC continued to stagnate. AMC surged ahead in 1970, by purchasing the Kaiser Jeep Corporation, and in 1974, by eliminating all of its large models. Still, AMC could not compete.

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It survived only because of huge investments of capital from Renault, a French company, beginning in 1978. By the mid-1980s, Renault held a controlling interest in AMC. In 1987, it sold that interest to Chrysler Corporation* for $600 million. Reference Tom Mahoney, The Story of George Romney, 1960.

A M E R I C A N R A I LWAY U N I O N In 1892, during an address to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Eugene V. Debs* resigned from the union and announced his plans to form an industrial union for all railroad workers, skilled and unskilled. The next year, in Chicago, he established the American Railway Union. Debs called for higher wages, shorter hours, better working conditions, and improved insurance policies. The American Railway Union grew rapidly and within a year boasted 140,000 members. But that year, Debs called a nationwide strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company. The strike turned into a nationwide boycott against Pullman* cars, and management turned to the federal government for assistance. The U.S. Attorney General, Richard Olney, secured an injunction* against the union on the grounds that the strike was interfering with the delivery of the U.S. mail. Debs ignored the injunction, so Olney sent federal troops into Chicago to break the strike. They crushed the strike, and Olney saw to it that Debs spent six months in jail. The entire incident convinced Debs that capitalism could not be reformed and made him a lifelong socialist*. Reference Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike, 1942.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION The American Revolution and the War for American Independence ended what historians refer to as the First British Empire. Both had a fundamental effect on the formation and subsequent development of the Second British Empire. The American Revolution and the War for American Independence are different, though overlapping, concepts. The War for American Independence involved only the limited military contest over the issue of American independence, whereas the American Revolution encompassed the longer-festering ideological alienation of Americans from Britons. Accordingly, the Revolution started long before the first shot was fired at Concord, Massachusetts. Chief among these alienating factors were economic, political, and constitutional differences. Economic friction resulted from a growing competition between the mother country and its colonies. In the 1760s, these led to new commercial regulations and restrictions on the colonial economy and a renewed determination by Britain to enforce the long-ignored and oft-evaded Acts of Trade and Navigation. Political and constitutional differences evolved around the concept of self-government, an American colonial tradition of long standing. Americans

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identified with the constitutional history of the mother country, particularly with concessions about representation won by England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688. The British empire was significantly altered in 1763. With the successful conclusion of the French and Indian War, Britain acquired new territories. For the first time, a large number of alien people, some 60,000 French Canadians, had to be absorbed into the empire. The shift from a basically commercial empire to a territorial empire required fresh imperial thinking and new responses. Aside from William Pitt the Elder, no innovative thinkers about broad imperial themes were able to adjust policies constructively, and some of the responses by tradition-bound ministers and unreformed parliaments alienated the older colonies. For example, one early policy was to raise a revenue in America to defend the enlarged empire, as well as to keep a standing army in America for this purpose. Pontiac’s Indian Rebellion in the spring of 1763 and the Royal Proclamation* of October 7, 1763, temporarily closed the American West to white settlement. Settlement of the West had been a major objective of American efforts during the French and Indian War. What was asserted to be temporary policy appeared to become permanent by the Quebec Act of 1774. Although the latter did deal intelligently with the new problem of an alien group (French Canadians) within the British empire, the act’s content convinced suspicious Americans that it was a coercive measure. The Northwest was attached administratively to the French-speaking province of Quebec and was reserved for Indians and the fur trade. No provisions were included for a representative government for Quebec, and Roman Catholicism was granted official recognition. It looked as though England wanted to thwart American agricultural expansion, undermine the principle of representative government, and surround Protestant America with Papists. Furthermore, much of the British legislation of the 1760s requiring Americans to defray imperial expenses (such as the Sugar Act*, the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, and the Townshend Duties Act) violated American conceptions of the rights of Englishmen. Despite frequent references to King George III in the Declaration of Independence, rebellion, when it came, was aimed primarily against Parliament, not the King. Colonials believed that the empire was not a unitary empire with all power vested in Parliament, but that it was instead a federal empire with sovereignty divided among equal units. Indeed, Americans were moving toward a commonwealth-of-nations concept, with the idea of coordinate legislatures under a common sovereign. For a time, Americans acknowledged Parliament’s right to legislate on external imperial matters while asserting that the sole right over internal taxation resided with the representative colonial assemblies. That time had passed by July 1776. Britons viewed the empire very differently. To them, the empire was unitary, and since the Glorious Revolution, the British Parliament was considered supreme over all—king, empire, everything. This was good Whig doctrine in Britain. Even George III accepted the Whig view and expressed no desire to restore to the monarchy the powers it had enjoyed under the Stuart kings of the previous century. Both king and Parliament clearly considered the various colonial assemblies subordinate to Parliament—and colonials inferior to Britons. Obduracy by king, Parliament, and other Britons led to military conflict with colonial Americans and the collapse of the First British Empire.

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References John R. Alden, A History of the American Revolution, 1969. Bemard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 1967.

AMERICAN STOCK EXCHANGE Historians estimate that the American Stock Exchange had its beginnings in the late 1840s when traders began buying and selling shares in the streets of lower Manhattan. It soon earned the nickname “The Curb,” and by 1908 it was formally known as the New York Curb Agency. It moved indoors on Wall Street* in 1921, and in 1929 it adopted the name the New York Curb Exchange*. Unlike the New York Stock Exchange, which historically handled only the most reputable firms, the New York Curb Exchange dealt in the securities of much smaller, and often more marginal, concerns. In 1953 it became known as the American Stock Exchange. By the late 1980s, the American Stock Exchange was trading more than 1,000 issues, most of which represented reliable corporate entities. NYSE Euronext acquired AMEX for $260 million in stock on October 1, 2008. NYSE Euronext announced that the AMEX would be renamed the NYSE Alternext U.S. after being merged with Alternext. In March 2009, NYSE Alternext U.S. was changed to NYSE Amex Equities, and three years later, on May 10, 2012, NYSE Amex Equities changed its name to NYSE MKT LLC. Reference Robert Sobel, AMEX: History of the American Stock Exchange, 1972.

AMERICAN SYSTEM During the late 1810s and throughout the 1820s, the National Republicans, led by Senator Henry Clay* of Kentucky and President John Quincy Adams*, advocated a comprehensive program of federal legislation designed to unite the various sections of the country. Clay called the ambitious program the “American System”*. He envisioned a high tariff on foreign goods in order to stimulate American industry, which in turn would improve industrial employment and increase business profits. He also proposed vigorous federal development of roads, canals, and river systems in order to be able to deliver goods all over the country. Food would head from west to east and manufactured goods from east to west. The Second Bank of the United States* would be strengthened to improve the financial system and provide the necessary development capital. Although Clay was not able to implement his American System during the 1820s, it did become the policy of the Whig Party and later the Republican Party in the antebellum period. Reference Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The Life of Henry Clay, 1937.

AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) is the global leader in telecommunications. The company was founded in 1885 by Theodore N. Vail. At the time, it was a subsidiary of the American Bell Telephone Company with responsibility for running

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the longline operations of telephones. In 1900, the entire corporate structure was reorganized, and AT&T took control of the parent company. From that time until the early 1970s, AT&T expanded steadily, both in geography and in technology, creating the world’s most sophisticated telephone system but also branching out into weapons technology and space and satellite communication systems and developing global radio and transoceanic cable communication systems. The company became a horizontally* and vertically* integrated corporation, dominating the industry from top to bottom. Not only did AT&T maintain its own research corporation—Bell Telephone Laboratories—but in the Western Electric Company it had its own product manufacturing unit. In addition, AT&T maintained twenty-two local companies that had regional monopolies of telephone service all over the United States. In 1974, the U.S. government sued AT&T for monopolizing the telephone industry. The suit wound its way through the federal courts until 1982–1983, when AT&T agreed to divest its twenty-two local companies as of January 1, 1984. Those twenty-two local companies were consolidated into seven holding companies—Nynex, Bell Atlantic, Ameritech, BellSouth, Southwestern Bell, US West, and Pacific Telesis. They were known as “baby Bells” and the former parent company as “Ma Bell.” AT&T retained Western Electric and Bell Telephone Laboratories. The effect of the decision was to open the way for more competition in telephone service, especially for the long-distance markets. By the 1980s, AT&T was also a leader in linking up communications systems with computer technologies. The company strengthened its position in the computer field in 1991 by purchasing the NCR Corporation for $7.4 billion. By 2013, AT&T became the largest provider of mobile and landline phones in the United States. It has also expanded into broadband television services. Reference Harry M. Shooshan III, Disconnecting Bell: The Impact of the AT&T Divestiture, 1984.

A M E R I C A N S F O R P R O S P E R I T Y F O U N D AT I O N (AFP) Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) is an antitaxation advocacy group founded in 2004 and financed by David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers who own Koch Industries of Wichita, Kansas. The Kochs also founded (and funded) AFP’s predecessor, Americans for a Sound Economy, the Cato Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, and numerous other free enterprise, libertarian*-oriented think tanks. AFP is a 501(c) group, which means that they do not disclose their donor list. The group’s stated policy goals include “removing unnecessary barriers to entrepreneurship and opportunity” and “restoring fairness to our judicial system by stemming the tide toward ‘overcriminalization’ of economic activity spurred by overactive attorneys general,” as well as “pointing out evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse,” tax reduction, and halting “the encroachment of government in the economic lives of citizens.” AFP provides a forum for conservative candidates running for office, hosting political dinners and policy summits. In the summer of 2009, AFP created Patients United Now to organize hundreds of rallies against President Barack Obama’s*

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proposed health care reforms. The group also promotes Tea Party movement* candidates, offering training sessions in grassroots political activities. Beginning in 2008, the group has also hosted the yearly RightOnline conference. RightOnline was intended to create a forum for conservative bloggers and activists that was similar to the liberal Netroots Nation conference. Attendees participate in training events and workshops and attend speeches by notable conservatives. Americans for Prosperity has funded state legislative and gubernatorial candidates who were committed to limiting the role of public-sector unions, opposing reforms in minimum wage laws, opposing new health care regulations, reducing taxes, and limiting regulations on businesses more generally. In particular, the organization contributed to the 2010 gubernatorial campaign of Scott Walker in Wisconsin as well as to those of numerous other state legislative candidates. Shortly after the newly elected Republicans were sworn into office in January 2011, Walker and the Republican legislature attempted to ban collective bargaining for public-sector unions (with the exception of firefighters and police officers). Large protests followed, and the Koch brothers’ role in funding federal elections became a topic of media scrutiny. AFP began to run ads in Wisconsin and other midwestern states that portrayed public-sector union members as enjoying unfair privileges that workers in other sectors do not receive, as well as of failing to do their fair share to reduce state deficits. AFP and its benefactors are concerned about workplace regulations, minimum wage laws, health care laws, and environmental regulations* on industry, particularly those aimed at global climate change* (most notably, cap and trade). AFP also seeks to reduce corporate and individual tax rates and to expand oil exploration and production in the United States. Robert North Roberts, Scott John Hammond, and Valerie A. Sulfaro References Americans for Prosperity, www.americansforprosperity.org. Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey, and Neela Banerjee, “Koch Brothers Now at Heart of GOP Power,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 2011. Paul Harris, “The Koch Brothers: All the Influence Money Can Buy,” Guardian, April 8, 2011. Kris Hundley, “Billionaire’s Role in Hiring Decisions at Florida State University Raises Questions,” St. Petersburg Times, May 10, 2011. Jane Mayer, “Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging a War against Obama,” The New Yorker, August 30, 2010. Robert North Roberts, Scott John Hammond, and Valerie A. Sulfaro, Presidential Campaigns, Slogans, Issues, and Platforms: The Complete Encyclopedia, 2012.

AMTRAK Amtrak is the trade name for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, which provides noncommuter intercity rail passenger service throughout the United States. Although the U.S. government owns controlling amounts of Amtrak stock,

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there is also a minority of private stockholders. Because of the automobile boom in the United States, the economic viability of passenger rail service steadily declined until the United States faced the likelihood of being the only major country in the world without such service. Congress passed the National Railroad Passenger Act of 1970 to guarantee that service, and Amtrak eventually bought up more than 24,000 miles of routes. Throughout the 1970s, Amtrak operated at huge losses, but during the 1980s, modernization of equipment and increased ridership have improved its outlook. By the late 1980s, nearly two-thirds of its operating budget came from fares and one-third from federal subsidies. In the 2000s and 2010s, Amtrak ridership increased in response to the rising cost of automobiles and fuel. However, despite growing amounts of users, the system still relied on Congressional funding to operate. Newer innovations, such as free Wi-Fi service and e-ticketing, were also implemented for passenger convenience. Reference Harold A. Edmonson, Journey to Amtrak, 1972.

ANNAPOLIS CONVENTION Because of obvious weaknesses in the form of government established by the Articles of Confederation*, a number of prominent Americans began flirting with the idea of constitutional revision. Virginia took the lead in January 1786 by inviting all thirteen states to meet in Annapolis in May to discuss a number of problems, but especially the difficulties with international and interstate commerce, including the problems of exit and entrance tariffs in each state and their effects on the ultimate prices of goods. Only Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia actually sent representatives to the meeting. The Annapolis Convention convened on September 11, 1786. They discussed a variety of problems, including obstacles to interstate trade and the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, but their most important proposal was to hold a general meeting of all the states to meet in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to consider the question of constitutional revision. Alexander Hamilton* of New York, who was committed to the creation of a much stronger central government, took the lead in making the proposal. In February 1787, Congress approved the proposal and announced that the sole purpose of the meeting would be to revise the Articles of Confederation. Reference Peter S. Onuf, The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787, 1983.

ANTITRUST The term “antitrust” is a political reference to government efforts to break up corporate monopolies in order to maintain competition and free trade*. During the late nineteenth century, as large horizontally and vertically integrated corporations like the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey came to dominate entire markets,

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reformers turned to the federal government as a counterweight. Public policy during the era of the Populists, Progressives, and New Dealers used antitrust policies to promote economic justice and fair prices. The primary pieces of antitrust legislation were the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890, the Clayton Antitrust Act* of 1914, and the Public Utility Holding Company Act* of 1935. Over the years, prominent Americans also debated the relative merits of certain antitrust policies, especially the New Freedom* notions of people like Woodrow Wilson* and Louis Brandeis* and the New Nationalism* ideas of Theodore Roosevelt* and Herbert Croly*. References Lewis Q. Gould, Reform and Regulation, 1986. Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism, 1963. Robert Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 1962.

A P PA L A C H I A N R E G I O N A L D E V E L O P M E N T A C T O F 1965 Congress passed the Appalachian Regional Development Act in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s* Great Society* “war on poverty.” The legislation was designed to provide approximately $250 million, along with subsequent appropriations of another $1 billion, to develop roads, highways, and water projects throughout the twelve states in the Appalachian mountain chain. The money was also to be used for conservation projects, public recreational facilities, health care facilities, wildlife refuges, and erosion prevention. Although the program as outlined under the provisions of the 1965 act ended in 1975, many of its programs were continued in subsequent legislation. Reference Niles M. Hansen, Rural Poverty and the Urban Crisis: A Strategy for Regional Development, 1970.

APPLE Apple Inc, is a U.S.-based multinational corporation* with headquarters in Cupertino, California. Apple has developed and sold personal computers, software, and smartphones*, most notably the Apple Mac line of computers and the iPhone. It has also innovated in the fields of tablets and music players—respectively, with the iPad and the iPod. Steve Jobs*, Steve Wosniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. The company was specifically formed to sell personal computers. Initially incorporated on January 3, 1977, as Apple Computer, Inc, it was later renamed Apple, Inc., on January 9, 2007, in recognition of its diversification. By 2013, it expanded to 408 retail stores in fourteen countries in addition to the online Apple Store and iTunes Store. It has also expanded as a major player in the smartphone market through the development of the iPhone. Despite the death of Steve Jobs in October 5, 2011, the company has remained a prominent player in the sale of personal computers, smartphones, and tablets internationally.

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References Water Issacson, Steve Jobs, 2011. Frank Rose, West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer, 1989.

ARAB OIL EMBARGO OF 1973–1974 At the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, in which the Israelis inflicted a decisive military defeat on Arab forces, the oil-producing nations of the Persian Gulf decided to place an embargo on all petroleum shipments to the United States. They correctly perceived that American foreign policy was decidedly pro-Israeli. The U.S. economy was particularly vulnerable to the boycott. During the previous decade, American oil production had declined in the face of the much cheaper Middle Eastern oil and of federal price controls on domestically produced oil and natural gas. The Arab embargo, which lasted until 1974, caused skyrocketing oil prices—up from $3 a barrel to $10 a barrel within months—and recession in the economy, since a huge proportion of consumer purchasing power went to oil consumption. As a result of the embargo, the United States began taking another look at the Arab–Israeli conflict and at least began to think about a national energy policy. Reference John M. Blair, The Control of Oil, 1976.

ARBITRAGE The term “arbitrage” is used by economists to describe a process by which traders attempt to exploit price differentials in various financial markets. Arbitrage can be used in a variety of ways, but it usually involves differentials in interest rates, securities prices, commodity prices, foreign exchange rates, and gold and silver prices. The arbitrager attempts to purchase lower-priced assets in one market and then almost instantaneously sell them, usually electronically, in another market. Although the practice of arbitrage has been going on for a long time, the rise of computers and electronic communications in a global financial market has put a premium on speed and the rapid processing of buy and sell orders. Even momentary delays can have catastrophic consequences for arbitrage investors. In the 1980s, a new practice known as “risk arbitrage” appeared in the United States. Risk arbitrage is essentially a form of stock speculation in which an investor, anticipating a corporate merger or takeover of one company by another, purchases stock in the company to be taken over. Since a takeover will usually drive up the price of the company’s stock, huge profits are possible. The financial pages of American newspapers during the 1980s had headlines about the bold risk arbitraging of people like T. Boone Pickens or Carl Icahn. Risk arbitrage, however, also led to the practice of insider trading, in which involved parties illegally exchange information about upcoming mergers and takeovers to remove the risk from arbitraging. Scandals involving people such as Ivan Boesky and Michael Milliken were also headlines in the 1980s and 1990s.

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Reference Richard Hirsch, “Arbitrage: A Tool for Traders,” American Metal Market (February 20, 1991), 12–13.

ARMOUR, PHILIP DANFORTH A native of Wisconsin who was born in 1832, Philip Armour went into the meatpacking business with his brothers in 1863. The Civil War provided them with an unprecedented opportunity. With more than a million men under arms and in the field, there was a huge demand for canned meat. They went into business to meet that demand. Seven years later, they founded the Armour Meat Packing Company and shifted their operations to Chicago, the center of the meatpacking business in the United States. They constructed a state-of-the-art meatpacking plant in which live cattle were delivered directly to the plant and slaughtered and quartered in an assembly line operation, with a host of by-products being converted to other uses. When refrigerated railroad cars came on line later, Armour shipped beef all over the country. By the late 1890s, company sales exceeded $200 million annually, and the Armours had become multimillionaires. Armour made even more money during the Spanish–American War* by supplying beef to the troops, but he was heartbroken by charges that he had fed the soldiers low-quality, often rotting meat and so-called “embalmed beef.” He died in 1901. Reference Henry Leech and J. C. Carroll, Armour and His Times, 1938.

“ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY” The term “Arsenal of Democracy” was coined during World War II to describe the prodigious capacity of the American economy. During the war, the United States supplied itself and the other Allied powers with 275,000 aircraft, 75,000 tanks, 650,000 artillery pieces, 55,239,000 tons of merchant shipping, and 1.5 million tons of synthetic rubber. Neither the Germans nor the Japanese came anywhere near matching American production. As a result, the Allies enjoyed a decided logistical and material advantage. References Bruce Catton, The War Lords in Washington, 1948. Eliot Janeway, The Struggle for Survival, 1951.

A R T I C L E S O F C O N F E D E R AT I O N After several years of disputes between various states over the ownership of western lands, the Articles of Confederation—the first constitution of the United States of America—went into effect in 1781. Because of fears of centralized political power, the framers of the Articles intentionally made the new government weak. It could not levy taxes or tariffs; it had no executive branch; congressmen had to stand for

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v.

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reelection every year; no individual could serve in Congress for more than three years at a stretch; and, perhaps worst of all, it could not be amended without unanimous agreement. As time passed, however, it became clear that the government was too weak. It was chronically without funds, could not regulate commerce, and proved unable to maintain domestic order. When Shays’s Rebellion* erupted in western Massachusetts in 1786, the federal government did not have the funds or the power to assist in suppressing the rebellion. Conservatives who were worried about “domestic tranquility” decided that a new constitution would have to be written to give the central government more power. That decision led to the Constitutional Convention* in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. The Articles of Confederation went out of effect when the new Constitution was ratified. Reference Merrill Jensen, The New Nation, 1956.

A S H WA N D E R E T A L . v. T E N N E S S E E VA L L E Y AUTHORITY (297 U.S. 288) The Tennessee Valley Authority* (TVA), created by an act of Congress on May 18, 1933, had entered into a contract with the Alabama Power Company to buy certain transmission lines and substations from it. The lines in question extended from Wilson Dam at TVA’s Muscle Shoals plant into seven counties within a radius of fifty miles, serving a population of about 190,000 people. The TVA’s objectives were to sell its surplus hydroelectric power to the Alabama Power Company and for both to restrict the areas to be served in the sale of the power. Alabama Power stockholders then brought suit against TVA, contending that TVA’s contract with Alabama Power was injurious to their corporate interests and exceeded the power of the federal government under the Constitution. The district court found for the plaintiffs and issued a decree annulling the contract; the circuit court found that the judgment of the district court was erroneous and reversed the decision. The Supreme Court decided the case on February 17, 1936. In its deliberations, the Supreme Court also confined itself to the narrow issues considered by the circuit court of appeals. It concurred with the judgment of the circuit court, upholding the authority of the federal government to build Wilson Dam under the war and commerce powers of Congress. On the question of TVA’s constitutional authorization to dispose of the electric power generated at the Wilson Dam, the Court found that the energy produced there constituted property belonging to the United States and that the Constitution expressly gave Congress the power to dispose of such property. On the question of the authority of TVA to acquire transmission lines, the Court found no constitutional objections. In the opinion of the Court, such lines were simply a facility necessary for the disposal of surplus energy that would otherwise be wasted. References Gerald O. Dykstra and L. O. Dykstra, Selected Cases on Government and Business, 1937. Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970. Supreme Court Reporter 56 (1936): 466–480.

As s U M P t I o n o F s t At e D e B t s

A S S O C I AT I O N A L I S M From 1870 to 1920, virtually every section of American society, in attempts to cope with the Industrial Revolution, began to look outward and to form certain communities of interest. In less than fifty years, American workers, for example, organized and replaced the feeble Knights of Labor* with the more formidable railroad brotherhoods, the United Mine Workers*, and the American Federation of Labor*. During the same half-century, a new middle class emerged: Doctors, lawyers, professors, teachers, and social workers all organized into professional organizations. The American Bar Association, the American Medical Association*, the American Historical Association, the National Education Association, and the National Conference on Social Work all sought to represent the interests of their constituents. Finally, businessmen formed trade associations, chambers of commerce, and marketing cooperatives to enhance their position in the national economy. “Associationalism” was the term given to the organizational revolution that swept through the United States. By the 1920s, a number of prominent Americans, especially Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover*, saw the formation of the private associations as the dawn of a new, more rational economic system that synthesized individual entrepreneurship and corporate enterprise. Each of the associations, although confined to a particular sector of the economy, had a national perspective and realized that the structural dynamics of the modem economy required cooperative action among likeminded groups. With their faith in scientific management, technology, precision, efficiency, and order, the associations could eliminate destructive competition, enhance research and development*, and improve productivity. Finally, the associational movement provided a form of self-regulation to the economy. By emphasizing professional standards, ethical codes of conduct, and rational problem solving, the private associations were self-disciplining and self-improving. Because they policed themselves internally, they contributed to social harmony and reduced the need for government intervention. They argued that there was no need for an oppressive regulatory state; instead, the federal government should promote economic prosperity by mediating disputes between the major interest groups, providing reliable statistical data for corporate use, and promoting the formation of more and more associations. Associationalism seemed a perfect solution to the challenges of the modem economy: Individual freedom and entrepreneurial enterprise would survive, and voluntary self-regulation of a national economy would continue automatically. Reference Ellis W. Hawley, “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of an ‘Associative State,’” Journal of American History 61 (June 1974): 116–140.

A S S U M P T I O N O F S TAT E D E B T S Soon after the new United States government began operations in 1789, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton* began to call for the federal government to assume all of the outstanding debts of the individual states. Anxious to make sure

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that the new government enjoyed widespread support, Hamilton was convinced that state bondholders would have a stake in the United States if they knew they were going to be paid by the government. At the time, state debts amounted to approximately $25 million. Hamilton wanted the federal government to assume $21.5 million of those debts. Such a program would also strengthen the credit reputation of the new country. The proposal precipitated a bitter debate, primarily because the New England states, which had the largest debts, were most enthusiastic about the measure. The Southern states, which had largely taken care of their debts, were opposed, because they felt the plan would tax them to payoff northern debts. James Madison* of Virginia led the fight against the plan in Congress and on April 12, 1790, Congress narrowly defeated it. Eventually a compromise was worked out in which the assumption scheme went through as long as the location of the permanent capital of the new federal government was located in the South— between Maryland and Virginia, in an area which became known as the District of Columbia. Reference Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government, 1970.

ASTOR, JOHN JACOB John Jacob Astor was born on July 17, 1763, in Waldorf, Germany. Astor went to London when he was a teenager and in 1783 made his way to America. He became a fur trader in New York City, invested his earnings in real estate, and by 1800 had saved $250,000. Astor formed the American Fur Company in 1808 to take advantage of the fur trading opportunities opened up by the Louisiana Purchase* of 1803. During the next ten years, he drove the competition out of business and established a near monopoly over the fur trade in the southern Rocky Mountains. Astor took his profits and invested them in real estate. By the time of his death on March 29, 1848, he was the richest man in the United States, with an estate exceeding $20 million. Reference Lucy Kavaler, The Astors: An American Legend, 1966.

ASTOR, WILLIAM VINCENT Born November 15, 1891, in New York City, William Vincent Astor inherited the Astor fortune in 1912 when his father, John Jacob Astor IV, drowned with the sinking of the Titanic. He married Helen D. Huntington in 1914. Astor served as a naval officer during World War I and then returned to private business. Politically, the Astor family had long been staunchly conservative, and Astor supported Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge during the 1920s. By 1928, however, he was gravitating toward the Democrats, supporting Alfred E. Smith’s* presidential campaign. When Franklin D. Roosevelt* ran for president in 1932, Astor served on the Democratic Finance Committee and contributed $35,000 to

AtL A n t I C C o A s t L I n e R A I L R o A D

the campaign. For several years, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the New Deal. Together with Mary Harriman Rumsey and Averell Harriman, he invested in Today, a weekly news magazine. Raymond Moley, assistant secretary of state and a member of Roosevelt’s “brains trust*,” edited the magazine, and many people assumed that Today reflected White House policy. But on June 19, 1935, Roosevelt sent a message to Congress expressing the belief that the “transmission from generation to generation of vast fortunes by will, inheritance, or gift is not consistent with the ideals and sentiments of the American people.” Astor broke with the administration. Astor and Harriman merged Today with News-Week in 1937, and they named the new magazine Newsweek. During World War II, Astor served as a convoy commodore carrying war matériel to Europe and bringing wounded soldiers back home. He died on February 2, 1959. Reference Lucy Kavaler, The Astors: An American Legend, 1966.

AT C H I S O N , T O P E K A & S A N TA F E R A I LWAY The Atchison & Topeka Railroad was founded by Cyrus K. Holiday in 1859 and became the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad (ATSF) in 1863. Historically, the line linked Kansas City with Chicago but later branched out through Texas and Oklahoma, out to Albuquerque and Denver, and on to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Because of early dieselization, the value of its urban properties, and the development of its own bus lines, the ATSF became one of the country’s most profitable railroads. In 1968, the railroad created a larger company known as Santa Fe Industries to manage its oil, natural gas, timber, coal, and real estate interests, the combined value of which eventually exceeded its railroad revenues. Reference Keith L. Bryant Jr. History of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, 1974.

AT L A N T I C C O A S T L I N E R A I L R O A D After the Civil War*, the demand for fresh fruit and vegetables exploded in the North. During the 1870s and 1880s, William Thompson Walters developed the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad* by purchasing and consolidating more than 100 separate railroads. Henry Walters, William’s son, continued to build the line in the early 1900s. The line connected Richmond, Virginia, in the north with a number of large and small cities in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, including Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta, Tampa, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, and Wilmington. After World War II, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad began to lose some of its traffic. Airlines robbed it of Florida customers while long-haul trucks took up much of the fruit and vegetable freight. In 1963, to prevent further financial losses, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad merged with the Seaboard Air Line Railroad* to become the Seaboard Coast Line Company. In 1983, the name changed again to the Seaboard System.

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Reference James A. Ward, “Atlantic Coast Line Railroad,” in Keith L. Bryant Jr., ed., Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980, 1988.

AT O M I C E N E R G Y A C T O F 1 9 5 4 Ever since the use of atomic weapons on Japan during World War II, policymakers have worried about the control of radioactive material and how to exploit it for peaceful purposes. Congress wanted to regulate the research and development* of atomic weapons, not only for military purposes, but also for the health and safety of the public. Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act and President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law on August 30, 1954. The legislation established the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to oversee the development and control of atomic power; at the same time, the law set up the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Under the legislation, private power companies were authorized to build and own nuclear reactors for generating electricity. They could also own nuclear materials. The AEC could conduct its own research and development projects or license others to do so. No patents were to be issued for the development of atomic weapons, since they were considered the property of the government. The government was also the sole owner of plutonium or uranium enriched in isotope 233 or 235. An AEC license was also required to mine, transport, receive, import, or export nuclear materials. Lewis Strauss, head of the AEC, also conceived of an “Atoms for Peace” program in which nations would share technologies for using atomic energy for peaceful uses, such as medical diagnosis, cancer treatment, and production of electricity. An “Atoms for Peace” Conference met in Geneva in 1955, but the idea never really got off the ground because of the Cold War*. References Corbin Allardice and Edward R. Trapnell, The Atomic Energy Commission, 1974. United States Statutes at Large, 1954, 919–961.

AUTOMOBILE During the 1920s, the automobile became for the first time a mass consumption product in the United States. Henry Ford’s low-priced, assembly line–produced Model T, which had been introduced in 1908, had been copied by other automobile manufacturers, and suddenly the automobile became affordable to millions of families. The use of installment buying also made the purchase of an automobile a real possibility for most families. First introduced in 1918, installment buying accounted for 70 percent of new car sales by 1922. The results were astounding. New car sales increased from 4,100 in 1900 to 63,500 in 1908, 461,500 in 1913, 1,951,000 in 1920, and 4,500,000 by 1929. The number of registered automobiles in the United States increased from 9,200,000 in 1920 to 26,700,000 in 1929. The economic and social effects of the ensuing “car culture” were inestimable. Production of steel, glass, rubber, and petroleum boomed to supply the apparently insatiable demands of the automobile factories in the early 1920s. Road

AUtoMoBILe

and highway construction was unprecedented, bringing full employment to civil engineers, architects, and construction workers. New industries appeared to take advantage of the mobility enjoyed by Americans who owned automobiles. Hotels, motels, service stations, car repair shops, and resorts all boomed, providing jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans. By 1925, the automobile industry was number one in the United States in terms of the gross value of its products and number three in terms of its export value. It had become the backbone of the twentiethcentury American economy. The social effects of the automobile were no less dramatic. What can only be described as a “car culture” appeared in the United States during the 1920s. Like no other product in the history of the world, the automobile provided freedom to individuals to go when and where they wanted. Residential patterns changed. Families were able to relocate to less crowded, less polluted suburbs*, and workers commuted to their jobs; isolated school districts were able to consolidate with larger districts to save money and offer broader curricula; farmers in rural areas were able to conduct their personal financial business in larger towns and cities, eroding the economic foundation of small banks and general stores; and young people were able to travel widely, altering their dating patterns and often eliminating chaperones. At one time a luxury, the automobile came to be seen by most Americans as a necessity in the 1920s, and the country was never the same again. Those changes introduced by the automobile into American culture only accelerated during the rest of the twentieth century. In fact, Americans came to define freedom not just in political and economic terms, but also in terms of time and mobility. The automobile gave every American the freedom to go anywhere at any time, and the economy and culture came to revolve around that sense of freedom. In the 1980s—no less than in the 1940s—the automobile industry was the most important in the country. The best example of how important the automobile had become was that in California in 1988, there were more registered automobiles than there were people in the state. But although the automobile had become a ubiquitous item in the American economy and American culture, the industry found itself facing difficult challenges in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Consumer interest groups insisted on technological innovations to improve safety, whereas environmental groups* demanded better fuel efficiency* and reduced exhaust emissions. Federal and state governments responded to both groups, and in the process automobile manufacturing costs increased. But by far the most direct challenge to the industry came from foreign manufacturers. In 1949, foreign manufacturers sold only 12,000 units in the United States, whereas American companies sold more than 5 million units. During the 1950s, however, the Germans began to successfully sell the Volkswagen in the low-price segment of the market, and by the end of the decade, imports had gained a market share of 10 percent, selling more than 600,000 units in the United States. Japanese manufacturers began to enter the market in the 1960s, providing lower-cost, more fuel-efficient trucks and automobiles to cost-conscious American buyers. By 1970 imports accounted for 1,230,000 unit sales in the United States, or 15.3 percent of the market. With the jump in oil prices in the 1970s,

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fuel-efficient foreign cars became even more popular, and in 1975 imports captured 18 percent of the market. By the late 1980s, that percentage had increased to more than 25 percent. In the late 1990s, rising fuel costs forced automobile manufacturers to develop more fuel efficient vehicles. By the early twenty-first century, innovations in low-emission automobiles, such as the popular hybrid models, which ran on fuel and electricity, or fully electric cars, became more common. The federal bailout of the automobile industry in 2008, when it was near collapse, resulted in the larger development of more fuel-efficient models as part of the financial arrangement. References James J. Fink, The Car Culture, 1975. James J. Fink, The Automobile Age, 1988. David Halberstam, The Reckoning, 1986.

AWA LT, F R A N C I S G L O Y D Francis G. Awalt was born in Laurel, Maryland, in 1895. He graduated from the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1914 and earned a law degree from the University of Maryland in 1917. Awalt practiced law in Baltimore, and from 1920 to 1927 he served as a special assistant to Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon*. At the time, he was also general counsel to the office of the comptroller of the currency. During the Herbert Hoover* administration, Awalt was deputy comptroller of the currency, and he played a conspicuous role in the banking crisis of 1932–1933 as acting comptroller of the currency. Awalt blamed mismanagement, low capitalization, and lax state regulation for the mess in which the banking system found itself during the 1920s and early 1930s. It was Awalt who urged a nationwide bank holiday* during the closing days of the Hoover administration. After Franklin D. Roosevelt* was inaugurated as president early in March 1933, Awalt stayed on in Washington to advise the new administration on how to reopen the thousands of banks closed by the banking holiday that Roosevelt had imposed. Francis G. Awalt died on December 30, 1966. References Francis G. Awalt, “Recollections of the Banking Crisis of 1933,” Business History Review 43 (autumn 1969): 347–371. New York Times, December 31, 1966.

B B A I L E Y v. D R E X E L F U R N I T U R E ( 2 5 9 U . S . 2 0 ) In 1922, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture. This ruling became a leading constitutional symbol in the use of the federal taxing authority to regulate child labor. During the Progressive period, a number of states had outlawed child labor, but in the process, states without such legislation (especially those in the South) acquired competitive advantages in labor costs. Northern manufacturers began demanding federal legislation to equalize labor standards throughout the country, and in 1916, Congress passed a child labor law. Known as the Keating–Owen Act, the law forbade the interstate shipment of products produced by child labor and defined child labor in non-agricultural industries as production by people younger than 14. In 1918, the Supreme Court, in Hammer v. Dagenhart, overturned that law on the grounds that it violated Tenth Amendment guarantees of states’ rights. Congress responded with the Child Labor Tax Act of 1919, which imposed a 10 percent tax on the profits of businesses employing workers younger than 14. Drexel Furniture Company received a tax bill from the Internal Revenue Service for employing a boy younger than 14. The company paid the tax under protest and sued in the federal courts. In 1922, the Supreme Court heard the case of Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company. By an 8–1 decision, it found in favor of the company. Chief Justice William Howard Taft* wrote the majority opinion, arguing again that the measure violated the reserve clause of the Tenth Amendment. Binding child labor legislation had to wait for the New Deal* of the 1930s, when changes in the makeup of the Supreme Court gave the federal government more latitude in social and economic legislation. References Donald E. Anderson, William Howard Taft, 1973. Alpheus Thomas Mason, The Supreme Court from Taft to Warren, 1958.

BAILOUT See TROUBLED ASSET RELIEF PROGRAM (TARP). B A LT I M O R E & O H I O R A I L R O A D The Baltimore & Ohio (B & O) Railroad was chartered in 1827 with the intent of connecting the city of Baltimore with the Ohio Valley on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains. It took thirty-three years of construction to connect Baltimore

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with Cumberland, Maryland, and then with Wheeling in what is today West Virginia. Under the leadership of John W. Garrett, the B & O expanded greatly after the Civil War*, extending the line into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Virginia, but competition from the Pennsylvania Railroad* was stiff. When Garrett cut wages in 1877, he precipitated a violent nationwide railroad strike that year. After the strike, the railroad continued to expand and prosper, but it came on hard times in the early twentieth century. Competition from automobiles and trucks, combined with a heavy debt structure, had already hurt the B & O, but the Great Depression* sent it close to bankruptcy. Without loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC), the B & O would have gone under. Although World War II temporarily assisted the line, it was destined for takeover, which transpired in 1962 when the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway* bought it out. Reference John F. Stover, History of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1987.

B A N K H O L I D AY On March 6, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed a proclamation declaring a moratorium on all banking operations in the United States, climaxing a financial panic that had been building since late in 1932, when depositors had begun demanding their cash. The concept of a national bank holiday did not originate with the New Deal*, however. As early as 1918, Milton Elliott, a lawyer with the Federal Reserve* Board, had suggested the potential need for a banking and currency moratorium if any war-related financial crisis struck the nation; the Trading with the Enemy Act* of 1917 authorized the president to impose such stringent measures during financial emergencies. In January 1932, during the liquidity crisis preceding the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC), Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Mills* and President Herbert Hoover* considered declaring a national bank holiday; they did so again that June when the Central Republic Bank of Chicago closed. By February 1933, the banking system was rapidly approaching a state of collapse after severe crises in Louisiana and Michigan. Several of Hoover’s advisers, including Mills, as well as Walter Wyatt of the Federal Reserve Board staff, urged him to consider declaring a national holiday as the only way of preventing a complete liquidation of the money markets. Although reluctant to use the federal government in such a way, Hoover moved ahead, asking Attorney General DeWitt Mitchell for his opinion on the constitutionality of such a declaration. Mitchell had some doubts about it and urged Hoover to secure the cooperation of President-elect Roosevelt before making the declaration. During the first two days of March 1933, Hoover had Wyatt draft a holiday proclamation, but Roosevelt refused to join in the declaration, agreeing only to support Hoover’s proposal up to the moment of his inauguration, after which he wanted a free hand to develop his own approach. As a result, nothing happened until after the inauguration. On March 6, 1933, two days after his inauguration, Roosevelt signed Wyatt’s proclamation closing banks throughout the country, and on March 9, 1933, he included the proclamation as Title I of the Emergency Banking Act* of 1933.

BAnK oF AMeRICA

At first members of the administration had little sense of how to go about reopening all the nation’s banks, but they were certain that only sound banks should return to business. Otherwise new failures would only trigger another panic and liquidity crisis. By March 11, government banking officials had decided to open only individual banks that were sound enough to operate profitably without restrictions. Only assurance by the federal government that every reopened bank was sound could restore public confidence. Under a crash program, bank examiners from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the comptroller of the currency, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve Board began analyzing the assets of national banks throughout the country. Each of them had the authority to certify those banks healthy enough to reopen. Each national bank whose capital was unimpaired received a license permitting it to reopen. Banks whose capital was impaired but whose assets were valuable enough to repay all depositors in full remained closed until the crisis had passed and they could reopen with RFC assistance. Banks whose capital was gone and had no hope of providing a full return to depositors were placed in the hands of conservators who could reorganize them with RFC funds, liquidate their assets, and give an equitable return to depositors. State banking authorities followed the same basic procedure for reopening their closed banks. On March 14, 1933, the eve of the reopening, Roosevelt went on radio in a “fireside chat,” explaining what would happen the next day and assuring the public that any bank open at the end of the day would be sound and reliable. On March 15, 1933, 12,756 banks reopened, 69 percent of the total of 18,390 banks that had been open before the holiday. The bank holiday was finally over. Reference Susan Estabrook Kennedy, The Banking Crisis of 1933, 1973.

BANK OF AMERICA Known today as the BankAmerica Corporation, the Bank of America was originally founded by Amadeo P. Giannini*. He established the Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904, and it grew rapidly after the California earthquake of 1906. By 1929, the Bank of Italy had 292 branches in eighteen California cities. In the 1920s, Giannini also launched a second banking chain, incorporated in 1927 as the Bank of America of California. Within three years, the Bank of America had 163 branches in that state. From 1930 to 1934, Giannini merged the two systems into the Bank of America, NT, and SA; a holding company* known as the Transamerica Corporation had formal ownership of the system. Giannini gradually had Transamerica divest itself of Bank of America stock from 1937 to 1952. During the 1930s, Bank of America barely weathered the financial crisis of the Great Depression*. Loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* kept it afloat. Prosperity returned to the Bank of America during the 1940s. After World War II, the Bank of America expanded vigorously into foreign markets, and by the early 1970s, more than 40 percent of its corporate earnings came from foreign markets. The bank also made heavy loans to Third-World countries.

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By the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, those loans had severely weakened the bank. Some Third-World countries were hard pressed to pay back their loans because of the recession brought on by skyrocketing oil prices in the 1970s; in the 1980s, the oil-producing Third-World* countries were badly hurt by the collapse in international oil prices. The Bank of America had to write off billions of dollars of bad loans during the 1980s. By the twenty-first century, the Bank of America became one of the premier banks, party thanks to a series of bank consolidations resulting from the Great Recession* of 2008, during which many banks were absorbed by larger financial institutions. Reference Marquis James and Bessie R. James, Biography of a Bank: The Story of Bank of America, NT & SA, 1954.

B A N K O F T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S On December 13, 1790, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton* called for the creation of a national bank. Hamilton firmly believed that the economy of the United States depended on the establishment of such a bank. By issuing a reliable currency, the bank could stem the tide of inflation that had plagued the country since the beginning of the American Revolution*. By lending money to industry, the bank could help diversify the economy and build an industrial base, which Hamilton believed was central to modem political power for a country. The proposal, however, raised a storm of protest. Southerners tended to oppose the bill because they were convinced that their section of the country, with little industry, would be taxed to support the bank but would not receive any benefits. Democratic-Republicans such as Thomas Jefferson* and James Madison* believed that the proposal was unconstitutional, on the grounds that the Constitution did not authorize the federal government to establish a bank. In the end, President George Washington* sided with Hamilton, and the bank was given a twenty-year charter on February 25, 1791. The Bank of the United States functioned for the next twenty years, but after 1801, American politics was dominated by the Democratic-Republicans and the presidential administrations of Jefferson and Madison. They refused to recharter the bank in 1811, and it was dissolved. Reference John C. Miller, Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation, 1959.

B A N K WA R See SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. BANKHEAD COTTON CONTROL ACT OF 1934 The Bankhead Cotton Control Act was passed by Congress on April 21, 1934, to increase participation in the cotton programs of the Agricultural Adjustment

B A n K H e A D – J o n e s FA R M t e n A n C Y A C t o F 1 9 3 7

Administration* (AAA). Cotton had become a chief concern of the AAA because of severely fluctuating prices on the world market. The prices of cotton had been falling steadily since the early 1920s while farmers continued to produce huge surpluses. The Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933 was designed to reduce those surpluses. The AAA required farmers to sign contracts agreeing to plow under from 25 to 50 percent of their crops in 1933 in return for cash rental payments or cash plus options. The second series of contracts, on the 1934–1935 crop, required growers to limit their production to 55 to 65 percent of their base acreage. Because the program was voluntary, however, the administration had difficulty both in getting farmers to comply with their contracts and in attracting farmers to participate in the program. Thus, in 1934, the Bankhead proposal was adopted to penalize nonparticipants and contract violators. Under the Bankhead Act, individual growers received tax-exempt certificates for their contracted crop. The total of all tax-exempt certificates would equal the predetermined adjusted crop quota of 10 million 500-pound bales. The allotment of tax-exempt certificates was determined by past production. Small producers were given certificates covering their entire production. According to the Bankhead Act, a tax would be levied on “the ginning of cotton equal to 50 percent of the average price of the standard grade on the 10 principal spot markets, but not under 5 cents per pound.” In other words, the tax penalized any cotton ginned in excess of individual allotments and thus tended to limit production. Cotton producers did extend the controls of the Bankhead Act through 1935, but the program died when the Supreme Court declared the AAA unconstitutional in January 1936. Congress formally repealed the Bankhead Cotton Control Act on February 10, 1936. Reference Edwin G. Nourse et al., Three Years of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 1937.

B A N K H E A D – J O N E S FA R M T E N A N C Y A C T O F 1 9 3 7 For several decades before the Great Depression*, farm tenancy had been increasing. By 1935, 42 percent of the nation’s farms were operated by tenants. This problem had been caused in part by the increasing amount of capital required for farm ownership and for the purchase of equipment necessary for profitable commercial agriculture. The Great Depression intensified the trend, causing many farmers to lose their lands and fall into tenancy or day labor, particularly in cotton-producing regions. In November 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* appointed a Special Committee on Farm Tenancy. Simultaneously, he asked Senator John Bankhead of Alabama and Representative Marvin Jones of Texas to draft tenancy legislation. Jones favored a financial credit approach, whereby local committees would purchase farms with limited government funds and sell them through low-interest loans to worthy tenants selected by the local committees. Jones’s idea was written into the Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act. It authorized rehabilitation loans for operating expenses and education, and it appropriated $50 million for conservation programs on submarginal lands. The Farm Security Administration* (FSA) was created to administer the act. The bill became law on July 22, 1937.

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The Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act was never intended to achieve total relief for all tenants, but from 1937 through 1947, the FSA made loans of $293 million to 47,104 farmers. The legislation was a small step forward for the tenants. Perhaps its most important result came during World War II* when FSA families, representing only 7 percent of the nation’s farmers, accounted for a proportionately much larger increase in food production. References Sidney Baldwin, Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration, 1968. Irvin M. May Jr., Marvin Jones: The Public Life of an Agrarian Advocate, 1980. Theodore Saloutos, The American Farmer and the New Deal, 1983.

BANKING ACT OF 1933 During the 1920s, demands for bank reform became more and more intense. Some people wanted a federally owned central bank, not the decentralized regional arrangement of the Federal Reserve System*. Others wanted to preserve the dual banking system, feeling that states had the right to manage their own financial institutions. Many people worried about the security operations of commercial banks, whereas small banks were concerned about the branch-banking plans of larger institutions, fearing for the future of their own local markets. The failure of 5,600 banks during the 1920s also frightened many people, giving rise to the suggestion that the federal government should establish some way of insuring bank deposits. The financial panic of 1931 and 1932, when several thousand more banks went under, only magnified all these concerns. During 1932, several bills to reform the banking system were introduced in Congress, the most important of them by Senator Carter Glass* of Virginia and Congressman Henry Steagall* of Alabama. The political problems surrounding President Herbert Hoover’s* last year in office stalled most of them. The Glass– Steagall Act of 1932* liberalized Federal Reserve discount provisions but left untouched the major problems facing the banking system. The panic of 1932–1933 and the complete collapse of the banking system that winter, followed by the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the bank holiday*, generated an irresistible momentum for reform. Throughout March and April of 1933, the administration studied the problem and developed a legislative approach. In mid-May, Glass and Steagall introduced bills in Congress. Together they called for an increase in Federal Reserve control over bank credit, coordination of Federal Reserve open market operations, and legal recognition of the Federal Open Market Committee*. The Federal Reserve Board acquired control of all the foreign operations of member banks. Commercial banking was separated from investment banking to prevent future speculative fevers and the loss of assets that had occurred so recently. Commercial banks could underwrite only the securities of state and local governments, and member banks had one year to divorce themselves from security affiliates. The officers of national banks had until July 1, 1935, to divest themselves of any loans granted to them

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by their own institutions. National banks could establish branches on a statewide basis in those states that already allowed state banks to do so. To control chain and group banking, the law gave the comptroller of the currency authority to regulate the stock-voting rights of the holding company* affiliate of national banks. The law also raised the capital requirements for national banks and provided for the establishment of a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation* (FDIC). The bill created the FDIC, using $150 million of federal money and the premiums of each member bank to finance operations; the FDIC would begin operation on January 1, 1934. All national banks had to join, as did state banks in the Federal Reserve System. State banks not in the Federal Reserve System could join the FDIC, with the provision that they would become part of the Federal Reserve System by July 1, 1936. The full bill passed through Congress in mid-June, and Roosevelt signed the Banking Act of 1933 into law on June 16. Reference Helen M. Burns, The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms: 1933– 1935, 1974.

BANKING ACT OF 1935 On August 23, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed into law the Banking Act of 1935. The Banking Act of 1933* had required the officers of national banks to divest themselves of all loans granted to them from their own institutions by July 1, 1935. Many private bankers wanted a time extension. After operating on an emergency basis since January 1, 1934, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation* (FDIC) was to begin formal operations on January 1, 1935, but most private bankers believed that the insurance rates charged were too high. Marriner Eccles, the new chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and an early New Deal advocate of Keynesian* economics, wanted to change the Federal Reserve System*, centralizing power with the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., rather than in the regional Federal Reserve Banks. Concerned that a modem industrial economy required central control of the money supply to guarantee stable prices and full employment, Eccles wanted the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C., to assume responsibility for all open market operations, instead of having the regional Federal Reserve Banks independently buying or selling securities to manipulate the money supply. Roosevelt had his staff draft an omnibus bill including all three provisions, hoping that private bankers would want the proposals for reduced FDIC assessments and a time extension on liquidating the prohibited loans so much that they would swallow the centralization feature. The bill moved through the House and Senate in the summer, and Roosevelt signed the Banking Act of 1935 on August 23. Title I of the Banking Act of 1935 reduced the assessments on members of the FDIC and helped the corporation to begin operations. Title II provided major changes in the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve Board was replaced by the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System, with seven members appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The original appointments were scheduled from two to fourteen years so that not more than one

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position would expire every two years. At the regional Federal Reserve Banks, the title of governor was changed to president, to be appointed to a five-year term by the local Federal Reserve Bank board of directors, subject to approval by the board of governors in Washington, D.C. The old Federal Open Market Committee*, consisting of the twelve governors of the Federal Reserve Banks, was replaced by a new Federal Open Market Committee, composed of the board of governors and five representatives from Federal Reserve Banks. The new Federal Open Market Committee controlled open market operations and policy. Federal Reserve Banks, with the approval of the board of governors, could also make advances to member banks on “satisfactory” as well as eligible paper. Title III extended the deadline for officers of national banks to divest themselves of loans from their own institutions. The Banking Act of 1935 was a milestone in the history of public policy in the United States. Because of the new power of the Federal Reserve Board and the supervisory authority of the FDIC, the federal government now had the responsibility for monetary management and credit control. More than ever before, the nation’s banks were part of a larger, more coordinated system. Ever since 1935, the Federal Reserve Board has played a critical role in federal economic policy, working to achieve stable prices and full employment. Reference Helen M. Burns, The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms: 1933– 1935, 1974.

BARTON, BRUCE Bruce Barton was born on August 5, 1886, in Robbins, Tennessee. He graduated from Amherst College in 1907 and went into magazine journalism, working for the Home Herald in Chicago and as editor of Housekeeper. In 1912, Barton went to work for the publishing house of P. F. Collier and Son as an assistant sales manager, and from 1914 to 1918, he served as editor of Everyweek magazine. Barton organized the advertising firm of Barton, Durstine, and Osborn in 1919 and became its first president. Among Barton’s creative accomplishments was the figure of Betty Crocker, designed for General Mills. At the same time, he also contributed widely as a freelance writer to several popular magazines. Barton became a symbol of the business mentality of the 1920s when he wrote The Man Nobody Knows in 1925. The book described Jesus Christ as the world’s best salesman and a first-class businessman who surrounded himself with excellent executives—the twelve apostles. To Barton, the spread of Christianity around the world was simply the result of excellent advertising and marketing activities. In 1936, Barton won a seat in Congress and became a bitter opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Deal. He left Congress in 1941 and died on July 5, 1967. References Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows, 1925. Current Biography, February 1961. New York Times, July 6, 1967.

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BARUCH, BERNARD MANNES Bernard M. Baruch was born on August 19, 1870, in Camden, South Carolina, to Jewish parents. The family moved to New York City in 1881. Baruch graduated from the City College of New York in 1889. After working at several jobs, Baruch joined A. A. Hausman and Company, a brokerage firm, as an office boy. He was a full partner by 1896 and owned a seat on the New York Stock Exchange* by 1900. In his investments, Baruch specialized in copper, sulfur, gold, and rubber companies. Also interested in politics, Baruch was a generous contributor to Democratic causes and a major supporter of Woodrow Wilson* in the election of 1916. Wilson named Baruch as head of the War Industries Board* in 1918, which put him in a position to supervise American industrial mobilization during the war. In the process, Baruch became one of the most influential Democrats in the country. During the 1920s, Baruch was active in politics, as well as an adviser to the American Farm Bureau Federation* and the United States Grain Growers Corporation. Baruch hoped to be named secretary of state in the Roosevelt* administration in 1933, but it was not to be. The new president did not want anyone with real influence having enough power to rival him. Instead, Baruch became an elder statesman, alarmed about the bureaucratic direction of the New Deal but resigned to it as a political necessity. He died on June 20, 1965. Reference Jordan A. Schwarz, The Speculator: Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, 1917–1965, 1981.

BEARD, CHARLES AUSTIN Charles A. Beard was born on November 27, 1874, near Knightstown, Indiana. He received a B.A. from DePauw in 1898 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1904. Beard is best remembered in American economic and intellectual history for his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913). The book argued that the Founding Fathers wrote a constitution providing for a strong federal government because of individual self-interest—primarily to receive defaulted payments on their government bonds. There was a strong strain of economic determinism in Beard’s theories, and he exerted tremendous influence on other American historians. He taught at Columbia University until 1917, when he resigned in protest over the university trustees’ attempt to suppress faculty criticism of Woodrow Wilson’s* declaration of war on Germany. Along with his wife Mary, a historian in her own right, Beard also wrote The Rise of American Civilization in 1927. He was the author of many other books promoting his economic interpretation of U.S. history. Beard never again held a regular faculty position, but he continued to write and serve as a critic of public policy. After World War II*, he wrote several books charging Franklin D. Roosevelt* with secretly conspiring with Japan to bring the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He died in 1948. References Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians, 1968. Ronald Radosh, Prophets on the Right, 1975.

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B E C H T E L , S T E P H E N D AV I S O N Stephen D. Bechtel was born on September 24, 1900, in Aurora, Indiana, although he was raised in Oakland, California. During World War I*, Bechtel served in the Army Corps of Engineers. After studying engineering for a few years at the University of California at Berkeley, Bechtel joined his father’s construction firm, W. E. Bechtel Corporation. Bechtel moved up through the corporate ranks and became president of the company in 1936. The company received major contracts during the 1930s, helping to build Hoover Dam* and the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. With his friend John A. McCone, Bechtel formed the Bechtel–McCone Corporation in 1937 to construct oil refineries and pipelines. During World War II*, they branched out into shipbuilding by establishing the California Shipbuilding Corporation and the Marineship Corporation. The Bechtel companies also became heavily involved in aircraft design and production. After the war, Bechtel formed the Bechtel Corporation to oversee his business empire. The postwar years found the company heavily involved in nuclear power plant construction and large-scale construction activities in the Middle East. Reference Current Biography, April 1957.

B E C K , D AV I D David Beck was born in Stockton, California, on June 16, 1894. After dropping out of high school, Beck took extension courses at the University of Washington and then got a job as a laundry worker. He became active in local union politics. He became a laundry driver and joined the local of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters*, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen, and Helpers (IBT) in 1917. During the 1920s, he served several terms as local union president and went to work full time for the IBT as an organizer in 1927. In 1937, Beck organized and became president of the Western Conference of Teamsters, and in 1952, he was elected international president of the IBT. He did not run for reelection in 1957, because he was under investigation by the McClellan Committee of the U.S. Senate. Convicted of income tax fraud, Beck spent 1962–1965 in a federal penitentiary. After his release, he built a successful real estate business in Seattle, Washington. In 1983, at age 89, Beck participated in a speaking tour for the teamsters. He died in 1989. Reference Donald Gamel, The Origins of Teamster Power in the West, 1972.

BEEF TRUST CASES In 1903, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an antitrust suit against the National Packing Company, a huge meatpackinghouse organization formed by the major meat-processing companies. The federal government claimed that the company was violating the Sherman Antitrust Act*. The suit wound its way through the federal courts until 1905, when the Supreme Court found in favor of the company.

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During the Woodrow Wilson* administration, the Federal Trade Commission* (FTC) launched another campaign against the National Packing Company under the provisions of the Clayton Antitrust Act*. The FTC suit succeeded, and the company was dissolved in 1920. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

B E E R TA X A C T The Democratic Party platform of 1932 called for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition*). While the amendment was in progress, Congress acted in accordance with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* suggestion to hasten the end of Prohibition by passing the Beer Tax Act. The measure, which became law on March 22, 1933, legalized the manufacture of alcoholic beverages containing not more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight. References Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970. U.S. Statutes at Large 48 (1933): 16–20.

BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847. Bell’s mother was hearing-impaired and his father an elocution teacher, so the family had a particular interest in the study of sound and voice. Bell came to America to introduce his father’s Visible Speech System for teaching the deaf, and he became a professor at Boston University. Along with an assistant, Thomas Watson*, he began to experiment with a process for sending vocal messages by wire through electrical wave transmission. In 1876, he invented the first crude telephone and patented it. Bell founded the Bell Telephone Company in 1877, and the company grew by leaps and bounds. The technology soon became a necessity in homes and businesses throughout the country. Bell was also involved in the invention of a number of other devices, including wax cylinder records for the phonograph, the photophone, and the spectrophone. He died on August 2, 1922. Reference John Brooks, Telephone: The First Hundred Years, 1976.

BENEFITS During the nineteenth century, the American labor movement, under the leadership of people such as Samuel Gompers*, made the critical decision to eschew socialist and radical objectives and instead concentrate on the “bread and butter” issues of higher pay, safer working conditions, and limited hours per day and per week for union members. It was not until the early twentieth century that significant strides were made in moving beyond safety, hours, and wages to include

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a broader definition of what are today called “benefits.” The drive to make the working place safer resulted in demands for workmen’s compensation* laws in which individuals injured on the job had recourse to some types of benefits during the time of their recuperation. The program that eventually won the most loyalty nationwide was an insurance program in which employers paid premiums to an insurance pool from which benefits to injured workers would then be paid. The program encouraged safer working environments, because employers with good safety records enjoyed reduced premiums. In 1902, Maryland became the first state to create a workmen’s compensation law, and in 1948 Mississippi became the forty-eighth state to do so. The most comprehensive improvements in workers’ benefits came during the Great Depression* when the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt* embodied a wide range of supportive legislation. The National Industrial Recovery Act* of 1933, for the first time in American history, imposed a minimum wage* for most industrial workers. In 1936, the Walsh–Healey Public Contracts Act* required all federal contractors to accept minimum wage legislation and not employ workers longer than eight hours a day or forty hours a week without paying them an overtime wage premium. The Fair Labor Standards Act* of 1938 then imposed that legislation on all workers engaged in interstate commerce or producing goods for interstate markets. By 1939, more than 13 million workers were covered by the law, and in subsequent years legislation included more and more workers. Finally, the Social Security Act* of 1935, using contributions from employers and employees, provided for a system of unemployment compensation for workers, survivors’ insurance, and an old-age pension. It was amended many times in subsequent years, adding benefits such as disability insurance in 1956 and Medicare* in 1965. After World War II, the concept of workers’ benefits broadened even more, moving beyond the wages, hours, safety, unemployment and workmen’s compensation, and retirement provisions of federally mandated programs. The first major group life insurance program designed by a life insurance company for a group of employees was written in 1912, and the first supplementary disability programs in the 1920s. The earliest Blue Cross group medical plans first appeared in the 1930s, but the real boost to those medical plans came during World War II when price and wage controls prevented companies from increasing employee wages. To compensate for that, hundreds of major corporations provided group medical plans for their employees. After World War II, labor unions made those medical and dental benefits programs a key ingredient in collective bargaining arrangements. The modem era of medical and dental benefits came to most major American corporations in the 1950s. By the end of the 1980s, more than 187 million Americans enjoyed hospital insurance, 172 million had major medical coverage, and 107 million had dental insurance. In 1955, the first Supplemental Unemployment Benefit program was negotiated to augment the Social Security* program, and by the 1980s, more than 1,000 major American corporations carried the benefit. Also by the end of the decade, more than 65 million employees enjoyed supplemental disability benefits. Since the 1960s, the major improvements in employee benefits plans have involved a variety of pension options so that workers can supplement Social

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Security benefits when they retire. Those benefit plans, all of which had their origins early in the twentieth century but accelerated only after World War II, include employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), cash or deferred arrangements (CODAs), flexible/cafeteria plans, account balance pension plans (ABPs), tax-deferred annuities (TDAs), and stock acquisition and multi employer plans. Most of these plans grant the ability to defer income taxes on the money invested until funds are withdrawn at retirement, and they are regulated by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974*. Reference Jeffrey D. Mamorsky, Employee Benefits Handbook, 1987.

BERING SEA CONTROVERSY Ever since the 1870s, the Department of the Treasury had granted harvesting rights to American companies hunting seals on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. But in the mid-1880s, Canadian sealers began hunting the animals from boats outside the three-mile limit, a practice known as pelagic sealing. Declining American profits sparked a diplomatic controversy between Great Britain and the United States. In 1893, an arbitration commission fined the United States for seizing Canadian sealers in international waters but also imposed a sixty-mile limit around the Pribilof Islands, prohibiting pelagic sealing within that boundary. The dispute continued to fester, however, especially after Japanese and Canadian sealers were periodically caught within the sixty-mile limit. In 1911, the North Pacific Sealing Convention provided for American sealers to give 15 percent of their harvest each to Japan and Canada in return for an agreement keeping Japanese and Canadian sealers out of the region. Reference C. C. Tansill, Canadian–American Relations, 1875–1911, 1943.

BERLE, ADOLF AUGUSTUS Adolf Augustus Berle was born in 1895. The son of a Congregational minister, Berle was a child prodigy who graduated from Harvard at 18 and Harvard Law School at 21. He did intelligence work for the army during World War I*. A corporation lawyer and law professor at Columbia University, he was the principal author, with economist Gardiner Means*, of The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932). The book was one of the most influential of the decade for suggesting a trend toward the concentration of power in 200 corporations that were increasingly divorced from either stockholder or public control. The concentration of corporation power was one of the principal issues of the New Deal*, and it brought Berle into political conflict with an old personal enemy, Felix Frankfurter. Along with Justice Louis D. Brandeis*, Frankfurter argued for the enforcement of antitrust laws against the biggest corporations while Berle and others advocated other means for their control.

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Berle chose to fight these New Deal philosophical battles from New York. After a brief role with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* in 1933, he refused several offers of positions in the New Deal and became chamberlain of New York City under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia during 1934–1937. Even so, he remained among the most influential of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* advisers. In 1938, at Roosevelt’s insistence, Berle returned to be assistant secretary of state. He remained at that post until late 1944, when he became ambassador to Brazil. During the John F. Kennedy* administration, he played a key role in developing the Alliance for Progress*. Berle died in 1971. Reference Jordan Schwarz, Adolf A. Berle, 1989.

BERNANKE, BEN Ben Bernanke served as the chair of the Federal Reserve Board (“the Fed”) from February 2006 to January 2014. A former Princeton University professor and chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Bernanke is a fellow at the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy, which was launched by the Brookings Institution* in 2014. A straight-talker who is considered to be one of the nation’s foremost economists, Bernanke spent much of his time as chair was spent trying to boost the economy after the Great Recession* and the U.S. financial crisis of 2008–2009. Bernanke was succeeded by Janet Yellen*, the first woman to become Fed chair. Benjamin Shalom Bernanke was born on December 13, 1953, in Augusta, Georgia and grew up in the small farming community of Dillon, South Carolina. The son of a pharmacist and a substitute teacher, Bernanke’s mother noticed early on that her son had a knack for numbers and currency. At age 3, he could add and subtract quickly, and by the time he was a senior in high school, Bernanke was teaching himself calculus because his school did not offer the course. Bernanke attended Harvard University in 1971 after a close friend convinced his parents to let him leave his small-town home. He first considered English and mathematics as potential majors but ultimately settled on economics, graduating summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in 1975. He continued as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received his doctorate in 1979. In addition to his Ph.D., Bernanke also acquired a fascination for the Great Depression, a phenomenon in history that he believed still offered relevant lessons for U.S. economic policy. After graduating from MIT, Bernanke moved to California, where he began his teaching career at Stanford University. For six years, he taught in the economics department as an assistant and associate professor and was a favorite among both his colleagues and students, earning higher evaluation scores than professors who had twenty years’ of classroom experience. He maintained his likable reputation when he moved to Princeton in 1985 to teach as a professor in the Department of Economics and Public Affairs and later chaired the department from 1996 to 2002. Beginning in 1994, he also served two elected terms as a member of the school board in Montgomery Township, New Jersey.

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Despite a preference for lower taxes, Bernanke let his emphasis on analysis over political ideology be known in 2000, his last year on the board. In an effort to expand classroom space for the Montgomery students, Bernanke provided the tiebreaking fifth vote that obtained more money for school funding via a $300 increase in area property taxes; by September, the student population grew by about 2,000, and the township opened a new high school. In addition to his teaching career, Bernanke was also an accomplished author. He published numerous articles on economic issues, monetary policy, and macroeconomics and wrote several scholarly books. In July 2001, he was appointed editor of the prestigious journal The American Economic Review. Bernanke was no stranger to the Fed. After departing Princeton in 2002 on a public service leave, he served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Three years later, he was appointed as the top economist to President George W. Bush* as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, serving until January 2006. In October 2005, Bernanke was nominated by the president to succeed Alan Greenspan as chair of the Federal Reserve Board. Bernanke was a very uncontroversial, mainstream choice for chair of the Fed. At the Senate Banking Committee hearings for his approval in November, a meeting that took just one day to complete, only one senator voted not to recommend him for the position. Bernanke was subsequently confirmed by the full Senate. In addition to the Federal Reserve chair, Bernanke also served as chair of the Federal Open Market Committee and was appointed a member of the board for a full fourteen-year term. Bernanke began his term as Fed chair by introducing increased measures of transparency. His two predecessors, Paul Volcker and Greenspan, had started this trend toward transparency by announcing policy framework and goals of the Fed. Greenspan took accountability even farther by releasing statements after each Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. Bernanke’s efforts to make the Fed a more accountable organization were disrupted by the U.S. financial crisis, which began in 2008. The collapse of the financial industry and housing market forced Bernanke and the Fed to take drastic action. Bernanke led the Fed in saving “too big to fail” financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs as well as major automotive companies like General Motors. The Fed purchased government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which deal with home mortgages. The Fed also allowed Bank of America to purchase Merrill Lynch without requiring the standard consultation from numerous government agencies. (Under normal circumstances, the purchase might have violated certain laws.) The Fed also let financial giant Lehman Brothers fail. Some have argued that the bailout of some major financial institutions was a misuse of government funds and went beyond what the Federal Reserve should have been allowed to do. Meanwhile, others have argued that although these big banks were largely responsible for the crisis, a much deeper recession and economic crisis might have resulted had they not been bailed out. Ultimately, the goal was to increase liquidity, or money, on the market that banks and people could use. President Barack Obama* nominated Bernanke for a second term, and Bernanke was confirmed by the Senate on January 28, 2010. However, 30 senators

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opposed his nomination in one of the narrowest and most politically contentious confirmations for a Fed chair ever. This was largely driven by election-year politics. The economy slowly recovered under Bernanke’s shepherding of monetary policy. He continued to keep interest rates low, and the Fed continued to print money to help support spending. Bernanke’s efforts to increase Fed accountability and predictability continued with his second term. Additionally, Bernanke was integral to creating financial reforms aimed at decreasing the likelihood of another major crash caused by financial institution misdeeds. These reforms came in the form of regulatory oversight. Bernanke’s monetary policy of purchasing troubled assets was unconventional but showed signs of helping unemployment and the economy at large. Despite progress toward recovery, as Bernanke left office in January 2014, some argued that the economic recovery was not robust enough considering the actions taken. Nicole Bertucci References Jeannine Aversa, “New Fed Chief Looks to Fight Inflation,” The Washington Post, February 6, 2006. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, www.federalreserve.gov; “Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to Join Economic Studies at Brookings,” February 3, 2014, www.brookings.edu. Neal Irwin, “Ben Bernanke Looks Back on His Fed Chairmanship,” The Washington Post, January 3, 2014. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “And in This Corner, Fed Choice Is Blip on Some Senators’ Radar,” The New York Times, January 31, 2006. Ben White, “Bernanke Unwrapped,” The Washington Post, November 15, 2005.

B E R R Y, G E O R G E L E O N A R D George L. Berry was born on September 12, 1882, in Lee Valley, Tennessee. He went to work in the printing offices of the Jackson, Mississippi, Evening News in 1891; during the next several years, he held jobs with several regional newspapers. He joined the Press Assistants Union in 1899 and eight years later was elected president of the American Federation of Labor’s* (AFL) International Pressmen and Assistants Union. An active Democrat, Berry unsuccessfully tried to secure the vice-presidential nomination in 1924. He became a strong supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Deal* during the 1930s. Berry served as a member of the National Labor Relations Board and the Cotton Textile National Industrial Relations Board, a divisional administrator of the National Recovery Administration* (NRA), and a coordinator for Industrial Cooperation in the NRA. During the elections of 1936, Berry joined with United Mine Worker* (UMW) President John L. Lewis* in forming labor’s Non-Partisan League to support Roosevelt. In 1937, Berry was appointed U.S. senator from Tennessee to fill the unexpired term of Nathan Bachman. Berry died on December 4, 1948. Reference Who Was Who in America, 1963 II:60.

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BIDDLE, NICHOLAS Nicholas Biddle was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 8, 1786. He graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1801 and spent the next several years in the diplomatic corps in France and Great Britain. Biddle returned to the United States in 1807 and became an associate editor of the Philadelphia Port Folio; he was named editor in 1812. A gifted financier and economist, Biddle received an appointment as a director of the Second Bank of the United States*, and in 1823, President James Monroe named him its president. Biddle pursued conservative economic policies, which earned him the wrath of expansionist state banking interests in the South and West. When President Andrew Jackson* began criticizing the bank in 1829, Biddle tried a political ploy to recharter the bank early, before its 1836 rechartering date. In 1831, Jackson vetoed congressional legislation approving the new charter, and, after his victory in the election of 1832*, the president withdrew all federal deposits from the bank, placing them in “pet banks.” Biddle was unable to get the bank rechartered in 1836, and the Second Bank of the United States became known as the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania, a statechartered financial institution. Biddle remained at the helm of the bank until its demise in 1841. He died on February 27, 1844. Reference Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War, 1967.

B I M E TA L L I S M The Coinage Act of 1873* demonetized silver by eliminating the standard silver dollar from circulation, making gold the only monetary standard in the United States. Later in 1873, the economy entered a period of depression and instability in the money markets, and western mining and farming interests began referring to the Coinage Act as the “Crime of 1873”*. In the mid-1870s, huge silver discoveries in Nevada, Utah, and Colorado depressed silver prices. At the same time, commodity prices for farm goods were falling because of overproduction. The farming and mining interests began advocating bimetallism—the free, unlimited coinage of silver money to go along with gold money. Mining interests felt that bimetallism would improve the market for silver, whereas farming interests believed it would inflate commodity prices. The Bland–Allison Act* of 1878 was only a modest step toward “free silver*,” and it was followed up by the Sherman Silver Purchase Act* of 1890. Bimetallists wanted even more action, but they got less when the Depression of 1893* set in and the Cleveland administration repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Bimetallists such as William H. Harvey, author of Coin’s Financial School (1894) and Ignatius Donnelly, author of The American People’s Money (1895), protested repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and demanded free coinage of silver. The Populist Party* soon joined them in that demand. With the victory of William McKinley and the Republican Party in 1896, bimetallism suffered a real setback. Not until the Great Depression* did bimetallists really surface again, and this time, too, it was because of falling silver prices. To appease the mining

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interests, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* approved Senator Elmer Thomas’s amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933 authorizing the Treasury department to exchange silver certificates for silver bullion. He also signed the Silver Purchase Act* of 1934 into law. The legislation declared that the proportion of silver to gold in the monetary system should be increased until the monetary stock was one-third that of gold or until the market price of silver reached $1.29 per ounce. Reference John A. Brennan, Silver and the First New Deal, 1969.

BIRDSEYE, CLARENCE Clarence Birdseye was born December 9, 1886, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Amherst College for two years but then left school to work for the United States Biological Survey as a field naturalist. In 1912, he headed for Labrador in Canada to work as a fur trapper, and he spent many miles on dogsleds in icy back country. At that time, he became interested in quick-freezing a winter’s supply of wild game. During World War I*, Birdseye returned to the United States and became a purchasing agent for the U.S. Housing Corporation. From 1918 to 1922, he served as an administrative assistant to the head of the U.S. Fisheries Association. Finally, in 1924, after borrowing on his life insurance policy, Birdseye founded the General Seafoods Company. Using a new method of quick-freezing meats by pressing them between refrigerated metal plates, Birdseye began turning out fresh-frozen haddock. It was an immediate success. In 1929, Goldman Sachs & Company, an investment firm, reorganized the company with more than $23 million in investment capital and renamed it General Foods. Birdseye then turned his attention to the process of quick-drying food. He died on October 7, 1956. References Current Biography, March 1946. Alex Groner, History of American Business and Technology, 1972. New York Times, October 9, 1956.

BITCOIN Bitcoin is a digital currency, introduced as open-source software in 2009 as an alternative to fixed national currency systems. Considered a decentralized currency by the United States for not being fixed to a central bank or banking system, it is considered by its users as a system of exchange for goods and services directly from user to user, particularly through online transactions. Although Bitcoin has seen its usage grow since its inception, banking institutions and authorities warn against its use because it lacks consumer protections. Although the U.S. government has been Bitcoin-friendly in comparison to other countries, it has still been cautious about the role it plays in black markets. Despite criticisms by various governments and international banking institutions, Bitcoin usage has continued to grow, indicative of the effect of the Internet* in creating a global infrastructure capable of sustaining a currency system independent of national and international governance.

BLACK BeLt

BLACK, EUGENE ROBERT Eugene R. Black was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1872. He graduated from the Boys High School there and attended the University of Georgia and the University of Georgia Law School, but he left before graduating. Eventually he read law privately and was admitted to the Georgia bar. Black practiced law for more than twenty years before becoming president of the Atlanta Trust Company in 1921. Six years later, he was appointed governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. During the repeated banking crises of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Black consistently warned that a nationwide liquidity crisis was imminent, and he gained national respect when his predictions were realized. A conservative who was widely respected in banking circles, Black also had the friendly ear of President Franklin D. Roosevelt* and served as an able liaison between the White House and the financial community. Roosevelt appointed Black head of the Federal Reserve* Board in May 1933. Black played a critical role in the bank reopening process and in drafting the legislation creating the Securities Act* of 1933, the Banking Act* of 1933, the extension of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation*, and the Securities Exchange* Act of 1934. After a brief illness, Black died on December 19, 1934. Reference New York Times, December 20, 1934.

BLACK, JOHN DONALD John D. Black was born on June 6, 1883, in Jefferson County, Wisconsin. Having a keen interest in agricultural economics, he took all of his degrees at the University of Wisconsin, receiving a B.A. in 1909, an M.A. in 1910, and a Ph.D. in 1918. He held a number of academic posts before joining the staff of Harvard University in 1927. Shortly thereafter, Black published his influential Agricultural Reform in the United States (1929), which proposed acreage reductions as a means of raising farm commodity prices. The book became extremely popular among liberal agricultural economists and became the basis for the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933. Black’s other books included The Dairy Industry and the AAA (1935), Parity, Parity, Parity (1942), and Three Years of the AM (1938). Black retired from Harvard in 1956, where he had been Henry Lee Professor of Economics, and he continued to write and consult on agricultural problems. He died on April 12, 1960. Reference New York Times, April 13, 1960.

B L A C K B E LT The term “Black Belt” once referred to a broad reach of territory in Alabama and northeastern Mississippi where the production of cotton was especially good because of the fertility and depth of the rich black soil. After the Civil War*, large numbers of former slaves* became sharecroppers* in the “Black Belt.” When American cotton production shifted toward Texas and California after World War II, the

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term “Black Belt” was still used to describe the region. Its connotation by that time had become largely racial because of the concentration of African Americans there.

BLACK CODES With the end of slavery* as a legal institution after the Civil War*, southern whites felt the need to pass legislation controlling the behavior of African Americans. Many pieces of legislation passed in all southern states during the 1870s and 1880s were known as “Black Codes.” The laws recognized the legality of black marriages, but the labor and migration restrictions all but restored black people to virtual slavery, limiting their civil rights and forcing them to work for their former owners. The Black Codes were soon followed by the Jim Crow laws and the sharecropping* system, both of which intensified the restrictions. Reference Theodore B. Wilson, The Black Codes of the South, 1966.

“ B L A C K M O N D AY ” The term “Black Monday” refers to October 28, 1929, when the stock market dropped 49 points on 9,250,000 shares of trading. On that day, the great crash of 1929 reached full-blown proportions. Reference John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929, 1955.

“ B L A C K M O N D AY ” The term “Black Monday” was used by many New Dealers to describe the events of May 27, 1935, when the Supreme Court, in three unanimous decisions, invalidated the National Industrial Recovery Act, overturned the Frazier–Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act* of 1934, and declared that the president’s removal of William E. Humphrey* from the Federal Trade Commission* was illegal. The judicial assault on the New Deal* helped inspire President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* unsuccessful “court-packing” scheme of 1937 and his subsequently successful reorientation of the Supreme Court through a number of new appointments. Reference Bernard Bellush, The Failure of the NRA, 1975.

“ B L A C K T H U R S D AY ” “Black Thursday” was the name given to October 24, 1929, when the stock market traded a record 12,894,650 shares. Although the index fell only from 384 to 372, the number of shares traded indicated the beginning of a panic that would reach full-blown proportions on “Black Monday*” (October 28) and “Black Tuesday*” (October 29).

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Reference John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929, 1955.

“ B L A C K T U E S D AY ” “Black Tuesday” was the name given to October 29, 1929, when the stock market collapsed. Ever since late in September, the stock exchange had been experiencing selling waves. On October 24, a bankers’ syndicate led by the House of Morgan tried to intervene and buy stock, but it managed to stem the tide for only a few days. On “Black Tuesday,” the bottom fell out of the stock market, with 16 million shares traded and the New York Times stock index declining by 43 points. “Black Tuesday” became a symbol of the catastrophe that struck the American economy from 1929 to 1940. References John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929, 1955. Robert Sobel, The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920s, 1968.

B L A N D , R I C H A R D PA R K S Richard Parks Bland was born in Missouri in 1835. Bland became famous in American economic history because of his strong advocacy of silver as part of the nation’s money supply. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1872 as a Democrat, and he served in Congress until 1884, when he failed to win reelection. Bland was elected to the House again in 1896, however, serving until 1899. Along with William Jennings Bryan*, he led the silver bloc in Congress. A variety of farming and western mining groups advocated the free coinage of silver as a way of expanding the money supply to increase commodity prices. Because silver prices were falling in the wake of new discoveries like the Comstock Lode*, the remonetization of silver would raise prices back up to profitable levels. Known as “Silver Dick” Bland, he cosponsored with Senator William Allison of Iowa the legislation that became known as the Bland–Allison Act of 1878. Back in 1873, the Demonetization Act (or “Crime of 1873*”) had demonetized silver. The law caused a storm of protest in rural America, with much of the anger directed against the Republican Party. The Bland–Allison Act required the government to purchase no less than $2 million or more than $4 million worth of silver each month and then to mint silver dollars or issue silver certificates as legal tender. Although Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed the bill, it had enough Republican support in Congress to override the veto. Bland died in 1899. Reference David J. Rothman, Politics and Power: The United States Senate, 1869–1901, 1966.

BLAND–ALLISON ACT OF 1878 See BLAND, RICHARD PARKS.

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BLUE-COLLAR The term “blue-collar” has been used since the World War II* era to describe industrial workers engaged in manufacturing employment. Blue-collar workers are contrasted with “white-collar” workers, who are employed in clerical, professional, and high technological positions. In terms of their politics, blue-collar workers have been members of labor unions and have usually voted Democratic since the era of the Great Depression*, whereas white-collar workers have been more likely to vote Republican. Reference Irving Howe, ed., The World of the Blue-Collar Worker, 1972.

B O E I N G , W I L L I A M E D WA R D William Edward Boeing was born on October 1, 1881, in Detroit, Michigan. He attended Yale for three years but dropped out before graduating. Boeing was infatuated with aircraft, and in 1916, he established the Pacific Aero Products Company. In 1929, he changed the name of the company to the Boeing Airplane Company. By that time, the company was manufacturing the B-40 biplane for the mail service. Boeing changed the company name again to Boeing Aircraft after the Air Mail Act* of 1934 mandated a separation of aircraft production companies from air transport firms. Under Boeing’s leadership, Boeing Aircraft became the leading aircraft manufacturer in the United States. He died on September 20, 1956. Reference Henry Mansfield, Vision: The Story of Boeing, 1966.

BOLL WEEVIL The boll weevil is a gray beetle that lays its eggs in cotton bolls. After the larvae hatch, they feed on the cotton fiber and are capable of destroying the crop. Boll weevil destruction first became apparent in Texas in 1892, and it spread throughout the South in the next two decades. The devastation was so extensive in 1913 and 1914 that it precipitated a large-scale migration of southern African Americans to factory jobs in the northern cities. Insecticides were used to control boll weevil attacks, but it was not until the 1970s that plant geneticists developed a hybrid cotton plant that matured in only thirty days, hardly enough time for boll weevil larvae to destroy an entire crop. Reference John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 1976.

BOLSHEVISM “Bolshevism” was the term used in the 1920s to describe the revolutionary political philosophy emanating from the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks were Communists and followers of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who believed that Marxism would eventually triumph throughout the industrial world.

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Because early Bolsheviks had a missionary zeal for exporting their revolution, large numbers of Americans in the late 1910s and early 1920s saw Bolshevism as a threat to religion, capitalism, democracy, and individualism—in short, a threat to the American way of life. Those fears led to the famous First Red Scare. Reference Robert Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920, 1955.

B O N N E V I L L E P O W E R A D M I N I S T R AT I O N To handle the electric power produced by the recently completed Bonneville Dam in Oregon, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* established the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) in August 1937 under the authority of the Bonneville Power Administration Act. I. D. Ross, head of the Seattle city light program, was appointed its first administrator. By executive order in 1940, Roosevelt designated the BPA the marketing agency for all power generated by the Grand Coulee Dam. The Public Works Administration (PWA) provided money and manpower to construct the transmission lines. Ross died in March 1939, and Paul Raver became the new administrator; by then, BPA was the chief producer of electric power in the Northwest. The BPA sold that power wholesale and brought to an end the establishment of private power installations for two decades. Reference Richard Lowitt, The New Deal and the West, 1984.

BONUS ARMY The Bonus Army refers to World War I veterans who gathered in Washington, D.C., in 1932 to demand that the federal government grant them their pensions. Amid the Great Depression, many of these former members of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) migrated to Washington, D.C. They were promised a bonus by the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924, which they had to wait until 1945 to redeem. Led by former Army sergeant Walter Waters, the Bonus Army participated in the “Bonus March” to demand early receipt of their pension. President Herbert Hoover ordered military and police forces to forcibly remove the Bonus Army from their camp. Hoover’s image, already tarnished by his having not done enough to alleviate the effects of the Depression, became further sullied by this incident. References Roger Daniels, The Bonus March, 1971. Paul Dickenson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic, 2004.

BORDEN, GAIL Gail Borden was born in upstate New York in 1801. His family moved to Indiana when he was still a small child, and he was raised there. In 1829, Borden moved to Texas, where he had received a land grant of more than 4,000 acres from the

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Mexican government; he played a leading role in the Texas revolution of 1836. In addition to his farming and ranching interests, Borden was a tinkerer and an inventor. In 1849, he developed a type of beef jerky called a “meat biscuit,” which could be stored for long periods without rotting, and he made a fortune selling it to “Forty-Niners” heading for the California gold fields. Four years later, Borden developed a process for condensing milk by boiling and evaporating the water out of it. Because of the boiling process, the milk was in effect pasteurized and therefore quite safe. During the Civil War*, Borden’s condensed milk was consumed widely by the Union troops. After the war, Borden developed a canning process for the milk. The corporate entity that he formed—Borden, Inc.—went on to become a leading producer of milk and milk products. Borden died in 1874. Reference J. B. Frantz, Gail Borden and His Heritage Since 1857, 1933.

BOSTON POLICE STRIKE OF 1919 In 1919, amid the labor agitation and political unrest endemic to the United States, the police in Boston formed a labor union and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor* (AFL). They demanded a pay raise to significantly higher than their minimum of $1,100 a year. When the city of Boston refused their request and suspended nineteen police officers for being active in union organization, the police went out on strike on September 9, 1919. Burglaries, looting, and violence escalated immediately in Boston, and Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge called in the national guard. The police commissioner began recruiting new police officers. When AFL president Samuel Gompers* complained to Coolidge that Boston officials were being too heavyhanded, the governor replied that there was “no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.” The city pressed amateur policemen into service, and they, along with the national guardsmen, were able to maintain order. Because of public fear of radicalism at the time, the police strike was very unpopular and collapsed. Coolidge became a national hero. One year later, the Republican Party picked him to run for vice president. Reference Donald R. McCoy, Calvin Coolidge: The Quiet President, 1967.

B O S T O N T E A PA R T Y O F 1 7 7 3 In order to bail out the financially troubled East India Company and force the American colonists to pay taxes in support of the empire, the English Parliament passed the Tea Act in 1773. The act gave the company a monopoly on tea sales in America and forced the colonists to pay a tax on the imported tea. Led by Sam Adams, American radicals in Massachusetts decided that the tea should not be permitted to make its way into the retail shops of Boston. Otherwise, the colonists would be tempted to purchase the tea and inadvertently pay the tax. On December 16, 1773, some of these radicals boarded the tea-carrying ships in Boston harbor

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and destroyed the consignment. Historians have dubbed the event the “Boston Tea Party.” England retaliated with the Intolerable Acts, and the pace of events leading to the American Revolution* accelerated. Reference Benjamin W. Labaree, The Boston Tea Party, 1964.

BOULDER CANYON PROJECT ACT OF 1928 See HOOVER DAM. BOYER, JOSEPH Joseph Boyer was born in 1848 near Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He apprenticed out as a machinist and in 1869 opened his own machine shop in St. Louis, Missouri. Boyer stayed in the machine tool business in St. Louis for the next thirty years, and he invented the first automatic pneumatic hammer. His company was named the Boyer Machine Company. Boyer also helped his friend, William S. Burroughs, to invent the first adding machine and to found the Burroughs Adding Machine Company. They moved to Detroit in 1904; the next year, Boyer became president of Burroughs Adding Machine Company. He served there until 1920, when he became chairman of the board. By 1930, Burroughs was doing more than $30 million in business annually. Boyer was also an early pioneer in the automobile* industry and helped found the Cadillac Motor Car Company. Boyer died on October 24, 1930. Reference New York Times, October 25, 1930.

BOYLE, WILLIAM ANTHONY William “Tony” Boyle was born in Bald Butte, Montana, on December 1, 1904. He went to work as a coalminer and became active in the local activities of the United Mine Workers* of America (UMW). Boyle rose through the union ranks and served as a personal assistant to John L. Lewis* from 1948 to 1960. He was elected international president of the UMW in 1963. Rank-and-file members came to resent Boyle’s leadership of the union. They suspected him of corrupt use of union funds and a lack of responsiveness to their needs. In 1969, Joseph A. Yablonski* challenged Boyle for the UMW presidency. Boyle defeated Yablonski in the election, but Yablonski and his family were murdered in their homes shortly thereafter. In 1972, the Department of Labor* invalidated the 1969 election as hopelessly fraudulent, and Arnold Miller* defeated Boyle in the presidential election. Boyle was subsequently convicted of illegally using union funds for political purposes and of conspiring to murder Yablonski. He received an extended prison sentence. References Stuart Brown, A Man Named Tony: The True Story of the Yablonski Murders, 1976. Joseph H. Finley, The Corrupt Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of the United Mine Workers, 1972.

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BRACEROS The word “bracero” is a Spanish term for worker. During the 1940s and 1950s, it referred to Mexican citizens brought to the United States by the federal government and private contractors to work as farm laborers. The program first appeared during World War II, when severe labor shortages threatened crop harvesting in the Southwest. After the war, the program continued, largely because Mexican laborers were cheaper to hire than domestic workers were. The bracero program then encountered intense opposition from organized labor in the United States, arguing that braceros cut down on wages and jobs for American workers. Congress ended the program in 1964. Reference Richard B. Craig, The Bracero Program: Interest Groups and Foreign Policy, 1971.

BRAIN TRUST During his early political career, Franklin D. Roosevelt* frequently consulted academics and intellectuals on important policy issues, and he continued the tradition during his governorship in New York from 1929 to 1933. Early in 1932, as he was planning his presidential campaign, he and some of his advisers were worried about issues and themes. They were as confused as everyone else about the problem of depression and recovery. In March 1932, Roosevelt’s general counsel, Samuel Rosenman, suggested that he assemble a group of advisers to develop campaign themes, but that they not be drawn from the business community. Rosenman urged Roosevelt to turn to the universities, and Roosevelt agreed. Rosenman recruited an impressive group. Among them was Raymond Moley, a political scientist at Barnard College who had written speeches for Roosevelt and who frequently offered political advice. For expertise on agriculture, Moley then recruited Rexford Guy Tugwell*, another Columbia professor. For advice on corporate and economic affairs, they both turned to Adolf Berle*, still another Columbia professor and the author of The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932). Basil O’Connor, Roosevelt’s law partner, joined them. Moley assumed leadership of the group, wrote up the list of topics they discussed, and presided at their meetings. They met frequently throughout 1932, and in September, James Kieran of the New York Times dubbed them the “brains trust,” a term the public later sometimes shortened to “brain trust.” Their ideas helped lead the way to the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and to the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933. After the election in November 1932*, the brain trust was dissolved as a formal group. All five men continued to play significant roles in the New Deal*, but they disbanded as a formal group that met frequently. Beyond helping Roosevelt to formulate his major campaign ideas and stimulating a policy momentum that carried right through the “hundred days,” they established the tradition of the “service intellectual” on the federal level. Reference Elliott A. Rosen, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust: From Depression to New Deal, 1977.

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BRANDEIS, LOUIS DEMBITZ European revolutionaries forced the Brandeis family to leave Czechoslovakia in 1848. By the time that Louis was born in 1856, Adolf Brandeis was established as a successful grain commission merchant in Louisville, Kentucky. Louis was educated at the German and English Academy in Louisville and attended school in Dresden, Germany, before entering Harvard Law School in 1875. His brilliance and judicial philosophy quickly became apparent. Brandeis viewed the Constitution as a flexible instrument that allowed people to govern themselves democratically. In order for the courts to interpret the Constitution properly, they had to consider legal precedents, common sense, and social realities. This method of jurisprudence came to national attention in 1908 when Brandeis submitted to the Supreme Court what came to be known as a Brandeis brief. In Muller v. Oregon*, Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept sociological statistics as evidence in upholding a law. While arbitrating the New York garment workers’ strike in 1910, Brandeis discovered his Jewish identity and eventually became head of the powerful American Zionist movement. He saw Zionism as an extension of the American ideal. Brandeis was also a fervent believer in the freedom of business enterprise. He felt that the great enemy of freedom was monopoly and special privileges, such as tariffs and subsidies. Similarly, he opposed the union demand for closed shops. To force laborers to join a union in order to secure employment violated his ideas of democracy. In 1912, Woodrow Wilson* asked Brandeis to serve as his campaign adviser. Brandeis helped the future president shape a program that they called the “New Freedom:” It proposed to protect competition and to create a federal trade commission to supervise business practices. Wilson appointed Brandeis to the Supreme Court in 1916. He served on the Court for twenty-three years. For almost the entire time, Brandeis’s views were expressed in minority opinions. The Great Depression* brought a new popularity to his opinions. Inexpensive editions of his book Other People’s Money were published during the campaign of 1932, and Franklin D. Roosevelt* frequently referred to the book in his fireside chats. Brandeis differed sharply with the planning philosophy behind early New Deal* measures such as the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) and the Agricultural Adjustment Act*. Still, he voted against specific New Deal measures only three times: in the Schechter* case, which struck down the NRA; the Panama* decision, which repudiated a section of the National Industrial Recovery Act; and the Louisville land bank case, which struck down the Frazier–Lemke Act. He acknowledged that the federal government had a role to play in the economic recovery but proposed that as many duties as possible should devolve upon the states. Brandeis advocated “breaking up business to the point where the states could regulate them,” championed the Wisconsin plan as a model for state action in handling unemployment compensation, criticized the Social Security Act* for retaining too large a role for the federal government, and opposed the court-packing scheme as dangerous to an independent judiciary. He suffered a heart attack in January 1939 and retired one month later. To Brandeis’s immense satisfaction, Roosevelt named William O. Douglas*, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission*, to the vacant seat. Brandeis continued

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meeting with government officials and reformers, intervening with Roosevelt when he could on Jewish matters. The president often referred to Brandeis as “Isaiah.” He died on October 5, 1941, one month before his eighty-fifth birthday. Reference Melvin J. Urofsky, Louis Brandeis and the Progressive Tradition, 1981.

BREADLINES After 1929, the term “breadline” was used to describe the lines of unemployed men and women waiting outside soup kitchens or government relief offices for food. Reference Paul Sann, The Lawless Decade, 1957.

BRETTON WOODS CONFERENCE Formally known as the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, the Bretton Woods Conference was an international meeting chaired by Henry Morgenthau Jr.,* the secretary of the treasury of the United States. During World War II, representatives of forty-four Allied nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, from July 1 to July 22, 1944. With the end of the war in sight, many world leaders were concerned about a resumption of the Great Depression* of the 1930s after government war spending declined. Harry Dexter White, a prominent economist and adviser to Morgenthau, proposed the establishment of several international financial institutions to help rebuild the world economy. The Bretton Woods Conference met to discuss the proposal. Out of the meeting came the establishment of the International Monetary Fund* (IMF) to stabilize world currencies and to prevent competitive speculation in currencies and devaluation cycles. The IMF enjoyed an initial capitalization of $8.8 billion. The IMF would also fund an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development* (IBRD), which would provide long-term investment capital to member nations. The IBRD, or World Bank, began operation in June 1946 with capital of $9.1 billion. References Alfred E. Eckes Jr., The Search for Solvency, 1975. William H. McNeill, America, Britain, and Russia, 1953.

B R O O K FA R M The first half of the nineteenth century saw many communal experiments in the United States. One of the most visible was Brook Farm. In 1841, George Ripley purchased a tract of land in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. There he sought to establish an intellectual community that could transcend the materialism of the larger society through simple agriculture and handicraft industries, with land held in common. More than 100 intellectuals, mostly Transcendentalist writers and Unitarian ministers, gathered there, but the experiment fell victim to financial problems and a terrible fire in 1846. By 1847, Brook

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Farm had disbanded, but it was one of America’s early experiments in communal living. Reference Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, 1970.

BROOKINGS, ROBERT SOMERS Robert S. Brookings was born on January 22, 1850, in Cecil County, Maryland. In 1867, Brookings became a store clerk in St. Louis, Missouri, and by 1872, he was managing the company. He branched out into real estate, lumbering, and transportation, becoming in the process a well-known business figure in the Midwest. In 1895, he built Cupples Station, a twelve-block private railway terminal in downtown St. Louis, which became a model for railway distribution sites in the United States. But in 1896, Brookings’s* life took a different course when he decided to compensate for his own lack of education by dedicating himself to higher education. He donated Cupples Station to Washington University and then vigorously raised funds for the university. Brookings was especially committed to the medical school. This commitment to education brought Brookings inevitably into research and philanthropy. In 1910, he was appointed to the board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; in 1916, he founded the Institute for Government Research to investigate administrative and political practice in the United States. During World War I*, Brookings worked for the War Industries Board* (WIB) and became a close associate of Bernard Baruch*. Experience on the WIB gave Brookings a new interest in economics and industrial cooperation. In 1922, he founded the Institute for Economics, and in 1924, the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government. In 1928, the three organizations he had founded were merged into the Brookings Institution* for Government Research, one of the most important research and policy* “think tanks” in American history. One of its first studies was of the “Indian problem” in America. Known as the Meriam Report*, the study advocated a change of direction of U.S. American Indian policy, one that would return Indian land, allow the full expression of Indian culture, and recognize tribal sovereignty once again. Brookings died on November 15, 1932. References Donald T. Critchlow, The Brookings Institution, 1916–1952: Expertise and the Public Interest in a Democratic Society, 1985. Herman Hagedorn, Brookings: A Biography, 1936. New York Times, November 16, 1932.

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION The Brookings Institution was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1916 as the Institute for Government Research. Its founders were Frederick A. Cleveland, chairman of the Commission on Economy and Efficiency, and Charles D. Norton, vice president of the National Bank of New York City. Frank J. Goodnow, president of Johns Hopkins University, was named its first president. In 1928, the Institute

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for Government Research merged with the Institute for Economics and the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government. The consolidated organization was named the Brookings Institution in honor of Robert Brookings, a St. Louis businessman who provided it with generous financial support. Since that time, the Brookings Institution has engaged in a wide range of economic, political, and diplomatic research. Its studies have been precursors of such influential government programs as the Budget and Accounting Office*, the Indian Reorganization Act* of 1934, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act* of 1934, the Full Employment Act of 1946, the Marshall Plan* of 1947, the Taft–Hartley Act* of 1947, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It has become one of the most important private “think tanks” in the United States. Reference Charles B. Saunder Jr., The Brookings Institution: A Fifty-Year History, 1966.

BROTHERHOOD OF SLEEPING CAR PORTERS The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was established by Asa Philip Randolph* in 1925 to improve the pay and working conditions of black Pullman porters in the railroad industry. In the face of bitter opposition from the Pullman Company, Randolph effectively organized the industry after taking the union into the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) as a segregated affiliate. In 1936, with New Deal protection, the union secured its first contract with the company. As passenger traffic on railroads declined after World War II, however, the union lost members, declining to fewer than 1,000 people by the mid-1980s. In 1978, the BSCP merged with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks (BRAC) and became known collectively as Transportation Communications International Union (TCU). References Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 1972. William H. Harris, Keeping the Faith, 1977.

BROWN, HARVEY WINFIELD Harvey W. Brown was born in Dow, Pennsylvania, on October 28, 1883. He became an apprentice machinist in 1900 and joined the International Association of Machinists (IAM) in 1905. Brown worked as a machinist until 1911, when he became a full-time IAM organizer. In 1921, Brown was elected vice president of the IAM; when Arthur Wharton stepped down as longtime president of the union, Brown assumed the position. During Brown’s tenure, the IAM made the transition from its historical mission as a railroad machinist craft union to an industrial union with heavy interests in the airframe and general manufacturing industries. Brown served as IAM president until 1948. He died on September 4, 1956. References New York Times, September 5, 1956. Mark Perlman, The Machinists: A New Study in American Trade Unionism, 1961.

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B R YA N , W I L L I A M J E N N I N G S William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois, on March 19, 1860. He graduated from Illinois College in 1881 and then took a law degree from the Union College of Law in Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1883. Bryan practiced law in Jacksonville for four years before moving his practice to Lincoln, Nebraska. There Bryan became active in Democratic politics and won a seat in Congress in 1890. By that time, the economic life of midwestern farmers was deteriorating under the pressure of massive overproduction and high railroad freight rates. Bryan was reelected to Congress in 1892 and associated himself with the silver bloc—a coalition of farmers and some industrial workers who believed that silver inflation would cure the country’s economic ills. He was unsuccessful in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in 1894. After leaving politics, Bryan became the head of the editorial staff of the Omaha World-Telegram and an extremely popular speaker on the Chautauqua circuit. He toured the country advocating the free coinage of silver. Like millions of farmers, Bryan was convinced that the free coinage of silver would stimulate a price inflation that would increase farm income. Bryan rocketed to national prominence in 1896 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There he delivered his famous “Cross of Gold Speech*” and won the party’s presidential nomination. The Populist Party* as well as the Democrats then nominated him as their candidate, and Bryan campaigned against the Republican nominee, William McKinley*, on the free silver* platform. Unable to put together a national coalition of workers and farmers, Bryan lost the election of 1896*, 7,035,638 votes to 6,467,946, although his losing total was greater than any previous winning total. He sought the presidency again in 1900, using anti-imperialism as the issue against McKinley, but Bryan lost again, this time 7,219,530 votes to 6,358,071. Bryan ran again in 1908 but lost to Republican William Howard Taft* 7,679,006 votes to 6,409,106. In 1912, Bryan actively supported the presidential candidacy of Woodrow Wilson*, and when Wilson won the election, Bryan was rewarded with the cabinet position of secretary of state. While at the State Department, Bryan negotiated thirty separate treaties with other nations providing for the arbitration of international disputes, but he resigned from the cabinet in 1915 when he concluded that Wilson was reacting too aggressively to the sinking of the Lusitania. Bryan believed strictly in absolute neutrality, and he could not morally continue to serve under Wilson. Bryan’s last public role proved to be an ironic one in the 1920s. For all his career, he had been viewed by many as a radical—for his advocacy of free silver and his neutrality during the months preceding the American entry into World War I*. But Bryan was also a fundamentalist in religion, who bitterly opposed the teaching of evolution. Early in the 1920s, he delivered hundreds of speeches across the country calling for state legislation prohibiting the teaching of evolution in the public schools. In 1925, when John T. Scopes of Dayton, Tennessee, was indicted for violating such legislation, Bryan came to town to assist the prosecution; famed criminal attorney Clarence Darrow came down from Chicago to defend Scopes. In the subsequent “Monkey Trial,” Bryan took the witness stand to defend a literal interpretation of the Bible, only to wither under Darrow’s brutal cross-examination. Bryan, known

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as the “Great Commoner,” ended his illustrious career as a buffoon in the mind of urban America. He died in Dayton, Tennessee, on July 26, 1925, shortly after the end of the trial. References Kendrick A. Clements, William Jennings Bryan: Missionary Isolationist, 1982. Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade, 1915– 1925, 1965.

B RY C E , J A M E S James Bryce was born in Ireland in 1838 to Scotch–Irish parents. He graduated from Trinity College, Oxford, and then practiced law for a few years before returning to Oxford as a lecturer. By then, he was a friend of William Gladstone and won a seat in Parliament as a Liberal. Bryce’s claim to fame in U.S. history comes from his book American Commonwealth, published in 1888 and based on his observations of American life from his post as British ambassador to the United States. The book was a comprehensive look at American political, social, and economic institutions, the best work since Alexis de Tocqueville’s monumental Democracy in America a half-century earlier. In terms of his emphasis on what he actually observed (and not on what should have been), Bryce was an early contributor to the new discipline of political science. During the latter years of his life, Bryce served as a jurist on the International Court at The Hague. He died in 1922. Reference Robert C. Brooks, Bryce’s “American Commonwealth”: Fiftieth Anniversary, 1939.

BUCARELI AGREEMENT OF 1923 In 1917, the Mexican Constitution stated that all subsurface mineral deposits were Mexican property, not the property of foreign corporations that might have negotiated such rights in the past. American companies, especially oil companies, with mineral rights in Mexico were outraged and put pressure on the U.S. government to remedy the situation; the result was a severing of diplomatic relations between the two countries. By 1921, the Mexican government under Alvarado Obregon was interested in seeking American loans and realized that the dispute needed to be resolved. The United States was also interested in settling the dispute because of predictions that domestic oil shortages were looming on the horizon. An American negotiating team went to Mexico, where discussions took place on the Calle Bucareli. Mexico agreed to honor American claims dating back to 1868 if the United States would extend recognition to the Obregon government and recognize Mexican title to all subsurface minerals. The treaty was signed by both parties, and on August 31, 1923, the United States and Mexico resumed diplomatic relations. References Howard F. Cline, The United States and Mexico, 1953. L. Ethan Ellis, Republican Foreign Policy, 1921–1933, 1968.

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B U C K M A S T E R , L E L A N D S TA N F O R D Leland S. Buckmaster was born in Geneva, Indiana, on March 30, 1894. He graduated from Tri-State College in Indiana and then taught school from 1913 to 1917. After a tour with the United States Army during World War I*, Buckmaster went to work as a tin finisher with the Firestone* Tire and Rubber Company in Akron. He worked there until 1937. In 1933, Buckmaster joined the United Rubber Workers* of America (URWA) and quickly rose through the ranks of the union. He was elected a URWA vice president in 1941 and international president of the union in 1945. During his tenure, Buckmaster helped root Communists out of the union and in the early 1950s played a major role in bringing about the merger between the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO). He became a vice president of the AFL-CIO* in 1955, retired from the URWA in 1960, and retired from the AFL-CIO in 1962. Buckmaster died on January 2, 1967. References New York Times, January 4, 1967. Harold S. Roberts, The Rubber Workers, 1944.

BUDGET AND ACCOUNTING ACT OF 1921 Shortly after his inauguration, President Warren G. Harding called Congress into special session. The new administration was committed to a reduction in government spending as well as the use of business methods in government operations. One target of “normalcy*” was the arcane budgeting process. Under the old system, each government agency annually appeared independently before Congress to appeal for funds. Congress appropriated money individually. A result of this process was that there was no comprehensive system for allocating money or estimating total expenditures. On June 10, 1921, President Harding signed the new Budget and Accounting Act into law. It established a Bureau of the Budget, under the direction of the president, to prepare an annual budget, as well as a General Accounting Office, with a Comptroller General, to audit government accounts. Harding selected John Raymond McCarl as Comptroller General and Chicago banker Charles G. Dawes* as Director of the Budget. For 1922–1923, Dawes, after a whirlwind of activity, submitted a federal budget* of only $3.5 billion, which provided a surplus at the end of the year. References Charles Dawes, The First Year of the Budget of the United States, 1923. Robert K. Murray, The Politics of Normalcy: Government Theory and Practice in the Harding– Coolidge Era, 1973.

B U F FA L O Historians estimate that by the early nineteenth century, there were more than 10 million head of bison, or buffalo, living on the Great Plains between the Mississippi

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River in the east and the Rocky Mountains in the west and between southern Canada in the north and central Texas in the south. Several hundred American Indian tribes depended partially or exclusively on the buffalo for their economic subsistence. When the westward movement of American settlers reached the Mississippi River area in the 1810s and 1820s, the slaughter of the buffalo began. At first, the buffalo were harvested for meat and hides in relatively small numbers, but after the Civil War*, the assault on the herds became so great that the point of extinction was reached. By 1900, there were only approximately 4,000 head of buffalo still alive in North America. In the process, the economy of the Plains Indians was destroyed, as was their independence. Reference James C. Malin, The Grasslands of North America, 1947.

B U F F E T T, WA R R E N Warren Edward Buffett is CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and ranked among the world’s wealthiest people. Known as the “Wizard of Omaha,” Buffett is considered an influential business magnate as well as a notable philanthropist. Buffet was born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska, as the second child of U.S. Representative Howard Buffett. Buffett attended college at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, studying at that institution for two years. He then transferred to the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. After graduating with a bachelor of science in business administration, he enrolled at Columbia Business School, later attaining a master’s of science in economics in 1951. From 1951 to 1954, Buffett worked as an investment salesperson for Buffett–Falk & Co. After a series of career changes in the next few decades, he worked his way up to CEO of Berkshire Hathaway as chairman and CEO, where he has worked since 1970. Through savvy investment strategies and business decisions, Buffett became a millionaire by 1962. By 1990, he became a billionaire, being able to make more acquisitions and become more wealthy. In the 2012 presidential election, Buffett became a prominent spokesperson arguing for the wealthy to pay higher taxes to contribute more to society. References Robert Heller, Warren Buffett, 2000. Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, 2008.

B U L K E L E Y, M O R G A N G A R D N E R Morgan G. Bulkeley was born on December 26, 1837, in East Haddam, Connecticut; he was raised in Hartford. Bulkeley’s father, Eliphalet Bulkeley, was a longtime president of the Aetna Insurance Company, and when he retired in 1873, Morgan Bulkeley assumed the presidency. When he took over, Aetna had assets of just over $22 million. Bulkeley later formed the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company and the Automobile Insurance Company of Hartford. By 1920, its assets exceeded $200 million. An

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active Republican, Bulkeley was elected mayor of Hartford on four different occasions and served two terms as governor of Connecticut. He died on November 6, 1922. References F. W. Chapman, The Bulkeley Family, 1875. New York Times, November 7, 1922.

BULL MARKET Perhaps the most distinguishing features of the 1920s, at least in the minds of the historical community, were the unprecedented stock market rise and the subsequent crash of 1929. In 1921, the composite average of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange* was 54. It increased to 65 in 1923, 106 in 1924, 245 in 1927, and 449 in 1929, nearly a tenfold gain. The gains were, quite literally, unbelievable, as was the crash of 1929, which brought the composite index down to 51 in 1931 and 37 in 1932. Except for minor adjustments, the market made steady gains throughout the 1920s. More important, those gains were not really tied to dividends or corporate profits. Investors were interested in capital gains, and quick ones at that, rather than in long-term growth and dividends. Business profits increased quite modestly during the decade, so dividend expectations did not fuel the market expansion. Looking back on the extraordinary increases in stock values, historians offer several explanations. One is the World War I* profits that American investors poured into the stock market. The United States emerged from the war with the strongest economy in the world and with huge gains in capital. Some of that money found its way to Wall Street*, fueling early stock market gains. Republican tax policies had a similar effect. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon* was committed to tax reductions for the well-to-do, and the Revenue Acts* of 1921, 1924, 1926, 1928, and 1929 all reduced general tax and surtax rates. Billions of dollars that might have gone to the federal government were thus left in the hands of investors, who put large amounts of it into the stock market, driving stock prices higher. Mellon was also committed to paying off the national debt*. As he did, government bonds were retired, and investors had to find other outlets for their investment capital. Wall Street was the primary recipient of their funds. By the middle of the decade, with stock prices rising at a dizzying rate, corporations began to postpone reinvestment in their own businesses and channeled their excess funds into the stock market too. Those price increases then attracted smaller investors into the market. The huge volumes of new money entering the market led to extraordinary price increases. Faulty monetary assumptions on the part of Federal Reserve* officials prevented the government from exerting any restraining influence. Finally, the creation of investment trusts and margin buying drove the market to unheard-of heights. With speculative money pouring into the stock market, creative stock manipulators began setting up investment trusts and issuing stock on the new companies. Hundreds of these trusts, issuing millions of shares of stock, appeared in 1928 and 1929, driving stock market prices still higher. The problem, of course, was that the values of the stocks were grossly inflated, because they did not represent real economic assets. Margin buying meant that investors

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could put up a small down payment on a stock, take out a call loan from a broker or bank, and purchase a stock using the stock itself as collateral for the loan. As long as securities values in general were rising, margin buying allowed for enormous profits, but when prices declined, margin calls required investors to put up more cash to cover the declining value of the collateral (the stock). The demand for cash triggered a wave of selling and helped precipitate the crash of 1929. References John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929, 1955. Robert Sobel, The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920s, 1968.

BURLINGTON NORTHERN RAILROAD In 1970, John Budd of the Great Northern Railway* engineered the merger of the Great Northern with the Northern Pacific Railroad*, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad*, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway. With more than 25,000 miles of track, the Burlington Northern Railroad has become the dominant carrier in the Pacific Northwest and the upper Midwest. By 1995, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway merged with the Burlington Northern to create the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. In 2005, the company changed its name to BNSF Railway. Reference W. Thomas White, “John M. Budd,” in Keith M. Bryant Jr., ed., Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980, 1988.

BURNS, ARTHUR FRANK Arthur Frank Burns was born in Stanislau, Austria, on April 27, 1904. The family immigrated to the United States when Burns was still a child, and he earned a number of degrees, including a Ph.D. in economics in 1934. Burns’s economic ideas were decidedly conservative, as were his Republican politics, but he was no ideologue. He served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration and was later president of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 1969, he came back into government service as an economic adviser to President Richard M. Nixon, who appointed him head of the Federal Reserve* Board in 1970. An expert on the business cycle, Burns argued that the violent swings in the American economy were things of the past, and he opposed business monopolies, wage–price controls, or social spending to stimulate an ailing economy. At the Federal Reserve Board, he argued that the board should concentrate more on managing the total supply of money in the economy rather than worrying about how monetary policy would affect credit market conditions. Burns left government service during the Jimmy Carter administration and retired to private life. However, he returned to public service for a short period, serving as U.S. ambassador to West Germany from 1981 to 1985. He died on June 26, 1987. Reference “Spotlight on Arthur Frank Burns,” Banking 62 (1970): 47, 110.

B U s H , G e o R G e H . W.

B U S H , G E O R G E H . W. Before becoming president of the United States in 1989, George Bush’s long career of public service included terms as a U.S. congress member, United Nations (UN) ambassador, Republican National Committee chair during the Watergate era, envoy to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and vice president. Eight years after leaving the White House, he was in the unique position of seeing his son, George W. Bush*, elected to the presidency. George Herbert Walker Bush was born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts. He grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and attended Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. In 1942, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He was commissioned an ensign and in 1943 became the navy’s youngest pilot. He was shot down during World War II and earned a Distinguished Flying Cross. Bush entered Yale in 1945, the same year in which he married Barbara Bush (née Pierce). After graduating with a bachelor’s degree three years later, he moved with his new wife to the oil fields of western Texas. Bush learned the oil industry from first-hand experience and founded his own company using family money. He eventually merged his firm with others to form the Zapata Petroleum Corporation but broke off on his own again in 1954 to develop the Zapata Offshore Company. He established the headquarters of his firm in Houston in 1958. Like his father, Prescott Bush (a Republican senator from Connecticut from 1962 to 1972), Bush became active in politics. In 1964, he won the Texas Republican Party nomination for senator, but his conservative positions and support for radical hawk Barry Goldwater were not sufficiently popular to defeat the Democratic incumbent. Two years later, Bush was elected to the first of two consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. In Congress, Bush won an important appointment to the House Ways and Means Committee and supported a generally conservative approach to issues. He did, however, vote to allow 18-year-olds to vote and for open housing legislation. His pro–civil rights vote riled many of his Texas constituents. In 1970, Bush decided not to seek a third term in the House in order to make another try for the Senate. Although he enjoyed a well-financed campaign, he was defeated by conservative Democrat Lloyd Bentsen. In appreciation for his effort, President Richard Nixon appointed Bush ambassador to the UN for two years and in 1973 made him chair of the Republican National Committee. Until the release of the Watergate tape that clearly implicated Nixon in a cover-up attempt, Bush loyally defended the president. When Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, allowed Bush to choose a new post, he decided to become the chief of the U.S. liaison office in the People’s Republic of China. He served in this position from 1974 until December 1975, when he returned to the United States to become the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA had been beset by a series of embarrassing disclosures revealing its role in destabilizing Third World governments through bribery, kidnapping, and support for assassinations. Although Bush headed the organization for only eight months, he had considerable success restoring morale and implementing needed organizational reforms.

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At the beginning of the 1980 race for the Republican presidential nomination, Bush unexpectedly pulled ahead of favorite Ronald Reagan* by winning the Iowa caucuses. A shocked Reagan altered his campaign strategy, recovered his momentum, and went on to defeat Bush for the nomination. Reagan then chose Bush as his running mate, and the ticket went on to a solid election victory against incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Reagan chose Bush to be his running mate again in 1984. During his eight years as vice president, Bush carefully cultivated conservative interests within the Republican Party. By 1988, he had convinced most of his critics within the party that he really would support conservative Republican positions and not the more open approach favored by the liberal wing of the party. He quickly knocked out his challengers for the presidential nomination in 1988, then went on to win a resounding victory against the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. In the national election campaign, Bush promised to continue the Reagan administration’s policies, especially the commitment to reduce government spending in order to balance the budget with no new taxes. As president, Bush made curtailing drug abuse and lowering the budget deficit high priorities. It was his administration’s “war on drugs” that led Bush to order an invasion of the Republic of Panama in 1989 in order to arrest its leader, Manuel Noriega. Noriega was accused of allowing his nation to be used as a drug smuggling center. Operation Just Cause captured Noriega at the cost of $2 million in property damage and the lives of several hundred Panamanian civilians. In the fall of 1990, faced with a growing budget deficit and a weakening economy, Bush publicly rescinded his no new taxes pledge. The move cost him the support of a substantial number of the Republican members of Congress, but a modest tax increase program was enacted that began to address the need to reduce the federal government’s budget deficit. In foreign policy, Bush encouraged the improvement of relations with the Soviet Union. His administration won praise for its speed in meeting the challenge of the unexpected collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990 and accepting the reunification of Germany. The first foreign policy crisis for the Bush administration occurred when Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait in the Persian Gulf in August 1990. Bush immediately protested the invasion, ordered a huge buildup of American naval, air, and ground forces in the area (stationed primarily in Saudi Arabia), and successfully sought UN approval for an international trade embargo of Iraq to force it to withdraw from Kuwait. The two reasons he gave for the need to commit troops in the area were safeguarding oil supplies and protecting small nation-states from unprovoked aggression by more powerful neighbors. When economic sanctions did not lead to Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait, Bush obtained support from the UN for the use of military force against Iraq. His approval rating in the United States soared during the ensuing Persian Gulf War, which lasted just longer than three months. Bush was renominated for president by the Republican Party in 1992. In a race that included Bill Clinton* as the Democratic nominee and Texas tycoon Ross Perot running as an independent, Bush stressed his foreign policy experience and

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defended his domestic record, in spite of an economic downturn and high unemployment. Clinton won the election, taking 370 electoral votes, and Bush retired to his home in Houston, Texas. Though Bush has retired from politics, his legacy continues. In 1998, his son George was reelected governor of Texas, and son Jeb Bush was elected governor of Florida. George was then elected to the presidency in November 2000, and reelected in 2004. ABC-CLIO References George Bush, with Victor Gold, Looking Forward: An Autobiography, 1987. George Bush, with Doug Wead, Man of Integrity, 1988. Fitzhugh Green, George Bush: An Intimate Portrait, 1989. George Plimpton, The X Factor, 1990. Matt Ridley, Warts and All: The Men Who Would Be Bush, 1989.

B U S H , G E O R G E W. George Walker Bush served as the forty-third president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 and as the forty-sixth governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, the eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush. Bush graduated from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975. After finishing business school, Bush worked in the oil business in Texas. He married Laura Welch in 1977. He ran as a Republican against popular Democratic incumbent governor Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election, winning convincingly. He was known for his pro-business policies and staunch support of the death penalty. He served as Texas governor from 1995 to 2000. In 2000, Bush ran for the presidency as a Republican against then–Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat. Bush was elected president in 2000 after a close election in which he received fewer popular votes than Gore; the election’s outcome was decided by the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore (2000). The closeness of his victory, which centered on a recount in Florida, made the decision controversial. As president, Bush was known for his “compassionate conservative” policies, which, though pro-business, were also indicative of his views on government assistance for the poor. However, his tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation policies were clearly indicative of his views on the role of government. On September 11, 2001, after the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center* in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Bush made the case to Congress for retaliation against mastermind Osama bin Laden. The subsequent war in Afghanistan was supported widely by the public for its direct relationship to events connected to 9/11. However, the following year, the Bush administration made a case for attacking Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq over suspicions that it possessed weapons of mass destruction. After the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, the Iraq regime quickly collapsed. However, militant factions of Shia, supported by foreign terrorist groups, resisted U.S. and Coalition forces for nearly a

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decade, extending the Iraq War far beyond its initial scope. The Iraq War contributed to Bush’s unpopularity among the U.S. public, as did his support of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which gave primacy to national security over civil liberties. His delayed response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 further blemished his reputation. Bush left office on January 20, 2009, succeeded by Democrat Barack Obama*. Bush’s legacy is associated with his pro-business policies on deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy (known as the Bush tax cuts), as well as his controversial intervention in Iraq. References John W. Dean, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, 2004. David Frum, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, 2003.

B U S I N E S S A D V I S O RY C O U N C I L Formed in June 1933 as the Business Advisory and Planning Council (renamed the Business Advisory Councilor BAC in 1935), the BAC was the brainchild of Daniel C. Roper, then secretary of commerce. He hoped that the council would provide President Franklin D. Roosevelt* with advice from the business community to help cement relations with the New Deal* and hasten economic recovery. The BAC included forty-one prominent businessmen. Among them were Myron Taylor of U.S. Steel*, Alfred Sloan* of General Motors*, Robert Wood* of Sears Roebuck*, Walter S. Gifford of American Telephone and Telegraph* (AT&T), and Pierre du Pont*. Gerard Swope* of General Electric* was chairman. In addition to making a variety of proposals about American business, the BAC membership staffed the National Recovery Administration’s* (NRA) Industrial Advisory Board on a rotating basis. When Hugh Johnson left the NRA in November 1934, S. Clay Williams left the BAC to replace him. But the days of real cooperation were short-lived. As the NRA became bogged down in dissension and bureaucratic infighting, the members of the BAC grew frustrated. Indeed, they became positively angry with such New Deal measures as the Securities Exchange Act of 1934* and the National Labor Relations Act* of 1935. In 1935, President Roosevelt tried to use the BAC to attack the U.S. Chamber of Commerce*. Many members resigned because they believed that the president had used them to create the impression that the chamber was alone in its opposition to the New Deal. In 1936 and 1937, the BAC called for fiscal retrenchment and a balanced budget. The group never really adjusted to the Keynesian* ideas gaining ground among New Dealers. Still, the BAC remained a bastion for those who dreamed of a business commonwealth, complete with national planning and the regulation of industry, with government cooperation but not government control. Supporting such measures as the NRA and the Social Security Act*, they were not at all a laissez-faire* interest group representing conservative businessmen. Reference

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Robert M. Collins, “Positive Business Responses to the New Deal: The Roots of the Committee for Economic Development, 1933–1942,” Business History Review 52 (1978): 369–391.

BUSINESS CONFERENCES OF 1929 When the stock market collapsed late in 1929, President Herbert Hoover* was prepared to implement the macroeconomic management ideas he had developed in the 1920s. At first, he was convinced that the crash, by bursting the speculative bubble, would release capital for legitimate investment and thus stimulate the economy. The key was confidence: If the leaders of the major corporations would resist panicky retrenchment and maintain wages and investment, the economy would recover quickly. During November 19–23, 1929, Hoover therefore convened conferences of leading executives in the business, finance, railroad, construction, and public utilities industries to organize cooperative private sector initiatives. Out of the meetings came three permanent programs: the National Business Survey Conference, which was a Chamber of Commerce* organization of 170 trade associations out to maintain wages and stimulate new investment; the National Building Survey Conference, which sought to stimulate new construction; and a new Division of Public Construction in the Department of Commerce* to speed up federal building projects. Eventually, business leaders turned out to be not nearly as system-oriented as Hoover had assumed. Disastrous quarterly earnings reports in 1930 triggered massive corporate retrenchment and layoffs—just what Hoover had wanted to avoid. References Martin Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 1985. Ellis W. Hawley, The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917–1933, 1979.

BUSINESS CYCLE COMMITTEE Chaired by General Electric* executive Owen D. Young*, the Business Cycle Committee was composed of a number of forward-looking businessmen and economists. Inspired by the Unemployment Conference of 1921, the committee was formed in 1923 to disseminate the latest information about business cycle theory and proposals for economic stabilization. In particular, the committee wanted to help businessmen make rational economic decisions, free of speculation on the one hand and desperate retrenchment on the other. Although the committee was suspicious of government measures, it did promote a number of private sector initiatives to help stabilize the economy during down cycles: unemployment insurance, wage maintenance, export management, and construction “reserves” to guarantee capital investment during slack periods. Eventually, the federal government adopted each of these proposals, contrary to what the Business Cycle Committee had originally envisioned, but at least the

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committee’s work had helped to prepare policymakers for the emergence of such economic management. Reference Evan B. Metcalf, “Secretary Hoover and the Emergence of Macroeconomic Management,” Business History Review 49 (1975): 60–80.

B U S I N E S S – I N D U S T RY P O L I T I C A L A C T I O N COMMITTEE The Business–Industry Political Action Committee was founded in 1963 by the National Association of Manufacturers* to counter the growing influence of the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations* (AFL-CIO) Political Action committee. Robert L. Humphrey served as its first president, and its board of directors was composed of major American business leaders. The mission of the Business–Industry Political Action Committee has been to promote free enterprise in the United States; the committee believes that the best way of achieving that goal is to reduce federal spending and balance the federal budget*, reduce government controls on business, and control the growth of the federal bureaucracy. Its Candidate Review Committee reviews political candidates for national office in terms of their conservative credentials and endorses their campaigns with large-scale contributions. Most of the recipients of Business–Industry Political Action Committee donations have been Republicans, though the organization selfdescribes as nonpartisan. Reference Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Political Parties and Civic Action Groups, 1981.

BUTTERFIELD, JOHN John Butterfield was born in Berne, New York, on November 18, 1801. He went to school on an intermittent basis for several years before quitting to become a stagecoach driver. Butterfield rose quickly to the top of the company and then became interested in Great Lakes packet boats, urban transit systems, and the telegraph. He organized the Buffalo Telegraph Company and in 1849 formed Butterfield, Wasson and Company. The company won the first congressional contract for transcontinental stagecoach service in 1857. Butterfield established the American Express Company to handle the contract. The American Express stage line eventually ran 2,800 miles from St. Louis to Tucson, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. He also established the Overland Mail Company at the same time. Butterfield died on November 14, 1869. References Ralph Moody, Stagecoach West, 1967. Henry P. Walker, The Wagonmasters, 1966.

C CAPONE, ALPHONSE Al Capone was born January 17, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up to become the most recognized criminal in the United States. Capone left school when he was 14 and worked at a variety of jobs, including as a bartender and bouncer in several saloons. During an altercation with a drunken customer, Capone’s face was cut with a knife; thereafter, Capone bore the nickname “Scarface.” He moved to Chicago early in 1920 and rapidly rose to leadership of the underworld. He created a huge bootlegging operation as well as being involved in the rest of the vices, including prostitution and gambling. By the early 1920s, Capone controlled an elaborate series of breweries, distilleries, and liquor distributorships, as well as several influential Chicago politicians and police officials. He was ruthless in expanding his organization and in eliminating the competition. Capone was implicated in hundreds of murders during the so-called “beer wars” as he reduced the power of rival gangs. The most famous incident was the 1929 “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” during which Capone’s mob machine-gunned seven members of the North Side Gang. By the late 1920s, Capone’s organization was making more money from its gambling syndicates than from bootlegging. At the same time, it went into labor racketeering. In 1930, Capone was arrested, tried, and sentenced to a year in prison for carrying a concealed weapon. The next year, the federal government charged him with income tax* evasion and conspiracy to violate federal prohibition* laws. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison, serving time in the federal penitentiaries in Atlanta and at Alcatraz. When prison physicians discovered that Capone was suffering from syphilis of the brain, he was released in 1939. Capone died on January 25, 1947. References John Kobler, Capone, 1971. New York Times, January 26, 1947.

CAPPER, ARTHUR Born on July 14, 1865, in Garnett, Kansas, Arthur Capper graduated from high school in 1884 and went to work for the Topeka Daily Capital. He reported on local and state politics and joined the Republican Party. In 1891, he became the Washington, D.C., correspondent for the Capital. Two years later, Capper purchased the Topeka Mail, a small weekly, and over the years built a midwestern business empire through prudent purchases of ailing newspapers. By the early 1900s, his progressive Republicanism was being echoed in the editorial policies of the Capper newspapers. He ran for governor in 1912 on the Republican

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ticket while maintaining open sympathy for Theodore Roosevelt’s* Bull Moose candidacy. He lost the election by a narrow margin to Democrat George H. Hodges but overwhelmingly defeated Hodges in 1914. In 1918, Capper won a seat in the U.S. Senate. He emerged as a leader of the farm bloc* in the 1920s, sponsored legislation to facilitate the marketing of farm products, and tried unsuccessfully to push the McNary–Haugen plan*. Capper was also known as a foreign policy isolationist and a critic of the Republican presidents during the 1920s, whom he found too conservative. During the 1930s, Capper was an early supporter of the New Deal, especially of its work relief, agricultural, and Social Security* measures. He became known as a Republican New Dealer, even though he remained loyal to his own party. Capper became somewhat critical of President Franklin D. Roosevelt* after 1936 because of the “court-packing” scheme and the drift toward an internationalist foreign policy. Capper remained in the Senate until 1949. He died on December 19, 1951. Reference Homer E. Socolofsky, Arthur Capper: Publisher, Politician, and Philanthropist, 1962.

CAPPER–TINCHER ACT OF 1921 Also known as the Future Trading Act or the Grain Futures Trading Act of 1921, the Capper–Tincher Act was a product of the farm bloc’s* demand for reform. At the time, farmers were suffering from the postwar collapse of commodity prices. Many of them continued the old Populist* refrain that middlemen were reaping huge profits while the farmers starved. The act provided for federal regulation of the large grain exchanges by imposing a prohibitive tax on all speculative transactions. Farmers wanted to make sure that they were getting a “real price” for their crops, not one artificially manipulated by eastern speculators. The next year, Congress passed the Capper–Tincher Act of 1922, also known as the Grain Futures Trading Act of 1922, which replaced the previous legislation. It gave the secretary of agriculture the power to regulate the Chicago Board of Trade to prevent futures speculation that was designed to comer commodity markets. References R. R. Enfield, The Agricultural Crisis, 1920–1923, 1924. Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900– 1939, 1951. James H. Shideler, Farm Crisis, 1919–1923, 1957.

CAPPER–TINCHER ACT OF 1922 See CAPPER–TINCHER ACT OF 1921. CAPPER–VOLSTEAD ACT OF 1922 Becoming law on February 18, 1922, the Capper–Volstead Act, or Cooperative Marketing Act, was known at the time as the Magna Carta of cooperative

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marketing. Conservative Republicans went along with the farm bloc* in supporting the measure because they hoped it would avert the mounting pressure for some type of federal price-fixing scheme. By marketing their crops through cooperatives, farmers could save substantial amounts of money on storage, handling, and commissions, thereby benefiting from economies of scale. Farmers agreed to sell their crops exclusively through the cooperatives, and the cooperatives claimed the right to enforce the agreements. The Capper–Volstead Act exempted the cooperatives from antitrust laws in the interstate marketing of commodities. In 1926, Congress also established a Division of Cooperative Marketing in the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. References Theodore Saloutos and John D. Hicks, Agricultural Discontent in the Middle West, 1900– 1939, 1951. Homer E. Socolofsky, Arthur Capper: Publisher, Politician, and Philanthropist, 1962.

CAREY ACT OF 1894 The Carey Act, passed by Congress on March 3, 1894, was part of the budding conservation movement in the United States. For years, John Wesley Powell of the U.S. Geological Survey had called for the preservation of American grasslands. In the 1890s, Frederick Haynes Newell demanded similar attention to irrigation and reclamation. The Carey Act was the modest beginning of federal conservation programs. It authorized the federal government to grant up to 1 million acres of public lands to states in arid regions. The states would then develop the irrigation potential of the land through private enterprise. The land was to be sold for $0.50 cents an acre and the water rights for $30–40 an acre, to be paid out in ten annual installments. The states were to use the proceeds to finance subsequent irrigation and reclamation projects. Reference B. H. Hibbard, A History of Public Land Policies, 1924.

CARNEGIE, ANDREW Andrew Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, on November 25, 1835, to a desperately poor family who immigrated to the United States in 1848. Carnegie went to work full-time when he was only 13; in 1849, he became a messenger boy in the Pittsburgh telegraph office. Carnegie was bright and ambitious. In 1853, he became private secretary to Thomas A. Scott, the general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad*. When Scott became vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1860, Carnegie was named superintendent of the railroad’s Pittsburgh division. Scott became an assistant secretary of war in 1861, and he named Carnegie to head the military telegraph lines. During the war, Carnegie decided that his economic future was in steel, and in 1865, he left the railroad business. In 1868, he established the Union Iron Mills. Carnegie steadily expanded into the steel

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business and in 1888 took control of the Homestead* Steel Works. In terms of business innovation, Carnegie was a pioneer in vertical integration. He bought iron ore leases in the Mesabi Range of Minnesota and coal mines in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Carnegie controlled railroads and lake barges, then transported the coal and iron to his steel plants in Pennsylvania. In just over a decade, he founded the Carnegie Steel Company and controlled most of the American steel industry. He sold out his interests to the United States Steel Corporation* in 1901, a move that gave him a fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Carnegie then devoted himself to a number of philanthropic concerns, which included funding public libraries across the country, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, construction of Carnegie Hall in New York City, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His major written work was The Gospel of Wealth (1900). Carnegie died on August 11, 1919. Reference Joseph F. Wall, Andrew Carnegie, 1970.

C A R N E G I E S T E E L C O M PA N Y See UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION. C A R R I E R , W I L L I S H AV I L A N D Willis H. Carrier was born on November 26, 1876, in Angola, New York. He graduated from Cornell University with a major in electrical engineering in 1901 and immediately went to work for the Buffalo Forge Company. He stayed with the company until 1915, becoming chief engineer. That year, he decided to go into business for himself, establishing the Carrier Engineering Corporation. As an engineer, Carrier specialized in climate control and was responsible for a number of important inventions. While still with Buffalo Forge, Carrier invented systems for humidifying and dehumidifying air, moving air through large factories, and controlling dew point. When Carrier left Buffalo Forge in 1915, he was focusing his creative energies on a new refrigeration apparatus—a centrifugal compressor to cool air using nontoxic chemical refrigerants. In 1924, Carrier installed an air-conditioning system at the J. L. Hudson department store in Detroit. Four years later, he installed similar systems in Washington, D.C., for the Senate and the House of Representatives. Air-conditioning systems also became very popular in the great theater palaces of the 1920s. By 1930, Carrier had installed air-conditioning systems in more than 300 theaters. During the 1930s, Carrier developed the process for air-conditioning high-rise buildings by piping chilled air from a central cooling station out to individual rooms. He retired in 1948 and died on October 7, 1950. References Carrier Corporation, Twenty-Five Years of Air Conditioning, 1947. M. Ingels, W. H. Carrier: Father of Air Conditioning, 1927. New York Times, October 8, 1950.

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CARSON, RACHEL Rachel Carson was born on May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pennsylvania. From 1929 to 1936, she spent her professional career at Johns Hopkins University and at the University of Maryland; in 1937, she joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department of the Interior as an ecologist. During those years, she wrote a number of books describing the effects that industrialization was having on the American environment*. She was particularly interested in oceanography. Her books Under the Sea Wind, The Sea around Us, and The Edge of the Sea were soft science—lyrical descriptions designed to popularize the ecological movement rather than to make any new scientific contributions. Her most famous book was Silent Spring, which warned the country about the destructiveness of the modem economy. She died in 1964. Reference Paul Brooks, The House of Life: Rachel Carson at Work, 1972.

CARTER, JIMMY In 1976, former one-term governor of Georgia James (Jimmy) Earl Carter Jr. became the first candidate from the Deep South to win election to the presidency of the United States without the benefit of incumbency since Zachary Taylor in 1848. During his term as president, Carter, an administrator with neither a liberal nor a conservative approach, proved unable to shake his image as a vacillator, unsure of how to cope with domestic economic turmoil and foreign policy crises. Carter was born on October 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia, and grew up on the family farm in nearby Archery. He became, like his father, a pillar of the First Baptist Church of Plains. After attending Georgia Southwestern College for a year in 1941 and the Georgia Institute of Technology for another year, he received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He graduated in 1946, entered the navy in 1947, and a year later began his career as a submarine officer, first on conventional vessels and then as part of Hyman Rickover’s nuclear submarine program. Upon the death of his father in 1953, Carter resigned from the navy and returned to Plains to run the family farm and small general store. He began his involvement in politics by serving in a variety of local community political positions. Although he later chastised himself for not protesting more strongly the unfair treatment of African Americans in Plains, he did refuse to join the local White Citizens’ Council, and he was one of only two members of his church in 1965 to oppose a motion to exclude African Americans from services. In 1962, Carter ran in the Democratic primary for the state Senate. He lost the primary election by a narrow margin because of illegal ballot box stuffing on the part of his opponent. Carter challenged the outcome and eventually convinced the state Democratic Committee to place his name on the general election ballot. He won the general election and served in the state Senate from 1963 to 1966. In 1967, after losing his first try to win the Democratic Party nomination for governor, Carter became a “born-again” Christian. His second effort to win the governor’s office in 1970 was successful.

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As governor, Carter opened the Georgia government to women as well as African Americans and established a number of innovations designed to improve efficiency and economy. He reorganized 300 state agencies into twenty-two superagencies and required each department to justify its total budget annually (zero-based budgeting). He instituted a sunshine law that required government meetings to be open to the public, pushed for legislation to protect the environment*, and added large tracts of open land to the state park system. He also maintained a strong anticrime image by supporting capital punishment and harsh sentences for drug dealers. The Georgia constitution prevented Carter from running for a second term. An effort to secure the vice presidential spot on the 1972 Democratic ticket with George McGovern was unsuccessful, but Carter began campaigning for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination as soon as he left the governor’s office in January 1975. Carter correctly sensed that the national electorate was eager for someone outside the Washington political establishment to vote for after the Vietnam War debacle and the Watergate scandal. He promised never to “tell a lie” and to return the government to the decency its citizens had every right to expect. By winning most of the thirty state primary elections, he was able to defeat his rivals for the nomination and to dispel doubts about his attraction to non-Southern voters. Carter chose Walter Mondale as his running mate and began the national campaign with a wide lead in the public opinion polls. Victory seemed assured, but a surprisingly vigorous campaign by President Gerald Ford, combined with what appeared to be Carter’s vacillation on important issues, resulted in a very close race: Carter won 297 electoral votes to Ford’s 240. After being sworn in as president on January 20, 1977, Carter walked from Capitol Hill with his family down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. The gesture of walking rather than riding in the presidential limousine demonstrated his desire to be perceived as a man of the people. As a candidate for president, Carter had successfully turned his lack of national government experience into an asset, but as president, his outsider image and approach to dealing with Congress and the federal bureaucracy became a liability. The Democrats had an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives and Senate during his administration, but Carter seldom obtained much congressional support for his legislative proposals. The domestic issues that dominated the nation during the Carter years concerned unemployment, inflation, and energy. When Carter assumed office, the unemployment rate was approximately 7 percent, and the annual inflation rate was 6.8 percent. Carter had promised to reduce unemployment, cut the inflation rate, and balance the budget, but he failed in all three areas. By 1980, unemployment was more than 8 percent, inflation was about 12 percent, and the projected budget deficit was nearly $59 billion. Not all the fault lay with Carter, but nothing he did to improve the situation ever seemed to work. On one hand, he had a political commitment to full employment and refused to sacrifice people’s jobs to lower inflation (reduced employment leads to less demand, which in turn results

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in lower prices). On the other hand, Carter appointed a conservative economist, Paul Volcker, to head the Federal Reserve Board. Volcker advocated forcing an economic recession (increasing unemployment) by tightening the money supply (raising interest rates). By 1980, Carter, the man who had promised to cut taxes while campaigning in 1976, was saying that new taxes were necessary. Carter had no better luck in dealing with a shortage of oil import supplies in 1979 caused by the overthrow of the shah of Iran. The United States had been plagued by rising energy costs ever since the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Even though Carter had submitted a comprehensive energy bill to Congress designed to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil with the statement that “nothing less than the moral equivalent of war” was at stake, he was unable to rally support. In fall 1978, he settled for enactment of a much weaker piece of legislation than he knew was necessary. Thus, when prices began to skyrocket in the summer of 1979, there was little he could do except urge conservation and institute a gasoline rationing system through the newly created Department of Energy. The rationing system failed to avoid fuel shortages: Tempers flared in long gasoline station lines, prices continued to soar, and Carter was blamed. Carter appeared on television and announced that he was submitting another comprehensive energy bill to Congress that instituted procedures for developing synthetic fuels and conservation incentives. That time most of his suggested measures were enacted, but his reputation did not recover. The basic tenets of Carter’s foreign policy objectives—to pursue diplomatic solutions to world problems, initiate détente with the Soviet Union, plan strategic arms reduction, and strengthen relations with China—were goals consistent with the administrations of both Richard Nixon and Ford. However, Carter’s human rights policy of holding nations accountable for the treatment of their citizens made his foreign policy different. Critics charged that the fundamental flaw in Carter’s approach was that the United States was able to exert pressure only on the authoritarian governments of allies, whereas it could do little or nothing to influence what happened in the communist nations that were not dependent on aid from the United States. But historians may well credit Carter’s insistence on human rights as providing critical support to dissidents in Eastern Europe and Russia, thus accelerating the collapse of communism. Moreover, Carter is one of the only U.S. presidents to retain respect in Latin America, where the U.S. government has traditionally supported governments with appalling human rights records. The two foreign policy successes of the Carter administration—the negotiation and ratification by the Senate of a new Panama Canal treaty in 1978 and the facilitating of the Camp David Summit Conference, which led to the signing of the Camp David Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel in 1979 (the first peace treaty between Israel and one of its Arab neighbors)—were overshadowed by events in Iran. Perhaps no issue exemplified the image of a confused leader so much as how Carter dealt with the results of the overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979. During the convoluted course of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, fifty-two American citizens were seized at the American embassy and held hostage for 444 days in what was dubbed the Iran hostage crisis. Carter pledged not to use military force that might

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endanger the lives of the hostages. Instead, greatly underestimating the popularity and power of the new Iranian government, he relied on world opinion and economic sanctions. In addition, after the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan in order to prop up a puppet communist government, an outraged Carter ordered further economic sanctions, appealed to the United Nations for support, and sent a U.S. fleet to the area in an ineffectual display of force. In 1980, in an effort to retain the Democratic presidential nomination in a close race with Senator Edward Kennedy, Carter announced on the eve of several important primary races that the release of the hostages was on the verge of being secured. Finally, desperate after an agreement for their release was never reached, Carter ordered a military rescue attempt that failed and that led to the death of eight servicemen and the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. As Hamilton Jordan, Carter’s chief campaign strategist, later noted, “[t]he hostage crisis had come to symbolize the collective frustration of the American people. And in that sense, the President’s chances for reelection probably died on the desert of Iran with eight brave soldiers.” The hostages were finally released on the day Republican Ronald Reagan*, Carter’s successor, became president in exchange for U.S. concessions that included the unfreezing of Iranian assets in the United States and the procurement of medical supplies. Carter retired to Plains, Georgia, with the lowest presidential popularity rating ever recorded. In Plains, he wrote his memoirs, rebuilt the family business, and established the Carter Library. He also began to rebuild his public reputation through goodwill work. He helped the homeless in the United States by rebuilding houses and worked for low-cost housing throughout the world with his participation in the Habitat for Humanity program. The former president has also served as a roving peace ambassador who employs his negotiating skills to effect compromise settlements. His efforts were successful in Nicaragua and Ethiopia but produced fewer results in Haiti and Korea. On October 11, 2002, the Nobel Committee, citing Carter’s “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development,” awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize. Carter became the first American president to publish fiction with the release of The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War in November 2003. The book centers around a militia enclave in northern Georgia during the American Revolution, a group to which some of Carter’s ancestors belonged. References M. Glenn Abernathy et al., The Carter Years: The President and Policy Making, 1984. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977– 1981, 1983. Jimmy Carter, Why Not the Best? 1975; R. Hyatt, The Carters of Plains, 1977. Hamilton Jordan, Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency, 1982. Victor Lasky, Jimmy Carter: The Man and The Myth, 1979. Joshua Muravchik, The Uncertain Crusade, 1986.

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C A R T E R v. C A R T E R C O A L C O M PA N Y ( 2 9 8 U . S . 2 3 8 ) When the Supreme Court invalidated the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 with its Schechter* decision in May 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* administration responded quickly with the Guffey–Snyder Bituminous Coal Stabilization Act, a measure designed to bring industrial self-regulation and rationalization to the soft coal industry; Roosevelt signed the measure on August 30, 1935. The Guffey bill guaranteed collective bargaining in the industry, provided uniform scales of wages and hours throughout the country, established a national commission to fix coal prices and control production, permitted the closing of less profitable mines, and imposed a production tax to pay for the mines and to assist in the retraining of unemployed miners. The Guffey bill amounted to reenactment of the bituminous coal code of the invalidated National Recovery Administration*. No sooner had the law been passed than lawsuits were filed against it. In January 1936, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Carter v. Carter Coal Company case, which claimed that the production tax was a government-imposed penalty and therefore a violation of Fifth and Tenth Amendment property rights. That May, the Court announced its decision and hammered another nail into the coffin of the New Deal’s* industrial recovery program, holding that the price fixing violated the Fifth Amendment and that the labor provisions violated the Tenth Amendment (by having Congress intervene in purely local matters). The decision then forced Congress to respond with the Guffey–Vinson Bituminous Coal Act of 1937. Reference James P. Johnson, The Politics of Soft Coal: The Bituminous Industry from World War I through the New Deal, 1979.

C AT O I N S T I T U T E The Cato Institute is a leading libertarian* research “think tank” that takes its name from Cato’s Letters, a series of libertarian writings that appeared leading up to the American Revolution. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the institute was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who served as the national chairperson of the Libertarian Party during 1974–1977. The nonpartisan, nonprofit* foundation is privately funded and accepts no government money. The Cato Institute’s goal is to alter the nature of public policy debate in the United States so that libertarian options will be included in discussions about the proper role of government. It is hoped that the open discussion of libertarian ideas will promote the traditional American values of free enterprise, respect for individual rights, peace, and limited government. Since its founding, the Cato Institute has given libertarian policy initiatives an increasingly larger role to play in the public arena, particularly since Republicans assumed control of Congress in 1994. A large number of public forums, seminars, and policy conferences are sponsored by the Cato Institute each year, and major conferences have been held in a number of cities around the world to disseminate libertarian policy alternatives. In addition, the institute produces a number of publications, including the Cato

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Policy Report newsletter, the Cato Journal, and Regulation magazine. Numerous studies, books, and monographs that review national and international issues have also been commissioned. The Cato Institute maintains a number of Web sites and sometimes broadcasts its forums and seminars live online. In 2004, the institute had twenty fellows and seventy adjunct scholars. References Cato Institute (www.cato.org). Joseph M. Hazlett, The Libertarian Party and Other Minor Political Parties in the United States, 1992.

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C E L L E R – K E FA U V E R A C T O F 1 9 5 0 Sponsored by Congressman Emanuel Celler of New York and Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, the Celler–Kefauver Act became law on December 29, 1950. The legislation strengthened the Clayton Antitrust Act* of 1914 by giving the Federal Trade Commission* and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice the power to prohibit the creation of monopolies through the acquisition by corporations of large amounts of stock, as well as to prevent vertical integration* and conglomerate* investments if their purpose was to restrain trade. Reference Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S Truman and American Liberalism, 1973.

C E N T R A L PA C I F I C R A I L R O A D In 1864, Californians Charles Crocker*, Mark Hopkins*, Leland Stanford*, and Collis P. Huntington* succeeded in getting legislation from Congress and gaining the approval of Abraham Lincoln* to build a transcontinental railroad from San Francisco east to meet up with the Union Pacific Railroad’s westbound route. The Union Pacific directors were upset with the organization of the Central Pacific Railroad, because they wanted to build the entire road themselves. On May 10, 1869, the two roads linked up at Promontory Summit, Utah. After a consolidation process, the Central Pacific Railroad fell under the control of the Southern Pacific Railroad*, which was chartered in 1884. Reference James McCague, Iron Moguls and Men: The Story of the First Transcontinental Railroad, 1969.

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was established in 1912 by Charles Nagel, the secretary of commerce and labor for President William Howard Taft*. It quickly evolved into one of the most powerful interest groups in the country and the recognized voice of the business community. Harry A. Wheeler, a banker with

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the Union Trust Company in Chicago, served as its first president. During the 1920s, Julius H. Barnes was its most prominent leader. The Chamber really came into its own then, primarily because its objectives fitted so nicely with those of the Republican Party, which dominated the federal government. The Chamber of Commerce tried to secure legislation outlawing labor union strikes, opposed government ownership of the railroads, and helped push through Congress the Transportation Act of 1920*, which returned the railroads to private control after World War I*. The Chamber successfully worked to limit the authority of the Federal Trade Commission*, backed the high Fordney–McCumber* and Hawley–Smoot* tariffs, and provided support for the open shop movement. At the same time, the Chamber supported the associationalism* then being promoted by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover*. When the Great Depression* spread across the United States after 1929, the Chamber kept calling it a temporary phenomenon. It initially supported the New Deal’s* efforts to deal with the economic decline through the National Recovery Administration*. By 1935, however, the Chamber of Commerce was thoroughly disgusted with the antibusiness, prolabor philosophy of the New Deal, as well as with the mounting deficits. It demanded cuts in government spending and an end to the antitrust investigations of the Temporary National Economic Committee*. Since that time, the Chamber of Commerce has for the most part maintained that same political agenda. It has supported large defense expenditures but opposed increases in federal spending for social programs; supported antilabor legislation such as the Taft–Hartley Act* of 1947 and state right-to-work laws; opposed various environmental legislation*; and favored tax cuts on corporations and the well-to-do, particularly President Ronald Reagan’s* 1986 federal revenue bill and President George Bush’s calls for reductions in the capital gains tax. The Chamber remains today a powerful lobby representing conservative and business interests. References Robert M. Collins, “Positive Business Response to the New Deal: The Roots of the Committee for Economic Development, 1933–1942,” Business History Review 52 (1978): 369–391. Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Political Parties and Civic Action Groups, 1981.

C H A N D L E R , H A R RY Harry Chandler was born May 17, 1864, in Landaff, New Hampshire. Although he came from a well-to-do family, his health forced him to move west in 1882, and he worked for a farmer outside of Los Angeles. In 1885, he got a job as a clerk for the Los Angeles Times; in 1892, he married the daughter of Harrison Gray Otis, the owner of the paper. Over the years, Chandler built the Times into the most powerful newspaper on the west coast. He also built himself a real estate empire of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland in the Imperial Valley, deep in southern California near the Mexican border, and in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles. Using the Times to spread the word about his economic

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crusade, Chandler convinced southern California voters in 1903 and 1907 to pass large bond issues to bring water out of the Sierra Nevada mountains to the San Fernando Valley. As these plans were being developed, Chandler secretly bought up large ranches in the area. Eventually, Chandler acquired more than 60 million acres, which he divided up into real estate subdivisions. To bring new settlers to southern California, Chandler used the Times as a promotional advertising entity. During winter months in the 1920s, he circulated special editions of the Times in the Midwest. During much of the 1920s, the Los Angeles Times sold more advertising space than any other newspaper in the country. Chandler’s politics were quite conservative, and he was especially opposed to labor unions. A strong supporter of the open shop movement, Chandler hated labor unions and militantly fought them. The enmity between him and labor leaders was so great that in 1910 the Times building was dynamited and twenty employees were killed. To keep the unions away, Chandler paid high wages, adopted the forty-hour week, rarely laid off loyal workers, and recognized the importance of seniority. Chandler was a conservative Republican, consistently opposed to the ideas of Senator Hiram Johnson* and a bitter opponent of the New Deal in the 1930s. Chandler resigned from the newspaper in 1941 and died on September 23, 1944. References David Halberstam, The Powers That Be, 1979. New York Times, September 24, 1944.

CHANDLER ACT OF 1938 Because of the large numbers of corporate bankruptcies and reorganizations during the 1930s, there was growing concern among New Dealers* that the interests of many small investors were not being protected. To deal with that concern, the Chandler Act was passed by Congress in June 1938; it amended the existing federal bankruptcy law. In addition to streamlining a number of procedural questions, the act gave the Securities and Exchange Commission* the power to participate in corporate reorganizations and to act as technical adviser to the federal courts in order to protect the interests of small and inarticulate securities owners. Chapter 13 of the measure also permitted wage earners to arrange for the amortization of their debts over a period of years under protection of federal bankruptcy legislation. At the time, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* considered the Chandler Act an important addition to federal securities regulatory power. Reference New York Times, June 17, 1938.

CHAPIN, ROY DIKEMAN, JR. Roy Dikeman Chapin Jr. was born on September 21, 1915, in Detroit, Michigan. He was the son of Roy Dikeman Chapin, founder of the Hudson Motor Company.

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The younger Chapin graduated from Yale in 1937 and then moved through the ranks of the Hudson Motor Company. He eventually served as the president, general manager, and chief executive officer of the American Motors Corporation* from 1961 to 1978. Reference William Serrin, “The Roy Chapin Story.” Detroit Free Press, July 12, 1970.

C H A R L E S R I V E R B R I D G E V. WA R R E N B R I D G E See TANEY, ROGER B. C H A S E M A N H AT TA N B A N K In 1799, a group of New York investors established the Manhattan Company in New York City to construct a water supply for the city. Much to their surprise, the company received more than $2 million, an oversubscription of capital, so they decided to open the Bank of the Manhattan Company on Wall Street* to put the funds to use. The Manhattan Company sold its interest in the city water works in 1808 and then concentrated completely on banking. The Bank of the Manhattan Company grew steadily over the years. The Chase National Bank was established in 1877. By acquiring several smaller banks in the early 1900s, it secured a variety of branch offices throughout New York State and in foreign countries. By the mid-1950s, Chase National was the second largest bank in the United States and the Bank of the Manhattan Company the fifteenth. In 1955, the two banks merged to form the Chase Manhattan Bank. The Chase Manhattan Corporation, a holding company*, was established in 1969 to purchase Chase Manhattan and to develop a number of other properties. In 2000, it merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. to become JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., but operating as Chase. In 2008, JPMorgan Chase absorbed the faltering Washington Mutual, Inc. Reference William Hoffman, David, 1971.

C H AV E Z , C E S A R E S T R A D A Cesar Chavez was born near Yuma, Arizona, on March 31, 1927. He began working as a migrant farm laborer as a child and then spent the last years of World War II* in the navy. In 1946, Chavez joined the National Agricultural Workers’ Union, and from 1952 to 1962, he worked for the Community Service Organization, the last two years as its general director. Chavez resigned from the Community Service Organization because of its refusal to organize farm workers. An ideological follower of the principles of nonviolence, Chavez relocated to Delano, California, in 1962 and established the National Farm Workers Association (NFW). In 1965, Chavez gained national attention when the NFW joined with Filipino workers

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in their strike against Coachella Valley grape growers. He secured the support of a number of liberal politicians, including Senator Robert Kennedy of New York. Although he encountered opposition from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters*, which was also trying to organize farm workers, Chavez was successful at establishing a union. In 1966, the NFW merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), with Chavez as president. The UFWOC affiliated with the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations* in 1967 and launched a national boycott of California table grapes grown with nonunion labor. In 1969–1970, the boycott resulted in the signing of three-year labor contracts between the major growers and the union. During the 1970s, Chavez and the United Farm Workers* tried, usually unsuccessfully, to organize farm workers in Texas and engaged in severe jurisdictional disputes with the Teamsters. Chavez’s critics, inside and outside the union, have charged him with being a terrible administrator and with advocating controversial psychological encounter groups and holistic medicine for his union members. Chavez died on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona. References Joan London and Henry Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap: The Story of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Movement, 1970. Newsweek, December 14, 1981.

C H E S A P E A K E A N D D E L AWA R E C A N A L First envisioned by Augustus Hermen in 1680, the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal was not completed until 1829. It connected the Delaware and Chesapeake bays in the states of Delaware and Maryland. The canal stretched a total of nineteen miles from Delaware City, Delaware, to the Elk River arm of Chesapeake Bay near Chesapeake City, Maryland. The U.S. government purchased the canal for $2.5 million in 1929 and made it part of the Intracoastal Waterway. Ships traveling from Philadelphia to Baltimore, a journey of 400 miles without the canal, saved a total of 300 miles because of it. Today it is a lockless canal. Reference Fon W. Boardman Jr., Canals, 1959.

CHESAPEAKE AND OHIO CANAL First envisioned by George Washington*, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was begun in 1829. It ran 185 miles along the east bank of the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., to Cumberland, Maryland. It was the longest canal in the United States and operated until 1924, when it was abandoned. The U.S. government purchased it in 1938 and made it part of the National Park system. Reference Fon W. Boardman Jr., Canals, 1959.

CHeVRon

C H E S A P E A K E & O H I O R A I LWAY The Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (C & O) was formed in 1868 when the Virginia Central Railroad and the Covington & Ohio Railroad merged. During the intense overbuilding of the 1870s and 1880s, the C & O acquired a burdensome debt structure, but the road still managed to survive and expand somewhat. The C & O recovered during the early years of the twentieth century, came on hard times again during the Great Depression*, and in 1947 merged with the Pere Marquette Railroad. The C & O merged with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad* in 1962; in 1973, both of them merged with the Maryland Western Railway to become known as the Chessie System. The Chessie System joined with Seaboard Coast Line Industries in 1980 to become the CSX Corporation. By that time, the road stretched from Newport News, Virginia, in the east to Louisville, Kentucky, and Chicago, Illinois, in the west. Reference Charles W. Turner, Chessie’s Road, 1956.

CHESTER, COLBY MITCHELL Colby M. Chester was born on July 23, 1877, in Annapolis, Maryland. He graduated from Yale in 1898 and in 1900 received his law degree from the New York Law School. Chester quickly organized his own law firm, specializing in corporate law until World War I*, at which point he joined the army. After the war, he joined the Postum Cereal Company as assistant treasurer; in 1924 he was made its president. From 1924 to 1929, he aggressively promoted the company, eventually engineering the corporate merger of Postum with fifteen other companies to form General Foods Corporation. He was president of General Foods until 1935, when he retired. During those years, General Foods marketed some of the most popular product lines in the United States, including Postum, Post Toasties, Jell-O, Sanka coffee, and Maxwell House coffee. He died on September 26, 1965. References E. L. Fisch, Lawyers in Industry, 1956. National Cyclopedia of American Biography.

CHEVRON Chevron Corporation is a U.S.-based multinational* energy company headquartered in San Ramon, California. Active in more than 180 countries, it is active in the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including the production, refining, and exploration aspects of the business. It is also involved in the transport, marking, manufacturing of chemicals, and product sales of its businesses. Chevron is one of the six largest oil companies in the world. Chevron emerged from the division of Standard Oil. In 1911, Standard Oil Company of California was severed from Standard Oil as part of an antitrust law suit by the federal government. In 1926, the company changed its name to Standard

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Oil Company of California (SOCAL). In the 1930s, the Chevron label was used for some of its products. In 1933, an oil concession in Saudi Arabia resulted in the discovery of oil in 1938. By 1948, SOCAL discovered the largest oil field, Ghawar, in Saudi Arabia. SOCAL’s relationship with the Saudi government and business relationships made the company quite profitable. In 1984, Standard Oil merged with Gulf Oil, resulting in the divestment of much of the latter’s assets in the U.S. east coast to comply with antitrust regulations. The company changed its name to Chevron Corporation that year. In 196, Chevron sold its natural gas operations to NGC Corporation for a stake in the company. Chevron later sold its stake for a profit of $985 million. In 2000, Chevron acquired Texaco for $45 billion. The merger was briefly called ChevronTexaco but was dropped by 2005. The name Texaco remained a brand owned by Chevron. In 2005, Chevron purchased Unocal for $18.4 billion. In 2011, Chevron planned to research and develop* renewable power. Reference Sonia Shah, Crude: The Story of Oil, 2004.

CHICAGO, BURLINGTON & QUINCY RAILROAD The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) was officially chartered in 1855, with most of its lines in Illinois. During the post–Civil War* years, the CB&Q gradually extended its rail mileage by acquiring or coming to control the Burlington & Missouri River Rail Road in Nebraska, the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad, and the Chicago, Burlington & Northern Railway. Hoping to secure a Chicago connection for his Great Northern Railroad*, James J. Hilt seized control of the CB&Q in 1901. Seven years later, the CB&Q took over the Colorado & Southern Railway. By that time, its lines reached throughout Illinois and Iowa, up into Minnesota, and out to Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming. In 1970, the CB&Q merged with the Great Northern Railway, the Northern Pacific Railroad*, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway to form the Burlington Northern Railroad*, the largest in the United States. Reference Richard C. Overton, Burlington Route: A History of the Burlington Lines, 1965.

C H I C A G O , M I LWA U K E E , S T. PA U L & PA C I F I C RAILROAD The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad (CMSPP) was formed in 1928 after the bankruptcy of its predecessor, the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, but the new line’s fortunes were no better. The 1930s were inauspicious times for railroads. Because of declining freight volumes and competition from automobiles and trucks, revenues could not keep up with debt structures. The railroad declared bankruptcy in 1935 and was not functionally reorganized until 1946. Although its track extended from Wisconsin south into Illinois, Indiana,

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Missouri, and Iowa and went all the way west to Seattle, the road could not survive in the long-haul traffic markets. It went bankrupt again in 1977. Reference Richard Steinheimer, The Electric Way across the Mountains: Stories of the Milwaukee Road Electrification, 1980.

C H I C A G O & N O R T H W E S T E R N R A I LWAY The Chicago and North Western Railway was organized in 1859 out of the merger of several smaller lines. The road expanded rapidly after the Civil War*, building way beyond its base in Wisconsin and Illinois. In 1867, it linked up with the Union Pacific–Central Pacific transcontinental route by building from Chicago to Omaha, Nebraska. The Chicago & North Western Railway proved to be an innovative business in terms of both technology and finance. During the 1950s, it acquired the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railroad, as well as the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad, the Chicago Great Western Railroad, and several smaller railroads. By the 1980s, the Chicago & North Western Railway lines extended throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Reference H. Roger Grant, “The Chicago & North Western Railway,” in Keith M. Bryant Jr., ed. Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980, 1988.

CHILD LABOR In the primarily agrarian economy of colonial America, children represented a valuable economic resource. Both male and female children learned the tasks involved in running a subsistence farm by helping their parents, gradually taking on a larger share of the work themselves. The question of whether childhood should be mostly a time of youthful recreation did not really come up, for everyone’s labor was needed to provide economic necessities, whether on farms or in trades. In fact, parents were more likely to worry about their children doing too little labor than too much. Some would apprentice or indenture their children to neighbors, on the grounds that parents might prove too lenient toward their own children and not train them to work hard. By the time of the first organized movement to prohibit child labor at the beginning of the twentieth century, several changes had taken place. The works of eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and others had begun to portray childhood as a special life stage that should be spent in the pursuit of education and recreation; these views became increasingly popular in the nineteenth century. The coming of industrialism changed the very nature of work itself. No longer did children spend their days learning household tasks, farming, or a trade beside a parent or other familiar adult. Now they left home for the factory or the mine, where they worked in dark, crowded, unhealthful conditions, often at a

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pace imposed by machines; instead of earning their keep, they earned a meager wage. The development of great cities after the Civil War* brought many factories (and child workers) together in centralized places, where the squalid conditions became evident to the urban middle class, partly through the dramatic photographs of Lewis Hine. Indeed, the 1900 census revealed that more than 1,750,000 children aged 10–15 were gainfully employed, not counting employed children younger than 10—more than double the number in 1870. The fact that many were immigrants*, who were more easily exploited because of their limited knowledge of English, also attracted the attention of Progressives* such as Jane Addams. Finally, the rise of the education profession and organized labor complemented each other and led to a demand for compulsory schooling for child laborers. Educators desired to extend their professional purview, while unions sought to provide more and better-paying jobs for adults by eliminating the cheap labor of children. The interests of both groups might be served by keeping children out of the labor force and in the classroom. All these factors contributed to the founding in April 1904 of the National Child Labor Committee*, whose purpose was to prohibit the labor in factories of children younger than 14 nationwide. The question was how to do it. Employers naturally opposed child labor legislation, whether at the state or federal level, because it would deprive them of the cheapest form of labor and raise their costs. They argued that such laws would interfere with the right of contract and also with Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights (the workers’ freedom to sell their own labor and the employers’ right of property to buy it). These arguments resembled those used against protective legislation* for women, except that most proposed child labor laws sought to ban such labor outright. The first federal child labor law, the Keating–Owen Act of 1916, prohibited carriers from moving the products of child labor in interstate commerce; the Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart* (1918) on the grounds that the law was designed not to regulate commerce, but rather to prohibit a particular labor practice. In 1919, Congress passed another Child Labor Act to get around these objections, this time imposing a 10 percent tax on the net profits of any firm using child labor. The Supreme Court ruled this second law unconstitutional as well in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company* (1922) on the grounds that the tax was in fact a penalty. The Court referred any future efforts to limit child labor legislation to the states, whereupon progressives such as Grace Abbott proposed a Child Labor Amendment to the Constitution. Congress adopted this amendment in June 1924 (though the states never ratified it) and eventually imposed a successful limitation on child labor in the Fair Labor Standards Act* of 1938. This law, which included minimum wage standards as well, was upheld by the Supreme Court in United States v. Darby (1941), which formally overruled Hammer v. Dagenhart. In conjunction with state compulsory schooling laws, this federal law has minimized the employment of children younger than 14. References John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony, 1970.

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Walter I. Trattner, Crusade for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor Committee and Child Labor Reform in America, 1970.

Susan Wladaver-Morgan

CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT OF 1882 After the Burlingame Treaty of 1868, Chinese immigration to the United States increased substantially, triggering vocal protest from labor organizations, especially those in California, where the Chinese tended to settle. American workers were convinced that Chinese workers took jobs away from them and drove down wage levels in general. In 1881, Congress passed legislation suspending Chinese immigration for twenty years and denying citizenship to alien Chinese settlers. President Chester A. Arthur vetoed the bill, but in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, imposing a ten-year moratorium on Chinese immigration. The law was the first attempt in the history of the United States to limit free immigration. Reference Herbert Hill, “Anti-Oriental Agitation and the Rise of Working-Class Racism,” Society 12 (1973), 43–54.

CHISHOLM TRAIL The so-called Chisholm Trail was the geographic route over which cattle were driven from the region of San Antonio, Texas, through Oklahoma to Abilene, Kansas; there the cattle were placed on railroad cars. The Chisholm Trail was in use until the 1880s, when barbed wire fences made the drive impossible. Reference Wayne Gard, The Chisholm Trail, 1954.

C H R Y S L E R , WA LT E R P E R C Y Walter Percy Chrysler was born on April 2, 1875, in Wamego, Kansas. Especially gifted in mathematics, Chrysler finished high school and then went to work in railroad machine shops. In 1896, he finished an apprenticeship as a master railroad mechanic and took a job with the Chicago & Great Western Railroad in 1903. By 1908, he was superintendent of 10,000 railroad mechanics. He moved to Pittsburgh in 1912 to work for the American Locomotive Company, but by then he was already fascinated with the automobile*, not only with its mechanical operations but also with its potential for changing American life. Later that year, taking a large cut in pay, Chrysler went to work for General Motors* (GM) in Detroit, Michigan. He was with the Buick division and immediately installed cost-cutting procedures, scientific management, and the assembly line track system, all of which boosted production and profits. In 1916, he became president of Buick. At Chrysler’s suggestion, GM acquired 60 percent ownership of the Fisher Body Corporation, which supplied most of GM’s car bodies. In 1920, because of a dispute with William C. Durant* of GM, Chrysler resigned from the company.

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For the next few years, Chrysler worked to rescue the troubled Willys–Overland Company and then the Maxwell Motor Car Company, but he yearned to venture out on his own and to develop a new car line. In 1922, he founded the Chrysler Motor Corporation* in order to manufacture a new six-cylinder automobile he had been developing. It was known as the Chrysler Six. He sold 32,000 models the first year. In 1928, he introduced two new models—the Plymouth and the DeSoto— and purchased the Dodge Brothers Company, another automobile manufacturer that employed 20,000 people. He also had more than 4,000 dealers around the country who marketed his Plymouths, DeSotos, Chryslers, and Dodges. Chrysler retired from the presidency of the company in 1935 and died on August 18, 1940. Reference Michael Moritz and Barrett Seaman, Going for Broke: The Chrysler Story, 1981.

C H R Y S L E R C O R P O R AT I O N In 1922, Walter P. Chrysler* founded the Chrysler Corporation to market the Chrysler Six, a six-cylinder automobile he had developed. Within five years, Chrysler had developed two new models, the Plymouth and the DeSoto, and he had also purchased the Dodge Brothers Corporation, which manufactured the Dodge automobile. The Chrysler Corporation developed an early reputation for engineering excellence, primarily because of its early commitment to high-compression engines and four-wheel hydraulic brakes. Walter Chrysler retired from the company in 1935, but by then his company, along with General Motors* and Ford*, was one of the industry’s giants. After World War II, Chrysler Corporation fell on hard times. Although its engineering reputation was still intact, especially after the introduction of the V-8 “Firepower” engine, the company had a poor design department. Chrysler automobiles gained a reputation as reliable, boxy, homely cars, The company’s market share declined steadily, from 23 percent in 1951 to 11 percent in 1960. The company rebounded somewhat in the 1960s but declined again in the 1970s, especially after the Arab oil embargo* led to skyrocketing oil prices. Chrysler lacked small, high-mileage model lines, and the company approached bankruptcy. Under the leadership of John Riccardo, Chrysler introduced the small, front-wheel-drive Horizon and Omni models in 1975, along with the somewhat larger K-model line, and sales began to pick up. In 1978, Riccardo brought in Lee Iacocca* from Ford Motor Company. Iacocca managed to secure a $1.5 billion loan, with federal government loan guarantees, to rescue the troubled company. By 1983, the company was again generating profits. In 1987, Chrysler purchased the American Motors Corporation* from Renault and bought the Jeep Company. In 1998, Chrysler merged with automaker Daimler–Benz AG to form DaimlerChrysler. However, the merger proved problematic to investors, and Chrysler was sold to Cerberus Capital Management and renamed Chrysler LLC in 2007. Chrysler was significantly affected by the Great Recession* of 2008 and was bailed out by the federal government. After bankruptcy proceedings in 2009, Chrysler was gradually acquisitioned by Italian car manufacturer Fiat from the U.S. and Canadian governments.

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Reference Michael Moritz and Barrett Seaman, Going for Broke: The Chrysler Story, 1981.

C I G A R M A K E R S ’ I N T E R N AT I O N A L U N I O N O F AMERICA The Cigarmakers’ International Union of America (CIU) was established as the National Union of Cigar Makers in 1864. It had nearly 6,000 members by 1869, but the invention of the mold turned much of the industry toward unskilled and semiskilled labor, so the union declined in power. The effectiveness of its strikes declined rapidly, and membership fell to only 1,000 members by the end of the 1870s. Under the more conservative leadership of Adolph Strasser in the 1880s, the CIU began to gain ground again. It merged with the rival Cigarmakers’ Progressive Union in 1887 and then joined the American Federation of Labor*. By 1890, CIU membership exceeded 25,000 people, but that was its heyday. It gradually lost members to the broader-based Tobacco Workers International Union in the twentieth century and merged into the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in 1974. Reference Bernard Mandel, Samuel Gompers, 1963.

C I T I Z E N S ’ R E C O N S T R U C T I O N O R G A N I Z AT I O N Because of the banking crisis that had developed in the 1920s and intensified after 1929, currency hoarding created serious liquidity problems in the monetary system. From early in 1930 on, the amount of currency in circulation grew by more than $1 billion as depositors turned their bank deposits into cash. In January 1932, Congress established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) to make loans to troubled banks, and that February, President Herbert Hoover* set up the Citizens’ Reconstruction Organization (CRO), a voluntary association designed to sponsor a campaign against hoarding. Hoover persuaded Frank Knox, the owner of the Chicago Daily News, to direct the organization. Together they sponsored a national conference at the White House; more than forty private associations met to discuss and promote the campaign. Throughout the country, local CRO groups were established to support the publicity campaign. Although Hoover placed great faith in the CRO and hoped that it would supplement the work of the RFC, it proved to be no more than a bandage because of the immensity of the banking crisis in 1932 and 1933. Reference James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977.

CIVIL AERONAUTICS ACT OF 1938 In 1926, the Aeronautics Branch in the Department of Commerce* began to supervise the development and regulation of commercial aviation and to promote the rise of airmail, passenger, and freight services. The agency stressed the licensing of

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all pilots, established safety rules, and drafted regulations for flight crews, aircraft manufacturers, airport operators, and ground employees. The Aeronautics Branch also investigated accidents. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* appointed Eugene L. Vidal of South Dakota to take over the Aeronautics Branch; in 1934, the President changed the agency’s name to the Bureau of Air Commerce. Vidal left the post in 1937 and was succeeded by Fred Fagg Jr. After considerable debate over the agency’s status, Congress passed the Civil Aeronautics Act in 1938, removing the Bureau of Air Commerce from the Department of Commerce and renaming it the Civil Aeronautics Authority. A civil aeronautics administrator took over the former responsibilities of the Bureau of Air Commerce and enjoyed the new responsibility of regulating commercial air carriers economically. An independent Air Safety Board assumed responsibility for investigating accidents. Finally, in 1940, Roosevelt placed both economic regulation and accident investigation under the new Civil Aeronautics Board*. He renamed the remainder the Civil Aeronautics Administration and returned the agency to the Department of Commerce. References Nick A. Komons, Bonfires to Beacons: Federal Civil Aviation Policy under the Air Commerce Act, 1926–1938, 1978. Donald R. Whitnah, Safer Skyways: Federal Control of Aviation, 1926–1966, 1966.

CIVIL AERONAUTICS AUTHORITY See CIVIL AERONAUTICS ACT OF 1938. CIVIL AERONAUTICS BOARD Beginning in 1940, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), a federal agency created under the authority of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938*, became responsible for establishing air safety standards, setting airline passenger and cargo rates, issuing licensing certificates, and conducting accident investigations. Over the years, the airline industry became one of the most heavily regulated industries in the United States. Gradually, however, the CAB lost its authority. The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 stripped it of its power to prescribe safety regulations and issue safety certificates, giving that power instead to the Federal Aviation Agency. In 1967, the CAB’s accident-investigating authority was transferred to the National Transportation Safety Board. By the mid-1970s, demands for the deregulation* of the airline industry were gaining momentum, primarily because of the need to restore real competition in setting rates. In 1977, Congress took away the CAB’s authority to block the entry of new carriers to the air cargo business and limited its rate-setting powers. The real change, however, came in 1978 with the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act*. Airlines became much freer to enter into new phases of the business and to set competitive rates. During the 1980s, the results were dramatic cuts in passenger and freight rates, declines in the quality of service, and huge increases in passenger traffic.

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Reference William A. Jordan, “The Civil Aeronautics Board,” in Donald R. Whitnah, ed., Government Agencies, 1983.

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 During the late 1950s, the momentum for comprehensive civil rights legislation grew stronger. When Martin Luther King Jr. launched his national civil disobedience movement in the early 1960s, the momentum became unstoppable. President John F. Kennedy* tried to sponsor civil rights legislation, but the combination of conservative Republicans and southern Democrats in Congress prevented significant legislation from becoming law. After Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson* picked up the civil rights cause and on July 2, 1964, a new Civil Rights Act became law. It prohibited all discrimination in public facilities, committed the federal government to school desegregation, outlawed employment discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, national origin, color, and sex, and prohibited voter registration discrimination. It was the most far-reaching civil rights legislation in American history. Its employment provisions soon led to the affirmative action* programs of the 1970s and 1980s. References William Robert Miller, Martin Luther King, Jr., 1968. J. Harvie Wilkinson, From Brown to Bakke, 1979.

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT The struggle for civil rights was fought on many fronts in the United States. Ever since the early years of the twentieth century, the NAACP had battled in the federal courts for the end of Jim Crow* segregation, and when African Americans became more prominent in the northern wing of the Democratic Party after World War II, the civil rights movement became a political struggle there, too. But civil rights was also fought on several economic fronts in the post–World War II era. Martin Luther King Jr. took the lead in 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott, during which the black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, refused to ride city buses until the buses were desegregated. The boycott went on for more than a year, and the bus company lost more than 65 percent of its income. With the choice of bankruptcy or desegregation, the bus lines integrated their services at the end of 1956. Civil rights demonstrators had similar success with the “sit-in” movement in 1960 in southern restaurants and lunch counters, when they simply sat down in seats reserved for whites and refused to leave until they were served. After success in implementing the Civil Rights Act* of 1964, which prohibited most forms of discrimination in public facilities, civil rights leaders turned their attention to forms of de facto economic discrimination. On September 24, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson* responded to that problem by issuing an executive order requiring all federal contractors to use “affirmative action*” in making sure that minority workers were hired in numbers consistent with their ratio in the

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population. In Griggs v. Duke Power Company in 1971, the Supreme Court invalidated the use of intelligence tests that had the effect of limiting minority hiring and promotion. Companies began to use a variety of criteria, not just intelligence tests, in making their hiring decisions. The Equal Employment Act of 1972 then extended “affirmative action” requirements to educational institutions. During the late 1960s and 1970s, the major focus of economic pressure tactics to achieve civil rights objectives came from Cesar Chavez*, the Hispanic labor leader who wanted to get California grape growers to sign contracts with the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee. To achieve that objective, he launched a nationwide boycott of California table grapes and secured the support of dozens of liberal political leaders around the country. Before his assassination in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was changing his civil rights focus to economic issues. Jesse Jackson launched his Operation PUSH in the 1970s to encourage African Americans to support black-owned businesses. The civil rights movement lost much of its momentum in the 1980s. By that time many whites, particularly blue-collar workers who had once enthusiastically supported the political civil rights movement, broke ranks over economic issues, especially because they believed that affirmative action programs had come to constitute reverse discrimination. References Rhoda Blumberg, Civil Rights, 1984. Paul Burstein, Discrimination, Jobs, and Politics, 1985. Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1987.

C I V I L WA R Although historians in general have long seen the Civil War as the pivotal event in U.S. political history, economic historians in particular see the Civil War as a key event in the evolution of the American political economy. In those terms, the federal government assumed a much broader role in American economic life than ever before. When southern Democrats walked out of Congress in 1860 and 1861, the Republicans were finally able to enact fully Henry Clay’s* “American System*.” They passed the Morrill Tariff of 1861, and its revisions in 1862 and 1864 substantially raised tariff levels. To promote western settlement, Congress passed the Homestead Act*, offering free land to settlers. The National Banking Acts* of 1863 and 1864 finally provided a measure of centralization to the currency and financial markets, and the legislation authorizing the construction of the transcontinental railroads represented the ultimate in internal improvements. To finance the war, Congress passed the first income tax* in 1861; by 1865, it had surpassed tariff revenues as the major source of income for the federal government. The federal government also issued $450 million in legal tender paper currency and nearly $3 billion in bonds. In addition to dramatic increases in the power and influence of the federal government in economic life, the Civil War also proved to be a boost to the industrial sector of the economy. Although the manufacture of cotton textiles dropped

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(because of the sudden scarcity of raw cotton), wool production expanded greatly, as did the production of clothing, shoes, coal, iron, steel, agricultural equipment, and food processing. Because of its superior industrial base, the North buried the South in terms of industrial production, which proved to be one of the major factors contributing to the Union victory. The Civil War had an enormous effect on the southern economy. First, the damage of the war was overwhelming, particularly in areas of Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, where Northern military leaders imposed “scorch and burn” policies to destroy the economy and its infrastructure as well as the Confederacy’s military capacity. Second, the Civil War demonstrated to many southern leaders that the plantation economy of the antebellum period badly needed diversifying. They had lost the war because of the inadequacy of their transportation system and their lack of an industrial base. If the South were ever to compete economically with the North, industrialization and infrastructural improvements were essential. Those sentiments led to what became known as the “New South*” movement after the Civil War. References David H. Donald, Why the North Won the Civil War, 1963. Robert P. Sharkey, Money, Class, and Power, 1959.

C I V I L W O R K S A D M I N I S T R AT I O N On November 9, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* established the Civil Works Administration (CWA). Roosevelt transferred $400 million from the Public Works Administration to the CWA. By February, the CWA was employing over 4,200,000 workers who received minimum wages rather than relief payments. Although the program generated political controversy, most observers judged it a success. The CWA constructed 40,000 schools, 469 airports, and 255,000 miles of streets and roads and pumped $1 billion into the ailing economy by hiring 4 million persons. Most of all, the CWA played a vital role in bringing some desperate Americans through the bitter winter of 1933–1934. Although impressed by these considerable accomplishments, Roosevelt did not wish to continue the CWA beyond the spring of 1934. Political interference by state and local officials constituted a major reason, as well as Roosevelt’s fear of creating a permanent underclass of poor people. Expressing his concern with the growing costs involved in maintaining a work relief program of CWA’s size, Roosevelt made a determined effort to end federal welfare. Finally, improved economic conditions in the spring of 1934 reinforced his hopes that no permanent massive federal work relief program would be necessary. When the program ended, it constituted a great domestic achievement and paved the way for the subsequent establishment of the Works Progress Administration*. Reference Forrest A. Walker, The Civil Works Administration: An Experiment in Federal Work Relief, 1979.

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C I V I L I A N C O N S E R VAT I O N C O R P S On March 21, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* asked Congress to establish the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Not only would such an agency be able to perform valuable conservation work, but it would also help alleviate the severe unemployment problem among young men. By late 1932, more than 25 percent of all single men aged 15–24 were out of work, and another 29 percent were working only part-time. The CCC was among the first of the New Deal* agencies. Authorized under the Civilian Conservation Corps Reforestation Act of March 31, 1933, the CCC was expected to provide jobs for young men aged 17–24 who came from families already on relief. The CCC went on to become one of the most successful of the New Deal programs. By the end of June 1933, more than 239,000 young men had been organized into companies of 200 and were either assigned to a camp or already in one. Ultimately, some 2.5 million men would serve in the CCC, and many of the early restrictions on age or family status would be lifted. CCC workers restored national historic sites, built national park facilities, cleaned and enlarged reservoirs, assisted in fighting forest fires, and undertook an immense reforestation effort. The agency planted more than 2 billion trees, earning the nickname “Roosevelt’s Tree Army.” The CCC also assisted in topsoil conservation efforts in the Midwest under the authority of the Tennessee Valley Authority* (TVA). More than 200 million trees were planted on these soil preservation projects alone. Within the camps, the CCC also encouraged educational programs, and some 35,000 men learned to read and write while in the corps. At its peak in 1935, the CCC had more than 500,000 men working in over 2,500 camps. In 1939, the life of the CCC was extended to July 1943, but improvements in the civilian economy, followed by the coming of World War II, spelled its earlier demise. In June 1942, Congress simply refused to appropriate any more operating funds for the agency, giving only enough money to close down the camps. Reference John A. Salmond, The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942: A New Deal Case Study, 1967.

CLARK, JOSHUA REUBEN, JR. J. Reuben Clark Jr. was born in Grantsville, Utah, on September 1, 1871. He graduated from the University of Utah in 1898 and received a law degree from Columbia University in 1906. He joined the State Department as a lawyer in 1906, served on the staff of the judge advocate general during World War I*, was a special counsel to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921, and acted as special counsel to Ambassador Dwight Morrow* in Mexico in 1927 and 1928; there he advised Morrow about the legal implications of the oil and agricultural controversies. In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Clark to be undersecretary of state. Clark then wrote what became known as the Clark Memorandum. First published in 1930, the Clark Memorandum argued that the Monroe Doctrine did not apply to purely inter-American relations and that the United States should not intervene so frequently in the internal affairs of its Latin American neighbors. The Clark

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Memorandum became the foundation for the Good Neighbor Policy*, which Herbert Hoover* and then Franklin D. Roosevelt* implemented in the 1930s. In 1930, Clark succeeded Morrow as ambassador to Mexico. He left the State Department in 1933 when Roosevelt and the Democrats took control of the government. He later worked for a time as president of the Foreign Bondholders Protective Council and spent much of the rest of his life as a leader of the Mormon Church. Clark died on October 6, 1961. References Robert H. Ferrell, “Repudiation of a Reputation,” Journal of American History 51 (March 1965): 669–673. Ray C. Hillam, J. Reuben Clark, Jr.: Diplomat and Statesman, 1973.

C L AY, H E N R Y Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777, in Hanover County, Virginia. He studied law privately and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1797, the same year when he moved to Kentucky. There he became a leading criminal attorney in Lexington. Originally a Democratic-Republican, Clay’s politics grew more conservative, and he eventually became a leading figure in the National Republican Party and, later, in the Whig Party. Clay served in the Kentucky legislature from 1803 to 1806 and again from 1807 to 1809. He won a seat in the House of Representatives in 1811 and served there until 1814, from 1815 to 1821, and from 1823 to 1825. In Congress, Clay became a leading advocate of what he called the “American System*,” a comprehensive economic development program to be financed by the federal government, which would include a high tariff, a national bank, and a system of internal improvements. Clay served in the U.S. Senate from 1806 to 1807, from 1831 to 1842, and from 1849 until his death on June 29, 1852. His congressional career is best remembered for his key role in forging the Missouri Compromise of 1820*, the Compromise Tariff of 1833*, and the Compromise of 1850*. Clay ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1824, 1832, and 1844. He served as secretary of state in the administration of John Quincy Adams from 1825 to 1829. Reference Clement Eaton, Henry Clay and the Art of American Politics, 1957.

C L AY T O N , W I L L I A M L O C K H A R T William Lockhart Clayton was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, on February 7, 1880. He moved to Madison County, Texas, in 1891, quit school in 1896, and went to work as a stenographer for a local cotton broker. Clayton was soon an expert in the business, and in 1902, he became secretary-treasurer of the Texas Cotton Products Company. Two years later, he established Anderson, Clayton and Company, which soon became the largest cotton brokerage in the world. He gained some political prominence as a member of the War Industries Board* during World War I. During the interwar period, Clayton became well-known in foreign policy circles for

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his internationalist views. In 1945, he headed up the American economic delegation to the Potsdam Conference and in 1947 played a key role in drafting the Marshall Plan*. That same year, he played a similarly important role in negotiating the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)* and creating the International Trade Organization. Clayton died on February 8, 1966. Reference Frederick Dobney, ed., Selected Papers of William Clayton, 1971.

C L AY T O N A N T I T R U S T A C T O F 1 9 1 4 During the presidential administration of Woodrow Wilson*, antitrust action on the part of the federal government received a real boost because of the New Freedom* ideas of people such as Louis D. Brandeis*. The Clayton Antitrust Act, which became law on October 15, 1914, strengthened the provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890 by outlawing monopolistic price discrimination, contracts requiring that purchasers not handle the products of competitors, and interlocking directorates* in businesses worth more than $1 million. Corporate officials could be held personally liable for violating the law. The Clayton Act also extended considerable protection to organized labor by proclaiming that court injunctions* against strikes were illegal unless the strike posed an overwhelming threat to property, and it legalized strikes, boycotts, and peaceful picketing. The Clayton Antitrust Act was subsequently strengthened by the Celler–Kefauver Act* of 1950. Reference Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1954.

CLEAN AIR ACT OF 1970 During the late 1960s, the ecology movement gained momentum in the United States as consumers became increasingly concerned about the health risks associated with the quality of the air and water. In 1963, Congress had passed clean air legislation that provided $95 million in grants to assist local governments in developing programs to reduce air pollution. Air pollution was one of the leading environmental problems*, and the primary culprit was auto emissions. Subsequent legislation (the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1965) authorized the federal government to set auto emission standards and launch research programs to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. The Air Quality Act of 1967 greatly expanded federal control and research programs by appropriating more than $550 million. In March 1970, Senator Edmund Muskie, a Democrat from Maine, challenged the automobile industry to engage in what he called a “forced technology” and reduce harmful emissions by 90 percent. Under Muskie’s sponsorship, Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970, a $1.1 billion program that required that 1975 automobiles reduce carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions by 90 percent and that 1976 automobiles emit 90 percent less nitrogen oxides. The Environmental Protection Agency* (EPA) was eventually assigned the responsibility of enforcing the legislation.

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References Elting E. Morison, From Know-How to Nowhere: The Development of American Technology, 1974. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

CLEVELAND, STEPHEN GROVER Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey in 1837 and raised in Fayetteville, New York. He read law privately and entered Democratic Party politics as a young man. Cleveland served as assistant district attorney for Erie County, New York, from 1863 to 1865 and as county sheriff from 1871 to 1873. In 1881, he won election as mayor of Buffalo, New York, and later became governor of the state. The governorship became the springboard for his successful bid for the presidency of the United States in 1884. Cleveland’s first administration was best known for passage of the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887* and the Interstate Commerce* Act of 1887. He was defeated for reelection in 1888 when Benjamin Harrison won the White House, but Cleveland came back in 1892 to win another term. His second term was known for its commitment to tariff reduction, an objective that was realized with the Wilson–Gorman Tariff of 1894. A conservative Democrat, Cleveland believed in sound money (the gold standard) and opposed such splinter groups as those represented by the Populist* and the Greenback* Labor parties. Cleveland left the White House in 1897 and died in 1908. Reference Allan Nevins, Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage, 1932.

CLINTON, BILL William Jefferson Clinton, known as Bill Clinton, was the forty-second president of the United States, serving in that capacity from 1993 to 2001. He is associated with the New Democrats*, a grouping that embraced neoliberal* economic policies while adhering to liberal social policies. Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. He received his bachelor of science in foreign service at Georgetown University in 1968. He was involved in the antiwar movement during this period of his life. He later obtained his law degree from Yale Law School in 1973. During this time, he met Hillary Rodham, whom he married in 1973. After Yale Law School, Clinton worked as a law professor at the University of Arkansas. He ran for a House seat in 1974 but lost the election. In 1978, Clinton ran for governor of Arkansas and won. Clinton emphasized education during his term as governor. He would serve as governor from 1979 to 1981 and then again, from 1983 to 1992. In 1992, he won the nomination of the Democratic Party for president of the United States. He would run against Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush in the 1992 general election. Primarily thanks to concerns over the economy, Clinton won convincingly against Bush. Clinton assumed office in 1993.

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Clinton spent his first term attempting to implement national health care reform but was met by Republican resistance. His efforts, and the backlash against them, would lead to Republican victories in the 1994 midterm elections. Despite this, he was able to win a second term in office in 1996. During his second term, he reformed the welfare system, a pet project of the Republican House, and claimed it as a success for his administration. However, after his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, was revealed, Clinton was impeached in 1998 after an ensuing media scandal and an investigation by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr; he was acquitted by the Senate the following year. During his time in office, Clinton enacted welfare reforms, continued the deregulation of business (which had been advanced by his two predecessors), and left office in 2001 with a budget surplus. Clinton has remained active in public life, founding the Clinton Global Initiative in 2005. Reference Bill Clinton, My Life, 2004.

CLOSED SHOP The term “closed shop” refers to a working environment in which, either through local or state legislation or union-management contractual arrangements, an individual must be a member of a labor union in order to secure employment in a particular industry. During the 1930s and 1940s, when labor unions gained great power in the United States because of such legislation as the National Labor Relations Act* of 1935 and the National Industrial Recovery Act* of 1933, the closed shop environment became increasingly common, especially in the heavily industrialized and heavily unionized regions of the Northeast and Midwest. A backlash set in after World War II and resulted in passage of the Taft–Hartley Act* of 1947, which outlawed closed shops. Reference R. Alton Lee, Truman and Taft–Hartley, 1966.

CLUB OF ROME In April 1968, a group of thirty scientists, educators, economists, humanists, industrialists, and national and international civil servants gathered in the Italian capital to consider the future of the world economy. Out of their meeting emerged the Club of Rome, a group committed to keeping the world informed about the state of the global economy and environment. From 1969 to 1972, the Club of Rome conducted what it called the Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Using computer models and assuming no change in population growth rates, the members of the Club of Rome predicted an ecological and economic disaster in the early decades of the twenty-first century. They warned that exponential population growth combined with continued industrialization would eventually send the world economy into a tailspin and lead to mass starvation and global suffering. The

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only answer, they argued, was the establishment of limits to world growth. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the environmental movement* in the United States was especially strong, the apocalyptic predictions of the Club of Rome found a sympathetic audience. Reference Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth, 1972.

C O A L A R B I T R AT I O N B O A R D In July 1933, John L. Lewis* of the United Mine Workers* (UMW) called a strike in the coal fields, charging that the coal operators were discouraging workers from affiliating with the UMW. Disorder was widespread; at times, Governor Gifford Pinchot* of Pennsylvania had to call out the state militia to preserve order. With the strike threatening to spread to all 200,000 workers in the bituminous industry, General Hugh S. Johnson of the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) suggested to President Franklin D. Roosevelt* the creation of a Coal Arbitration Board to settle the dispute. Roosevelt agreed and appointed a three-person board composed of Gerard Swope* of General Electric*, George L. Berry* of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL), and Louis Kirstein of Filene’s in Boston. The board quickly secured an agreement to postpone the strike until the NRA had developed the bituminous coal code, and the strike was averted. Roosevelt announced the agreement on August 4, 1933. Reference Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1938.

COAL STRIKE OF 1919 Although coal companies had prospered greatly during World War I*, coal miners had received only stable wages because of a 1917 agreement freezing their wages for the duration of the conflict. By 1919, miners were demanding a wage increase, and when the United Mine Workers* (UMW) cautioned them to be patient, a series of wildcat strikes* by independent unions erupted throughout the coal fields. Some miners demanded the nationalization of the mines. John L. Lewis*, head of the UMW and a bitter anticommunist, rejected nationalization but in September 1919 called for an agreement with the coal operators providing for a 60 percent wage increase, a five-day week, a six-hour day, and a nationwide contract. The coal companies rejected the demands out of hand. After federal arbitration attempts failed in October 1919, Lewis called for a strike to begin on November 1, 1919. The strike call came at the peak of the First Red Scare, when large numbers of Americans were convinced that a radical, communist conspiracy was preparing to overthrow the government. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was busily rounding up supposed radicals, and President Woodrow Wilson* was not about to accept a crippling strike in the coal fields. At the end of October, a federal court issued an injunction* outlawing the UMW strike. The next day, however, more

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than 400,000 miners went on strike anyway, convincing the American public that radicals really had taken over the coal fields. When another federal court injunction failed to end the strike on November 11, the Department of Justice initiated contempt proceedings against Lewis and various UMW officials. At the same time, President Wilson agreed to a 14 percent wage increase. The strike ended on December 10, 1919. Reference Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920, 1955.

C O F F I N , H O WA R D E A R L E Howard Coffin was born on September 6, 1873, near Milton, Ohio. Off and on from 1893 to 1902, Coffin worked and attended the University of Michigan, although he never graduated. He was fascinated with gasoline and steam automobiles. In 1902, Coffin joined the Olds Motor Works as an engineer. In 1906, he joined with Roy Chapin* in forming the E. R. Thomas Detroit Company, which in 1910 evolved into the Hudson Motor Company. Coffin concentrated on engineering new cars while Chapin focused his energy on sales and administration. President Woodrow Wilson* named Coffin to be head of the Council of National Defense during 1917 and 1918. By that time, Coffin was also interested in aircraft and aeronautics, and he left the automobile business except for occasional consulting assignments. In 1923, he founded and served as president of the National Aeronautical Association and in 1925 established the National Air Transport Company, which later became United Air Lines. Coffin served as president of National Air Transport from 1925 to 1928 and as chairman of the board from 1928 to 1930. He retired in 1930 and died on November 21, 1937. References Charles Kelly Jr., The Sky’s the Limit, 1963. New York Times, November 22, 1937.

COHEN, BENJAMIN VICTOR Benjamin Victor Cohen was born in Muncie, Indiana, on September 23, 1894, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants. He had a brilliant academic career at the University of Chicago, receiving a bachelor of philosophy and a doctorate in jurisprudence. He decided to pursue further graduate studies at the Harvard Law School. There he met Professor Felix Frankfurter, who almost twenty years later would be responsible for bringing Cohen to Washington as a legal and legislative adviser. Between 1916 and 1933, Cohen pursued a distinguished career in corporate law and public service. Cohen came to Washington in 1933 with James Landis to work on the truth-in-securities legislation, which eventually became the Securities Act of 1933*. It was while working on this legislation that he met Thomas Corcoran*, then counsel to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). Together Cohen and Corcoran wrote the more comprehensive Securities Exchange Act of 1934,

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and the team of Cohen and Corcoran was born. Theirs was an extraordinary collaboration, responsible in whole or in part for a host of New Deal* laws, including the acts establishing the Federal Housing Administration*, the Tennessee Valley Authority*, the RFC extension, and the Public Utility Holding Company Act* of 1935. Cohen was also responsible for the lend–lease* program before World War II* and contributed to the development and implementation of the wage and price control programs during the war. He earned a reputation as a superb legislative draftsman whose work left lawyers searching in vain for loopholes. During the war, Cohen served as adviser to the United States embassy in London and as an adviser to James F. Byrnes in the Office of Economic Stabilization and the State Department. He left government service for a brief period in 1947 but returned when asked by President Harry S. Truman* to join the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, a post in which he remained until 1952. Never a man to seek the public spotlight, Cohen was nonetheless one of the most influential of all those who shaped the course of the New Deal. To many, he was the “top brain” in the later Franklin D. Roosevelt* group of counselors. He died in 1983. References Katie Louchheim, ed., The Making of the New Deal: The Insiders Speak, 1983. New York Times, September 5, 1983.

COINAGE ACT OF 1792 Early in the first administration of President George Washington*, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton* commissioned a careful study of the country’s currency system. As a result of that study, Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1792*. The law placed the value of the dollar at 24.75 grains of gold, exactly the same amount as the Spanish milled coins, and at 371.24 grains of silver. The ratio of silver to gold was 15:1. The law provided for free and unlimited coinage of both coins as legal tender. A mint was established at Philadelphia, but little silver or gold was actually minted. Relatively small volumes of gold and silver were then being produced in the United States, and because silver was somewhat overvalued at 15:1, gold fled the country; American money rapidly became silver money. Moreover, because American silver coins were slightly lower in value than similar Spanish coins but were accepted as equal in value, profiteers took American silver dollars to the West Indies, traded them for Spanish silver coins, returned the coins to the United States, reduced them to bullion, and brought them back to the Treasury for coinage payment. The result was that the country was chronically short of silver coins as well. By the early 1800s, currency in America consisted of paper money, small denomination coins, and foreign coins. The Coinage Act of 1792 was not significantly revised until 1834. Because the total volume of currency in circulation was not sufficient to meet the needs of a growing economy, state banks began issuing their own bank notes, and they quickly evolved into an unofficial currency in the United States. When depositors placed hard money with these banks, the banks would issue them bank

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notes unique to that bank (not unlike the current practice of issuing checks when a depositor opens a checking account). Although the bank notes met the need for an expanding currency, there were several disadvantages. By the 1830s there were several hundred banks issuing bank notes in the United States. Each set of those notes was unique to that bank, and their value depended on the financial health of the bank. Merchants had a difficult time determining the value of many bank notes, so they began automatically discounting them, which helped stimulate inflation. The bank note business was also a boon for counterfeiters. Not until the National Banking Act of 1864 was the issuing of bank notes prohibited. Reference John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1960.

COINAGE ACT OF 1834 In 1834, Congress decided to revalue the American dollar in hopes of providing a more abundant and reliable currency system. The Coinage Act of 1792* had overvalued silver at 15:1 and driven gold out of the country. The Coinage Act of 1834 revalued the relationship of silver to gold from 15:1 to 15.98:1. The weight of the gold dollar dropped from 24.75 to 23.22 grains of silver. The new arrangement actually overvalued gold, bringing it back into circulation. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, the price of gold fell even more and virtually pushed silver out of circulation. Reference J. M. McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance, 1972.

COINAGE ACT OF 1873 See CRIME OF 1873. COINAGE ACT OF 1878 See BLAND, RICHARD P. COINAGE ACT OF 1890 See SHERMAN SILVER PURCHASE ACT OF 1890. COIN’S FINANCIAL SCHOOL Coin’s Financial School was a pamphlet written by William H. Harvey and published in 1894. Harvey made a simple argument on behalf of bimetallism and argued that the free coinage of silver at a ratio of 16:1 would help poor farmers and workers throughout the country. The pamphlet proved very popular throughout the West and the South in the 1890s and became the major theme of the Populist* party and eventually the Democratic Party in the election of 1896*.

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Reference John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt, 1931.

C O L D WA R The development of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II had economic origins and a tremendous economic effect on both countries. With World War II coming to an end in 1945, American policymakers were deeply concerned about the threat posed by the Soviet Union in Europe and by the possible return of the Great Depression* at home. They worried that the drop in wartime spending would send the economy into a tailspin. One answer to that problem was the economic revival of Western Europe—especially the economies of Great Britain, France, and Germany—so that they would be able to resist Communist political and economic rhetoric. That would also serve to strengthen the American economy, because those countries would certainly make huge purchases of goods and services from the United States. The Truman Doctrine*, Marshall Plan*, and Point Four programs of the late 1940s all funneled large volumes of American dollars to Europe, but those dollars returned tenfold in the form of demand for American products. There was also an Asian economic connection for the Cold War. Communist expansion was no idle threat in the region. In the 1950s, the Philippines were dealing with communist guerrillas, and in Malaya and Burma the British government faced similar threats. Radical insurgents in Indonesia were undermining the Dutch colonial regime. Political leaders in Australia and New Zealand were genuinely concerned about the prospects of a communist victory in Vietnam. The fall of Vietnam might topple Malaya, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and after Indonesia fell, Australia and New Zealand were threatened. In strategic and economic terms, southeast Asia was also critical to American interests. The fall of southeast Asia would threaten the island chain stretching from Japan to the Philippines, cutting off American air routes to India and south Asia and eliminating the first line of defense in the Pacific. Australia and New Zealand would be isolated. The region was loaded with important natural and strategic resources, including tin, rubber, rice, copra, iron ore, copper, tungsten, and oil. Not only would the United States be cut off from those resources, but huge potential markets for American products would be threatened. Communist victories in Indochina, Malaya, and Indonesia would also place a geopolitical noose around the Philippines. In 1940 the United States had faced a similar threat when Japanese expansion threatened Indochina, Malaya, and Indonesia, and the outcome had occurred during World War II. How long could the Philippines stay free of communism if its neighbors fell? In 1949 Great Britain was still in the economic doldrums and dangerously low in dollar reserves. The recovery of the British economy required huge capital investments, and the entire British empire needed to increase its exports to the United States. Southeast Asia was critical to that process. Before World War II, a vigorous triangular trade had existed between Great Britain, the United States, and British Malaya, which had valuable rubber and tin assets. That trade needed to be

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revived. Nor could the French economy be restored to health as long as the war in Indochina was such a financial drain. Finally, American leaders had believed ever since the end of World War II that the Japanese economy would have to revive dramatically to prevent the spread of Communism there. The key to the Japanese revival, they thought, was the presence of the huge Chinese market for Japanese goods. But when China fell to Mao Zedong in 1949, that market ceased to exist. Many international economists then looked to southeast Asia as a market for Japanese products. The fall of Vietnam to Communism would eliminate that market as well. American policymakers looked at all these possibilities. Eventually, the Asian economic connection brought the United States into the war in Vietnam. In both the Soviet Union and the United States, the Cold War created large defense industries which became very important in their respective economies. By the 1980s, approximately 7 percent of the American gross national product was devoted to defense production, but that number approached 20 percent in the Soviet Union, which maintained a huge standing army as well as a commitment to high-tech strategic weapons. Because, as economists argue, defense spending is an economic dead end in that it adds nothing to an economy, the Soviet Union suffered the long-term debilitating effects of its defense industry. The collapse of the Soviet economy in the late 1980s and early 1990s was in large part the result of its huge defense component. With the end of the Cold War, politicians were beginning to talk about cutting defense spending and how to use the “peace dividend.” References Richard J. Barnet, Roots of War, 1974. Robert M. Blum, Drawing the Line: The Origin of the American Containment Policy in East Asia, 1984. Lisle Rose, Roots of Tragedy: The United States and the Struggle for Asia, 1945–1953, 1981. Andrew J. Rotter, The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia, 1987.

C O L U M B I A R I V E R B A S I N A N T I - S P E C U L AT I O N A C T OF 1937 Concerned about speculators making a fortune from Columbia River Basin land, which was soon to enjoy the benefits of federal water development, Congress passed the Columbia River Basin Anti-Speculation Act on May 27, 1937. The federal government also wanted to break up large dry farms in regions that could be irrigated. The Department of the Interior estimated that more than 1 million acres were involved, and the act decreed that farms exceeding eighty acres per family would be designated excess land. Owners of excess land would not receive irrigation water on any part of their property until they had sold the excess land at prices that the federal government considered fair market value. The law also gave the federal government the option to purchase excess land. Reference Richard Lowitt, The New Deal in the West, 1984.

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C O M M E R C E , D E PA R T M E N T O F Early in his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt* became concerned about the lack of a government department specifically to promote foreign trade, so in 1901, Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota submitted legislation to create a Department of Commerce and Industry. Much debate and negotiation occurred over the next two years, and Congress created the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903. The Department of Commerce was separated from the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1913, at which time it was also raised to cabinet-level status. Since then, it has been intimately involved in federal programs designed to promote domestic and foreign business transactions, strengthen American business, stimulate economic growth, and improve research and development*. Reference Donald R. Whitnah, “The Department of Commerce,” in Donald R. Whitnah, ed., Government Agencies, 1983.

COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT First established in 1942 as a private agency, the Committee for Economic Development was led by Theodore Houser of Sears, Roebuck and Company*. The committee made a careful study of American agriculture, identified overproduction and federal price supports as major problems, and advocated the gradual elimination of federal price subsidies, the removal of marginal producers from the land through job-retraining programs, a giveaway of existing stored surpluses, and a federal agricultural policy guided by market conditions. Although the committee’s proposals were logical, they proved to be politically impossible. Reference Committee for Economic Development, An Adaptive Program for Agriculture, 1962.

COMMITTEE FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION See CONFERENCE ON PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION. C O M M I T T E E F O R T H E N AT I O N In 1921, the economist Irving Fisher* organized the Stable Money League to promote the idea of a dollar whose purchasing power was stable. He worked for the concept of the “commodity dollar”* and found a good deal of support for it among farmers, as well as among some businessmen. In the summer of 1932, supporters of the idea met to discuss the problem of collapsing prices, and, early in 1933, they formed the Committee for the Nation to Rebuild Prices and Purchasing Power. Its leaders included Robert E. Wood*, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company*, and Frank E. Gannett, the newspaper mogul. The committee was an early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Deal*, but when the “Second New

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Deal” arrived—with its emphasis on social legislation, antitrust action, and deficit spending—the committee parted company. By the end of the 1930s, the committee bitterly opposed the New Deal. Throughout the 1930s, the committee campaigned for manipulation of the value of the dollar, hoping that inflation would create new investment capital. Reference H. M. Bratter, “The Committee for the Nation,” Journal of Political Economy 49 (1941): 531–553.

C O M M I T T E E F O R T H E N AT I O N T O R E B U I L D PRICES AND PURCHASING POWER See COMMITTEE FOR THE NATION. C O M M I T T E E O F F O R T Y- E I G H T After the debacle of the election of 1912*, most progressive Republicans abandoned the Bull Moose party and returned to the GOP fold. A small number of them, however, still hoped to effect a major political change in the United States with a progressive third party. Most regular Republicans wanted nothing to do with them. After all, when Theodore Roosevelt* and the Bull Moosers had left the party in 1912, it had guaranteed the election of Woodrow Wilson* and the Democrats. But in 1919, a number of former Bull Moosers, led by J. A. H. Hopkins of New Jersey, formed the Committee of Forty-Eight. They tried to build a coalition of workers and farmers to support Senator Robert M. La Follette* for president. La Follette realized the organization was hopelessly weak, and he refused to accept their nomination. In 1924, members of the Committee of Forty-Eight joined forces with the Conference for Progressive Political Action* and nominated La Follette for president again. La Follette accepted the nomination of what became known as the Progressive Party and ran for president against Republican Calvin Coolidge and Democrat John W. Davis* in the election of 1924*. La Follette won only 16.6 percent of the popular vote, and Coolidge won the election. The Committee of Forty-Eight then dissolved. Reference Kenneth Mackay, The Progressive Movement of 1924, 1947.

COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC SECURITY By 1934, pressure was mounting in labor and social welfare circles for some type of unemployment and old age insurance. Therefore, on June 8, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* submitted a message to Congress, raising the idea of social insurance; late in the month, he appointed a cabinet-level Committee on Economic Security to investigate the major policy issues and economic needs and to make a recommendation before December 1934. He named Secretary of Labor Frances

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Perkins* to be chairman of the committee. The committee had to resolve two conflicting positions on both unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. In terms of unemployment insurance, the basic question was whether to have a state-based plan with basic minimum standards or a national plan administered and financed by the federal government. After intense debate and negotiation, the Committee on Economic Security recommended the former, with each state required to establish an unemployment insurance system adhering to some fundamental standards. In terms of old-age pensions, the major debate was over its financing—whether to have the federal government finance it out of general revenues, which would have had the effect of redistributing income, or whether to have employers and employees make equal contributions so that workers could gradually accumulate annuity rights in their old age. The committee opted for the latter, much to the dismay of liberals, who wanted to redistribute national income. The committee also recommended that the federal government make grants-in-aid to the states to assist the contemporary elderly population who had no pension reserves. Finally, the committee decided on supplementary benefits for the blind and for dependent children. The Committee on Economic Security submitted its report to the president on January 15, 1935. Roosevelt then submitted his request to Congress for social security legislation on January 17. Senator Robert F. Wagner* of New York introduced the bill in the Senate, and Representatives David J. Lewis and Robert Doughton of North Carolina introduced it in the House. The Social Security Act* became law on August 14, 1935. Reference Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 3: The Politics of Upheaval: 1935–1936, 1960.

C O M M O D I T Y C R E D I T C O R P O R AT I O N The central problems of American agriculture in the 1930s were overproduction and depressed commodity prices. The New Deal* tried to solve the overproduction problem with the Agricultural Adjustment Administration* (AAA), but members of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* administration were also concerned about the farmers’ claim that low prices were also a consequence of marketing conditions. Because crops came on the market soon after harvest, prices were artificially low on a seasonal basis. Farmers demanded that some scheme for the orderly marketing of farm commodities be developed. On October 18, 1933, Roosevelt responded to their demands with Executive Order 6340, creating the Commodity Credit Corporation. The Commodity Credit Corporation’s loan program for farmers aimed to bring relief by allowing them to keep their crops off the market until more favorable marketing conditions had appeared. The Commodity Credit Corporation also hoped to stimulate farm loans by private banks through loan guarantees. To maintain normal channels of credit, the Commodity Credit Corporation urged private bankers to make such loans with the guarantee that the corporation would, upon demand, purchase all of the marketing loans that the banks had extended. When banks refused to

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make the loans, the Commodity Credit Corporation would lend directly. The Commodity Credit Corporation lent funds on cotton, corn, wheat, turpentine, rosin, figs, peanuts, raisins, butter, dates, cowhides, wool, and tobacco. Demand for loans was so high that from 1933 to 1939, the Commodity Credit Corporation gained the authority to borrow $900 million against its $100 million capital. The money was used to enable farmers to hold crops off the market. By absorbing the surplus of bumper crops and meeting deficiencies in short years, the Commodity Credit Corporation was able to help farmers achieve price stability. With the passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938*, the Commodity Credit Corporation became the major means of achieving Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace’s* goal of an “ever-normal granary*.” By June 30, 1940, the Commodity Credit Corporation had lent out $889 million on 16,674,000 bales of cotton, $470 million on 897,776,000 bushels of corn, $166 million on 253,391,000 bushels of wheat, and $46 million on 253,249,000 pounds of tobacco. The Commodity Credit Corporation went on to become a key element in federal agricultural policy. Reference James S. Olson, The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940, 1988.

COMMODITY DOLLAR Late in the 1920s and early in the 1930s, Professor Irving Fisher* of Yale University and George Warren* of Cornell University established the Stable Money League to promote their ideas for manipulating the gold content of the dollar as a means of stabilizing prices. Farm organizations tended to favor the idea because it would, they thought, bring about a price inflation. Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace* endorsed the idea, and in 1933 and 1934 President Franklin D. Roosevelt* frequently adjusted the price of gold in order to manipulate price levels. Eventually, the idea proved worthless in terms of achieving price stability, and it was abandoned by 1934. Reference James S. Olson, The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940, 1988.

COMMODITY EXCHANGE ACT OF 1936 Ever since the nineteenth century, large numbers of farmers have blamed middlemen and commodity speculators for their problems. In 1922, the Grain Futures Trading Act prohibited anyone from securing control over a single commodity in order to manipulate its prices, and the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936 was designed to strengthen that legislation. The law also outlawed other types of speculation as well as fraudulent practices and excessively high brokerage fees. The Commodity Exchange Authority was established to enforce the law and regulate the commodity exchanges. Reference Cedric B. Cowing, Populists, Plungers, and Progressives: A Social History of Stock and Commodity Speculation, 1890–1936, 1965.

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COMMODITY EXCHANGE AUTHORITY See COMMODITY EXCHANGE ACT OF 1936. COMMONS, JOHN ROGERS Born October 13, 1862, in Hollansburg, Ohio, John R. Commons graduated from Oberlin College in 1888 and took his master’s degree there in 1890. He also studied at Johns Hopkins, and from 1890 to 1904, he taught economics and sociology at Wesleyan, Indiana, Oberlin, and Syracuse. He began his career at the University of Wisconsin in 1904. An optimistic utilitarian, Commons believed that capitalism was capable of delivering the greatest good to the largest number of people. Since large organizations had assumed control of the economy, the key to stability and prosperity was government mediation between competing interest groups. His scholarship and political activities encouraged his view of capitalism. Commons served actively in the National Civic Federation* and the American Association for Labor Legislation. He wrote a plan for unemployment insurance that would use individual corporate reserves, and Wisconsin enacted it in 1932. From 1913 to 1915, Commons was a member of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, where he advocated corporate planning and cooperation with the government. Pragmatic and committed, Commons played a crucial role in the 1920s in promoting the ideas of industrial responsibility, social welfare, and federal government coordination of the economy. These reached fruition in the New Deal* of the 1930s. Commons died on May 11, 1944. Reference Lafayette Harter, John R. Commons, 1962.

C O M M U N I C AT I O N S W O R K E R S O F A M E R I C A By the 1890s, several unions were trying to organize telephone workers, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers* (IBEW) and the Commercial Telegraphers Union. A group of telephone workers bolted the IBEW in 1920 and organized the International Brotherhood of Telephone Workers. For all intents and purposes, the union was little more than a company union for the New England Bell Telephone Company. Little organization took place during the 1920s and early 1930s. Under the protection of New Deal* labor legislation, however, a number of smaller communication worker unions, totaling about 45,000 members, met in 1937 and established the National Federation of Telephone Workers. Its membership reached 170,000 members by 1945. The next year, American Telephone & Telegraph* signed a contract with the union to ward off a threatened nationwide strike of telephone workers. In 1947, the union was renamed the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The CWA joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations* in 1948. From 1950 to 1970, CWA membership increased from 180,000 to 420,000 people. By the mid-1980s that membership was approaching 450,000 people. Since 1997, it has also included the Newspaper Guild. In 2004,

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CWA merged with the Association of Flight Attendants and became known as the Association of Flight Attendants–CWA, or AFA-CWA. References Jack Barbash, Unions and Telephones, 1952. Joseph A. Beirne, Challenge to Labor, 1969.

C O M PA N Y U N I O N The term “company union” refers to labor unions that are organized by management and corporate entities to prevent externally organized labor unions from recruiting new members. Company unions, of course, represent the opinions of the management groups that control them. Eventually, they largely disappeared once the New Deal extended legal protection to labor unions in the 1930s. Reference Daniel Nelson, “The Company Union Movement, 1900–1937: A Reexamination,” Business History Review 46 (autumn 1982): 335–358.

C O M PA R A B L E W O R T H The concept of comparable worth takes the idea of equal pay for equal work* one step further. How should compensation be calculated when jobs are not identical in content but require comparable degrees of education, experience, skill, or strength? How should jobs be ranked? On what grounds should a trash hauler, for instance, earn higher compensation than a child care worker, a prison guard more than a nurse? These vexatious questions were first made explicit in the 1980s as part of a renewed emphasis on workplace equity. The answers will probably emerge only through long processes of negotiation. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Gilda Berger, Women, Work, and Wages, 1986. Helen Remick, ed., Comparable Worth and Wage Discrimination, 1984.

COMPROMISE OF 1850 Winning the Mexican War* (1846–1848) not only gave the United States another vast area to settle but also presented new questions over which Northerners and Southerners could fight. How many slave states would be carved from the huge territory of Texas? Would slavery* be allowed to expand westward from there? What would happen to the delicate congressional balance worked out in the Missouri Compromise*? Finally, whose version of the national economic agenda would prevail? North–South relations had deteriorated steadily during the Mexican War, as Northern Whigs demanded and southern Democrats rejected the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned the extension of involuntary servitude in any territory

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that might be won from Mexico. Disunion threatened, but what really brought the crisis to a head was California’s application in 1849 to join the Union as a free state. The gold rush* of that year had brought so many settlers to California that they chose to bypass the stage of being an officially designated territory and apply directly for statehood. The South was unlikely to agree to this unorthodox procedure without getting something in return. After much acrimony, the death of President Zachary Taylor, and strenuous efforts by Henry Clay* and Stephen Douglas, the Compromise of 1850 emerged. It included five main points: (1) California was admitted to the Union as a free state; (2) New Mexico and Utah were established as territories that could decide on the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty; (3) the border of Texas was fixed in its present contours, and Texas received $10 million from the federal treasury for yielding territory to New Mexico; (4) the slave trade was banned in Washington, D.C.; and (5) a Fugitive Slave Act* provided federal enforcement to ensure the return of runaway slaves to their owners. The self-contradictory nature of this compromise, like that of the Missouri Compromise before it, did not solve the underlying problems of sectionalism and slavery. The Compromise of 1850 did, however, postpone the dissolution of the Union and the coming of civil war* for another ten years. References Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850, 1964. Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, 1970.

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C O M P R O M I S E TA R I F F O F 1 8 3 3 See TARIFF OF 1833. COMSTOCK LODE Early in 1859, Henry T. P. Comstock established a mining claim in Gold Canyon in western Nevada. The claim proved to be a huge silver deposit that became known as the Comstock Lode. When news of the discovery hit the newspapers in June 1859, it led to a mining boom in western Nevada. During the next twenty years, the Comstock Lode yielded more than $300 million in silver. Reference William S. Greever, The Bonanza West: The Story of the Western Mining Rushes, 1848–1900, 1963.

CONFERENCE FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICAL ACTION A number of progressive protest groups functioned during the 1920s, protesting the probusiness atmosphere in Washington and the suffering of workers and poor

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people. In 1922, the leaders of the railroad brotherhoods formed the Committee for Progressive Political Action, which became the Conference for Progressive Political Action (CPPA) after its first convention in 1922. During the congressional and gubernatorial elections of 1922, the CPPA endorsed a number of candidates, many of whom won their elections. Senator Robert M. La Follette* of Wisconsin emerged as the leader of the CPPA. Under his direction, its constituency broadened out from the railroad brotherhoods to include other labor unions, social welfare workers, socialists*, and antitrust advocates. In 1924, the CPPA secured the support of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) and launched the Progressive Party to challenge Calvin Coolidge for the White House. The Progressive Party called for public control of all natural resources, the elimination of all monopolies, increased taxes on the rich, the elimination of child labor, minimum wages and rights to collective bargaining for labor, the prohibition of antilabor federal court injunctions*, and the outlawing of war. La Follette ran for president, and his running mate was Senator Burton K. Wheeler* of Montana. They managed to gamer only 4.8 million votes out of the 28.6 million cast, and only thirteen electoral votes. Republican prosperity doomed them. The CPPA met in Chicago in 1925; after hearing that the AFL would never again endorse a third-party effort, they dissolved the organization. The death of La Follette that year and of Eugene V. Debs* in 1926 also removed whatever influence a charismatic leader might have had on a revival of the organization. The CPPA was dead. References Kenneth C. MacKay, The Progressive Movement of 1924, 1947. James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925, 1967.

C O N G L O M E R AT E The term “conglomerate” has been used to describe highly diversified corporations that do business in several completely unrelated markets. The wave of conglomerate mergers began in the 1950s and accelerated in the 1960s; only 10 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are conglomerates, however. Management has usually decided to diversify for several reasons. One of the most important is simply as a defensive move. Companies in rapidly changing industries have diversified in order to guarantee their futures. When new abortion laws and lifestyle changes dramatically reduced the number of births in the United States, the Gerber Company went into the life insurance business in addition to its baby food products. A second strategy has been finding more profitable outlets for corporate funds. Borden Company, worried about the future of milk products sales, has diversified into chemicals, cosmetics, and fertilizers. In other situations, companies have acquired unrelated operations simply because some companies have been undervalued; by combining the book values of the two companies, net increases in profits and assets can be spectacular. Generally, the federal government has not taken antitrust action against conglomerates. Reference Mansel G. Blackford and K. Austin Kerr, Business Enterprise in American History, 1986.

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C O N G R E S S O F I N D U S T R I A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N S By the early 1930s, the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) was the premier union in the country, resting on a half-century of success. When Samuel Gompers* organized the AFL in the early 1880s, he succeeded where others had failed by eschewing mass organization and focusing on skilled workers in the craft trades. In the twentieth century, Gompers and his successor William Green* formed federal labor unions for the increasing numbers of mass production workers but treated them as second-class citizens. The mass production workers chafed at the AFL’s anti-industrial attitude. At the 1934 convention, a group of perhaps 30 percent of the union membership called on the AFL to organize mass production factory workers into industrial unions. John L. Lewis*, president of the United Mine Workers* (UMW), led the rebellion. They got little satisfaction in 1934 but renewed their demands at the 1935 convention. Again the rank-and-file membership delegates voted them down 18,464–10,987. Lewis, Sidney Hillman* (Amalgamated Clothing Workers), David Dubinsky* (International Ladies’ Garment Workers*), Thomas F. McMahon (Textile Workers*), and Charles Howard (Typographers) formed the Committee for Industrial Organization as a formal entity within the AFL*. In 1936, the AFL suspended those unions, and, after two years of legal disputes, Lewis and the others formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Protected by the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act*, the CIO became a potent political and economic force in the United States. In the 1936 presidential election, it contributed nearly $1 million to Franklin D. Roosevelt*’s reelection campaign and established the Labor’s Non-Partisan League* and the American Labor party to campaign for him. Economically, the CIO then assaulted the major corporate bastions of industrial America with mass organization drives. In June 1936, Philip Murray*, Lewis’s assistant with the UMW, formed the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, and Hillman established the Textile Workers Organizing Committee. Later that year, the United Automobile Workers* (UAW) launched their “sit-down” strikes, which shut down the industry. In February 1937, General Motors capitulated, recognized the union, and met its wage and hours demands. By the end of 1937, UAW membership had jumped from fewer than 30,000 workers to more than 400,000. In March 1937, the United States Steel Corporation* recognized the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) and agreed to its demands. By midsummer 1937, SWOC membership stood at nearly 350,000 people. The United Rubber Workers* (URW), United Electrical and Radio Workers, and the Textile Workers Organizing Committee all enjoyed similar triumphs in 1937. Only Henry Ford*, the “little steel” companies, and the major packinghouses remained unorganized, but even their independence was doomed. By 1940, the CIO had a total membership of 2,654,000 in forty-one affiliated unions. More than 71 percent of the CIO membership was concentrated in the UMW, UAW, SWOC, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Textile Workers, and United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers. Lewis’s role in the CIO ended in 1940 when he endorsed Wendell Willkie for president and had to resign when Roosevelt was reelected. Murray succeeded him as head of the CIO. The union

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boomed during World War II* and the postwar years. When it merged with the AFL in 1955, it had a membership of more than 4,600,000 people. References Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941, 1970. Ara Preis, Labor’s Giant Step: Twenty Years of the CIO, 1964.

C O N N A L LY A C T O F 1 9 3 5 In its early drive to stabilize price levels and stimulate business confidence, Congress had passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) in 1933. Section 9(c) of the NIRA was the so-called “hot oil” section, permitting the president to regulate the interstate shipment of illegally produced oil in excess of state production quotas. By regulating oil production, the administration hoped to stop the price declines so endemic to the early 1930s. In January 1935, however, the Supreme Court, in the Panama Refining Company* and Amazon Petroleum cases, declared Section 9(c) unconstitutional because of the discretionary authority over interstate commerce that it gave the executive branch. Oil producers in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, fearing that illegally produced and exported oil would undermine prices, insisted on some protection. In February 1935, Senator Thomas Connally sponsored legislation to prohibit the practice. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed the Connally Act into law on February 22, 1935. The law prohibited the interstate transportation of “hot oil” (oil in excess of state production quotas), authorized the president to lift the prohibition on such crude oil if a disparity developed between supply and demand and called for the federal confiscation of illegal petroleum taken across state lines. Along with the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act, the Guffey–Vinson, Robinson– Patman, Walsh–Healey* and Miller–Tydings acts*, the Connally Act of 1935 has been considered by historians as part of the “Little NRA” legislation passed by Congress in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of the National Recovery Administration*. Reference Bernard Bellush, The Failure of the NRA, 1975.

CONOCOPHILLIPS ConocoPhillips Co. is a U.S.-based multinational* energy corporation headquartered in Houston, Texas. ConocoPhillips was established through the 2002 merger of Conoco Inc. and Phillips Petroleum Co. Conoco Inc., or Continental Oil and Transportation Co., was founded in 1987. Based in Ogden, Utah, it was a major producer of coal, oil, kerosene, and petroleum byproducts in the western states. It was later absorbed by Marland Oil Co, which changed its name to Continental Oil Co. in 1929 and moved to Ponca City, Oklahoma. Conoco moved its headquarters to Houston, Texas, in 1949. In 2002, Conoco merged with Phillips Petroleum to form the ConocoPhillips corporation.

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Reference Sonia Shah, Crude: The Story of Oil, 2004.

CONRAIL By the late 1960s the railroad industry in the Northeast was in shambles, burdened by heavy debt structures, declining passenger revenues, and the weaknesses of American heavy industry, which was faring poorly against international competition. The huge Penn Central Railroad went bankrupt in 1970. Because the services it provided were essential to the regional economy, however, the federal government kept the road running with large subsidies. To deal with the crisis, Congress passed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973, which authorized the establishment of the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) as a private company. Conrail took over six bankrupt railroads in 1976: the Penn Central, the Jersey Central, the Lehigh Valley, the Reading, the Erie Lackawanna, and the Lehigh & Hudson River. After huge losses in the 1970s, Congress passed the Northeast Rail Reorganization Act of 1981, which allowed Conrail to drop its unprofitable passenger service and renegotiate its labor contracts. Under the leadership of L. Stanley Crane, Conrail showed its first profit in 1981 and was sold to private investors in 1987. In 1997, CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), agreed to acquire and split the Conrail system approximately equally. By 1998, CSX and NS took control of the company. On June 1, 1999, they began operating their respective portions of Conrail. Reference Richard Saunders, The Railroad Mergers and the Coming of Conrail, 1978.

C O N S E R VAT I O N O F F I S H A C T O F 1 9 3 4 Because of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* lifelong interest in wildlife conservation and because of concern among conservationists that federal public works and public power projects might harm fish populations, Congress passed the Conservation of Fish Act in 1934. The law specifically directed Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes to cooperate with local fish and game management groups to make sure that native fish populations were not harmed by federal water development projects. Reference Ira Gabrielson, Wildlife Conservation, 1959.

CONSORTIUM CHINESE LOAN OF 1911 In 1911, a consortium of French, German, and British bankers received a special charter to construct the Hukuang Railroad in China. The United States joined the consortium shortly thereafter, and Russian and Japanese bankers did the same in 1912. In order to guarantee the loan, the consortium governments took virtual

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control of the Chinese government. American participation ended in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson* became president. Wilson decided to return to a strict interpretation of the Open Door policy*, protecting China’s status as an independent nation, by withdrawing from the consortium. Reference Roy Curry, Woodrow Wilson and Far Eastern Policy, 1913–1921, 1957.

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION At the Annapolis Convention* in 1786, advocates of a stronger central government decided to meet at Philadelphia in 1787 and completely revise the Articles of Confederation*, which many perceived as providing for a government so lacking in central direction that it was incapable of maintaining stability. Shays’s Rebellion* in Massachusetts in 1786 had reinforced that conviction. At the Constitutional Convention, the Founding Fathers devised a much stronger central government, and after ratification of the Constitution, it became the new government of the United States. The motives of the Founding Fathers were considered impeccable until 1913, when historian Charles Beard* wrote his famous book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. Beard argued that the Founding Fathers, most of whom were well-to-do individuals who owned defaulted U.S. securities, actually wanted a stronger central government so that their investments would be redeemed. Beard’s thesis has stimulated a vigorous scholarly debate ever since 1913. Reference Peter S. Onuf, The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787, 1975.

C O N S U M E R F E D E R AT I O N O F A M E R I C A The Consumer Federation of America is an omnibus group of more than 200 consumer organizations. It was founded in 1967 with the mission of lobbying* Congress and state legislatures for consumer protection legislation. It also has research and public affairs divisions to distribute information about consumer issues. In addition, the Consumer Federation of America campaigns for the establishment of a cabinet-level federal consumer protection agency. Reference Judith Smith, ed., Political Brokers: People, Organizations, Money and Power, 1972.

CONSUMER RIGHTS Consumer rights, focused on the protection of consumers from business practices, are focused on protecting the rights of consumers, ensuring fair trade and competition, and allowing for the dissemination of information about products and the prohibition of deceptive advertising in the market. Consumer rights legislation are designed to prevent businesses from engaging in fraud or unfair practices. Government regulation of business since the Progressive Era, most notably the Pure Food

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and Drug Act of 1906, has ensured that consumer rights are protected despite the protests of pro-business interests that these constitute “red tape” that hinders free enterprise. The Federal Trade Commission is a key federal agency that works to ensure and protect consumer rights. Reference Jane K. Winn, Consumer Protection in the Age of the “Information Economy,” 2006.

C O O K E , J AY Jay Cooke was born on August 10, 1821, in Sandusky, Ohio. His father was an attorney and U.S. congressman, but the son, after working at a variety of jobs, went into the banking business. From 1839 to 1857, he worked for E. W. Clark and Company in Philadelphia. Cooke left the business in the wake of the Panic of 1857*, but in 1861, he established Jay Cooke and Company, a banking firm. During the Civil War*, Cooke did most of the business of marketing government securities and in the process made a fortune. Cooke inaugurated the major financial enterprise of securities underwriting. His firm remained quite successful until the Panic of 1873*, when Jay Cooke and Company went under. He died on February 16, 1905. Reference Henrietta Larson, Jay Cooke. Private Banker, 1936.

CORCORAN, THOMAS GARDINER Thomas “The Cork” Corcoran, the brilliant, witty legislative strategist behind much of the New Deal*, was born December 29, 1900, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University in 1922 and then went on to the Harvard Law School. In Cambridge, he quickly impressed Professor Felix Frankfurter with his wit and unparalleled analytical skills, becoming the future Supreme Court justice’s “favorite pupil.” Corcoran graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1925, took a doctorate of juristic science in 1926, and then served one year as secretary to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.* From 1927 to 1932, Corcoran practiced law privately in New York, specializing in corporate reorganization and new stock issues. Although a loyal Democrat in the tradition of millions of Irish Catholics, Corcoran first went to work for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) in 1932. In 1933, Frankfurter introduced him to newly elected Franklin D. Roosevelt*. The president made him a special assistant to both Secretary of the Treasury William H. Woodin and Attorney General Homer Cummings. In 1934, Corcoran returned to the RFC as special counsel, and he remained there until his return to private practice in 1941. Corcoran’s influence, however, was hardly confined to the RFC. Roosevelt frequently used him on a wide variety of legislation. While working on the truth-in-securities legislation that became the Securities Act* in 1933, Corcoran met Benjamin Cohen*, who had come to Washington with Harvard Law School professor James Landis to work on the bill. Together they wrote the more comprehensive Securities

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Exchange Act of 1934. The team of Cohen and Corcoran was born. Theirs was an extraordinary collaboration, responsible in whole or in part for a wealth of New Deal legislation, including the Federal Housing Administration*, the Tennessee Valley Authority*, the RFC extension, and the Public Utility Holding Company Act* of 1935. One of the most influential people in the United States during the 1930s, Corcoran died on December 6, 1981. References Peter Irons, The New Deal Lawyers, 1982. New York Times, December 7, 1981.

C O R N B E LT The term “Corn Belt” is used to describe the region of the Midwest where corn is the staple crop in farm production. The leading corn-producing states of the Corn Belt are Iowa and Illinois, although Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas are also included in the group. Reference Allen G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, 1963.

C O R P O R AT E B A N K R U P T C Y A C T O F 1 9 3 4 As part of the recovery efforts and in order to extend to businessmen the same opportunities that farmers, railroads, and cities had already received, the Franklin D. Roosevelt* administration began pushing amendments to federal bankruptcy laws in 1934. Similar measures had reached Congress in 1932, only to be opposed by the Democratic majority. But by 1934, with the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) in full gear, many New Dealers hoped that more liberal bankruptcy rules for private corporations would facilitate their reorganization, preparing them to rehire workers and increase production. One problem with the existing bankruptcy regulations was that a minority of stockholders who were unwilling to accept an adjustment of their assets could block any attempts at the refinancing or scaling down of debts, as could a minority of creditors. In the spring of 1934, Senator Frederick Van Nuys of Indiana and Representative Tom D. McKeown of Oklahoma jointly sponsored a corporate reorganization measure to prevent such minority delays. The measure would allow an application for reorganization from an insolvent corporation if the application was approved by 25 percent of the stockholders. All creditors would be bound to a reorganization plan sanctioned by a federal court and accepted by 67 percent of the holders of the total amount of claims. The law also specifically prohibited corporations that were applying for reorganization from interfering with the rights of their employees to join labor unions. The bill enjoyed the widespread support of the business community and Roosevelt signed it into law on June 7, 1934. Four years later, on June 22, 1938, Roosevelt signed into law the Chandler Act*, which amended the Federal Bankruptcy Act of 1898 to allow financially distressed

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people, partnerships, and corporations to petition the federal courts for settlement, refinancing, or debt reduction if such a step were agreeable to a majority of creditors in each class of debt and if it were necessary to avoid liquidation. Reference New York Times, June 8, 1934, and June 23, 1938.

C O R P O R AT I O N The corporation is a legal entity employed to own property and direct the use of the property’s assets. As a legal entity, the corporation also limits the liability of the investor. In the U.S. economy, corporations began to appear in the early nineteenth century as a means of raising capital for such costly concerns as canals, highways, and railroads. After the Civil War*, the federal courts extended Fourteenth Amendment* civil rights to corporations. Once corporations began to receive tax rates lower than those of individuals, there were additional incentives to establish them. By the late twentieth century, practically all businesses in the United States, large and small, were incorporating to limit their liability, to raise capital, or to enjoy tax advantages. Reference James Willard Hurst, The Legitimacy of the Business Corporation, 1970.

C O T T O N B E LT The term “Cotton Belt” has been used ever since the nineteenth century to refer to the group of lower southern states where the American cotton industry was centered until the rise of California in the 1940s and 1950s. COTTON GIN See WHITNEY, ELI. COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) was created by the Employment Act* of 1946. The CEA was to consist of three individuals providing economic advice to the president and helping the president prepare the annual “Economic Report of the President.” Over the years, presidents have appointed economists who reflect their own personal and political philosophies. Reference Hugh S. Norton, The Employment Act and the Council of Economic Advisers, 1977.

COUNCIL OF ENERGY RESOURCE TRIBES The Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT) was established in 1978 by Peter Macdonald, leader of the Navajo tribe of American Indians. Located on the reservations

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of various American Indian tribes are up to 40 percent of all U.S. uranium, 33 percent of U.S. coal, and 5 percent of U.S. oil and natural gas. CERT is composed of representatives of each of the tribes whose holdings include some of those energy resources. Because many tribes have a history of leasing their energy resources out at prices well below market levels, CERT is committed to maximizing tribal profits by raising prices. CERT has negotiated with foreign governments to improve prices and has lobbied for federal legislation to protect Indian assets. CERT has also sought federal financing for training programs so that Indians can learn the engineering and technical skills necessary for effective management of resources. Reference James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, 1984.

COWBOY The term “cowboy” is a translation of the Spanish word vaquero, referring to a Mexican rider who herded cattle. Beginning in the 1830s, cowboys herded cattle in the American West, wearing a ten-gallon hat to keep the burning sunlight off their heads and necks, leg chaps to protect them from brush scratches, heavy boots, and bandanas to help them breathe through the dust. After the Civil War*, large numbers of recently freed blacks went out West and became cowboys. Cowboys began to disappear when homesteaders fenced the open ranges. By the twentieth century, they had become the stuff of legends in American popular culture. Reference Bart McDowell, The American Cowboy in Life and Legend, 1972.

COXEY’S ARMY In 1894, Jacob S. Coxey founded Coxey’s Army in Massillon, Ohio. The depression of 1893* had thrown hundreds of thousands of industrial workers out of work, and Coxey demanded federal programs designed to provide work. Coxey was a local businessman concerned about the families of unemployed people. To dramatize his demands, Coxey decided to lead a march of unemployed people from Massillon to Washington, D.C. In particular, Coxey wanted a $500 million federal program to improve roads throughout the country, as well as a federal bonding program to encourage state and local governments to engage in public works construction programs for the unemployed. Individuals hired to work on such programs would receive at least $1.50 a day in wages. Although conservatives feared that the marchers would swell to more than 100,000 people and foment a revolution, Coxey’s Army never had more than 500 people on the road at any given time. When they arrived in Washington, D.C., some of them were arrested; the others disbanded. Not until the Great Depression* of the 1930s would any of Coxey’s ideas be implemented. Reference Donald L. McMurray, Coxey’s Army: A Study of the Industrial Army Movement of 1894, 1968.

CRAsH oF 1987

CRASH OF 1929 During the 1920s, the stock market in the United States underwent an extraordinary, unprecedented expansion. The country was caught up in a speculative euphoria, and, from 1925 to 1929, confidence and optimism were transformed into a cult of unlimited expectations. The New York Times stock index stood at 65 in 1921 and rose to 134 by the end of 1924, 180 by the end of 1926, 245 by the end of 1927, and 331 by the end of 1928. On the last day of August 1929, the index stood at 449, but that was the peak. The Great Crash of 1929 was about to ensue. Even though stock prices declined modestly in September 1929, broker loans increased by $670 million, indicating that the speculative fever had not diminished. But on October 23, the index dropped from 415 to 384, and on October 24, “Black Thursday*,” the rout became a panic. A record of 12,894,650 shares changed hands, and the index dropped to 372. Only massive organized buying by major banks and investment companies saved the day. On “Black Monday*,” October 28, the panic resumed. The Times industrial index fell 49 points that day on more than 9,250,000 traded shares. The next day, “Black Tuesday*,” saw the index fall another 43 points on 16,400,000 traded shares. The slide continued off and on until mid-November, when the stock index hit 224; in July 1932, it bottomed out at 58. Instead of rising apace with corporate profits and productivity, the bull market* of the 1920s had been fueled by Republican tax and budget policies, Federal Reserve* irresponsibility, margin buying, an infusion of corporate and bank funds, and the creation of hundreds of bogus investment trusts, each issuing huge amounts of its own stock. The collapse of the stock market, along with the other weaknesses of the economy, sent the country into a tailspin from which it did not recover until the outbreak of World War II. References Harold Bierman Jr., The Great Myths of 1929 and the Lessons to be Learned, 1991. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929, 1955. Robert Sobel, The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920s, 1968.

CRASH OF 1987 During the early 1980s, a great bull market* took over Wall Street*. Stock prices began a steady climb, and the volume of shares traded increased dramatically. Increasingly large numbers of transactions were carried out by institutional investors—mutual funds, pension funds, and large commercial investors. Securities transactions were also increasingly conducted by computers in what came to be known as “programmed trading.” Computers were programmed to buy stocks automatically when prices reached what programmers thought was a bottom, or to sell automatically when prices reached a supposed peak. The bull market of the 1980s reached its peak in 1987. At the beginning of the year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average* stood at 1,927. It reached a high of 2,722 on August 25, 1987. By that

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time, increasingly large numbers of institutional investors were ready to take their profits and move back into cash positions. The market began to falter. It hit 2,508 on October 13, 1987. The next day, the Dow Jones average fell an alarming 96 points, with programmed selling key to the drop. It went down 57 points the next day and 89 points the day after, bringing the Dow to 2,246 on October 15. The market then collapsed, losing 514 points the next day. By the end of the year, the market had recovered to 1,938, very nearly to where it had been on January 1, 1987. To prevent such huge fluctuations in the future, the stock exchanges agreed to suspend programmed trading whenever the Dow fell by more than 50 points in a single day. Reference “1987 Need Not Be 1929,” Fortune 116 (November 23, 1987): 46–48.

CREDIT CARDS At the beginning of the twentieth century, credit cards were virtually unknown. By 1990, however, there were more than 1.25 billion credit cards in circulation around the world. In the United States, American consumers made more than 13 percent of their total purchases using credit cards in 1990—a total of nearly $400 billion. The first credit cards appeared in the United States before World War I* when retailers issued them to their wealthiest customers as a convenience item. The cards bound those customers to particular stores and seemed to stimulate the sale of big-ticket items. They began to issue “charge-plates” in 1928, but these were little more than embossed-metal address plates. During the next several decades, those retailers added minimum monthly payments, finance charges, and the famous “30-day grace period” to their billing procedures. When the automobile* boomed in the 1920s, major oil companies began issuing “courtesy cards” allowing customers to buy gasoline at any of the company’s retail outlets. Finally, in 1936 the airline industry, with American Airlines taking the lead, formed the Universal Air Travel Plan, a coupon credit system that later evolved into credit cards for frequent travelers. In 1949 Alfred Bloomingdale, Frank McNamara, and Ralph Snyder launched the era of the universal third-party credit card when they founded the Diners Club. The retail and gas credit cards were restricted to use in those industries, whereas the Diners Club card could be used to purchase goods and services at a variety of places around the country. Diners Club became the third party to the transaction, extending credit to the customer, providing customers to the seller, and charging them both for the service. The Diners Club saw credit as the product they were selling, not any particular commodity, service, or brand name. It was an uphill struggle. The airline, retail, and oil companies fought the idea because it competed with them, and many merchants resented the fee they were charged. But Diners Club stayed the course and pioneered a new industry. After World War II, with the boom in consumer purchases, the market was ripe for a revolution in the consumer credit industry. In 1958 American Express, which had confined itself to issuing travelers checks, issued its own third-party

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universal credit card, and the Hilton Hotel Corporation did the same with its Carte Blanche label. The Bank of America and Chase Manhattan Bank also issued their own universal credit cards in 1958. Chase Manhattan withdrew from the industry in 1962, but in 1966 Bank of America licensed its BankAmericard nationwide. To give themselves a more international image, they renamed the card VISA in 1976. Additionally, in the 1960s, a group of large banks had decided to form the Interbank Card Association. Eventually their card became known as Master Charge, a name that changed in 1980 to MasterCard. By the late 1980s, VISA had one third more subscribers than MasterCard, and both of them had dwarfed Diners Club and Carte Blanche in their domination of the market. The major development in credit cards in the 1980s was the rise of electronic funds transfer (EFT) systems, which allowed for instantaneous electronic transfers of funds from the customer’s bank to the retailer’s bank, essentially making the credit card a debit card. They operate online to central mainframe computers making the transfer of funds and identification of the customer’s credit standing immediate. The major criticism of the cards in the late 1980s and early 1990s was that the interest rates they charged—anywhere from 13 to 22 percent—were exorbitant and did not fluctuate with other interest rates. In 1991 there was talk in political circles of imposing government-mandated ceilings on credit card interest rates. By the twenty-first century, the increase of identity theft resulted in greater precautions by credit card companies to prevent security breaches and fraud. However, through the Internet* and other technological means, criminals were able to circumvent these systems. As a result, credit card security has remained a major problem, despite the development of newer systems to prevent theft and fraud. In addition, credit card debt has skyrocketed in recent decades as many users have resorted to their use to pay bills amid rising costs of living or to pay off other debts. Reference Lewis Mandell, The Credit Card Industry: A History, 1990.

CREDIT MOBILIER In 1864, when the promoters of the Union Pacific Railroad* were ready to begin constructing the transcontinental railroad, they created the Credit Mobilier, a construction company with close ties to the railroad, as a means of diverting profits from the project to themselves. They then issued Credit Mobilier stock to several prominent members of the Republican Party, including congressmen Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, James Garfield of Ohio, and James Brooks of New York, as well as Schuyler Colfax, who went on to become vice president of the United States under Ulysses S. Grant. In return for the stock, the politicians were to provide political influence and lucrative government contracts for the company. In September 1872 the New York Post got wind of the scandal and publicized it in a series of exposé articles. Eventually, the scandal led to the dissolution of Credit Mobilier and the official congressional censure of Oakes Ames and James Brooks. As a result of the Credit Mobilier scandal, the issue of official corruption became politically important in the United States.

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Reference Mark W. Summers, Railroads, Reconstruction and the Gospel of Prosperity, 1984.

CREDIT UNIONS A credit union is a cooperative financial institution designed to provide its members with inexpensive savings-and-loan services. Usually credit union membership is confined to a particularly defined group, such as individual professions, company employees, or members of an interest group. Those individuals deposit savings with the credit union, and the credit union in turn loans out the money to members of the group. The credit union movement began in Europe and Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it did not get a real boost in the United States until Edward Filene, the prominent Boston businessman, began to push it. Massachusetts passed legislation authorizing the formation of credit unions in 1909, and by 1920 New York, Rhode Island, and North Carolina followed suit. In 1921 Filene established the Credit Bureau National Extension Bureau to promote similar legislation all around the country. By 1934 credit unions had been authorized in 41 of the 48 states. That year the Credit Union National Association was established, with Edward Filene as president. Congress passed the Federal Credit Union Act in 1934 to allow the organization of federal credit unions anywhere in the United States, even in states that had refused to pass legislation. By 1970 there were more than 28,000 credit unions in the United States with more than $17 billion in assets. Two pieces of legislation that year also strengthened credit unions. On March 10, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon* signed legislation creating the National Credit Union Administration as an independent federal agency to oversee the industry, and the National Credit Union Share Insurance Act of October 20, 1970, provided federal deposit insurance to credit union members. During the 1970s and 1980s, credit unions found themselves facing difficult economic circumstances. They had committed themselves to long-term fixed mortgages, but when inflation skyrocketed in the 1970s and early 1980s, they were forced to pay higher rates on their deposits. Gradually, their capital structures, like those of thousands of banks and savings-and-loan institutions, eroded away. Credit unions were also handicapped by the “common bond” provisions of their charters, which confined their clientele to a single group of employees. As a result, they had more limited sources of funds and less flexibility in responding to the financial crisis of the 1980s. Hundreds of credit unions failed during the 1980s and had to be taken over by larger, healthier institutions, and billions of dollars of federal funds were used to redeem depositor accounts in failed institutions. By the twenty-first century, as commercial banks increased fees for basic services, such as checking and savings accounts, many customers switched over to credit unions. References Andrew S. Carron, The Plight of the Thrift Institutions, 1982. Jack Dublin, Credit Unions: Theory and Practice, 1970.

C R o L Y, H e R B e R t D AV I D

CRIME OF 1873 The term “Crime of 1873” was used by advocates of free silver* to describe the Coinage Act of 1873. Because of falling farm prices and the desire of the silver states to see the demand for silver increase, the free silver movement swept through the western states. Farmers wanted the free coinage of silver so that the money supply would increase, a move that they believed would bring about an inflation of commodity prices. But the Coinage Act of 1873, also known as the Demonetization Act of 1873, ordered that the silver dollar be taken out of circulation, a move that westerners believed was motivated by the desire of eastern bankers and financiers to control the money supply and prevent inflation. Western congressmen campaigned against the “Crime of 1873,” and the law was partially repealed in the Bland–Allison Act* of 1878. Reference Allen Weinstein, Prelude to Populism: Origins of the Silver Issue, 1970.

CROCKER, CHARLES Charles F. Crocker was born in Troy, New York, on September 16, 1822. He was raised in Marshall County, Indiana, and spent his first working years as a farmer. Crocker discovered an iron ore deposit in Marshall County in 1845, and he established the Charles Crocker Company to exploit it. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, Crocker sold his business and opened a store in Sacramento, California. Within two years, he was one of the wealthiest men in the city. He was active in local politics and became closely associated with Leland Stanford*, Collis P. Huntington*, and Mark Hopkins*. Together they managed to secure congressional authorization to form the Central Pacific Railroad* and to build a transcontinental line from San Francisco to link up with the Union Pacific’s* line. Crocker supervised the engineering and construction, and the project was completed in 1869. The “Big Four” then worked to dominate the California transportation system and economy, buying up railroads, steamship companies, dock facilities, and the Southern Pacific Railroad*. Crocker became fantastically wealthy in the process. He died on August 14, 1888. Reference Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, 1938.

C R O LY, H E R B E R T D AV I D Herbert D. Croly was born on January 23, 1869, in New York City. Over the years, he studied at Harvard University and finally received a degree there in 1910. Croly served as editor of the Architectural Record from 1900 to 1906 and as founding editor of The New Republic in 1914. Croly’s fame in American history is the result of his 1914 book, The Promise of American Life, in which he became the philosophical father of progressivism* in general and Theodore Roosevelt’s* “New Nationalism*” in particular. Croly advocated a strong central government to stop the abuses of

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corporate power and to provide a variety of social welfare programs. During the 1920s and the New Deal*, liberals looked to Croly as their intellectual progenitor. Croly died on May 17, 1930. References Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life, 1914. New York Times, May 18, 1930.

“CROSS OF GOLD SPEECH” The term “Cross of Gold Speech” refers to William Jennings Bryan’s* stirring address before the Democratic National Convention of 1896. In it, he called for the free coinage of silver by proclaiming, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” The speech is generally credited with winning the presidential nomination for Bryan in 1896. Reference Paul Glad, McKinley, Bryan, and the People, 1964.

CROWDSOURCING Crowdsourcing refers to the practice of developing a service, a project, or a business idea by obtaining mass contributions from a large group of people, particularly from the online community. Jeff Howe, a writer for Wired magazine, coined the term crowdsourcing in 2000. The concept of crowdsourcing emerged in the 2000s by members of online communities to drive and execute large projects. Early examples include genealogical research projects involving genetics. More recent uses of crowdsourcing involve creating new businesses or products or driving ideas to become film projects. Reference Daren C. Brabham, Crowdsourcing, 2013.

C R U D E O I L W I N D FA L L P R O F I T S TA X A C T Because of the Arab oil embargo* in the early 1970s, oil prices skyrocketed, as did the profits of the major oil companies around the world. There was considerable speculation in the United States that the oil companies were manipulating prices by creating artificial shortages in oil supplies. When the Iranian Revolution erupted in 1979, Iranian oil production collapsed and international oil prices went from about $12 a barrel to $36 a barrel. Anticipating another round of hefty prices hikes and more profits for the oil companies, President Jimmy Carter proposed, and Congress passed, the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act of 1980. It imposed large excess profits taxes on the oil companies and hoped to collect as much as $227 billion over the following decade. Reference Haynes Johnson, Governing America, 1980.

CUBA

CUBA Until 1898, Cuba was a Spanish colony, although U.S. investments in the island had begun long before independence. Most Americans sympathized with the desire of the Cuban people to be independent of Spain. In February 1898, the U.S.S. Maine* mysteriously exploded in Havana’s harbor. Since the Ten Year’s War, United States businesses had increased their Cuban investments significantly. President William McKinley, pressured by a public outcry fueled by yellow journalism, declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898. Although it had attempted to purchase the island earlier in the century, by the Teller Amendment the United States promised not to annex Cuba. In less than four months, Spain surrendered. The rebels, unfortunately, were not represented at the peace talks. From January 1899 until May 1902, the U.S. militarily occupied the former colony. Some improvements were made, especially in sanitation. Washington approved the Cuban Constitution of 1901 only when the Platt Amendment* was attached, which granted it the option to intervene for the purpose of protecting Cuba’s “independence” or American “lives and property.” On May 20, 1902, Tomas Estrada Palma assumed office as the first elected president of the Republic of Cuba. Before Franklin D. Roosevelt* abrogated the Platt Amendment in 1934, the United States reoccupied Cuba from 1906–1909 and landed Marines in 1912. Moreover, it acquired a perpetual lease to a forty-five-square-mile naval base at Guantanamo Bay, which it continues to hold. During the next forty-seven years, the investments of American airlines, sugar companies, tourist hotels, and gambling interests in Cuba increased dramatically. When Fidel Castro ousted the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and quickly nationalized huge amounts of American-owned property, the United States government demanded compensation. When Castro refused, the United States imposed an economic embargo on Cuba, refusing to purchase Cuban sugar and sending the Cuban economy into a tailspin. Castro turned for economic assistance to the Soviet Union, and that assistance continued, as did the embargo, until 1990, when the Soviet economy collapsed. The Soviet Union drastically cut its financial assistance to Cuba in 1990, and by 1991 the Cuban economy was worse off than ever before. Some political observers were predicting that the end of Soviet aid and the continuance of the American embargo would soon undermine the Castro regime. Nonetheless, even after the transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul in 2008, relations between Cuba and the United States have remained the same, albeit somewhat less tense than during the Cold War. References Louis Perez, Cuba and the United States, 1990. Jaime Suchlicki, Cuba: From Columbus to Castro, 1985. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom, 1971.

CUMBERLAND PIKE See NATIONAL ROAD.

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C U M M I N G S , WA LT E R J . Walter J. Cummings was born on June 24, 1879, in Springfield, Illinois. He was educated at Northwestern and Loyola universities and entered the banking business in Chicago. An active Democrat, Cummings became a prominent conservative party leader. In 1933, Secretary of the Treasury William H. Woodin named Cummings as his administrative assistant. Cummings left that position after Woodin’s death in January 1934, but later that year President Franklin D. Roosevelt* named him to become the first chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation* (FDIC). Cummings headed the FDIC during its formative stage but left it in 1934 to become chairman of the board of the Continental Illinois Bank & Trust Company and treasurer of the Democratic National Committee. He remained with the Democratic National Committee until 1936 and then returned exclusively to banking endeavors. He died on August 20, 1967. Reference New York Times, August 21, 1967.

CURRENCY ACT OF 1900 See GOLD STANDARD ACT OF 1900. CURRIE, LAUCHLIN Lauchlin Currie was born October 8, 1902, in West Dublin, Nova Scotia. He received his education at St. Francis Xavier University (1920–1922) and graduated from the London School of Economics in 1925. Currie received a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard in 1936. Currie’s early professional career involved an instructorship in international economics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Massachusetts. In the early 1930s, Currie began advocating increased federal expenditures for public works to bring about economic recovery. In 1934, he received an invitation from University of Chicago economist Jacob Viner to come to Washington, D.C., to work for the Department of the Treasury. While at the treasury, Currie met and became a close friend to Marriner Eccles, then Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau’s* special assistant on monetary and credit matters. When Eccles became head of the Federal Reserve Board* in Washington in November 1934, he asked Currie to transfer to the board to work as assistant director of the Research and Statistics Division. There Currie helped draft the Banking Act* of 1935, which centralized control of the reserve system in the new board of governors in Washington. The law also gave the board greater control over reserve requirements and policymaking in the Open Market Committee. In late 1935, with the aid of reserve board economist Martin Krost, Currie developed the “Net Contribution of the Federal Government to National Buying Power” series of monthly calculations, a statistical tool that made policymaking advances possible in what later became known as Keynesian* economics. Currie argued that merely citing figures of actual government

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expenditures told policymakers little about the effects of federal deficit spending on increased purchasing power. Instead, total government expenditures and receipts had to be compared to arrive at a net figure for the government’s contribution to national purchasing power. Currie functioned as an economic expert who advised Chairman Eccles of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve Board. Currie also took part in policy discussions in Washington, D.C., among the Eccles spending group. In the Temporary National Economic Committee* hearings in the spring of 1939, Currie and Alvin Hansen* presented the Keynesian case for compensatory government spending policy. Passage of the Reorganization Act of 1939 established six new administrative assistant positions and the Executive Office of the President. Roosevelt appointed Currie as one of the six with responsibility for economic affairs. Currie did not agree with all Keynes’s economic analyses, but he became known as one of the first Keynesian economists to work for the federal government in the late New Deal*. During World War II*, Currie increasingly moved away from domestic economic policy advising and toward regional affairs work. During the war, Currie was joined by a number of other Keynesian economists who worked in mobilization agencies. After the war, Currie headed the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development* and served as an economic and diplomatic consultant to the federal government and a number of major corporations. Currie died on December 23, 1993. References Byrd L. Jones, “The Role of Keynesians in Wartime and Postwar Planning,” American Economic Review 62 (1972): 116–133. Dean May, From New Deal to New Economics, 1982. Herbert Stein, The Fiscal Revolution and America, 1969.

CURTIS, CYRUS HERMANN KOTZSCHMAR Cyrus H. K. Curtis was born on June 18, 1850, in Portland, Maine. He dropped out of school and worked at several jobs before getting into the advertising and newspaper business. In 1872, on a shoestring budget, Curtis established the Peoples’ Ledger, a weekly magazine featuring popular short stories. Curtis moved to Philadelphia in 1876, sold the Peoples’ Ledger in 1878, and launched the Tribune and Farmer, another weekly publication, in 1879. His wife, Kate Pillsbury, began running a section in the paper about issues of interest to women. It was so successful that in 1883 Curtis decided to publish that section separately. He called it the Ladies’ Journal and Practical Housekeeper. It soon became known as the Ladies’ Home Journal, and within a few years, circulation stood at 700,000 copies a month. Edward W. Bok became editor of the magazine in 1889 and remained there for thirty years. The Ladies’ Home Journal published articles by the most prominent Americans and on a wide variety of subjects. In 1897, Curtis purchased the Saturday Evening Post for only $1,000 and soon converted it into an enormously popular weekly magazine. From 1897 to 1937, Post circulation

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went from 2,000 copies to 3 million copies a week. Because of those two magazines, the Curtis Publishing Company became the largest in the world. Curtis died on June 7, 1933. References Edward W. Bok, A Man from Maine, 1923. New York Times, June 8, 1933.

D D A N B U R Y H AT T E R S C A S E ( 2 0 8 U . S . 2 7 4 ) Formally known as Loewe v. Lawlor, the so-called Danbury Hatters case was an antilabor decision by the Supreme Court in 1908. A labor union of hatmakers in Danbury, Connecticut, went on strike against their employers in 1902 and then launched a secondary boycott against them. The Court ruled that secondary boycotts were formal restraints of trade that were prohibited by the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890. The case was the first time that the Supreme Court had used antitrust legislation against a labor union. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

D A R T M O U T H C O L L E G E v. W O O D WA R D ( 4 W H E AT O N 1 2 2 ) Dartmouth College had been given a royal charter in 1769; in 1816, the state legislature of New Hampshire dissolved the earlier charter and rechartered the school as a state institution. The trustees of Dartmouth College protested that the state’s decision was a violation of the sanctity of contract. They sued unsuccessfully in the state courts and then appealed through the federal court system. Daniel Webster* was the legal counsel for Dartmouth in the case. On February 2, 1819, the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice John Marshall* writing the majority opinion, agreed with the trustees that a charter given to a private corporation was indeed a legitimate contract protected from state intervention. The state law was overthrown. The decision, which gave private corporations substantial immunity from state legislatures, acted as a stimulus to business activity. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

D AV I S , H A L C . Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on February 27, 1914, Hal C. Davis attended Allegheny High School. He began his professional career in 1930 as a percussionist and musician on KDKA, the nation’s first radio station and also worked for station WCAE and in theaters and nightclubs. Davis served as a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. He joined the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) and served as its president from 1949 to 1963. He was elected AFM

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vice president and executive council member in 1963, and he held that position until being elected international president of the AFM in 1970. Davis died in New York City in January 1978. References AFL-CIO News, January 14, 1978. Who’s Who in Labor, 1976.

D AV I S , J A M E S J O H N James J. Davis was born on October 27, 1873, in Tredegar, South Wales. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1881 and went to work in the steel mills of Pittsburgh and its surrounding area at age 11. Davis moved to Elwood, Indiana, in 1893 and continued working in steel and tin plate mills. In 1898, he became city clerk for Elwood and in 1903 recorder for Madison County, Indiana. A Republican and a member of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers*, Davis served as secretary of labor in the cabinets of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover*. Davis was a strong advocate of federal public works construction projects as a way of dealing with unemployment problems. He resigned as secretary of labor in 1930 and ran successfully for the U.S. Senate. He was reelected in 1932 and 1938. During the 1930s, Davis was an advocate of minimum wages, maximum hours, collective bargaining, and unemployment assistance, but he strongly opposed President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* attempt to pack the Supreme Court in 1937 and criticized the size of the federal bureaucracy. Davis left the Senate in 1945 and died on November 22, 1947. References James J. Davis, The Iron Puddler, 1922. New York Times, November 23, 1947. Francis Russell, The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding and His Times, 1968.

D AV I S , J O H N W I L L I A M John W. Davis was born on April 13, 1873, in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and received undergraduate and law degrees from Washington and Lee University in 1892 and 1895. After teaching law for two years at Washington and Lee, Davis went into private practice and became active in local Democratic politics. He served one term in the West Virginia legislature in 1899 and a term as a U.S. congressman from 1911 to 1913. He left the House of Representatives when President Woodrow Wilson* named him solicitor general. Because of his intense hatred for Germany and his personal friendship with Secretary of State Robert Lansing, Davis was named ambassador to Great Britain in 1918, a post he held until 1921. Widely recognized as a moderate Democrat, Davis became a dark-horse candidate for president in 1924. When the Democratic National Convention at New York City deadlocked between William Gibbs McAdoo and Alfred E. Smith*, Davis emerged as a compromise candidate and won the nomination. In the general election, however,

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he could not overcome the prevailing prosperity and Calvin Coolidge’s “squeaky clean” reputation. Davis lost the election. A good part of the Democratic vote was siphoned off by Robert La Follette’s* third-party candidacy with the Progressive Party. Davis returned to private law practice after the election. During the 1930s, Davis became deeply alienated from Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Deal*. A fiscal conservative, Davis could not tolerate the increased power of the federal government or its deficit spending. His opposition was so bitter that he helped to organize the American Liberty League to oppose Roosevelt in 1934, and in 1940, he endorsed the presidential candidacy of Republican Wendell Willkie. Davis died on March 24, 1955. Reference William Henry Harbaugh, Lawyer’s Lawyer: The Life of John W. Davis, 1973.

D AW E S , C H A R L E S G AT E S Charles G. Dawes was born in Marietta, Ohio, on August 27, 1865. He graduated from Marietta College in 1884 and took a master’s degree there in 1887. In 1886, Dawes also received a law degree from the Cincinnati Law School. Until 1894, he was a lawyer in Lincoln, Nebraska, after which he went into the electric utility industry. Dawes managed the Illinois election campaign of William McKinley* in 1896; in 1897, President McKinley appointed him comptroller of the currency. Dawes remained in that post until 1902, when he left government service to become president of the Central Republic Bank and Trust Company of Chicago. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding named Dawes to be the first director of the budget after passage of the Budget and Accounting Act* of 1921. In 1924, he became the chief architect of the Dawes Plan*, which reorganized the German reparations* debt to the allied nations. For this work, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925. Calvin Coolidge selected Dawes as his running mate in the election of 1924*, and Dawes served as vice president of the United States from 1925 to 1929. In 1932, President Herbert Hoover* appointed Dawes to head the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). He left that position later in 1932 when the Central Republic Bank and Trust Company faced collapse during the banking crisis. Dawes died on April 23, 1951. References Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan, 1976. Bascom N. Timmons, Portrait of an American: Charles G. Dawes, 1953.

D AW E S P L A N By the mid-1920s, the German economy was in ruins. The Reparations* Commission of World War I* had imposed a debt of $33 billion on Germany—a bill for the damage and death that country had “caused” during the war. From 1921 to 1925, Germany was to pay $375 million each year; after 1925, the annual payments

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would rise to $900 million until the debt was paid in full. The reparations burden crushed the German economy, triggering runaway inflation, destroying the middle class, and all but undermining the Weimar Republic. The Reparations Commission declared Germany in default in 1923, so the French army moved into the industrialized Ruhr Valley to take its share of German assets. In the United States, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes* realized that normal international trade patterns depended on the revival of the German economy, but that as long as the reparations burden rested on the Germany economy, there would be no recovery. Therefore, in 1922, Hughes suggested the establishment of an international commission to reevaluate the entire reparations question. The French agreed to the idea in 1923, and in 1924, the Reparations Commission appointed a special committee, headed by Charles G. Dawes*, to propose solutions to the German currency, debt, and budget problems. To stabilize the German economy, the Dawes Commission proposed an international loan of $200 million to Germany and the issuance of a new reichsmark valued at nearly $0.24. The German Reichsbank would be reorganized under allied supervision. The Dawes Plan also reduced the debt payments to $250 million for 1925, increasing gradually to $625 million by 1929. In 1925 and 1926, Germany could make its reparations payments out of the loan proceeds. To prevent damage to exchange rates, the German payments could remain inside Germany until economic conditions made the currency transfers feasible. The Dawes Plan was accepted by Germany and the allied powers and went into operation on September 1, 1924. As part of the agreement, Belgian and French troops withdrew from the Ruhr Valley. The $200 million loan was extended, and an American, S. Parker Gilbert of J. P. Morgan* and Company, was appointed Agent General of Reparations to supervise the plan. Although the Dawes Plan relieved some of the economic pressure on Germany, it would prove to be not enough. Later in the 1920s, the Young Plan* would again deal with currency, reparations, and the debt problem. References E. H. Carr, International Relations between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939, 1947. L. Ethan Ellis, Republican Foreign Policy, 1968. Harold G. Moulton and Leo Paslovsky, World War Debt Settlements, 1926. Bascom N. Timmons, Portrait of an American: Charles G. Dawes, 1953.

D AW E S S E V E R A LT Y A C T O F 1 8 8 7 Also known as the General Allotment Act of 1887, the Dawes Act was designed to break up the Indian reservations and assimilate the Indians into mainstream America. It was sponsored by Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The law provided for the distribution of reservation land in plots of 160, 80, and 40 acres to individual American Indians. They also received U.S. citizenship along with the allotment. To keep Indians from selling their land immediately to whites, the law prohibited such sales for twenty-five years. The law exempted the Oklahoma tribes from allotment, although the Curtis Act of 1910 eventually applied allotment to them as well. All

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surplus land not allotted to American Indians was made available to white settlers. The Dawes Act remained in force until 1934, by which time more than 100 million acres of Indian land had been lost to them. Reference James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, 1984.

D AY, D O R O T H Y Born in New York in 1897, Dorothy Day grew up in California and attended high school and college in Illinois. After college, she became a journalist, joined the Industrial Workers of the World*, and wrote for such Marxist publications as The Masses from 1917 to 1921. Identifying with the urban poor, she moved to a New York tenement and worked as a nurse in Brooklyn during the influenza epidemic of 1919. In 1927, she joined the Catholic Church, which proved to be a pivotal event in her life. In 1932, she and Peter Maurin, a priest turned itinerant worker, founded the Catholic Worker Movement, which combined her Catholic faith with her idealistic commitment to communism. On May Day 1933, they began publishing the Catholic Worker. The next year, they founded St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality to serve the poor and homeless victims of the Great Depression*; the founding of more such houses and farms followed. Her politics often conflicted with the official positions of the Catholic Church, in particular her opposition to the Vietnam War* and her support of Cesar Chavez* and migrant workers; in many ways, she represented the activist, radical wing of the church. She died in New York in 1980. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Robert Coles, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion, 1987.

D E B O W, J A M E S D U N W O O D Y B R O W N S O N James DeBow was born on July 10, 1820, in Charleston, South Carolina. He was orphaned as a child, graduated from the College of Charleston in 1843, and read law privately. He had no real interest in the law, however, being far more interested in writing. In 1846, DeBow moved to New Orleans and launched the monthly magazine Commercial Review of the South and Southwest. It struggled for a few years but by 1850 was the largest circulating publication in the South. In 1848, DeBow was given a chair in political economy at the University of Louisiana and in 1850 became head of the U.S. Census Bureau. The magazine later changed its name to DeBow’s Review and advocated the continuation of slavery*, increased railroad construction in the South, and more diversified economic development. DeBow died on February 27, 1867. Reference Otis C. Skipper, J.D.B. DeBow: Magazinist of the Old South, 1958.

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DEBS, EUGENE VICTOR Eugene V. Debs was born November 5, 1855, in Elmhurst, Illinois. He went to work for the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad in 1870 and soon joined the local of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. Honest, committed, and trustworthy, Debs rose through the ranks of the railroad brotherhood, becoming its national secretary and treasurer in 1880. In 1893, Debs became a founder and the first president of the American Railway Union*. From that position, he promoted the cause of industrial unionism with unwavering passion. Debs led the American Railway Union in its famous strike against the Pullman* Company in 1894, and he eventually spent six months in jail for defying court orders to call off the strike. When Debs came out of the federal prison, he was a confirmed socialist*. In 1897, Debs founded the Social Democratic Party of America, and in 1900, he united it with portions of the Socialist Labor Party to create the Socialist Party of America*. Debs ran for president on the Socialist ticket in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920, winning nearly 900,000 votes in the election of 1912. Debs had a vision of an industrial America in which the government owned the means of production in the major industries and provided a social welfare safety net for all families. Unlike other radicals of his generation, Debs insisted that socialism must come to America through the ballot box, not through revolution. He opposed American entry into World War I and in 1918 was sentenced to ten years in prison for sedition. His final run for the presidency in 1920 was headquartered in his federal prison cell in Atlanta. President Warren G. Harding ordered Debs’s release from jail in 1921. Widely known as the conscience of industrial America, Debs died on October 20, 1926. Reference Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs, 1949.

DEERE, JOHN John Deere was born February 7, 1804, in Rutland, Vermont. He apprenticed out as a blacksmith, a trade at which he became highly skilled. In 1837, Deere forged the first steel-faced plow, which was more durable than iron or wooden plows and had the capacity to scour itself while cutting into the earth. Deere made them by hand until 1846, when he established a factory in Moline, Illinois. The invention was perfectly timed for American expansion onto the Great Plains, where the tough sod demanded a hard, reliable plow. The company that Deere founded—the John Deere Company— went on to become a leading manufacturer of farm implements. Deere died in 1886. Reference Darragh Aldrich, The Story of John Deere, 1942.

D E F E N S E P L A N T C O R P O R AT I O N To provide a steady supply of new capital to American industries making the conversion to war production, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* authorized the

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Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) to establish the Defense Plant Corporation as a subsidiary to make the necessary loans. Jesse Jones*, head of the RFC, set up the Defense Plan Corporation on August 20, 1940, and by the end of the war, it had lent out a total of $9.2 billion. The Defense Plant Corporation also directly built and equipped 2,300 factories that it then leased out to private companies at nominal fees. When the war ended, the Defense Supplies Corporation* quickly disposed of those factories by selling them at huge discounts. Reference Jesse Jones, Fifty-Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945, 1951.

D E F E N S E S U P P L I E S C O R P O R AT I O N To guarantee a steady flow of critical industrial materials to American factories during World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* authorized the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) to establish the Defense Supplies Corporation as a subsidiary. On August 27, 1940, Jesse Jones*, head of the RFC, set up the company. The Defense Supplies Corporation bought aviation gasoline, industrial alcohol, sugar, molasses, sodium nitrate, wool, cotton, diamond dies, silk, quinine, and timber. By the end of the war, the Defense Supplies Corporation had spent more than $9.3 billion. Reference Jesse Jones, Fifty-Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945, 1951.

D E L AWA R E A N D H U D S O N C A N A L The Delaware and Hudson Canal was second only to the Erie Canal* in terms of its significance for the Northeast. The canal was constructed from 1825 to 1828, and it underwent substantial improvements from 1842 to 1850. The Delaware and Hudson Canal reached 107 miles from Kingston on the Hudson River to Port Jervis on the Delaware River. From there, by river and another stretch of canal, it reached Honesdale, Pennsylvania. Like other canal systems, its freight volumes were hurt by railroad development, and the Delaware and Hudson Canal was completely abandoned in 1899. Reference Fon W. Boardman Jr., Canals, 1959.

D E L AWA R E A N D R A R I TA N C A N A L The Delaware and Raritan Canal, completed in 1834, ran forty-five miles from Bordentown on the New Jersey River to New Brunswick on the Raritan River in New Jersey. Like other canals, its freight volume steadily decreased as railroad track mileage increased, and the Delaware and Raritan Canal declined after the Civil War. Reference Fon W. Boardman Jr., Canals, 1959.

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D E M I N G , W. E D WA R D S See TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT. DEPOSIT ACT OF 1836 Because of massive land sales during the 1830s, the federal treasury accumulated more than $36 million. President Andrew Jackson*, a believer in states rights, supported legislation to distribute some of those funds to the states. The Deposit Act of 1836 represented that legislation. The law required that only $5 million in surplus federal revenues remain with the treasury, the rest being distributed to the states. The subsequent distribution fueled widespread land speculation throughout the western states. Jackson later issued the Specie Circular* to end the speculative boom. Reference A. M. Sakolski, The Great American Land Bubble, 1932.

D E P O S I T O R Y I N S T I T U T I O N S D E R E G U L AT I O N A N D M O N E TA R Y C O N T R O L A C T O F 1 9 8 0 Back during the Great Depression*, Congress rigidly separated the functions and operations of savings and loan associations, commercial banks, and investment banks with passage of the Banking Act* of 1933. Subsequent regulations from the Federal Reserve* Board and the Comptroller of the Currency placed a lid on the interest rates that those institutions could offer customers, thereby eliminating competition in the industry. In the 1970s, however, securities firms established mutual funds and offered rates of return in excess of those offered by insurance companies, banks, and thrifts. These latter financial institutions suffered serious outflows of capital. To deal with the problem, Congress decided to deregulate the banking industry, passing the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Thrift institutions could now provide loans for more than real estate; interest rate caps were lifted, and all banks and thrifts became more involved in the securities business. Although the law did improve competition in the industry, it also allowed for serious abuses and fraud, which eventually created the terrible liquidity problems in financial markets in the 1990s. Reference Mansell G. Blackford and K. Austin Kerr, Business Enterprise in American History, 1986.

DEPRESSION OF 1837 See PANIC OF 1837. DEPRESSION OF 1857 See PANIC OF 1857.

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DEPRESSION OF 1873 See PANIC OF 1873. DEPRESSION OF 1893 During the late 1880s and early 1890s, severe weaknesses began to appear in the economy, especially in the overbuilt, debt-ridden railroad industry, which had become the major sector of the American economy. Late in February 1893, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad declared bankruptcy and a panic swept through the securities markets. Large numbers of banks and companies owned railroad bonds, and the threat of default on those bonds sent the economy into what became a depression. During 1893, more than 500 banks and 16,000 businesses failed, commodity prices collapsed, and 3 million people lost their jobs. A sense of desperation swept through the urban unemployed, precipitating insurgent movements such as “Coxey’s army*” and the Pullman strike*. It also stimulated protest movements on the farms, which led to the formation of the Populist Party*. Grover Cleveland* insisted on sound money policies, which only made the downturn more severe, and he alienated workers and farmers, thereby guaranteeing a Republican victory in the election of 1896*. Reference Charles Hoffman, The Depression of 1893, 1966.

DEPRESSION OF 1920–1921 Beginning in 1920, the economic boom of World War I* and the immediate postwar period turned into a bust. The index of wholesale prices for all commodities fell from 228 in 1920 to 151 in 1921, with raw materials and farm goods leading the way. Retail prices fell 13 percent during the same period. The gross national product fell from $40.1 billion to $37.6 billion, and 4,754,000 people were thrown out of work. The change in the economy was very abrupt. The economic decline derived from both the end of the war and several postwar changes in public policy. In terms of farming, European production fully revived from its World War I hiatus, cutting demand for American products and lowering farm prices. Individual farmers, who had gone heavily in debt to finance their wartime production increases, had severe cash flow problems. The only way that they could cope with the combination of their debt payments and falling prices was to increase production, hoping that more volume would give them the income they needed to meet their needs. As millions of farmers used that same approach in 1920 and 1921, overproduction increased even more, and commodity prices fell further. The farm depression, which began in 1920, continued throughout the decade and reached catastrophic proportions in the early 1930s. Government policy also contributed to the decline. In the last half of 1918, government spending had exceeded its income by more than $9 billion, pumping enormous purchasing power into the economy and creating millions of jobs. When the

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war ended, the government began canceling its war contracts. During the first half of 1920, government income exceeded spending by $831 million, imposing a net decline in purchasing power on the economy. The Revenue Act of 1919 had also raised the corporate income tax to 12 percent and the individual income tax rate to 8 percent for people making more than $4,000 a year; thus, tax policy also removed purchasing power from the economy. Finally, the Federal Reserve system* raised the rediscount rate from 4.75 percent in 1919 to 7 percent in 1920, which reduced the money supply precisely when government fiscal policy was already eroding consumer purchasing power. The result was the depression of 1920–1921. Reference George Soule, Prosperity Decade: From War to Depression, 1917–1919, 1947.

D E R E G U L AT I O N During the 1960s, there was an increase in federal government regulations dealing with consumer goods and a simultaneous drive to lift some of the controls on the industries that had traditionally been regulated. During the twentieth century, some companies and trade associations had actually used government regulation to stifle competition and sustain high profit margins. Many Americans began to argue that the regulatory agencies were no longer “watchdogs” of the public interest but had actually been “captured” by the very industries that they were supposed to regulate. Banking, transportation, communications, and the energy industry seemed especially entangled in the problem. Although Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford complained about the problem of excess regulation in the 1970s, it was the administration of President Jimmy Carter that launched the deregulation movement. The inflationary spiral of the 1970s gave Carter the opportunity to convince businesses that removing regulations would reduce their costs. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978*, the Rail Act of 1980, the Motor Carrier Act of 1980*, and the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980* were prime examples of the deregulation phenomenon. The results, of course, were mixed. Although new competition did drive the prices of those goods and services down, it also weakened a number of major economic institutions, particularly in the airline and banking industries, thus contributing to the problems of those industries in the 1980s and 1990s. Under the presidential administrations of Bill Clinton* and George W. Bush*, further deregulation, particularly of the financial sector, led to abuses by major corporations. The Enron* scandal of 2001 and the subprime mortgage crisis* that triggered the Great Recession* of 2008 were direct effects of federal deregulation. Reference James Q. Wilson, The Politics of Regulation, 1980.

DESERT LAND ACT OF 1877 In the years after the Civil War*, the federal government wanted to encourage settlement of the Far West, but much of the region was too arid to attract farmers.

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The Desert Land Act of 1877 was designed to encourage settlement. It allowed a settler to purchase up to 640 acres of federal land for $1.25 an acre if the settler managed to irrigate the land within three years. Eventually, even that incentive proved to be insufficient to attract settlers. The Carey Ad of 1894 and the Newlands Reclamation Act* of 1902 were both designed to follow up on the Desert Land Act of 1877. Reference John T. Ganoe, “The Desert Land Act in Operation, 1877–1891,” Agricultural History 11 (1937): 152–167.

DESKILLING Deskilling is a process where skilled labor in a particular industry or occupation is eliminated by new technology or processes that make their functions obsolete. Unskilled or semiskilled workers that do not need the same level of education or training that the original skilled labor had attained operate these newly introduced elements. The result of this process is savings for the employer in overhead through the reduction of labor cost. Older historical examples of this process include craftsmen replaced by low-wage workers during the Industrial Revolution. More recent instances of deskilling include teachers and librarians being replaced by newer informational technologies that only need a facilitator rather than an expert on the subject matter. References Sondra Cuban, Deskilling Migrant Women in the Global Care Industry, 2013. Stephen Wood, The Degradation of Work? Skill, Deskilling and the Labour Process, 1983.

D E W S O N , M A RY W I L L I A M S “Molly” Dewson was born February 18, 1874, in Quincy, Massachusetts. She was raised in a politically active home that supported the women’s suffrage movement. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1897, Dewson then worked as an economic researcher for the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston until 1900. From 1900 to 1912, Dewson served as superintendent of the Massachusetts Girls’ Parole Department. In 1911, she formed a friendship with Florence Kelley* and became active in the minimum wage movement of the National Consumers* League. From 1912 to 1917, she operated an experimental scientific dairy in Massachusetts. Dewson left the dairy when World War I* broke out and became a zone chief in charge of immigrant refugees for the American Red Cross in Europe. Upon her return, she rejoined the National Consumers League as a research secretary and in 1925 became president of the Consumers* League of New York. In that post, Dewson campaigned tirelessly for women’s rights, national health insurance, minimum labor standards, and social security. An intimate friend of the Franklin D. Roosevelt* family, Dewson worked closely with Eleanor Roosevelt*, organizing women’s groups in the Democratic Party in the 1920s. In 1933, she became head of the Women’s Division of the Democratic National Committee. In

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1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her to the Committee on Economic Security*, which drafted the Social Security Act* of 1935, and in 1937, the president named her a member of the Social Security Board. III health forced her to resign in 1938. Dewson died on October 24, 1962. References New York Times, October 25, 1962. Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, eds., Notable American Women: The Modern Period, 1980. Susan Ware, Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal, 1981.

D I G I TA L C U R R E N C Y See BITCOIN. D I N G L E Y TA R I F F O F 1 8 9 7 Throughout the nineteenth century, a debate raged between Democrats on the one hand and Whigs, and then Republicans, on the other over tariff levels. Democrats generally favored lower rates; Whigs and Republicans, higher ones. When Grover Cleveland* won the presidential election of 1892, Congress responded with the Wilson–Gorman Tariff of 1894, which substantially reduced rates from the levels of the McKinley Tariff of 1890. But when William McKinley* and the Republicans won election of 1896*, Congress passed the Dingley Tariff on July 7, 1897, raising rates again to all-time highs—to an average of 57 percent, up from the 40 percent of the Wilson–Gorman Tariff. Reference H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America, 1963.

DOAK, WILLIAM NUCKLES William N. Doak was born near Rural Retreat, Virginia, on December 12, 1882. He went to work for the Norfolk and Western Railroad in 1900 and then joined the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen in 1904. Doak rose through the union ranks and in 1916 was elected vice president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen; he served as its lobbyist* in Washington, D.C. He made an unsuccessful bid for a Republican Senate seat in 1924. In 1928, he became managing editor of the Railroad Trainmen. In 1929, President Herbert Hoover* named him to the cabinet post of secretary of labor. Doak served until Hoover left office in March 1933. He died on October 23 that same year. References Walter F. McCaleb, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, with Special Reference to the Life of Alexander F. Whitney, 1936. New York Times, October 24, 1933.

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D O D D – F R A N K WA L L S T R E E T R E F O R M A N D CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT Commonly known as Dodd–Frank, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 was signed into law by President Barack Obama* on July 21, 2010. Dodd–Frank was written in response to the Great Recession* of the late 2000s. It created the largest set of regulations on the financial sector since the New Deal of the 1930s. Critics of the law claim that it does not do enough to curtail abuses or, alternatively, that it hinders private enterprise. Representative Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd, after whom the bill was named, initially proposed the law to the Obama administration in June 2009. The law was aimed at curtailing many abuses committed by the banking and financial sector, particularly those that triggered the subprime mortgage crisis* in the late 2000s. Reference David Maraniss, Barack Obama, 2012.

DODGE, WILLIAM EARL William E. Dodge was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on September 4, 1805. He tried his hand at the mercantile business in Boston and then in New York City. He married Melissa Phelps, the daughter of Anson G. Phelps*, a prosperous New York City merchant, in 1828. In 1833, Dodge joined with his father-in-law in establishing Phelps Dodge and Company. Although the company started off in the cotton export business, Dodge and Phelps soon changed its direction. They invested their money in railroads, established the Lackawanna Iron and Coal Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, constructed rolling mills, purchased coal mines, and bought heavily into timber interests. The firm’s biggest coup, however, came with its decision to invest heavily in copper mining and smelting operations in southern Arizona. Phelps Dodge was soon the world’s largest copper producer. Dodge died on February 9, 1883. Reference Robert G. Cleland, A History of the Phelps Dodge Company, 1952.

D O H E N Y, E D WA R D Edward Doheny was born August 10, 1856, near Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He left home in 1872 for work as a mule driver in Arizona and New Mexico. Doheny worked at a variety of jobs, especially gold prospecting, for the next twenty years, but in 1893, he successfully drilled an oil well in Los Angeles, California. In 1900, Doheny bought leases on 250,000 acres of land in Tampico, Mexico, and, when the market for oil eroded early in the 1900s, he went into the manufacture of asphalt, selling contracts for half of the paved roads in Mexico City. The development of the automobile* in the United States soon increased demand for petroleum products again, and Doheny organized the Mexican Petroleum Company

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of California, which controlled most of the Tampico oil fields. In 1922, Doheny received a contract from the U.S. Navy to build a large naval fuel depot at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Later that year, after bribing Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall with $100,000, Doheny received drilling rights on 32,000 acres of naval oil reserve land in Wyoming and California. This affair became known in the 1920s as the Teapot Dome* scandal. Although Fall was convicted on taking a bribe, Doheny was acquitted of charges of offering one; he claimed it was a loan. Nevertheless, the government canceled his oil leases. His reputation ruined, Doheny sold his oil interests to Standard Oil of Indiana in 1925. Doheny died on September 8, 1935. References New York Times, September 9, 1935. Burl Noggle, Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s, 1962.

D O H E R T Y, H E N R Y L AT H A M Henry Doherty was born May 15, 1870, in Columbus, Ohio. When his father died in 1882, Doherty had to go to work as an office boy at the Columbus Gas Company. Doherty rose steadily in the company, eventually to chief engineer and general manager. In 1898, he helped to form a new holding company*—American Light and Traction Company—of which he was president. Seven years later, Doherty formed his own business, Henry L. Doherty and Company, which provided consulting services to utilities companies. Doherty established the Cities Services Company in 1910 by purchasing three utility-operating companies; by 1913, he had acquired fifty-three more. Doherty helped reorganize the weak companies. In 1931, he built the first high-pressure gas line from Amarillo, Texas, to Chicago. During the 1920s, Doherty built Cities Services into a huge utility. By 1932, its total assets exceeded $1.25 billion and included more than 200 natural gas and oil properties. To help rationalize the industry, Doherty helped found the American Petroleum Institute in 1919 and served on its board of directors until 1931. Doherty died on December 26, 1939. Reference New York Times, December 27, 1939.

DOLLAR DIPLOMACY The “Dollar Diplomacy” policy had its origins in the William Howard Taft* administration. Secretary of State Philander Knox* decided to maintain financial stability in the Caribbean–Central American region (and to a lesser extent in China) as a basic tenet of American foreign affairs. Taft argued that the United States should use loans and customs receiverships as means of maintaining political stability and financial solvency, rather than resorting to military intervention. Critics argued that the policy was simply a smoke screen for private American banking interests to accomplish the economic penetration of Latin American and Asian markets. Dollar Diplomacy was employed extensively in Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti, and the

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Dominican Republic, even though military intervention also occurred there. Latin Americans resented the consistency with which the U.S. government supported American corporate interests. The Good Neighbor Policy* of Herbert Hoover* and Franklin D. Roosevelt* in the 1930s reversed the earlier policy. References Dana G. Munro, Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921, 1964. Scott Nearing and Joseph Freeman, Dollar Diplomacy, 1925.

DOMESTIC ALLOTMENT PLAN See AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT OF 1933. DORRANCE, JOHN THOMPSON John T. Dorrance was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, on November 11, 1873. He received an undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1895 and then earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of G6ettingen in 1897. That year, he went to work for the John Campbell Preserve Company in Philadelphia; two years later, he invented the method for condensing soup by removing the water. The Campbell product became an immediate success, not only in terms of public taste, but because it could be shipped so much more cheaply than competing soups, in which water had to be packed into the cans. By 1905, Campbell’s Soup was selling 5 million cans a year. John Dorrance became president of Campbell’s in 1914 and remained there until his death on September 21, 1930. His brother, Arthur Dorrance, was born in Bristol in 1893 and graduated from MIT with a degree in chemical engineering in 1914. He served as vice president of Franco–American Foods, a Campbell’s subsidiary. When his brother died in 1930, Arthur Dorrance became the new president of Campbell’s Soup. He served in that capacity until his death on September 22, 1946. References Earl C. May, The Canning Clan, 1937. New York Times, September 22, 1930, and September 23, 1946.

D O T- C O M B U B B L E The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble from 1997 to 2000 associated with businesses that relied primarily on the Internet*. As Internet-based companies, many of them in Silicon Valley*, sought to use Internet technologies and e-commerce* to ply their products, investors heavily speculated on the future potential of these ventures. The stock prices of these companies increased as investors failed to rely on traditional metrics to forecast future profitability. The bubble collapsed from 1999 to 2000 as various companies either failed completely, most significantly Pets.com, whereas others survived while taking on substantial losses.

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Others, most notably Amazon.com*, were able to be successful even after the collapse. Many investors lost substantially given their high level of investment and the buzz around the potentially immense profitability fostered by the sky-is-the-limit attitude of the e-commerce and Internet-based industries. Reference Roger Lowenstein, Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing, 2004.

DOUGLAS, DONALD WILLS Donald Wills Douglas was born on April 6, 1892, in Brooklyn, New York. He spent three years at the U.S. Naval Academy before transferring to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he graduated in 1914 with a degree in aeronautical engineering. Douglas went to work for the Connecticut Aircraft Company in New Haven and then for the Glenn L. Martin Company in Los Angeles, California. Both companies were aircraft manufacturers. During the early 1920s, Douglas started his own aircraft company, but it failed. In 1928, he tried again with the Douglas Aircraft Company and this time succeeded. His DC-1 plane was first produced in 1931, followed by the DC-2 in 1933. Trans-World Airlines purchased forty of the DC-2s. Douglas’s real success came with the famous DC-3, perhaps the world’s most aerodynamically perfect aircraft. Eventually, Douglas sold 448 of them and made his company one of the leading aircraft manufacturers in the world. Douglas Aircraft constructed thousands of planes for the government during World War II. After World War II, Douglas produced the DC-8 jet aircraft, but the company lost much of the jet market to the Boeing* 707. The company survived because of its military aircraft production and its missile and space division, which was producing the Nike missile for the government. In 1966, Douglas merged with McDonnell Aircraft of St. Louis, creating the McDonnell–Douglas Corporation. They produced the DC-10 to compete with the Boeing 747, but a series of crashes in the early 1970s hurt the DC-10’s reputation and sales. McDonnell–Douglas was still a successful defense contractor, but its success in domestic passenger service markets was quite poor. Douglas died on February 1, 1981. Reference John B. Rae, Climb to Greatness: The American Aircraft Industry, 1920–1960, 1968.

DOUGLAS, LEWIS WILLIAM Lewis William Douglas was born July 2, 1894, in Bisbee, Arizona. He graduated from Amherst College in 1916 and then did some graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1916 and 1917. Douglas served in the Arizona state legislature from 1923 to 1925; in 1927, he began a career as a Democrat in the House of Representatives. A well-known fiscal conservative, Douglas was convinced by 1933 that only drastic cuts in government expenditures could restore

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confidence to the business community, stimulate increases in investment, and lift the country out of the Great Depression. In that sense, Douglas was a traditional Grover Cleveland* Democrat, committed to free trade*, sound money, and a balanced federal budget*. In February 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* named Douglas his new director of the budget. When Roosevelt decided during the special congressional session of the “hundred days*” to promote the Economy Act* by cutting government spending, Douglas was encouraged, believing he had made the right decision. An “insider” in New Deal* policymaking circles, Douglas played a critical role in the formulation of public policy, always advocating efficiency in government and always warning about new spending programs. But after passage of the Economy Act of 1933, Douglas and the president began to drift apart. Four days after signing the Economy Act, Roosevelt dumbfounded Douglas by calling for the establishment of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration*, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration*, and the Civilian Conservation Corps*. Douglas objected on the grounds that further deficits would only worsen the climate for business investment, but Roosevelt would have none of it. When Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard in 1933, Douglas termed the step “the end of western civilization.” In June 1934, when Roosevelt called for a new $525 million appropriation for drought relief, Douglas registered a vigorous protest. By then, Roosevelt had tired of him, excluding him from important policymaking meetings, and essentially forcing his resignation on August 30, 1934. After resigning, Douglas became vice president of the American Cyanamid Corporation (1934–1937), vice-chancellor of McGill University (1937–1940), and president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York (1940–1947). He served as ambassador to Great Britain from 1947 to 1950. He served on the board of directors of a number of prominent banks until his death on March 7, 1974. Reference James E. Sargent, “FDR and Lewis Douglas: Budget Balancing and the Early New Deal,” Prologue 6 (1974): 33–44.

DOUGLAS, WILLIAM ORVILLE William O. Douglas, one of the most liberal Supreme Court justices in American history, was born on October 16, 1898, in Maine, Minnesota. Raised in a desperately poor farm family, Douglas retained for his entire life a sensitivity to the plight of low-income people and a suspicion of corporate power. He graduated from Whitman College in 1920 and then from the Columbia University Law School at the top of his class. He tried to work at a Wall Street* law firm for two years, but his own suspicions of corporate clientele left him frustrated and unhappy. Douglas returned to Yakima, Washington, for a year and then joined the law faculty at Columbia. In 1929, he moved to New Haven to teach at Yale. In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* brought Douglas to Washington as a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission* (SEC), and in 1937, Douglas became its chairman. Douglas emphasized corporate regulation, antitrust action, and progressive

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taxation. In 1939, Roosevelt nominated Douglas to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Douglas was a strong advocate of state taxation and regulatory laws, clearly recognizing the principle of legislative supremacy and the “right to govern.” He was also a general supporter of civil liberties and an opponent of government interference with them, except in wartime; he believed that national emergencies sometimes justified extraordinary exercises of national power. Douglas was also a longtime protector of the rights of the accused to legal counsel and jury trials. Finally, Douglas was a vigorous supporter of federal antitrust and prolabor legislation. In January 1975, Douglas suffered a severe stroke. He tried to continue working, but his physical ailments weakened him. He resigned in November 1975 after serving nearly thirty-seven years, longer than any other justice until then. Douglas died on January 19, 1980. References James C. Duram, Justice William O. Douglas, 1981. New York Times, January 20, 1980.

D O W, H E R B E R T H E N R Y Herbert Henry Dow was born February 26, 1866, in Belleville, Ontario, Canada, and was raised in Birmingham, Connecticut. Dow graduated from the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1888. He had an early interest in the chemistry of brines and eventually built his business on them. Soon after graduating, Dow invented a method for extracting bromine from electrolyzed brine, and in 1890, he established the Midland Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan. When he installed an electrical generator in the plant, Dow had created the first electrochemical factory in the United States. He founded Dow Chemical Company in 1896 and manufactured leaching powder. From there, the company branched out into insecticides, pharmaceuticals, chlorines, and salicylates. Eventually, he made Dow Chemical Company one of the leading manufacturers of chemical products in the world. Dow died October 15, 1930. Reference Dan Whitehead, The Dow Story, 1968.

D O W J O N E S I N D U S T R I A L AV E R A G E The Dow Jones averages are stock indexes produced by Dow, Jones and Company, a financial publishing company. Dow, Jones and Company first published the average in 1897 by figuring a mean value for twelve heavily traded stocks on the New York Stock Exchange*. It has evolved over the years until today there are three Dow Jones index averages. The Dow Jones Industrial index consists of thirty prominent stocks; the Dow Jones Transportation index consists of fifteen transportation stocks; and the Dow Jones Utilities index consists of ten utility stocks. Reference Robert Sobel, The New York Stock Exchange, 1981.

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DOWNSIZING The concept of downsizing refers to the practice of laying off workers in an effort to reorganize a company’s labor needs. Skilled workers are laid off and either are replaced by workers who can be paid less or are not replaced at all, in which case existing staff members take on their former responsibilities; either way, labor costs are lowered. Moreover, a company’s labor operations can be eliminated in one country and outsourced* to a nation with a cheaper labor market. The deindustrialization of the United States in heavy industries in the 1970s and 1980s, when many of these jobs were shipped abroad, is perhaps the most notable example of this process. Multinational corporations* practice downsizing when they find qualified professionals in a cheaper labor market internationally. The relocation of call centers from the United States to India in the 1990s and 2000s is a more recent example of how downsizing affects domestic employment. Reference William J. Baurmol et al. Downsizing, 2003.

D R E D S C O T T v. S A N D F O R D ( 1 9 H O WA R D 3 9 3 , 1857) Dred Scott was a slave from Missouri who had been brought to Illinois (a free state) and Minnesota (part of the free Wisconsin Territory) by his master; slave and master later returned to Missouri. Upon his master’s death, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds of his having resided in a free state. John A. Sandford, the executor of the owner’s estate, contested the suit on the grounds that Scott, as a slave, had no standing in a court of law. A Missouri court held that he did have standing but did not grant his suit. Scott appealed the case to the Supreme Court on the grounds of diversity of citizenship. Although the Court could have refused to hear the case on the basis of earlier rulings (e.g., Strader v. Graham, 1850, which said that whatever a slave’s legal status when in a free state, he was again a slave when he returned to a slave state), the justices chose to rule on constitutional questions because of the apparent breakdown of political solutions. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney* wrote for a 7–2 majority that (1) Scott had no standing because he was black and a slave; (2) residence in a free state did not emancipate him; and (3) residence in a free territory did not free him either, because Congress could make no law forbidding slavery* in a territory, because such a law would violate the right of property protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Missouri Compromise* of 1820 was therefore void and had no bearing on Scott. In addition, the case clearly ranked the Fifth Amendment right of property higher than the right of liberty. Far from quieting the political debate over slavery and sectionalism, Dred Scott v. Sandford only stirred up more of the sectional bitterness that led to the Civil War*. Susan Wladaver-Morgan

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References Don E. Fehrenbacker, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics, 1978. R. Kent Newmeyer, The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney, 1968.

D R Y D E N , J O H N FA I R F I E L D John F. Dryden was born on August 7, 1839, near Farmington, Maine. He entered Yale in 1861 but quit a few years later to go into the insurance business. In 1873, Dryden moved to Newark, New Jersey. With investment money from a few friends, he established the Prudential Friendly Society in 1875. Dryden renamed the company the Prudential Insurance Company in 1878. He followed the English model of appealing to working-class customers, writing small policies, and using agents to collect premiums on a weekly basis. About that time, the insurance business took off in the United States. By 1899, the Prudential Insurance Company had receipts of more than $17 million. Dryden died on November 24, 1911. Reference New York Times, November 25, 1911.

D U P O N T, P I E R R E S A M U E L Pierre du Pont was born on January 15, 1870, in New Castle County, Delaware, to one of America’s most prominent business families. The first du Pont in America, Eleuthere Irenee du Pont, established a gunpowder business in Delaware, which eventually formed the basis of a family fortune in chemical manufacturing, finance, and automobiles. The young du Pont graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890 and then joined the family business, first in Delaware and then in New Jersey. He played a central role in the development of nitrocellulose, which facilitated the production of a smokeless shotgun gunpowder. Du Pont left the family business in 1899 to become president of the Johnson Steel Company, but in 1902, through a series of complicated financial maneuvers, he purchased a controlling interest in the DuPont company. He was named president of the corporation in 1915 and managed its huge profits during World War I*, when the company supplied more than 1.5 billion tons of explosives to the U.S. military. After the war, du Pont purchased an interest in General Motors* (GM), serving as its president from 1920 to 1923 and as chairman of the board until 1929. He also turned the family business away from the production of explosives to a broader range of synthetic chemical products. Although he was a Republican, du Pont at first cooperated with Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Deal. He soon became disaffected by its spending policies, bureaucracy, and antibusiness attitude. In 1934, du Pont helped to found the American Liberty League, an anti-Roosevelt lobbying* group. Du Pont died on April 5, 1954. References Alfred D. Chandler Jr. and Stephen Salsbury, Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation, 1971. New York Times, April 6, 1954.

DUKe, JAMes BUCHAnAn

D U B I N S K Y, D AV I D David Dubinsky was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russian Poland, on February 22, 1892. At age 11, he was officially apprenticed to his father, who opened a bakery in Lodz. He joined the local bakers* union and led a strike against his own father’s bakery. His activities attracted the attention of the czarist police. Dubinsky was arrested as a labor agitator and exiled to Siberia. He escaped and evaded capture until 1910, when he received amnesty. In 1911, he immigrated to the United States. After working at menial jobs for a few months, Dubinsky abandoned baking for garment making. He joined Local 10 of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union* (ILGWU). Although the industry was still in the sweatshop era, Dubinsky did not involve himself in union organizing until 1916 during an ILGWU strike. He was elected vice-chairman (1919) and then chairman (1920) of the Local 10. In 1922, he was named vice president and a member of the ILGWU executive board. At a time when Communist influence was expanding in other New York locals of the ILGWU, Dubinsky thwarted such penetration into Local 10. In 1916, the Communists carried the ILGWU into a disastrous strike that lasted twenty-eight weeks and plunged the union $2 million into debt, but Dubinsky’s Local 10 emerged from the strike both solvent and strong. In 1929, he was elected secretary-treasurer of the ILGWU and assumed the post of acting president during the illness of its president, Benjamin Schlesinger. Dubinsky was elected president of the ILGWU in 1932. Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act* proved to be a godsend. Within six months, ILGWU membership expanded by about 160,000 and stood at 200,000 in 1935. In 1935, Dubinsky threw in his lot with John L. Lewis* and others to form the Committee for Industrial Organizations (it became the Congress of Industrial Organizations* or CIO in 1936). In 1937, however, he opposed the establishment of the CIO as a permanent and independent organization. After two years without affiliation, the ILGWU rejoined the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) in 1940, In 1945, Dubinsky became an AFL vice president and member of the executive council He had strongly supported New Deal policies in the 1930, and with Adolf A. Berle Jr. and others, he formed the Liberal Party of New York. In 1947, he helped to organize Americans for Democratic Action. Although admitting the problem of abuses in the labor movement, Dubinsky vigorously opposed the passage of the Taft–Hartley Act: During the late 1940s and 1950s, he actively fought Communist influence in the unions. He served as president of the ILGWU until his death on September 17, 1982. Reference Max D. Danish, The World of David Dubinsky, 1957.

DUKE, JAMES BUCHANAN James Buchanan Duke was born in 1856 near Durham, North Carolina, to Washington Duke, the founder of W. Duke and Sons and Company. The younger Duke eventually inherited control of the company and, using James Bonsack’s cigarettemaking invention, began to produce cigarettes by the billions. In 1890, James

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Duke founded the American Tobacco Company and produced such best-selling brands as Lucky Strike and Pall Mall. During World War I*, Duke distributed cigarettes free to American soldiers; when they came home from the war, they brought their cigarette habit with them. He also manufactured Durham Smoking Tobacco, which farmers called “Bull Durham.” Duke died in 1925. Reference John K. Winker, Tobacco Tycoon: The Story of James Buchanan Duke, 1943.

D U P L E X P R I N T I N G P R E S S C O M PA N Y v. D E E R I N G (254 U.S. 443) Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deering was decided on January 3, 1921, by a 6–3 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court; Justices Louis Brandeis*, Oliver Wendell Holmes*, and John H. Clarke dissented. The decision, consistent with the prevailing conservative business and political philosophy of the 1920s, interpreted the Clayton Act* of 1914 very narrowly, holding that the federal courts were prohibited only from issuing injunctions* against legal labor union operations. Illegal strikes and secondary boycotts were still subject to federal court injunctions. Reference Congressional Quarterly, Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court, 1979.

D U R A N T, W I L L I A M C R A P O William C. Durant was born December 8, 1861, in Boston, Massachusetts. Although he came from a well-to-do family, Durant left home in 1877 to work in his grandfather’s lumberyard and at other odd jobs. In 1881, he was named manager of the Flint Water Works in Flint, Michigan. At the time, Flint led the nation in the manufacture of carriages and wagons, and Durant gradually fell into the business. In 1887, he established the Durant–Dort Carriage Company, which became, in the next four years, the leading manufacturer of horse-drawn carriages in the United States. Durant established separate companies specializing in the production of timber, wheels, and spokes. He used assembly line techniques in putting the carriages together and stayed with the business until 1914. As far back as 1904, however, he had gone into the automobile* business after buying the Buick Motor Car Company. Under Durant’s leadership, Buick became one of the leading auto manufacturers in the country. In 1908, he formed the General Motors Company by buying the Buick, Cadillac, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile Motor Companies, bringing the Weston–Mott Axle Company from Utica, New York, to Flint, and financing Albert Champion’s design for a new porcelain sparkplug. Durant was pushed out of General Motors when the company came on hard times in 1910 (as a result of overproducing cars), so in 1911, he joined with Louis Chevrolet, a mechanic and race car driver. Together they established the Chevrolet Motor Car Company. The company was so successful that Durant began acquiring

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General Motors stock. In 1916, he had enough stock to take control of the company again. John J. Raskob* and Pierre S. du Pont* provided him with the capital he needed to take over General Motors. The company again came on hard times during the depression of 1920–1921*, when Durant once more let automobile inventories accumulate too rapidly. Company stock prices sagged badly and, when Durant tried to maintain the price by margin buying, he became overextended. Du Pont then took control of the company in 1920, and Durant resigned. Durant tried again, this time forming the Durant Motor Company, but the Great Depression* destroyed the venture; he filed for bankruptcy in 1935. Durant died on March 18, 1947. References Lawrence R. Gustin, Billy Durant, 1973. Alfred P. Sloan Jr., My Years with General Motors, 1969.

DUST BOWL “Dust bowl” was the term applied to an area of the southern Great Plains, comprising western Kansas, eastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico, and the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, that was hit during the 1930s by severe dust storms. High plains soils have been long vulnerable to drought-induced wind erosion. From 1932 to 1939, drought often prevented the winter wheat crops from achieving sufficient fall growth to protect the soil. The drought there followed a period of agricultural expansion that lasted from World War I* through the 1920s and that had converted millions of acres of grazing land into cropland devoted to wheat production. This expansion was characterized by rapid mechanization, by emphasis on wheat as a cash crop, and by techniques of dry farming that preserved little crop residue. Another contributing factor was the prevalence of absentee ownership and “suitcase farming” (tenants renting farms on short-term leases). The dust storms of the “dirty thirties,” as residents referred to the decade, began in 1932 and became increasingly serious until 1935, the worst year, when the “black blizzard” of April 14 struck. Severe storms continued through 1936 and 1937 but eased in 1938. The social and economic effects were profound. There were only a few deaths attributable to the storms, but thousands suffered longterm effects from dust pneumonia. The local agricultural economy collapsed, farms were abandoned, and dependence on federal relief programs escalated. The wheat program and the Emergency Cattle Purchase Program of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration* were particularly important to dust bowl farmers. The dust bowl led to soil conservation efforts. H. H. Finnell was a key figure in this process, beginning in 1934, when he assumed direction of the Soil Erosion Service’s wind erosion station at Dalhart, Texas. Contouring, stripping, and terracing, which were effective against water erosion, did little to stop wind erosion. The key to better management, Finnell and others discovered, was to cease destructive practices such as burning stubble and to retain enough crop residue on the

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surface to hold in the soil. The main reason for the cessation of the dust storms in the 1940s, however, was increased rainfall. Although dust storms recurred on the plains in the 1950s and 1970s, none have matched those of the 1930s in scope or severity. References Paul Bonnifield, The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression, 1979. R. Douglas Hurt, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History, 1981. Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, 1979.

E EASTMAN, GEORGE George Eastman was born on July 12, 1854, in Waterville, New York. He quit school as a teenager and went to work as a bookkeeper in Rochester, New York. Eastman also began dabbling with photographic equipment and improving on existing development techniques. Late in the 1870s, Eastman invented a process for preparing gelatin dry plates for photography, and early in the 1880s, he succeeded in developing the first paper-backed film. He established the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company in 1885. That same year, Eastman produced the “Kodak,” a small box camera containing 100 exposures of film. It was an immediate success, as was the transparent film the company produced two years later. In 1892, he formed the Eastman Kodak Company. By the early 1900s, Eastman Kodak was the worldwide leader in the photographic industry. Eastman stepped down as president in 1923 and died on March 12, 1932. Reference C. W. Ackerman, George Eastman, 1930.

EASTMAN, JOSEPH BARTLETT Joseph B. Eastman was born on June 26, 1882, in Katonah, New York. He graduated from Amherst College in 1904 and received a fellowship to work at South End House in Boston. He took the position of secretary to the Public Franchise League in Boston in 1905 and remained there until 1913. That year, he began assisting Louis D. Brandeis* in investigations of the Boston Elevated Railway Company and the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. From 1913 to 1915, he served the Electric Street Railway Employees* Union as a wage adviser and in 1915 accepted appointment to the Massachusetts Public Service Commission. There he earned a reputation as an independent progressive*, willing to judge rate cases on their merits and always considering the public welfare. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson* appointed Eastman to the Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC), where he served for the rest of his life. During the 1920s, Eastman realized before anyone else did that the railroads were in a desperate long-range crisis. They were burdened by heavy debt structures and high long-term fixed payments, but they were steadily losing freight volume to the expanding trucking industry. When World War I ended, Eastman urged the government not to turn the railroads back to private management, but rather to bring about a forced consolidation of duplicated services. He also opposed wage increases to railroad workers, because he believed that the railroads could not afford them. By 1933, Eastman was widely recognized as the most liberal mind in

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the transportation field. He helped to draft the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act* of 1933 and accepted the appointment as federal coordinator of transportation. Although Eastman believed that the only answer to railroad troubles was massive reorganization and consolidation, as well as possible nationalization, he was unable either as federal coordinator or later as chairman of the ICC (1939– 1942) to bring about these goals. Eastman died on March 15, 1944. Reference Claude M. Fuess, Joseph B. Eastman, 1952.

E-COMMERCE E-commerce, short for electronic commerce, refers to an industry based on the sale and purchase of goods and services over the Internet* and other electronic means. A product of the Information Revolution* of the late twentieth century, e-commerce draws on Internet-based technologies for processing, marketing, and purchasing, as well as distribution networks that allow for the mailing of goods. Newer technologies based on the smartphone* and advertising through social media* networks are now also integral to the expansion of e-commerce. Its massive growth in the early twenty-first century changed the retail model as older companies developed websites to sell their goods in addition to the older brickand-mortar chains and stores. Some retail chains, however, such as Borders Books, went out of business, unable to compete with the e-commerce model. Reference Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, 2002.

ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY ACT OF 1964 In 1962, Michael Harrington* wrote a best-selling book entitled The Other America: Poverty in the United States, which first exposed the millions of Americans who lived below what came to be called the “poverty line.” Although the John F. Kennedy* administration had begun to talk about establishing some type of antipoverty program, it was President Lyndon B. Johnson* who took the initiative in 1964 and made his “War on Poverty” the central part of his “Great Society*” programs. In his State of the Union address of January 8, 1964, Johnson called for a war on poverty, and Congress responded by enacting the Economic Opportunity Act in August 1964. The legislation appropriated nearly $1 billion for a variety of work-training, hiring incentives, education, Job Corps*, and small business incentive programs. It also established an Office of Economic Opportunity to administer the program. Reference Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point, 1970.

ECONOMY ACT OF 1933 On March 20, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed into law the socalled Economy Act, which was designed to achieve a balanced federal budget* by

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reducing the salaries of federal employees by up to 15 percent, reducing federal pensions and disability payments, and reducing bureaucratic waste. The president hoped to save up to $500 million through the measure and to help restore confidence in the government and in the health of the economy. Although the bill eventually resulted in $243 million in savings, its achievement was far offset by the huge appropriations for the other New Deal agencies. Historians generally turn to the Economy Act of 1933 to demonstrate how confused early New Deal economic policies were—cutting government expenditures on the one hand and vastly increasing them on the other. Reference Paul Conkin, The New Deal, 1967.

EDGE ACT OF 1919 See WEBB–POMERENE ACT OF 1918. E D I S O N , T H O M A S A LVA Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. Brilliant but unable to settle on a career, Edison held a number of jobs in his early years. He was always tinkering and experimenting, first with chemistry but then with anything that caught his curiosity. He found a partner and formed Pope, Edison and Company in 1869; they developed a stock ticker device. In 1870, another company bought the rights to the ticker and paid Edison $40,000 for it. He used the money to establish his own business—an “invention factory.” During those first years, Edison invented an automatic telegraph, a sound wave resonator, and a carbon telephone transmitter. In 1876, he moved his factory to Menlo Park, New Jersey. His later inventions included improvements in the incandescent light bulb, a movie film projector, the phonograph, electrical generators, and auxiliary electrical equipment. Edison moved his operations to West Orange, New Jersey, in 1887 and then established the Edison General Electric Company. Later in his life, he invented the storage battery. Edison died on October 18, 1931. Reference Harold C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers, 1953.

EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT See PROHIBITION. ELECTION OF 1800 Throughout the 1790s, discontent among southerners and westerners about the leadership of the Federalist Party grew ever deeper. In the agricultural sections of the country, there was a strong perception that the policies of George Washington*, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton* were pro-Northeast, pro-banking,

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pro-industry, and pro–upper class. The tariff, national bank, and taxation policies all seemed discriminatory against workers and farmers, who came to support low tariffs and limited government spending policies; they also opposed the Bank of the United States*. Thomas Jefferson* and James Madison* emerged as their political leaders, and their political vehicle was the Democratic-Republican Party. In the election of 1800, Jefferson ran for president against Adams, the incumbent Federalist. Election rhetoric revolved around economic issues and the question of an aristocracy versus the people. Neither candidate received a majority in the Electoral College, but after extended voting in the House of Representatives, Jefferson was elected president. The Democratic-Republicans had come into power, and the Federalist Party began a slide from which it never recovered. The election marks the first peaceful transition from one political party to another in the United States. Reference William N. Chambers, Political Parties in a New Nation, 1957.

ELECTION OF 1828 Because of the political agreement between Henry Clay* and John Quincy Adams* that had given Adams a victory in the House of Representatives in the presidential election of 1824, there was a strong feeling among Democrats in the South and the West that Andrew Jackson* had been robbed of the office. Many believed that even though he had won the largest percentage of the popular vote—approximately 42 percent—he had lost the election unfairly. That Congress had also passed a high tariff—known as the “Tariff of Abominations”—only inspired more wrath from farmers in the South and the West. Jackson ran for president riding a wave of democratic outrage over the tariff, the policies of the Second Bank of the United States*, and the elitist attitudes of the National Republicans. It was no contest. Jackson won the presidency with 647,286 votes to Adams’s 508,064. Reference George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism, 1815–1828, 1957.

ELECTION OF 1896 Throughout the late 1870s, 1880s, and early 1890s, American farmers suffered from overproduction and falling commodity prices. Convinced that neither of the two major parties recognized their problems, farmers turned to other organizations, such as the Grange* and the Farmers Alliances*, to meet their economic, social, and political needs. Out of those organizations came the People’s Party, or the Populist Party*, a farmer-oriented political organization; it first ran a presidential ticket in the election of 1892, when James Weaver* challenged Grover Cleveland* and Benjamin Harrison for the White House. Weaver lost, but the Populist Party continued to gain momentum. Although the Populists called for government legislation to regulate and control such major industries as banking and railroads and to provide new sources of credit for farmers, they really focused their energies

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on the idea of “free coinage of silver”—a massive expansion of the money supply by printing currency backed by silver. By ending an exclusive reliance on the gold standard, the Populists hoped to expand the money supply and produce inflation, which would drive up the prices of farm commodities. When the Democratic Party accepted the free silver* proposal and nominated William Jennings Bryan* as its candidate, the Populists endorsed him, too. The Republicans, aghast at the notion of demonetizing gold, nominated William McKinley* for president. The election had a strong sectional dimension to it, with the North and East inclined toward McKinley and the South and West leaning toward Bryan. Northern workers were the key, and they eventually accepted the Republican claim that free silver would drive up food prices, weaken the industrial economy, and throw them out of work. McKinley received 7,036,000 votes to Bryan’s 6,468,000. Reference Stanley Jones, The Presidential Election of 1896, 1964.

ELECTION OF 1912 During the election of 1912, President William Howard Taft* (and the Republicans) hoped to win a second term. Their prospects were shattered by the decision of former president Theodore Roosevelt*, who had tried but failed to win the Republican nomination, to launch a third-party movement. At the time, the progressive movement* was gaining momentum in the United States, and Taft seemed too conservative. The Democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson*, former governor of New Jersey. Wilson proposed what he called the “New Freedom”*—an ambitious program for the direct election of senators, the adoption of a federal income tax*, the strengthening of the Sherman Antitrust Act*, and immediate tariff reductions. Roosevelt and his Progressive, or “Bull Moose,” Party called for the “New Nationalism”*—a graduated federal income tax and inheritance taxes, a national child labor law, women’s suffrage, and vigorous government regulation of large corporations. The Socialist Party* also ran a ticket headed by Eugene V. Debs*. Wilson won the election with 6,297,000 popular votes, largely because the Republicans split their vote—3,487,000 votes for Taft and 4,119,000 votes for Roosevelt. Debs put in a respectable showing, with 900,000 votes. The election of 1912 is significant for its head-to-head confrontation of differing versions of progressive thought; most of the campaign proposals were eventually enacted. Reference Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1954.

ELECTION OF 1924 The election of 1924 was one of the most complicated political campaigns in American history. Calvin Coolidge was president, having entered the White House a year before, after the sudden death of Warren G. Harding. Coolidge and the Republicans were riding the crest of a wave of economic prosperity, for which

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they claimed Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon’s* tax and budgetary policies to be responsible. But the Republicans were also vulnerable because of the Harding administration scandals. Throughout late 1923 and 1924, congressional investigating committees had exposed the Teapot Dome*, Veteran’s Bureau, and Alien Property Custodian Office scandals; they had implicated such close Harding associates as Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, Attorney General Harry Daugherty, Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby, and Veteran’s Bureau head Charles Forbes. Democrats were comfortable claiming that the Harding administration had been one of the most corrupt in American history. The Republican Party nominated Calvin Coolidge for president and Charles G. Dawes* for vice president. The Democrats proved unable to take advantage of the Harding scandals. Coolidge’s reputation was still intact, and the Democrats’ intense squabbles doomed them to defeat. At their nominating convention in New York City, Alfred E. “Al” Smith* and William Gibbs McAdoo fought to a stalemate for 102 ballots. At the time, the party was basically divided between its northern, urban wing, which drew strength from new immigrants and Roman Catholics, and its lily-white solid southern wing. Raised in Hell’s Kitchen in New York, Smith represented the northern wing. He opposed Prohibition*, the Ku Klux Klan, and immigration restriction. Smith was also an Irish Catholic. McAdoo, a Southerner and the son-in-law of former president Woodrow Wilson*, represented the southern wing of the party. He favored Prohibition and immigration restriction and acquiesced in the anti-Catholicism of the Ku Klux Klan. Ultimately, the Democrats had to abandon both Smith and McAdoo, compromising on the nondescript John W. Davis*, a Wall Street* lawyer; Charles W. Bryan of Nebraska was his running mate. The Democratic platform condemned the Ku Klux Klan and called for low tariffs, lower income tax* rates on the middle class, and government regulation of railroad freight rates. A third party also appeared, emerging out of the progressive* protest group, the Conference for Progressive Political Action*. For the most part, they consisted of old Bull Moosers, social welfare advocates, farm bloc* members, labor unionists, and socialists. The Progressive Party nominated Senator Robert M. La Follette* for president and Senator Burton K. Wheeler* for vice president. They demanded a variety of progressive legislation, including McNary–Haugenism*, collective bargaining for labor, the end of antilabor injunctions*, higher income taxes on the rich, federal development of Muscle Shoals, and eventual government ownership of the railroads. In the end, neither Davis nor La Follette could compete with prosperity, and Coolidge won the election. He took 15,725,016 popular votes to 8,385,586 for Davis and 4,822,856 for La Follette. In the Electoral College, Coolidge won 382 votes to Davis’s 136 and La Follette’s 13. Coolidge also carried Republican majorities into Congress on his coattails. When the new Congress convened, Republicans outnumbered Democrats 56–39 in the Senate, with 1 Farmer–Laborite*, and 247–183 in the House, with 2 socialists* and 2 Farmer–Laborites. The Republican Old Guard was in complete control.

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Reference Kenneth C. MacKay, The Progressive Movement of 1924, 1947.

ELECTION OF 1928 The presidential election of 1928 was one of the most controversial in American history. At the time, most people correctly gave the Democrats no chance of victory. Throughout the 1920s, the party had been badly divided between its rural and urban wings—southern Protestants who supported the Ku Klux Klan, Prohibition*, and states rights were aligned against urban northern Democrats who hated the Klan and Prohibition* while supporting the social legislation demanded by Catholics and recent immigrants. By 1928, the urban wing of the Democratic Party was gaining strength over the rural faction, but internecine warfare still weakened the party. In contrast, the Republicans were riding high on a wave of unprecedented prosperity. They played upon fears that a Democratic victory would destroy the economy. In August 1927, President Calvin Coolidge announced he would not seek reelection, and Herbert Hoover*, the longtime secretary of commerce, won the nomination in his stead. Senator Charles Curtis of Kansas was selected as Hoover’s running mate. The Democrats nominated Governor Alfred E. “Al” Smith* of New York for president, with Senator Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas running for vice president. The election was one of the most colorful in American history, dubbed by some historians the “brown derby campaign” because of the derby hat that Smith often wore. Hoover promised the electorate that four more years of Republican government would bring comfort and material progress to every American; he even went so far as to say that the end of poverty was in sight. By eliminating waste in government and increasing production while reducing economic costs, everyone would benefit. A Quaker by birth, Hoover supported Prohibition and appealed to native, traditional voters. Smith, on the other hand, epitomized the new America of cities, immigrants, and social welfare. A devout Roman Catholic schooled in the rough and tumble of New York City machine politics, Smith outspokenly demanded an end to Prohibition, condemned the Ku Klux Klan, and opposed immigration restriction. Instead of reaching out to rural America, where he desperately needed voter support, Smith alienated them by emphasizing his urban roots, immigrant heritage, and Catholic faith. Throughout the Protestant South, where support for the Democratic Party was almost an article of faith, Smith’s Roman Catholicism was highly suspect, as was his call for repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), and he lost what should have been a major area of support. When the ballots were counted, Hoover had received 21,392,190 popular votes to Smith’s 15,016,443. The electoral vote stood at 444 for Hoover and 87 for Smith. Because of anti-Catholic sentiment directed against Smith, Hoover won five southern states. The election was significant, however, for mobilizing urban Democrats and new immigrant voters as never before. These were to prove crucial to the victory of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. Reference Allan J. Lichtman, Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928, 1979.

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ELECTION OF 1932 In the summer of 1932, when perhaps 12 million people were unemployed, the Democrats eagerly expected to win the presidency. Most Republicans sensed their fate. Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt* of New York formally announced his candidacy in January 1932. By the time that the Democratic Convention opened in Chicago on June 27, Roosevelt had the largest bloc of supporters, though not enough to secure the nomination. Struggles over contested delegations, rules of nomination, and the convention chairmanship were all won by Roosevelt majorities, but still not by the two-thirds majority needed to nominate. John Nance Gamer finally agreed to release the Texas delegation from its obligation to vote for him, which also freed the California delegation. This created a bandwagon effect, giving Roosevelt the nomination; Gamer accepted the second spot on the ticket. At the convention, Roosevelt pledged a “new deal”* for the American people. The Roosevelt campaign focused largely on domestic reforms and economic recovery. Except for outright opposition to Prohibition* and a call for a balanced budget, Roosevelt’s campaign was intentionally vague, focusing on Republican failures and the problems created by the Great Depression*. Herbert Hoover* did not stand a chance. Roosevelt seemed to draw energy from the crowds, and he exploited the radio. He exuded confidence. On election day, Roosevelt carried forty-two states, secured 472 of the 531 electoral votes, and defeated Hoover by more than 7 million popular votes (22,809,638 to 15,758,901). Reference Elliot Rosen, Hoover, Roosevelt, and the Brains Trust: From Depression to New Deal, 1977.

ELECTION OF 1964 The election of 1964, like the elections of 1896 and 1932, gave the American public a clear choice between two quite distinct political philosophies. On the Democratic ticket, President Lyndon B. Johnson* was trying to win the presidency in his own right after inheriting the office because of John F. Kennedy’s* assassination in 1963. Johnson was an advocate of the “Great Society”*—an ambitious program of federal civil rights, social justice, and economic development legislation. The Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater* of Arizona, who represented the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Goldwater wanted severe limits on the actions of the federal government in all areas. He was convinced that the best way to guarantee economic growth was to let an unfettered American economy work its magic without federal intervention. Johnson won in a landslide, 43 million to 27 million popular votes, proving clearly that the American public was still not ready for Goldwater’s brand of conservatism. Reference Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1964, 1965.

ELECTION OF 1980 By the end of the Jimmy Carter administration, the United States was mired in collective gloom brought on by the Iranian hostage situation and by an energy

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crisis* that had driven the inflation rate to 13 percent a year and the prime rate to over 20 percent a year. While President Jimmy Carter had been talking about an economic policy of price controls, rationing, and belt-tightening, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan* talked about restoring America to military greatness, ending the energy crisis by the elimination of price controls to encourage domestic drilling, cutting government spending, reducing taxes, and placing severe limits on the power of federal regulatory policies. Reagan called these policies “supply-side” economics*, but it was his upbeat style and his promise to resurrect the American dream that won him the election. Reference Roland Evans and Robert Novak, The Reagan Revolution, 1981.

ELECTION OF 1992 The election of 1992 pitted Republican incumbent George H. W. Bush against Democrat Bill Clinton*. Bush’s popularity had taken a beating in recent polls due to the severe recession of 1991–1992, despite his success in the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991. Clinton, a savvy, charismatic, and popular Southern politician who was then seen as a political outsider, proved a stark contrast with the dour Bush. Bush, blamed for the current recession and his inability to address the economy, lost the election to Clinton, who was viewed by much of the public as a more positive and capable politician. Despite his foreign policy successes at the end of the Cold War, the immediate public reaction to the economy showed the primacy of domestic politics in deciding the election. Reference William J. Crotty, America’s Choice: The Election of 1992, 1993.

ELECTION OF 2000 By the end of the Bill Clinton* administration, the pro-business Republican George W. Bush* ran against the Democratic candidate, U.S. vice president Albert Gore in the presidential election of 2000. Bush promised a more proactive pro-business stance and deregulation of private enterprise. Gore ran on a promise of securing more liberal policies that protected the public against pro-business and banking interests. Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” to ensure that voters would not be concerned that he would overturn welfare “safety net” policies. Ultimately, Gore won the popular vote while Bush won the electoral vote. With the election decided by a voter recount in Florida, the Supreme Court called the decision for Bush in Bush v. Gore (2000). Reference E. D. Dover, The Disputed Presidential Election of 2000: A History and Reference Guide, 2003.

ELECTION OF 2008 At the end of the George W. Bush* presidency, Democratic candidate U.S. senator Barack Obama* ran against Republican U.S. senator John McCain in the

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presidential election of 2008. Public fatigue with the foreign policy of the Bush administration and with domestic policies that benefited the wealthy contributed to Obama’s popularity. Obama promised hope and change for the future. McCain, known for his proactive interventionist foreign policies and associated with support for domestic policies of the Bush administration, experienced a growing unpopularity. The social conservative wing of the Republican Party was suspicious of his flirtations with liberal polices during his tenure in the Senate. In response to this, McCain took Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. However, displeasure with the Bush administration and, perhaps to a lesser extent, issues with McCain’s age, as well as his choice of outsider Palin, contributed to his unpopularity. Obama, seen as a new voice with the potential to institute change, won the election, becoming the nation’s first African American president. Reference David Maraniss, Barack Obama, 2012.

E L E M E N TA R Y A N D S E C O N D A R Y E D U C AT I O N A C T OF 1965 A central element of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s* Great Society* was the improvement of American education, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 became a keystone of federal education policy. There was a widespread belief that poor school systems perpetuated poverty in many areas of America. Because school funding was tied to the property tax base in most areas, a vicious cycle dominated the schools. The law therefore provided federal funds to improve school libraries, language laboratories, learning centers, and support services in poor school districts. Reference Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point, 1970.

ELKINS ACT OF 1903 Ever since the 1870s, various political groups, particularly farmers and shippers, had demanded federal regulation of the railroads. The Interstate Commerce Commission Act* of 1887 was the first attempt at regulation. By the early 1900s, however, the progressive movement* in the United States was gaining momentum, demanding that the federal government move beyond the 1887 legislation. One of the most notorious abuses involved rebates*. In 1903, Senator Stephen Elkins of West Virginia sponsored legislation outlawing railroad rebates to favored shippers or any other type of discriminatory rate cuts. Railroads were bound to charge according to their published rates, and the Interstate Commerce Commission* was to police their actions. Federal courts were also authorized to issue injunctions* to stop the practice of rebates. President Theodore Roosevelt* signed the Elkins Act into law on February 19, 1903. Reference Gabriel Kolko, Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916, 1965.

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E LY, R I C H A R D T. Richard T. Ely was born on April 13, 1854, in Ripley, New York. He was raised in Fredonia, New York. After spending a year at Dartmouth College in 1872, he transferred to Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1876. From 1876 to 1880, Ely studied in Germany and earned a Ph.D. in agricultural economics. He joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 1880. Ely played a leading role in the “new economics” and was a founding father of the American Economic Association in 1885. He rejected the rigidities of classical economics and insisted on using inductive methods in economics. He saw society as an organic whole of interrelated parts; it was the responsibility of government to help keep them in balance. Not surprisingly, Ely was a vigorous supporter of government regulation of business, collective bargaining, immigration restriction, and a variety of social legislation. In 1892, Ely moved to the University of Wisconsin, where he became a leading figure in what became known as the “Wisconsin School” of progressive* reform. By the late 1890s, Ely was an advocate of limited socialism—especially government control of public utilities and major transportation systems—as well as workmen’s compensation* and social security. When progressive Republican Robert M. La Follette* was elected governor of Wisconsin in 1900, Ely became one of his key advisers. That relationship remained intact until World War I, when Ely’s internationalism conflicted with La Follette’s isolationism. Ely moved to Northwestern University in 1925, where he edited the Journal of Land and Public Utility Economics. He died on October 4, 1943. Reference Benjamin Rader, The Academic Mind and Reform: The Influence of Richard T. Ely in American Life, 1966.

E M A N C I PAT I O N P R O C L A M AT I O N On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln* issued the Emancipation Proclamation and freed all slaves* living in the rebellious states. At the time, he had a number of objectives in mind. Foremost was the need to shore up his support with the Radical Republican wing of his own party, many of whom were in favor of the abolition of slavery and black civil rights. Lincoln also hoped that when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the South, it would hurt the southern economy by making the slaves less reliable workers. Although he managed to achieve the first objective and did increase his support among Radical Republicans, the goal of disrupting the Southern economy was never realized. Most slaves either heard the news very late in the Civil War* or believed that there was little they could do without direct support from the North. Reference James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War, 1964.

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EMBARGO ACT OF 1807 During the 1790s and the early 1800s, the United States tried desperately to maintain the principle of freedom of the seas*. This was impossible to do because of the ongoing war between France and Great Britain. Both British and French warships had been guilty of blocking the shipment of American products to enemy ports. On June 22, 1807, a British warship attacked the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, seizing four alleged deserters from the British navy and killing three Americans in the process. In retaliation, President Thomas Jefferson* ordered all British warships out of U.S. territorial waters. Assuming that the United States had a great deal of economic leverage over both Britain and France, Jefferson decided to close down the American market. Congress passed the Embargo Act and Jefferson signed it into law on December 22, 1807. The law prohibited U.S. ships from leaving for foreign ports, foreign vessels from carrying American goods out of American ports, and coastal shippers from diverting their cargoes to foreign ports. On January 9 and again on March 12, 1808, Congress passed subsequent embargo acts to close loopholes in the original legislation. The Enforcement Act of January 9, 1809, increased the punishments for evading the law. Although the Embargo Act stimulated American industry, it proved to be a political and economic nightmare for Jefferson. Moreover, it did little to stop French and especially British attacks on American merchant vessels carrying goods to Europe. Economic losses were heavy in the commercial centers of the Northeast, and in the election of 1808, Federalists gained power in New England. Under increasing pressure, Jefferson agreed to its repeal. On March 1, 1809, he signed legislation ending the embargo as of March 15. The Non-Intercourse Act* reopened American ports to the ships of all nations except Great Britain and France and authorized the president to lift those two restrictions when either power stopped violating neutral rights. References W. W. Jennings, The American Embargo 1807–1809, 1921. Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805–1812, 1961. L. M. Sears, Jefferson and the Embargo, 1927.

EMBARGO ACT OF 1812 As relations between the United States and Great Britain deteriorated in 1812, President James Madison* wanted to send a message to the British that he was serious about stopping British attacks on American merchant vessels and the British practice of impressment*. On April 4, 1812, Congress passed the Embargo Act, which imposed a ninety-day moratorium on all trade between the United States and Great Britain. Madison hoped to block the shipment of American foodstuffs to British troops fighting in Spain and to clear all American shipping off the high seas. The Embargo Act of 1812 had little effect, being superseded on June 18, 1812, by the U.S. declaration of war on Great Britain. Reference Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War, 1805–1812, 1961.

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EMERGENCY BANKING ACT OF 1933 On Thursday, March 9, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* convened Congress in special session and introduced an emergency banking bill to deal with the panic. Within a matter of hours, the bill was law. The Emergency Banking Act of 1933 had five titles. Title I formally legalized Roosevelt’s decision to declare a national bank holiday*. Title II permitted the comptroller of the currency to appoint a conservator with powers of receivership over all national banks threatened with suspension, and it further permitted the conservator to subordinate certain depositor and stockholder interests to reorganize those banks. Title III authorized the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) to purchase the preferred stock or capital notes of banks and trust companies to provide them with long-term investment funds and to relieve them of short-term debts to the RFC. These first three titles were critical for the banking system. Title IV permitted Federal Reserve banks to discount previously ineligible assets and to issue new Federal Reserve notes on the basis of those assets as a means of ending currency shortages in certain areas of the country. This provision proved to be of little use after the bank holiday because of the surprising return of hoarded currency to the banks. Title V appropriated $2 million to implement the act. Each of the three major provisions of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 had originated in Herbert Hoover’s* administration during the banking panics of 1931, 1932, and 1933. The idea for a bank holiday had first appeared during World War I* when the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917* authorized President Woodrow Wilson* to impose a banking embargo in case of any financial emergencies. In January 1932, during the liquidity crisis preceding the establishment of the RFC, President Hoover considered declaring a national bank holiday to relieve the crisis. As financial conditions worsened in January and February 1933, Hoover again considered the idea of a national bank holiday, even approaching President-elect Roosevelt for a cooperative declaration. Hoover had his staff draft a holiday proclamation, but Roosevelt refused to issue any joint declaration. Upon his inauguration, he issued the declaration and included it as Title I of the Emergency Banking Act of 1933. Title II of the Emergency Banking Act dealt with the problem of reorganizing the thousands of closed banks throughout the United States. Comptroller of the Currency Francis Awalt* had already written a piece of legislation in early 1933 allowing the comptroller of the currency to evaluate and isolate the free assets of any national bank and forcing depositors and stockholders to subordinate the exact amount of any deficiency. The bank would then have to issue a certificate of deposit to each depositor for his share of the deficiency, guaranteeing that the profits of the bank would be credited and paid to each depositor until their losses had been recovered. It was known as the Bank Conservation Act when Roosevelt included it as Title II of the Emergency Banking Act. Title III, providing for RFC investment in troubled banks, had originated in a 1932 proposal by Franklin W. Fort, head of the Federal Home Loan* bank system. Fort urged Hoover to seek legislation authorizing the RFC to purchase the preferred stock or capital notes of commercial banks. At first, Hoover found the proposal too drastic, but as the financial situation deteriorated in 1933, he gradually

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came around to the idea. In February 1933, his staff drafted a bill giving the RFC such powers. Like the proposed Bank Conservation Act, however, the proposal had no chance of making its way through the Democratic Congress before Roosevelt’s inauguration. After the inauguration of Roosevelt, Hoover’s former advisers met with Roosevelt’s new economic staff. They drafted the Emergency Banking Act of 1933, and they pulled together Hoover’s proposals for a bank holiday, the Bank Conservation Act, and the RFC stock-buying plan. That bill then went to Congress on March 9, 1933, and Roosevelt signed it into law the same day. Reference James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977.

EMERGENCY CREDITS ACT OF 1921 Early in 1921, Senator George Norris* of Nebraska devised a proposal to create a government corporation to buy farm surpluses for cash and then sell them abroad for credit. Herbert Hoover*, the secretary of commerce, was to serve as head of the corporation. Although the farm bloc* supported the measure, Republican conservatives believed that it smacked of socialism*. As a compromise, Hoover and Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace* drafted an alternative measure known as the Emergency Agricultural Credits Act, which Senator Frank Kellogg sponsored in Congress; President Warren G. Harding signed it into law on August 24, 1921. The law permitted the federal government, through Federal Reserve banks, to purchase short-term agricultural paper, secured by agricultural products, from rural banks; to grant loans for breeding, fattening, and marketing livestock; and to grant loans to marketing cooperatives and foreign buyers of American commodities. Reference Robert K. Murray, The Politics of Normalcy: Governmental Theory and Practice in the Harding– Coolidge Era, 1973.

E M E R G E N C Y FA R M M O R T G A G E A C T O F 1 9 3 3 The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act was an amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act* signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt* on May 12, 1933. It provided for refinancing farm mortgages to prevent the loss of homes and land by thousands of farmers. Congress authorized federal land banks to issue up to $2 billion worth of tax-exempt bonds at 4 percent interest, guaranteed by the federal government. Proceeds from the bond sales would be used to make new loans or to refinance existing mortgages. The amendment also allowed the direct exchange of bonds for existing mortgages. A loan ceiling of $50,000 per farm or $25,000 per individual was established. Loans issued at 4.5 percent could not exceed 50 percent of the appraised value of the land. Borrowers were not required to make payment on the principal for five years. The act also directed the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to allocate $200 million to the farm loan commissioner for loans to enable farmers to

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redeem farm property lost through foreclosure after July 1, 1931, to refinance minor debts, and to provide farmers with working capital. The maximum loan was not to exceed $5,000 at 5 percent. The total of first and second mortgages could not exceed 75 percent of the appraised value of the property. Payment was to be made in ten annual installments, with no payment on the principal for the first three years. Reference Congressional Digest 12 (1933): 156–157.

EMERGENCY FEED GRAIN ACT OF 1961 The chronic problem in American agriculture—overproduction—has inspired a number of proposed solutions. In 1961, Congress passed the Emergency Feed Grain Act in an attempt to stem the tide of massive surpluses and falling prices for grain sorghum and corn. Participating farmers who retired at least 20 percent of their land from production were paid a stipend estimated at 50 percent of their costs of production. They received certificates allowing them to take payment in cash or in Commodity Credit Corporation* grain supplies. The bill succeeded in withdrawing more than 20 million acres from production and cut production by more than 420 million bushels. Reference Hal Landsberg, “New Approach to the Farm Problem,” Reporter 26 (April 12, 1962), 34–37.

E M E R G E N C Y Q U O TA A C T O F 1 9 2 1 After the end of World War I*, the massive immigration to the United States from eastern and southern Europe resumed, and American nativists began calling for immigration restriction. Madison Grant’s book The Passing of the Great Race (1913) was still in vogue, and large numbers of Americans wanted to stem the tide of immigrants from Italy, Greece, the former Austro–Hungarian empire, and Japan. For them, the “true America” was composed of northern and western Europeans—fair-skinned Protestants. In 1920, Senator William P. Dillingham of Vermont sponsored legislation to end the flow of immigrants to the United States. Although his bill said nothing about Asian immigration and allowed unlimited immigration from Mexico and Latin America, primarily because of the need for agricultural laborers in the Southwest, it did limit European immigration to 5 percent of the number of foreign-born of each nationality as they had been present in the United States in 1910. The bill was passed by the Senate, but the House amended it to reduce the quotas to 3 percent. That would have limited European immigration to approximately 350,000 people a year. President Woodrow Wilson*, however, pocket-vetoed the bill. After the inauguration of President Warren G. Harding, Dillingham resurrected his bill. It passed in the House by voice vote and in the Senate 78–1; Harding signed it on May 19, 1921. The Emergency Quota Act was the first absolute numerical limit on American immigration, and it established a quota system guaranteeing that northern and western Europeans would enjoy preferential status. In 1924, it was superseded by the National Origins Act.

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References Thomas J. Curran, Xenophobia and Immigration, 1820–1930, 1975. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, 1963.

E M E R G E N C Y R A I L R O A D T R A N S P O R TAT I O N ACT OF 1933 By the 1930s, the American railroad industry was on the verge of collapse. Since the stock market crash, railroad freight revenues, already devastated by the growth of the trucking industry, had fallen drastically. With revenue down sharply, a substantial number of roads were unable to meet their short- or even long-term obligations. Because of decades of overbuilding, duplication of service, and enormous capital investments, most railroads were burdened with huge debt structures and high fixed payments. The only hope for the railroads was massive reorganization and consolidation, as well as federal regulation of the trucking industry to coordinate both forms of transportation and keep each profitable. The Emergency Railroad Transportation Act of 1933 was an attempt to restore structural health to the railroad industry. Signed into law on June 16, 1933, during the first “hundred days*” the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act was a makeshift law pleasing few people. It created a federal coordinator of transportation who would divide railroads into eastern, southern, and western groups. Each group would select a coordinating committee of railroad managers to eliminate duplication, promote joint use of tracks and terminals, encourage financial reorganization to cut fixed costs, and study ways of improving transportation. Although the general philosophy of the law was for the committees to coordinate voluntary action to eliminate waste, the federal transportation coordinator could order uncooperative carriers to participate. Before taking any formal action, the coordinator had to consult with labor leaders. Neither railroad employment nor salaries could be reduced below their May 1933 levels, except for a modest 5 percent reduction to handle resignations, retirements, and deaths. All decisions of the federal coordinator could be appealed to the Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC) or to the federal courts. Finally, the act exempted carriers from antitrust laws. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* appointed Joseph B. Eastman* of the ICC as federal coordinator of transportation, but no significant consolidation or coordination of facilities occurred. When Eastman tried to force consolidation, he encountered bitter opposition from railroad management afraid of losing corporate independence, from railroad workers afraid of losing their jobs, from various communities afraid of losing railroad service, and from large shippers afraid of losing cheap, competitive fares. Consequently, the reductions in fixed costs so desperately needed by the railroads did not occur. Congress allowed the federal coordinator’s office to expire in June 1936. Reference Ari Hoogenboom and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative, 1976.

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EMERGENCY RELIEF AND CONSTRUCTION ACT OF 1932 By the spring of 1932, the economy was reaching bottom; 25 percent of the workforce was unemployed. President Herbert Hoover* had established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) in January 1932, and he desperately hoped that its $2 billion in loan funds would stimulate the economy. But 1932 was also an election year, with important politicians clamoring for federal relief programs to ease the suffering of the unemployed. Liberal Democrats such as Senator Robert Wagner* of New York were joining with progressive Republicans such as Senator Robert M. La Follette Jr.* of Wisconsin in promoting a variety of relief bills. In the congressional election of 1930, the Republicans had lost eight seats in the Senate and majority control of the House, so the likelihood of a successful federal relief program making its way through Congress was strong. Hoover worried about the federal government taking over relief programs; he greatly preferred to leave them to local government and to private charities. That was no longer possible in 1932. To prevent Congress from passing irresponsible, budget-busting legislation, Hoover decided to sponsor his own law. His proposal was a modest one, calling for an expansion of RFC lending power. The bill authorized the RFC to lend up to $1.5 billion to state and local governments for the construction of self-amortizing public works projects—toll roads and bridges, sewage and water systems, hydroelectric projects, and so forth. It also allowed the RFC to lend up to $300 million to state relief commissions for distribution to the poor. Finally, the bill allowed the RFC to lend money to a variety of financial institutions for relending to farmers. Speaker of the House John Nance Gamer added an amendment requiring the publication of all RFC bank loans. On July 14, 1932, the House passed the bill by a vote of 296–46; two days later, the Senate passed it by voice vote. The president signed it on July 21, 1932, but it was too little too late. The $1.5 billion appropriated for public works construction projects was not spent at all in, 1932 because the lead time for beginning such complicated construction was so long. Furthermore, when the RFC tried to distribute $300 million in relief money equitably—when ten times that amount was needed—it became a political nightmare. Reference James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977.

E M E R G E N C Y R E L I E F A P P R O P R I AT I O N A C T S During the New Deal* of the 1930s, it was clear that until the economy recovered, relief programs would be necessary to take care of the large numbers of the unemployed. Early in April 1935, Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act providing $4.8 billion for work relief. It was the largest single appropriation ever made in the United States up to that time. On May 6, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* established the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which received $1.4 billion of the appropriation. Other relief agencies received the rest.

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All the money had to be spent in two years. In April 1937, Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1937, which appropriated another $1.5 billion for relief spending. The comparable act of 1939 appropriated $1.477 billion, and that of 1940 appropriated $975 million. By that time, the economy was recovering because of World War II in Europe, and the WPA was being phased out. Reference Barbara Blumberg, The New Deal and the Unemployed: The View from New York City, 1979.

E M E R G E N C Y TA R I F F A C T O F 1 9 2 1 Although American farmers prospered during World War I*, the end of the war soon brought hard times. As European production revived, demand for American farm products fell. So did commodity prices. Having gone heavily into debt to finance wartime production increases, farmers were hard pressed to satisfy their bankers. By 1920, they were mired in a severe depression. In the Farm Belt, people began demanding tariff increases as a way of bringing relief. It was a naive hope. American farm prices were down not because of foreign competition, but because of domestic overproduction. High tariffs on foreign commodities would thus do nothing to raise prices. Woodrow Wilson* had already vetoed one such bill, but when Warren G. Harding entered the White House, tariff revisionists had their hopes raised. With Harding’s blessing, Congress came back with a new measure— the Emergency Tariff Act. Harding signed it into law on May 27, 1921. The Emergency Tariff Act of 1921 established prohibitive rates on twenty-eight agricultural products. Although the law helped raise sugar and wool prices, it had little effect on other commodities. The Emergency Tariff Act of 1921 was succeeded late in 1922 by the Fordney–McCumber Tariff. References Frank William Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 1931. Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson, The Presidency of Warren G. Harding, 1977.

EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT INCOME SECURITY ACT OF 1974 During the 1950s and 1960s, private pension plans in the United States proliferated dramatically. By the early 1970s, there were more than 300,000 of those plans in operation around the country, and they constituted the life savings of millions of Americans. During the recession of the early 1970s, however, it became clear that many of those plans were economically vulnerable, whether to the ups and downs of the business cycle, poor management decisions, fraud, or greedy companies anxious to find new sources of revenue. The failure of a number of those plans in the early 1970s, which left retirees with nothing to live on, prompted congressional action, so in 1974, Congress passed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The legislation was signed into law by President Gerald R. Ford on September 2, 1974. It set the date of January 1, 1976, as the deadline by which all private

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pension programs would have to be brought under federal control. It also provided a federal reinsurance program for failed retirement plans and set standard federal regulations for all plans. Reference D. G. Carlson, “Responding to the Pension Reform Law,” Harvard Business Review 52 (November 1974): 133–144.

EMPLOYMENT ACT OF 1946 Throughout U.S. history, at least until the years of the New Deal, the federal government had played a very small role in regulating the functioning of the economy. In fact, few Americans even believed it was the responsibility of government to guarantee full employment and stable prices. The Great Depression* and World War II, however, changed all that, especially after Keynesian* economics made it clear that the federal government, through spending and taxation policies, could dramatically affect the course of the economy. By the end of World War II, most Americans wanted to make the transition to a peacetime economy as well as continue the social and economic safety net programs inaugurated by the New Deal. Liberal Democrats also wanted the federal government to take permanent responsibility for guaranteeing full employment in the United States. The legislation that achieved those goals was the Employment Act of 1946. Passed as part of the Truman* administration’s hopes of continuing the thrust of the New Deal, the legislation established a Council of Economic Advisers* to assist the president in developing economic policy, established a Joint Economic Committee of Congress to monitor those policies, and clearly gave the federal government responsibility for maintaining full employment. It was tacitly understood by all concerned that the government should use spending and taxation policies to stimulate employment and to control prices. By the 1960s, the Council of Economic Advisers had become an extremely influential body in American economic affairs. Reference Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S Truman and American Liberalism, 1973.

END POVERTY IN CALIFORNIA The End Poverty in California (EPIC) organization was founded in Los Angeles in 1933 by Upton Sinclair, a prominent socialist* and the author of The Jungle (1906). Committed to widespread social and economic reform, Sinclair won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1934 and called for the establishment of subsistence agricultural colonies, government takeover of all idle factories, unemployment compensation, old age pensions, increased rates of progressive taxation, and a variety of social welfare measures. But even during the Great Depression*, Upton Sinclair was years ahead of his time, and Governor Frank E. Merriam, the Republican incumbent, won the election. The EPIC movement then dissolved, and regular Democrats regained control of the party machinery.

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Reference Floyd Dell, Upton Sinclair: A Study in Social Protest, 1970.

E N E R G Y, D E PA R T M E N T O F Because of the energy crisis* afflicting the United States, Congress established the Department of Energy in 1977 as a cabinet-level agency of the U.S. government. The Department of Energy assumed responsibility for a number of other government agencies involved in the development and regulation of the energy industries, including programs from the Department of the Interior, the Federal Power Commission,* the Atomic Energy Commission, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission*, and the Federal Energy Administration. Reference Richard Hewlett and Francis Duncan, The Organization of Federal Energy Functions, 1977.

ENERGY CRISIS Although there were serious concerns during the 1920s about future energy supplies in the United States, the real energy crisis of the twentieth century occurred during the 1970s and 1980s. The invention of the internal combustion engine early in the 1900s had revolutionized the domestic economy. That change and the decision to switch naval fuel from coal to petroleum just after World War I combined to make oil the single most important commodity in the world economy. Until the 1950s, domestic production had satisfied American energy needs, but cheap energy prices spawned a wasteful consumption-oriented economy. Beginning in the 1950s, cheap oil from the Persian Gulf region gradually undermined American production. Persian Gulf oil was cheaper to produce than domestic oil, so while American production dropped, consumption continued to climb. The crunch came after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Upset about the level of American support for Israel, the Arab nations instituted a boycott of oil to the United States. Oil shortages appeared immediately, oil prices skyrocketed, and the American economy entered a decade-long period of “stagflation*”—high prices combined with high unemployment. The two political parties in the United States debated how to solve the energy crisis. Democrats, because of their working-class and lower-class constituencies, wanted to make sure that oil prices stabilized, so they emphasized price controls, rationing, and energy-saving measures. Those themes epitomized the presidential administration of Jimmy Carter (1977–1981). The Republicans were more concerned about increasing the supplies of oil, so they emphasized the need to eliminate price controls on domestic oil to encourage production. Those policies characterized the administrations of Richard Nixon (1969–1974), Gerald Ford (1974–1977), and Ronald Reagan* (1981–1989). In the end, however, the United States did not develop a comprehensive energy policy. Because of increases in

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global supplies and price-induced reductions in demand, oil prices began to fall early in the 1980s. Once again, Americans were lulled into a sense of complacency. Not until 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, did the United States once again worry about the supply and price of oil. That concern led to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Reference Daniel Yergin, The Prize, 1991.

ENRON Enron Corporation was a U.S.-based energy corporation, also holding assets in commodities and services, that filed for bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, after becoming the epitome of corporate corruption. Institutionalized corruption, through its practice of accounting fraud, created the well-known Enron scandal of the early 2000s. The level of complicity by the company’s top officers in the fraud, and the association of the scandal with the pro-business atmosphere fostered by the Bill Clinton* and George W. Bush* administrations, were of considerable concern to the U.S. public. Reference Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room, 2003.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L M O V E M E N T The environmental movement was a social and political movement consisting of scientists, public officials, and activists aimed at addressing environmental issues, conservations, and “green” politics. Environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of natural resources and the responsible stewardship of the natural environment through public policy and societal behaviors. It became a popular social movement in the United States beginning in 1962, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which created public awareness about the dangers posed by pesticides to the environment. The Richard Nixon administration was particularly receptive to the demands of the environmental movement, signing legislation such as the Clean Air Act of 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1970, and the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as well as supporting similar other policies. By the end of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, the environmental movement became more proactive in advocating for polices addressing the dangers of global warming*. However, some pro-business interests have been active in trying to debunk or outright deny scientific findings that sustain the existence of climate change*, concerned that these environmental policies threaten their short-term profitability. Reference Mark H. Lytle, The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement, 2007.

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E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y A C T O F 1 9 6 9 At the height of the environmental movement* in 1969, President Richard Nixon proposed a series of laws that became enacted in the Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The law required the federal government to direct each of its agencies to develop an ecology and environmental protection policy and also demanded that environmental impact studies be conducted before the implementation of any new government program. The law created a Council on Environmental Quality to serve as an advisory body on environmental concerns. Nixon staffed the Council on Environmental Quality in 1970, but since then its recommendations have had little effect on federal policy. Reference William Ahern Jr., Organizing for Pollution Control: The Beginnings of the Environmental Protection Agency, 1970–1971, 1973.

E N V I R O N M E N TA L P R O T E C T I O N A G E N C Y During the late 1960s, the environmental movement* gained a great deal of momentum in the United States. In 1971, responding to growing political pressure, President Richard M. Nixon proposed and Congress created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an independent government agency designed to promote environmental protection. The EPA was charged to coordinate federal environmental policy and activities, as well as to enforce federal regulations concerning air and water quality, use of herbicides, disposal of chemical and radioactive waste materials, and the use of pesticides. The EPA has been especially active in imposing vehicle exhaust standards on the automobile industry. The EPA has often been caught between the demands of business and labor for economic growth and the demands of environmentalists for protecting the environment. It quickly became the largest of the independent regulatory agencies of the federal government. Reference Alfred A. Marcus, “The EPA,” in James Q. Wilson, ed., The Politics of Regulation, 1980.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was created on July 2, 1965, as directed by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act* of 1964. Its charge was to prohibit employment discrimination on the base of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. As a result of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, its provisions also apply to state and local governments as well as federal agencies and private employers. At first its authority was limited to persuasion and conciliation, but amendments in 1972 empowered the EEOC to bring suit when necessary, and amendments in 1974 gave the EEOC power to file pattern and practice lawsuits as well. The EEOC is a bipartisan commission of five members appointed for fiveyear terms. The most effective tactic employed by the EEOC has been its issuance

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of employment guidelines, which most large employers gradually adopt in order to avoid lawsuits. The guidelines do not have the force of law, but the federal courts often rely on them in making decisions about individual discrimination cases. As a result of EEOC activities, overt employment discrimination has been largely eliminated in the United States, and the principle of affirmative action* now plays a much more prominent role in the hiring and promotion procedures of most large employers. References Joan Abramson, Old Boys, New Women, 1979. Herbert Hill, Black Labor and the American Legal System, 1977. Robert M. O’Neal, Discriminating against Discrimination, 1975.

“ E Q U A L PAY F O R E Q U A L W O R K ” Although “equal pay for equal work” quickly became a slogan of the women’s movement of the 1970s, the concept had been around virtually since women became involved in the labor movement. It reflects the conviction that wage compensation should be based on the content of the job performed, not the gender of the person performing it. That this needed to be stated was because women have traditionally received far less than men for doing the same job; in 1970, a woman earned (on average) 59 cents for each dollar a man received on average over all workers. This kind of disparity had long been justified by the idea that men were the breadwinners for their families, whereas women were merely working for “pin money”—an explanation that discounted such possibilities as that a man might have no dependents; that a single woman (whether unmarried, divorced, or widowed) might be trying to support her parents, siblings, or children; or that a married woman might be the main breadwinner for her family. The predominance of women in so-called “pink collar*” occupations, which pay less well than occupations in which men predominate, has recently led to a demand for compensation based on the comparable worth* of the jobs performed. The wage gap narrowed in the 1980s but remains significant, which partially accounts for the higher rates of poverty among women and children. By the twenty-first century, although compensation rates between men and women have relatively improved, there remain severe gaps in pay in various professions. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Gilda Berger, Women, Work, and Wages, 1986. Helen Remick, ed., Comparable Worth and Wage Discrimination, 1984.

EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT After the hard-won adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (woman suffrage) in 1920, the National Women’s Party first proposed what became known as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1923. This first version stated

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simply, “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” It sought to end the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. Right from the start, the ERA stirred up controversy among the general public and in the ranks of committed feminists as well. Those who favored the ERA asserted that it was needed to ensure women equal access to jobs, fair pay, and equitable treatment in the courts. Although women’s civil rights as citizens were already protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, women rarely succeeded in pressing legal claims to insist upon these rights. Moreover, the use of the word “male” in section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment seemed to undermine any firm commitment to providing women with equal protection under law. Proponents believed that after legal equality was written into the Constitution, social and economic equality would have to follow. Those who opposed the ERA did so for many reasons. Some simply believed that women should remain in traditional roles and that they already had all the rights they needed. Others feared that such an amendment would undo the protective legislation for women (shorter hours, health and safety conditions, etc.) that had been achieved with so much struggle and that had finally been approved by the Supreme Court in Muller v. Oregon* (1908); still others worried that women would become subject to the military draft or would in other ways lose more than they gained. Such opponents, who included prominent women such as Eleanor Roosevelt*, believed that some feminists would sacrifice actual benefits in the real but imperfect world to an ideal that might never be achieved by a mere amendment to the Constitution. Feminist leaders continued to press Congress to submit the ERA to the states up through the 1940s, but all their efforts failed. With the resurgence of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, however, the amendment took on new life. Congress submitted the ERA to the states in 1972. As ever, it aroused strong feelings on both sides of the issue. In the end, even after an extension, the ERA achieved ratification in only thirty-five states (rather than the thirty-eight necessary) and went down to defeat in June 1982. Although proponents have continued to pressure Congress to refer the amendment to the states again, they have so far met with no success. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Mary Frances Berry, Why ERA Failed, 1986. Jane S. DeHart, Sex, Gender, and the ERA, 1990.

E R D M A N A R B I T R AT I O N A C T O F 1 8 9 8 Because of the outbreak of industrial strife in the 1880s and early 1890s, many Americans favored federal legislation to deal with the problems of crippling labor union strikes as well as the exploitation of company workers. Congressman Jacob Erdman of Pennsylvania sponsored legislation that became known as the Erdman Arbitration Act of 1898. The law authorized the federal government to intercede in interstate labor disputes and prohibited employers from discriminating against or blacklisting union workers. Under the Erdman Act, the federal government

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mediated nearly sixty railroad labor disputes. The Supreme Court declared the Erdman Act unconstitutional in 1913, and Congress replaced it with the Newlands Act, which created a Board of Mediation and Conciliation. Reference “Railroads and Their Employees,” Monthly Labor Review 39 (1934), 352–354.

ERIE CANAL By the early nineteenth century, it was clear to many Americans that the existing river system would have to be augmented by a manmade economic infrastructure if real economic development of the West were ever to take place. Merchants and shippers in New York City were especially interested in developing economic connections with upstate New York, and their demands gave rise to the construction of the Erie Canal. The New York state legislature authorized construction of the canal in 1817, and it was completed in 1824 at a cost of $7 million. The Erie Canal extended from Buffalo to Albany and connected Lake Erie with the Hudson River, thereby making it possible to ship goods from New York City to the Great Lakes by barge. The Erie Canal was 363 miles long. By providing New York City, via the Hudson River, with access to markets in the hinterland, the Erie Canal made New York City the economic hub of the United States. The canal’s success spawned a surge of canal building in the United States, but as railroads were constructed throughout the eastern states in the 1850s, the canals, including the Erie Canal, fell into a long period of decline. Reference Ronald E. Shaw, Erie Water West: A History of the Erie Canal, 1792–1854, 1966.

ESCH–CUMMINS ACT OF 1920 See TRANSPORTATION ACT OF 1920. ESSEX DECISION When the Napoleonic Wars resumed in 1803, the United States once again found its merchant vessels subject to attacks by both French and British naval ships. Both countries wanted to keep American supplies from reaching enemy ports. During the Seven Years War, British maritime policy had come to be ruled by a principle known as the Rule of the War of 1756, whereby trade prohibited to neutrals in peacetime must also be prohibited to them during war. Great Britain had enforced that rule against American shipping when the Napoleonic Wars first erupted in 1793. American shippers got around the rule by what they called the “broken voyage principle.” By landing a cargo at a port, passing it through customs, and then reshipping it to the originally desired destination, American merchants had enjoyed relative freedom of commerce with the French West Indies and France. British admiralty courts had upheld the principle in the Immanuel decision in 1799 and the Polly decision in 1800. But on July 23, 1805, a British admiralty court handed down the Essex decision, which declared American cargo

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to be vulnerable to seizure unless the shipper could prove that the action was a legitimate reexport, not simply a ruse to get around the Rule of the War of 1756. British seizures of American ships increased dramatically, as did American protests of the decision. The Essex decision led directly to passage of the Non-Importation Act* of 1806. Reference Reginald Horsman, The Causes of the War of 1812, 1962.

EUROPEAN UNION In 1957, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands signed the Treaty of Rome creating the European Economic Community (EEC). The EEC established a Common Market to eliminate tariff barriers between members but also enacted policies imposing tariffs against American agricultural produce. Great Britain and several other nations were subsequently brought into the EEC. The existence of the EEC has to a certain extent posed a threat to American economic investment in Europe, particularly to the sales of American farm products there. For the past thirty years, U.S. policymakers have worked to lower EEC tariff barriers and limit government subsidies to European farmers so that American products will be more competitive. By eliminating the internal barriers within the European economy, the EEC has the potential of making the Europeans a new superpower, economically, in the world. By the late 1980s, the talk of even more detailed institutional ties between European countries gained momentum. The common market idea evolved into what came to be known as the European Community, and it envisioned the development of a common European currency by the end of the century. Such a currency would immensely improve the efficiency of goods exchanges and make the European economy more competitive with those of Japan and the United States. Opposition to the idea of a common currency, however, was quite intense in Great Britain. This currency, known as the Euro, would eventually be adopted in 1995. Also, the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the outbreak of national and ethnic rivalries throughout Eastern and Southeastern Europe threatened to destroy the idea of a European Community before it ever achieved institutional reality. In 1993, the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union as the official name of the union. The last major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009. In 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU. By 2004, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia had also joined. Reference Stanley Andrews, Agriculture and the Common Market, 1973.

“ E V E R - N O R M A L G R A N A RY ” The “ever-normal granary” was a concept for creating agricultural stability that gradually evolved in the mind of Henry A. Wallace*. As early as 1912, Wallace

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wrote of using the biblical lesson of Joseph in Egypt for solving the boom-and-bust cycle of Iowa wheat farming. During good years, wheat surpluses would be kept off the market and stored until production fell below demand. Only the government had the financial resources to implement an ever-normal granary. The Great Depression* and the New Deal* gave Wallace the political climate that he needed to create the “ever-normal” granary. Wallace became secretary of agriculture in 1933, but it was not until the passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act* (AAA) in 1938* that he was able to put his pet theory into practice. Crop failures in the early 1930s caused by droughts, disease, and insects convinced Wallace of the need to make the granary a major part of federal agricultural policy. Even though the new law continued the soil conservation features of earlier legislation, the act of 1938 deeply reflected his sentiment and his concern that the very survival of the nation depended upon a consistent food supply. The AAA shifted the policy away from crop reductions to the systematic storage of surplus agricultural commodities. Reference Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: The Agrarian Years, 1920–1940, 1968.

EXPORT–DEBENTURE PLAN Because of heavy debt burdens and gross overproduction that depressed commodity prices, farmers in the United States suffered economically during the 1920s. Not since the 1890s had they faced such enormous difficulties. Among the proposed solutions for the farm crisis was the export–debenture plan, which the National Grange* promoted vigorously. Founded in 1867 as an agrarian social organization, the National Grange had by the 1890s evolved into a strong interest group advocating profarmer legislation. In the 1920s, the leader of the Grange was Louis J. Taber, and he campaigned strongly for the export–debenture plan. The plan provided an indirect subsidy for farmers selling crops at a loss on world markets. The federal government would issue debentures to farmers equal to the value of their losses on the world market. Farmers would then sell the debentures to foreign traders, who could use them as legal tender in paying import duties. Farm advocates argued that the program would extend to farmers the same protection manufacturers enjoyed from protective tariffs. Critics claimed that the plan would not solve the basic farm problem—overproduction—and that American farmers were not suffering from heavy competition from foreign producers. When both presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover* rejected the export–debenture plan, farmers felt betrayed. References Martin L. Fausold, “President Hoover’s Farm Policies, 1929–1933,” Agricultural History 51 (April 1977): 335–361. Joan Hoff Wilson, “Hoover’s Agricultural Policies, 1921–1928,” Agricultural History 51 (April 1977): 362–377.

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EXPORT–IMPORT BANK During the 1930s, the New Deal* experimented with several different approaches to recovery. One of these involved using federal lending agencies to strengthen private credit markets. The argument ran that only when businessmen could obtain the working capital to increase employment and production would recovery take place. To increase the volume of bank credit available to private financial institutions, to farmers, and to businessmen, the New Deal established a number of federal loan agencies, including the Farm Credit Administration*, Commodity Credit Corporation*, and the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation*. The Franklin D. Roosevelt* administration, which was interested in stimulating foreign trade and American exports in order to help bring about economic recovery, also tried to increase the volume of international bank credit. In February 1934, Roosevelt, as part of his decision to extend diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union, established the Export–Import Bank of Washington to finance trade with it. A few weeks later, when Cuba requested a loan for purchasing and minting silver coins, Roosevelt established the Second Export–Import Bank of Washington to handle the transaction. Soon the president decided to expand the Second Export–Import Bank’s activities to finance trade with other nations. The original Export–Import Bank remained confined to Soviet trade. Eventually, negotiations with the Soviet Union over its World War I* debts fell apart; in 1936, therefore, the administration liquidated the Second Export–Import Bank and transferred its obligations and responsibilities to the Export–Import Bank of Washington. At first, the Export–Import Bank sought to focus on long-term loans to stimulate private lending in the international market. Because private commercial banks were reluctant to make export loans, however, the Export–Import Bank at first spent large sums granting credit on tobacco and cotton. Commercial banks handled the loans but sold most of them to the Export–Import Bank. The bank granted some intermediate credit to exporters of capital goods, primarily railway and heavy equipment; it also advanced long-term credit to exporters and banks against obligations issued by foreign governments in settlement of claims arising out of blocked exchanges. Despite great hopes, the Export–Import Bank did little to stimulate foreign trade until later in the 1930s. By 1937, it had advanced only $35 million to exporters, and bank participations were minimal. The Export–Import Bank operated as a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC)*. Export–Import Bank loans did not really begin to increase until large-scale lending to foreign governments began. In 1937, the bank extended a $37 million loan to China, secured by a promise to supply crude oil to the United States. The bank also made loans of $35 million to several Scandinavian countries, $16 million to Spain, and $20 million to Chile—all in 1939 and 1940. In fact, by then the purposes of the Export–Import Bank had changed from economic to diplomatic. Conservatives in Congress such as Senator Robert Taft of Ohio began accusing Roosevelt of using the Export–Import Bank to extend American influence abroad. In 1939, they managed to place a $100 million limit on the bank’s outstanding obligations. In March 1940, the president was able to add

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another $100 million to that total, but Congress stipulated that no more than $20 million in credit could be extended to one country and that the Export–Import Bank would be subject to the Neutrality Act of 1939. Only the German invasion of western Europe in the spring of 1940 eased the pressure and enabled Roosevelt to push the loan ceiling up to $700 million. The pace of loans then increased dramatically, and by 1945, the bank had authorized loans totaling nearly $1.2 billion. After World War II, the Export–Import Bank became the principal economic vehicle of American foreign policy. In 1954, with passage of the Export–Import Bank Act, Congress gave the bank permanent statutory authority. Subsequent legislation in 1961 expanded the bank’s lending authority and its resources. In 1968, its authority to make loans to Communist countries or to businesses in Communist countries was severely restricted. By the mid-1980s, the Export–Import Bank’s activities totaled more than $13 billion. In 2007, the Export–Import Bank became self-funding. References Frederick C. Adams, Economic Diplomacy: The Export–Import Bank and American Foreign Policy, 1934–1939, 1976. George Holliday, History of the Export–Import Bank of the United States, 1975.

EXXON MOBIL Until 1972, the Exxon Corporation was known as the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The company was first formed in 1882 by John D. Rockefeller*, and it quickly evolved into one of the most powerful corporations in the United States. Under Rockefeller’s leadership, the company became a horizontally integrated* monopoly, and he also saw to its vertical integration*. But in 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on a federal government antitrust suit, ordered Standard Oil of New Jersey to divest itself of its thirty-three American subsidiary companies. By that time, Standard Oil had become a multinational corporation*, securing raw materials and marketing finished products abroad. Standard Oil had acquired the Anglo-American Oil Company and converted it into Esso Oil in 1888, and then bought the Imperial Oil Company of Canada in 1898. Subsequent purchases included, among others, the Humble Oil and Refining Company in 1919, Standard Oil of Venezuela in 1921, and the Arab American Oil Company in 1948. In 1972, Standard Oil of New Jersey changed its name to the Exxon Corporation. In 1998, it merged with Mobil, thereby becoming ExxonMobil in the largest merger in U.S. history. It is today one of the world’s largest corporations. References Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise, 1962. Ralph Hidy and Muriel Hidy, Pioneering in Big Business, 1882–1921, 1955.

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F FA C E B O O K Facebook is a U.S.-based online social media* network headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Facebook was founded in February 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, originally as a social media hub for Harvard students—they were attending Harvard University at the time. It was later expanded to include other universities and high school students as a popular way to communicate and share information and photos. Zuckerberg later took Facebook to the next level and developed it as a mainstream social media tool that replaced MySpace as the most popular social media venue. As a result of lawsuits concerning who actually invented Facebook, Zuckerberg settled with the other co-creators as Facebook continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Venture capitalists invested heavily in Facebook during this period, viewing its relationship to advertising as a profitable enterprise. Many large companies and small business used Facebook to popularize their products as advertising became an important component to social media. Games, applications, and other online services became integral elements of Facebook. In February 1, 2012, Facebook filed for an initial public offering (IPO) and began selling stock on the NASDAQ* on May 18, 2012. That year, its 2012 income was $1.5 billion. Despite its success, Facebook has faced criticism over the lack of privacy its users enjoy when personal information is disclosed to advertising firms. Reference David Kirkpatrick, The Facebook Effect, 2010.

FA I R D E A L The “Fair Deal” was the nickname used to describe the policies of the Harry S. Truman* administration. Truman first used the term in his 1949 State of the Union address. Truman intended his administration to be an extension of the New Deal* of Franklin D. Roosevelt*, but he was not able to secure enough support within the Democratic Party for his measures and the Korean War* deflected national interest away from domestic policy. Reference Louis W. Koenig, The Truman Administration: Its Principles and Practice, 1956.

FA I R E M P L O Y M E N T P R A C T I C E S C O M M I S S I O N In 1941, A. Philip Randolph* of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters* called for a march on Washington, D.C., to protest employment discrimination in defense

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industries. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* was concerned about the effect a major civil rights demonstration would have on the American image abroad, and he worried that the march would distract attention from the New Deal domestic programs. After meeting with the leaders of the March on Washington Committee, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) on June 15, 1941. The FEPC was understaffed and underbudgeted. Without enforcement powers, it was not taken seriously by business leaders or government officials. Its main functions were to hold public hearings on complaints and to propose policy. The FEPC was also severely limited by the social climate in the United States at the time. Even as the committee was conducting hearings on discrimination in employment, racism was clearly evident on the West Coast. In the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were being driven from their homes to relocation camps. Prejudice in the South also limited the committee’s power. At a time when he needed broad-based support for his New Deal programs, Roosevelt could not afford to give full support to the FEPC for fear that such action would upset southern congressmen, a substantial legislative bloc. In June 1942, FEPC hearings in Birmingham, Alabama, so angered southern leaders that Roosevelt abandoned plans to increase the effectiveness of order 8802. Instead, he transferred the FEPC to the War Manpower Commission, giving Congress the power to limit the committee’s funding. By 1943, two years after its inception, the FEPC had ceased to function. Later that year, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9346 to replace the unsuccessful FEPC. His order led to the establishment of a new Fair Employment Practices Commission with redefined powers, a larger staff, and field offices. Nondiscrimination clauses were extended to all government contracts, not just those dealing with defense industries. Funding for the new FEPC was provided by a presidential emergency appropriation. The expenditures were approved twice by Congress, but the second budgetary approval of the fund was for liquidation of the commission. References Ruth P. Morgan, The President and Civil Rights, 1970. Joseph Parker Witherspoon, Administrative Implementation of Civil Rights, 1968.

FA I R L A B O R S TA N D A R D S A C T O F 1 9 3 8 To appease labor unions about the powers given to the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) under the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, Congress had specified in sections 7 and 7(a) of the law that workers had the right to a minimum wage, to bargain collectively, and to be free of “yellow-dog” contracts*. When the Supreme Court invalidated the NRA in May 1935, the labor standards provisions also died. Facing reelection in 1936 and realizing his need for strong labor support, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* began demanding a restoration of minimum wage and maximum hours legislation. Congress passed the Walsh– Healey Public Contracts Act* of 1936, which required all federal contractors to agree to a Department of Labor minimum wage and to not employ workers more than eight hours a day or forty hours a week without paying them overtime.

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The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established a Wage and Hour Division in the Department of Labor to enforce its provisions. The act affected all workers engaged in interstate commerce or producing goods for interstate commerce. It set a minimum wage of twenty-five cents per hour for 1938 and thirty cents per hour for 1939. It also said that the minimum wage would rise to forty cents per hour after a period of seven years. In addition, the act fixed a maximum work week of forty-four hours for 1938, forty-two hours for 1939, and forty hours for 1940 and thereafter. Child labor for people younger than 16 was prohibited. The act exempted certain occupations, including agricultural workers, intrastate retail employees, seamen, street railway employees, and fishermen. By 1939, nearly 13 million workers were covered by the law. Reference Paul H. Douglas and Joseph Hackman, “The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 II,” Political Science Quarterly 54 (1939): 29–55.

FA R M A C T O F 1 9 7 0 See AGRICULTURE ACT OF 1970. FA R M A C T O F 1 9 8 1 During the presidential election of 1980*, Ronald Reagan* and the Republicans charged President Jimmy Carter and the Democrats with ruining the American economy by excessive federal spending and excessive governmental regulation. They called for cuts in government spending and a return to free market principles. One of their favorite targets was the multi-billion-dollar government farm subsidy program, which guaranteed farm profits even when market conditions did not justify those profits. The Republicans called for a gradual, phased-in end to federal farm subsidies, and they proposed legislation that became known as the Farm Act of 1981. But farm interest groups and their representatives in Congress mounted a huge campaign against the bill, and the process of legislative compromise and logrolling eventually led to an increase in farm subsidies. The Farm Act of 1981 provided more than $11 billion in subsidies over a four-year period. Reference “Farm Legislation Outlook: No Sharp Turn to the Right,” Nation’s Business 69 (January 1981): 34–36.

FA R M B L O C In 1921, Senator William S. Kenyon of Iowa formally organized the Farm Bloc as a voting group in Congress. It consisted of congressmen and senators from primarily agricultural states. They tended to vote together on farm legislation in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, as well as on other measures that might indirectly benefit or hurt farmers. The Farm Bloc was more cohesive in the Senate than in the House.

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Its leading members were such individuals as Senators Arthur Capper* of Kansas, George W. Norris* of Nebraska, Robert M. La Follette* of Wisconsin, and Duncan Fletcher of Florida. Over the years, the power of the Farm Bloc gradually slipped with the decline of the rural population in the United States. By the 1960s, the Farm Bloc had all but ceased to exist in Congress. Reference Wesley McCune, The Farm Bloc, 1943.

FA R M C R E D I T A C T O F 1 9 3 3 As part of the progressive* reform movement and the struggle during the 1920s to deal with the farm crisis, the federal government had gradually become increasingly involved in the agricultural economy. The Federal Farm Loan Act* of 1916, the Agricultural Credits Act* of 1923, and the Agricultural Marketing Act* of 1929 had all been designed to ease credit and marketing problems. When the Great Depression* spread from agriculture to the rest of the economy after 1929, farm problems became even more acute. Commodity prices and farm income dropped, mortgage foreclosures became more common, and many farmers had trouble securing production loans from troubled rural banks. Responding to the crisis, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act* on May 12, 1933, and the Farm Credit Act on June 16. The Farm Credit Act was designed to establish local credit institutions for farmers to ease their working capital and marketing problems. A Central Bank for Cooperatives and twelve regional banks for cooperatives were set up to replace the Federal Farm Board* and to make loans to national farm cooperatives. Those loans had to exceed $500,000 each. The Farm Credit Act also established a Production Credit Corporation with $7.5 million in each federal land bank district. The corporations were designed to promote the formation of production credit associations—groups of ten or more farmers that could borrow from the Federal Intermediate Credit Banks*. The programs of the Farm Credit Act were administered by the Farm Credit Administration*. References W. Clifford Hoag, The Farm Credit System: A History of Financial Self-Help, 1976. W. N. Stokes Jr., Credit to Farmers: The Story of the Federal Intermediate Credit Banks and Production Credit Associations, 1973.

FA R M C R E D I T A C T O F 1 9 5 3 See FARM CREDIT ADMINISTRATION. FA R M C R E D I T A C T O F 1 9 7 1 The Farm Credit Act of 1971 was designed to impose some administrative order on the wealth of federal farm credit institutions in the United States. It created a farm credit system, complete with twelve regional farm credit districts, each with

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a federal land bank, federal intermediate credit bank, land bank associations, production credit associations, and banks for cooperatives. Although the Farm Credit Act of 1971 did not spell any dramatic changes in the country’s farm credit apparatus, it did rationalize it to a certain degree. Reference F. T. Bailey, “Crisis in Country Banks,” Successful Farming 69 (September 1971): 10–11.

FA R M C R E D I T A D M I N I S T R AT I O N To coordinate the federal government’s increasingly large agricultural credit complex, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* issued an executive order on March 27, 1933, creating the Farm Credit Administration (FCA). Beginning work on May 27, 1933, the FCA assumed control over the Federal Farm Board*, Federal Farm Loan Board*, Federal Land Banks, Federal Intermediate Credit Banks*, Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), regional agricultural credit corporations, and Department of Agriculture farm loans. After only eighteen months of operations, the FCA had refinanced more than 20 percent of all farm mortgages in the United States, saving millions of farms from foreclosures and thousands of rural banks from catastrophic declines in their assets. By 1936, there were a total of 549 production credit associations functioning in the United States and borrowing money from the Federal Intermediate Credit Banks. The Crop Loan Act of 1934 authorized the FCA to make loans to farmers for crop production and harvesting. Nearly $38 million of the $40 million fund was lent out. Congress also passed the Farm Mortgage Refinancing Act on January 31, 1934, establishing the Federal Farm Mortgage Corporation under the FCA to issue up to $2 billion in bonds and refinance farm debts. By the end of 1940, the agencies directed by the FCA had made loans totaling $6.87 billion. In 1939, as part of a federal reorganization effort, the FCA lost its independent status and was transferred to the Department of Agriculture. The Farm Credit Act of 1953 restored the FCA’s independent status and established a Federal Farm Credit Board to make agricultural credit policy. References W. Clifford Hoag, The Farm Credit System: A History of Financial Self-Help, 1976. W. N. Stokes Jr., Credit to Farmers: The Story of the Federal Intermediate Credit Banks and Production Credit Associations, 1973.

FA R M L A B O R S U P P LY A C T O F 1 9 4 3 Because of the manpower shortages created by World War II, commercial farmers in the South and West had a difficult time securing enough labor to harvest their crops. The United States and Mexico had already developed the bracero* program, which allowed Mexican nationals temporary residency in the United States in order to work on farms; the Farm Labor Supply Act of 1943 provided federal funds to pay for their transportation to the fields. The legislation was allowed to lapse late in the 1940s when the manpower shortage evaporated.

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Reference Arthur F. Corwin, Immigrants and Immigrants: Perspectives on Mexican Labor Migration to the United States, 1978.

FA R M S E C U R I T Y A D M I N I S T R AT I O N The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was one of the New Deal’s* more controversial programs during the 1930s. A Special Committee on Farm Tenancy, headed by Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace*, had investigated the terrible living conditions of tenant farmers and sharecroppers*. The committee’s recommendations, published in 1937 as Farm Tenancy: Report of the President’s Committee, recommended legislation that was implemented in the Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act* of 1937. Congress established the FSA to implement the law. In addition to assuming the duties of the Resettlement Administration*, the FSA provided long-term, low-interest loans to sharecroppers and tenant farmers so that they could purchase their own land; it provided high-quality camps for migrant laborers to limit their exploitation by growers and supplied credit to cooperatives. Will W. Alexander headed the agency. It encountered considerable criticism from commercial farmers worried about losing their supply of cheap labor. During World War II, the FSA assisted the relocation of Japanese Americans and helped bring Mexican laborers into the United States as braceros* to work the farms. In 1946, the FSA was abolished, and its programs were taken over by the new Farmers Home Administration*. Reference Sidney Baldwin, Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration, 1968.

FA R M E R – L A B O R PA R T Y The Farmer–Labor Party was founded in 1919 by John Fitzpatrick, head of the Chicago Federation of Labor. Its first national chairperson was Edward N. Nockels. At first, its avowed intention was uniting all left-wing labor movements in the United States under a single banner. Hoping to add farmers to the coalition, they renamed it the Farmer–Labor Party in 1920 and ran a presidential ticket that year. Parley P. Christiansen was nominated for president and Max S. Hayes for vice president. They campaigned for free coinage of silver, unemployment insurance, a federal public works program, an end to immigration, a $1.00 per hour minimum wage, increased taxes on the rich, tariff reductions, government regulation of the stock exchanges, abolition of the Federal Reserve System*, prohibition of yellowdog contracts* and antilabor injunctions*, independence for the Philippines, and the elimination of child labor and holding companies*. They drew less than 1 percent of the electorate, a total of 189,339 votes. In 1921, Communists gained control of the national organization, which led to an exodus of socialists*, labor leaders, and liberals. The Farmer–Labor Party soon

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disintegrated. The Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota continued to exist, increasingly allying itself with the Democratic Party after 1933. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, it was closely associated with the political career of Hubert Humphrey. Reference Murray S. Stedman and Susan W. Stedman, Discontent at the Polls: A Study of Farmer and Labor Parties, 1827–1948, 1967.

FA R M E R S ’ A L L I A N C E S During the 1870s, severe factionalism swept through the National Grange* organization over whether farmers should develop a political movement of their own. Because of overproduction, commodity prices were falling and farmers were demanding political action, from government ownership of the railroads and telegraphs to the free coinage of silver. The farmers’ alliance movement originated in Texas in 1877 and spread rapidly throughout the region, becoming known as the Southern Farmers’ Alliance by the late 1880s; in 1890, it boasted a membership of 1.5 million people. A separate Colored Farmers’ Alliance was organized for African American farmers in the South. Early in the 1880s, a Northern Farmers’ Alliance was organized in Chicago, but it did not have anywhere near the influence of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance. The farmers’ alliances were originally secret fraternal organizations that had primarily social functions. As the plight of farmers worsened in the 1880s, the organizations took on more and more of a political dimension. In 1890, the farmers’ alliances met in Ocala, Florida, and issued the Ocala Platform*, which became the basis of the Populist Party*. This third party emerged from the farmers’ alliance movement from 1890 to 1892. Reference Theodore Saloutos, Farmer Movements in the South, 1865–1933, 1960.

FA R M E R S H O M E A D M I N I S T R AT I O N In 1946, Congress passed the Farmers Home Administration Act, which merged the Farm Security Administration* and the Emergency Crop and Feed Loan program of the Farm Credit Administration*. The new Farmers Home Administration was to continue the work of the Farm Security Administration except for the resettlement programs and migrant labor camps, which were discontinued. The Farmers Home Administration provided federally insured farm mortgages as well as loans to veterans. It was especially active in its family farm program, facilitating the purchase of farm land. Over the years, the Farmers Home Administration also became actively involved in a variety of conservation and environmental programs*, particularly in the areas of water management and flood control. Reference Gladys L. Baker et al., Century of Service: The First 100 Years of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1963.

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FA R M E R S H O M E A D M I N I S T R AT I O N A C T O F 1 9 4 6 See FARMERS HOME ADMINISTRATION. F E AT H E R B E D D I N G The term “featherbedding” has traditionally described the practice used by labor unions to insist on the retention of workers even when technology has rendered their skills superfluous. The American economy has historically suffered from a labor shortage, and the incentive to develop laborsaving machinery has been high. At the same time, the introduction of laborsaving machinery in an industry has inevitably led to layoffs of employees in that industry. Labor unions have always opposed such layoffs. “Featherbedding” is the term that management has used to describe the retention of unnecessary workers. The practice started in the railroad industry in the late 1800s. Reference Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1940, 1970.

FEDERAL AID ROAD ACT See FEDERAL HIGHWAY ACT OF 1921. FEDERAL AID ROAD ACT OF 1916 Because of increasing use of the automobile* and its effects on the American economy, the need for improvements in the highway system, especially for paved roads, became overwhelmingly clear by the early 1910s. The need for good roads in rural areas was particularly acute, but funds to construct those roads were in short supply. To remedy that situation, Congress passed the Federal Aid Road Act in 1916, which provided one federal dollar for every two other dollars spent on rural road construction. The total appropriation amounted to $75 million, and it marked the beginning of the long, central role that the federal government has played in highway construction and maintenance in the United States. Reference Warren J. Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910–1945, 1979.

F E D E R A L A N T I – P R I C E D I S C R I M I N AT I O N A C T O F 1936 Because of their concentrated buying power, chain stores were able to approach manufacturers directly and purchase large volumes of goods at very low prices, thereby keeping their own costs low. Very often the retail prices they sold their products for were lower than the wholesale prices that small businessmen and wholesalers had to pay. Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt* on June 20, 1936, the Federal Anti-Price Discrimination Act, also known as the Robinson–Patman

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Act, prohibited price discrimination by manufacturers on behalf of large chain stores. It also prohibited discounts, rebates, and excessive selling allowances. The law empowered the Federal Trade Commission* (FTC) to investigate and abolish any price discrimination tending to reduce competition. Although the Federal Anti-Price Discrimination Act spoke in Brandeisian* terms of the importance of protecting competition and small businessmen, it also had the support of the United States Wholesale Grocers Association, a group threatened by direct chain buying from manufacturers. In one sense, the act was the culmination of a struggle between chain stores and large wholesalers. Reference Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 3: The Politics of Upheaval, 1935–1936, 1960.

F E D E R A L AV I AT I O N A D M I N I S T R AT I O N In 1926 the Air Commerce Act established the Aeronautics Branch in the Department of Commerce. Originally, the Aeronautics Branch focused on licensing flight personnel, establishing safety codes, and regulating airline employees. It also promoted airline travel as a new industry. In 1927 it began officially investigating accidents as well. The agency’s name was changed to Bureau of Air Commerce in 1934, and in 1938 the Civil Aeronautics Act* removed it from the Department of Commerce and established it as the new, independent Civil Aeronautics Authority* (CAA). A new Air Safety Board assumed the duties of investigating accidents. The Civil Aeronautics Authority also had the authority to regulate the industry economically. In 1959 Congress created the Federal Aviation Agency to replace the CAA. In 1966 the FAA was renamed the Federal Aviation Administration and placed in the new Department of Transportation. Reference Donald R. Whitnah, Safer Skyways: Federal Control of Aviation, 1926–1966, 1966.

FEDERAL BUDGET The federal budget is a yearly allotment agreed upon by Congress after the president’s proposal. Typically, it is negotiated to allocate funds for various federal departments and programs, among the most notable, military spending*, entitlements, and business subsidies. Congressional appropriation bills allocate funding to various federal programs at the request and attained through the negotiation of both major parties. The federal budget has historically affected the national economy as the federal government is the largest spender in the country. During the two world wars and the Great Depression, the federal government expanded its spending, particularly through the New Deal of the 1930s and government war contracts to war industries, contributing immensely to the greater good of U.S. society through the creation of employment. Since then, the federal budget has remained an important factor in stimulating the national economy.

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Reference Amanda Hiber, The Federal Budget, 2010.

F E D E R A L C O M M U N I C AT I O N S C O M M I S S I O N In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* set up a government commission to study the problem of regulating communications services in the United States. He was concerned about competition within the industry, the lack of service to rural areas, and the technical advances underway. The commission reported in January 1934 and recommended the creation of a federal regulatory commission that would reduce rates by regulating profits, overhead charges, and intercompany charges; prevent discrimination; control exclusive contracts; regulate annual depreciation charges; prevent the watering of stocks; extend services into rural areas; and regulate mergers between communications companies. Roosevelt forwarded the recommendations to Congress in February 1934, and Congress passed them as the Communications Act of 1934 on May 31. Roosevelt signed the measure on June 19, 1934, thereby creating the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC replaced the Federal Radio Commission*, which had been established in 1927, and consolidated the relevant duties of the Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC), the post office, and the Department of Commerce* into one federal agency. The FCC was responsible for regulating interstate and foreign communications by radio, telegraph, wire, or cable. The commission was also charged with the orderly development and operation of broadcast services, the promotion of efficient national telephone and telegraph services at reasonable rates, and the coordination of all licensed communications services for national defense through the Emergency Broadcast System. Since then, the FCC has had a unique charge, at least compared with other federal regulatory agencies. In most other government regulatory institutions, the federal agency controls entry into the industry, the nature of services, and the rates charged. In radio and television broadcasting, however, which has become the primary focus of the FCC, the regulatory agency severely restricts entry into the industry, only casually monitors the nature of broadcasting services, and allows rate competition to function. Recent technological innovations have also challenged FCC authority or at least its ability to regulate the industry. Satellite broadcasting, cable systems, home video recording equipment, and copyright problems are only a few of the challenges that the FCC faces. References Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, 1933–1953, 1968. Dictionary of American History, 1976, 3:1–2.

F E D E R A L C O O R D I N AT O R O F T R A N S P O R TAT I O N See EMERGENCY RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION ACT OF 1933.

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FEDERAL CROP INSURANCE ACT OF 1938 The idea of private crop insurance had surfaced in the late nineteenth century when a number of companies tried to protect farmers against losses caused by natural disasters. Well into the 1920s, all of the experiments in private crop insurance continued to be short-lived. In the 1920s, Senator Charles L. McNary began promoting the idea of federal crop insurance. In the early 1930s, after the creation of the Commodity Credit Corporation* and the drought of 1934, the idea of federal crop insurance gained ground, especially when Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace* linked it to his “ever-normal granary:” More droughts in 1936 gave the idea added momentum. Early in 1937, the President’s Committee on Crop Insurance, headed by Wallace, called for a federal crop insurance program covering only wheat. The Federal Crop Insurance Act was passed as Title V of the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1938. The act established a Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) within the Department of Agriculture. The FCIC had a capital stock of $100 million, with an annual treasury appropriation of $6 million for operating costs. Insurance for wheat was authorized in 1939, with growers insured for 50–75 percent of their recorded average yield against losses from natural phenomena. Local committees of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration* administered the program. Participation in the program increased steadily, from 165,775 in 1939 to 371,392 in 1941. Because of poor yield records on many farms, the program proved expensive, with indemnities exceeding premiums by a rate of between 1.52 and 1.68. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt* vetoed a bill adding cotton to the crop insurance program in 1940, he signed an identical bill in 1941. Over the years, the crop insurance program has grown substantially. By the mid-1980s, the FCIC was insuring more than $1.5 billion of crops annually. Reference Randall A. Kramer, “Federal Crop Insurance, 1938–1982,” Agricultural History 57 (1983): 181–200.

F E D E R A L C R O P I N S U R A N C E C O R P O R AT I O N See FEDERAL CROP INSURANCE ACT OF 1938. FEDERAL DEFENSE SPENDING Federal defense spending, particularly during times of war, has been a major factor in the U.S. economy. Defense contracts with major U.S. industries such as Boeing, Raytheon, DOW Chemical, among others, contribute to the development of newer defense systems and more sophisticated military equipment. Since World War I, through World War II and the Cold War, and into the present, federal defense spending, particularly considering its size, contributes immensely to the profitability of defense industries and their subsidiaries, and thus to the overall national economy. Reference Leon V. Sigal, The Changing Dynamics of U.S. Defense Spending, 1999.

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F E D E R A L D E P O S I T I N S U R A N C E C O R P O R AT I O N Of all the agencies to emerge from the New Deal*, none has been as enduring or as universally accepted as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). During the 1920s, more than 5,600 banks failed because of the problems of undercapitalization, overextension, conflicting federal and state supervision, and the prevailing depression in American agriculture. These failures tied up more than $2 billion in assets and imposed financial ruin on large numbers of depositors. When the stock market crashed in 1929 and securities values began their long descent, the value of bank assets dropped precipitously, triggering public panic in 1931 and 1932. Several thousand more banks closed. By then, the problem of closed banks had become a political as well as an economic issue, and public demand for some solution grew intense. Even when closed banks had some assets left, the process of receivership was long and complicated, sequestering people’s money for years. Because private bankers vehemently opposed any federal deposit guarantee and state banking departments did not have the resources to implement any meaningful program, people began turning to the federal government for relief. By 1932, a number of deposit guarantee proposals had been introduced to Congress. From them came the Banking Act of 1933*. The FDIC was one of the most significant features of the bill. Under provisions of the Banking Act of 1933, a Temporary Deposit Insurance Fund, with $150 million from the federal government, would begin operations on January 1, 1934. Only banks certified as sound would be eligible to join, and individual accounts would be insured up to a maximum of $2,500. All national banks had to join the program, and all state banks joining the program would have to become part of the Federal Reserve System* by July 1, 1936. On July 1, 1934, the permanent FDIC would replace the Temporary Deposit Insurance Fund. Subsequent legislation in 1934 extended the life of the Temporary Deposit Insurance Fund by one year, raised the insurance on individual accounts to $5,000, and postponed compulsory Federal Reserve membership for insured state banks until July 1, 1937. After a crash program of Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) loans and investments to approximately 2,000 weak banks in 1933, the insurance program went into effect on January 1, 1934. The FDIC itself started on July 1, 1935, under the direction of Leo Crowley. For the first fifty-five years of its existence, the FDIC was an unparalleled success. By 1935, more than 14,400 banks had joined the corporation. Bank failures dropped to sixty-one in 1934 and thirty-two in 1935. Never again would such failures exceed eighty-five in a year. Although the requirement that all FDIC banks join the Federal Reserve System was postponed several times and finally eliminated in 1939, the FDIC did impose a measure of unity on the dual banking system, helped eliminate depositor panics and rashes of bank failures, and protected the money supply from catastrophic fluctuations. But in the 1980s, the FDIC fell victim to a new banking crisis. Congress passed the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act* of 1980, which substantially reduced government regulation of the banking and savings and loan industries. The legislation occurred just when the massive federal spending of the Ronald Reagan* administration fueled a decade of economic growth.

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Thousands of financial institutions exercised poor judgment and greed in making bad loans, especially to foreign countries; others were actually defrauded by poor and criminal management. Late in the 1980s, the bottom fell out of the petroleum and real estate markets. Hundreds of financial institutions that had invested in them approached bankruptcy. By 1991, the reserve funds of the FDIC had been almost completely wiped out, and Congress was debating a series of measures to restore solvency to the FDIC. During the Great Recession* of 2008–2010, the FDIC oversaw guaranteeing the funds amid the failure of hundreds of banks. References Helen M. Burns, The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms: 1933– 1935, 1974. James S. Olson, “The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1932–1940,” Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1972.

F E D E R A L E M E R G E N C Y R E L I E F A D M I N I S T R AT I O N Congress authorized the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) under the Emergency Relief and Construction Act* of May 12, 1933; the act appropriated $500 million for immediate relief to the unemployed. Headed by social worker Harry L. Hopkins*, the agency was partly modeled on the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration that Franklin D. Roosevelt* had set up in New York when he was governor. The FERA provided mostly direct relief, rather than work relief, through grants-in-aid to the states; the states, which were expected to provide matching funds, then expended the money as they saw fit. The FERA also sponsored several coordinating bodies to advise the states, including a women’s work division and a program of workers’ education*. Perhaps the most innovative program within the FERA was the short-lived Civil Works Administration* (CWA), which provided 4 million work relief jobs in the winter of 1933–1934 and inspired some of the programs of the later Works Progress Administration* (WPA). From the start, the Roosevelt administration had viewed the FERA as a temporary stopgap response to emergency conditions. In 1935, after the New Deal* was well under way, the Social Security Administration* took over the FERA’s direct relief functions and the WPA took on its work relief responsibilities; at that point, the FERA was officially discontinued. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Arthur Burns and Edward A. Williams, Federal Work, Security, and Relief Programs, 1971. Betty Reid Mandell, ed., Welfare in America, 1975.

F E D E R A L FA R M B A N K R U P T C Y A C T O F 1 9 3 4 The Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act of 1934, also known as the Frazier–Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act, was the single most important legislative accomplishment of William Lemke, Republican congressman from North Dakota. Long concerned about

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the plight of farmers, especially declining commodity prices and land values along with their increasing debt burdens, Lemke was determined to bring relief after his election to the House of Representatives in 1932. Lemke marshaled overwhelming support for a farm bankruptcy bill in the Midwest, even though Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* administration initially opposed it. The bill that Lemke introduced and successfully promoted in Congress involved a modification in bankruptcy laws for farmers whose debts so exceeded the value of their property that their financial outlook was hopeless. It provided for legal machinery in each county to permit an appraisal of the property of a debt-ridden farmer. The federal courts could then scale down the farmer’s debts until they compared favorably with the current value of his property. The farmer would then be able to continue farming on the same land with the same equipment and chattels. If he succeeded in retiring his debts at the scaled-down figure, the property would be his and all encumbrances against it would be removed. In its final form, the Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act permitted farmers to repurchase their properties at a newly appraised value with small annual payments, at an interest rate of 1 percent, distributed over a six-year period. If creditors opposed such a settlement, the farmer could retain possession of the land for five years and no foreclosure could occur. The Supreme Court held the law unconstitutional in 1935 in Louisville Joint Stock Land Bank v. Radford on the grounds that it deprived creditors of their property without due process of law. Lemke and Lynn J. Frazier then came back in August 1935 with the Farm Mortgage Moratorium Act of 1935 (Frazier–Lemke Act of 1935). The latter law provided for a three-year moratorium against seizures for farmers who secured court permission. Debt-ridden farmers were then able to keep possession of their land by paying a fair rental rate determined by the court. Reference Edward B. Blackorby, Prairie Rebel: The Public Life of William Lemke, 1963.

F E D E R A L FA R M B O A R D The Federal Farm Board was Herbert Hoover’s* answer to the farm bloc* demand for McNary–Haugenism* and the export–debenture plan*. Created by the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929*, the Federal Farm Board was an eight-member agency equipped with a $500 million revolving loan fund to reduce speculation, control surpluses, and prevent wide fluctuations in prices. The loan money would go to hundreds of farm cooperatives that would then assist farmers to act in unison to market their products. For Hoover, the Federal Farm Board was perfect; it represented a federal initiative without federal domination. Alexander Legge*, a former assistant to Bernard Baruch* in the War Industries Board,* became the first chairman of the Federal Farm Board. Almost immediately, the board, working to stimulate the growth of farm cooperatives, generously lent money at 90 percent of cotton’s current market value. More and more farmers joined cooperatives, and the cooperatives became more and more influential. Late in 1929, after the stock market crashed, the Federal Farm

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Board helped to stabilize cotton prices by lending on the crop at 16 cents a pound. Soon the board was doing the same for wheat, corn, grapes, citrus, dairy products, livestock, and wool. In effect, this amounted to price fixing by the federal government. In February 1930, when wheat prices fell to $1.00 a bushel, the Farm Board encouraged the formation of a Grain Stabilization Corporation to stop the price fall by making direct purchases on the open market. In May 1930, a Cotton Stabilization Corporation was formed to perform the same function. Critics charged Hoover with fostering socialism*. Although the Federal Farm Board lent hundreds of millions of dollars and the stabilization corporations purchased enormous volumes of commodities, these policies failed to stem the collapse of prices. Wheat dropped from $1.02 a bushel in July 1929 to 37 cents a bushel in June 1932; cotton plummeted from 17 cents to 5 cents a pound; and corn fell from 91 cents to 31 cents a bushel. With no authority to impose compulsory cuts in production or to mandate rational marketing, the Federal Farm Board simply did not have the power to deal effectively with the farm crisis. References David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 1979. James H. Shideler, “Hoover and the Farm Board Project,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 42 (March 1956): 710–729.

F E D E R A L FA R M L O A N A C T O F 1 9 1 6 During the first administration of President Woodrow Wilson*, the progressive* movement gained momentum. One of its most longstanding proposals had been to improve the availability of credit to farmers. The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 created the Federal Land Bank System, complete with twelve regional federal land banks to provide low-interest loans to farmers, usually for mortgages on land purchases. Reference Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Movement, 1954.

F E D E R A L H I G H WAY A C T O F 1 9 2 1 In 1916, Congress passed the Federal Aid Road Act to help states construct adequate rural roads so that mail delivery could be improved. The automobile* revolution was making it clear, however, that a vastly improved highway system was absolutely necessary. Prodded by the farm bloc* and the American Automobile Association, Congress passed the Federal Highway Act of 1921. The legislation had states designate a system of interstate and intercounty roads that would receive federal funding. Federal spending for highway construction went from $19.5 million in 1920 to $88 million in 1923. Highway expansion greatly stimulated the automobile industry. Reference Warren J. Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910–1945, 1979.

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F E D E R A L H I G H WAY A D M I N I S T R AT I O N In 1950 a total of 79,000 motor vehicles were registered in the United States. That number increased to 468,500 in 1910 and 26 million in 1929. It was 32.4 million by 1940 and 150 million by 1990. Over the course of the twentieth century, American motorists demanded more and better highways. The Post Office Appropriation Act of 1912 provided the first major commitment of federal funds to highway construction, but the modem era began with passage of the Federal Aid Road Act* of 1916, which designated the states as recipients of the funds and required each state to organize a highway department. The Federal Highway Act* of 1921 provided an enormous boost in federal highway spending and designated 7 percent of mileage as the U.S. highway system. It was administered by the Bureau of Public Roads. The major infrastructural improvement in the American transportation system was the interstate highway system. Thomas H. MacDonald, head of the Bureau of Public Roads in the 1920s and 1930s, first sketched an outline of an interstate system in 1939, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower pushed the idea during his administration. Congress passed the Interstate and Defense Highway System Act in 1956. The law established a Highway Trust Fund to finance construction and maintenance and created, in 1957, the Federal Highway Administration to supervise the new federal highway system. In 1967 the Federal Highway Administration became part of the Department of Transportation. Reference Federal Highway Administration, America’s Highways, 1776–1976: A History of the Federal Aid Program, 1976.

FEDERAL HOME LOAN BANK ACT OF 1932 By the summer of 1932, the unemployment rate was reaching catastrophic proportions, and the Herbert Hoover* administration was desperate to find some means of creating jobs. Because administration officials were convinced that the country was facing mainly a crisis of confidence and severe shortages of credit, they proposed creating a new federal banking system to stimulate the construction industry. President Hoover recommended such a system in his address to Congress on December 8, 1931, and Congress passed the Federal Home Loan Bank Act the following July. Hoover signed it into law on July 22, 1932. The law established a five-person Home Loan Bank Board and created a system of government banks to discount home mortgages. The Federal Home Loan Bank received $125 million in capital to discount the home mortgages held by building and loan associations, insurance companies, and savings banks. The administration believed that the banks would make the market for mortgages more liquid and revive the construction industry. Although the Federal Home Loan Bank system did provide some liquidity to the home mortgage market, it did little to revive what had become a moribund construction industry. References David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 1979. James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977.

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F E D E R A L H O U S I N G A D M I N I S T R AT I O N The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was established under the provisions of the National Housing Act* passed in June 1934. The act was intended to encourage investment in housing construction, provide employment, and increase demand for manufacturing for the housing industry. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* wanted a federal program to help revive the industry—but without large expenditures and without involving government directly in construction and financing. The act set up the FHA to insure loans made by private institutions to middle-income families that wanted to repair their homes or build new ones. Despite opposition from building and loan associations, which held a favorable position in the mortgage market, Congress passed the measure. In addition to insuring financial institutions against losses on improvement and mortgage loans, the act included provisions authorizing the federal housing administrator to establish national mortgage associations to buy up mortgages by issuing notes or other obligations. Savings and loan associations and federal home loan banks were insured through the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation* (FSLIC) that was established under the new law. By greatly reducing the risks of financing housing, the FHA helped to stimulate the modernization of existing structures, but new home construction did not increase to the anticipated extent, and the private sector generally ignored the invitation to establish mortgage associations. From the beginning, the agency was reluctant to insure mortgages in blighted neighborhoods, especially in the inner city, or to insure rental housing ventures. Its conservative policies, critics charged, helped encourage the exodus from central cities and led to the restrictive covenants that assisted residential segregation. Not until the late 1930s did the FHA move aggressively into new home construction. In 1938, amendments. to the National Housing Act* of 1934 substantially eased down payment requirements on new home financing and increased the FHA’s financing limit to $3 billion. That number became $4 billion in 1939. From 1934 to 1940, the FHA helped homeowners repair or modernize 1,544,217 houses. The FHA also specialized in single-family home construction, increasing its volume from 220,000 in 1937 to 394,000 in 1940, an amount greater than the construction in 1929. Between June 1934 and December 1940, the FHA extended $4.076 billion in insured loans. Its effect was to reduce the need for second and third mortgages on homes and to make owning a home more affordable to larger numbers of people. That mission has dominated FHA programs ever since its inception. References Gertrude S. Fish, The Story of Housing, 1979. Mark I. Gelfand, A Nation of Cities, 1975. Samuel I. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt 6 (1941): 530–532.

F E D E R A L I N T E R M E D I AT E C R E D I T B A N K S Y S T E M On March 4, 1923, President Warren G. Harding signed into law the Federal Intermediate Credit Act, a bill for which the farm bloc* had been campaigning since 1921. The War Finance Corporation* had been providing intermediate credit to

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troubled farmers, but farmers wanted the program institutionalized. The new law established twelve federal intermediate credit banks, one in each Federal Reserve district. The Federal Farm Loan* Board supervised the new banks. Each had $5 million in capital with which to make loans lasting from six months to three years to farm and livestock marketing cooperatives. Private groups could also establish agricultural credit corporations and apply for loan money. Reference James Shideler, Farm Crisis, 1919–1923, 1957.

FEDERAL MARITIME COMMISSION The Federal Maritime Commission has its roots in the Shipping Act of 1916. It is a five-member commission appointed by the president. They are assisted by a staff of people who specialize in administrative law. Essentially, the Shipping Act of 1916 exempted maritime carriers from the Sherman Antitrust Act* if they agreed to cooperate and subject themselves to federal regulation. The arrangement allows shippers to come together in a variety of joint arrangements, or pools, to stabilize competition and preserve the economic integrity of the industry. After the 1916 legislation, the Shipping Board saw to these duties. The Merchant Marine Act* of 1936 abolished the Shipping Board and replaced it with a United States Maritime Commission, which also had new responsibilities for providing subsidies to the industry. In 1950, the Truman administration separated the functions of regulating oceangoing commerce and promoting the industry, creating a Maritime Administration and a Federal Maritime Board. In 1961, the Kennedy administration further defined it, giving a new Federal Maritime Commission responsibility for regulating commerce and the Maritime Administration responsibility for promoting the industry. Reference Samuel A. Lawrence, United States Merchant Shipping Policies and Politics, 1966.

F E D E R A L N AT I O N A L M O R T G A G E A S S O C I AT I O N Throughout the 1930s, New Dealers struggled to stimulate the housing industry by making frozen real estate markets more liquid. Lending institutions were reluctant to make housing loans because the secondary mortgage market was all but dead. To stimulate the construction industry by expanding mortgage credit, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* asked Jesse Jones* of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) to organize a federal national mortgage association. The National Housing Act* of 1934 provided for the establishment of National Mortgage Associations, and the Federal Housing Administration* (FHA) offered to match private capital in buying the preferred stock of the associations. Private bankers wanted nothing to do with the program, however, being still too cautious, frightened of another liquidity crisis. So in 1938, at the president’s request, Jones established the Federal National Mortgage Association* (“Fannie Mae”) as a subsidiary of the RFC.

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By 1939, Fannie Mae had purchased 26,276 mortgages, totaling more than $100 million. Eight years later, those totals had risen to 66,966 FHA-insured mortgages totaling $271,716,894. Fannie Mae has continued ever since then to provide a secondary market for home mortgages. Reference Jesse Jones, Fifty-Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945, 1951.

FEDERAL OPEN MARKET COMMITTEE In the years following the passage of the Federal Reserve Act* of 1913, the idea of using open market operations—that is, Federal Reserve Bank purchases of member bank bonds—to affect the money supply gradually evolved. The problem, of course, was that there was no central coordination of such policies, each Federal Reserve Bank being free to buy or sell bonds at its own discretion. The Banking Act* of 1935 centralized those powers in the Federal Open Market Committee, which answered only to the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. Since then, the Federal Open Market Committee has provided centralized leadership in decisions to expand or contract the money supply. Reference Helen M. Burns, The American Banking Community and the New Deal Banking Reforms, 1933– 1935, 1974.

FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION Although the unique political coalition that had given rise to the progressive movement* was breaking apart in the 1920s, progressivism still had a great deal of vitality, especially as expressed by the farm bloc* and by groups that still believed in federal regulation. On June 20, 1920, Congress passed the Water Power Act, creating the Federal Power Commission (FPC) and bringing electric utilities under the growing regulatory umbrella. Its original purpose was to exercise general administrative management of water-power sites and similar installations on navigable rivers, public land, and reservations. It issued licenses and permits for the construction of dams, power facilities, reservoirs, transmission lines, and generators. The FPC in the 1920s also regulated the operation of power projects. In 1930, Congress strengthened the FPC, giving it more authority over rates, services, and operations, but until 1935, the commission never made use of its new authority. The Public Utility Holding Company Act* of 1935 amended the Water Power Act of 1920 and renamed it the Federal Power Act. After 1935, the FPC had supervisory control over all electric energy transmitted in interstate commerce regardless of whether the power came from water or fuel sources. The National Gas Act of 1938 gave the FPC authority to regulate natural gas companies engaged in interstate commerce as well. As time passed after World War II, the natural gas role of the FPC came to dwarf its responsibilities for regulating the electricity industry. The energy crisis of the

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1970s only magnified the challenge, since shortages of fuel and price increases plagued the economy. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed the Emergency Natural Gas Act, which directed the FPC to see to it that the eastern United States received adequate, or at least fair, supplies of natural gas. In October 1977, the FPC’s responsibilities were transferred to a new Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which was part of the new Department of Energy*. Reference Richard Lowitt, “The Federal Power Commission,” in Donald Whitnah, ed., Government Agencies, 1983.

FEDERAL RADIO COMMISSION When President Warren G. Harding took office in 1921, there were only two commercial radio* stations in the United States. By 1922, there were more than 300, and during 1922 another 500 started operation. It quickly became obvious that some type of federal regulation was necessary. In 1922, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover* held a conference in Washington for radio executives, who called for government regulation of the airwaves. Subsequent conferences in 1923, 1924, and 1925 led to a voluntary system of licensing through the Department of Commerce and the distribution of frequencies in the 500–1,500 kilocycle range. But the continuing proliferation of radio stations made the voluntary program inadequate. In February 1927, Congress passed the Radio Act. The law declared that the federal government owned the airwaves and established a five-person Federal Radio Commission to license stations; it also prohibited censorship (except of obscene material) and guaranteed equal access to the airwaves for political candidates. The Federal Radio Commission was superseded by the Federal Communications Commission* in 1934. Reference Erik Barnouw, A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States to 1933, 1968.

FEDERAL RESERVE ACT OF 1913 See FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM. FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 in an attempt to bring a measure of stability to the financial markets, especially after the Panic* of 1907 had exposed the weaknesses of an uncontrolled system. The legislation established twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks and allowed them to discount eligible securities from member banks. Such a provision, the system’s supporters hoped, would provide some elasticity to the monetary system. Each Federal Reserve Bank had considerable autonomy, although a central Federal Reserve Board provided a strong advisory role. For the first twenty years of its existence, the Federal Reserve

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System played a minimal role in the economic life of the United States. It did little to nothing to control the speculative mania that afflicted the economy in the 1920s and contributed to the Great Depression*. The Great Depression changed the focus of the Federal Reserve System. It was obvious to all observers that more centralized control of the monetary system was necessary. The Banking Act* of 1935 created a new Board of Governors in Washington that exercised great authority over the open market operations and discount rates of the regional Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve System was becoming an integral part of the New Deal’s* attempt to stimulate the economy without causing price inflation. World War II made that role even more important. During the war, the federal government floated hundreds of billions of dollars of government securities, and through open market operations, the Federal Reserve Banks could exercise increasing levels of influence on the credit markets. Finally, the Employment Act* of 1946 explicitly gave the federal government the responsibility for maintaining full employment and steady prices. The Federal Reserve System has continued to play a central role in that responsibility. Reference Elmer Wood, Monetary Control, 1965.

F E D E R A L S AV I N G S A N D L O A N I N S U R A N C E C O R P O R AT I O N As Title IV of the National Housing Act* of 1934, Congress established the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) to insure the deposits of federal savings and loan associations and also to offer the services of insuring the accounts of other savings and loan associations, building and loan associations, homestead associations, and cooperative banks. During the 1920s, the assets of building and loan and savings and loan institutions had grown by over $6 billion, but most of those assets were invested in the booming real estate market. When that market collapsed in the late 1920s and early 1930s, hundreds of these institutions found themselves with frozen portfolios and had to close. By 1934, when the public and Congress had already approved the idea of a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation* (FDIC) for banks and had seen it go into operation, people were ready to do the same for building and loan associations. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed the National Housing Act on June 28, 1934. Under its provisions, the FSLIC was to insure individual accounts up to $5,000, provided that the participating institution submitted to a thorough examination, paid an annual insurance premium, and agreed to issue securities only with the approval of the FSLIC. When any institution defaulted, each depositor was to receive an amount not in excess of 10 percent in cash, 50 percent of the balance within one year, and the remainder within three years from the date of the default. The Federal Home Loan Bank* System supervised the operations of the FSLIC. By 1940, the FSLIC had insured 2,189 institutions and had paid off depositors in seven defaulted associations. Like the FDIC it proved to be a permanent addition to the federal government’s economic “safety net” during the first forty years of its existence.

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But in the 1970s and 1980s, the FSLIC came on hard times. Rapidly rising oil prices in the 1970s created an inflationary spiral in the economy, raising interest rates to unprecedented peacetime levels. The savings and loan industry was stuck with huge volumes of low, fixed rate mortgages that they had issued in the 1950s and 1960s. The gap between their earning assets and what they had to pay for new funds steadily eroded their capital. Moreover, when deregulation* came to the financial markets in the early 1980s, large numbers of savings and loan managers embarked on risky, speculative ventures to make profits. Many of those ventures were in questionable real estate projects. In the 1980s, when real estate markets weakened and oil prices tumbled, many savings and loans went bankrupt. The FSLIC rescued so many of them that its own capital was severely impaired, requiring hundreds of billions of new capital from the federal government and the industry in the early 1990s. References Monthly Labor Review 39 (1934): 369–370. USA Today, September 6, 1990.

F E D E R A L S U R P L U S C O M M O D I T I E S C O R P O R AT I O N See FEDERAL SURPLUS RELIEF CORPORATION. F E D E R A L S U R P L U S R E L I E F C O R P O R AT I O N President Franklin D. Roosevelt* set up the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation (FSRC) by executive order in 1933 to assist in the distribution of commodities to people on federal relief. The FSRC provided surplus commodities to Harry Hopkins and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration*. From 1933 to 1935, the FSRC distributed $265 million in commodities to the needy. In 1935, its duties were assumed by the new Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation (FSCC), which had been established through an amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933. The FSCC distributed surplus commodities to the needy until 1945, when the program was discontinued. Reference C. Roger Lambert, “Want and Plenty: The Federal Surplus Relief Corporation and the AAA,” Agricultural History 46 (1972): 390–400.

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION When Congress passed the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914, President Woodrow Wilson* viewed it as an important step in implementing the antitrust movement. The law empowered the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to “investigate, publicize, and prohibit all unfair methods of competition.” From the very beginning, however, the FTC was limited by intense business opposition. From 1920 to 1929, the FTC was transformed by the politics of normalcy* from a progressive*, antimonopoly government agency into a probusiness institution. When

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President Warren G. Harding demanded “less government in business and more business in government,” the FTC’s days as a progressive institution were numbered. Businessmen universally condemned the FTC, the federal courts were hostile to its activities, and after 1921, the Republican Congress repeatedly called for restrictions on its authority. The watershed for the FTC came in 1925. In February 1925, President Calvin Coolidge appointed William E. Humphrey* to the FTC, giving conservatives a majority on the commission. The FTC immediately adopted new procedures, ending all sweeping investigations except when definite allegations of unfair practices were evident, proclaiming the need for “informal settlements” rather than costly court suits or agency rulings, and allowing private, preliminary hearings before formal actions began. Humphrey’s pro-business attitudes also inclined him toward allowing business to govern itself through trade association rules. By 1926, business groups were praising the FTC, and progressives were condemning it. The FTC had been completely transformed. The FTC was revitalized in 1935 when the New Deal began its ideological shift away from the idea of a government–business commonwealth back toward the antitrust values of the Progressive* Era. The Robinson–Patman (Federal Anti-Price Discrimination*) Act of 1936 gave the FTC power to prevent large chain stores from receiving price concessions from wholesalers. In addition, beginning late in the 1930s, the FTC also began to address the issue of fraudulent and unfair trade practices. The Wheeler–Lea Act of 1939 and, in the early 1950s, legislation such as the Fur Products Labeling Act, the Flammable Fabrics Act, and the Textile Fiber Products Identification Act strengthened the FTC’s powers to eliminate fraudulent trading practices. The Celler–Kefauver Act* of 1950 gave the FTC new authority to limit business mergers. In the 1970s, the FTC began to address consumer issues. The Magnuson–Moss Act of 1975 empowered the FTC to set industrywide standards of trade behavior, which freed the agency from its longstanding case-by-case approach. References G. Cullom Davis, “The Transformation of the Federal Trade Commission, 1914–1929,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 49 (December 1962). Robert A. Katzmann, Regulatory Bureaucracy: The Federal Trade Commission and Antitrust Policy, 1980.

F E D E R A L W O R K M E N ’ S C O M P E N S AT I O N ACT OF 1916 One of the primary demands of the American labor movement over the years has been to improve safety conditions in the workplace. Throughout much of U.S. history, workers injured on the job had no compensation program, and employers had few incentives to improve safety conditions. During the Progressive* Era, the idea of workmen’s compensation* gained momentum. Its essential provisions called for mandatory workmen’s compensation programs through which employers carried insurance to pay workers who were injured on the job. Businessmen, of course, opposed workmen’s compensation because they viewed the insurance premiums as an extra

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expense. Reformers, by contrast, argued that the program would actually provide an incentive, in the form of lower insurance premiums, to improve safety conditions. The first workmen’s compensation law in the United States was enacted in Maryland in 1902. Other states soon followed, although in each case a battle took place between reformers and businessmen. Mississippi was the last state to enact a workmen’s compensation law in 1948. During the Woodrow Wilson* administration, Congress passed the Kern–McGillicuddy Act, or the Federal Workmen’s Compensation Act, providing workmen’s compensation for federal employees. Reference Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1910–1917, 1954.

F E D E R A L I S T PA R T Y Although the Founding Fathers hated political factionalism and hoped to avoid it in the new republic, their hopes were quite naive, and within a few years of George Washington’s* inauguration, two political parties began to emerge in the United States. The Federalist Party, led by George Washington, Alexander Hamilton*, and John Adams, was committed to a strong central government, as opposed to states’ rights, and believed intensely that the federal government should work to stimulate the banking, commercial, and industrial sectors of the economy. Throughout the 1790s and early 1800s, the Federalist Party called for protective tariffs, a national bank, full funding of the national debt*, and tax policies that helped the rich and well-to-do preserve their investment capital. Not surprisingly, the Federalist Party found most of its political strength in the Northeast, where industry and commerce were rapidly developing. But because of the rise of Jeffersonian and then Jacksonian democracy, the Federalist Party was doomed in the United States. It was an elitist party at a time when political culture was raising the “common people” to the pedestal. Its goals seemed designed to benefit the rich over the poor, the North over the South and West, and business over agriculture. Most voters, however, were working-class farmers. Although John Adams succeeded George Washington as president in the election of 1796, that was the last time a Federalist candidate won. Federalist candidates lost to Democrats Thomas Jefferson* in 1800 and 1804, James Madison* in 1808 and 1812, and James Monroe in 1816. After the election of 1816, the Federalist Party disappeared as a political entity, the victim of the culture of democracy. References James M. Banner, To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789–1815, 1970. Richard Beul Jr., Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815, 1972.

FIRESTONE, HARVEY SAMUEL Harvey Firestone was born in Columbiana, Ohio, on December 20, 1868. He went to public schools and attended a business college in Cleveland. Firestone went to work as a salesman with his uncle’s buggy company. After it went bankrupt in 1896, he decided to go into the business of selling rubber wheels. He set up a

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company that he sold three years later for $40,000. He used that money to move to Akron and establish the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which manufactured tires for bicycles and buggies. Firestone developed a pneumatic rubber tire to replace the solid rubber tire in 1903, and in 1906 Henry Ford* placed a large order for them for his automobile* company. The two men soon became close friends. In 1907, Firestone invented a disposable rim that allowed a flat tire to be changed. From 1901 to 1913, Firestone sales went from $100,000 a year to $15 million. During the 1920s, Firestone slashed prices for tires, developed the “balloon tire” that became standard on automobiles, promoted the trucking industry, and bitterly refused to negotiate with labor organizers. In 1928, he also pioneered the “one-stop” service store around the country, where consumers could purchase gasoline, oil, tires, automobile parts, and automobile repairs. By the time of World War II, there were more than 600 of the Firestone stores in the United States. By 1937, despite the Great Depression*, Firestone’s total sales exceeded $156 million. Firestone died on February 7, 1938. References Harvey Firestone, Men and Rubber, 1926. Alfred Lief, Harvey Firestone, 1951. New York Times, February 8, 1938.

FISHER, FREDERICK JOHN Frederick Fisher was born on January 2, 1878, in Sandusky, Ohio. His father was a blacksmith and wheelwright; when he was 14, young Fisher left school and went to work in his father’s business. Fisher was adept as a carriage maker. In 1902, he moved to Detroit and took a job as a draftsman for a large automobile* body manufacturer. Five years later, Fisher was the plant superintendent. With his brother Charles, Fisher founded the Fisher Body Company in Detroit in 1908. Instead of adapting carriage bodies for automobiles, Fisher designed bodies specifically for automobiles, and manufacturers found his products sturdy and efficient. By 1916, Fisher Body was manufacturing 370,000 units a year, and in 1919, General Motors* (GM) bought a controlling interest in the company. During the 1920s, Fisher Body constructed twenty factories around the country and became the most successful of GM’s divisions. By 1925, the company was making 425,000 bodies a year and the company trademark, “Body by Fisher,” was familiar throughout the United States. In 1926, GM bought the remaining shares in Fisher Body. By the end of the decade, the assets of the Fisher family—Frederick Fisher and his brothers— exceeded $500 million. Fisher died on July 14, 1941. References New York Times, July 15, 1941. Alfred P. Sloan Jr., My Years with General Motors, 1969.

FISHER, IRVING Irving Fisher, a leading economist at Yale University, was born February 27, 1867, at Saugerties, New York. He earned an undergraduate degree and Ph.D. in

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economics at Yale. Fisher’s dissertation became a landmark in the development of mathematical economics. Fisher took a teaching position at Yale in 1890 and became full professor in 1898. From 1894 to 1929, he published widely in scholarly journals on bimetallism, the theory of utility and prices, interest, and capital. A serious bout with tuberculosis left Fisher with an extraordinary interest in health. He became a crusader for exercise, proper diet, relaxation therapy, and the avoidance of tobacco and alcohol. He played an important role in the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition*) and campaigned vigorously for the League of Nations. In 1928, Fisher published The Money Illusion to educate laymen about prices and money. The stock market crash* of 1929 caught him by surprise, however, wiping out his personal fortune and eventually destroying much of his reputation as a leading economist. In February 1930, he wrote an optimistic book about the crash, The Stock Market Crash and After, in which he argued that recovery was imminent. Two years later he had to revise his point of view, arguing in Booms and Depressions that devastating shifts in the business cycle could be controlled by the Federal Reserve System*. The depression could be stopped if the federal government would pursue a policy of “reflating the price level up to the average level at which outstanding debts were contracted, and maintaining that level unchanged.” Supported by leading silver monetarists, Fisher urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt* to abandon the gold standard and to try to stabilize currency at the 1926 level. The president’s ill-fated gold-buying scheme in 1933–1934 was one consequence of Fisher’s argument for manipulating price levels through purchases of hard metal. Eventually, Fisher became a strong critic of the New Deal*. He died on April 29, 1947. References W. Fellner et al., Ten Economic Studies in the Tradition of Irving Fisher, 1967. Irving Fisher Jr., My Father Irving Fisher, 1956.

FISK, JAMES James Fisk was born on April 1, 1834, in Bennington, Vermont. A born speculator and manipulator, Fisk sold tickets for his father’s small circus and eventually bought his father out. He also became a jobber in the wholesale dry goods business in New England before going bankrupt in 1865. Fisk then managed to establish a brokerage house—Fisk and Belden—in 1866. He made a quick fortune. He became a director of the Erie Railroad and issued millions of dollars of new stock. Some of the money actually went into the railroad, but much of it was used for incredibly speculative ventures. In 1869, Fisk engineered a scheme to corner the world’s gold supply. When it failed, he was left with millions of dollars of contracts that he simply repudiated. He made and lost several fortunes during his lifetime and was widely recognized throughout the country as the most unscrupulous businessman of his time. Fisk was murdered on January 7, 1872, by a jealous rival in a love triangle. Reference W. A. Swanberg, Jim Fisk: Career of an Improbable Rascal, 1939.

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FITZGERALD, ALBERT Albert Fitzgerald was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1906. He went to work for General Electric after high school and joined the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UERMWA). Fitzgerald rose quickly through the union ranks and was elected UERMWA president in 1941. Although Fitzgerald denied membership in the Communist Party, his politics were decidedly left of center. He became a Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) vice president in 1943, and after the war, he vigorously supported the political career of Henry A. Wallace*, as well as the Progressive Party. In 1949, the CIO expelled Fitzgerald and the UERMWA for being infiltrated by the Communist Party. Despite that experience, Fitzgerald remained at the helm of the UERMWA and in 1970 led the union in a successful strike against General Electric. Fitzgerald died on April 3, 1982. References New York Times, April 4, 1982. Who’s Who in Labor, 1982–1983, 1983.

F I T Z S I M M O N S , F R A N K E D WA R D Frank Fitzsimmons was born in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, on April 7, 1908. He became a truck driver after leaving school, and in Detroit he joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters*, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America. Jimmy Hoffa* was head of the Detroit local, and Fitzsimmons rose through the Teamsters* ranks along with Hoffa. He became vice president of the Teamsters in 1961. In 1967, when Hoffa was imprisoned for jury tampering and fraud, Fitzsimmons became the new president of the union. Fitzsimmons’s own politics were rather conservative, and he tended to be a loyal Republican. He died on May 6, 1981. References New York Times, May 7, 1981. Walter Sheridan, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa, 1972.

F L E T C H E R v. P E C K ( 6 C R A N C H 8 7 , 1 8 1 0 ) Like Dartmouth College v. Woodward* (1819), the case of Fletcher v. Peck helped firmly establish the sanctity of contractual obligations. The case grew out of the Yazoo land frauds of the late eighteenth century. In 1795, members of the Georgia legislature, some of whom had been bribed, granted millions of acres of Georgia’s western lands along the Yazoo River (now in Mississippi) to certain land companies. The next session of the legislature rescinded this grant, but by then, the companies had sold some of the land to innocent third parties. Rescinding the grant left their title to the land in doubt. The question that came before the Supreme Court was whether the act rescinding the original corrupt land grant was valid. For the first time, the Court unanimously ruled that a state law was void because it conflicted with part of the Constitution itself (the contract clause), rather than

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with some federal statute or treaty. Chief Justice John Marshall* argued that regardless of any corruption involved in the original land grant, a grant between a state and a grantee is an executed contract whose original contractual obligations continue. The state may thus not interfere with such a contract. Many have argued that Marshall intentionally misconstrued the Constitution in this case, since the framers’ original intent had probably been to limit state interference in contracts between private citizens, not between citizens and the state itself. In any event, this decision proved unpopular with states’ rights leaders, who accused Marshall of being a land speculator lacking the proper impartiality. The ruling had the effect of strengthening public confidence in contracts and somewhat simplifying conflicting land claims, thereby contributing to economic development in the early nineteenth century. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, 1970.

FLORIDA BOOM During the 1920s, no financial event rivaled playing the stock market for excitement, profit, and crash, except the Florida real estate boom. Early in the 1920s, developers turned to Florida because of its climate, its easy accessibility to the money and population of the Northeast, the Coolidge prosperity and its “get-rich-quick” culture, and the widespread use of the automobile*. In 1922 and 1923, these developers created whole new residential communities in Coral Gables, Miami Beach, Davis Island, Tampa, Sarasota, and St. Petersburg. Investors in on the ground floor of those projects made fortunes. As the news of the enormous profits to be made in Florida real estate spread, a host of speculators, crooks, and naive buyers entered the business. People sometimes bought property “site unseen” based on slick brochures. Land prices doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in a matter of months. But in the summer of 1926, the geometric growth rates began to slow, and the boom collapsed on September 18, 1926, when an enormous hurricane struck South Florida and flooded all the major coastal areas. Housing developments were destroyed, 400 people were killed, and 50,000 people were left homeless. Heavily leveraged and dependent on continuing cash investments, the real estate developments collapsed. By 1927, South Florida was besieged with bank failures and real estate bankruptcies. Real estate bonds secured by new buildings under construction were defaulted, and dozens of Florida cities verged on bankruptcy. The Florida land boom and collapse of the mid-1920s were a rehearsal for the boom and bust that hit the entire economy after 1929. References Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, 1931. Paul Carter, The Twenties in America, 1968.

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F O O D A D M I N I S T R AT I O N Congress passed the Food Control Ad of 1917 after the United States entered World War I. President Woodrow Wilson* appointed Herbert Hoover* to head up a new Food Administration to administer the law. Its purpose was to guarantee the national food supply throughout the war. In addition to stabilizing market prices and purchasing commodities for military use, the Food Administration sponsored various weekly days of fasting from certain products, like meat and wheat. The Food Administration was eminently successful. When the war ended, however, there was no further need for the agency, and it was discontinued in 1919. Reference William C. Mullendore, History of the United States Food Administration, 1958.

F O O D A N D A G R I C U LT U R E A C T O F 1 9 6 2 The chronic problem of overproduction in American agriculture plagued the John F. Kennedy* administration no less than it had those of his predecessors of the previous century. In an attempt to reduce commodity surpluses, Congress passed the Food and Agriculture Act of 1962. The law established a price floor for feed grains at no less than 65 percent of parity* as long as the production of corn, barley, and sorghum was cut by 20–50 percent. After 1963, the law allowed the secretary of agriculture to set a flexible price floor of between 50 and 90 percent of parity. To further induce farmers to cut production, the law appropriated $70 million for converting farm land to conservation and recreational use; provided long-term government financing for rural redevelopment; and allowed the Farmers Home Administration* to offer long-term loans for converting farm land to other purposes. Reference Don F. Hadwiger and Ross B. Talbot, Pressures and Protests: The Kennedy Farm Program and the Wheat Referendum of 1963, 1965.

F O O D A N D A G R I C U LT U R E A C T O F 1 9 6 5 In a continuation of federal policies to reduce the amount of farm land in production, Congress passed the Food and Agriculture Act of 1965, which allowed the secretary of agriculture to pay farmers up to 40 percent of the value of the crops that could have been raised on land taken out of production for wildlife refuges, forest reserves, and public recreation. Reference C. W. Gifford, “What the New Farm Bill Means,” Farm Journal 89 (June 1965): 31–33.

F O O D A N D D R U G A D M I N I S T R AT I O N In 1927, Congress set up the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration to enforce the Pure Food and Drug Act* of 1906 and other existing consumer protection

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legislation. The agency became known as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1930. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act* of 1938 increased the FDA’s powers. The FDA could establish testing and processing standards and also had the power of injunction* to punish recalcitrant businesses and protect the public health. During the 1950s, Congress expanded the FDA’s authority through such legislation as the Pesticide Chemicals Act of 1954, the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, and the Color Additives Amendment of 1960. The Kefauver–Harris Drug Amendment of 1958, which was passed in the wake of the thalidomide disaster in Europe in the 1950s, required extensive testing of new drugs before their release to the consuming public. Reference P. J. Quirk, “Food and Drug Administration,” in James Q. Wilson, ed., The Politics of Regulation, 1980.

FOOD CONTROL ACT OF 1917 The Food Control Act of 1917 gave the president of the United States the authority to regulate both food and fuels for the duration of World War I. Under its provisions, President Woodrow Wilson* established the Food Administration* and the U.S. Grain Corporation. FOOD, DRUG, AND COSMETIC ACT OF 1938 The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 was, along with the Fair Labor Standards Act* of that year, the last major legislation of the New Deal*. By the mid1920s, many reformers believed that the Pure Food and Drug Act* of 1906 needed refining. In 1933, Rexford G. Tugwell*, with the help of Professors Milton Handler of Columbia and David Cavers of Duke, drafted new legislation. The bill greatly expanded government control over the drug and food-processing industry. It specified that drugs making any therapeutic claims contrary to general medical opinion were illegal; that palliatives must be clearly labeled as such and not as cures; that all medical ingredients must be disclosed; that food labels must list all ingredients in order of predominance by weight; that the government could establish identity standards for quality and fill of containers; and that the government could inspect factories to make sure that the law was being obeyed. The food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries opposed the bill and lobbied against it successfully. Senator Royal Copeland of New York then became a major sponsor of the measure. For the next five years, Copeland fought for the measure, and two events gradually brought the legislation more and more support. Over the years, the industries concerned had become frightened over the increasing volume of state regulatory laws, which they found diverse and often contradictory. They therefore began favoring some type of federal legislation as a means of rationalizing the problem. In addition late in October 1937, more than a hundred people died after taking the drug sulfanilamide for venereal disease and strep infections. Produced by

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S. E. Massengill Company, a veterinary medicine manufacturer, the drug did extensive kidney and liver damage in many patients. Under the leadership of Senator Copeland and Representative Clarence Lea of California and with the constant assistance of Walter Campbell, head of the Food and Drug Administration* (FDA), the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act moved through Congress in 1938. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed it into law on June 24, 1938. The law, which is still the country’s basic governing statute, greatly expanded consumer protection. It increased the minimal penalties of the 1906 law and added the power of injunction* to the law’s seizure and criminal sanctions. The FDA could establish food standards that had the effect of law, and cosmetics and therapeutic devices came under government control for the first time. Moreover, the government no longer had to prove fraudulent intent on the part of manufacturers or advertisers of false claims. The law also required all drug manufacturers to convince the FDA of a new drug’s safety before it could be marketed. Finally, the law insisted that trade as well as generic products live up to the new legislation. Reference Charles O. Jackson, Food and Drug Legislation in the New Deal, 1970.

FOOD FOR PEACE ACT OF 1965 The Food for Peace Act of 1965 was an integral part of the foreign and domestic policies of Lyndon B. Johnson’s* Great Society* plan for the United States and the world. The legislation authorized the president to distribute surplus farm commodities to fight famine abroad or to trade stored surpluses for strategic materials in a national emergency. Beyond that, the legislation was designed to provide U.S. assistance to help Third World countries improve their agricultural output by constructing adequate storage facilities, launching scientific research and extension programs, initiating agricultural industries, creating a climate favorable to outside investors, and improving infrastructures so that crops could be marketed. The Food for Peace program is still in effect as an important element of American foreign policy. Reference Peter A. Toma, The Politics of Food for Peace, 1967.

FOOD PRODUCTION ACT OF 1917 When the United States entered World War I* in 1917, the question of commodity production assumed top priority among economic planners. In order to boost food production, Congress passed the Food Production Act of 1917. The law authorized the secretary of agriculture to provide seed and fertilizer to farmers at cost, assist them in the use of pesticides and planting techniques to increase production, and greatly expand the extension service. Reference William C. Mullendore, History of the United States Food Administration, 1958.

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F O O D S TA M P A C T O F 1 9 6 4 In 1939, Congress created the Food Stamp Program within the Department of Agriculture to allow poor people to purchase surplus commodities at retail stores through the use of government-issued stamps. The program was discontinued in 1943, because World War II* virtually eliminated unemployment. Congress reauthorized the food stamp program in 1954, though the Eisenhower administration decided not to implement it. In 1961, however, the John F. Kennedy administration resurrected the program, and Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman launched a pilot project. The program was formalized in 1964 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s* Great Society* antipoverty policies. The law then allowed a family of four making less than $470 a month to receive food stamps, which could be redeemed at retail stores for food, but not for alcohol, tobacco, or nonfood products. The eligibility formula is tied to the Consumer Price Index. By the late 1980s, more than 20 million Americans were participating in the program. Reference Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantage Point, 1970.

F O O D S TA M P P R O G R A M See FOOD STAMP ACT OF 1964. F O R B E S , J O H N M U R R AY John M. Forbes was born on February 23, 1813, in Bordeaux, France, to American parents who were vacationing there. The family had already established a prosperous import–export business between the United States and China. Forbes moved to Canton, China, when he was seventeen to work in the family firm. He also became a partner in Russell and Company, a highly successful Canton trading firm. Forbes returned to the United States in 1836 and made another fortune advising Boston trading firms on how to invest in the China market. He also became a major investor in the Michigan Central Railroad, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad*, the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, and the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad. He died on October 12, 1898. Reference H. G. Pearson, John Murray Forbes: American Railroad Builder, 1911.

FORBES, MALCOLM After Malcolm Forbes inherited his father’s publishing business, he earned a reputation for business accomplishments in his own right and for his flamboyant lifestyle that included lavish parties, hot-air balloon rides, and motorcycle races. Forbes was born on August 19, 1919 in Englewood, New Jersey. He was the son of B. C. “Bertie” Forbes and Adelaide Stevens Forbes. His father, a Scottish

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immigrant, used his success as a Wall Street columnist to found Forbes, a business magazine that quickly gained a wide readership, in 1917. In 1941, Malcolm graduated from Princeton University and two days after receiving his degree, began his own weekly newspaper, the Fairfield Times, in Lancaster, Ohio. He founded a second newspaper the following year and then entered the U.S. Army; he served in Europe during World War II as a staff sergeant of a heavy machine gun unit. After the war, Forbes joined the family business and was soon named vice president of Forbes, Incorporated and associate publisher of the magazine. In 1946, he married Roberta Remsen Laidlaw, and they had five children. Three years later, Forbes plunged into politics and won the election to the borough council in Bernardsville, New Jersey. In 1951, he ran for the New Jersey Senate on the Republican Party ticket and won by a large margin. In 1957, Forbes left the Senate to seek the governorship and campaigned with the promise of no state income tax and no state sales tax. He lost, however, and then concentrated on his job as editor and publisher of Forbes magazine, a position he had assumed in 1954 after his father died. Forbes became president of Forbes, Inc., in 1964 and then diversified his holdings and activities. In the 1960s, he bought a 170,000-acre ranch in Colorado and purchased Hank Siegers Company to form Siegers & Forbes, the largest motorcycle dealership on the East Coast. He also wrote several books including a bestseller, They Went That-a-Way. In 1973, Forbes momentarily traded his office for a gondola and became the first person to fly across America, coast to coast, in a hot-air balloon. He entered motorcycle races with his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and gained a reputation for, as one newspaper stated, “capitalist machismo.” Forbes collected art and precious objects designed by the Russian jeweler Fabergé. He owned houses in New Jersey, Colorado, Tangiers, and the South Pacific. His lavish parties included a $2 million extravaganza in Morocco to honor his own 70th birthday. His 1,000 guests included some of the world’s most prominent businesspeople and celebrities, including Fiat chairman Govanni Agnelli, Australian publishing mogul Rupert Murdoch, television newscaster Walter Cronkite, opera singer Beverly Sills, the former kings of Greece and Bulgaria, and his companion, actress Elizabeth Taylor. By 1990, Forbes magazine reached a circulation of 720,000 and was valued at $600 million. In addition, Forbes’s American Heritage magazine and his newspaper and real estate holdings were valued at over $100 million, while his own worth neared $1 billion. Forbes died from a heart attack on February 24, 1990, at his home in Far Hills, New Jersey. More than 2,500 people turned out for his funeral—from Taylor and former president Richard Nixon to columnist Ann Landers and fifty Hell’s Angels. Publicity surrounded Forbes even in death as numerous reports revealed that the publisher had been a homosexual. Forbes’s friends, however, most remembered him for his spirited life and his exceptional business acumen. Neil Hamilton

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References Malcolm Forbes, Further Sayings of Chairman Malcolm, 1986. Malcolm Forbes, They Went That-a-way, 1988. Christopher Winans, Malcolm Forbes: The Man Who Had Everything, 1990.

FORD, GERALD Gerald Ford was successor to the first U.S. president to resign. A moderate Republican who had been a popular longtime congressional leader, Ford helped heal the country’s wounds after the Watergate scandal. Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Leslie and Dorothy King. In 1915, his mother divorced and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she remarried a paint salesman, Gerald Rudolph Ford Sr., who adopted Ford and changed the boy’s name to Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. Ford attended the University of Michigan on a football scholarship, graduating in 1935. He earned his law degree at Yale University and was admitted to the Michigan bar in 1941. Ford had barely started his practice when the Pearl Harbor attack occurred, and he joined the U.S. Navy. During the war, he served as a gunnery officer and assistant navigator on a light aircraft carrier that was involved in virtually every major battle in the South Pacific, including the Battles of the Gilbert and Marshall islands. After his discharge from the navy in 1946, Ford returned to Grand Rapids, began to practice law, and married Elizabeth Bloomer Warren in 1948; they had four children. In 1948, Ford managed to beat the incumbent and win Michigan’s Fifth Congressional District seat. In Congress, he was appointed to the Public Works Committee and in 1951, moved to the powerful House Appropriations Committee, where, ten years later, he earned considerable influence as the ranking minority member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Ford supported Harry Truman’s foreign policy, endorsing the Marshall Plan, Truman’s Point Four program for aid to underdeveloped countries, and increases in the defense budget. He opposed Truman’s domestic policy, however, especially such pro-labor initiatives as the repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act (1947) and a minimum wage hike. He also voted to override Truman’s veto of the McCarran–Walter immigration bill, which removed the ban against Asian immigration, included screening measures to keep out subversives, and allowed the attorney general to deport immigrants who had communist affiliations. Later, Ford regretted that he did not speak out against the communist witch hunt instigated by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. Ford was an early supporter of Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Republican presidential nomination in the election of 1952. A friend of Vice President Richard Nixon from the time of their service in the House of Representatives together, Ford fought to help him remain as the vice presidential candidate on the Republican national ticket in 1956 and supported his nomination for president in 1960. In 1963, Ford was named chair of the House Republican Conference, a position third in command in the minority leadership.

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After the John F. Kennedy assassination in November 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Ford as one of the two Republican congress members to serve on the Warren Commission, which investigated the murder. Ford, with the help of a commission assistant, published Portrait of the Assassin in 1965 to explain why he fully endorsed the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. During the 1960s, Ford was criticized by African American leaders for voting to weaken civil rights legislation. He opposed the establishment of Medicare and denounced the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty as “a lot of washed-up old programs.” In 1965, he was elected House minority leader. As minority leader, Ford frequently criticized the conduct of the Vietnam War by demanding that the president either unleash American military might to win the war or simply withdraw. After the election of Nixon as president in 1969, Ford was among the administration’s strongest supporters. He argued for Nixon’s “peace with honor” Vietnam policy, the cutting back of social welfare programs, détente with the Soviet Union, the recognition of China, and the imposition of wage and price controls. When two conservative Nixon U.S. Supreme Court nominees were rejected by the Senate, Ford headed a movement to impeach Justice William O. Douglas, the Court’s most liberal member, citing Douglas’s paid activities on behalf of the Parvin Foundation, a charitable organization with alleged ties to organized crime. When critics pressed that Douglas’s actions did not warrant impeachment, Ford replied: “An impeachable offense is whatever the majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment of history; conviction results from whatever offenses two-thirds of the Senate considers to be sufficiently serious to require removal of the accused from office.” Following Vice President Spiro Agnew’s resignation in 1973, President Nixon selected Ford to be the first vice president appointed according to the provisions of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As vice president, Ford defended Nixon throughout the long Watergate scandal ordeal. Upon Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, Ford assumed the presidency. He selected Nelson Rockefeller to be his vice president and kept most of Nixon’s cabinet members, appointing Donald Rumsfeld secretary of defense. In September, President Ford granted “a full, free and absolute pardon” to Nixon on the grounds that he had suffered enough and that his lengthy trial would only serve to arouse “ugly passions.” Facing a depressed economy at home, Ford ineffectively acted to curb inflation and lower the deficit. In foreign affairs, he oversaw the withdrawal of U.S. forces from a defeated South Vietnam with Operation Frequent Wind and worked with both Israel and Egypt to bring about a truce. Ford narrowly escaped two assassination attempts. He lost his bid to be elected president in 1976 when he was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter. After leaving office, Ford concentrated on business ventures and leisure activities. In declining health for several years, Ford died at age 93 in Rancho Mirage, California, on December 26, 2006. ABC-CLIO

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References Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal, 1979. John Hersey, The President, 1975. Richard Reeves, A Ford, Not a Lincoln, 1975.

F O R D , H E N RY Henry Ford was born near Dearborn, Michigan, on July 30, 1863. He attended school until 1878, when he moved to Detroit and worked for several years as a machine shop apprentice and farm machinery repairman. In the mid-1880s, Ford operated a sawmill and in 1887 became the chief engineer for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. Ford’s personal interests rested on the “horseless carriage.” By 1896, he had constructed his first automobile*. He built the “999” racing car in 1903 and organized the Ford Motor Company* that same year. He developed the “Model T” later that decade and in 1908 began producing it on a mass scale, using factory assembly methods that brought international acclaim. The Model T was characterized by lightness, durability, efficiency, and low cost. By 1916, Ford was able to sell the Model T for $350 and still make a profit. It was the only model that Ford produced. By 1916, Ford Motor Company was producing 2,000 Model Ts each day. In 1914, Ford became a pioneer in labor relations by introducing the eight-hour day and the $5-per-day minimum wage as well as a profit-sharing program. Hoping to stave off World War I*, Ford chartered the ship Oscar II and carried a large group of pacifists, feminists, and reformers to Scandinavia. Ford made an unsuccessful bid for a U.S. Senate seat as a Democrat in 1918, campaigning in favor of America’s joining the League of Nations. By that time, Ford had become bitterly anti-Semitic, blaming Jews for his election defeat. During the 1920s, Ford vigorously expanded his corporate operations but faced stiff challenges. He constructed a huge industrial complex at River Rouge in Dearborn, which included a foundry, glass factory, blast furnaces, coke ovens, and assembly facility. He purchased forests in Michigan, iron resources in Minnesota, coal mines in Kentucky and West Virginia, and a rubber plantation in Brazil. In 1929, he bought the Lincoln Motor Car Company and diversified his product line. Diversification was long overdue. Because of competition from the new Chevrolet produced by General Motors, the Model T’s market share of all automobiles sold in America fell from 56 percent in 1921 to 34 percent in 1926. Ford cut the price on the Model T, but it had little effect. Many consumers were drawn to the Chevrolet because it seemed more stylish, even though it was more expensive. Accordingly, in 1926, Ford shut down production at River Rouge for five months to begin production of the Model A. The Model A captured 45 percent of the market by 1929, but the depression cut into sales badly, and Ford discontinued it in 1931. Ford’s reputation as an enlightened entrepreneur did not survive the 1920s and 1930s. He became a bitter opponent of labor unions and the New Deal*. Harboring pro-fascist views, Ford saw the New Deal and the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) as symbols of radicalism and communism. He saw the “sit-down” strikes of 1937 by the United Automobile Workers* (UAW) as the beginning of a revolution;

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unlike General Motors, Ford Motor Company refused to sign a contract with the union. Ford resorted to violence-prone, strike-breaking hoodlums to persuade his workers. Not until 1941, when global war loomed on the horizon and huge production orders were mounting, did Ford acquiesce and recognize the UAW. He died on April 7, 1947. Reference Allan Nevins, Ford, 1954.

F O R D , H E N R Y, I I Henry Ford II was born in Dearborn, Michigan, on September 4, 1917. He spent four years studying sociology at Yale but did not graduate. After several years in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Ford was discharged to return to the Ford Motor Company* to manage its wartime production. He became president of the company in 1945. In 1960, Ford resigned the presidency and became chairman of the board, a position he held until 1980. Ford saved the company from bankruptcy by firing incompetent managers, implementing an effective audit system, retooling the company toward more effective automation systems, and revolutionizing the design system, which produced the successful Falcon, Fairlane, Mustang, and Maverick models in the 1950s and 1960s. The great failure of Henry Ford II’s era was the ill-fated Edsel. By the early 1970s, the Ford Motor Company was the third largest corporation in the United States. Ford died on September 29, 1987. Reference New York Times, September 30, 1987.

F O R D M O T O R C O M PA N Y Henry Ford* established the Ford Motor Company in 1903. In 1908, he introduced the Model T, the only car that he manufactured for the next several years. By 1923, the Model T sold for only $300, and the Ford Motor Company made more than 2 million of them. New Model T sales accounted for 60 percent of the market share in the United States. After 1919, the Ford Motor Company was owned completely by the Ford family. Although Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford, took over as president of the Ford Motor Company in 1919, his father was for all intents the corporate dictator. Edsel Ford remained president until his death in 1943. Henry Ford died in 1947, and Henry Ford II* became president in 1945; he served as president or chairman of the board until 1980. In the mid-1920s, however, the Ford Motor* Company came on hard times, particularly because General Motors introduced the new Chevrolet line, which cut drastically into Model T sales. Ford had to discontinue the Model T in 1926 and soon came out with the four-cylinder Model A. In 1928, however, Chevrolet regained the lead with its new six-cylinder model. Ford discontinued the Model A in 1932, replacing it with a new V-8 model. By the late 1930s, the Ford Motor Company had fallen behind the fledgling Chrysler Corporation* in sales despite introducing the new Lincoln and Mercury models.

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The 1930s was a difficult time for the company in other ways as well. The Great Depression* hurt all automobile* manufacturers, but Henry Ford adamantly refused to recognize the rights of organized labor, which Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* New Deal was ready to protect and promote. Not until 1941, long after General Motors and Chrysler had decided to bargain with the United Automobile Workers* (UAW), did Henry Ford agree, and then only after a costly series of strikes and work stoppages. Henry Ford II took control of the company near the end of World War II. Under his leadership, the Ford Motor Company returned to financial health. He scrapped his grandfather’s management system and introduced people who came to be known as the “Whiz Kids”—experts in statistical and systems analysis. By 1952, the Ford Motor Company had pulled ahead of Chrysler in sales. Apart from the disastrous Edsel model, which was produced for only two years, from 1956 to 1958, the Ford Motor Company introduced a series of highly successful models, including the Thunderbird, Continental, and Mustang, among others. During the 1970s, the company was hurt by the oil crisis and the rising popularity of small, fuel-efficient cars. After a bitter battle for power with Lee Iacocca*, who was fired in 1978, Henry Ford II stepped aside, and Philip Caldwell took control of the company. Under his leadership in the 1980s, the Ford Motor Company once again became highly profitable. After the near collapse of the automobile industry in 2008, Ford developed more innovative fuel-efficient autos. In 2011, it discontinued the Mercury line. Reference Robert Lacey, Ford: The Men and the Machine, 1986.

F O R D N E Y – M C C U M B E R TA R I F F O F 1 9 2 2 On May 27, 1921, President Warren G. Harding signed the Emergency Tariff Act*, which raised the tariffs on twenty-eight agricultural products to protective levels. Convinced that American business needed protection from foreign competition as well, the new Republican administration was committed to raising tariff levels. In the House, the responsibility fell on Joseph Fordney, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. In June 1921, his committee reported out a new tariff bill that was passed by a 288–177 vote along highly partisan lines, Republicans favoring it and Democrats opposing it. In the Senate, Porter J. McCumber of North Dakota headed the push for tariff legislation. The bill that he finally brought to the floor of the Senate contained 2,082 amendments to the House measure, most of them logrolling increases in tariff schedules. The bill was passed in the Senate by a 48–25 vote in August 1922. The Fordney–McCumber bill spent the next month in conference committee, but it was passed by both houses of Congress. Harding signed it into law on September 21, 1922. The law raised general tariff levels approximately 25 percent above the protectionist Payne–Aldrich Tariff of 1909 and allowed the U.S. Tariff Commission to recommend schedule changes of as much as 50 percent without congressional authorization. In the long run, the tariff hurt foreign trade. The U.S. Tariff

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Commission, under the direction of Republicans in the 1920s, recommended only thirty-seven changes in tariff schedules; thirty-two of them were increases. By raising tariff schedules to protectionist levels, the Fordney–McCumber Act triggered retaliatory tariffs against the United States in Europe, reduced the availability of foreign markets for American products, and prevented Europeans from generating the revenues they needed to repay their war and other debts to the United States. Along with the Hawley–Smoot Tariff of 1930, the Fordney–McCumber Tariff contributed to the collapse of the economy after 1929. References Robert K. Murray, The Politics of Normalcy: Governmental Theory and Practice in the Harding– Coolidge Era, 1973. Frank W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 1931.

FOREIGN MINERS ACT OF 1850 On the eve of the gold rush* in California, Hispanic and American Indians vastly outnumbered the Anglo settlers in the territory. When gold was discovered, however, the mass migration brought large numbers of Anglos who soon made up the large majority of the population. Tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants also settled in the gold fields. Resentment of Chinese and Hispanic miners soon surfaced among Anglo settlers, so in 1850, the California state legislature passed the Foreign Miners Act, which prohibited Chinese and Hispanics from working in the gold fields, except as menial laborers. Reference James S. Olson, The Ethnic Dimension of American History, 1979.

FOSTER, WILLIAM ZEBULON William Z. Foster was born in Taunton, Massachusetts, on February 25, 1881. Foster held a variety of jobs and became politically active as a young man, joining the Socialist Party of America* in 1901 but abandoning it in 1909 for the Industrial Workers of the World* (IWW). Foster became an advocate of radical syndicalism and an officer in the Syndicalist League of North America. In 1917, Foster founded the International Trade Union Educational League and led the steel strike of 1919*. In 1921, Foster visited the Soviet Union and joined the Communist Party of America. Foster was the Communist Party’s presidential candidate in the elections of 1924*, 1928*, and 1932*, and he served as national chairman of the party from 1932 to 1957. Indefatigable in his commitment to Marxism, Foster never wavered in his belief that capitalism would inevitably collapse and that revolution would sweep through America. He died in Moscow on September 1, 1961. References William Z. Foster, Pages from a Worker’s Life, 1939. Arthur Zipser, Working Class Giant: The Life of William Z. Foster, 1981.

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FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT Although the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was written and ratified to give citizenship and basic civil rights to the freed southern slaves* after the Civil War*, the federal courts eventually extended its protections to corporate entities as well. For instance, the state of Illinois passed legislation prohibiting long- and shorthaul clauses in railroad transportation contracts, but the Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad brought suit against the state. The case went to the Supreme Court in 1886 (118-557). The Court ruled the law an unconstitutional violation of Congress’s exclusive control over interstate commerce. More important, the Court ruled that corporations were persons under the law; as such, they were entitled to due process protection of life, liberty, and property under the Fourteenth Amendment. Although states could still pass regulatory legislation, such legislation had to be “reasonable,” and the federal courts would decide that reasonableness. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

FOX, WILLIAM William Fox was born on January 1, 1879, in Tulchva, Hungary, to a Jewish family. He immigrated to New York City as an infant, and he attended public schools. Fox worked for a while in the garment district, but in 1904 he scraped together enough money to purchase a nickelodeon theater in Brooklyn. By 1908, he owned fourteen more of them. After 1910, Fox began buying vaudeville theaters and changing half the evening programs to movies. His theaters were large and comfortable, and middle-class attendance at vaudeville programs skyrocketed. In 1912, Fox established the Greater New York Film Rental Company, a distribution enterprise that came into direct competition with Thomas Edison’s* distribution monopoly—the General Film Company. Fox refused to sell out to Edison and prospered as a distributor. He then integrated his business vertically* by going into the production of movies, establishing the Fox Film Corporation in 1915. Fox signed Theda Bara to star in his first production, Carmen. In 1919, he began producing films in Hollywood, California, helping to make the city the film capital of the world. During the 1920s and 1930s, Fox had an enormous effect on the film industry, He produced such films as What Price Glory?, Evangeline, Cleopatra, and Les Miserables. Along with Warner Brothers*, Fox was an early entrant into sound movies, and he acquired hundreds more movie theaters in the 1920s and 1930s. When the Great Depression* hit, Fox owned properties worth more than $300 million, but he was heavily leveraged financially, and the crash* of the stock market ruined him. Fox declared bankruptcy in 1933. Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Film Corporation in 1935. In 1941, Fox spent a short time in prison for trying to bribe a bankruptcy court judge. Fox died on May 8, 1952. References Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, 1989. New York Times, May 9, 1952. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America, 1975.

F R e e s I LV e R

FRASER, DOUGLAS ANDREW Douglas Fraser was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on December 18, 1916; his family immigrated to Detroit, Michigan in 1922. After quitting high school, Fraser went to work in a Chrysler* automobile plant. He also joined the United Automobile Workers* (UAW). Fraser was active in union politics and came to the attention of Walter Reuther*, who made him his administrative assistant in 1951. Fraser played a key role in most UAW contracts with automakers in the 1960s, and in 1970, he became a union vice president. Fraser’s central role in the union contract process continued during the 1970s when he served under Leonard Woodcock and won agreements providing comprehensive health insurance and improved pension benefits. In 1977, Fraser was elected president of the UAW. In 1980, to help save the Chrysler Corporation from bankruptcy, Fraser became a member of the Chrysler board and limited UAW demands on the company. He retired from the UAW in 1983. Douglas Fraser died on February 23, 2008. Reference Time, May 30, 1977.

FRAZIER–LEMKE ACT OF 1934 See FEDERAL FARM BANKRUPTCY ACT OF 1934. FRAZIER–LEMKE ACT OF 1935 See FEDERAL FARM BANKRUPTCY ACT OF 1934. “FREE SHIPS, FREE GOODS” The term “Free Ships, Free Goods” was a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diplomatic principle allowing neutral carriers during wartime to enter into treaties with belligerent nations to permit enemy goods to be shipped unhindered. Because the United States was usually a neutral nation in the 1790s and early 1800s and sought to ship goods to both France and Great Britain, American policymakers strongly supported the principle. Reference Samuel F. Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution, 1935.

F R E E S I LV E R The term “Free Silver” refers to the demand by farmers and western mining interests in the late nineteenth century that the federal government coin both silver and gold in a ratio of 16:1. Because of the deflationary spiral in the late nineteenth-century economy, many farmers in the South and the West believed that free silver would bring about a general price inflation and increase the money they received for their crops. Western silver-mining interests simply wanted the

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federal government to buy more of the product they were producing. People such as William Harvey, in books such as Coin’s Financial School (1894), presented free silver as a panacea for the country’s economic problems. In 1896, the Populist* and Democratic parties both adopted free silver as their major campaign theme, but the overwhelming victory of William McKinley* and the Republicans, who bitterly opposed the idea of the free coinage of silver, dealt a death blow to the idea. Reference Lawrence J. Scheidler, “Silver and Politics, 1893–1896,” Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1936.

F R E E - S O I L PA R T Y By the 1830s, opposition to the expansion of slavery* into the western territories was gaining strength in the North, so much so that a third party—the Liberty Party—appeared in the election of 1840. As the westward movement gained momentum in the 1840s, that opposition became even more pronounced, especially among dissident Whigs who favored abolition, antislavery Democrats in New York (who were known as “Barnburners”) and former members of the Liberty Party. The acquisition of the Mexican Cession as a result of the Mexican War inspired new fears in the North about the expansion of slavery into California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. The opponents of the expansion of slavery coalesced into a third party in the election of 1848, calling themselves the Free-Soil Party and employing the theme of “free-soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.” They also wanted public domain land to be sold at cheap prices, or even given away, to small farmers. In the election of 1848, the Free-Soilers nominated former president Martin Van Buren for president, and he polled 291,000 votes, which divided the Democratic vote and gave the election to Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate. During the early 1850s, the Free-Soil Party officially opposed the Fugitive Slave Law* and claimed that returning escaped slaves to their southern masters was immoral and unconstitutional. John Hale was the Free Soil Party candidate in the election of 1852, but he polled only 156,000 votes. By 1856, with the Republican Party established in the North, the Free Soil Party disintegrated. The Republicans also opposed the expansion of slavery in the territories, and most Free-Soilers simply melted into the Republican Party. References Michael Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s, 1978. Joel H. Sibley, The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics before the Civil War, 1985.

FREE TIMBER CUTTING ACT OF 1878 See TIMBER CUTTING ACT OF 1878.

“FReeDoM oF tHe seAs”

FREE TRADE Free trade is an economic arrangement whereby countries do not place restrictions on imports and exports. Free trade relies on open markets and lax tariff policies. although in some instances some barriers do exists, such as taxes, import quotas, and regulations, protocols and trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement* and the treaties of the European Union, free trade is relatively unhindered. Critics of free trade argue that it hurts domestic industry by lowering its profitability when foreign competition is unrestricted. Reference Douglas A. Irwin, Free Trade under Fire, 2002.

FREEDMEN’S BUREAU As the Civil War came to a close, considerable sentiment among Radical Republicans in the North favored helping the recently emancipated slaves adjust to their new lives. Some of those Republicans were simply altruistic, wanting to give African Americans in the South a new lease on life. Others were more politically motivated, hoping to give the Republican Party a new constituency in the South. The federal government established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in March 1865 as a temporary agency to provide basic economic, medical, and educational assistance to black southerners. The need to assist African Americans became more urgent in 1866 when various southern states began enacting “Black Codes”—legislation designed to tie black people to the land. Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Act over President Andrew Johnson’s veto on July 16, 1866. During the years of Reconstruction*, against much opposition from southern whites, the Freedmen’s Bureau established schools, medical clinics, legal offices, and agricultural stations for the recently emancipated African Americans of the South. The presence of Union troops in the southern states protected Freedmen’s Bureau agents, who were labeled “carpetbaggers” by local whites. The Freedmen’s Bureau, however, did not survive Reconstruction. By 1877 federal troops were withdrawn from the last of the southern states, and as those troops left, so did most Freedmen’s Bureau agents. References Roger L. Ranson and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation, 1977. James Roark, Masters without Slaves, 1977.

“FREEDOM OF THE SEAS” “Freedom of the seas” has long been an American diplomatic principle. Dating from the American Revolution*, the principle stated that “free ships make free goods”—in other words, that neutral ships may freely carry noncontraband goods to belligerent destinations. The United States defined “contraband” as weapons and ammunition, not naval stores or food. During the early history of the United

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States, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain frequently protested the principle, arguing that it amounted to a diplomatic excuse for American economic interests trying to profit from war. Reference Samuel F. Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 1949.

F R I C K , H E N R Y C L AY Henry Clay Frick was born on December 19, 1849, in West Overton, Pennsylvania. His grandfather owned a very successful whiskey distillery, and after quitting school, Frick got a job as a bookkeeper there. Frick had an eye for opportunity, and he observed that the steel industry was growing in western Pennsylvania and that the demand for coke was going to boom as well. By 1870, he was building coke ovens in the region. With financial backing from the Mellon* family, he established the H. C. Frick Coke Company in 1870. Within a decade, Frick was operating more than a thousand coke ovens and was a millionaire. In 1881, Frick merged with the Carnegie Steel Company and began his partnership with Andrew Carnegie*. Frick became chairman of the board of Carnegie Steel in 1887 and rapidly integrated the company, horizontally* and vertically*. A falling-out between Carnegie and Frick took place after Frick’s heavy-handed approach to the Homestead* strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton detectives hired by the company killed a number of strikers. Frick himself was shot and stabbed during the strike by a deranged anarchist. Public opinion shifted decidedly against the company, and Carnegie never forgave Frick for the incident. In 1894, Frick resigned. By that time, he was worth more than $60 million. He later played a role in the formation of the U.S. Steel Corporation* and served on its board of directors. Frick died on December 2, 1919. Reference George Harvey, Henry Clay Frick: The Man, 1928.

F R I E D M A N , M I LT O N Milton Friedman was born in New York City on July 31, 1912. He graduated from Rutgers University in 1932 and received a master’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago in 1933. In 1946 Friedman completed a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University. Friedman then built his reputation as a monetary economist while working as a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, becoming one of the leading lights of the “Chicago School” of economics. Friedman’s intellectual theories revolve around the notion that expansion and contraction of the money supply are responsible for swings in the business cycle and for changes in the nation’s level of production, employment, and spending. For Friedman, if the money supply expands too rapidly, the result is inflation because of increased consumer spending relative to the quantity of goods and services available. On the other hand, if the money supply decreases relative to the level of

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output, production will decrease, unemployment will rise, and consumer spending will slow. For Friedman and other monetarists, the ideal economic world is one in which the rate of growth of the money supply equals the rate of growth in production. Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976. Friedman died on November 26, 2006, in San Francisco, California, aged 94. Reference Kurt Luebe, ed., The Essence of Friedman, 1987.

FRONTIER The term “frontier” in American history has traditionally referred to a region of the country in which population density was less than two persons per square mile—the area beyond the reach of small farmers. The frontier line in American history was continually pushed west, and the people who pushed it west were explorers, ranchers, miners, and farmers. According to the writings of historian Frederick Jackson Turner, the frontier in American intellectual history served to shape American culture by emphasizing the values of individualism, pragmatism, and self-reliance. References Gilbert C. Fite, The Farmer’s Frontier, 1865–1900, 1966. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, 1893.

FUEL EFFICIENCY The notion of fuel efficiency grew out of the Arab oil embargo* of 1973 and the resultant shortages and rising costs of fuel. The automobile industry developed new technologies to use fuel more efficiently rather than rely on the prior model that had relied on cheap gasoline supplies. Compact models were developed for consumers who preferred more mileage per gallon. Rising fuel costs in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries led to further innovations, such as the hybrid or fully electric automobiles, as the automobile industry realized that fuel efficiency was a major selling factor for people looking to save on fuel costs. Reference Jason K. Bernard, Fuel Efficiency, 2011.

F U G I T I V E S L AV E A C T O F 1 8 5 0 When the Treaty of Guadalupe–Hidalgo ended the Mexican War* in 1848, it also brought a huge amount of territory into the United States. Many northerners were dead set against allowing slaves into California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, whereas southerners were just as committed to doing so. The issue triggered bitter debates in Congress, which were not resolved until the Compromise of 1850*. The compromise allowed California to enter the Union as a free state and allowed the principle of popular sovereignty—residents’ of each

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territory deciding the issue for themselves—to prevail in the rest of the territories. To appease the South, the compromise also included the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it easier for southerners to recover slaves who had escaped to the North. The law placed fugitive slave cases under federal jurisdiction, paid a $10 fee to federal commissioners for each slave they returned, denied jury trials to fugitive slaves, prohibited fugitive slaves from testifying on their own behalf, permitted federal commissioners to organize posses to capture the slaves, and punished federal marshals who refused to cooperate with a $1,000 fine. The measure produced a storm of protest throughout the North. Eight northern states passed “personal liberty laws” prohibiting state officials from assisting in returning fugitive slaves. Free blacks in the North organized to oppose the law, and anti–Fugitive Slave Act riots and demonstrations erupted in northern cities in 1851. In spite of the opposition, most of the 1,000 or so fugitive slaves living in the North in 1850 were eventually returned to their owners. The issue, however, inspired real acrimony between the North and the South. The issue was resolved, constitutionally at least, when Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott* decision declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and in essence authorized slave owners to take their slaves anywhere they wanted in the United States. Reference W. Stanley Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860, 1968.

FULLER, ALFRED CARL Alfred C. Fuller was born on January 13, 1885, in Wellsford, Nova Scotia, Canada. After his graduation from high school, Fuller’s family moved to Somerset, Massachusetts. He got a job with the Boston Elevated Railroad Company and in 1905 went to work as a salesman for the Somerville Brush Company. The next year, Fuller founded his own company, the Capital Brush Company. In 1910, he changed its name to the Fuller Brush Company and began advertising in national magazines and employing salesmen nationwide to market cleaning brushes. From 1911 to 1924, company sales increased from $40,000 a year to $12 million, and the “Fuller Brush Men” were ubiquitous, door-to-door salesmen in middle-class America. By 1930, Fuller had 3,600 salesmen combing the countryside and working out of 200 branch offices. In 1943, Fuller stepped down as president, and his son took over. He remained as chairman of the board and died in December 1973. References Current Biography, 1950. Who Was Who in America, 1973.

F U LT O N , R O B E R T Robert Fulton was born on November 14, 1765, in Little Britain, Pennsylvania. He was a gifted machinist and gunsmith, and in 1783, he went to Philadelphia to

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work as a draftsman and artist. Fulton lived and traveled in Europe from 1786 to 1805. There he acquired an interest in science and technology. Fulton had a special interest in canal construction, and in 1796, he wrote A Treatise on the Improvement of Canal Navigation. He was a strong advocate of cast-iron bridges and aqueducts, and he invented a submarine in 1801. In 1805, he returned to the United States. Fulton then spent his time designing steamboats; in 1807, he constructed the Clermont. He demonstrated its usefulness by taking it up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany in August 1807. The steamboat transformed water transportation in the United States by allowing the flow of goods and passengers upstream as well as down. Fulton died on February 24, 1815. Reference Viktor Virginskii, Robert Fulton, 1765–1815, 1976.

F U N D I N G T H E N AT I O N A L D E B T In his First Report on the Public Credit in 1790, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton* wanted to deal with the United States’ foreign debt of $11,710,379 and its domestic debt of $40,414,086. He wanted to fund the debt at par value and allow creditors to exchange depreciated bonds for new interest-bearing securities at face value. Such a proposal would restore the credit reputation of the new government and give business and commercial groups a stake in the new government. The proposal to fund the foreign debt enjoyed near unanimous support in Congress, but the plan to fund the national debt triggered a storm of protest from small investors who already had sold their bonds at badly discounted values. They argued that only speculators would benefit from the proposal. James Madison* of Virginia proposed discriminating between the original holders of the bonds and the speculators, but the logistics of that idea were impossible. Despite the opposition, the measure to fund the debt eventually passed Congress and was signed by President George Washington*. Reference Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government, 1970.

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G GADSDEN PURCHASE Within a few years of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe–Hidalgo of 1848, the United States and Mexico developed an internal disagreement over the exact boundary between present-day Arizona and New Mexico and Mexico. The United States laid claim to nearly 30,000 square miles of territory, a claim that became more important when railroad entrepreneurs began planning a transcontinental railroad from New Orleans to southern California. Most of them believed that the line would pass through the disputed territory. In May 1853, James Gadsden traveled to Mexico to negotiate a settlement. The terms of the agreement were worked out over the next several months, recognizing the United States’ claim to 29,640 square miles of land in the Mesilla Valley south of the Gila River. In return, Mexico received a payment of $10 million. Reference Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915, 1973.

GALBRAITH, JOHN KENNETH John Kenneth Galbraith was born on October 15, 1908, on a farm in Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1931 and then went to graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in economics in 1934. Except for a year at Princeton (1939–1940), four years in Washington during World War II, and a tour as ambassador to India (1961–1963), Galbraith spent virtually his entire professional career in the economics department at Harvard University. A leading liberal economist trained in Keynesian* values, Galbraith gained public popularity in 1958 with his book The Affluent Society, a look at America through the lens of the consumer culture. His 1967 book The New Industrial State argued that the modem industrial economy, whether communist or capitalist, generates similar bureaucratic systems and organizational principles that will eventually overwhelm ideologies. Galbraith was an adviser to John F. Kennedy* and Lyndon B. Johnson*, and he was an early critic of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Galbraith died on April 29, 2006, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 97. References John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times: Memoirs, 1981. John S. Gambs, John Kenneth Galbraith, 1975.

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G A L L AT I N , A B R A H A M A L F O N S E A L B E R T Albert Gallatin was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 29, 1761. He graduated from the Geneva Academy in 1779 and then emigrated to Massachusetts, soon trying his hand in land speculation in rural Pennsylvania. Gallatin was elected to the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1790 and exhibited his credentials as a devout Democratic-Republican. Gallatin won election to the U.S. Senate in 1793, but Federalists in the Senate refused to seat him on the grounds that he had not been an American citizen long enough. Gallatin was elected to the House of Representatives in 1795, and he emerged as the leader of the Republican minority. Gallatin specialized in financial issues, and in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson* named him secretary of the treasury, a post that Gallatin held until 1814, serving President James Madison* as well. After leaving the presidential cabinet, Gallatin served as a diplomat with posts in France from 1816 to 1823 and England from 1826 to 1827. Gallatin became president of the National Bank of New York City in 1839. He was also an avid amateur ethnologist and in 1842 founded the American Ethnological Society. Gallatin died on August 12, 1849. Reference Raymond Walters, Albert Gallatin: Jeffersonian Financier and Diplomat, 1957.

G A R V E Y, M A R C U S M O S I A H Marcus Garvey was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. He became a printer’s apprentice in 1901. Garvey became interested in labor union issues as a young man, and from 1910 to 1914 he traveled widely throughout Central America and Europe, after which he concluded that black people were discriminated against almost everywhere. When he returned to Jamaica in 1914, Garvey established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Communities League (ACL). The UNIA was a self-help benevolent group designed to bring pride and economic self-sufficiency to black people, and the ACL worked to promote independent nationhood in Africa. Garvey came to the United States in 1916 and by 1919 had more than 700 branches of the UNIA. During the 1920s, the UNIA provided death benefits, correspondence courses, adult classes, lectures, and socials for its members. Garvey also helped blacks establish businesses in their communities, such as laundries, restaurants, and dry goods stores, and called on the black community to patronize those stores rather than stores owned by whites. The UNIA regularly fed thousands of poor blacks, published a weekly newspaper, ran the Black Star Line (a steamship company), and preached pan-African unity, black separatism, and black economic independence. Marcus Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in 1923, imprisoned in 1925, and deported from the United States in 1927. Marcus Garvey died in Jamaica on June 10, 1940. Reference Edmund D. Cronin, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, 1955.

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G A R Y, E L B E R T H E N R Y Elbert Gary was born on October 8, 1846, in Wheaton, Illinois. He attended the Illinois Institute and served briefly in the Union army during the Civil War*. In 1865, he began reading law privately. Gary entered the Union College of Law in Chicago in 1866 and graduated in 1868. He began practicing law, specializing in railroad cases, and over the years he accumulated a number of influential friends in corporate America. In 1898, J. P. Morgan* convinced Gary to leave his law practice and assume the presidency of the Federal Steel Company. During the next three years, Gary played a central role in Morgan’s creation of the United States Steel Corporation*. Gary served as chairman of the board of U.S. Steel from 1903 until 1927. As the head of a huge corporation, Gary cultivated relationships with important politicians, especially Theodore Roosevelt* and William Howard Taft*, always working to prevent antitrust action against the company. Through what he called the “Gary Dinners,” he also met frequently with leading steel executives throughout the country; at these affairs, they discussed and set steel prices informally. When intense competition from smaller firms hit the steel industry in the 1910s, Gary developed his “umbrella concept,” which set a general price level for all firms, allowing a place in the market for smaller companies. As for labor relations, Gary believed in high wages, safe working conditions, long hours, and absolutely, positively no union representation for employees. During the steel strike* of 1919, Gary crushed steelworkers, employing intimidation, violence, and accusations of communist infiltration to defeat the workers. The strike lasted more than three months until the union called it off in January 1920. Gary’s reputation as a benevolent corporate leader did not survive the strike. He died on August 15, 1927. References Frederick Lewis Allen, The Lords of Creation, 1935. New York Times, August 16, 1927. Ida Tarbell, Life of Elbert Gary, 1925.

G AT E S , B I L L William Henry Gates III, or Bill Gates, is a U.S. businessman, inventor, and philanthropist, as well as cofounder of Microsoft*. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth in the billions of dollars. Gates was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. During his early youth, he worked on computers and became adept at developing programs. He attended Harvard University in 1973, remaining for only two years. He established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as a startup working on implementing code to develop a platform interpreter. In 1980, he tried to convince IBM to allow him to develop an operating system for the IBM personal computer. He developed MS-DOS, an operating system that would be used by IBM’s computer as well as by IBM clones. In 1985, Gates reincorporated Microsoft in Washington. That year, Microsoft released the first version of Microsoft Windows, the most recognizable product of

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the company. By the 1990s, Windows became a popular operating system for personal computers (PCs). Other products Microsoft developed were software, notably the Microsoft Office suite, which included word processing, spreadsheets, and database programs, and the Xbox video game console. During the 2000s, antitrust lawsuits plagued Microsoft, other software companies’ being critical of Microsoft and the difficulty of competing with Microsoft-compatible products in addition to Microsoft’s providing the Windows operating system used by most people. Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in 2000, yet remained its primary shareholder. Since then he has become a philanthropist through the charitable Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Reference James Wallace, Jim Erickson, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, 1992.

GENEEN, HAROLD SYDNEY Harold S. Geneen was born in Bournemouth, England, on January 22, 1910. The family immigrated to the United States in 1911. While working as a page at the New York Stock Exchange*, Geneen attended New York University and graduated in 1934 with a degree in accounting. He then went to work as an accountant. Geneen moved up the corporate ladder steadily, serving as chief accountant for the American Car Company from 1942 to 1946, comptroller of Bell and Howell from 1946 to 1950, and vice president of Jones and Laughlin Steel from 1950 to 1956. Geneen went to Raytheon Manufacturing Company as executive vice president and there instituted his decentralized management system, cut costs, and increased earnings by 400 percent. In 1959, Geneen became president of International Telephone and Telegraph* (ITT), a global communications company that had become somewhat stagnant. Geneen embarked on an aggressive diversification program that made ITT one of the largest conglomerates in the world. In addition to its communications operations, ITT became involved in insurance and finance, hotels and tourism, publishing, defense manufacturing, and computer systems. By the early 1980s, ITT controlled more than 270 companies in sixty countries. Geneen died on November 21, 1997. Reference Anthony Sampson, The Sovereign State of ITT, 1973.

G E N E R A L A G R E E M E N T O N TA R I F F S A N D T R A D E ( G AT T ) When World War II came to an end, economists around the world feared the possibility of the return of the Great Depression* of the 1930s. By that time, most economists realized that the round of protective tariffs passed in Europe and the United States during the 1920s had contributed to the economic decline, and they were determined to achieve international tariff reform. Economists also hoped to

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replace the bilateral agreements of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act* of 1934 with more effective multilateral approaches to trade relations. The International Trade and Employment Conference met in Geneva for five months in 1947 to set up the International Trade Organization and to work out a series of general tariff reductions. Will Clayton* headed the U.S. delegation. Eventually, the twenty-three nations represented at Geneva wrote the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which included 122 mutual tariff reduction agreements and provisions for building regional free trade* or common market zones. The GATT proved to be a boon to international trade and economic revival in the postwar world. The trade negotiations continued periodically throughout the postwar years, always with the objective of stimulating international trade through reduced tariff barriers. During the Kennedy Round of talks from 1964 to 1967, the fifty participants agreed to a 33 percent cut in their tariff schedules; the Tokyo Round of talks from 1973 to 1979 achieved similar results from ninety-nine participants. In 1990, however, the GATT talks eventually broke down in a storm of bitterness between the United States and the European community. Because of its huge agricultural surpluses, the United States sought a reduction of the agricultural subsidies to European farmers from European governments. The end of those subsidies would have made American produce more competitive. But European farmers balked at such moves, since it would have reduced the demand for their goods. GATT lasted until 1994 until it was replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO). References C. Fred Bergsten, “The New Economics and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs 50 (1972): 199–222. Frederick Dobney, ed., Selected Papers of William Clayton, 1971.

G E N E R A L E L E C T R I C C O R P O R AT I O N Today the General Electric Corporation (GE) is a large, highly diversified American company whose assets are spread through the aircraft engine, medical technology, atomic energy, financial services, electrical generating and appliance manufacturing industries. In 1878, Thomas Alva Edison* founded the Electric Light Company to sell incandescent lamps and, within a few years, a variety of other electrical products. The company, along with the entire industry boomed, and in 1892 a new company—General Electric—acquired all Edison’s assets as well as those of several other competing firms. Throughout the twentieth century, GE expanded rapidly, particularly in the area of electrical appliances. Its appliance brand names, General Electric and Hotpoint, became dominant in the industry. By the 1980s, however, consumer products accounted for less than 17 percent of GE’s revenues. The company also actively designed and manufactured jet engines, electrical utility power systems, nuclear reactors, and aerospace equipment, all of which tied the company closely to the U.S. defense industry. The GE Credit Corporation diversified GE assets throughout real estate, insurance, investment banking, and business finance. The greatest challenges facing GE in the 1990s involved the increasing difficulty of

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overcoming environmental concerns* about nuclear electricity–generating plants and the demise of the Cold War*, which reduced American defense spending and directly impacted GE. References David Nye, Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at GE, 1890–1930, 1985. George Wise, Willis R. Whitney, GE, and the Origins of United States Industrial Research, 1985.

G E N E R A L M O T O R S C O R P O R AT I O N Early in the twentieth century, the development of the internal combustion engine spawned an explosion of new manufacturing concerns, all interested in building automobiles* or their component parts. William C. Durant* was a wealthy carriage manufacturer and an early investor in the Buick Company, which was manufacturing automobiles in Flint, Michigan. In 1908 Durant established General Motors (GM) and took control of Buick Company, Oldsmobile Company, Cadillac Company, Oakland Company (which manufactured Pontiacs), Cartercar Company, Elmore Company, Reliance Truck Company, and the Rapid Truck Company. It became known as the General Motors Corporation in 1916. The company aggressively expanded during the World War I years, acquiring Chevrolet Company and Delco Company in 1918, Fisher Body Company in 1919, and Frigidaire Company in 1919. Arthur P. Sloan* assumed the presidency of GM in 1923, and his tenure with the company was marked by two major trends: acquisition of a number of foreign properties and bureaucratic decentralization. GM acquired Vauxhall Company in England in 1925, Adam Opel Company in Germany in 1929, and Holden Company of Australia in 1931. Because of the company’s huge size, Sloan realized that avoiding bureaucratic inertia and conservatism would be necessary if the company was going to be innovative and aggressive. Only then could it increase its market share. Sloan had GM establish overall policy for the corporation, but he gave near autonomy to GM’s various divisions. That pattern of decentralization became a model for other industrial giants. During the 1970s and 1980s, GM experienced a number of major challenges. Because of its history of manufacturing large, comfortable automobiles, it was unprepared for the energy crisis* of the 1970s and the new interest in fuel-efficient automobiles. GM found itself losing market share to foreign auto manufacturers. The company retooled to address the problem but at the same time began a diversification process as well. In 1984 GM purchased Electronic Systems Corporation, a huge Dallas-based data processing firm, and it branched out into the aerospace and defense industries with its purchase of the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1986. By the early 1990s, GM remained one of the largest corporations in the world, though it was still experiencing the erosion of market share in the automobile industry. In 2009, after a government-backed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, GM discontinued the Pontiac, Saturn, and Hummer lines. By 2010, after teetering near collapse only two years prior, GM was again profitable.

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References Ed Cray, The Chrome Colossus: General Motors, 1987. Bernard Weisberger, The Dream Maker: William C. Durant, Founder of General Motors, 1979.

GENERAL SURVEY ACT OF 1824 By the early 1820s, there was increasing pressure from settlers in the western territories to improve the infrastructural network. They swelled the demand for federally financed internal improvements, and Senator Henry Clay* of Kentucky became the premier advocate of such developments. To move toward a more complete transportation network, Clay introduced into Congress a bill known as the General Survey Act. It would allow the president of the United States to see to it that the western territories received surveys and analyses of the roads and canals that might be required for military, postal, or economic endeavors. The bill became law in February 1824. Reference George R. Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1951.

G E N T R I F I C AT I O N Gentrification refers to the purchase of property in poor neighborhoods with the expectation that the value of the property will increase. As wealthier people view the purchase of property in these poor neighborhoods as a viable investment, property values increase, leading to sharp increases in rent for existing residents. This typically leads to their exodus as the neighborhood experiences growth and development geared for wealthier people. Major U.S. cities, notably New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston, have experienced gentrification in the latter part of the twentieth century that eventually led to a drastic shift in demographics in what were historically poor neighborhoods, often inhabited by people of color, to whiter and wealthier enclaves. Critics of gentrification maintain that this process destroys communities, whereas advocates argue that it revitalizes cities. Reference Loretta Lees et al., Gentrification, 2008.

G E O R G E , H E N RY Henry George was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 2, 1839. As a teenager, he began a period of work on ocean steamers that took him around the world, and during the 1850s, he wandered around the United States, moving from one temporary job to another; most of his time during that period he spent on the West Coast. The migrant poverty that he faced began to shape his ideas about the nature of economic life. In 1858, he went to work in the newspaper business in northern California, and in 1866, he joined the San Francisco Times, first as a printer and then as a

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reporter. By 1868, he was managing editor of the paper. That year, George went to work for the Oakland Transcript, a political organ of the local Democratic Party. George published a pamphlet, Our Land and Our Land Policy, in 1871. He later expanded on it in 1879 when he wrote his most famous work, Progress and Poverty, which explained the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States. George argued that the rent that landowners received from tenants was essentially an unearned increment. Over time, that increment had become the source of wealth in America. The solution for George was simple: a single tax on such income would eliminate the need for all other taxes and redress the poor distribution of income in the United States. In 1881, George wrote The Irish Land Question and went to work for the Irish World. By that time, George was widely known on the lecture circuit in the United States and also in Great Britain. Henry George clubs and single-tax leagues appeared throughout the country in working-class neighborhoods. George ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York City in 1884. He died on October 2, 1897. References Henry George, The Life of Henry George, 1902. R. A. Sawyer, Henry George and the Single Tax, 1926.

GERBER, DANIEL FRANK, JR. Daniel Gerber was born in Fremont, Michigan, on May 6, 1898. After graduating from high school, he served in the army during World War I*, then returned and completed a year of study at a business college. In 1920, Gerber joined the family business—the Fremont Canning Company. Early in the 1920s, Gerber began urging his father to go into the business of producing strained baby food, a novel idea at the time because conventional wisdom said that infants were to have a liquid-only diet until they were a year old. In 1928, his father agreed, however, and Gerber took out advertisements in large-circulation women’s magazines, complete with coupons. Instead of selling baby food at pharmacies, which was the practice in the 1920s, Gerber marketed them through grocery stores. The “Gerber Baby” picture of a healthy, red-cheeked infant became a symbol for the company; within a few years, it was recognized throughout the country. By the time of World War II*, the company had dropped all its adult food products to concentrate exclusively on the baby food market. In 1941, he changed the name of the company to Gerber Products Company. Gerber died on March 16, 1974. Reference New York Times, March 18, 1974.

G E T T Y, J E A N PA U L J. Paul Getty was born on December 15, 1892, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His family was in the oil business. Getty graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1913; he then studied for a year at Oxford University in England.

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Getty returned to the United States in 1914 and began to buy up oil leases in what were called the “red-beds” of Oklahoma. Few geologists thought that there was any oil there, so Getty got the leases at the cheapest of rates. The experts were wrong. Within two years, Getty had earned his first million dollars. Getty made another $3 million drilling wildcat wells in the early 1920s with his own company, Getty Oil. During the Great Depression*, he bought the Pacific Western Oil Company. It was only the first of many such purchases he made during the next twenty years. Getty created a land, drilling, refining, wholesaling, and retailing empire, all owned by Getty Oil Company, which was worth $3 billion by 1967. The biggest part of that success was Getty’s agreement to pay King Saud of Saudi Arabia $9.5 million in 1949 and $1 million annually thereafter for the rights to drill oil on land between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Getty found huge volumes of oil there in 1953, and those discoveries made him a billionaire. Getty died on June 6, 1976. Reference J. Paul Getty, As I See It, 1976.

G.I. BILL OF RIGHTS By 1944, when it became clear that an Allied victory over Germany and Japan was just a matter of time, many Americans began to be concerned about the problem of reconverting to a peacetime economy. The Great Depression* was only in the recent past, and the possibility of reductions in government spending—leading to reductions in demand, production, and employment—seemed very real. At the same time, a number of congressmen wanted to provide decent government programs for returning veterans as a reward for their service and to make sure that a grateful nation expressed its appreciation. Congress solved both problems with the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the “G.1. Bill of Rights.” The bill dramatically increased funding for hospitalization and unemployment benefits and also provided job placement programs. Veterans wanting to attend college were given subsidies to support themselves, and those wanting to purchase homes received low-interest loans with tiny down payment requirements. The legislation stimulated the construction industry while keeping hundreds of thousands of veterans out of the job market and in college improving their skills. In subsequent years, Congress modified the G.1. Bill, but its basic mission of providing health care, education, and employment benefits to veterans continues today. Reference Richard Davies, Housing Reform during the Truman Administration, 1966.

GIANNINI, AMADEO PETER A. P. Giannini was born on May 6, 1870, in San Jose, California. He quit school in 1883 to go to work in the family produce business; by 1891, he owned a half-interest in the firm. Giannini retired in 1901 with a small fortune. When his

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father-in-law died in 1902, family members asked Giannini to manage the estate, including shares in the Columbus Savings and Loan Society. Giannini encouraged the institution to cultivate the favor of small borrowers and depositors. When Columbus Savings refused, he resigned and organized the Bank of Italy in 1904, with assets totaling $300,000. The bank’s clientele consisted almost exclusively of Italian merchants, laborers, and small businesses. When the California legislature passed a statute permitting branch banking in 1909, Giannini quickly expanded and by 1918 had twenty-four branches in addition to the headquarters in San Francisco. In 1927, Giannini merged his banking interests into the Bank of Italy National Trust and Savings Association, which became the Bank of America*. Giannini was a loyal Democrat and a progressive in his political philosophy, criticizing the tax policies of Republican administrations in the 1920s and praising the New Deal* of Franklin D. Roosevelt* in the 1930s. Giannini died on June 3, 1949. References Marquis James and Bessie R. James, Biography of a Bank: The Story of the Bank of America, NT & SA, 1954. Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1949.

G I B B O N S v. O G D E N ( 9 W H E AT O N 1 ) During his tenure as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in the early 1800s, John Marshall* diligently worked at upholding the sanctity of contracts, interstate commerce, and the sovereignty of the federal government. In 1808, the New York state legislature had granted a monopoly to Robert Fulton* and Robert Livingston on all steamboat operations across the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. Aaron Ogden had inherited that monopolistic property right from Fulton, but Congress had already authorized any vessel duly licensed by the federal government to engage in coastal shipping. Thomas Gibbons had such a license and was operating a steamboat between the two states. Ogden then sued Gibbons to force him to cease his business. Gibbons countersued, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court overthrew the New York statute, and thereby invalidated the monopoly on the grounds that only the federal government, under the U.S. Constitution, had the authority to regulate interstate commerce. The decision constituted a major expansion in the interpretation of federal powers under the Commerce Clause. References Edward S. Corwin, John Marshall and the Constitution, 1913. R. Kent Newmeyer, The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney, 1968.

GILDED AGE The Gilded Age refers to the period in U.S. history spanning the 1870s to the turn of the twentieth century. The term was coined by Mark Twain, in the title of a book coauthored with Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, published

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in 1873. The Gilded Age was characterized by the massive industrialization of the eastern seaboard, increased immigration from Europe, and the unscrupulous business practices of the robber barons in the railroad and heavy industries. It was also associated with the ostentatious displays of wealth by the rich that contrasted with the misery and poverty of workers and the destitute. The Gilded Age would foster a social and political set of changes that would be associated with the Progressive Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Reference Joel Shrock, The Gilded Age, 2004.

GILMAN, CHARLOTTE PERKINS Writer and socialist Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 into an unconventional New England family with connections to the famous Beecher clan. In adolescence, she read the works of Charles Darwin and welcomed the technological changes of the Gilded Age* as forward steps in human evolution. At 21, she went to work, tutoring and contracting for occasional commercial art projects. Following a brief marriage and the birth of a daughter, she fell into a nearly incapacitating depression that is chillingly depicted in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” These experiences clearly affected some of her later thinking. After her divorce, she made her living writing articles and poetry for progressive periodicals, including the Nationalist, the chief organ of Edward Bellamy’s socialism. Influenced by Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) and Lester Frank Ward’s Dynamic Sociology (1883), she became committed to rational socialism—the conscious use of human intelligence to restructure society for maximum human benefit. This spirit pervades her book Women and Economics (1898). In it, she criticized how that women’s social and economic roles were defined by their sexual function, a situation that led to women’s economic dependence on men and pernicious effects throughout society. Dependence stunted women’s development to their full human potential, cheated men of the true companionship of women, and denied the nation the chance to maximize its human resources. Her solution was for women to gain economic equality with men. Suffrage represented an important step, but even more basic was the opportunity for women to work outside the home and earn their own money. To accomplish this goal, it was necessary to apply human reason to the problem. Society profited when individuals did the work to which each was best suited. Some women (and men) were admirably suited to cooking, nurturing children, or caring for the day-to-day needs of others, but other individuals were better suited to different jobs. It was socially inefficient for those not suited to these tasks to perform them, especially in the equally inefficient setting of the nuclear family. Thus the home needed to be restructured as well, with cooking, child care, and laundry performed communally by those best suited to these tasks; those with other skills should work in different fields. This approach would make optimal use of the skills of all members of society and benefit society as a whole. She elaborated on these ideas in The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903).

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Gilman fits well into the progressive* tradition. She integrated the ideas of Darwin into her worldview, participated in the struggle for women’s suffrage, endorsed the settlement house movement, and shrewdly commented on urbanization. At the same time, she shared the progressives’ mistrust of immigrants (sometimes to the point of racism) and their dislike of working-class approaches to problems. She continued writing (commentary, fiction, and poetry) and public speaking into the 1930s, when she was diagnosed with inoperable cancer; she committed suicide in August 1935. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References James L. Cooper and Sheila M. Cooper, eds., The Roots of American Feminist Thought, 1973. Mary A. Hill, Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Making of a Radical Feminist, 1860–1896, 1980.

GIMBEL, BERNARD Bernard Gimbel was born April 10, 1885, in Vincennes, Indiana, to a famous retailing family: His father Isaac had founded the Gimbel chain of department stores in the 1860s. Young Gimbel graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907 and was named vice president of Gimbel Brothers Department Stores in 1909. In 1910, he supervised the construction of the ten-story Gimbel store in midtown Manhattan that became a symbol for the company. Under his direction, the company bought out Saks and Company in 1923, and in 1925, he was named president of the company, a position he held until 1953. From 1925 to 1953, annual sales increased from $15 million to $500 million. Gimbel died on September 29, 1966. References Leon Harris, Merchant Princes, 1979. New York Times, September 30, 1966.

GIRDLER, TOM MERCER Tom M. Girdler, steel executive and foe of the New Deal*, was born in Clark County, Indiana, on May 19, 1877. His father operated a farm and a cement factory, but family income was limited. Only with financial help from a rich aunt could the elder Girdler afford to send his son to Lehigh University, from which the young man graduated in 1901 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He then went to work as a sales engineer in the London office of the Buffalo Forge Company. After a year in England, Girdler returned to Pittsburgh to take a job with the Oliver Iron and Steel Company. He later worked for short periods with the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in Pueblo and for the Atlantic Steel Company in Atlanta. In 1914, Girdler was hired by Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation, where he stayed until 1930, having risen to the presidency of the company. That year, Cyrus Eaton, the Cleveland financier, hired Girdler to take charge of the newly organized Republic

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Steel Corporation. The company operated at a loss until 1935, when it earned $4.5 million; by 1937, it was showing annual earnings of around $9 million and had plants and mines in seventy-seven cities. By this time, John L. Lewis* and his Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) had won a contract with United States Steel Corporation* and were moving for a pact with “little steel” (Republic, Bethlehem, and smaller companies). Girdler and his associates, Girdler later wrote, “were determined to fight.” During the six-week strike that followed, nearly a million men were made idle, and there were over 500 instances of violence. Despite union picketing, Republic Steel officials tried to keep the plants in operation, sending food and supplies to the workers inside the plants. On May 30, 1937, Memorial Day, some 2,000 people gathered a half mile from Republic’s South Chicago plant for a picnic and protest march. As the marchers started moving across a marshy prairie toward the plant, they were confronted by several hundred armed policemen, nervous and uncomfortable in their heavy winter uniforms. When the marchers were about 250 yards from the plant, with some of them taunting the police and throwing a few rocks, the police began to hurl gas shells into the crowd. There followed a few gunshots, after which the marchers turned and ran; the police began firing volleys at the retreating mass. Ten marchers were killed and over ninety wounded, the majority of them shot or clubbed from behind. Girdler blamed Lewis and his associates for the “Memorial Day massacre.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt*, shocked and angered, blamed both Girdler and Lewis. The strike was broken, and the workers went back to their jobs without a contract. But Girdler’s victory was only temporary. In 1941, “little steel” signed contracts after the National Labor Relations Board* ordered the reinstatement of workers who had been discharged for their involvement in the 1937 strike. During World War II, Girdler served as chairman of Republic Steel and of Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, commuting regularly by plane between Republic’s headquarters in Cleveland and Convair’s in San Diego. Under his direction, both companies set remarkable production records. In the postwar years, Republic Steel spent heavily on new plants and expanded its workforce to nearly 70,000. In 1956, when Girdler retired, the company’s net income was $90.4 million, its highest profit to that date. Girdler retired to Harleigh, his thirteen-acre estate near Easton, Maryland. He died on February 4, 1965. References Tom M. Girdler, Boot Straps 1943. New York Times, February 5, 1965.

GLASS, CARTER Carter Glass was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, on January 4, 1858. His father was a newspaper editor, so Glass grew up in a political atmosphere. He attended school until he was 14; then he went to work as a printer’s apprentice for the Lynchburg Daily Republican. Glass also worked for several years as an auditor for the Atlantic, Mississippi, and Ohio Railroad but in 1880 became a reporter and writer for the

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Lynchburg Daily News, a paper that he purchased later in his life. From 1881 to 1901, Glass was clerk for the Lynchburg city council. He held a seat in the state senate from 1899 to 1903 and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1902 until 1918. As chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, Glass was the sponsor and acknowledged “father” of the Federal Reserve Bank Act in 1913. For the rest of his life, Glass treated the Federal Reserve System* as one of his own family, tenaciously guarding its independence. From 1918 to 1920, Glass served as secretary of the treasury under Woodrow Wilson*. He resigned that position in 1920 to accept appointment to the U.S. Senate, filling the seat vacated by the death of Thomas S. Martin of Virginia. Glass was reelected to the Senate in 1924, 1930, 1936, and 1942 and served as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1941 to 1945. As a conservative Democrat, Glass was suspicious of progressive* schemes in the 1920s to solve the farm problem, guarantee the right of labor to bargain collectively, or implement a variety of social welfare legislation. During the 1930s, Glass disliked the massive bureaucracy and large-scale spending of the New Deal. In Glass’s mind, social workers and lawyers took over the Democratic Party in the 1930s. He was responsible for passing the Glass–Steagall Act* of 1932, but in general he opposed tinkering with the country’s financial apparatus. Stubborn, independent, and rigidly committed to states* rights politics, Glass never made the transition from the progressivism of Woodrow Wilson to what he called the “radicalism” of Franklin D. Roosevelt*. He died on May 28, 1946. References Norman Beasley, Carter Glass: A Biography, 1939. New York Times, May 29, 1946.

GLASS–STEAGALL ACT OF 1932 Because of the severe weaknesses in the banking system and the rash of bank failures that plagued the country throughout the 1920s, the United States experienced a rash of gold withdrawals by foreign investors and gold hoarding by American citizens. The situation was so serious that Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Mills* feared that the country would have to abandon the gold standard*. To restore confidence in the money markets and avert any need to abandon the gold standard, President Herbert Hoover* called for the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC), which Congress established in January 1932. The RFC was designed to lend money to banks that would then expand their commercial loans and stimulate a revival of the economy. As part of that general objective, Congress passed the Glass–Steagall Act, and Hoover signed it on February 27, 1932. Sponsored by Senator Carter Glass* of Virginia and Representative Henry Steagall* of Alabama, the bill amended the Federal Reserve Act*, which at the time required that all Federal Reserve currency issues be backed 40 percent in gold and 60 percent in securities eligible for discounting. The Glass–Steagall Act broadened the classes of securities eligible for discounting and permitted the use of government securities to back Federal Reserve currency issues beyond the 60 percent level.

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The law released approximately $750 million of the government’s gold supply to be used for credit expansion. The Federal Reserve Board was reluctant, however, to use government securities as collateral for currency issues, primarily because Senator Glass, “father of the Federal Reserve System,” did not like the provision. He sponsored the Glass–Steagall Act only because Hoover put so much pressure on him. It was not until May 1932 that the Federal Reserve Board began using the securities as collateral. In the long run, however, the Glass–Steagall Act did little to stimulate the economy. The collapse of the banking system late in 1932 and early in 1933 rendered the bill useless. Reference Lester V. Chandler, American Monetary Policy, 1928–1941, 1971.

G L O B A L WA R M I N G Global warming refers to the rise of the world’s average temperature of the Earth. Since the late twentieth century, climate scientists have presented evidence that human consumption of energy sources, particularly fossil fuels, is a major contributor to the process of global warming. Global warming had led to the melting of the polar ice caps, the warming of the world’s oceans, and extreme weather fluctuations, which led to increasing incidences of natural disasters, such as hurricanes. Despite the overwhelming support of the U.S. scientific community, some business leaders and politicians minimize or deny the impacts of global warming, particularly when it puts their businesses or interests in jeopardy. As global warming continues to incur damage to the world’s environment*, questions about energy consumption and current business strategies will continue to be questioned, particularly when they threaten human survival. Reference Brian Black, Gary J. Weisel, Global Warming, 2010.

G L O B A L I Z AT I O N Globalization is the process of international integration developing from the increased shared views, ideas, products, and culture created by advances in telecommunications and transportation in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Other factors, such as migration, economic investment and development, and international trade, are also byproducts of globalization. Critics of globalization lament the erosion of traditional cultures as people around the world become exposed to the same products and lifestyles, as well as expanding the gap between the wealthy and the poor on a global scale. Advocates of globalization embrace the potential for economic expansion and investment opportunities. Reference Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, 2002.

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GOLD RESERVE ACT OF 1934 Most historians have agreed that Franklin D. Roosevelt* was, if anything, a pragmatist willing to employ a variety of programs to stimulate recovery. His gold-buying program in late 1933 and early 1934 is a perfect illustration. Along with large numbers of Americans, President Roosevelt was especially concerned about the deflationary spiral and the demands of western farmers and mining interests to inflate the currency. On April 19, 1933, to help create a proper atmosphere for some domestic price-raising ventures, Roosevelt abandoned the gold standard* with the support of a joint resolution of Congress. A few months later, fascinated by the “commodity dollar*” theories of economists Irving Fisher*, George Warren*, and Frank Pearson, Roosevelt inaugurated his gold-buying program. The major theory behind the “commodity dollar” was that if the government purchased gold at steadily increasing prices, the United States would deflate the value of the dollar, trigger a rise in wholesale prices, and capture an increased share of world trade. Business confidence would revive, as would employment and production. The dollar devaluation, it was argued, would restore the connection between the prices of consumer goods and raw materials. This was the commodity dollar, which would produce fixed purchasing power for all commodities because the gold content of the dollar would be tied to the price index. Late in October 1933, the president daily set the price at which the government would purchase gold. He set a price above the world price for gold and altered it each day to keep speculators off guard. Wall Street* bankers were horrified by the program, but inflation-devoted agrarian and business entrepreneurs in the South and West loved it. The doubts were well founded. Commodity prices and farm prices continued to drop late in 1933, and the commodity dollar proved to be a short-term panacea. Roosevelt stopped buying gold in January 1934, and on January 30, 1934, he signed the Gold Reserve Act, giving him the power to fix the price of gold in the United States and concentrate more credit and currency power in the treasury. On January 31, 1934, the president set the price of gold at $35 an ounce, an amount fixing the value of the dollar at 59 percent of its pre-1933 level. The end of the gold manipulation program satisfied conservatives, but the monetary inflationists still wanted more. Their demands led to the Silver Purchase Act* later in the year. Reference James S. Olson, The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940, 1988.

GOLD RUSH When the Mexican War ended in 1848, the provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe– Hidalgo stipulated that California was to become U.S. territory. At the time, there were approximately 6,000 Hispanic people living in California, but the question of whether slaves* would be permitted there prevented Congress from admitting California as a state. All that changed in 1848 when gold was discovered in the Sacramento Valley. There were rich deposits of gold in northern California, and the news spread like wildfire throughout the country, precipitating the famous Gold Rush of

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1849. By the end of the year, California’s population had increased to 85,000 people. Most of the “Forty-Niners” were from the northern states, where slavery had been outlawed, and when they drew up a state constitution in September 1849, they outlawed slavery. It was not until 1850, however, that the problem was resolved in Congress. The Compromise of 1850 allowed for California’s admission to the Union as a free state. California’s population continued to grow rapidly, but in the early 1850s, as the easiest gold deposits were exhausted and technological mining replaced hand panning, the flood of immigrants slowed, and the gold rush ended. Reference Robert G. Cleland, From Wilderness to Empire: A History of California, 1542–1900, 1944.

G O L D S TA N D A R D A C T O F 1 9 0 0 Also known as the Currency Act of 1900, the Gold Standard Act became law on March 14, 1900. It proved to be the culmination of the monetary debate that had divided American politics throughout the 1890s. Unaware of the impact of overproduction on commodity prices, farmers in the 1890s had advocated the free coinage of silver as a way of introducing inflation into the American economy. Both the Democratic and Populist* parties adopted the idea of free silver* because they believed that it would raise the prices that farmers received for their products. Republican business interests as well as urban workers resisted the idea, however, and in the election of 1896*, Republican William McKinley* handily defeated Democratic-Populist William Jennings Bryan* for the presidency, tolling the death knell of free silver. During the next several years, increases in world gold supplies resolved the issue by allowing for an expansion in the currency. The Gold Standard Act of 1900 guaranteed the dollar by declaring its standard unit value to be 25.8 grains of nine-tenths fine gold. A gold reserve of $150 million was set aside for the redemption of legal-tender notes. The bill also tried to provide for the capital needs in rural areas by allowing for the establishment of national banks in towns of fewer than 3,000 people even if the bank had a capitalization of only $25,000. Reference H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America, 1963.

G O L D S TA N D A R D J O I N T R E S O L U T I O N R E P E A L OF 1933 See GOLD RESERVE ACT OF 1934. GOLDMAN, EMMA Anarchist Emma Goldman was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia, on June 27, 1869; the family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1882. Three years later, she and her sister immigrated to the United States, settling in Rochester, New York, where she worked in a clothing factory. Inspired by the Haymarket* affair, she moved to

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New York City in 1889, became active in labor and anarchist circles, and met her longtime companion Alexander Berkman. Together they planned the assassination of Henry Clay Frick*, which Berkman attempted during the Homestead* strike and for which he went to prison. She herself was arrested in connection with the assassination of President William McKinley*. In the early twentieth century, she edited the anarchist monthly Mother Earth and spoke nationwide on anarchism, freedom of expression (on behalf of the Industrial Workers of the World*, among others), modem drama, and the revolt of women. She and Berkman both opposed World War I and were sent to prison for opposing the draft. In 1919, they and 247 other victims of the postwar First Red Scare were deported to Russia. Disillusioned with the emerging totalitarianism that followed the Russian Revolution, she left that country in 1921, living for a time in Germany, Sweden, and Britain, and traveling to Spain during its Civil War. She died in Toronto, Canada, and is buried in Chicago near the graves of the Haymarket martyrs. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Alice Wexler, Emma Goldman: An Intimate Life, 1984. Alice Wexler, Emma Goldman in Exile, 1989.

G O L D WAT E R , B A R R Y M O R R I S Barry Goldwater was born in Phoenix, Arizona, on January 1, 1909. He attended the University of Arizona for a year but then went to work in the family department store business. During World War II*, he was a pilot in the Army Air Corps. A conservative Republican, Goldwater was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952, and in 1964, he won the Republican presidential nomination. He lost in a landslide to Lyndon B. Johnson*. Although most of the country hoped to avoid war in Vietnam, Goldwater took a very aggressive position. In terms of domestic policy, he advocated drastic cuts in federal spending for all programs and severe reductions in Social Security* benefits. Most Americans were then still enamored of the New Deal*. Goldwater’s brand of political and economic conservatism would not receive widespread support until the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan* took advantage of it. Because of the presidential nomination, Goldwater did not run for reelection to the Senate in 1964, but he was reelected in 1968, 1974, and 1980. Goldwater retired from the Senate in 1987 and returned to Arizona. Goldwater died on May 29, 1998, in Paradise Valley, Arizona, at the age of 89. Reference Barry M. Goldwater, With No Apologies: The Personal and Political Memoirs of United States Senator Barry Morris Goldwater, 1979.

GOMPERS, SAMUEL Samuel Gompers was born in London, England, on January 27, 1850. His parents were working-class Jews, and the family immigrated to the United States in 1863.

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They settled in New York City, and Gompers soon went to work as a cigarmaker and attended school at night. When he was fourteen, he joined the Cigarmakers’ International Union* and became president of his own local in 1875. Gompers then rose through the union ranks, becoming vice president of the Cigarmakers’ International Union in 1886 and president in 1896. Except for one year, Gompers served as president of that union until his death in 1924. Gompers was also a leading figure in the formation of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL), of which he served as president from 1886 to 1895 and 1896 to 1924. Gompers epitomized responsible, conservative craft unionism. He opposed organizing unskilled, industrial workers because he believed that management would then hold the advantage in labor disputes; unskilled workers were too easily replaced. Gompers was committed to craft unionism—the organization of skilled workers—and craft autonomy. He also believed that American workers should avoid any hint of radicalism, try to win the confidence of management through business unionism, and use strikes only as a last resort. During the 1920s, Gompers represented a middle road in the American labor movement. He avoided the radical left by insisting that all economic and political change must come through established channels. Gompers even opposed government-mandated workmen’s compensation* laws, the eight-hour day, old-age pensions, and comprehensive health insurance. On the other hand, he opposed the open shop movement* of the 1920s and the spread of company unions*. Gompers was an advocate of legislation outlawing child labor and guaranteeing the right of collective bargaining. Among prominent conservative businessmen, Gompers was viewed as a stable, sensible adversary. Gompers played the key role in the rise of the AFL to the pinnacle of power in the U.S. labor movement. He died in San Antonio, Texas, on December 3, 1924. References Stuart B. Kaufman, Samuel Gompers and the Origins of the American Federation of Labor, 1848–1896, 1973. Harold Livesey, Samuel Gompers and Organized Labor in America, 1978.

GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY In the years before World War I, the United States aggressively asserted its authority over the entire Western Hemisphere. President Theodore Roosevelt* had fomented revolution in Panama to secure an isthmian canal, much to the embarrassment and anger of Colombia. In 1904, he also issued the so-called “Roosevelt Corollary”— to the Monroe Doctrine, asserting the right of the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of hemispheric nations, so to prevent European intervention. The corollary happened to justify his 1904 intervention in the Dominican Republic to see to it that the country paid its bills. Under President William Howard Taft*, the United States pursued what became known as “Dollar Diplomacy*”—an aggressive protection of American corporate interests abroad. In 1911, Taft sent 2,500 marines into Nicaragua to protect American life and property there during a revolution. Most of the troops were withdrawn in 1912, but a small contingent

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remained until 1925. President Woodrow Wilson* eventually sent American troops into Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. By the 1920s, Latin American nations were thoroughly disgusted with what they called “the Colossus of the North.” Although Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes* removed the troops from the Dominican Republic in 1924 and Nicaragua in 1925, the troops went back into Nicaragua in 1926 during renewed fighting among various political factions. But in April 1927, Henry L. Stimson went to Nicaragua at President Calvin Coolidge’s request and brought about a negotiated settlement and free elections. That same year, Dwight Morrow*, the new ambassador to Mexico, helped settle the tensions between Mexico and the United States by persuading President Plutarco Calles to stop his bitter anti-Catholic campaign and to recognize the oil rights of American companies doing business in Mexico before 1917. Some historians mark the Mexican settlement as the real beginning of the Good Neighbor Policy. Shortly after his election in November 1928, President-elect Herbert Hoover* went on a seven-week goodwill tour of Latin America and proclaimed the willingness of the United States to reevaluate its traditional role in hemispheric foreign policy. In 1930, Hoover approved the Clark Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine, a document written by Undersecretary of State J. Reuben Clark*, which repudiated the right of the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. Hoover backed his promise with actions. When revolutionaries took over the government of Brazil in 1930, the Department of State extended immediate diplomatic recognition. Hoover removed the marines from Haiti in 1932 and from Nicaragua in 1933. The Good Neighbor Policy received its real fulfillment late in 1933 at the Seventh International Conference of American States, which met in Montevideo, Uruguay. At the conference, new Secretary of State Cordell Hull* announced to a stunned audience that “no state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.” In May 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed a treaty ending the Platt Amendment* and its controls over Cuba. Historians generally attribute the loyalty of Latin American countries to the Allies during World War II to the improved relations with the United States resulting from implementation of the Good Neighbor Policy during the late 1920s and 1930s. References Alexander DeConde, Herbert Hoover’s Latin American Policy, 1951. E. O. Guerrant, Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, 1950. Dexter Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine, 1955.

G O O D N I G H T, C H A R L E S A Texas native born in 1836, Charles Goodnight became a legendary figure in the history of the American cattle industry. Along with his associate John G. Adair, he established the huge JA Ranch in the Texas Panhandle. At its peak, the ranch included nearly 1,350,000 acres and fed more than 125,000 cattle. The JA Ranch became an early example of the future of agribusiness* in America. He pioneered

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the Goodnight–Loring Trail over which millions of head of cattle were driven from the Texas Panhandle to railheads in Colorado and Wyoming. Goodnight was interested in every aspect of the cattle business, including animal genetics and marketing. He was also active in organizing the Texas Cattlemen’s Association, a trade group to protect and promote the industry. Goodnight died in 1929. References Lewis Atherton, The Cattle Kings, 1955. J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight, Cowman and Plainsman, 1936.

GOODYEAR, CHARLES Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 29, 1800. He went into the hardware business but could not make a go of it. During a period of extended poverty in the 1830s, he began experimenting with curing Indian rubber. In 1837, he patented a processing technique that kept the finished product from melting at high temperatures or breaking up at low ones. In 1839, he accidentally discovered the vulcanizing process when he dropped a mixture of rubber and sulfur on top of a hot stove. He patented that process in 1844. Because of poor business management skills and lack of investment capital, he could not take advantage of his discoveries personally, and he died a poor man on July 1, 1860. His discoveries, however, gave birth to what became a huge industry. Reference National Cyclopedia of American Biography 3 (1891): 86.

GOOGLE Google is a U.S.-based multinational corporation* based on Internet*-related products and services, including search engines, software, and online advertising. Google makes most of its profits through its AdWords program, which allows advertising to be an integral element of Google products. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google on September 4, 1998, in Menlo Park, California. Page and Brin, then students at Stanford University, initially worked primarily on the Google search engine. Since then, the company has expanded into other ventures, such as the Gmail email service, the Chrome Internet browser, the Google Drive cloud storage service, and the Google+ social network, among other things. Google is well known for dropping products if they prove to be unpopular and for taking innovative technologies outside the Internet, such as Google Glass. In 2004, Google offered its first initial public offering. By 2006, it moved its headquarters to Mountain View, California, to its new campus, known as the Googleplex. Google’s company culture is known for its informality and unique outlets for personal creativity. Reference David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story, 2005.

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G O R D Y, B E R R Y, J R . Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, was born in Detroit, Michigan, on November 28, 1929. After service in the armed forces, he learned the hard way about the popular music market by running his own record store there from 1953 to 1955. When his store went out of business, he got a job as a chrome fitter with the Ford Motor Company*, where he began making up songs in his head to deal with the boredom. Local artists recorded some of his songs, and he soon began producing the songs himself, using rented studios and hired musicians. After several hit songs, he founded Motown Records in 1959 with singer William “Smokey” Robinson Jr. The company capitalized on the Motor City (Detroit) sound, introducing and promoting dozens of popular black singing groups and changing the face of American music in the 1960s. The company quickly diversified into many aspects of the music business, with concerns including music publishing, recording studios, record distribution, songwriting, accompaniments (including a full-sized orchestra), talent management, and artist development. In 1972, Gordy moved Motown’s corporate headquarters to Hollywood, California, where the company has branched out into film-making as well as music. By the mid-1970s, Motown was the most successful black enterprise in the United States, with an annual sales volume of more than $50 million. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference “Berry Gordy, Jr.,” Current Biography, July 1978.

GORMAN, FRANK J. Frank J. Gorman was born in 1877 in Bradford, England. His family immigrated to the United States in 1890 and settled in Providence, Rhode Island. He went to work in a woolen mill and became a member of the United Textile Workers of America (UTWA) in 1912. Gorman was a highly successful organizer for the UTWA, and he moved up through union ranks steadily to positions of greater responsibility. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, he led increasing numbers of strikes among textile workers. In 1934, he led the successful “flying squadrons” of textile worker strikes throughout the country. For a few weeks that year, he virtually shut down the textile industry. In 1937, Gorman became international president of the UTWA; shortly thereafter, he took the UTWA into the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO). In 1939, because of differences with the Textile Workers Organizing Committee, Gorman bolted the CIO and took some UTWA locals back into the American Federation of Labor* (AFL). Gorman remained active in union politics during the rest of his life. He died on June 4, 1975. Reference New York Times, June 5, 1975.

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G O U L D , J AY Jay Gould was born on May 27, 1836, in Roxbury, New York. Gould worked at a number of jobs—clerking, surveying, and blacksmithing—as a young man, and in 1858, he started a tannery business. Gould took the money that he earned and began speculating in railroad stock. He came to national attention in 1868 when, along with James Fisk* and Daniel Drew, he managed to thwart an attempt by Cornelius Vanderbilt* to take over the Erie Railroad by issuing 50,000 new shares of Erie stock. The stock issue was illegal, but Gould managed, with lavish bribes in the New York legislature, to have the action legalized. The next year, Gould teamed with Fisk again, this time in an ill-fated attempt to corner the world gold market. The subsequent financial panic gave Gould a bad name all over the country. Gould then turned to railroad empire building, buying up huge blocks of stock in the Union Pacific*, the Missouri Pacific*, the Kansas Pacific, the Wabash, the Lackawanna, the New York and New England, the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, the Central of New Jersey, and the Erie railroads. By the early 1880s, Gould controlled 15 percent of the railroad mileage in the country. He also managed to secure control of the Western Union Telegraph Company. Gould died on December 2, 1892. Reference E. P. Hoyt, The Goulds, 1969.

GRACE, EUGENE GIFFORD Eugene G. Grace was born on August 27, 1876, in Goshen, New Jersey. He received a degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh University in 1899 and went to work for Bethlehem Steel as a crane operator. Grace moved up quickly through company ranks; in 1911, he was named vice president and general manager. Two years later, Grace became president of Bethlehem Steel, a position he held until 1945. Grace then became chairman of the board and continued in that position until 1957. When Grace took over, Bethlehem was a small steel company, producing less than a million tons annually. Through aggressive expansion and purchase of smaller firms, Grace increased that production to nearly 9 million tons annually in 1929. Although the Great Depression* hurt the company, Grace weathered the financial storms and, during World War II* and the Korean War*, continued the program of expansion and acquisition. When he retired in 1957, Bethlehem was, with 20 million tons of capacity, the second largest steel producer in the country. Reference Gertrude Schroeder, The Growth of Major Steel Companies, 1953.

GRACE, WILLIAM RUSSELL William Russell Grace was born on May 10, 1832, in Queenstown, Ireland. After spending several years as a sailor, he settled in Lima and Callao, Peru, where he and his brother set up a firm of ship chandlers. He moved to New York City in

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1865 and established W. R. Grace and Company, which supplied a wide range of supplies for the Peruvian government and railway system. During the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), in which Chile fought against Peru and Bolivia, Grace’s company reaped enormous profits. Peru lost the war and ended up owing W. R. Grace and Company a huge debt. When the settlement was reached in 1890, Grace owned a virtual mortgage on the entire country. In return for canceling the debt, Grace organized the Peruvian Corporation and received lucrative concessions in silver, guano, oil, and railroad mileage. He formed the William R. Grace Company in 1895 and expanded his operations into many other Latin American countries. From 1880 to 1888, Grace served as a reform-minded Republican mayor of New York City. He died on March 21, 1904. References Dictionary of American Biography 7 (1986): 463. R. W. Dunn, American Foreign Investments, 1926.

G R A D U AT I O N A C T O F 1 8 5 4 The Graduation Act of 1854 became law on August 3, 1854. The legislation provided that all public domain lands that had remained unsold after ten years would be sold at $1 an acre. All land unsold after fifteen years would go for $0.75 an acre. All land unsold after twenty years would be sold for $0.25 an acre, and all land unsold after thirty years would cost only $0.125 an acre. Under the provisions of this law, more than 35 million acres of public domain land were sold each year. The South opposed the legislation, because it tended to strengthen the economic ties between the agrarian West and the increasingly industrial Northeast. The law was superseded by the Homestead Act* of 1862. Reference Walter Havighurst, Wilderness for Sale: The Story of the First Western Land Rush, 1956.

GRANGE See NATIONAL GRANGE. GRANGER CASES See GRANGER LAWS. G R A N G E R L AW S During the second half of the nineteenth century, American farm income began to suffer because of gross overproduction and because of artificially high freight rates from railroads and storage rates from grain elevators. The National Grange* had first appeared as a social organization for farmers, but it quickly evolved into a political organization and interest group. Farmers demanded government

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regulation of railroads and grain elevators. Because the federal government was not prepared to act on their demands, a number of state legislatures began passing so-called Granger laws in the 1870s, regulating the rates charged by railroads and grain elevators. Both groups challenged the constitutionality of the legislation, but in 1877, in the case of Munn v. Illinois, the Supreme Court upheld the Illinois Warehouse Act of 1871. Following that decision, a number of other western states passed similar Granger laws, which led to similar Granger cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1886, in the case of Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad v. Illinois, the Supreme Court reversed itself, arguing that state regulation of railroads was an unconstitutional usurpation of the exclusive right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. The decision led to the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887*. Reference George H. Miller, Railroads and the Granger Laws, 1971.

G R A N T, W I L L I A M T H O M A S William T. Grant was born on June 27, 1876, in Stevensville, Pennsylvania. He was raised in Malden, Massachusetts, but quit school to work at a variety of odd jobs. In 1895, he became a shoe salesman and from there on worked in the department store business until he decided to open his own store in 1906. He had a novel idea: He would establish a discount department store in which no item cost more than 25 cents. The first Grant department store opened in Lynn, Massachusetts, and he started another one in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1908. It was a popular marketing idea, and the stores thrived. Grant opened a New York City store in 1913, and by 1918 there were more than thirty stores. At that time, he raised the maximum price on his products to $1. During the 1920s, the Grant chain expanded rapidly until it was the most familiar name in discount retailing. By 1940, there were stores allover the country, and when Grant died on August 6, 1972, there were more than 1,150 stores in the chain. The irony was that the company went bankrupt in 1975: Over the years, it had been caught in a squeeze by the expansion of Sears* and Penney’s on one hand and by new discount houses such as Wal-Mart* and K-Mart on the other. References Godfrey Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 1859–1959, 1959. New York Times, August 7, 1972.

G R A P E S O F W R AT H See STEINBECK, JOHN. G R AY PA N T H E R S See KUHN, MAGGIE.

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G R E AT D E P R E S S I O N The term “Great Depression” has been used almost universally since the 1940s to refer to the collapse of the American economy during the 1930s. The term is also used to refer to the general decline in the global economy between the late 1920s and the outbreak of World War II. Reference Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America 1929–1941, 1993.

G R E AT N O R T H E R N R A I LWAY The Minnesota & Pacific Railroad was chartered in 1857, but, after a number of financial difficulties, it was reorganized and acquired by railroad entrepreneur James J. Hilt, who renamed it the St. Paul, Minnesota & Manitoba Railroad in 1879. Consistent with his plans for the road, however, Hill renamed it again in 1889, this time as the Great Northern Railway. By that time, Hill had completed constructing extensions of the Great Northern from Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota, out to Seattle and Vancouver. During the 1920s and 1930s, the railroad extended its reach through Oregon and into northern California. The Great Northern Railway merged in 1970 with the Northern Pacific*, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy*, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle railroads to become part of the huge Burlington Northern* system. References Albro Martin, James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest, 1976. Charles Wood and Dorothy Wood, The Great Northern Railway, 1979.

G R E AT R E C E S S I O N The Great Recession was a global economic downturn that began in late 2007, that snowballed in 2008, and that has arguably continued into the next decade. It contributed to high unemployment rates, low consumer confidence, declining property values, and increase in prices, foreclosures, and bankruptcies. Related to other financial crises such as the subprime mortgage crisis* and the collapse of the auto industry, the Great Recession also helped wipe out the savings of millions of Americans, rapidly increasing the levels of poverty and eliminating manufacturing completely from the national economy. Government officials were divided between austerity measures and public spending as a way to alleviate the most immediate effects of the recession. Despite economic growth, partly resulting from government stimulus and restored consumer confidence since 2010, inflation has continued even as wages have remained stagnant. Reference Frank K. Martin, A Decade of Delusions: From Speculative Contagion to the Great Recession, 2011.

G R E AT S O C I E T Y The term “Great Society” became the historical description of the domestic reforms of the Lyndon B. Johnson* administration. In his 1964 State of the Union address,

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Johnson declared a “war on poverty,” and in a speech at the University of Michigan in May 1964, he spoke of “the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society but upward to the Great Society.” Journalists picked up on the term, and it was subsequently used to refer to such Johnson legislation as the Civil Rights Acts* of 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the antipoverty campaign of the 1960s. Reference Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, 1976.

GREEN, WILLIAM William Green was born in Coshocton, Ohio, on March 3, 1873. For two generations, his family had worked as coal miners, and in 1889, Green did the same. He also became active in union politics and rose through the ranks of the United Mine Workers* (UMW). In 1906, Green became head of the Ohio unit of the UMW. From 1910 to 1913, he served in the Ohio state legislature, as part of which he labored successfully for passage of the 1911 workmen’s compensation* law. From 1912 to 1922, Green was secretary treasurer of the UMW as well as a member of the executive council of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL). When Samuel Gompers* died in 1924, Green was elected president of the AFL. During the 1920s, Green was indefatigable in his support for federal labor standards legislation, social security, and an end to labor injunctions* and yellow-dog contracts*. He worked closely with Senator George Norris* and Representative Fiorello La Guardia in their successful development of the Norris–La Guardia Act* of 1932. A devout Baptist and bitter anticommunist, Green was convinced that labor must be disciplined and responsible to win management confidence. During the 1930s, Green put the full weight of the AFL behind the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, the National Labor Relations Act* of 1935, and the Social Security Act* of 1935. He left the UMW in 1937 during the split between the AFL and the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) over the question of industrial unionism. Throughout World War II*, Green supported a no-strike pledge from labor to keep production lines operating at full speed. He opposed the Taft– Hartley Act* of 1947 as a slave-labor law and in 1949 organized the International Confederation of Trade Unions. Green died on November 21, 1952. References Max D. Danish, William Green, 1952. Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography, 1977. Philip Taft, The A. F. of L. from the Death of Gompers to the Merger, 1959.

G R E E N B A C K PA R T Y The Greenback Party, also known as the Greenback–Labor Party, was founded in 1874 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Its original constituency included representatives of the National Grange*, the Knights of Labor*, and several other reform groups. The primary objective of the Greenback Party was to bring about changes in national

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monetary policy. Because of the effects of the Panic of 1873*, banking and financial interests wanted to remove from circulation the more than $400 million in paper currency, or greenbacks, that the U.S. government had issued during the Civil War*. Farmers and workers, on the other hand, had heavy debts and feared that removing the greenbacks from circulation would be deflationary and would force them to pay back their debts with more valuable money. The Greenback Party represented their demands for inflation and cheap money. In the election of 1876, the Greenback Party nominated Peter Cooper for president. The platform called for the issuance of greenbacks as legal tender, the repeal of the Specie Resumption Act of 1875, and the end of gold bond sales to foreign investors. The Greenback Party earned only 81,737 votes in 1876, but in the congressional elections of 1878, the party elected fourteen people to Congress. In 1880, James B. Weaver* received the Greenback Party nomination for president and won 308,578 votes. By that time, the party platform was demanding more paper money, free coinage of silver, the eight-hour workday, the end of convict labor, an end to future Chinese immigration, the breakup of all monopolies, and a graduated income tax*. But 1880 was the peak for the Greenback Party. In 1888, it fused with the Union Labor Party and in 1892 with the Populist Party*. The party reemerged as an insignificant and eventually right-wing organization in the twentieth century but disappeared completely after the election of 1956. Reference Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era, 1964.

G R E E N B A C K – L A B O R PA R T Y During the 1870s, the American economy went into a tailspin and triggered a series of bitter labor disputes, highlighted by the great railroad strike of 1877. It also led to new forms of political organization. One of them ‘was the Greenback– Labor Party, organized at Toledo, Ohio, in 1877. The party’s organizers believed that the country’s economic problems were due to the government’s monetary policy, and they advocated expansion of the money supply and inflation as solutions. The Greenback–Labor Party officially called for the resumption of specie payments by the federal government, the free coinage of silver at a ratio equal to that of gold, the elimination of national bank notes, legislatively mandated restrictions on the length of the work week, and imposition of a ban on Chinese immigration. The Greenback–Labor Party enjoyed a great deal of momentum in its first year or two. In the congressional elections of 1878, they ran candidates in 28 states and polled 1,060,000 votes. James Weaver* of Iowa emerged as the leader of that congressional contingency and of the Greenback–Labor Party. In 1880 the party expanded its platform to include woman suffrage, federal regulation of interstate commerce, and establishment of a graduated federal income tax. James Weaver ran for president on the Greenback–Labor ticket but polled only 308,000 votes, a disappointment when compared to James Garfield’s 4,449,000 votes. The Greenback–Labor Party then went into decline. They ran a presidential ticket headed by Benjamin

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F. Butler in 1884, but he won only 175,000 votes. The party dissolved soon after the election. References Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence, 1959. Norman Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1929.

G R E E N S PA N , A L A N Alan Greenspan was born on March 6, 1926, in New York City. He started out his educational career studying music at Juilliard, but he eventually switched to economics and graduated from New York University in 1948. He pursued a doctorate in economics at Columbia University, and in 1953, he formed a private consulting firm with David Townsend. Over the next two decades, Greenspan earned an outstanding reputation for economic sagacity. In terms of his politics, he was a conservative Republican, and as a young man, he had become enamored of the ideas of Ayn Rand. Although he became more pragmatic over the years, he maintained a deep faith in the power of the marketplace and the superiority of capitalism. He advised Richard Nixon during the presidential campaign of 1968, and in 1974, Nixon named him chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors*. Greenspan remained there until the end of the Gerald Ford administration in 1977. He returned to public life 1981, when President Ronald Reagan* named him to the President’s Economic Policy Board. Although Greenspan never liked the tag of being a supply-sider* or monetarist, he was convinced that the greatest threat to the American economy was inflation. In 1987, Reagan named Greenspan to fill the shoes of Paul Volcker*, who had retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve* Board. He served in this capacity until 2006. During this time, he was known for following his monetarist views in his Fed policies. Reference Time, June 15, 1987.

GREEN TECHNOLOGY Green technology is the development of products and services that serve to conserve, protect, and manage natural resources as well as limit the negative effects of extraction and pollution. Sustainable development of natural resources is one of the main goals of green technology, which allows for the development of energy sources, such as solar, wind, and other forms of “clean” power. Electronic and hybrid automobiles, the use of recycled goods for consumer goods, and the more efficient use of finite resources are also associated with green technologies. In the early twenty-first century, green technologies have become a popular new business ventures as innovative products are developed to meet the growing environmental awareness* of the consumer market. Reference Alexis Madrigal, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology, 2011.

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G R I F F I T H , D AV I D L E W E LY N WA R K D. W. Griffith was born in La Grange, Kentucky, on January 22, 1875. As a young man, he became very interested in the theater, but in the early 1900s, he transferred that interest to movie-making. In 1908, he joined the Biograph Studio as an assistant director, where his first film was The Adventures of Dollie. In 1914, however, Griffith became a national figure because of his film The Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman. Griffith went on to direct or produce more than 500 more films, and in 1919, he was one of the founders of United Artists Corporation. In addition to being a founding father of the movie industry in the United States, Griffith was also a technical and artistic innovator who is credited with making the first modem motion pictures. Griffith died on July 23, 1948. Reference Iris Barryk and Eileen Bowser, D. W. Griffith: American Film Master, 1965.

GROUP OF EIGHT (G-8) The Group of Eight, or G-8, is an eight-nation association that meets to discuss a wide range of global issues. Anchored by the United States, members include France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Great Britain, Canada, and, since 1997, Russia. The loose-knit organization (known as the G-7 before Russia entered) has come under incessant fire since the 1970s for failing to solve the economic problems of developing nations. The idea for a summit between the major world powers stems back to the early 1970s, when global economic problems became evident to American and European political leaders. In 1973, U.S. treasury secretary George Shultz organized a conference of finance heads from Japan, Great Britain, France, and Germany. It was prompted by the growing world recession created by problems between the petroleum industry and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The next year, France and Germany agitated to transition the summit into a national leaders’ conference. In 1975, the first G-6 meeting took place in France. Canada and Italy entered the next year, making the 1976 summit in Puerto Rico the first for the G-7. The following year in London, the European Union was accorded observer status for the first time. The cooperative gatherings at first dealt strictly with economic matters relating to the operation of the fledgling and powerless World Bank and International Monetary Fund and the establishment of exchange rates to ward off high inflation. By the early 1980s, the G-7 had expanded to include political issues on a world scale. Meetings in Ottawa in 1981 and Versailles in 1982 focused on terrorism and the proliferation of arms and aggression within Lebanon, Israel, Iran, and Iraq. Still interested in fiscal policy, the G-7 summit at Tokyo in 1986 called for closer scrutiny of the monetary systems of each member nation. In the late 1980s, G-7 summits addressed environmental* and health issues for the first time. The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, the discovery of HIV/AIDS, the widespread use and sale of cocaine, and global warming* dominated the focus of

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several meetings. During the past decade, G-7 conferences targeted the need to increase employment across the globe. The Munich Summit of 1992 concluded that nations need to monitor labor sources and tie them to global markets. The G-8’s economic initiatives, such as when it tried to stem the collapse of the Mexican peso, have failed to instill confidence in the conference’s ability and the necessity for G-8 meetings’ continuance. An expert on G-8 issues has commented, “The major source of G-8 decline is growing consensus within the group that effective coordination is beyond its grasp.” Jason Newman References Nicholas Bayne, Hanging in There: The G7 and G8 Summit in Maturity and Renewal, 2000. G8 Summit Online (www.library.utoronto.ca/g7). Peter I. Hajnal, The G7/G8 System: Evolution, Role, and Documentation, 1999. Peter Morton, “How Many ‘Gs’ is Enough?” Financial Post, May 16, 1988.

G U G G E N H E I M , D AV I D David Guggenheim was born in Philadelphia on July 9, 1856. He was born to a mercantile family that sent him to Switzerland during the early 1880s to learn the marketing business. Guggenheim returned in 1884 and immediately became active in the family copper-mining and smelting business that his father had founded. In 1901, Guggenheim took over the American Smelting & Refining Company and integrated mining, smelting, and refining into a single industrial process. American Smelting was soon a huge multinational corporation* with operations throughout the world. The company also became a leader in mass production mining techniques and the continual adoption of new technologies. Guggenheim died on September 28, 1930. Reference E. P. Hoyt, The Guggenheims and the American Dream, 1967.

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H H A L L , J O Y C E C LY D E Joyce Clyde Hall was born December 29, 1891, in David City, Nebraska. After the death of his father in 1897, Hall went to work part-time in a local stationery store. When he was fourteen, he pooled several hundred dollars with money from his two older brothers and opened a company selling greeting cards. Five years later, he was attending a business college in Kansas City and maintaining a healthy business on the side as a jobber for greeting cards. In 1913, he and his brother Rollie established the “Hallmark” label to market Christmas cards. Convinced that people wanted more personalized greeting cards in general, the brothers bought their own printing plant in 1916 and began producing them. They struggled along for a year until World War I* created an enormous demand for cards to send overseas to soldiers. Through widespread advertising on radio and in magazines during the early 1920s, they gave Hallmark cards a national reputation. An innovative marketing tool (the “Eye Vision Display Fixture,” which put cards at eye-level for customers in stores and markets) greatly boosted sales after 1924. They expanded nationwide by establishing independent Hallmark shops, and by 1958, there were more than 6,000 stores selling nearly 2 million cards a day. Hall died October 29, 1982. References Milton Moscowitz et al., Everybody’s Business, 1980. Who’s Who In America, 1978–1979.

H A M I LT O N , A L E X A N D E R Alexander Hamilton was born in Nevis, the British West Indies, on January 11, 1755. He came to New York City in 1773 to attend King’s College, and he was an early advocate of colonial independence. Hamilton put together an artillery company and proved himself an able leader. He became George Washington’s* personal secretary in 1777 and served later as an aide-de-camp until 1781. Washington let him command a unit of troops at the battle of Yorktown in 1781. Hamilton won a term in Congress in 1782 and in 1783 began a law practice in New York City, at which he was eminently successful. Hamilton fervently believed that the United States needed a strong central government, and he pushed that point of view as a delegate to the Annapolis Convention* in 1786. The next year, he served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention*. As one of the authors of the Federalist Papers after the convention, he worked diligently for ratification of the new document. Hamilton played an instrumental role in securing New York’s ratification of the Constitution.

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During Washington’s presidential administration, Hamilton served as the country’s first secretary of the treasury. In that position, he worked to fund the national debt*, assume the state debts, create a national bank*, pass a whiskey tax*, enact high tariffs on foreign goods, and establish American industry on a sound financial footing. Hamilton emerged as a leader of the fledgling Federalist Party*. He left public office late in Washington’s first term but continued to support a strong central government and the interests of bankers and businessmen. Hamilton died in a duel with Aaron Burr on July 12, 1804. Reference John C. Miller, Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation, 1959.

HAMMER, ARMAND Armand Hammer was born on May 21, 1898, in New York City. He had Russian ancestry, and Hammer’s father was a successful physician in New York City, an entrepreneur with several successful pharmacies, a committed socialist*, and one of the founders of the American Communist Party. Hammer graduated from Columbia University in 1919 and took an M.D. there in 1921. At the end of World War I*, Hammer convinced the family to buy up huge supplies of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies at deflated postwar prices. They made a fortune when those prices recovered shortly thereafter. In 1921, Hammer went to the Soviet Union to try to collect a $150,000 drug bill that the country owed to his family, but he also brought along a large supply of medicine to help fight a typhus epidemic. Hammer met Lenin and secured from him an agreement to trade Russian furs and caviar for American wheat. This was the beginning of Hammer’s successful Russian–American trading business. By 1930, he had exclusive rights to sell all Ford*, U.S. Rubber, Allis–Chalmers, and Underwood Typewriter products in the Soviet Union. That business continued to grow throughout his career. In 1956, Hammer decided to go into the oil business, primarily as a tax shelter. He bought up Occidental Oil Company, a nearly bankrupt concern and promptly struck oil along the southern California coast. Five years later, Occidental secured exclusive rights to develop Libyan oil. Hammer used the profits to turn Occidental into a huge conglomerate* with interests in real estate, oil, oil refining, chemicals, coal, and fertilizers. He remained active in his business and in Soviet interests until his death in 1991. Reference Milton Moscowitz et aI., Everybody’s Business, 1980.

H A M M E R v. D A G E N H A R T ( 2 4 7 U . S . 2 5 1 ) In 1916, Congress passed the Keating–Owen Act, which prohibited the interstate shipment of products made with child labor. Although long advocated by social reformers, the federal abolition of child labor also found support among northern textile manufacturers. State laws in New England already regulated child labor in

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the textile mills, making it difficult for northern producers to compete with unregulated southern mills. National legislation was an attempt by social reformers to abolish child labor for moral reasons, but it became equally a crusade by northern textile owners to rationalize labor markets across the country. Southern mill owners protested the legislation and carried their objections to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1918, by a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court overturned the legislation in Hammer v. Dagenhart on the grounds that the law was really a regulation of local labor practices rather than a genuinely interstate commerce issue. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.* wrote the minority opinion upholding the right of federal courts to enforce the Commerce Clause. Congress responded to the decision in 1919 with the Child Labor Relations Act, which imposed a heavy tax on all products in interstate commerce made with the assistance of child labor. In 1922, the Supreme Court overturned that law as well in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company*. Not until the New Deal* in the 1930s would permanent prohibitions on child labor be enacted on the federal level. References Alpheus Thomas Mason, The Supreme Court from Taft to Warren, 1958. Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 1939.

H A N S E N , A LV I N Alvin Hansen was born on August 23, 1887, in Viborg, South Dakota. He graduated from Yankton College in 1910, worked as a school principal for a few years, and then entered graduate school at the University of Wisconsin to study economics; he earned his Ph.D. in 1918. Hansen then taught at the University of Wisconsin and Brown University before his appointment at the University of Minnesota in 1919. He wrote Business Cycle Theory in 1927 and soon broadened his research into unemployment. During the early 1930s, Hansen worked for the Social Science Research Council’s Commission of Inquiry into National Policy in International Economic Relations and Columbia University’s Commission on Economic Recovery. Between 1936 and 1939, Hansen moved away from neoclassical economics toward Keynesian* assumptions on compensatory spending. In September 1937, he went to Harvard University. Scholars often credit Hansen with leading the “Keynesian revolution” in America and with providing the theoretical foundation for the economic policymaking of the late New Deal. Actually, Hansen combined the work of pre-Keynesian economists such as Knut Wicksell, Arthur Spiethoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Gustav Cassel, and D. H. Robertson with his own interest in business cycle theory and his modification of Keynesian theory to point the way toward a mixed economy. Hansen argued that the recession of 1937 stemmed from declining investment opportunities, lagging consumer credit, and the deflationary effects of the withdrawal of federal net expenditures that year. Hansen extended this analysis more broadly and most clearly in his famous “secular stagnation theory.” Its gist was that economic changes since the nineteenth century meant that the American economy was undergoing fundamental structural change. Declining population growth, declining availability of new land and natural resources, and

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lagging technological innovations left the economy without emerging new industries. Fewer private investment opportunities in the twentieth century thus had to be supplemented with increased consumer expenditures and careful consideration of increased federal expenditures through deficit-spending policies. The acknowledged dean of American Keynesians, Hansen helped to educate an emerging generation of Keynesian economic policy advisers who staffed the war mobilization agencies during World War II and the postwar Council of Economic Advisers*. Hansen wrote A Guide to Keynes in 1953, retired from Harvard in 1958, and died on June 6, 1975. References J. Ronnie Davis, The New Economics and the Old Economists, 1971. Robert Lekachman, The Age of Keynes, 1966. Herbert Stein, The Fiscal Revolution in America, 1969.

HARD MONEY Historically, the term “hard money” has been used to refer to gold or silver coin or bullion as opposed to paper currency. It has also been used to describe paper currency that is completely convertible on demand into bullion or gold and silver coins. Reference Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, 1963.

H A R R I M A N , E D WA R D H E N R Y Edward H. Harriman was born on February 10, 1848, in Hempstead, Long Island, New York. He was raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, and he quit school in 1862 to work as an office boy on Wall Street*. Harriman borrowed $3,000 from an uncle in 1870 and opened his own brokerage firm. In 1872, he founded his own investment bank-Harriman and Company. Harriman married Mary Averell in 1879. Her father was president of the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railroad, and Harriman took an immediate interest in the industry. He took control of the Lake Ontario Southern Railroad in 1881 and sold it at a large profit in 1883. Harriman then invested in other lines, including the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad and the Illinois Central Railroad*. Along with J. P. Morgan* and Company, Harriman financially reorganized the Erie Railroad in 1893. Harriman was then poised for a massive entry into the industry. In 1898, he put together a syndicate that purchased the Union Pacific Railroad*, and within three years, he added several other roads to it, including the Kansas Pacific, the Denver Pacific, the Oregon Short Line, and the Southern Pacific* railroads. Harriman found himself in the middle of the battle for control of the Northern Securities Company*, but he emerged from it with a profit of $50 million in 1904. Harriman died on September 9, 1909. Reference George F. Kennan, E. H. Harriman: A Biography, 1922.

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HARRINGTON, MICHAEL Michael Harrington was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 24, 1928. He graduated from Holy Cross in 1947, spent a year at the Yale Law School, and then earned a master’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1949. A committed socialist*, Harrington worked as a social worker in St. Louis and then became associate editor of the Catholic Worker in 1951. Harrington pursued an active writing and academic career, writing many books and teaching political science at the City University of New York. He came to national attention in 1962 with his bestselling book The Other America, which made the United States aware of the poverty hidden throughout the country. The ideas in the book found policy expression in the presidential administrations of John F. Kennedy* and Lyndon B. Johnson*. Michael Harrington died on August 9, 1989. Reference Michael Harrington, The Long Distance Runner: An Autobiography, 1988.

H A R R I S T R E AT Y O F 1 8 5 8 In 1858, Townsend Harris negotiated a commercial treaty with Japan. The treaty ended more than two centuries of Japan’s self-imposed economic and political isolation. The treaty provided for U.S. consuls in Tokyo and in the six Japanese ports open to foreign commerce. It extended freedom of religion to Americans living in Japan. It also allowed Japan to purchase weapons, naval technology, and ships from the United States, as well as designating the United States as the official mediator of all disputes between Japan and the European powers. For the United States, the Harris Treaty provided an economic and political foothold in Asia. References Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 1922. Charles E. Neu, The Troubled Encounter: The United States and Japan, 1975.

HARRISON, GEORGE George Harrison was born in San Francisco, California, on January 26, 1887. He took his A.B. degree from Yale in 1910 and a law degree from Harvard in 1913. Harrison then served as a legal secretary to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.* in 1913–1914. When he left his appointment with the Supreme Court, Harrison became assistant general counsel (1919–1920). He was appointed deputy governor of the Federal Reserve* Bank of New York in 1920, governor in 1928, and president in 1936. Harrison played a central role in the banking crisis of 1933, and in the formulation of the Banking Acts* of 1933 and 1935. He retired from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1941 to become president of the New York Life Insurance Company. He was named chairman of the board in 1948 and retired from that position in 1954. Harrison died on March 6, 1958. Reference New York Times, March 7, 1958.

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HARTFORD, GEORGE HUNTINGTON George H. Hartford was born on September 5, 1833, in Augusta, Maine. After leaving school, he worked in a number of different mercantile establishments. In 1860, he went to work for George F. Gilman in New York City. They began importing tea and formed the Great American Tea Company. The store was an instant success, and the two then began selling a wider variety of products—tea, spices, milk, baking powder, and grain staples. Gilman and Hartford opened other stores in New York City, and those were just as successful. In 1869, they had ten stores and renamed the company the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, or the A & P. By 1878, they had sixty-seven stores and by 1901 more than 200. The A & P was by far the most successful chain store system of its time, and its annual sales were not surpassed until 1964, by Sears, Roebuck, and Company*. Hartford died on August 29, 1917. Reference M. A. Adelman, A & P, 1959.

HARTFORD CONVENTION During the War of 1812*, considerable opposition to the conflict emerged in New England, where merchants, shippers, and workers worried about the effect of the war on the economy. Federalist leaders in Massachusetts called a meeting of war opponents to meet in Hartford, Connecticut, on December 15, 1814. Representatives from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire attended the Hartford Convention, where they debated the war and passed resolutions condemning James Madison’s* war policies. They demanded protection for New England from unconstitutional actions by the federal government and insisted on formal protection of New England’s interests from attacks by the South and West. Little came of the Hartford Convention, except that when the news of the resolutions became public (just as peace was achieved), the delegates were condemned as unpatriotic. Reference H. L. Coles, The War of 1812, 1967.

H AT C H A C T O F 1 8 8 7 In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act*, which established land grant colleges throughout the United States. By the 1880s, there was a growing feeling that the agricultural research being produced in the land grant colleges needed to be distributed efficiently to the country’s farmers. To promote that type of education, Congress passed the Hatch Act, which became law on March 2, 1887. The Hatch Act set up a federal system of experimental stations to work with the land grant colleges in conducting experimental research and distributing useful information to the nation’s farmers. The Hatch Act goes a long way toward explaining why American farmers became the most productive in the world in the twentieth century.

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Reference Gladys L. Baker et al., Century of Service: The First 100 Years of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1963.

H AWA I I The Hawaiian Islands lie in an isolated position in the Central Pacific Ocean. The earliest economic value of the islands was as a stopover point in the trans-Pacific trade between California and China and as a wintering ground for whaling ships. American domination appeared early. Late in the nineteenth century, American interests virtually controlled the Hawaiian sugar industry, with its West Coast market, almost as soon as it began. Americans led a rebellion on the island in 1892. The rebels, quickly recognized by the American minister, sent a delegation to Washington to draw up a treaty of annexation. The Benjamin Harrison administration was willing, but the effort was forestalled by the inauguration of Grover Cleveland* in March 1893. Cleveland withdrew the treaty and restored the indigenous government. Three years later, William McKinley* was elected president, and early in 1898, another attempt was made to bring about annexation. It languished in the Senate until the outbreak of the Spanish–American War. With the American capture of the Philippines, the vital importance of Hawaii to trans-Pacific communications suddenly became obvious. On July 2, 1898, McKinley signed a joint congressional resolution providing for Hawaii’s annexation. Reference James A. Russ Jr., The Hawaiian Republic, 1961.

H AWA I I A N R E C I P R O C I T Y T R E AT Y O F 1 8 7 5 American businessmen settled in Hawaii* in the early nineteenth century, and the sugar cane plantations that they developed eventually became the backbone of the economy. The developing sugar beet industry in the American West provided competition for sugar cane producers all around the world, and Hawaiian producers wanted to give themselves an economic boost. Secretary of State Hamilton Fish listened to the proposals of the Hawaiian commissioners and finally agreed. The Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty provided for the free importation of Hawaiian sugar products into the United States. In return, Hawaii would allow the free importation of American manufactured goods. Reference Sylvester K. Stevens, American Expansion in Hawaii, 1842–1898, 1945.

H AW L E Y – S M O O T TA R I F F When President Herbert Hoover* came into office in 1929, he was committed to tariff reform, but in the legislative process, the logrolling principle eventually produced one of the highest tariffs in U.S. history. The original sponsor of the

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tariff was Congressman Willis C. Hawley of Oregon, but he quickly lost control of the measure. In the Senate, Reed Smoot of Utah was in charge of the bill. He was strongly inclined toward protectionism, especially for farm goods (a futile gesture, considering the huge surpluses being produced) in general and for Utah sugar in particular. Senator Joseph R. Grundy of Pennsylvania, former head of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association, enthusiastically agreed to the demands of farm state senators for high agricultural duties, and they in turn supported his call for high duties on industrial goods. In Congress, insurgent Republicans and some Democrats tried to keep the duties reasonable. They inserted provisions supporting the export debenture plan* for agriculture and amending the Fordney–McCumber* tariff to require Congress rather than the president to approve any schedule revisions. Hoover opposed both the amendments and threatened to veto the measure, so both amendments were removed from the bill. Congress debated the bill throughout the spring of 1930, and on June 13, the Senate passed it by a 44–42 vote. The House followed suit on June 14 with a 222–153 vote. The strongest support for the bill came from the industrial Midwest and Northeast. Hoover signed the bill on June 17, 1930. The Hawley–Smoot Tariff raised the duties on raw materials from 50 to 100 percent above the Fordney–McCumber levels. Its average ad valorem rates were 40 percent, compared to 33 percent for Fordney–McCumber. The tariff increases attracted nearly universal condemnation from economists, who feared that the law would destroy international trade, increase the cost of living, subsidize wasteful and inefficient production, and inspire retaliatory tariffs from foreign competitors. They were right. After the stock market crash* of October 1929, the economy slid into the worst depression in American history, and the Hawley–Smoot Tariff only accelerated the decline. Reference Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 1984.

H AY, J O H N M I LT O N John M. Hay was born in Salem, Indiana, on October 8, 1838. He graduated from Brown University in 1858 and began practicing law. In 1859, he became private secretary to Abraham Lincoln*, and in 1865, he began a five-year stint as legation secretary for the State Department in Paris, Vienna, and Madrid. Hay returned to the United States in 1870 and began a writing career, which resulted in his book Life of Lincoln. President William McKinley* appointed him ambassador to Great Britain in 1897. One year later, Hay returned from London when McKinley named him secretary of state. Hay played a key role in American diplomacy, especially in the conduct and conclusion of the Spanish–American War and the acquisition of the territory for the Panama Canal. He is best remembered, however, for his role in developing the Open Door* policy. With the acquisition of Hawaii*, Guam, Wake, and the Philippines in the late 1890s, the United States became a Pacific power with dreams of economically developing the huge China market. That market,

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however, was threatened by the European imperial powers, which had recently intervened in China and were prepared to carve it up into spheres of influence. In 1899 and 1900, Hay negotiated the Open Door Notes with the European powers; the notes called for freedom of commerce in China and Chinese territorial integrity. Although the Open Door Notes never acquired the status of international law, they remained for the first half of the twentieth century the linchpin of American foreign policy in East Asia. Hay died on July 1, 1905. References Kenton J. Clymer, John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat, 1975. Tyler Dennett, John Hay: From Poetry to Politics, 1934.

H AY M A R K E T Against a background of economic hard times, the Haymarket affair illustrated the violent actions and emotions surrounding the development of organized labor in the late nineteenth century. On May 3, 1886, Chicago police fired on a crowd of strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works; several workers were killed or wounded. The next day, a group of anarchists held a protest at Haymarket Square. As the meeting was drawing to a close, police arrived to disperse the crowd. The speaker asserted that the meeting was a peaceful one that was breaking up anyway. When the police insisted, someone threw a bomb in their direction. The police responded by firing into the crowd, killing and wounding both civilians and other police. Altogether, sixty-three police were injured, and several later died. Eight Chicago anarchists were tried and convicted of the murder of the police, even though the identity of the bomb-thrower was never discovered. Their trial has since taken on the notoriety of the Sacco–Vanzetti and Dreyfus affairs. Four of the anarchists were executed, one committed suicide in jail, and the rest were eventually pardoned by Illinois’s new governor, John Peter Altgeld. The violence on both sides foreshadowed the Homestead* and Pullman* strikes of the 1890s. The affair also badly damaged the Knights of Labor* by internal dissension over Terence V. Powderly’s* refusal to express any sympathy or support for the condemned anarchists. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy, 1984.

H AY W O O D , W I L L I A M D U D L E Y William “Big Bill” Haywood was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on February 4, 1869. He went to work as a miner when he was 15 and spent ten years laboring in Nevada and Utah before moving to Silver City, Idaho. Haywood joined the Western Federation of Miners, and in 1899, he was elected to its executive board; he became its national secretary-treasurer in 1900. Haywood was astounded by the antiunion

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attitudes of mine operators and by their willingness to resort to violence. Their reactionary opinions made him more and more radical. In 1905, Haywood helped establish the new Industrial Workers of the World* (IWW), or the “Wobblies,” and in 1907, he was acquitted of the murder of the governor of Idaho. Outspoken and uncompromising, Haywood symbolized revolutionary trade unionism. Factional disputes in the IWW disillusioned Haywood, and he flirted for a time with the Socialist Party*, but he found them too willing to compromise with the existing capitalist order. Haywood returned to the IWW in 1912. In 1917, he was imprisoned for opposing American entry into World War I. Even though he was released from prison in 1919, the country was in the middle of the First Red Scare, and the government continued to harass him. Haywood moved to the Soviet Union in 1921 and died in Moscow on May 18, 1928. Reference Joseph H. Conlin, Big Bill Haywood and the Radical Union Movement, 1969.

H E A R S T, W I L L I A M R A N D O L P H William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco, California, on April 29, 1863. He studied at Harvard from 1882 to 1885 and was awarded an honorary LLD degree from Oglethorpe in 1927. His interest in politics was deep, if erratic, and he served two terms in Congress (1903–1907) as a Democrat from New York. Although he ran for mayor of New York City and later for governor of New York, his influence was primarily the result of his ownership of such important newspapers and magazines as the San Francisco Examiner, the Los Angeles Examiner, the Los Angeles Herald and Express, the Chicago Herald-American, the Boston American, the Boston Record, the New York Journal-American, the New York Mirror, the Baltimore News-Post, the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegram, the Detroit Times, and the Milwaukee Sentinel. He had received $5 million from his mother and used the money in 1895 to buy the New York Journal. He soon built a reputation for crude, sensational “yellow journalism” in his competition with the Joseph Pulitzer newspapers. Realizing that technological change was expensive but made mass circulation possible and necessary, Hearst built his newspaper empire by driving the competition out of business. By the 1920s, Hearst owned ninety newspapers, three radio stations, and such magazines as Good Housekeeping and Harper’s Bazaar. But in the process of creating his empire, Hearst became a thoroughly despised man, the model for Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. His political failures tended to make him more and more conservative, even by the standards of the 1920s. He opposed American entry into World War I and bitterly opposed the nomination of Alfred E. Smith* as the Democratic presidential candidate in 1928. During the 1930s, he was absolutely convinced that Franklin D. Roosevelt* was leading the country down the road to communism. In the election of 1936, all his newspapers pushed the candidacy of Republican nominee Alf Landon, but when Roosevelt defeated Landon in a landslide, Hearst gradually withdrew from the political arena. Out of touch with the ambitions and beliefs of most Americans, Hearst held opinions that were increasingly regarded as extreme. He died on August 14, 1951.

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References Rodney P. Carlisle, Hearst and the New Deal: The Progressive as Reactionary, 1982. William A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst, 1961.

H E I N Z , H E N RY J O H N Henry J. Heinz was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 11, 1844, to German immigrant parents. As a child, he began selling produce from the family garden, and in 1876, he established the F & J. Heinz Company to manufacture pickles and other prepared foods. The company was renamed H. J. Heinz Company in 1888. Through ingenious marketing and advertising techniques, Heinz soon presided over the country’s largest food processing firm. He was also a liberal employer in terms of worker benefits and a strong supporter of the Pure Food and Drug Act* of 1906. Heinz died on May 14, 1919. Reference Robert C. Alberts, The Good Provider: H. J. Heinz and His 57 Varieties, 1973.

H E L L E R , WA LT E R Walter Heller (1915–1987), a premier American economist during the 1960s and 1970s, received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1941, where he specialized in finance and taxation. During World War II, he worked as an economic analyst for the Treasury Department. After the war, he took an academic post at the University of Minnesota. In December 1960, President John F. Kennedy* appointed Heller chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers*. Heller immediately advocated deficit government spending as a means of stimulating the economy and addressing the 7 percent unemployment rate. During the last year of the Kennedy administration, Heller drafted the legislation that became the antipoverty program under Lyndon B. Johnson*. He left the administration in 1964 and returned to academia, but he continued to serve as a consultant, always from a Keynesian* perspective. Reference George Church, “Demystifier of the Dismal Science,” Time, June 29, 1987.

HEPBURN ACT OF 1906 Congress brought the federal government into the railroad business with the Interstate Commerce Act* of 1887. The Elkins Act* of 1903 gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) even more authority to regulate the railroads. But progressive* Republicans and Democrats demanded still more regulation, so in 1906, Congress passed the Hepburn Act, which allowed the ICC to set railroad freight rates, outlawed rebates, limited the use of free passes, and made ICC decisions immune from the federal court review system. Reference Gabriel Kolko, Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916, 1967.

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H E R I TA G E F O U N D AT I O N A right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation is a nonprofit* foundation geared toward fostering the development of conservative politics and values in the United States. It claims to be one of the country’s biggest public policy research groups and the most broadly supported think tank in the nation, counting more than 200,000 benefactors last year. Founded in 1973 during the conservative backlash to the civil rights movement, the Heritage Foundation has consistently supported free enterprise, limited government, personal freedom, a competitive national defense, and “traditional” American values. Interns and permanent staff at the Heritage Foundation conduct research and lobby members of Congress to adopt policies in league with the foundation’s goals of a more conservative America. To facilitate its mission, the Heritage Foundation provides publications, news articles, public lectures, professional conferences, and political meetings to any individual or group that needs information. Steered by a Board of Trustees, the Heritage Foundation depends on the financial support of wealthy private donors who want the climate of American politics to shift to the right. In 1981, the Heritage Foundation acted as the bedrock of support for President Ronald Reagan’s* successful bid for the presidency. Also that year, the organization wrote Mandate for Leadership, the “bible of the Reagan administration.” The influential work went into several new editions in the 1980s and 1990s as Republican politicians and the Christian right sought to reestablish conservative values. The Heritage Foundation has continued to support conservative candidates and pro-business stances into the 21st century. ABC-CLIO References Lee Edwards, The Power of Ideas: The Heritage Foundation at 25 years, 1997. Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org).

HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING ACT OF 1991 In 1991 Congress passed legislation to develop a national computer networking infrastructure which would link American research, educational, and military establishments. Proponents called the system a “high-tech data superhighway,” as significant as the creation of the interstate highway system in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Congress envisioned spending $5 billion from 1992 to 1997 to build what would be known as the National Public Telecomputing Network. The legislation also provided for improving the performance of supercomputers, increasing the number of computer science graduates in the United States, and creating an immediate National Research and Educational Network based on existing research-oriented Internet* systems. Reference Joe Abernathy, “Data Superhighway,” Houston Chronicle, November 30, 1991.

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H I G H WAY A C T O F 1 9 1 6 See FEDERAL AID ROAD ACT OF 1916. H I G H WAY A C T O F 1 9 5 6 See INTERSTATE AND DEFENSE HIGHWAY SYSTEM ACT OF 1956. H I L L , G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N George Washington Hill was born on October 22, 1884, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The family moved to New York City before his father became president of the American Tobacco Company. Young Hill studied at Williams College for two years before joining the firm. In 1907, with the assistance of his father, he purchased the tobacco firm of Butler and Butler and became its president. Hill aggressively marketed the company’s principal product—Pall Mall cigarettes—and made it one of the most successful brands in the country. He rejoined American Tobacco as vice president and sales manager in 1912 and in 1916 introduced a new cigarette named Lucky Strike. From 1916 to 1931, Hill transformed Lucky Strike into the most-bought cigarette in the country. He became president of American Tobacco Company in 1912. His advertising campaigns, which consumed more than $250 million from 1921 to 1938, became legendary for both their success and their questionable ethics. To attract women smokers in the 1920s, Hill launched the “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet” campaign, which compared beautiful, thin women smoking Lucky Strikes with obese women eating candy. On radio, Hill sponsored the Walter Winchell shows. Hill also broadcast and printed testimonials from physicians that Lucky Strike was a “smoother” and supposedly more healthful cigarette. Despite the outraged protests of antismoking reformers, Lucky Strike sales jumped from $12 million in 1920 to $40 million in 1924. During the 1930s, Hill kept Lucky Strike sales and American Tobacco Company profits high by sponsoring Frank Sinatra, Kate Smith, the “Jack Benny Show,” and “Your Hit Parade.” Hill died on September 13, 1946. References New York Times, September 14, 1946. Robert Sobel, They Satisfy: The Cigarette Industry, 1978. Richard Tennant, The American Tobacco Industry, 1950.

HILL, JAMES JEROME James J. Hill was born on September 16, 1838, in Rockwood, Ontario, Canada. Hill’s father died in 1852, and his son had to quit school and go to work in a local store. He left home when he was 18 and traveled widely around the eastern United States. Hill finally settled in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1856. He spent the next nineteen years working as a buyer and freight agent for a number of Mississippi and Great Lakes packet ships. In 1870, Hill formed the Red River Transportation

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Company to ship goods by steamboat from St. Paul into Saskatchewan, Canada. His business immediately provided serious competition to the steamboats of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The two operations merged in 1872, retaining the Red River name. Hill also served as an agent for several railroads, and he realized that coal was destined to replace wood as the primary fuel for the railroads. In 1875, Hill established the Northwestern Fuel Company to supply coal to the railroads. His profits from these ventures were enough to allow him to enter the railroad industry in a big way. In 1878, with several associates, Hill purchased the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, a nearly bankrupt line. They restored it to physical and financial health and then expanded it north into Canada and west to Everett, Washington, on the Pacific Coast. The line became known as the St. Paul, Minnesota, and Manitoba Railroad in 1879. Several years later, Hill built the Great Northern Railroad* across the country, competing with the Northern Pacific Railroad*. Early in the 1900s, Hill came to control the Northern Pacific as well, and in 1901, with financial assistance from the House of Morgan, he formed the Northern Securities Company*, a holding company* that controlled the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy* railroads, as well as several other Hill properties. The federal government launched an antitrust suit against the Northern Securities Company, and in 1904 the Supreme Court dissolved the company. Hill died on May 29, 1916. Reference Albro Martin, James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest, 1976.

HILLMAN, SIDNEY Sidney Hillman was born on March 23, 1887, in Zagare, Lithuania. Educated at the Stodbodka Rabbinical Seminary in Lithuania, Hillman fled to the United States in 1907 after being arrested and jailed for labor agitation in favor of the ten-hour working day. He settled in Chicago and went to work as an apprentice cutter at the Hart, Schaffner, and Marx factory. In September 1910, when women workers went on strike, Hillman joined them, and he negotiated an agreement with the firm that established the foundation for the impartial chairman plan. His prominence in the strike gave him a public profile among fellow workers, and Hillman became a trade union officer for the Chicago local of the United Garment Workers of America. Hillman became the first president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America* (ACWA) in 1914. He played a critical role in ACWA, organizing victories in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. He established the union’s unemployment insurance, cooperative housing, and worker bank programs, and he built ACWA into one of the most powerful industrial unions in the country. When the depression hit, Hillman called for limiting the work week as a way of preserving jobs, helped draft the public works section of the National Industrial Recovery Act, and sat as a member of the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) board. Hillman served as vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) from 1935

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to 1940, was a founder of Labor’s Non-Partisan League* to reelect Franklin D. Roosevelt* in 1936, and was co-director of the Office of Production Management from 1940 to 1942. Hillman was also the founder and chairman of the American Labor Party. He died of a heart attack on July 10, 1946. Reference Matthew Josephson, Sidney Hillman, Statesman of American Labor, 1952.

H I L L Q U I T, M O R R I S Morris Hillquit was born in Riga, Latvia, on August 1, 1869. His family immigrated to the United States in 1886, and Hillquit went to work in a shirt factory in New York City. In 1890, he joined the Socialist Labor Party and became active in radical politics, studying law at the same time at the New York Law School, from which he graduated in 1893. Hillquit left the Socialist Labor Party in 1899 because he disagreed with the increasingly revolutionary militancy of its leader, Daniel DeLeon. In 1901, Hillquit became an early member of the Socialist Party* of America, primarily because he believed that its tactics—nonviolent political action—were more appropriate to the American environment. He was active in organizing workers for the United Hebrew Trades, and in 1913, he became general counsel for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union* (ILGWU). He remained there until 1933. In 1917, Hillquit actively opposed U.S. entry into World War I*. He established the American Conference for Democracy and Terms of Peace that year to promote his views. He served as chairman of the national committee of the Socialist Party from 1913 to 1933. Hillquit was indefatigable in laboring on behalf of poor workers and immigrants, and he opposed the paranoia of the First Red Scare in 1919 and 1920. In 1924, Hillquit endorsed the presidential candidacy of Robert M. La Follette* and the Progressive Party. He resented the business philosophy that dominated national politics in the 1920s and viewed the depression after 1929 as an opportunity for socialism to make real gains in America. Hillquit did not live to see how Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Deal prevented American socialists from capitalizing on the suffering of the Great Depression*. Hillquit died on October 7, 1933. References Morris Hillquit, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life, 1934. New York Times, October 8, 1933. Norman F. Pratt, Morris Hillquit: A Political History of an American Jewish Socialist, 1979.

H I LT O N , C O N R A D N I C H O L S O N Conrad Hilton was born on December 25, 1887, in San Antonio, New Mexico. His father ran a variety of small business enterprises, including renting out rooms in the family house to boarders, and Conrad assisted him. They began calling the home the Hilton Inn. Hilton went to work for a local bank in 1913, and within

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two years, he was named president. He spent a term in the state legislature in 1912–1913 and served in the army during World War I*. His father died in 1918, and with money from the estate, Hilton began investing in hotels in Texas. He spread out to New Mexico and California in the 1930s and then to New York and Chicago in the 1940s. Hilton established the Hilton Hotels Corporation in 1946. He purchased the Statler Hotel chain early in the 1950s and then founded Hilton International to move into foreign countries. Under Hilton’s leadership, Hilton Hotels became one of the most recognizable names in the industry. Hilton died on January 4, 1979. References Conrad Hilton, Be My Guest, 1976. New York Times, January 5, 1979.

H O F FA , J A M E S R I D D L E James R. “Jimmy” Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913. He quit school in Detroit when he was 15 and became a stockboy in a department store. In 1930, Hoffa became a freight handler for Kroger’s and four years later joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters*, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America. Later that year, Hoffa became a full-time Teamster organizer, and he spent the rest of his life in Teamster politics. On a number of occasions, federal agents accused him of racketeering, but he managed to escape conviction. In 1957, Hoffa became president of the Teamsters Union. He played a key role during the next several years in expanding Teamster control throughout the trucking industry. President John F. Kennedy and Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy, committed to dealing with the problem of labor union corruption, targeted Hoffa for investigation and prosecution. In 1964, he was convicted of jury tampering, misuse of union pension funds, bribery, and conspiracy. He entered the federal penitentiary in 1967, and resigned the Teamster presidency in 1971, but was pardoned by President Richard Nixon on the condition that he would stay out of union affairs for the next ten years. Hoffa had usually supported the Republican Party. He disappeared under suspicious circumstances in July 1975 and was never seen again. During the 1980s, rumor had it that Hoffa had been the victim of a mob murder and that his body was buried in the concrete foundation of the Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey. References Steven Brill, The Teamsters, 1978. Walter Sheridan, The Fall and Rise of Jimmy Hoffa, 1972.

H O L D I N G C O M PA N Y A holding company is a device used in the process of horizontal integration*, whereby a company gradually gains more and more control of a particular market. A holding company purchases a controlling stock interest in a variety of operating

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companies and then either dictates prices and production levels or allocates markets to them, all in an attempt to monopolize an industry and augment profit levels.

HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, JR. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., was born on March 8, 1841. He graduated from Harvard College in 1861. After graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Massachusetts 20th Volunteers and he was wounded in battle during the Civil War*. He returned to Harvard after the war and earned his law degree there in 1866. For the next fifteen years, Holmes practiced law in Boston and taught at the Harvard Law School. He specialized in constitutional law. In 1882, he was appointed an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. During the next twenty years, Holmes adopted a progressive* philosophy on labor and industrial issues, writing more than 1,000 opinions and often incurring the wrath of corporate interests. When Horace Gray retired from the U.S. Supreme Court in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt* offered the vacancy to Holmes. Holmes, though a lifelong Republican, proved to be pragmatic and fiercely independent on the court. During the 1920s, Holmes frequently offered minority opinions, along with Justices Louis D. Brandeis* and Harlan Fiske Stone*, because he basically accepted the right of the people, through the federal government, to regulate large corporations. Holmes interpreted the Commerce Clause of the Constitution loosely and wanted to protect the rights of labor. In 1932, aged 91, Holmes retired from the Supreme Court. He died on March 6, 1935. References Alpheus Thomas Mason, The Supreme Court from Taft to Warren, 1958. New York Times, March 7, 1935.

H O M E O W N E R S ’ L O A N C O R P O R AT I O N By early 1933, more than 40 percent of the $20 billion in home mortgages in the United States were in default, and mortgage lending institutions throughout the country were in serious trouble. Herbert Hoover’s* administration had tried to deal with the problem through Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) loans and the creation of the Federal Home Loan Bank* system in 1932. Those loans were repayable, with interest, by the savings and loan associations, however, and did little to help people keep up their mortgage payments. The default situation was also undermining housing values and the asset portfolios of thousands of lending institutions. During the first “hundred days”* of the New Deal*, Senator Joseph Robinson of Arkansas sponsored legislation to deal with the problem, and on June 13, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed the Home Owners’ Refinancing Act. The law authorized the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to establish a Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) with $200 million in capital from the RFC and the right to issue up to $2 billion in bonds. The bond total was increased to $3

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billion in June 1934 and to $4.75 billion in May 1935. The Home Owners’ Loan Act of April 1934 guaranteed the principal and interest of HOLC bonds. Under the program, HOLC bonds would be exchanged for mortgages (up to a maximum of $14,000) that would be changed into a single first mortgage. The corporation could also issue cash advances for payment of taxes and repairs up to 50 percent of the value of the property. The HOLC could redeem properties that had been lost by foreclosure after January 1, 1930. Mortgagees would then pay back the HOLC over the course of fifteen years, at 5 percent interest. Under the direction of John H. Fahey, the HOLC made 992,531 loans totaling $3,005,408,000 by February 29, 1936. The corporation stopped accepting loan applications in June 1935 and stopped making loans in June 1936. By that time, the HOLC had refinanced perhaps 20 percent of the mortgaged urban homes in the United States and one sixth of the total urban home mortgage debt. Under the National Housing Act* of 1934, the HOLC also extended $100 million in its bonds to finance the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation* (FSLIC) and $300 million for purchasing stock in federal savings and loan associations. After 1936, the HOLC spent fifteen years collecting its payments and terminated operations in 1951. Reference Congressional Digest 15 (1937): 107–108.

HOMESTEAD ACT The Homestead Act of 1862 was one of the most important pieces of legislation in American economic history. For decades, the Whig Party and then the Republican Party had been promoting progressively more generous policies for the sale of public lands to encourage settlement of the West and economic development. Democrats, especially southern Democrats, often opposed such land sale policies for fear that the West would dwarf the South in population and forge strong economic links with the North; politically, this trend could only threaten the South’s “peculiar institution”—slavery*. But when southern Democrats left Congress in 1861, Republicans quickly passed the Homestead Act of 1862, which offered 160 acres of public land to any individual older than 21. If the individual lived on the land for at least six months and farmed it, he could take title to it after paying $1.25 an acre. If he lived on the land for five years and farmed it, he would receive outright title with no payment. The Homestead Act opened up millions of acres of the public domain to settlement and accelerated the economic development of the West. References Paul Gates, History of Public Land Development, 1968. George M. Stephenson, The Political History of the Public Lands from 1840 to 1862, 1917.

HOMESTEAD STRIKE OF 1892 In July 1892, the Carnegie Steel Works at Homestead, Pennsylvania, announced a series of wage cuts. Angry workers reacted by going on strike. Henry C. Frick*,

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manager of the company, hired 300 private detectives from the Pinkerton Agency to defend the plant. As the Pinkertons were arriving at the plant by barge on July 6, strikers fired upon them. The detectives returned the fire and in the process seven people were killed. On July 12, state militiamen were called to work as strikebreakers, and on July 23, an avowed anarchist, Alexander Berkman, attacked and stabbed Frick. Although the strike formally continued until November 20, it was effectively over. The Homestead strike of 1892 demonstrated that the industry was not ready for labor organization and that management could count on the power of the state to suppress union activity. Reference Joseph F. Wood, Andrew Carnegie, 1970.

HOOSAC MILLS CASE See UNITED STATES v. BUTLER. HOOVER, HERBERT CLARK Herbert Clark Hoover was born on August 10, 1874, in West Branch, Iowa. Orphaned as a child, he was shuttled back and forth among several relatives before moving out to Oregon. Hoover graduated from Stanford University in 1895 with a major in mining and metallurgical engineering. He worked around the world as an engineer from 1895 to 1913 and accumulated a personal fortune. Hoover first came to public notice in 1914 when World War I* broke out. He worked out a successful method for getting American citizens out of Europe and back to the United States. During the war, Hoover headed the Commission for the Relief of Belgium, which shipped millions of tons of food to relieve starvation in the Low Countries. In the process, he built a global reputation as a humanitarian who was sensitive to the suffering of the poor and as an administrator capable of solving problems. President Woodrow Wilson* appointed Hoover to be head of the U.S. Food Administration* in 1917, and from 1918 to 1922, Hoover headed the American Relief Association, a humanitarian group providing food and medicine to wartorn areas of Europe and the Soviet Union. Hoover was popular enough in 1920 that both political parties courted him as a presidential candidate, but he announced himself as a Republican and decided not to run. Instead, he chose to accept a spot in Warren G. Harding’s cabinet as secretary of commerce. Hoover proved to be the most active secretary of commerce in U.S. history. He believed firmly in what he called the “associative state”—a national economy governed by organized interest groups and assisted by the federal government. Hoover encouraged the formation of trade associations, farm cooperatives, marketing groups, and labor unions because he believed that those groups were capable of negotiating their differences and improving competition, professional standards, expert planning, and efficiency. Hoover served as secretary of commerce under both Harding and his successor Calvin Coolidge.

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As for foreign affairs, Hoover had a global perspective based on his personal experience. He had a Jeffersonian* idealism that fused nationalism and internationalism. Hoover at first favored U.S. membership in the League of Nations, believing that Woodrow Wilson’s vision of a world order was the only way of preventing another global conflagration. Reluctantly, he supported the Treaty of Versailles with the reservations of Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, only because he thought it was politically necessary that it gain ratification. Lodge was an isolationist who insisted that American sovereignty not be compromised by giving the League too much power. During the 1920s, Hoover walked a political tightrope in the Republican Party, avoiding much talk about the League of Nations but supporting the disarmament conferences. By 1928, Hoover was the heir apparent for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, which he pursued after Coolidge decided not to seek reelection. In a controversial campaign against Governor Alfred E. Smith* of New York, Hoover won the presidential election of 1928*. His success in the election rested on two public perceptions: that he was a genuine humanitarian and that he had been responsible for much of the Republican prosperity of the 1920s. With the stock market crash* of 1929 and the Great Depression*, the second assumption was dashed, and when Hoover delayed again and again in providing large-scale federal relief programs, the prevailing belief in his humanitarianism died, too. In his inaugural address, Hoover had predicted the ultimate demise of poverty in the United States. Less than a year later, the country was in desperate and worsening circumstances. Hoover’s response to the economic crisis was to marshal the voluntary resources of the country to provide relief, to rely on benevolent corporate leaders to maintain employment, and to use the federal government to coordinate recovery efforts. Hoover was not a laissez-faire* president. The Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929* set up government stabilization corporations to purchase some crop surpluses; the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) of 1932 provided up to $2 billion in federal loan money to prop up the banking system; the Federal Home Loan Bank Ad of 1932 provided $500 million to shore up weakened savings and loan associations; and the Emergency Relief and Construction Act* of 1932 appropriated $3.3 billion for relief and public works loans. Hoover’s problem was that the programs simply did not stimulate the economy. Like most followers of classical economics, Hoover thought that a massive infusion of credit into the economy would automatically lead to increased consumer demand, production, and employment. But the Great Depression was primarily a problem of consumer purchasing power, not credit availability. During his administration, the unemployment problem grew steadily worse, finally reaching 25 percent in 1932. That was the kiss of death in an election year. Worse yet, Hoover was perceived as the man who had led the government-instigated riot against the Bonus Army* marchers in the summer of 1932, further convincing the public that he was mean-spirited and insensitive. In the election of 1932*, Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the Democrats delivered an unprecedented defeat to Hoover and the Republicans, driving the president out of the White House and routing the Republicans in Congress.

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Hoover spent the rest of his life as an elder statesman, criticizing the New Deal* and the steady growth of the federal government, which he felt was dangerously bureaucratic, inefficient, and stifling. Late in the 1940s, Hoover presided over a commission studying the federal government, and he recommended sweeping consolidations of federal agencies. Hoover, once the great humanitarian and later a symbol of the suffering of the Great Depression, died on October 20, 1964. References David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 1979. James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977.

HOOVER, HERBERT WILLIAM Herbert William Hoover was born on October 30, 1877, in New Berlin, Ohio. After finishing high school, he studied for two years at Hiram College but then entered the family harness and tannery business. They prospered by adapting the business to new consumer interests, shifting away from horse collars and harnesses early in the 1900s to leather for belts, purses, coats, and automobile straps. World War I provided the family with multimillion-dollar government contracts for what became known as the W. H. Hoover Company. In 1908, they decided to provide financial backing for one of their janitors, who had invented an electric sweeper by mounting a small engine on a Bissell carpet sweeper. William and Herbert Hoover established the Electric Suction Sweeper Company to market the new product. They placed advertisements in the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies’ Home Journal. Demand for the “Hoover vacuum cleaner” was immediate. Hoover established dealerships across the country just before and after World War I, and by the 1920s, the product had a national reputation. Hoover became president of the Hoover Suction Sweeper Company in 1922. By that time, he had developed newer, lighter vacuum cleaners and had introduced door-to-door salesmen and home demonstrations, which also increased sales. He died on September 16, 1954. References Frank G. Hoover, Fabulous Dustpan, 1955. New York Times, September 17, 1954.

HOOVER DAM After years of negotiations among Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and California over development and use of the waters of the Colorado River, Congress passed the Boulder Canyon Project Act on December 21, 1928, authorizing the construction of a huge federal dam near Boulder City, Nevada. The purpose of the dam was to provide water control, irrigation, hydroelectric power, and flood control along the Colorado River. The dam was situated at Black Canyon on the Colorado River, approximately twenty-five miles southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. Construction began in 1931 and was completed in 1936. The dam was considered the world’s

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most monumental engineering achievement—726 feet high and 1,244 feet long. It was dedicated in honor of President Herbert Hoover*, although the name reverted to Boulder Dam for a while until 1947, when the federal government again officially recognized it as Hoover Dam. Reference Norris Hundley, Water for the West, 1974.

H O O V E R M O R AT O R I U M In the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the Allied powers saddled Germany with responsibility for World War I and imposed reparations* of $56 billion. The reparations proved disastrous to the German economy, and the Allied powers eventually agreed to reduce them in the Dawes Plan* of 1924 and the Young Plan* of 1929. By then, the reparations were down to just over $8 billion. But the serious erosion of the world economy in 1931 made still further intervention necessary. Germany wanted the reparations reduced or eliminated, but France objected as long as the Allies were still required to repay their war debts* to the United States. In May 1931, the central bank of Austria failed, threatening financial instability throughout the Western world. On June 20, 1931, President Herbert Hoover* proposed a twelve-month moratorium on both Allied war debt payments and German reparations payments. The French agreed in July 1931, and the moratorium went into effect. At the Lausanne Conference* in June 1932, German reparations were reduced to less than $1 billion. References Edward W. Bennett, Germany and the Diplomacy of the Financial Crisis, 1962. Bernard V. Burke, “American Economic Diplomacy and the Weimar Republic,” Mid-America 54 (October 1972): 211–233. Benjamin Rhodes, “Herbert Hoover and the War Debts, 1919–1933,” Prologue 6 (summer 1974): 150–180.

HOOVERVILLES A pejorative term clearly reflecting the public conviction that Herbert Hoover* was responsible for the Great Depression*, “Hoovervilles” described the shantytowns sprouting around the United States in the early 1930s. By 1932, the communities of the homeless and unemployed had increased in size and number. With unemployment rates exceeding 25 percent and the number of business failures and farm and home foreclosures increasing, thousands of Americans became migrants and tens of thousands were homeless. In empty lots, city outskirts, beaches, river banks, municipal parks, and garbage dumps, these families erected makeshift shacks of cardboard, scrap metal, and cloth. The largest of the “Hoovervilles” was in St. Louis, where more than 1,000 people lived in makeshift housing. In New York City, hundreds of people lived along the Hudson River between West 72nd and l00th Street. In California, groups of migrant

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families lived in their cars while they searched for farm labor. Like “Hoover blankets” (newspapers), “Hoover heaters” (campfires), and “Hoover hogs” (armadillos), the term “Hooverville” was a symbol of the suffering wrought by the depression. It clearly implied that Herbert Hoover and the Republicans were responsible for the tragedy. Reference Martin G. Towey, “Hooverville: St. Louis Had the Largest,” Gateway Heritage 1 (fall 1980): 4–11.

H O P K I N S , H A R RY L . Harry L. Hopkins was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on August 17, 1877. He grew up in the Midwest and attended Grinnell College, graduating in 1912. Progressive* politics thrived at Grinnell, influencing the future careers of Hopkins and of his classmates Robert and Florence Kerr and Hallie Flanagan, all of whom would one day serve in the Works Progress Administration* (WPA) during the New Deal. His elder sister Adah, a social worker, inspired him to go into that field. Immediately after college, Hopkins moved to New York City, soon joining the city’s oldest social welfare agency, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. There he learned about the conditions that produced and derived from unemployment; health care also concerned him. He played a key role in the professionalization* of social work as a founder of the American Association of Social Workers (AASW) in 1921. With the coming of the Great Depression*, Hopkins volunteered with New York’s Emergency Work Bureau and called on the state government for help. This brought him to the attention of Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt*, who responded to these appeals by setting up the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration with Hopkins as its director. Before Roosevelt coined the term, Hopkins was already applying “bold, persistent experimentation” to deal with unemployment and relief, and when Roosevelt became president in 1933, he brought Hopkins with him to Washington to do it at the federal level. Hopkins became the head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration* (FERA) in 1933 and of its successor, the WPA, in 1935. As “Minister of Relief,” he worked closely with his old colleagues in social work and the settlement houses; his alliance with Eleanor Roosevelt* made a formidable team. In 1938, President Roosevelt named him to be secretary of commerce, and with the coming of war in Europe, he played a vital role in setting up and administering the Lend Lease* program. He also participated in diplomatic negotiations among the allies and worked to set up the United Nations. He died on January 29, 1946. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References George McJimsey, Harry Hopkins: Ally of the Poor and Defender of Democracy, 1987. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 1948.

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HOPKINS, MARK Mark Hopkins was born on September 1, 1813, in Henderson, New York. Like his father and grandfather before him, Hopkins went into the mercantile business. He studied law, served as a postmaster, sold plows, and worked as a bookkeeper before moving to California when gold was discovered there in 1848. Hopkins settled in Sacramento, sold groceries for a while, and then formed a partnership with Collis P. Huntington* to sell hardware and iron tools. He also formed close relationships with Leland Stanford* and Charles Crocker*, and all of them began talking earnestly of the need for a transcontinental railroad. In 1862, they received the go-ahead from Congress to build a line running from west to east. They formed the Central Pacific Railroad* and decided to link it up with the Union Pacific Railroad*, which was building from east to west. They also formed the Central Pacific Construction Company to sell construction materials. The two roads linked up at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869. Hopkins and his associates then built a trunk line into southern California, which became known as the Southern Pacific Railroad*. By that time, Hopkins was a millionaire more than twenty times over. He died on March 29, 1878. Reference Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, 1930.

H O R I Z O N TA L I N T E G R AT I O N The term “horizontal integration” generally refers to economic arrangements in which single corporate or institutional entities come to control the market for a particular service or commodity. Such monopolies come about because of mergers, pools*, trusts*, holding companies*, and informal arrangements to fix prices or allocate markets. Reference Matthew Sparke, Globalization: Ties, Tension, and Uneven Integration, 2013.

HOUSING ACT OF 1954 During the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the federal government made a major commitment to federal housing programs. Although such federal action was unusual for a Republican administration, housing programs had considerable support from the construction industry and from middle-class home buyers. The Housing Act was signed into law on August 2, 1954. The legislation provided for the construction of 35,000 homes for families who had been displaced by urban renewal and slum clearance programs. It considerably liberalized Federal Housing Administration (FHA) regulations by increasing maximum mortgage amounts, reducing the minimum down payments, and lengthening the period for amortization to thirty years. All of these changing regulations had the effect of reducing monthly payments and making housing more affordable. Congress followed up on the program with the Housing Act of 1955, which appropriated funds

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for an additional 45,000 homes. The Housing Act of 1957 again raised maximum mortgage amounts and provided more than $1 billion for more urban renewal programs. Still another housing act in 1958 liberalized FHA regulations once again, while the Housing Act of 1959 provided another $650 million for urban renewal. Reference Charles C. Alexander, Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952–1961, 1975.

H U G H E S , C H A R L E S E VA N S Charles Evans Hughes was born on April 11, 1862, in Glen Falls, New York. Hughes attended Colgate University from 1876 to 1878, but he transferred to Brown University and graduated third in his class. He taught at Brown for a year and in 1882 entered Columbia Law School. Hughes got his law degree in 1884 and then specialized in commercial law. He joined the law faculty of Cornell University in 1891 and then returned to private practice in New York City in 1893. During the 1890s, Hughes chaired two investigative commissions, one looking into the utilities industry and the other into the insurance industry. In the process, he impressed progressive* Republicans, who then backed him in his 1906 bid to become governor of New York. Hughes defeated Democratic candidate William Randolph Hearst* by 58,000 votes and entered the governor’s mansion in Albany. Hughes was reelected in 1908, but by then he had alienated important elements in the Republican Party. He refused to change the state law prohibiting racetrack betting, and he earned the lifelong wrath of Theodore Roosevelt* when he rebuffed the president’s friendly attempts to intervene in a bitter fight to oust Hughes’s superintendent of insurance. Hughes decided not to seek reelection, but in 1910, President William Howard Taft* nominated him to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. As a justice, Hughes was widely regarded as a liberal activist, upholding the right of Congress to control interstate commerce and the rights of labor and minorities. In 1916, the Republican Party persuaded Hughes to resign his court post and challenge Woodrow Wilson* for the White House. Because Wilson had preempted many of the progressive reform issues, Hughes had a difficult time defining his campaign, and he lost the election. Out of politics, Hughes returned to his law practice in New York and continued to speak out on the issues. On the question of the League of Nations, he was a moderate reservationist who essentially supported the idea of American participation. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Hughes secretary of state. In that post, he presided over the Washington Conference of 1921–1922, which developed a series of treaties on naval arms reduction, restrictions on submarine warfare, the Open Door* policy, and the balance of power in the Pacific. Hughes also played a central role in developing the Dawes Plan*, which scaled down and refinanced German reparations* payments. Hughes’s administration at the State Department was also noted for the Treaty of Berlin of 1921, the Santiago Conference of 1923, and his advocacy of American entry into the World Court. Hughes resigned as secretary of state in 1925 and returned to private law practice, but in 1930, President Herbert Hoover” nominated him to succeed Chief

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Justice Taft. There he presided over the court during its battles with President Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Dealers. Critics have unjustly assailed Hughes as a conservative on the court, when he was actually quite moderate. After 1935, he usually opposed the conservative faction and provided the swing vote in confirming New Deal* legislation. Hughes resigned from the court in 1941, and he died on August 29, 1948. Reference Merlo J. Pusey, Charles Evans Hughes, 1951.

H U G H E S , H O WA R D R O B A R D , J R . Howard Hughes Jr. was born on December 25, 1905, in Houston, Texas. He was educated at the Rice Institute in Houston and the California Institute of Technology. His father died in 1924, and the young Hughes inherited control of Hughes Tool Company. With the huge profits generated by Hughes Tool, Hughes invested money in the film industry in Hollywood. By 1948, he had a controlling interest in RKO Studio. He also established Hughes Aircraft Company in the 1930s. During World War II, the company made enormous profits in war production. After the war, the firm evolved into one of the country’s major defense contractors. He also bought a controlling interest in Trans World Airlines in 1939. By the 1950s, however, Hughes was becoming increasingly eccentric—even, according to some, deranged. He was paranoid about publicity and obsessed with disease and germs. Nevertheless, he used the Hughes Tool Company and the Summa Corporation of Las Vegas to enter the radio*, television, hotel, gambling, casino, and real estate businesses in southern Nevada, southern California, and northern Arizona. Hughes died on April 5, 1976. Reference New York Times, April 6, 1976.

HULL, CORDELL Cordell Hull was born on October 2, 1871, in Overton County, Tennessee. He attended the National Normal University in Lebanon, Ohio, in 1888 and 1889, and then studied law at the Cumberland Law School, receiving his degree in 1891. He then began practicing law. Entering the political arena in 1893, Hull was elected to the Tennessee legislature and served there until 1897. Hull returned to his private law practice until 1903, when he was appointed to fill a judgeship in the Fifth Judicial Circuit of Tennessee. In 1907, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served continuously (except for 1921–1922) until his election to the Senate in 1931. In Congress, Hull was a leading progressive*, authoring the Federal Income Tax* Act (1913), the Revised Federal Income Tax Act (1916), and the Federal Inheritance Tax Act (1916). During the 1920s, Hull advocated low tariffs (to stimulate world trade), disarmament, U.S. membership in the League of Nations, and a revision of U.S.

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interventionist policies in Latin America. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* selected Hull to join his cabinet as secretary of state. In that position, Hull was responsible for the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934* and the development of the Good Neighbor Policy*. Next to Roosevelt, Hull became one of the most popular Democrats in the country during the 1930s. During World War II*, Hull concentrated his efforts on the creation of the United Nations, and in 1945, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Hull retired from the State Department in 1944 and died on July 23, 1955. References Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, 1948. New York Times, July 24, 1955. Julius W. Pratt, Cordell Hull, 1933–1944, 1964.

H U M P H R E Y, W I L L I A M E WA R T William E. Humphrey was born near Alamo, Indiana, on March 31, 1862. He graduated from Wabash College in 1887 and practiced law in Crawfordsville, Indiana, from 1888 to 1893. Humphrey moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1893 to practice corporate law, specializing in the timber industry. A conservative Republican, Humphrey was a member of Congress from 1903 to 1917, and in 1924, he was campaign manager for President Calvin Coolidge’s successful reelection bid. Because the Federal Trade Commission* (FTC) had repeatedly investigated the Northwest timber industry, Humphrey was a bitter opponent of the FTC. In 1925, with the clear hope that Humphrey would transform the agency into a probusiness institution, Coolidge appointed him to a six-year term as a commissioner. There Humphrey dominated the conservative majority and essentially changed the FTC from a progressive* body working to guarantee free competition into a probusiness, conservative body. President Herbert Hoover* reappointed him in 1931. During the early New Deal, however, President Franklin D. Roosevelt*, James M. Landis, and Felix Frankfurter saw Humphrey as a hopeless reactionary. Roosevelt fired Humphrey in 1933 in a decision that the commissioner fought in the courts. Two years later, after Humphrey’s death in 1934, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Humphrey’s Executor (Rathbun) v. United States, overturning the firing on the grounds that the president did not have the authority to remove the officials of regulatory agencies for political reasons before their scheduled reappointment. References G. Cullom Davis, “The Transformation of the Federal Trade Commission, 1914–1929,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 49 (December 1962). Donald A. Ritchie, James M. Landis: Dean of the Regulators, 1980.

“ H U N D R E D D AY S ” Shortly after his inauguration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* called the 73rd Congress into special session to deal with the banking crisis. That session lasted

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until June 16, 1933, when the Congress adjourned. Known as the “hundred days” of the New Deal, the special session quickly went beyond the banking crisis to enact a broad series of relief and recovery measures, including the Emergency Banking Act*, Economy Act*, Beer Tax Act*, Civilian Conservation Corps*, Reforestation Relief Act, Federal Emergency Relief Act*, Agricultural Adjustment Act*, Tennessee Valley Authority*, Securities Act*, National Employment System Act, Home Owners’ Refinancing Act*, Banking Act*, Farm Credit Act*, Emergency Railroad Transportation Act*, and the National Industrial Recovery Act. Ever since the spring of 1933, the “hundred days” has been recognized as one of the most dramatic periods in the history of public policy in the United States. Reference James E. Sargent, Roosevelt and the Hundred Days: Struggle for the Early New Deal, 1981.

H U N T, H A R O L D S O N L A FAY E T T E H. L. Hunt was born on February 17, 1889, near Vandalia, Illinois. He left home while he was still a teenager and traveled widely across the country. When his father’s death left him with an inheritance of $6,000, Hunt bought a cotton plantation in Lake Valley, Arkansas. He then became involved in real estate speculation, and by 1920, he owned more than 15,000 acres in Arkansas and Louisiana. When oil was discovered in EI Dorado, Arkansas, Hunt also bought up lease property there, drilled on some land of his own, and hit a gusher. He sold his forty-four wells in 1923 for $600,000. Hunt then continued buying and drilling in Oklahoma and Louisiana, and in 1929, he struck oil in the huge East Texas field. He founded Hunt Oil Company in Tyler, Texas, in 1936. Hunt moved the company headquarters to Dallas in 1937, and the company soon became the largest independent oil producer in the United States. World War II only augmented Hunt’s fortune, which by the early 1970s was estimated at $2.5 billion. Hunt died on November 29, 1976. Reference New York Times, November 30, 1976.

HUNTINGTON, COLLIS POTTER Collis P. Huntington was born on October 22, 1821, in Harwinton, Connecticut. He was apprenticed out as a barber in 1835 but then went into the peddling business, traveling widely throughout upstate New York and New England. In 1843, he went into the mercantile business with his brother in Oneonta, New York. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, Huntington headed west and settled in Sacramento. There he again went into the mercantile business and formed a business partnership with Mark Hopkins*. Huntington was active in local Republican politics, and he formed close relationships with Leland Stanford* and Charles Crocker*. In 1861, along with Hopkins, Crocker, and Stanford, Huntington formed the Central Pacific Railroad*; in 1862, he managed to get a congressional grant to build a transcontinental railroad east from San Francisco

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to meet up with the Union Pacific* construction team. With large land and cash grants for construction coming from Congress, the venture was a huge success. The two roads linked up at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869. Thereafter, the four men built a huge railroad, land, steamship, and construction empire in the Far West. Huntington died on August 13, 1900. Reference Cerinda W. Evans, Collis Potter Huntington, 1954.

H U R R I C A N E K AT R I N A Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest and most expensive storms to strike the United States in the last century. With sustained winds of 125 miles per hour—a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale—Katrina made landfall on the border of Louisiana and Mississippi on August 29, 2005, causing flooding and devastation along the states of the central Gulf Coast. Such cities as Biloxi, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; and New Orleans, Louisiana, were particularly affected by the storm, which displaced thousands of families from their homes and killed more than 1,600 people. In the aftermath of the storm, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came under intense criticism for its handling of the disaster. In Louisiana, the damage caused by strong winds and heavy rainfall was intensified by breaks in the levees surrounding New Orleans, causing flooding in at least 80 percent of the city and surrounding areas. Storm surge levels reaching higher than thirty feet caused flooding in large parts of Mississippi and Alabama. Major property damage left thousands of people unable to return to their homes, and many areas in the region faced weeks without electricity and access to drinking water. Katrina’s economic effect was widespread. By April 1, 2006, the federal government had requested over $100 billion in federal funds to aid recovery efforts in the region. In addition, the storm significantly interrupted oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, driving American gas prices to record highs in the fall of 2005. As a number of Katrina’s victims remained homeless and without water in the weeks following the disaster, the public began to question the federal, state, and local governments’ role in prevention and recovery efforts. The Bush administration received the brunt of the criticism. Many critics lashed out at FEMA for failing to take adequate prevention measures despite knowledge of Katrina’s potential for damage, and for slowly responding with relief in the days following the storm. Amidst accusations of mismanagement, Michael Brown resigned as the director of FEMA in September 2005. Even under new leadership, concerns about the agency’s structure and credibility continue. In April 2006, a panel of senators described FEMA as being so damaged that it would be better to replace it with a new agency altogether. ABC-CLIO References Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 2006.

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Jed Horne, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City, 2006.

HYDRAULIC FRACTURING (FRACKING) A process commonly used in connection with horizontal drilling (less commonly used with vertical drilling), is known as hydraulic fracturing or, more colloquially, “fracking” or “hydrofracking.” Fracking involves the high-pressure injection of a liquid mixture consisting primarily of water and sand, along with other chemicals, into a well site. The force created by the injection process increases the pore size within the reservoir, allowing oil or gas to flow more readily toward the well pipe. Hydraulic fracturing is a relatively old technology in the oil and gas industry. A primitive form of the process was first used in the 1860s when nitroglycerin, in either solid or liquid form, was injected into a well and then ignited. The purpose of the process was to break up the rock formation holding the resource, making its extraction easier. The nitroglycerin process was both dangerous and, in some places, illegal, so industry researchers began to look for other means of achieving the same result. By the 1930s, acid injections were being used as a way of dissolving portions of the rocky material in which oil and gas were embedded, thus improving its flow. The first experiment using this more modern approach was conducted by Stanolind Oil in the Hugoton gas field in Grant County, Kansas, in 1947. The experiment did not result in any increase in oil or gas production, but it provided useful new data for the further development of the technology. Two years after the Huogoton experiment, the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company (Howco) put into operation the first commercial use of fracking technology at wells in Oklahoma and Texas, resulting in an increase of more than 75 percent in the oil and gas obtained from the treated wells. Use of the process soon began to grow by leaps and bounds. In the first year after Howco’s initial use of fracking, 332 wells in the United States were treated with the technology. By the mid-1950s, about 3,000 new wells per month were being treated with fracking technology, and by 2008, more than 50,000 fracking operations had been completed worldwide. As of 2010, the vast majority of fracking operations on land and offshore were being conducted in the United States and Mexico, with 756 facilities in operation, followed by Canada (111), Latin America (72), Russia (49), China (32), non-China Asia (21), Africa (16), the Middle East (10), Europe (8), and Australasia (5). The total value of the fracking market is reported to have grown from less than $3 billion in 1999 to nearly $13 billion in 2007, with more than 80 percent of that market centered in the United States and Canada. The use of hydraulic fracturing in oil and gas mining has become one of the most contentious energy issues in the United States. Critics have raised a host of environmental and health concerns about the use of the technology, to which the oil and gas industry has responded aggressively. Both sides cite a large number of studies that support their specific stand on the use of fracking, resulting in an extended and heated debate. A report prepared by two scientists associated with TEDX, the Endocrine Disruption Exchange, found that 353 of the 632 chemicals

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used in natural gas fracking had one or more deleterious effects on human health. A study by researchers at Duke University published in 2011 found another potential problem associated with fracking operations: the accumulation of methane gas in and around fracked wells. The Duke researchers pointed out that methane levels in regions undergoing fracking were sufficiently high to raise the question of possible explosions or fires resulting from the ignition of the methane. Concerns about fracking have been expressed in many parts of the world. In 2011, France became the first nation to adopt an outright ban on hydraulic fracturing because of potential environmental damage caused by the practice. In the United States, regulation of fracking operations has been restricted largely to decisions by state and local agencies. In 2010, for example, Pennsylvania imposed a ban on further drilling by the Cabot Oil & Gas Company until it sealed a well where fracking had been used and had supposedly caused the contamination of drinking water in adjacent Dimock Township. In November 2010, the New York state senate voted to place a temporary moratorium on fracking until a number of health and environmental issues* were resolved. National regulatory policy on fracking in the United States is defined by 2004 study conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which found insufficient evidence that fracking produced significant health or environmental effects. That study was limited, however, to methane produced from coal beds and did not deal with the related problem of the effects of fracking in oil and gas exploration and mining. Because of increasing concerns about fracking, a number of individuals and organizations have called for the EPA to revisit this question. In 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriation Conference Committee asked the EPA to investigate the potential harm to human health and the environment from fracking operations in the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry has offered responses to each of the complaints raised about the potential risks of fracking in the recovery of fossil fuels. A 2012 example is the information provided by the Keystone Energy Forum on its Web site. The forum points, first of all, to the 2004 EPA study that concluded that “the injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into CBM [coalbed methane] wells poses little or no threat to USDWs [underground drinking water sources] and does not justify additional study at this time.” It also mentions a 1998 study by the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC) of fracking operations in twenty-five states that found that “there was no evidence to support claims that public health is at risk as a result of the hydraulic fracturing of coalbeds used for the production of methane gas.” (Note that both studies deal with coalbed methane, not oil and gas obtained from fracked wells.) The forum also notes that huge benefits have accrued to consumers as the result of fracking. It argues that fracking will be required in 80 percent of all future oil and gas operations, and that such operations will result in “tens of thousands of additional jobs,” making fracking an essential technology in the nation’s energy future. Finally, the forum says that the public has been protected in the past, and will continue to be protected, by industry best practices and by existing state and federal regulations of the use of fracking. David E. Newton

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References Sean Gregory, “Why Cory Booker Likes Being Mayor of Newark,” Time Magazine, July 27, 2009. Susan Headden, “The Guy in the Thick of It,” US News & World Report, April 16, 2006. Carl T. Montgomery, and Michael B. Smith, “Hydraulic Fracturing: History of an Enduring Technology,” JPT Online, 2010. Stephen G. Osborn, Avner Vengosh, Nathaniel R. Warner, and Robert B. Jackson, “Methane Contamination of Drinking Water Accompanying Gas Well Drilling and Hydraulic Fracturing,” PNAS 108, no. 20 (2011): 8,172–8,176.

I IACOCCA, LEE Lee Iacocca was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on October 15, 1924. He graduated from Lehigh University and earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton in 1946. Iacocca then went to work for the Ford Motor Company*. He soon tired of the engineering department, switched to sales, and then began his steady rise through the corporate ranks, becoming president of Ford in 1970. Iacocca was a central figure in the production of the Mustang, Maverick, Pinto, and Mustang II automobiles. But in 1978, Henry Ford II fired Iacocca. Iacocca was hired immediately by Chrysler Corporation*, and in September 1979, he was named president of the company. With the company facing bankruptcy, Iacocca managed to secure $1.5 billion in loan guarantees from the federal government and rebuilt the company into a profitable entity. The loan was paid back by 1984. The company’s television advertisements, in which Iacocca personally sold the automobiles, gave him extraordinary name recognition. Some people even began touting him as a presidential candidate in 1984 and 1988. Iacocca stepped down as head of Chrysler in 1992. Reference Lee Iacocca and William Novak, Iacocca: An Autobiography, 1984.

ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL The Illinois and Michigan Canal was constructed during the great canal boom in antebellum America. The canal’s purpose was to connect Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River. Construction started in 1836 but was halted by the Panic of 1837*. It resumed in 1842, and the canal was completed in 1848. Although increasing railroad construction gradually cut into the volume of freight shipped annually on the canal, it remained in operation until 1930. Reference Alvin F. Harlow, Old Towpaths: The Story of the American Canal Era, 1926.

ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD The Illinois Central Railroad received its charter in 1851; with the assistance of Senator Stephen Douglas, it also received a 2.5 million-acre federal land grant. By 1856, the company had constructed 705 miles of track from Cairo to Dunleith, Illinois, and in the surrounding regions. Through new construction and acquisitions after the Civil War*, the Illinois Central had 4,200 miles of track in thirteen

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states by 1901. The total reached 6,700 miles by 1930, with track in Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Nebraska, South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Hard times hit the railroad during the 1930s, but the Illinois Central survived because of loans from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). Recovery came during World War II. After World War II, under the leadership of Wayne Johnston, the Illinois Central dramatically reduced its debt structure, cut its labor force in half, and began a diversification process managed by its holding company*, Illinois Central Industries. In 1972, the railroad merged with the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio Railroad to become the Central Gulf Railroad. Reference John F. Stover, History of the Illinois Central Railroad, 1975.

I M M I G R AT I O N Historians now identify four general periods of immigration to the United States. Although each period reflected unique circumstances, the primary reason for the mass movement of more than 50 million people in the past 300 years has been economic. During the colonial period, some groups of English Puritans and German Quakers came to the New World to worship as they saw fit, but most of the English, Scots–Irish, Scots, German, and Dutch immigrants simply wanted land of their own. Economic opportunity, not religion, brought most colonial immigrants to America. The second wave of immigration to the United States began in the 1790s once the political instability of the years of the American Revolution* was over. Rapid population increases in Europe, the industrialization of production, and the commercialization of agriculture all created a large group of highly mobile workers searching for jobs and/or land. The flow of immigrants from Germany accelerated dramatically, as did the arrival of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish settlers, all of whom wanted land. The potato famine drove more than 2 million people out of Ireland and toward the New World in the l840s and l850s. A powerful anti-Catholic movement emerged in the United States because of the Irish and German immigrants. During these years, approximately 300,000 Chinese immigrants came to the United States as well, until the protests of labor unions restricted that movement after 1882. Except for the Chinese and the Irish, most of the immigrants were Protestants who found farmland in America. The second period of American immigration has been known as the “Old Immigration.” The third wave, or the “New Immigration,” began in the l880s when economic changes reached eastern and southern Europe. Millions of Poles, Czechs, Russians, Slovaks, Italians, Slovenians, Croatians, Serbians, and Ukrainians came to the United States, as did several hundred thousand Japanese. Most of these immigrants were Roman Catholics or Jews, and they arrived after the best land had already been taken. Taking up residence in cities and jobs in the mines and mills of industrial

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America, they were highly visible and inspired a nativist reaction from Protestant working-class groups. The nativist fears eventually led to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924*, which severely limited immigration. Indeed, through the use of quotas, this law practically stopped the flow of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and from Japan. The fourth, or contemporary, wave of immigration has consisted primarily of Hispanic Americans (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central Americans) and Asians (Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, Cambodians, and East Asians) who have fled from political instability and economic oppression to the New World. All told, more than 50 million people have immigrated to the United States, and their arrival and adjustment have set the tone for much of American political and social life. References James S. Olson, The Ethnic Dimension in American History, 1979. Brinley Thomas, Migration and Economic Growth, 1973.

I M M I G R AT I O N A C T O F 1 9 2 4 Also known as the National Origins Act, the Immigration Act of 1924 institutionalized the practice of limiting immigration to the United States. Throughout U.S. history, immigration had essentially been unlimited, even though labor unions periodically campaigned for restrictions to limit the size of the labor market and thereby raise wages. Employers were equally vociferous in their support for immigration. But early in the 1900s, immigration patterns began to change as increasing numbers of southern and eastern Europeans replaced the northern and western Europeans who had come earlier. The immigrants of the 1900s and 1910s were usually Catholics or Jews, and they lived in urban areas. Their presence in the United States precipitated a nativist reaction that, when combined with labor union lobbying*, resulted in congressional action. The Immigration Act of 1924 severely limited the number of immigrants allowed in the United States. By imposing nationality quotas that were based on respective percentages of the total population earlier in the century, the law discriminated against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and in favor of Protestant immigrants from northern and western Europe. The law prohibited Japanese immigration altogether but allowed unlimited immigration from the Western Hemisphere, primarily because large southwestern farmers needed cheap farm labor. Reference James S. Olson, The Ethnic Dimension in American History, 1979.

IMPERIALISM For the first century of its national existence, the United States was preoccupied with continental expansion rather than overseas imperialism. The spirit of Manifest

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Destiny* drove the United States across the continent and explained the Adams– Onís Treaty of 1819*, the Oregon Treaty of 1846*, and the Mexican War*. After the Civil War* the United States began to look beyond its own shores. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. The United States shied away from an opportunity to annex Hawaii* early in the 1890s, but when the Spanish–American War* developed in 1898, the United States embarked on an imperial crusade, fueled by industrialists seeking new markets and sources of raw materials, Protestant evangelists looking for new converts, and naval enthusiasts searching for coaling stations and bases in the Caribbean and Pacific. As a result of the Treaty of Paris of 1898*, the United States acquired Puerto Rico*, Guam*, and the Philippines from Spain. Hawaii had already been annexed during the war. The United States then seized what became the Panama Canal Zone* in 1903 and purchased the Virgin Islands* from Denmark in 1917. Beginning in 1936, the United States launched a ten-year program to extend independence to the Philippines, a process which was completed in 1946. Although the United States* experience in colonial imperialism was far more limited than the experiences of the British, Spanish, French, and the Dutch, Marxist critics in the twentieth century accused America of developing an insidious form of “noncolonial imperialism” in which corporate expansion and investment gave the United States a powerful political influence around the world. Reference David Healy, U.S. Expansionism, 1970.

IMPRESSMENT Beginning in the 1790s, the British navy experienced a high rate of desertion among its sailors. Because of labor shortages in North America that drove up wages, many British sailors joined the American navy or merchant marine. British naval officials began forcibly boarding American ships in search of deserters and “pressing” them back into service. Frequently, they mistakenly seized American citizens and impressed them into the British navy. The U.S. government vigorously protested the practice, but the British continued. Eventually, the practice so inflamed American policymakers that it contributed to the U.S. decision to declare war on Great Britain in 1812. Reference Reginald Horsman, The Causes of the War of 1812, 1962.

IN RE DEBS (158 U.S. 564) When Eugene V. Debs* and the American Railway Union* went on strike against the Pullman* Company in 1894, the company secured an injunction* from the federal courts. The injunction ordered Debs to end the strike because the delivery of the U.S. mail was being compromised. Debs refused to comply, so federal marshals arrested him and he was cited for contempt. The injunction was issued under the authority of the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890. Debs sued in a writ

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of habeas corpus, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1895, the Supreme Court denied Debs’s writ. The justices ignored the Sherman Antitrust Act and simply stated that the federal government had jurisdiction over interstate commerce, that delivery of the mail was a uniquely governmental operation, and that the injunction was therefore justified. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

I N C O M E TA X On a number of occasions in the late nineteenth century, Congress tried to pass legislation authorizing the federal government to impose an income tax. The purpose of such a tax was to improve the government’s revenue base as well as to secure more tax support from corporations and the well-to-do. The legislation encountered a major constitutional hurdle, however, over whether the federal government could levy direct taxes on individuals instead of apportioning them out to the states. The Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act* of 1894 contained an income tax provision, but the Supreme Court overturned the provision as unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company (1895). By a 6–2 vote, the court argued that the Wilson–Gorman Act constituted a direct tax and was therefore unconstitutional. Demands for an income tax continued to intensify, especially as the Progressive movement* gained momentum in the early twentieth century. On July 12, 1909, Congress passed the enabling legislation to propose a constitutional amendment to the states. By February 25, 1913, enough states had ratified the Sixteenth Amendment to make it part of the U.S. Constitution. Reference D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States, 1936.

I N D E P E N D E N T T R E A S U RY When President Andrew Jackson* withdrew federal funds from the Second Bank of the United States* and distributed them to state banks, he inadvertently set in motion a wave of inflation; with ample new funds, state bankers made large loans to land speculators. To deal with that problem, Congress established the Independent Treasury System in 1840 during the presidential administration of Martin Van Buren. The legislation allowed the federal government to take care of its own funds in subtreasuries located in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, and Charleston. When the Whigs came to power in 1841, their desire for a new national bank led them to repeal the Independent Treasury Act of 1840. Once again, federal funds were deposited in state banks. When the Democrats came back into power with President James K. Polk* in 1845, they revived the Independent Treasury. New legislation in 1846 restored it and its subtreasuries. That arrangement remained in place until 1863 when the National Banking Act* established a new financial system.

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Reference William G. Shade, The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832–1865, 1972.

I N D E P E N D E N T T R E A S U RY A C T O F 1 8 4 6 See INDEPENDENT TREASURY. I N D I A N R E M O VA L A C T O F 1 8 3 0 By the 1820s, the pressure of white settlers on Indian land west of the Appalachian Mountains was becoming severe. Frequent incidents of violence were occurring, as was political pressure to do something about the problem. White economic interests wanted the Indian tribes relocated west of the Mississippi River in order to free up their land for settlement; missionary groups also favored the notion in order to stop the violence against Indians and make it easier to convert them to western ways. With the support of President Andrew Jackson*, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which mandated the relocation of the Indian tribes living between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. During the next fifteen years, more than thirty tribes were forcibly relocated along what the Cherokee call the “Trail of Tears.” Ironically, the Indians lived west of the river for only a few years before new waves of white settlers undermined their land tenure there, too. Reference James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, 1984.

I N D I A N R E O R G A N I Z AT I O N A C T O F 1 9 3 4 The Indian Reorganization Act, passed by Congress in 1934, initiated a period of eleven years that came to be known as the Indian New Deal. In 1928, the Meriam Report* of the Brookings Institution* argued that the Dawes Act* of 1887 had been an unmitigated disaster for American Indians, taking their property away from them, breaking up the tribes as political entities, and pushing them into abject poverty. The Meriam Report recommended extensive changes in the government’s Indian policy, and those recommendations were implemented in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. The law stopped the allotment of Indian land, provided some funds to buy back alienated land, allowed federal loans to tribal businesses, and reconstituted the political authority of the Indian tribes. The Indian New Deal remained in effect until after World War II, when assimilationists once again demanded the incorporation of Indians and Indian land into the larger society. Reference James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, 1984.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION See WALTHAM SYSTEM.

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INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD Because of the prejudice of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) in favor of craft unionism and against industrial unionism, a number of labor radicals in the United States, including William Haywood* and Clarence Smith, worked for the creation of an international industrial union. They met in Chicago in 1905 and organized the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); because some immigrants had difficulty in pronouncing those initials, members were often known as Wobblies. Like most other socialist* and radical groups in American history, the IWW was badly divided by philosophical bickering and disagreements over tactics. The IWW became involved in a variety of radical issues, including free speech movements, and it worked diligently at organizing lumber workers in the Pacific Northwest, migrant farm workers in the Midwest, and miners in the West. It also earned a reputation for violence. What probably sealed the IWW’s fate was its opposition to American entry into World War I. Most major IWW leaders were convicted of a variety of crimes during the war, and the union never recovered. Reference Joseph H. Conlin, Big Bill Haywood and the Radical Union Movement, 1969.

I N F O R M AT I O N R E V O L U T I O N The Information Revolution is considered an era in world history characterized by the shift from industry to one of an economy based on computers and technology associated with the Internet*. One of the key factors in this shift is the creation of a knowledge-based society created by the high-tech economy, creating easier ways of creating, buying, and selling goods and services, with the Internet as the key driver of these changes. Although it had its origins in previous decades, the Information Age became widely acknowledged in the early 1980s with the proliferation of the personal computer and blossomed with the expansion of the Internet and the growing reliance on email in the 1990s. By the twenty-first century, with newer innovations such as social media* and smartphones*, it has taken on a new dimension. Reference Martin Gay, The New Information Revolution: A Reference Handbook, 1996.

INGERSOLL, ROBERT STEPHEN Robert S. Ingersoll was born on January 28, 1914, in Galesburg, Illinois. He graduated from Yale in 1937 and went to work for Armco Steel Company. Ingersoll joined Borg– Warner Company—a producer of automobile equipment, petrochemicals, and air conditioners—in 1939 and eventually rose to become chairman of the board in 1961. Ingersoll was especially adept at expanding the company’s international business connections. A devoted Republican, Ingersoll was appointed ambassador to Japan by President Richard Nixon in 1972. Ingersoll returned to Washington, D.C., in 1974 as assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, and the next year President Gerald Ford named him deputy secretary of state. Ingersoll died on August 22, 2010.

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Reference New York Times, January 26, 28, 1972.

INJUNCTIONS The injunction is a judicial device that was commonly used by large corporations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to break union activities. Corporate lawyers would go to sympathetic federal judges and secure injunctions requiring labor unions to terminate their strikes, boycotts, and picketing. If the unions refused, federal troops could be called up to enforce the court order. The use of injunctions continued until the Norris–La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932*, which prohibited the use of such injunctions. Reference Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age, 2007.

I N S TA L L M E N T B U Y I N G Throughout much of the nineteenth century, banks permitted farmers to purchase land over periods of time, using the land as collateral. By the late nineteenth century, the practice of financing urban housing over time was becoming increasingly common. But the real birth of installment buying came just after World War I* when a proliferation of finance companies allowed for the purchase of such consumer products as automobiles*, furniture, and electrical appliances on extended contracts. Essentially, the consumer would purchase the product, the finance company would pay the seller in full, and the finance company, charging a hefty interest rate, would allow the consumer to pay the debt over an extended period. By the time of World War II*, most automobiles were purchased in this manner. With the invention of credit cards* and their ubiquitous spread throughout the economy in the 1960s and 1970s, installment buying began to be used for a great variety of products in the United States. In fact, consumer spending, like much of the consumer economy, became dependent on the availability of credit. By the late 1980s, excluding mortgages, the total consumer debt of the American public exceeded $100 trillion. Reference Paul Trescott, Financing American Enterprise: The Story of Commercial Banking, 1963.

INSULL, SAMUEL Born in London on November 11, 1859, Samuel Insull attended fine private schools and in 1874 went to work for an auctioneering company. In 1879, he went to work as a secretary to Colonel George E. Gouraud, the European representative for Thomas A. Edison’s* electric power industry. Several of Insull’s reports to the United States impressed Edison, so in 1881, he brought Insull to the United States as his secretary. Edison soon put Insull in charge of the Thomas A. Edison

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Construction Company. In 1892, Insull became president of Chicago Edison. By 1929, Insull had built an unparalleled utility empire in the Midwest by corporate combinations and the use of holding companies*. The Insull empire consisted of five great corporate systems with more than 150 subsidiaries, 4.5 million customers, and $2.5 billion in assets. At the top of the holding company empire were two companies—Insull Utility Investments, Inc., and Corporation Securities Company of Chicago. Revenue from the operating companies sustained the holding companies, but any interruption in those revenues would immediately threaten the corporate superstructure. When the stock market crashed in 1929, Insull was unable to keep the empire liquid. By December 1931, Insull Utilities Investment was in the hands of creditors. In 1932, when Middle West Utilities failed to secure refinancing credit, the company and its 111 subsidiaries went into receivership. Insull resigned from sixty corporations and fled to Europe. In September 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt*, then Democratic nominee for president, attacked Insull publicly. Other politicians also used the collapse of Insull’s empire to illustrate business corruption and the evil forces at work causing the Great Depression*. Insull was indicted, tried, and acquitted of charges of embezzlement, mail fraud, and violation of the Bankruptcy Act; he died in France on July 16, 1938. The publicity surrounding his career, the spectacular collapse of his corporate empire, and the public outrage over the suffering caused by the Great Depression led to unprecedented demands for reform. Those demands eventually became significant portions of the Banking Act* of 1933, the Corporate Bankruptcy Act*, and the Wagner–Connery Act, as well as the Public Utility Holding Company Act* of 1935, the Securities and Exchange Commission*, the Tennessee Valley Authority*, and the Rural Electrification Administration*. Reference Forrest McDonald, Insult, 1962.

INTER-AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK After World War II, the United States was committed to building a series of political and economic alliances around the world to prevent Communist expansion. In Latin America, the political realization of that goal was creation of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) was also part of that vision. Juscelino Kubitschek of Brazil first proposed such a bank, and it was established in Washington, D.C., in 1959 with $1 billion in capital. Fidel Castro’s triumph in Cuba in 1959 led to an increase in IADB capital, to $1.5 billion. The bank was designed to provide capital loans to Latin American nations, stimulate private loans to Latin American businesses by American banks, and serve as a clearinghouse for a variety of economic proposals concerning Latin America. Reference Sidney Dell, The Inter-American Development Bank: A Study in Development Financing, 1974.

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I N T E R L O C K I N G D I R E C T O R AT E S During the late nineteenth century, concern steadily mounted in the United States over the problem of monopolies in the industrial and transportation sectors of the economy. Farmers, workers, small businessmen, and middle-class professionals worried that a few huge companies would come to dominate the economy and subvert the laws of competition and supply and demand. Congress addressed the issue in 1890 by passing the Sherman Antitrust Act*, which prohibited monopolistic combinations. Some large businesses immediately searched for ways of avoiding the restrictions of the Sherman Act, and one of those ways was interlocking directorates. Instead of having several firms providing the same product or service combine into a single corporate entity, which would have violated the Sherman Act, the companies retained their individual identity but appointed boards of directors composed of the same people. Those corporate boards and interlocking directorates would then establish policies which amounted to monopolistic practices by fixing prices, manipulating production, and allocating market shares. In 1913, Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act*, which specifically prohibited interlocking directorates. References Thomas C. Cochran, Business in American Life: A History, 1972. Robert Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 1962.

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS The term “internal improvements” was used in the antebellum period to describe federally financed projects to improve the country’s transportation system. Since the economic lifeline of the South consisted of river systems draining into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, most internal improvement projects were designed for the North, a fact that introduced a political dimension to the public policy debates. The real demand for internal improvements was along an east– west axis—toll roads, highways, and canals—to link up the farms of the West with the consumers and businesses of the Northeast. By the 1820s, Henry Clay* had made internal improvements part of his famous “American System*,” calling for a national bank, protective tariffs, and internal improvements. The National Republican Party and then the Whig Party picked up that banner, whereas for the most part the Democratic Party, because of its strong southern base, opposed using federal funds for such improvements. After the Civil War, the federal government provided real financial inducements for the construction of the transcontinental railroads, and in the twentieth century most major improvements in the transportation system—highway systems, airports, harbor facilities—were constructed and maintained with substantial amounts of federal assistance, primarily because the expense of such projects was so high. References Joseph A. Durrenberger, Turnpikes: A Study of the Toll Road Movement, 1968. Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890, 1960.

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I N T E R N AT I O N A L B A N K F O R R E C O N S T R U C T I O N AND DEVELOPMENT The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, more popularly known as the World Bank, was created at the Bretton Woods Conference* in July 1944. It was initially capitalized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with $7.6 billion. When World War II* ended, world leaders were particularly concerned about the return of the Great Depression*, and the World Bank was designed to provide funds for long-range capital improvements, especially in poverty-stricken nations. Initially, it was also to work with the IMF in stabilizing world currencies. By the late 1950s, the World Bank began its work as a major source of capital to Third World nations. By selling bonds on global securities markets in the 1960s and 1970s, the World Bank increased its available capital by billions of dollars and simultaneously expanded its loan volume. It established an affiliate—the International Development Association to make loans to Fourth World countries. During the 1980s, the World Bank also dedicated itself to assisting debt-ridden Third World countries to avoid bankruptcy. Reference Edward S. Mason and Robert E. Asher, The World Bank since Bretton Woods, 1973.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L B R O T H E R H O O D O F E L E C T R I C A L WORKERS The first labor unions among electrical workers began to appear in the early 1880s, but it was not until 1891 that the National Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was established. The union received a charter from the American Federation of Labor* (AFL). Its name was changed to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) in 1899. Because of the depression of 1893*, a number of unauthorized local strikes, and a lack of funds, the new union grew slowly until 1903 when Frank J. McNully became president. It was during World War I that the IBEW experienced its greatest gains, increasing in membership from 23,500 in 1913 to nearly 150,000 in 1919. Although membership declined during the 1920s, it was still an auspicious time for the union. The IBEW and the National Electrical Contractors Association, a management group, established a Council on Industrial Relations to resolve industrial disputes. Composed of IBEW and management representatives, the council was a success in arbitrating labor problems. Since the 1930s, the IBEW has grown steadily, with its membership increasing from 200,000 in 1941 to nearly 1 million workers in the mid 1980s. In 2013, the membership was estimated to be 750,000. Reference Michael Mulcire, The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 1923.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L B R O T H E R H O O D O F T E A M S T E R S In 1899, the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) gave a charter to the Team Drivers International Union. The union had a membership of 1,700 people and wanted

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to end the practice of fourteen-hour days, six days a week, in the industry. A dissident Teamsters National Union emerged in 1902, but in 1903, it merged with the Team Drivers International Union to become the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In 1910 and again in 1940, the name of the union was changed, and it finally became formally known as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America. The union had a tradition of corruption until 1907, when David Tobin began his presidency. Tobin cleaned up the Teamsters and actively supported Democratic politicians. During the presidency of David Beck* in the 1930s, however, the rumors of corruption surfaced again. The federal government began investigating the union for corruption, and Beck was convicted of fraud and corruption in 1957. The AFL expelled the union in 1957, and Jimmy Hoffa* succeeded Beck as president. Under Hoffa’s leadership, the union continued to expand, but the charges of corruption, jury tampering, bribery, and fraud continued. Hoffa was imprisoned in 1967 and resigned the presidency in 1971. By the 1980s, the Teamsters membership exceeded 1,900,000 members. In 2005, the Teamsters disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO. Reference Ralph James and Estelle James, Hoffa and the Teamsters, 1965.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L B U S I N E S S M A C H I N E S International Business Machines (IBM) originated in 1911 with the formation of the Computing-Tabulating Recording Company. Thomas Watson* took over the company in the early 1920s, renaming it International Business Machines and pioneering in the development of the first electric typewriter and in a series of special time clocks. The company grew rapidly, and in 1951, Watson made the decision to take IBM into the new field of computers. Because of its size and cash reserves, IBM was able to invest heavily in research and development*. IBM had excellent marketing capabilities and made a commitment to the repair and servicing of its own equipment. The company quickly became the leading institution in the computer industry. Ever since then, IBM has been the world’s largest producer of data processing equipment. In the late 1980s, however, IBM profits fell because of intense competition and. because its own huge bureaucracy had become too cumbersome. In 1991, IBM launched a drastic decentralization program to give its major units complete managerial independence. In 2005, IBM sold its personal computer business. By 2013, IBM’s narrower focus on hosting and consulting services, software and hardware specialized for companies, and other innovations on cutting-edge technologies kept the company profitable. Reference Nancy Foy, The Sun Never Sets on IBM, 1975.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L L A B O R O R G A N I Z AT I O N The International Labor Organization (ILO) was set up in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles. Its original goal was to promote fair labor practices all over the world,

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with each member nation responsible for legislating its own standards. Geneva, Switzerland, became the headquarters for the ILO. Suspicious of the agreements reached at Versailles, the United States did not join the ILO until 1934. In 1945, the ILO became an independent affiliate of the United Nations. Like so many other international organizations, the ILO became a political battleground between communist and capitalist nations in the postwar era. In 1977, convinced that the ILO had become hopelessly politicized by communist and Third World nations, the United States withdrew. References Anthony Alcock, History of the International Labor Organization, 1971. New York Times, November 2, 1977.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L L A D I E S ’ G A R M E N T W O R K E R S UNION The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was established in New York City in 1900. Large numbers of Jewish and Eastern European workers had poured into the industry in the late 1800s, and the union developed a liberal political outlook, supporting a variety of progressive* and socialist* measures. The union made great strides, and by 1915, more than 90 percent of the industry had been unionized. The ILGWU suffered from having large numbers of communists among its members in the 1920s, but during the 1930s, under the leadership of David Dubinsky*, the union expelled most of them. Dubinsky then helped organize the Committee for Industrial Organization* (CIO) in 1935 and took the ILGWU into the CIO in 1936. It returned to the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) in 1940. By the 1980s, the ILGWU claimed more than 400,000 members. In 1995, the union merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). References Max D. Danish, The World of David Dubinsky, 1957. Max D. Danish and Leon Stein, eds., ILGWU News—History, 1900–1950, 1950.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L L O N G S H O R E M E N ’ S A S S O C I AT I O N During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of longshoremen’s unions rose and fell in the United States. The first permanent one was the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), organized in Detroit in 1892 among Great Lakes workers. After promising a no-strike policy and crushing wildcat strikes, the ILA virtually created virtually a closed shop* on the Great Lakes and increased in membership to more than 100,000 members by 1905. During the next fifteen years, the ILA also made great strides in organizing longshoremen on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. They failed to organize the longshoremen

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on the Pacific Coast, and a rival union—the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union—emerged under the leadership of Harry Bridges. Those two unions continue to dominate the industry. The ILA disaffiliated from the AFLCIO in 2013. References Charles P. Larrowe, Harry Bridges, 1972. Maud Russell, Men Along the Shore, 1966.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L M O N E TA R Y F U N D The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was established at the Bretton Woods Conference* in July 1944. Harry Dexter White, a leading American economist in the Treasury Department, first proposed an international organization to promote international trade through stable currency and monetary arrangements. White was particularly concerned about the likelihood of currency depreciations after World War II* and the possible return of the Great Depression*. The IMF hoped to prevent competition in currency depreciations and to provide a reliable system for international payments. The IMF began its work in 1946, and although there have been periods of currency destabilization, it has helped to achieve White’s original vision for it. Since 1946, the IMF has lent tens of billions of dollars to dozens of countries to stabilize their currencies. References Hans Aufricht, The International Monetary Fund, 1964. Alfred E. Eckes, The Search for Solvency, 1975.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L T E L E P H O N E A N D T E L E G R A P H During the early 1900s, an entrepreneur named Sosthenes Behn established several telephone companies in the Caribbean. These were consolidated in 1920 into the International Telephone and Telegraph Company (ITT). Five years later, ITT bought International Western Electric from American Telephone & Telegraph* (AT&T), which provided IIT with a large manufacturing subsidiary. ITT grew steadily until 1959 when Harold Geneen* assumed its presidency. Geneen embarked on an ambitious, indeed unprecedented, program of expansion and acquisition. During the next twenty years, ITT acquired more than 275 new companies and became a true multinational conglomerate*, doing business in the data processing, telecommunications, defense manufacturing, food processing, book publishing, insurance, hotel, and recreation industries. International Telephone and Telegraph became known as ITT Corporation in 1983, and in 1987, it divested itself of its telecommunications subsidiaries. In 1996, the company was reestablished as a spinoff of IT&T as ITT Industries, Inc. It then changed its name to ITT Corporation in 2006. Reference Anthony Sampson, The Sovereign State of ITT, 1973.

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INTERNET The Internet is a worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that allow for the exchange of information for several billions of users. It consists of multiple networks that link private, public, business, government users over a variety of wireless, electronic, or optical networks. The Internet allows for the extensive range of services and information through the World Wide Web (WWW), email servers, and other networks that allow communication between users and computer services. Initially devised by the United States government in the 1960s as a way to communicate directly between computers, the modern Internet came into fruition by the 1980s. As computer networks expanded and government and private enterprise made use of the expansion of the Internet, it became an essential venue for information, the exchange of goods and services, and personal and business communications. Through the development of the Web browser, electronic mail (email), and a vast array of products by Silicon Valley*, the Internet grew by leaps and bounds in the 1990s. By the twenty-first century, newer forms of communication, such as the social media* networks of Facebook* and Twitter, and the widespread use of smartphones* over personal computers, expanded the range of uses of the Internet. Reference Christos J. P. Moschovitis et al., History of the Internet: A Chronology, 1843 to the Present, 1999.

I N T E R S TAT E A N D D E F E N S E H I G H WAY S Y S T E M ACT OF 1956 After World War II, when automobiles* and trucks became by far the preferred method of travel and freight shipping in the United States, traffic problems became especially severe. Congestion in cities made it particularly difficult and expensive to ship goods across the country. To deal with the problem, a number of urban planners and transportation engineers began proposing the construction of limited access, high-speed expressways. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower endorsed the idea, and Congress passed the Interstate and Defense Highway System Act that June. The law authorized the appropriation of $32 billion over a thirteen-year period to construct a 41,000-mile interstate highway system and to make improvements on other federal highways. The federal government would pay for 90 percent of the construction costs of the interstate highways and 50 percent for the other federal highways. The law set up a Highway Trust Fund, financed by gasoline taxes and user fees, to maintain the system. The project would prove to be the greatest infrastructural improvement, as well as the greatest government public works project, in U.S. history. Reference Mark H. Rose, Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1941–1956, 1979.

I N T E R S TAT E C O M M E R C E C O M M I S S I O N Established in 1887 as the first independent regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission was designed to stabilize the railroad industry by preventing

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destructive competition and unfair freight rates. Congress hoped to protect shippers and consumers, as well as to provide the country with a functional, profitable transportation system. Despite a series of laws over the years (the Elkins Act* of 1903, the Hepburn Act* of 1906, and the Mann–Elkins Act* of 1910) and increasing ICC regulatory authority, the nation’s railroad system was a shambles by the 1930s. Burdened with enormous debt structures and fixed costs, plagued by increased competition from the burgeoning trucking industry, and devastated by the economic collapse of the Great Depression*, the railroad system desperately needed consolidation and a competitive edge over the trucking industry. At the same time, the trucking industry was marked by cutthroat competition between common, contract, and private carriers. Transportation experts such as Joseph Eastman* of the ICC wanted comprehensive federal legislation to coordinate the entire transportation system. In 1932, the private Railroad Credit Corporation and later the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) provided millions of dollars in loans to the railroads, but loans were only temporary answers. Only massive consolidation of individual railroads into larger regional systems, as well as government regulations of other modes of transportation, could solve the crisis. Three major New Deal* measures achieved the latter goal but not the former. The Emergency Railroad Transportation Act* of 1933 designated a federal coordinator of transportation to consolidate the railroads into three regional groups, with coordinating committees to effect cuts in cost by ending duplication and promoting joint use of tracks and terminals, financial reorganization, and ICC approval of all combinations. No significant consolidations occurred, however, because of opposition from railroads, labor unions, and shippers who feared that consolidation would eliminate jobs, harm service quality, and still raise rates. To deal with the chaotic trucking industry and limit its competition with the railroads, Congress passed the Motor Carrier Act* of 1935, giving the ICC power to set maximum and minimum rates for common motor carriers and minimum rates for contract carriers. Although the ICC, under the authority of the Motor Carrier Act, raised the minimum freight rates of common and contract motor carriers to a parity level with railroad rates, its decisions were based on the value-of-service rate structure. That, too, of course, was only a short-term solution, because on a parity basis, railroads could not compete with motor carriers using a value-of-service rate structure. Still, the ICC employed that method rather than cost-of-service parity, which might have allowed railroads to compete. In other words, while the Motor Carrier Act of 1935 increased ICC power over new modes of transportation, it did not really address the basic problems in the railroad industry. Finally, the Transportation Act* of 1940 extended ICC authority over coastwise, intercoastal, inland, and Great Lakes common and contract water carriers of the national transportation system. Apart from air transportation, which was controlled by the Civil Aeronautics Authority* after 1938, the ICC regulated all significant modes of interstate transportation. But no consolidation of the railroad system had occurred, nor had the problem of trucking competition been eliminated. Only World War II and its attendant unprecedented increase in freight traffic saved the railroads from certain collapse.

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In the postwar years, ICC jurisdiction was increased even further, but by that time, the commission was bogged down by an enormous workload, confused national transportation policy, and contradictory decision making. Such laws as the Rail Act of 1980 and the Motor Carrier Act* of 1980 also restored a good deal of competition to the industry. Reference Ari Hoogenboom and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative, 1976.

I N T E R S TAT E C O M M E R C E C O M M I S S I O N ACT OF 1887 See INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION. INVESTMENT ADVISERS ACT OF 1940 A companion to the Investment Company Act* of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act required all individuals and companies profiting from the sale of securities to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission*. After November 1, 1940, unregistered individuals or companies were prohibited from using the federal mail, interstate commerce, or national securities exchanges in their investment advice business. Newspapers, banks, accountants, and lawyers whose securities advice was incidental to their regular business were exempted from the law. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* considered the Investment Advisers Act a major improvement in federal regulatory power over the securities markets and a natural follow-up to the Securities Act* of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934*, the Public Utility Holding Company Act* of 1935, the Chandler Act* of 1938, and the Investment Company Act of 1940. Reference New York Times, August 2, 9, and 24, 1940.

I N V E S T M E N T C O M PA N Y A C T O F 1 9 4 0 During the 1930s, the public reputation of the investment banking and trust industry plummeted because of the tremendous liquidation of stock values as well as the sensational revelations of the Pecora* Committee in 1932 and 1933. The resistance of those industries to the Securities Act* of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Public Utility Holding Company Act* of 1935 only added to public hostility. Late in the 1930s, a number of trade associations, but especially the Investment Bankers* Association, began developing their own regulatory legislation to standardize and stabilize industrywide practices and to eliminate corruption and fraud. Drafted by the Securities and Exchange Commission* (SEC) with the assistance of the Investment Bankers* Association, the legislation was sponsored by Congressman William P. Cole of Maryland and became

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law as the Investment Company Act in June 1940. The law prohibited “self-dealing” between companies and their affiliates, required a proportion of independent directorships, and insisted that investment trust companies register with the SEC, provide full information to stockholders, and allowed the SEC to oversee their operations. Along with the Investment Advisers Act* of 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* considered the Investment Company Act of 1940 a major addition to federal securities regulation. Reference New York Times, August 2, 9, and 24, 1940.

I R A Q WA R The Iraq War of 2003 pitted a coalition led by the United States and the United Kingdom against the government of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his Arab Baath Socialist Party. Hostilities commenced with U.S.-led attacks on March 20, 2003—without the approval of the United Nations (UN)—following months of U.S. and British assertions that Hussein was harboring weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). The war had much longer-lasting effects in the Middle East and the international community than the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 had. Sparking a great deal of controversy, the war triggered arguments among UN member states regarding the appropriate action to take and spurred millions of people around the world to march in protest of the military action. In addition, a great deal of suspicion arose regarding the U.S.-led coalition’s motives behind the war, with pundits suggesting that the coalition desired more to control Iraq’s great oil reserves than to liberate a people long oppressed by Hussein. Following the Persian Gulf War, the UN imposed sanctions on Iraq calling for Hussein to destroy the country’s arsenal of WMDs. Over the next decade, however, Hussein repeatedly evaded attempts by UN weapons inspectors to ensure that the sanctions were enforced. Upon assuming the U.S. presidency in January 2001, George W. Bush* and his administration immediately began calling for renewed efforts toward ridding Iraq of WMDs—an endeavor that greatly intensified after the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center* and Pentagon attacks. In Bush’s 2002 State of the Union message, he castigated Iraq for continuing to “flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror” and called the Middle Eastern nation part of “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” In the months that followed, he increasingly spoke of taking military action in Iraq. Bush found an ally in British prime minister Tony Blair, but pressure from U.S. citizens and UK subjects pushed the two leaders to take the issue before the UN Security Council in the form of UN Resolution 1441, which called for UN weapons inspectors, led by Hans Blix, to return to Iraq and issue a report on their findings. On November 8, 2002, the fifteen-member Security Council unanimously passed the resolution, and weapons inspectors began work on November 27. On December 7, Iraq delivered a 12,000-page declaration of its weapons program,

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an insufficient accounting according to Blix, and a month later, Bush stated: “If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.” Bush and Blair actively sought the support of the international community, but their announcement that they would circumvent the UN if necessary ruffled many nations’ feathers, most notably drawing the ire of France, Germany, and Russia, all of which pushed for further inspections. Spain joined with the United Kingdom and the United States to propose a second UN resolution declaring Iraq to be in “material breach” of Resolution 1441. Although a small number of other nations pledged their support for military action in Iraq, only Australia committed troops to fight alongside British and U.S. forces. Blair in particular incurred negative reaction from his country’s citizens, and reports indicated that he might lose his job. As a result, Blair pushed for a compromise that would give weapons inspectors a little more time to inspect Iraq. However, with two permanent members of the Security Council—France and Germany—threatening to veto the resolution, the proposal was withdrawn. Undeterred by that set of events, as well as the Turkish government’s refusal to allow coalition troops to use Turkey as a platform for a northern invasion of Iraq and increasing protestations by antiwar groups around the world, on March 17, Bush issued an ultimatum to Hussein, ordering him to leave Iraq within 48 hours or face military action. Hours before the deadline was to expire, Bush received intelligence information that Hussein and several top officials in the Iraqi government were sleeping in an underground facility in Baghdad. Bush ordered a “decapitation strike” aimed at killing Hussein, and on March 20, around 2:30 a.m. local time, three dozen Tomahawk missiles with 1,000-pound warheads were launched from warships in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea. Three hours later, they hit their targets in Baghdad and were followed immediately by 2,000-pound bunker-busters. The war had started. Although intelligence reports suggested that Hussein was carried from the facility on a stretcher, it became clear in the coming weeks that the decapitation strike had failed and that Hussein was still alive. U.S.-led coalition troops crossed the border from Kuwait into Iraq on March 20. Armed with new technology that included stealth bombers and smart bombs—which constituted 80 percent of the coalition arsenal, as opposed to 10 percent during the Persian Gulf War—the coalition commenced its “shock and awe” campaign, designed to stun and demoralize the Iraqi Army so that it would quickly surrender. Iraqi soldiers did not surrender with the same celerity as in the Persian Gulf War, but nevertheless, within a matter of days, the coalition had overtaken Iraq’s second-largest city of Basra, the port city of Umm Qasr, and Nasiriya. The coalition also destroyed Hussein’s government buildings and palaces on the Tigris River in Baghdad, symbolizing the end of the Iraqi regime. Nearly 10,000 Iraqi troops surrendered to coalition forces during those first days. Still, the coalition troops were caught unprepared by some of the Iraqis’ guerrilla tactics, including faking surrenders and ambushing troops from the rear. Throughout the fighting, news reporters and camera crews “embedded” in military units brought live action to television viewers worldwide.

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After securing southern Iraq and its oil fields, coalition soldiers began moving toward Baghdad; they secured an airfield in western Iraq and Hussein International Airport (immediately renamed Baghdad International Airport) with little difficulty. On April 5, coalition forces entered Baghdad, and six days later, the United States declared the end of Hussein’s regime. One last hurdle remained, and by April 14, coalition forces accomplished it by capturing Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit. Formal military action ceased, with fewer than 200 confirmed coalition deaths. In the weeks after the Battle of Tikrit, coalition forces began searching for WMDs, Hussein, and other top Iraqi officials. Although there was a degree of success in the latter endeavor, the troops were unable to find WMDs or Hussein (though he was eventually captured by U.S. soldiers on December 13, 2003). Those failures drew criticism from many who already questioned the coalition presence in Iraq, as did the looting of historic treasures from Iraqi museums, which the coalition failed to protect. In addition, though many Iraqi citizens and neighboring countries were very happy to see Hussein’s regime toppled, many others protested the continued presence of coalition forces and the influence they, particularly the United States, would have in the new Iraqi government. Bush appointed Paul Bremer to govern Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority, whose stated aim was to reconstruct Iraq as a liberal, pluralist democratic state. The occupation has been plagued by violent resistance, which has greatly hampered the economic and political reconstruction of the country, preventing international aid organizations from working in Iraq and discouraging badly needed capital investment. An interim constitution was signed in March 2004, and on June 28, 2004, sovereignty was transferred to the Iraqi people. On January 30, 2005, Iraq held its first open election in half a century, selecting a 275-member transitional National Assembly. Despite the withdrawal of several Sunni parties from the poll and threats of Election Day violence from insurgents, turnout was high. After two months of deadlock, on April 6 the new legislature elected Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president and Ibrahim al-Jaafari as prime minister. In April 2006, Talabani was reelected and Nouri al-Maliki was selected to succeed al-Jaafari as prime minister. The country continued to be racked by sectarian violence as the new government struggles to unite disparate parties and warring factions. Although Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, 2003, deadly guerrilla attacks against U.S. troops continued and increased. In addition, major violence broke out between Shiite and Sunni insurgents, causing many observers to begin calling the conflict a civil war. The most notable counterinsurgency effort was mounted during 2007. The so-called troop surge, undertaken by the Bush administration, accounted for an increase in U.S. troop size by about 30,000 additional soldiers. The move was hailed a success by U.S. officials for bringing down the levels of violence in Iraq. Critics, however, contended that the levels of violence went down only in some areas of the country, and only through methods that cordoned off and imposed barriers around neighborhoods that had been cleansed on a sectarian basis. In spring 2009 there was, for example, an upsurge of bombings targeting both Shia and Sunni areas in Baghdad. Although most insurgent activity

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involved only Sunnis, other groups were also been involved. Thus, there was also armed resistance by members of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army when Iraqi government forces engaged them. They had not been a part of the insurgency but rather sought to enhance their power within the body politic. Another reason for a drop in the violence was that the U.S. military struck a bargain with various Sunni groups, some of them jihadist salafists. This permitted coalition forces to concentrate on fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq in these areas. However, these so-called Awakening Councils were subject to numerous attacks and began clashing with the government. Because their support rested on financial incentives, their continued compliance was never ensured. By late 2008, the U.S. public’s support for the Iraq War had plummeted. A status of forces agreement was arranged by the U.S. and Iraqi governments that required U.S. combat troops to leave Iraqi urban areas by the end of June 2009 and to leave the country entirely by the end of 2011. Soon after taking office in early 2009, President Barack Obama* announced that most U.S. troops would exit from Iraq by the end of August 2010, with a smaller transitional force remaining until the end of 2011. The war was declared officially over by the U.S. military on December 15, 2011; by that time, more than 1 million members of the armed forces had served in Iraq, nearly 4,500 Americans had died in the conflict, and more than 32,000 had been wounded in action. After the departure of U.S. troops, however, Islamist insurgents and sectarian violence once again began to threaten the stability and long-term viability of the Iraqi regime under President Nouri al-Maliki. Al-Maliki’s Shiite-dominated government has been largely unable to stem the new and growing insurgency and has been attempting to further marginalize the Sunni opposition. During 2012–2013 and into early 2014, bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and other violence accelerated, and more and more civilians were being caught in the crossfire of a potential civil war in Iraq. Al Qaeda had now become a major player in the insurgency, as had numerous Shiite militias. At the same time, the number of foreigners taking part in the insurgency increased, and Iran was playing a larger role in funding and supporting the rebels. By early January 2014, Al Qaeda insurgents and their allies had seized control of a large portion of Anbar Province, including its two major cities (Ramadi and Fallujah). The future of Iraq remained very much in doubt by early 2014, and the al-Maliki government was exhibiting little success in breaking the growing momentum of the Iraqi insurgency. Lori Weathers References Rick Atkinson, In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat, 2004. Walter J. Boyne, Operation Iraqi Freedom: What Went Right, What Went Wrong, and Why, 2003. Gregory Fontenot, E. J. Degen, and David Tohn, On Point, 2004. Bob Woodward, Bush at War, 2003.

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J JACKSON, ANDREW Andrew Jackson was born in Waxhaw, South Carolina, on March 15, 1767. He fought in the American Revolution* and spent time as a British prisoner of war in 1781. After the war, he studied law privately and was admitted to the bar in 1787. Jackson began practicing law in Martinsville, South Carolina. In 1788, he received appointment as the prosecuting attorney for western North Carolina, and he moved to Nashville to take up the post; the area later became Tennessee. From 1796 to 1798, Jackson served a term as the first Tennessee congressman, was elected to the U.S. Senate, and then resigned for a post on the Tennessee supreme court. Jackson was active in the Tennessee militia and saw combat against the Creek Indians during the War of 1812*. He received a commission as a major general in the U.S. army in 1814 and then rocketed to national prominence as the leader of the American troops at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. After the war, Jackson fought a number of battles against the Seminole Indians in Florida and was appointed military governor of Florida in 1821. Although he received the largest number of popular votes in 1824, Jackson lost the presidency to John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives. As an active Democrat, Jackson resented the high-tariff, pro-industrial policies of the Adams administration. Jackson was elected president of the United States in 1828. As president, he vetoed the Maysville Road* bill in an attempt to slow down the drive for federal internal improvements, destroyed the Second Bank of the United States*, worked for lower tariff rates, and faced down John C. Calhoun and South Carolina in the Nullification Controversy of 1832. Jackson was reelected in 1832. He was also active in removing the Indians to reservations west of the Mississippi River. Jackson retired from public life in 1837 and died on June 8, 1845. Reference Marquis James, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 1938.

J AY ’ S T R E AT Y O F 1 7 9 4 By the early 1790s, relations between the United states and Great Britain had deteriorated badly. Although the Treaty of Paris of 1783 had called for British withdrawal from forts in the Northwest, the troops were still there and encouraging Indian attacks on American settlers. British ships were also seizing American merchant vessels headed for France. Democratic-Republicans in Congress were calling for either an embargo on all British trade or a declaration of war. To prevent war,

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President George Washington* sent John Jay, chief justice of the Supreme Court, to negotiate an agreement with the British. In the treaty, the British agreed to evacuate the Northwest forts and provide compensation for illegally seized ships, but they did not agree to the principle of “free ships, free goods”*, nor would they permit American trade in the British West Indies. The treaty was signed in November 1794, and despite intense opposition from Democratic-Republicans, the Senate ratified it in June 1795. References Samuel F. Bemis, Jay’s Treaty, 1923. Bradford Perkins, The First Rapprochement: Britain and the United States, 1795–1805, 1955.

JEFFERSON, THOMAS Thomas Jefferson was born in Shadwell, Virginia, on April 13, 1743. He graduated from William and Mary College in 1762 and then studied law. Jefferson was admitted to the bar the next year and began practicing law. He won a seat in the House of Burgesses in 1769 and served there until 1765. Jefferson was an early advocate of independence, outlining his views in a 1774 publication entitled A Summary View of the Rights of British America. As a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1775–1776, Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He then returned to the House of Burgesses and earned a reputation as a civil libertarian*, arguing for the separation of church and state, the elimination of primogeniture and entail, and the establishment of a public school system. Jefferson served a term as governor of Virginia from 1779 to 1781 and then returned to the U.S. Congress. From that position, he drafted the Land Ordinance of 1785*. In 1785, Jefferson took up his post in Paris as minister to France, and he remained in France until 1789. When the new U.S. government under the Constitution began in 1789, President George Washington* named Jefferson to the post of secretary of state. Jefferson emerged early as a leader of the fledgling Democratic-Republican Party, which opposed the neo-mercantilist, strong central government policies of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton*. Jefferson resigned from the State Department in 1793 but was elected vice president of the United States in 1796. He opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts promulgated by the John Adams administration and, along with James Madison*, helped to draft the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions outlining the states* rights philosophy. When Jefferson became president in 1801, he repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts, reduced the tariff levels, and cut government spending. He was also responsible for the Louisiana Purchase* of 1803, the Lewis and Clark expedition*, and the Embargo Act* of 1807. Jefferson retired from public life in 1809 and founded the University of Virginia in 1819. He died on July 4, 1826. Reference Merrill D. Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation, 1970.

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JIM CROW Although the origins of the term “Jim Crow” are shrouded in the distant past of the rural South, the term came to describe the racially segregated institutions and laws—de jure segregation—that which emerged in the late nineteenth century. After the end of Reconstruction*, southern whites were desperate to maintain the economic and social subjugation of the African American population. Only then would they enjoy the cheap labor needed to run the large tobacco, cotton, and sugar plantations. But the end of slavery had left whites without the legal controls they needed over the black population, and Jim Crow laws evolved to fill that void. Between the 1880s and the early 1900s, states and localities throughout the South passed legislation and ordinances restricting black economic opportunities by forbidding migration out of counties, outlawing membership in labor unions, preventing blacks from apprenticing out in the skilled trades, and confining black children to second-class segregated schools. A series of poll taxes, white primaries, and literacy tests ensured that African Americans could not exercise their rights as American citizens. Finally, dozens of ordinances segregated African Americans in every imaginable type of public facility. The Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), upheld racially separated public facilities so long as such facilities were “equal.” By the early 1900s, the Jim Crow system was rigidly in place throughout the South. The demise of the Jim Crow system did not begin until the World War II era when the armed forces integrated. In the postwar years, the Supreme Court outlawed poll taxes whose primary purpose was to limit black voting rights, prohibited white primaries, and, in the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case, ordered the desegregation of public schools. The Civil Rights Act* of 1964 then outlawed segregation in all public facilities. Reference C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 1966.

JOB CORPS In 1964, as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s* “War on Poverty*,” Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act*. One provision of the law established the Job Corps to provide vocational education to disadvantaged young people. The first Job Corps center opened a year later. It was modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps* program of the Great Depression. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota first proposed the Job Corps in 1958. Although the Johnson administration originally envisioned 100,000 enrollees, the most the program ever enrolled during the 1960s was 45,000 people. It was scaled down to 20,000 during the Nixon administration and transferred from the Office of Economic Opportunity to the Department of Labor. It has always been a very successful program, placing an average of 93 percent of its graduates in good jobs. During the 1980s, the program cost the government approximately $100 million a year. In 2013, Job Corps serves an estimated 60,000 people. References Sar Levitan and Benjamin Johnston, The Job Corps: A Social Experiment That Works, 1975. Christopher Weeks, Job Corps: Dollars and Dropouts, 1967.

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JOBS, STEVE Steven Paul Jobs, or Steve Jobs, was an American entrepreneur and inventor, known mostly for his work at Apple, Inc.* Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. After attending high school in Cupertino, California, Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon for one year in 1972. In 1973, Jobs worked at Atari in Los Gatos, California, as a technician. There, he met Steve Wozniak, a fellow technician. In 1976, Jobs and Wozniak would form Apple Computer Company. That year, Wozniak had developed the Apple I computer. After a series of back room conflicts with fellow directors, Jobs was fired in 1985, despite his role in the growth of the company. He founded NeXT Inc., in 1985 bought what would later become Pixar in 1986. He would be moderately successful with these business ventures until his return to Apple in 1996. Apple purchased NeXT, and Jobs became CEO of Apple in 1997. The Apple personal computers would develop into the Mac series, which, along with the iBook laptop, became very popular in the late 1990s. By the 2000s, Jobs sought to diversify the products produced by Apple, developing the iPod for downloadable music, the iPhone as a smartphone* that ran Apple’s operating system, and the iPad as one of the first computer tablets on the market. Jobs was an active spokesperson pitching the release of these new products, appearing at MacWorld conferences to present them in person. Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple on August 2011 due to illness. Jobs died on October 5, 2011, in Palo Alto, California, aged 56. Reference Walter Issacson, Steve Jobs, 2011.

J O H N S O N , H I R A M WA R R E N Hiram Warren Johnson was born September 2, 1866, in Sacramento, California. His father, Grover Johnson, was an attorney who handled a large number of cases for the Southern Pacific Railroad*, a dominant force in California politics; he was also a conservative Republican who was elected to the state legislature in 1877 and the U.S. Congress in 1894. Young Johnson attended public school in Sacramento and began reading law after three years at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1894, Hiram managed his father’s congressional campaign, but while working in the family law firm, he became estranged, both personally and politically, from his father. The younger Johnson gained a reputation as a progressive* Republican. In 1901, he supported the reform candidate for mayor of Sacramento, and in 1906, he worked to oust Abraham Ruef, the machine mayor of San Francisco. In 1910, young Johnson ran for governor of California and won the election. He quickly established his reputation as a progressive by establishing a civil service system, regulating the railroads and public utilities, and instituting workmen’s compensation* and an eight-hour day for women and children. He ran as Theodore Roosevelt’s* vice-presidential running mate with the Bull Moose party in 1912. Though defeated in that election, he was reelected governor of California in 1914. Two years later, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate.

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In the Senate, Johnson earned a reputation as a progressive in domestic affairs and an isolationist in foreign affairs. He supported a wide variety of social welfare, labor, and profarmer legislation, as well as the McNary–Haugen plan* and federal development of Muscle Shoals (which later became part of the Tennessee Valley Authority*). He also intensely opposed American participation in the League of Nations. In 1932, Johnson openly endorsed Franklin D. Roosevelt* for president, rejecting the candidacy of Republican Herbert Hoover*. He supported Roosevelt until the late 1930s, by which time Johnson believed that the president was leading the country into another war. Johnson actively opposed naval expansion, conscription, and lend–lease*. In July 1945, Johnson cast one of two dissenting Senate votes against the charter of the United Nations. He died on August 6, 1945. References Ronald L. Feinman, Twilight of Progressivism: The Western Republican Senators and the New Deal, 1981. George Mowry, California Progressives, 1951. New York Times, August 7, 1945.

JOHNSON, HUGH See NATIONAL RECOVERY ADMINISTRATION. J O H N S O N , LY N D O N B A I N E S Lyndon B. Johnson was born near Stonewall, Texas, on August 27, 1908. He graduated from Southwest Texas Teachers* College in 1930 and then taught school in South Texas for a brief period. In 1932, Johnson joined the staff of Congressman Richard Kleberg as his personal secretary. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* appointed Johnson to be Texas state director of the National Youth Administration* (NYA) in 1935, and in 1937, he was elected to fill a vacant seat in Congress. Johnson remained in that office until 1949. He won election as a U.S. senator in 1949. Politically gifted, Johnson was elected minority leader of the Senate in 1953 and became majority leader in 1955 when the Democrats took control of the Senate. Johnson failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, but John F. Kennedy* picked him as his running mate. Johnson became president of the United States in November 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated. Johnson’s administration was noted for its domestic successes, including the Civil Rights Act* of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Medicare program, and the antipoverty program, all of which were part of his Great Society* vision. Those achievements, however, were overshadowed by his disastrous military policy in Vietnam, which eventually cost Johnson his chances for reelection. The war was politically unpopular, and Johnson’s decision not to seek a tax increase to finance the war started the country down the long road of inflation. In 1968, Johnson decided not to seek reelection. He returned home to Texas in 1969 and died there on January 22, 1973. Reference Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, 1969.

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JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE OF CONGRESS See EMPLOYMENT ACT OF 1946. J O I N T S T O C K C O M PA N Y The joint stock company was among the most common techniques that Europeans used in establishing overseas colonies. Used most frequently by the Dutch and the British, the corporate enterprise provided investment capital to finance colonial ventures when central governments were unwilling or unable to do so. Many of the companies even exercised sovereign power over their colonies—raising armies, levying taxes, and shaping political institutions. The typical pattern, however, was for private, corporate control to give way to the political sovereignty of the state. In some cases, that transition occurred rather quickly. The London Company financed the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, but the colony of Virginia became a royal colony in 1624. For other joint stock companies, the transition took much longer. The British East India Company, founded in 1600, was not dissolved until 1858. During its more than 250 years of existence, the company exercised enormous power in East Asia and South Asia. The Dutch West India Company financed the settlement of New Netherland, and the Virginia Company, the Plymouth Company, and the Massachusetts Bay Company played prominent roles in other colonial ventures. Reference L. B. Wright, Piety and Empire: The Alliance between Piety and Commerce in English Expansion, 1558–1625, 1943.

JONES, JESSE HOLMAN Jesse H. Jones, “czar” of the New Deal credit establishment, was born April 22, 1874, in Robertson County, Tennessee. His family moved to Dallas, Texas, and he graduated from Hill’s Business College there in 1891. After rising to general manager in his uncle’s lumber company, Jones purchased his own firm. He entered real estate and construction in 1903, banking in 1905, and newspaper publishing in 1908. Eventually he became one of the largest real estate developers in the country, constructing and operating some fifty major buildings in Houston, together with properties in other major cities. A self-made man, he had become known by 1929 as “Mr. Houston.” Jones had also become a prominent figure in the Democratic Party. In 1928, Jones brought the Democratic National Convention (at which Alfred E. Smith* was nominated for the presidency) to Houston, building a 25,000-seat convention center for the meeting. Texas made Jones a “favorite son” candidate for president. He was director general of the Texas State Centennial (held in 1936 with Jones as chairman), for which he designed and built the San Jacinto Monument. In 1929, a banking crisis in Houston following the onset of the Great Depression” was averted by Jones’s quick action. In January 1932, President Herbert Hoover*

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appointed him as one of the seven directors of the newly created Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). It was with the RFC that Jones’s New Deal fame was established. During 1932, Jones was instrumental in averting a banking crisis in Chicago through the use of RFC funds. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* quickly made Jones chairman of the RFC in 1933, a position he held until his resignation from the federal government in 1945. The RFC, which was reorganized into the Small Business Administration in 1953, made $50 billion in loans under Jones’s chairmanship. It was his proudest accomplishment that these loans were largely repaid to the government, with interest. The RFC became known as the “Fourth Branch of Government” for its importance as a New Deal emergency agency. Jones’s wide business and banking experience was of incalculable value at the RFC. In 1939, Roosevelt appointed Jones head of the newly created Federal Loan Agency, a position he occupied until 1945. During 1940–1945, when he also served as secretary of commerce, special legislation was passed to permit Jones to serve simultaneously as an agency administrator and a member of the cabinet. He left government service in 1945. In the postwar era, he devoted much of his time to philanthropy until his death on June 1, 1956. References Jesse H. Jones, Fifty-Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945, 1951. James S. Olson, The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940, 1988.

J O N E S , M A RY H A R R I S Mary Harris “Mother” Jones was born in Cork, Ireland, on May 1, 1830. She immigrated to the United States in 1835 and grew up in Toronto, Canada. Jones was a schoolteacher and dressmaker, but in 1867, her husband and four children died in a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee. When the 1871 Chicago fire made her homeless, she stayed for a while at a Knights of Labor* union hall and became interested in labor unions. She participated actively in the great railroad strike* of 1877, and during the 1890s, she worked as an organizer for the United Mine Workers* of America (UMW). In 1905, she helped to found the Industrial Workers of the World*. Jones was an indefatigable union organizer and was present at the Arizona copper strikes in 1910, the West Virginia coal strikes in 1912–1913, the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado in 1914, the garment workers’ strike in New York City in 1915–1916, and the great steel strike* of 1919. She died on November 30, 1930. Reference Dale Fetherling, Mother Jones, the Miner’s Angel: A Portrait, 1974.

J O N E S – C O N N A L LY FA R M R E L I E F A C T O F 1 9 3 4 Although many ranchers were at first opposed to including cattle as a basic agricultural commodity in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration’s* (AAA) new program, the drought of 1933–1934 changed all that. Congressman Marvin Jones

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and Senator Tom Connally, both from Texas, introduced a bill including cattle in the program. Jones led the House in passing a bill that made cattle a basic commodity and that provided $200 million for production adjustments for beef and dairy cattle. The Senate broadened the bill to include barley, rye, peanuts, flax, and grain sorghum. For these reasons, senators also accepted amendments introduced by Senator Robert La Follette Jr.* for appropriations to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation* and for the eradication of tubercular cattle. The House agreed to these provisions, and the bill became law on April 7, 1934. References Irvin M. May Jr., Marvin Jones: The Public Life of an Agrarian Advocate, 1980. John T. Schlebecker, Cattle Raising on the Plains, 1900–1961, 1963.

JONES–COSTIGAN SUGAR ACT OF 1934 In February 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* called for legislation to increase sugar producers* prices, stabilize production, stop the decline of Cuban sugar imports, and maintain existing acreages of sugar cane and sugar beets. Such measures had been proposed unsuccessfully as amendments to the Jones–Connally Farm Relief Act*. Roosevelt asked House Agriculture Chairman Marvin Jones to sponsor a House bill officially making sugar beets and sugar cane basic agricultural commodities. Jones agreed to do so with reluctance. Senator Edward Costigan of Colorado introduced a similar measure in the Senate. Led by Representative Fred Cummings of Colorado, the House Agriculture Committee reported a bill increasing the quota for domestic sugar beet producers, providing for benefit payments from a processing tax on sugar, and insuring a minimum wage for workers. Child labor was prohibited. The House bill went not to the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry but to the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Pat Harrison of Mississippi. Sugar beet producers favored the bill, but Puerto Rican and Hawaiian sugar cane producers opposed it. Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan modified the child labor provision to allow the regulation, but not abolition, of child labor. The Senate also eliminated the minimum wage. The House accepted these changes. This was the first, and perhaps only, instance of a child labor feature in any New Deal* agricultural aid bill. References Murray R. Benedict, Farm Policies of the United States, 1790–1950, 1953. Irvin M. May Jr., Marvin Jones: The Public Life of an Agrarian Advocate, 1980.

K K A I S E R , H E N RY J O H N Henry J. Kaiser was born in Sprout Brook, New York, on May 9, 1882, to a working-class, German immigrant family. He quit school when he was 13 to work in a dry goods store, but when he was 17, he became fascinated with photography and switched jobs. He sold photographic supplies, opened a small camera store in Lake Placid, New York, and in 1903 launched a small chain of photography stores in Florida. By 1905, Kaiser was in Spokane, Washington, learning the hardware and construction businesses. He formed the Kaiser Paving Company in 1914 and gained a reputation for completing high-quality, timely projects at a fair price. Kaiser made a fortune in highway construction in the 1920s when the automobile* revolution began in the United States. In 1930, Kaiser formed a consortium of contractors, known as Six Companies, Inc., that bid successfully for the government contract to build Hoover Dam*. They stayed busy throughout the Great Depression* on Hoover Dam, as well as on the Coulee and Bonneville* dam projects. It was during World War II, however, that Kaiser became a national figure. He established a huge shipbuilding works in Richmond, California, and the U.S. Maritime Commission awarded him a steady stream of shipbuilding contracts. Kaiser later built other shipbuilding works in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington. During the war, Kaiser constructed an astonishing 1,490 ships for the United States. He also established Kaiser Steel in 1942 to supply raw materials to the shipworks. When the war ended, Kaiser was ready to exploit domestic consumer needs, so he formed the Kaiser–Frazer Corporation in 1945 to build automobiles. Although he eventually lost $130 million in the automobile industry, Kaiser had formed Kaiser Aluminum Company in 1946; his profits there more than made up for the losses. Although he retired in 1954, Kaiser spent the last years of his life promoting the Kaiser Health plan, an early health maintenance organization (HMO), which raised the ire of the American Medical Association*. Eventually, his became the largest HMO in the country. Kaiser died on August 24, 1967. Reference Richard M. Longworth, Kaiser–Frazer: The Last Onslaught on Detroit, 1975.

K A N A G AWA , T R E AT Y O F The Treaty of Kanagawa of 1854 was the first modem treaty between Japan and a Western nation. Commodore Matthew C. Perry* of the United States negotiated the treaty during his epic voyage to Japan in July 1853. Japan promised not to imprison shipwrecked American sailors and opened the ports of Shimoda and

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Hakodate to American vessels to obtain water, wood, and supplies. It also permitted American consuls to be stationed at Shimoda and Hakodate. The treaty provided “most-favored nation”* status to both countries as trading partners but left out any references to extraterritoriality. The United States pledged to assist Japan in any controversy with a European power. Reference Foster R. Dulles, Yankees and Samurai, 1965.

K E AT I N G – O W E N A C T O F 1 9 1 6 See NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE. KEITH, MINOR COOPER M. C. Keith was born on January 19, 1848, in Brooklyn, New York. He left school in 1864 and worked at various jobs until 1871 when he went to Costa Rica to help his brother build a railroad. His brother died in 1874, and Keith finished the project against enormous political, engineering, and financial odds, although the road from the Caribbean inland to San Jose was not operational until 1890. During the years he was building the railroad, Keith was also investing in banana plantations and continued doing so in Panama and Nicaragua in the 1890s. By 1899, Keith dominated the banana industry in Central America and was exporting huge volumes of bananas to the United States. That year, he merged his interests with the Boston Fruit Company to form the United Fruit Company*. Keith then spent the rest of his life building railroads in Central America, developing banana plantations along the routes to make sure that United Fruit could ship its crops to market. In 1912, Keith established the International Railways of Central America, and he served as president of the company. When he died on June 14, 1929, Keith was the best-known American in Central America. References Thomas McCann, An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit, 1976. New York Times, June 15, 1929.

K E L L E Y, F L O R E N C E Florence Kelley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 12, 1859. She graduated from Cornell University in 1882. After being refused admission to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania because she was a woman, Kelley went abroad to the University of Zurich. In Switzerland, she became acquainted with radical students and soon became an avid socialist*. When Kelley returned to the United States in 1886, she became a member of the Socialist Labor Party*. She spent the next several years translating the works of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx into English, eventually leaving the Socialist Labor Party because of theoretical differences with Daniel DeLeon over violence and revolution. In 1891, Kelley

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moved to Chicago and lived at Jane Addams’s Hull House, where she became active in reform politics. In 1892, she went to work for the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics investigating working conditions in the garment industry. After campaigning actively for an end to child labor, limited working hours for women, and government regulation of sweatshop labor, Kelley was appointed chief factory inspector for Illinois by Governor John Peter Altgeld. She attended law school at night at Northwestern University and earned her degree in 1894. In 1899, Kelley moved to New York City and became general secretary of the National Consumers* League, a position she held for the rest of her life. In 1909, she became a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). During the 1920s, Kelley continued her fight against child labor and also began campaigning for old age pensions, federal labor standards legislation, and women’s rights. She died on February 17, 1932. References Dorothy Rose Blumber, Florence Kelley: The Making of a Social Pioneer, 1966. Josephine Goldmark, Impatient Crusader: Florence Kelley’s Life Story, 1953.

K E L L E Y, O L I V E R H U D S O N Oliver H. Kelley was born in 1826, and after spending his early years as a farmer, he* joined the federal government in the agriculture department. When the Civil War* ended, the department asked him to travel throughout the South surveying farming conditions and quality of rural life. Kelley was overwhelmed by the social and intellectual void he encountered and decided that the country desperately needed a national farming organization to provide social and intellectual services to farmers. In 1867, Kelley established and became the first president of the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange. Kelley traveled widely organizing local Grange associations, and from those local groups emerged the National Grange*. Kelley resigned from the Grange in 1878, just before the farm movement became more highly politicized. He spent the next several years in a variety of real estate ventures. Kelley died in 1913. Reference Carl C. Taylor, The Farmers’ Movement, 1620–1920, 1953.

KELLOGG, WILL KEITH Will K. Kellogg was born on April 7, 1860, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Kellogg left school when he was fourteen. He worked for the next 25 years as a traveling salesman and contractor. In 1899, he moved to Texas where he worked selling brooms. A devout Seventh Day Adventist and vegetarian, Kellogg wanted to find some way of marketing grains and nuts. Along with his brother, he decided to try to sell wheat flakes as a breakfast food in 1895. The Kelloggs proved too late for the wheat flakes industry because Charles William Post had already cornered it,

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so Kellogg turned his attention to corn flakes. In 1905, he established the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company. Through advertising in Ladies Home Journal and the use of redeemable coupons, Kellogg built the company quickly. By 1909, he was selling over 1 million cases of corn flakes a year. In 1921, he changed the name of the company to Kellogg Company, and during that decade, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes became one of the most recognizable consumer products in the country. Kellogg stepped down from active leadership of the company in 1939 and died on October 6, 1951. References New York Times, October 7, 1951. H. B. Powell, The Original Has the Signature, 1952.

K E N N E D Y, J O H N F I T Z G E R A L D John F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. He graduated from Harvard University in 1940 and published his senior thesis as Why England Slept (1940). During World War II, Kennedy commanded a PT boat in the Pacific and was decorated for bravery. He returned to Massachusetts and won a seat in Congress as a Democrat in 1946. Kennedy served three terms in the House before defeating Henry Cabot Lodge for a Senate seat in 1952. He was reelected in 1958 and won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. In the general election, Kennedy defeated Republican nominee Richard M. Nixon. As president, Kennedy adopted Keynesian* economic policies to stimulate the economy, vigorously opposed the decision of private steel companies to raise prices, and supported the Alliance for Progress* in Latin America. He also increased the American troop level in Vietnam from 900 to nearly 17,000. He was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Reference David Burner, John F. Kennedy, 1988.

KENNEDY ROUND The term “Kennedy Round” refers to a series of tariff negotiations among the prominent economic powers of the world. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)* in 1947 had provided for periodic tariff negotiations, and the Kennedy Round was the sixth of those meetings. The Kennedy Round lasted from 1963 to 1967. Christian A. Herter headed the American delegation at first, but he was succeeded by W. Michael Blumenthal and William M. Roth. The Kennedy Round began after Congress passed the Trade Expansion Act* of 1962. At the time, the United States was increasingly concerned about America’s languishing trade with Western Europe. In 1957 France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands created the European Economic Community* to coordinate economic policy on the continent. The United States wanted to make sure that European markets remained open to American manufacturers. The Kennedy Round began at

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Geneva with the objective of increasing U.S. exports to Common Market countries, as well as greater Common Market access to American markets, through mutual tariff reductions. Fifty-three nations participated in the Kennedy Round over four years, and in the end, the average tariff reductions ranged from 35 to 40 percent. The Kennedy Round also negotiated an agreement to provide 4.5 million tons of wheat a year in food assistance to impoverished countries and strengthened standards against dumping goods abroad. References Thomas B. Curtis and John Robert Vastine, The Kennedy Round and the Future of American Trade, 1971. John W. Evans, The Kennedy Round in American Trade Policy, 1971.

K E Y N E S , J O H N M AY N A R D Although not an American and never a member of any New Deal agency, John Maynard Keynes had an enormous influence on U.S. public policy. He was born in 1883 in Cambridge, England, attended Eton, and went on to a brilliant career at King’s College, Cambridge. After graduation, he spent some time in the civil service with the India Office but quit after two years, returned to Cambridge, and wrote Indian Currency and Finance (1913). The book was considered a triumph, and Keynes was given the editorship of the Economic Journal, Britain’s most prestigious economic publication. In 1918, following World War I*, Keynes went to Versailles as deputy for the chancellor of the exchequer on the Supreme Economic Council. He protested the imposition of reparations* on Germany, because he fervently believed that they would destroy the German economy and trigger a new round of military authoritarianism. Keynes resigned in protest and wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), a book that gave him an international reputation. During the 1920s, he accumulated a fortune speculating in the international securities markets, taught classes at Cambridge, and wrote the Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) and the Treatise on Money (1930), both of which criticized the world’s preoccupation with gold and currency. Keynes then turned the economic world upside-down with The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), in which he argued that contrary to the classical theory, which assumed that in the long run the economy would always balance itself into a position of equilibrium, modem industrial economies were capable of declining indefinitely. Declines in production, employment, and income could be mutually reinforcing, depleting private savings and creating a miserable depression. Instead of waiting for the economy to find its equilibrium, as the classical economists advocated, Keynes insisted that government investment, income, and spending would temporarily have to supplement private investment, income, and spending. The technique to provide that supplement was deficit spending. Keynes visited Washington, D.C., in 1934 and urged New Dealers to more of the same—more relief, more work relief, and more spending. He wrote several letters to President Franklin D. Roosevelt* during the 1930s, explaining the need for government spending to pick up the slack from the private sector. For Keynes, the New Deal relief programs should

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not be considered temporary political expedients, but good medicine for a sick economy—indeed, the only way that private investment and income could be stimulated. It was not until World War II, with its massive government spending and deficit financing, that the “Keynesian Revolution” was complete. Not until the 1970s, when unemployment and inflation occurred together, did Keynes’s theories come into question again. Keynes suffered a heart attack in 1937 and had to curtail some of his activities, but during World War II, he served as an economic adviser to the British government and traveled to the United States several times while working on international economic concerns. His last visit came in 1945, when he attended the Bretton Woods Conference*. Keynes died on April 21, 1946. Reference Robert Lekachman, The Age of Keynes, 1966.

“KING COTTON” The term “King Cotton” first emerged in the 1850s as a way of expressing southern confidence in the economic power of the South’s major product. Throughout much of the early nineteenth century, Southern apologists discussed the significance of cotton. As Northern and British textile mills became larger and larger importers of cotton, Southerners became convinced that their economic leverage could translate into political power. The Panic of 1857* confirmed those beliefs. The panic was a major financial disaster in the North, whereas the South remained relatively unscathed; Southerners became still more certain that “King Cotton” guaranteed them protection and power. During the Civil War*, the term “King Cotton Diplomacy” described the basic diplomatic approaches of the Confederate States of America. Confederate leaders believed that because cotton was so vital to the economies of Great Britain and France, those nations would give diplomatic recognition and economic assistance to the South in the Civil War. The South also tried to embargo cotton shipments to Europe to accelerate that recognition and assistance. King Cotton diplomacy failed because Britain had stockpiled cotton supplies in preparation for the war, as well as because of new cotton sources in India. Eventually, it became clear that cotton was not king—neither diplomatically nor economically. Great Britain and France never recognized the Confederacy. After the war, it became increasingly clear that the South’s one-product economy was a liability rather than an asset. Reference Frank Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, 1959.

KNIGHTS OF LABOR The Knights of Labor, formerly known as the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor, grew out of the Garment Workers Association of Philadelphia, which had been organized in 1862. When the Garment Workers Association dissolved in 1869, a few of its members formed the Knights of Labor. They believed that their earlier union had

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failed because its members were too well known by management, so they decided that the Knights of Labor should be a secret, fraternal order. They also organized all workers, regardless of craft or skill. The Knights of Labor was only a local Philadelphia union until the depression of 1873. Large numbers of other unions around the country failed, and the Knights of Labor filled the void. In 1882, the Knights of Labor elected Uriah Stephens* as president and abandoned its commitment to secrecy, primarily because the Roman Catholic church opposed secret societies and because the violent Molly Maguires* had given secrecy a bad name. Terence V. Powderly* replaced Stephens after several years and committed the Knights of Labor to establishing worker-controlled industrial cooperatives designed to actually compete with business. Membership in the Knights grew from 9,000 in 1872 to 19,000 in 1881 and to 111,000 in 1885. Because of its successful strike against the Wabash Railroad in 1885, membership boomed to 700,000 by 1886. The decline of the Knights of Labor then set in. In 1886, they launched an unsuccessful strike against Jay Gould* and the Southwestern Railroad, and membership suffered. The cooperative enterprises failed economically, and the antilabor hysteria that swept America after the Haymarket* Square riot of 1886 hurt the union badly. Powderly’s refusal to support the eight-hour day movement also hurt the reputation of the Knights of Labor. The American Federation of Labor* (AFL), which organized skilled workers only, replaced the Knights of Labor as the country’s leading labor institution. Membership fell to 250,000 in 1887, 100,000 in 1890, and 75,000 in 1893. Socialists* seized control of the union in 1893 and virtually destroyed it. Reference Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, 1955.

KNOX, PHILANDER CHASE Philander C. Knox was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, on May 6, 1853. He graduated from Mount Union College in Ohio in 1872; in 1875, he was admitted to the bar and began practicing law. Knox moved to Pittsburgh and became a leading corporate attorney. In 1901, President William McKinley* named him attorney general of the United States. Knox won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1904 and served there until 1909, when President William Howard Taft* named him secretary of state. While at the State Department, Knox aggressively promoted American business interests abroad; his zeal earned American foreign policy during his tenure the nickname of “Dollar Diplomacy*.” In other words, the U.S. government placed its political and military might behind its corporate investments abroad. Knox also settled disputes with Great Britain over the Atlantic fisheries and helped to negotiate a series of arbitration treaties. He left the State Department in 1913, practiced law for four years, and in 1916 again won a seat in the Senate. There Knox earned a reputation as one of the “Irreconcilables” who opposed American entry into the League of Nations at all costs. Knox died on October 12, 1921.

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References Samuel F. Bemis, American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, 1929. New York Times, October 13, 1921.

KNUDSEN, WILLIAM William Knudsen was born on March 25, 1879, in Copenhagen, Denmark. He immigrated to the United States in 1900 after studying drafting and engineering in Denmark. Knudson worked in several machine tool factories before joining the John R. Keim Mills in Buffalo, New York. Keim manufactured crankcases and rear axle casings for the Ford Motor Company*, and in 1911, Ford bought out the smaller company. By 1913, Knudsen was in charge of designing assembly line operations for all of Henry Ford’s* plants, and by the time of World War I*, Knudsen was recognized as the leading expert on mass production in heavy industry in the country. Because of a personality conflict, Ford fired Knudsen in 1921, so Knudsen moved over to General Motors*, where Alfred P. Sloan* put him in charge of Chevrolet Motors. From 1924 to 1926, Knudsen redesigned the Chevrolet. Chevrolet sales jumped from just under 73,000 in 1921 to more than 720,000 in 1926, and in 1927, it outsold Ford’s Model T. Knudsen became vice president of General Motors in 1933 and president in 1937. When World War II* broke out, Knudsen joined the army as a lieutenant general to serve as an adviser to the undersecretary of war. He retired from the army in 1945 and died on April 27, 1948. References Nathan Beasley, Knudsen: A Biography, 1947. John B. Rae, American Automobile Manufacturers, 1959.

K O R E A N WA R By 1950, the American economy finally appeared to have stabilized after the unusual developments of World War II. Inflation had been minimized, employment had stabilized, and government management of the economy had been dramatically reduced. But when North Korean troops invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950, the United States once again went into a war economy. Employment skyrocketed and unemployment disappeared, but large-scale government spending triggered serious inflation once again. Congress passed the Defense Production Act in December 1950, giving President Harry S. Truman* broad powers to increase production and control wages and prices. He established a new Office of Economic Stabilization late in January 1951 to enforce those controls. The Defense Production Act was renewed for one year in June 1952. When the United Steelworkers of America* threatened to go on strike, Truman seized the steel mills in April 1952 to make sure that production was not interrupted. On June 2, 1952, the Supreme Court held the seizure unconstitutional in Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer, and Truman returned the mills to the owners. The strike was quickly settled by arbitration. All price controls were removed from the economy on March 17, 1953.

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Reference Carl Berger, The Korea Knot, a Military–Political History, 1957.

K R A F T, J A M E S L E W I S James Kraft was born on November 11, 1874, in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. He immigrated to the United States in 1903 after finishing high school and working several years as a clerk; he settled in Buffalo, New York. In 1904, Kraft moved to Chicago. He immediately started his own business wholesaling cheese to small food stores. With his two brothers, he founded J. L. Kraft Brothers and Company in 1909. At the time, cheese was difficult to market because it spoiled so quickly, but in 1916, Kraft managed to produce natural cheese through a pasteurization process. This made it possible to package cheese in small amounts that could be stored longer. Kraft then established his business on a firm footing by selling millions of four-ounce cans of cheese to the U.S. Army during World War I*. Gross sales went from $2 million a year in 1917 to more than $28 million a year in 1926. Kraft cheese products were sold throughout the country, and per capita consumption of cheese grew dramatically. National Dairy Products bought out Kraft in 1930, but James Kraft continued to head the subsidiary. He died on February 16, 1953. References New York Times, February 17, 1953. Who Was Who in America, III (1961): 489.

KRESGE, SEBASTIAN SPERING Sebastian Kresge was born on July 31, 1867, in Bald Mount, Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, Kresge attended business college in Poughkeepsie, New York, and taught school for a while. In 1889, he moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he worked as a clerk and bookkeeper. He left that job in 1892 and spent the next fifteen years as a traveling salesman hawking hardware. Some of his customers were small variety stores, and in 1897, Kresge joined with one of his clients and opened two variety stores, one in Memphis, Tennessee, and the other in Detroit, Michigan. The partnership split up in 1899, and Kresge became the sole owner of the store in Detroit. Kresge joined with his brother-in-law, Charles J. Wilson, and formed Kresge and Wilson Company, which began opening new “5 and 10” stores. By 1907, they had stores in eight northeastern cities. They incorporated as S. S. Kresge in 1907 with a total of eighty-five stores. He served as president of the company and continued to open new stores during World War I and the early 1920s. When he retired in 1925, the chain had 600 stores in the United States and gross annual sales of nearly $160 million. Kresge spent the rest of his life involved in a number of charitable concerns, and he died on October 16, 1966. References Godfrey M. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 1963. New York Times, October 19, 1966.

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K R O C , R AY Raymond Kroc is an American businessman who joined McDonald’s in 1954 and established its primacy in the fast food market in the United States and the world. Kroc was born on October 5, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, to Czech immigrants. He worked for the McDonald brothers starting in 1954 in the San Bernardino, California, flagship store, viewing the potential of expanding the store’s model nationwide. He became the franchising agent for the McDonald’s fast food restaurant, opening the first franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois. In 1961, he bought the company and went about expanding the chain nationwide. The innovative setup that created an assembly line production model of fast food distribution was used by Kroc in all the franchises and was supplied by a centralized distribution system. Kroc standardized operations across the United States to ensure that all products were produced exactly the same in all franchises. The company also enforced standard practices in all franchises. Kroc retired as CEO of McDonald’s in 1973. He died on January 14, 1984, in San Diego, California, aged 81. Reference John F. Love, McDonald’s: Behind the Arches, 1986.

K R U G M A N , PA U L Paul Krugman is a U.S. economist and public intellectual. Krugman is professor of economics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and serves as an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. Krugman was born on February 28, 1953, in Albany, New York. He graduated from Yale University with a BA in economics in 1974 and attained his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. After a series of key publications that solidified his academic reputation, he joined the MIT faculty in 1979. He worked for the Ronald Reagan* administration from 1982 to 1983 in the Council of Economic Advisers. He returned to MIT in 1984 as a full professor, also teaching at Stanford University, Yale University, and the London School of Economics. In 2000, Krugman became a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. In 2008, Krugman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his work associated with new trade theory and new economic geography, which illustrated the complexities of the global economy. Krugman has written various books, scholarly articles, and newspaper columns. His criticisms of U.S. economic policies in the 2000s and 2010s have been instrumental in creating public debate over unemployment, the redistribution of wealth, and the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States. Reference Paul R. Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal, 2007.

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KUHN, MAGGIE Margaret E. “Maggie” Kuhn, the founder of the Gray Panthers, was born on August 3, 1905, in Buffalo, New York, and was educated at Case Western Reserve University. She first worked as a teacher but soon became involved in organizing for the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). This job brought her into contact with women who were trying to unionize for better pay and working conditions, an experience that instilled her with a lifelong concern for issues of social justice. She moved on to editing the magazine Social Progress for the United Presbyterian Church, a position she held until forced into retirement in 1970. Her opposition to the Vietnam War* and her concern for social justice issues brought her into an alliance with people at both ends of the age spectrum, partly because she believed that both old and young faced economic and social discrimination. Initially through the church, she organized the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change in 1970 and took part in the first White House Conference on Aging in 1971. That year, the apparent radicalism of her views led one reporter to nickname her organization the Gray Panthers by analogy with the Black Panther movement. The Gray Panthers work toward ending age discrimination in all its forms and training older persons to use their skills for work in the public interest. These public interest activities led her to cooperate with consumer advocate Ralph Nader*, investigating conditions in nursing homes and fighting against opposition by the American Medical Association* (AMA) to a national health care program. At age 87, she was still pressing her agenda for comprehensive health care for all, publicly owned utilities, a national office of consumer representation, and no mandatory retirement. Kuhn died on April 22, 1995, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the age of 89. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference “Maggie Kuhn,” Current Biography, July 1978.

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L LA FOLLETTE, ROBERT MARION Robert M. La Follette was born on June 14, 1855, on a farm in Primrose Township, Wisconsin. He was raised on the farm and in a neighboring town after his father died and his mother remarried. In 1873, his mother moved the family to Madison so that young Robert could attend the University of Wisconsin. He graduated in 1879 after teaching school part-time, editing the student newspaper, and becoming a Republican. La Follette took some classes at the law school in the fall of 1879, read law privately, and passed the state bar examination in 1880. That year, he was also elected district attorney for Dane County. Four years later, he was elected to Congress, but he was swept out in the Democratic resurgence of 1890. He practiced law during the 1890s and was influenced by progressive* insurgency during the depression of 1893* and the Populist* agitation of 1895–1896. Riding the crest of progressivism, La Follette was elected governor of Wisconsin in 1900 and reelected in 1902 and 1904. During his tenure in the state house, he pushed tariff reform, direct primary elections, conservation, and property taxes for the railroads. In 1905, the Wisconsin legislature elected La Follette to the U.S. Senate. In the Senate, La Follette aligned himself with other progressive insurgents. He promoted railroad regulation, tariff reform, pure food and drug legislation, honesty in government, and what became the “Wisconsin Idea”*—the use of experts on government commissions to deal with economic and social problems. Interested in the presidency, La Follette launched the National Progressive Republican League in 1911 but wound up battling both Theodore Roosevelt* and William Howard Taft* for the 1912 Republican nomination. When Taft won the nomination and Roosevelt bolted the party, La Follette retreated to the sidelines, endorsing no candidate but privately hoping for Woodrow Wilson’s* victory. La Follette was reelected to the Senate in 1910, 1916, and 1922. During the 1920s, La Follette continued his progressive crusade. He opposed the Transportation Act of 1920* as a windfall for railroads because it legalized pooling* and exempted the railroads from the antitrust laws. He hated the Water Power Act and Mineral Leasing Act for giving private corporations access to public resources. La Follette was also an outspoken opponent of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon’s* tax policies and was a major figure in the Senate investigation of the Harding scandals. In 1924, La Follette won the presidential nomination of the Progressive Party, but he won only 16.5 percent of the popular vote and only Wisconsin’s electoral votes. Republican Calvin Coolidge took 54 percent of the vote to Democrat John Davis’s 28.8 percent. The election drained La Follette, and he died of a heart attack on June 18, 1925.

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References David P. Thelen, Robert M. La Follette and the Insurgent Spirit, 1976. David P. Thelen, The Early Life of Robert M. La Follette, 1855–1884, 1966.

LA FOLLETTE, ROBERT MARION, JR. Born on February 6, 1895, in Madison, Wisconsin, Robert Marion La Follette Jr., was raised in one of the most politically prominent families in America. His father, Robert M. La Follette*, served as a congressman, governor, and U.S. senator, and his name became synonymous with early twentieth-century progressivism*. Robert M. La Follette Jr., who entered the Senate in 1925 and served until 1949, was a transitional figure linking progressivism with the urban liberalism of the New Deal. He entered the University of Wisconsin in 1913 but never graduated, quitting school in 1916 and going to work as a clerk in his father’s Senate office. He became his father’s personal secretary in 1919, and when Robert M. La Follette died in 1925, Robert Jr. (“Young Bob”) won the special election to fill the vacant seat. He did not emerge from his father’s shadow until after the stock market crash* of 1929. Until then, he had been preoccupied with the traditional issues of progressivism. But after 1929, La Follette became an outspoken critic of Herbert Hoover*, despite their shared Republican Party affiliation. La Follette demanded direct relief for the unemployed, a massive expansion of public works, and national economic planning. He became recognized as one of the most liberal members of the Senate. During the New Deal*, La Follette consistently charged Franklin D. Roosevelt* with not moving fast enough or far enough in restoring mass purchasing power or protecting collective bargaining rights for labor. On virtually every labor, relief, public works, and taxation issue of the 1930s, La Follette tried to push the president farther to the left. La Follette was defeated for reelection in 1946 by Joseph McCarthy, and he committed suicide on February 24, 1953. References Jerold S. Auerbach, Labor and Liberty: The La Follette Committee and the New Deal, 1966. Patrick J. Maney, “Young Bob” La Follette: A Biography of Robert M. La Follette, Jr., 1895–1953, 1978.

L A B O R , D E PA R T M E N T O F In 1884, Congress established a Bureau of Labor within the Department of the Interior, and in March 1888, it was raised to an independent office, although it still did not have cabinet-level status. By the 1890s and early 1900s, such major labor unions as the Knights of Labor* and the American Federation of Labor* were demanding cabinet-level status for the Department of Labor, but the business community generally opposed such demands. The growing momentum of the Progressive movement*, combined with the increasing numbers of industrial workers in the economy, led Congress to respond at last. On March 4, 1913, his last day in office, President William Howard Taft* signed the legislation raising the Department of Labor to cabinet status.

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Reference Jonathan Grossman, The Department of Labor, 1973.

LABOR MANAGEMENT REPORTING AND DISCLOSURE ACT OF 1959 See LANDRUM–GRIFFIN ACT OF 1959. L A B O R ’ S L E A G U E F O R P O L I T I C A L E D U C AT I O N In 1947, William Green*, head of the American Federation of Labor*, formed Labor’s League for Political Education. Its essential purpose was to secure congressional repeal of the anti-union Taft–Hartley Act* of 1947, which had forced the disclosure of union leaders’ incomes, the temporary suspensions of strikes, and the prohibition of several unfair union practices. Joseph Keenan headed the group. Ostensibly nonpartisan, the league actually supported Democratic political candidates. The league failed to secure repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act. In 1955, Labor’s League for Political Education merged with the Political Action Committee of the Congress of Industrial Organizations to form the Committee on Political Education. Reference Philip Taft, Organized Labor in American History, 1964.

LAFFER, ARTHUR Arthur Laffer was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on August 14, 1940. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University in 1963 and 1965, respectively, and in 1972 he earned a doctorate in economics from Stanford. Laffer formed a close relationship with George P. Schultz in the early 1970s, and in 1973, he became Schultz’s aide in the Office of Management and Budget. Laffer developed a controversial economic philosophy who became very influential in California in the 1970s and in Washington, D.C., during the Reagan* years of the 1980s. He became known as the “tax revolt guru” for his role in the “Proposition 13” tax revolt in California in the mid-1970s. His “supply-side” economics*, popularized through what he called the “Laffer Curve,” argued that when taxes become too high, they discourage investment and production, even if government spending is active. He wanted to cut tax rates and believed strongly that subsequent increases in investment and business activity would enlarge the tax base and increase gross revenues. His 1983 book, Foundations of Supply-Side Economics, popularized those ideas and became the moving intellectual force behind the tax cuts of the Reagan administration. Laffer’s other books include Future American Energy Policy (1982) and The Phenomenon of Worldwide Inflation (1975). He is currently a professor of economics at the University of Southern California. Reference Arthur B. Laffer, Foundations of Supply-Side Economics, 1983.

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L A I S S E Z - FA I R E Laissez-faire is a theory of political economy that holds that the government should not intervene in economic affairs. It originated with the political economic theories of Adam Smith, whose 1776 book The Wealth of Nations argued that the economy naturally regulated itself through the laws of self-interest, competition, and supply and demand and furthermore that any political interference with those laws only created new sets of economic problems. The doctrine was, in the beginning, opposed to the mercantilist* philosophy, which advocated government subsidies to the commercial and industrial sectors of the economy. Opponents, especially farmers and workers, preached laissez-faire, because they believed that mercantilism unfairly benefited businessmen and bankers. Laissez-faire became the political philosophy of the Democratic-Republican Party in early American history. By the late nineteenth century, however, because of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of big business, laissez-faire theories were adopted by large corporations interested in preventing government regulation. Because monopolistic corporations were capable of subverting competition and the law of supply and demand, reformers began to demand government regulation and rejected their earlier support for laissez-faire. Laissez-faire became the rhetoric of Republicans and conservative Democrats who wanted to limit government intervention. Reference Sidney Fine, Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State, 1951.

L A M O N T, T H O M A S W I L L I A M Thomas William Lamont was born on September 30, 1870, near Albany, New York. He obtained his preparatory education at Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Harvard in 1892. He received a position as secretary to the Cushman Brothers, a food distribution firm. When the firm neared bankruptcy in 1898, it asked Lamont to reorganize and manage the business; his success was immediate. In 1903 he joined the Bankers* Trust Company, becoming vice president in 1905. In 1911, Lamont became a partner with J. P. Morgan* and Company. During World War I, Lamont coordinated wartime finances among the Allied countries for President Woodrow Wilson*, assisted with the Dawes* and Young* plans for payment of German reparations*, and served as President Herbert Hoover’s* secretary of commerce. Lamont was a lifelong Republican, but he was also an internationalist. Throughout the 1920s, he worked through economic diplomacy and international banking circles to create some global machinery for managing politics. His objective sincere, if naive. When the stock market crashed in 1929, Lamont unsuccessfully tried to stabilize the market by establishing a banking consortium. He consistently believed that the depression was a crisis of confidence and would be short-lived. During the 1930s, Lamont became an open critic of the New Deal. When J. P. Morgan died in 1943, Lamont succeeded him as chairman of the board of the House of Morgan. Lamont died on February 2, 1948.

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References Michael J. Hogan, “Thomas W. Lamont and European Recovery: The Diplomacy of Privatism in a Corporate Age,” in Kenneth Paul Jones, ed., U.S. Diplomats in Europe, 1919–1941, 1981. Thomas Lamont, My Boyhood, 1946. New York Times, February 3, 1948.

L A N D , E M O RY S C O T T Emory Scott Land was born on January 9, 1879. He graduated with a B.S. and an M.A. from the University of Wyoming in 1898 and then went to the United States Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1902. With his engineering background, Land worked in naval construction after an initial sea tour in 1902–1904. He served as assistant chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics in the Navy Department from 1926 to 1928, as chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair from 1932 to 1937, and as a commissioner on the U.S. Maritime Commission in 1937 and 1938. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt* named Joseph P. Kennedy ambassador to Great Britain, leaving the chairmanship of the U.S. Maritime Commission vacant, he named Land to fill the position. Land served as chairman of the Maritime Commission until 1946. During all those years, he worked diligently to improve the merchant marine and make it more competitive with foreign carriers. In 1942, the president asked Land to serve as administrator of the War Shipping Board as well, a position for which he was eminently qualified by his years of supervisory experience in naval construction and repair and by his time with the Maritime Commission’s vigorous shipbuilding program in the late 1930s. Land rose to the rank of vice admiral before his retirement in 1946. After retiring from government service, Land served for years as president of the Air Transport Association of America. He died on November 27, 1971. Reference Samuel A. Lawrence, United States Merchant Shipping Policies and Politics, 1966.

LAND ACT OF 1796 In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance*, which outlined the process of political development for the Northwest Territory. Nine years later, the Land Act of 1796 provided for the economic development of the region. The law stipulated that the public domain could be sold in tracts of 640 to 5,120 acres to the highest bidder or for $2 per acre. The government hoped to encourage settlement, as well as to provide a good revenue base. The measure proved expensive for small farmers, who felt that it only helped land speculators to make a fortune at their expense. Those small farmers demanded the sale of public lands at cheaper prices, and their political clout led to the Land Acts of 1800*, 1804, 1820*, and 1832, as well as the Homestead Act of 1862*. Reference Walter Havighurst, Wilderness for Sale: The Story of the First Western Land Rush, 1956.

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LAND ACT OF 1800 When small farmers complained that the Land Act* of 1796, which authorized the sale of public lands in parcels of 640 to 5,120 acres, was still inadequate, political pressure mounted in Congress for adjustments in the law. The Land Act of 1800 reduced the minimum purchase to 320 acres and extended the payment period from one to two years. But because the price of land remained at $2 an acre, small farmers continued their complaints. In 1804, Congress revised the law again, this time lowering the price to $1.64 an acre and reducing the minimum tract size to 160 acres. Reference Walter Havighurst, Wilderness for Sale: The Story of the First Western Land Rush, 1956.

LAND ACT OF 1804 See LAND ACT OF 1800. LAND ACT OF 1820 Although the Land Acts of 1800* and 1804 had steadily reduced both the price per acre and the minimum tract size of public land sales, small farmers still complained bitterly that speculators were the real beneficiaries of government land policies. Congress responded to those complaints with the Land Act of 1820, which further reduced the price per acre to $1.25 and the minimum tract size to eighty acres. An amendment in 1832 reduced the minimum tract size further to only forty acres. Still the agitation for more liberal policies continued and resulted in the Preemption Act* of 1841, which protected squatter land claims, and the Homestead Act* of 1862, which offered up to 160 acres of public land for free if the settler would live on the parcel and develop it. Reference Benjamin H. Hubbard, History of Public Land Policies, 1939.

LAND ACT OF 1832 See LAND ACT OF 1820. L A N D M A N A G E M E N T, B U R E A U O F In 1812 Congress established the General Land Office within the Treasury Department to handle the public domain. Because land was the center of American life, and ownership of land a basic tenet of the Jeffersonian political system, the General Land Office was a very important agency, seeing to the management and sale of government-owned land. The establishment of the General Land Office was soon followed by a huge population movement into the Trans-Mississippi West*. In 1832, the General Land Office issued 40,000 separate patents to land purchasers,

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a figure that increased to 110,000 in 1834 and to 320,000 in 1836. The General Land Office could not handle all of the business until Congress passed the Reorganization Act of 1836, which greatly expanded its budget and number of personnel. The Oregon Treaty* of 1846, the Treaty of Guadalupe–Hidalgo* of 1848, and the Gadsden Purchase* of 1853 all added greatly to public lands. After the Civil War*, in addition to handling its traditional responsibilities, the General Land Office also received new duties involving mining laws, railroad land grants, and dealing with the new conservation movement. All of those involved adjudicating public and private land claims. With the close of the frontier in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the duties of the General Land Office gradually changed from surveys and public land sales to conservation, land management, and resource development. The General Land Office supervised the distribution of Indian reservation land under the Dawes Severalty Act* of 1887 and the withdrawal of land from the public domain for inclusion into national forests, which Congress authorized in 1891. During the New Deal of the 1930s, the General Land Office was charged with administering the Taylor Grazing Act* and the Indian Reorganization Act*. In 1946 Congress created the Bureau of Land Management, which absorbed the General Land Office. Since that time, it has continued to manage land owned by the federal government. References Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776–1970, 1976. Paul Wallace, History of Public Land Law Development, 1968.

LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785 One of the great problems facing the United States after the American Revolution* was providing some direction to the westward movement and a logical method of disposing of public domain land. On May 20, 1785, Congress passed the Land Ordinance of 1785. The law provided for federal surveys of public domain land and the division of that land into rectangular segments six miles square. Those segments would be called townships. Each township would then be divided into thirty-six segments of 640 acres each, with each segment being called a “lot.” One of the thirty-six lots would be set aside for a public school. Congress debated setting aside another lot in each township to help support the church attended by the majority of the adult men in the community, but the proposal failed. Finally, the law called for selling a lot at $1 an acre, or $640. Reference Walter Havighurst, Wilderness for Sale: The Story of the First Western Land Rush, 1956.

LANDRUM–GRIFFIN ACT OF 1959 The Landrum–Griffin Act, also known as the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, became law on September 14, 1959. Throughout the 1950s, there had been steadily accumulating evidence of labor union corruption, and the

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Dwight D. Eisenhower administration was eager to eliminate such practices. Democrats, too, were interested in eliminating the worst abuses of the unions. Senator John F. Kennedy* of Massachusetts chaired a special Senate committee that had long been investigating labor racketeering, especially the activities of Jimmy Hoffa* and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters*. The committee drafted the necessary legislation. The Landrum–Griffin Act was designed to eliminate abuses, and it encountered stiff opposition from labor unions anxious to keep their prerogatives unrestrained. The law provided for the reporting and disclosure of labor union financial transactions and administrative procedures. It outlawed blackmail picketing and required employers to report any payments to union officers. Former and current members of the Communist Party were banned from union leadership positions, fair election procedures in union elections were guaranteed, the Taft–Hartley Act’s* restrictions on secondary boycotts were expanded, and the civil rights of labor union members were protected against abuse by union leaders. Reference Charles C. Alexander, Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952–1961, 1975.

LANE, DENNIS Dennis Lane was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1881. He had to leave school when he was 10 years old and go to work in the Chicago stockyards. Soon after, he joined the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America. Because of his active support of union organization, Lane was blacklisted by the major meatpacking companies and spent several years as a door-to-door salesman. In 1913, Lane was elected to the executive board of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters, and in 1917 he became head of the union. He dominated the union for the next quarter of a century. Lane watched organizing drives in the meatcutting industry succeed during World War I but then languish during the depression of 1920–1921*. Unwisely, Lane called a butchers’ strike in 1921, which management easily crushed. After that, Lane simply worked to consolidate the union and campaigned on behalf of industrial unionism. During the 1930s, he refused to bolt the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) for the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO), and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters remained firmly in the AFL. Lane died on August 10, 1942. Reference David Brody, The Butcher Workman: A Study of Unionization, 1964.

L AT H R O P, J U L I A Social worker and reformer Julia Clifford Lathrop was born in Rockford, Illinois, on June 29, 1858. After graduation from Vassar College, she worked as a secretary, read law, and made some profitable investments in two manufacturing concerns. Like her father, she was concerned with issues of civil service reform, woman suffrage, and humane treatment of the insane. The Haymarket* riot seems to have

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radicalized her politics. Soon after the riot, she joined Jane Addams in working at Hull House, where she remained for the next twenty years. She first became involved in public welfare in the depression of 1893*, when she volunteered as a county agent to investigate relief applicants. That same year, Governor John Peter Altgeld appointed her to the Illinois Board of Charities. After her investigations, she pressed for many reforms, including separate facilities for delinquent children, which eventually led to the juvenile court movement and the system of probation. Her growing involvement in child welfare issues brought her to the attention of President William Howard Taft*, who in 1912 appointed her to be the first head of the federal Children’s Bureau, which had been established by Congress within the Department of Commerce*. Reappointed to the bureau by President Woodrow Wilson*, she studied maternal and infant mortality, juvenile delinquency, and laws on child labor* and mothers’ pensions. The Children’s Bureau had responsibility for enforcing the Keating–Owen Act, the first federal child labor law (1916), which was ruled unconstitutional in Hammer v. Dagenhart* (1918). In 1921, she won a true victory when Congress passed the Sheppard–Towner Act*, which provided federal aid to the states for the protection of mothers and infants. She resigned from the Children’s Bureau the same year for health reasons but remained active for the rest of her life, investigating conditions at the immigration* center on Ellis Island and repatriating displaced children after World War I. She died in Rockford on April 15, 1932. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Louise C. Wade, “Julia Clifford Lathrop,” in Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, eds., Notable American Women, 1971.

LAUSANNE CONFERENCE OF 1932 The Lausanne Conference of 1932, which convened simultaneously with the World Disarmament Conference, brought the United States, Great Britain, and France together to deal with the continuing problem of German reparations*, issues that had presumably already been addressed by the Dawes Plan* and the Young Plan*. The global depression had all but eliminated Germany’s ability to meet its reparations payments, and the allied nations were falling behind in their own debt payments to the United States. The conference agreed to cut German reparations by more than 90 percent, down to $715 million, contingent upon the allied nations’ not having to repay their own debts to the United States. The Lausanne Agreement was never ratified, because the United States was unwilling to yield on the debt question. Because of the depression, the World War I* debts had become uncollectible. Allied war debts* were an issue in the election of 1932*, but politicians stayed away from the controversy, because most Americans viewed the debts as sacrosanct. In 1932 and 1933, all the allied nations

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except Finland defaulted on their debts, and Germany did not make its required reparations payments to Great Britain and France. References Robert Ferrell, American Diplomacy in the Great Depression, 1957. Joan Hoff Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920–1933, 1971.

LEGAL TENDER ACT OF 1862 To finance the Civil War* without huge tax increases, Congress passed the Legal Tender Act of 1862, and then an amendment to it in 1863. The legislation authorized the federal government to issue up to $450 million in paper currency that would have the status of legal tender. Although poor farmers welcomed the expansion of the currency that the law provided, businessmen did not value the currency and sometimes refused to accept it. In any case, the production of the “greenback dollars” helped inflate the economy. The Supreme Court, in the 1870 case of Hepburn v. Griswold, initially held the laws unconstitutional, but in the Know v. Lee, Parker, and Davis case of 1871, the Court reversed itself and upheld the laws as acceptable exercises of the government’s emergency powers. The two court cases were known as the Legal Tender Cases. The paper money and the inflation it stimulated subsequently provided the ideological rationale for the Greenback* and Populist parties in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Reference Margaret Myers, Financial History of the United States, 1970.

LEGGE, ALEXANDER Alexander Legge was born on July 13, 1866, in Dane County, Wisconsin. His family moved to a ranch in Nebraska in 1876, and in 1883, Legge quit school and found a job as a cowboy in Wyoming. In 1891, Legge took a job as a bill collector for the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, and he proved to be very successful at it. By 1898, he was branch manager of the McCormick office in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He went to the corporate headquarters in 1899, and in 1902, when International Harvester purchased the company, Legge became sales manager for the new company. He then rose through the corporate hierarchy of International Harvester, becoming its senior vice president in 1918. During World War I*, Legge was an assistant to Bernard Baruch* on the War Industries Board*, and in 1918 and 1919, he helped draft the economic sections of the Treaty of Versailles for Woodrow Wilson*. Legge returned to International Harvester in 1919 and was named president of the company in 1922. Under Legge’s direction, International Harvester survived the farm depression of the 1920s and staved off a major government antitrust suit. President Herbert Hoover* chose Legge to serve as chairman of the Federal Farm Board* in 1929. Created by the Agricultural Marketing Act* of 1929, the Federal Farm Board was designed to encourage the formation of marketing cooperatives, establish commodity stabilization corporations to deal

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with farm surpluses, and make loans to farmers to assist them in marketing their crops. Legge died on December 3, 1933. References Robert D. Cuff, The War Industries Board, 1973. New York Times, December 4, 1933.

LEND–LEASE Lend–Lease was a huge U.S. military assistance program during World War II. Despite intense isolationist pressures at home, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* was convinced that Great Britain needed help in its fight against Nazi Germany in 1939 and 1940. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.* developed the program, which Congress passed in March 1941. Lend–Lease supplied war matériel to the allied nations, but they were supposed to return the weapons after the war. Few people ever expected the goods to be returned, but the promise satisfied some isolationists who were trying to keep the United States out of the war. Between March 1941 and June 1945, Lend–Lease supplied $29.6 billion in goods to the Allies. Great Britain and the Soviet Union received the most. Lend–Lease provided a tremendous boost to the American economy. References Warren F. Kimball, A Most Unsordid Act: Lend–Lease, 1939–1941, 1969. Edward R. Stettinius Jr., Lend–Lease: Weapon for Victory, 1944.

LEVER FOOD AND FUEL CONTROL ACT OF 1917 When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the need to guarantee food production and fuel supplies assumed a high priority in the Woodrow Wilson* administration. On August 10, 1917, Wilson signed into law the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act, which gave the president the authority to take whatever steps were necessary to stimulate fuel and food production, promote fuel conservation, and provide for the efficient distribution of both. Under the authority of the legislation, Wilson created a Food Administration* under the direction of Herbert Hoover* and a Fuel Administration under Harry S. Garfield. The president set the guaranteed price of wheat at $2.20 a bushel and established a Grain Corporation to stimulate wheat production and the Sugar Equalization Board to control sugar prices. The legislation remained in effect for the duration of the war and was a major success in accomplishing its objectives. Reference Seward W. Livermore, Politics Is Adjourned: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1966.

L E W I S , J O H N L L E W E L LY N John L. Lewis was born in Lucas, Iowa, on February 12, 1880. His father was a coal miner, and in 1896, Lewis went into the mines himself, digging coal, lead,

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and silver in a variety of western mines. In 1909, he was elected president of the Panama, Illinois, local of the United Mine Workers* (UMW) union. From 1909 to 1920, Lewis held a number of important union positions, including chief statistician, business manager of the United Mine Workers Journal, and UMW vice president. In 1920, Lewis became international president of the UMW of America. The decade was a difficult time for the union. From 1920 to 1933, UMW membership dropped from more than 500,000 to less than 75,000, with overproduction in the industry responsible for falling prices, declining wages, and serious unemployment. Lewis was a ruthless leader, crushing all opposition and centralizing union control in the headquarters. During the 1930s, Lewis rallied labor support for the New Deal. He supported the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and saw to it that within a few months of its passage, more than 90 percent of American coal miners were in the UMW. In 1935, Lewis established the Committee for Industrial Organizations (CIO) within the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) to organize mass production industrial workers. In 1936, Lewis became the first president of the CIO. Although he was a Republican, Lewis endorsed the reelection of Franklin D. Roosevelt* in 1936 and saw to it that the CIO contributed $500,000 to the campaign. In the election of 1940, disillusioned with Roosevelt’s leadership, Lewis returned to the Republican fold and endorsed GOP candidate Wendell Willkie. Lewis remained at the helm of the UMW until his retirement in 1960. He died on June 11, 1969. References Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography, 1977. Charles K. McFarland, Roosevelt, Lewis, and the New Deal, 1970.

LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION After completing the Louisiana Purchase* in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson* wanted to know more about the territory the United States had just acquired. He asked Congress to appropriate the necessary funds for an exploring expedition and appointed two army officers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to lead it. On August 31, 1803, the expedition began moving down the Ohio River, and on May 14, 1804, they began moving up the Missouri River. By November 7, 1805, they had reached the Pacific Ocean after crossing the Rocky Mountains. They returned to St. Louis, Missouri, on September 23, 1806. The Lewis and Clark expedition secured the American claim to the western territories and proved that settlement of the region was possible. Reference Paul R. Cutright, Lewis and Clark: Pioneering Naturalists, 1969.

LIBERALISM, CLASSICAL Classical liberalism is the economic and political ideology that purports that the state should have little to no intervention in the economy. Originally developed is an economic philosophy in the early eighteenth century, then known as laissez-faire

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economics, the support of the private sector by the state is considered beneficial to the greater good of society. Although it has grown out of favor in the late twentieth century, it has remained an integral element in understanding the early development of global capitalism. Reference David Conway, Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal, 1995.

L I B E R TA R I A N I S M Libertarianism is a political philosophy that espouses individual liberty, political freedom, and a minimal role for government in the affairs of society. Typically associated with the belief that the government should allow private enterprise a free hand in the economy, contemporary libertarianism is also opposed to taxation. Although some libertarians view taxation as necessary, they generally support lower taxes. The Tea Party movement* in the United States, while espousing some of the core beliefs of libertarianism, such as lower taxes and a reduced role for the federal government, strays from these notions when it comes to conservative social legislation and an increased role for religion in civic society. Reference Jason Brennan, Libertarianism, 2012.

LIBERTY LOAN ACT OF 1917 To finance the costs of World War I*, the federal government decided to issue special bonds to investors, in addition to a number of other revenue-producing measures. Congress passed the Liberty Loan Act on April 24, 1917. During the next two years, under the authority of the legislation, the Department of the Treasury issued five bond series totaling $20.5 billion. The bulk of those bonds were redeemed in full during the 1920s. Reference Seward W. Livermore, Politics Is Adjourned: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1966.

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809. His family moved to southern Indiana in 1816, and he moved to New Salem, Illinois, in 1830. Lincoln commanded a group of militia troops in the Black Hawk War of 1832, worked as a storekeeper and surveyor, and studied law privately. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1836 and began a law practice in Springfield. Lincoln joined the Whig Party and served in the state legislature from 1834 to 1842. He was elected to Congress in 1846 but served only one term. Lincoln was a bitter opponent of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and joined the Republican Party in 1856. He opposed the expansion of slavery* into the territories, favored federally financed internal improvements, wanted to reestablish the national bank, and

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believed in high tariff policies. Lincoln lost a run for the U.S. Senate to Stephen Douglas in 1858 but defeated Douglas for the presidency in 1860. As president, he led the country through the Civil War* and saw to the passage of the Morrill Tariff, the National Banking Act*, the Homestead Act*, and the Emancipation Proclamation*. Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865. References Allan Nevins, The War for Union, 1960. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, 1954.

LITTON INDUSTRIES Until 1953, Litton Industries was a small company on the West Coast that specialized in the manufacture of microwave tubes. That year, Tex Thornton, head of operations of Hughes Aircraft, and Roy L. Ash, controller of Hughes Aircraft, left the company and, with financing from the Lehman Brothers in New York, purchased Litton Industries. With borrowed capital, they embarked on an unprecedented series of corporate acquisitions, purchasing twenty-five companies with nearly fifty plants around the world. Many of those companies were specialty concerns in the defense industry. By 1962, Litton sales exceeded $250 million annually. Five years later, its annual sales exceeded $1 billion, and the company was involved in the production of more than 5,000 separate products. Litton Industries was the first modern U.S. conglomerate* corporation. By the end of the 1980s, more than 110 separate companies operated under the Litton umbrella. Reference Milton Moscowitz, ed., Everybody’s Business, 1990.

LOBBYING Lobbying, known as the practice by professional lobbyists of influencing decisions by government officials, mostly lawmakers or regulatory agency officials, is done by individuals or organizations. Lobbyists represent interests in corporations, unions, advocacy groups, or other organizations with a stake in legislation. Large corporations typically have a lobbying group affiliated with their industry in Washington, D.C., or state capitals to ensure that their views are represented. Critics of lobbyists argue that their influence is often given greater weight than that of a lawmakers’ own constituents in policy decisions, considering the amount of money large corporations can spend on shaping government policy. Reference Robert G. Kaiser, So Much Damn Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, 2009.

LOCHNER v. NEW YORK (198 U.S. 45) The Lochner v. New York decision of the Supreme Court was a major blow to the Progressive movement* in the United States, particularly in its drive to have state

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and local governments enact social and labor protection legislation. The New York legislature had imposed a maximum workday for bakers in the state, but the bakery owners sued, on the grounds that such legislation violated the right of employers and employees freely to negotiate a contract between themselves. By a narrow vote, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds of its interference with contract rights. The logic of the Lochner v. New York decision would be superseded in 1908 with the Muller v. Oregon* decision, which upheld an Oregon law limiting the maximum hours for women workers. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred H. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

LOCKOUT A lockout is a work stoppage initiated by the management of a business during a labor dispute. In contrast to a strike, in which workers refuse to work, in a lockout, a company ceases production altogether so that workers cannot perform their jobs. During a lockout, a company typically refuses the entry of employees to the workplace. This practice has been used to force unions into negotiation during major labor disputes. Reference Leon Fink, Workers Across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History, 2011.

L O D G E C O R O L L A RY In 1911, news filtered out through the American press that a syndicate of American real estate and banking interests was preparing to sell a large tract of land at Magdalena Bay in Lower California, Mexico, to a group of Japanese investors. Because naval experts believed that the bay had strategic military value and could be used by the Japanese navy against the United States, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. of Massachusetts came out against the deal. Over the objection of President William Howard Taft*, Lodge had the Senate pass a resolution, 51–4, prohibiting the sale of Western Hemisphere private property to any foreign country that might make military use of it. The resolution became known as the Lodge Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine. Reference John Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 1953.

L O E W, M A R C U S Marcus Loew was born May 7, 1870, in New York City. Because of his poverty, he left school when he was 10 and went to work for a firm that colored maps. Loew tried his hand in the fur business and went bankrupt when he was a young man, but by 1900, he had achieved prosperity through timely investments in New York apartment houses. In 1903, he joined with Adolph Zukor and David Warfield in

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establishing the Automatic Vaudeville Company, which ran the penny arcades and nickelodeons so popular in New York. Nickelodeons were small theaters, usually converted stores or shops, in which films and vaudeville acts were presented. The primary clientele of the nickelodeons were poor immigrants in the major cities. In 1904, he formed Loew’s Enterprises to set up nickelodeons outside the city. He was joined in the enterprise by William Fox*. By 1915, Loew was trying to attract more well-to-do middle-class audiences, so he began purchasing much larger, more luxurious theaters and presenting handsomely produced films with elaborate plots. He was a success. By 1919, Loew owned more than 100 theaters. During the 1920s, the trend in the movie industry was for vertical integration*, and Loew realized that he would need movie production facilities if he were to guarantee a constant supply of new films for his theaters. So, in 1920, he purchased Metro Films, a bankrupt production company, and in 1924, he purchased independent film production companies from Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer*. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer immediately became a corporate giant in the film industry. Loew died on September 5, 1927. References New York Times, September 6, 1927. Leo C. Rosten, Hollywood, 1941. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America, 1975.

LONDON ECONOMIC CONFERENCE OF 1933 Because of economic troubles throughout the Western world in 1931 and 1932, political leaders in the United States and Europe decided to convene a world economic conference in London in the late spring of 1933. They hoped the United States, France, and England would be able to stabilize their currencies and relieve the pressure on the money markets. By March 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* had tentatively accepted the proposal put forward by his adviser James Warburg*: France would accept inflationary open market operations, England would stabilize the pound, and the United States would restore a full gold standard. These hopes were never realized, and the conference broke up in a storm of controversy. Late in March and early in April 1933, the inflationary bloc of western farming and mining interests in Congress began demanding inflation through the expansion of the currency. The Thomas amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act* on April 20 did just that by providing for the increased use of silver in the currency. To satisfy silver interests and to stop foreign attacks on the dollar, Roosevelt halted gold exports, which essentially amounted to an abandonment of the gold standard. When the world economic conference convened in London on June 12, 1933, a major battle erupted between the gold-bloc countries, headed by France, and those such as England and the United States, which had gone off the gold standard. As more and more world leaders talked of currency stabilization, Roosevelt began to fear that the agreement would only retard his efforts to raise commodity

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prices. When commodity and securities prices dropped in mid-June, his fears were confirmed, and he vetoed the stabilization idea. With the conference in trouble, Roosevelt sent his adviser, Raymond Moley, to London with a statement that the United States would do its best to cooperate with the other gold-bloc countries in working out a stabilization agreement. On July 3, however, after Moley released the statement, the president announced to the world that the United States would not cooperate in any “premature stabilization” agreements and accused the European nations of trying to hurt his attempts to raise prices in the United States. The president’s message was a bombshell and destroyed the conference, enraging European political leaders. Economic internationalism gave way to economic nationalism. Reference James R. Moore, “Sources of New Deal Economic Policy: The International Dimension,” Journal of American History 61 (1974): 728–744.

LONG, HUEY See SHARE OUR WEALTH MOVEMENT. LOUISIANA PURCHASE After the conclusion of the French and Indian War, the American colonists as well as the French were interested in the Trans-Mississippi West*. After Pinckney’s Treaty* in 1795 opened the port of New Orleans to American commerce down the Mississippi River, American interest increased. Hoping to use the region as a source of food and fiber for its Caribbean colonies, France acquired the region from Spain in the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800). A mass slave uprising in Haiti all but destroyed the French presence in the Caribbean, however, and the bitter wars with Great Britain drained Napoleon’s treasury. In 1803, Napoleon sold the entire region, which became known as the Louisiana Purchase, to the United States for $15 million. President Thomas Jefferson* presided over the purchase, which doubled the territorial size of the United States. Reference Richard W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire, 1960.

LOWELL, FRANCIS CABOT Francis Cabot Lowell was born on April 7, 1775, in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard in 1793 and joined his uncle’s export–import business. After a visit to England in 1810, during which he visited several new textile mills, Lowell decided to launch the textile industry in the United States. With a close associate, Patrick Jackson, Lowell put together a syndicate of Boston mercantile money and established the Boston Manufacturing Company. Together they built an integrated textile factory in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1813, and it was

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an immediate success. They built a second mill in 1815. This was the beginning of the factory system in the United States. When the War of 1812* ended, they were hurt by British competition, and they persuaded Congress to pass a high tariff on cotton goods in 1816. Lowell died on August 10, 1917. Reference Frank Greenslet, The Lowells and Their Seven Worlds, 1946.

M MACON’S BILLS Named after Senator Nathaniel Macon, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Macon’s Bill Number One was an attempt at economic coercion. During the Napoleonic Wars, both Great Britain and France were seizing American merchant vessels on the high seas, despite repeated American protests and punitive actions such as the Non-Importation Act* and the Embargo Act*, neither of which had solved the problem. Macon proposed closing American ports to British and French commerce until one or both of those countries changed their outrageous policies. The bill passed the House of Representatives and, in a different form, the Senate, but the conference committee could not work out a compromise, so the bill was not enacted. In its place, Congress passed a weaker version—Macon’s Bill Number Two, a feeble attempt at economic coercion that removed all economic sanctions against Great Britain and France but that offered to reimpose them on the enemy of the first country to stop seizing American ships. Macon’s Bill Number Two had no positive effect on British or French policy. Reference Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War, 1961.

M A C Y, R O W L A N D H . R. H. Macy was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1822. When he was 15, Macy went to sea as a whaler, and when he returned home in 1841, he went to work in a Boston dry goods store. Macy failed at a few small businesses of his own but then made $3,000 selling goods to gold miners in Sacramento, California. Macy had his ups and downs in Boston, and in 1857, he moved to New York City. He started an upscale dry goods store at Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. Macy spent more money on advertising than any of his rivals, and he put nearly all of his profits back into his business, adding new merchandise lines regularly. By 1870, he was operating one of the first real department stores in the United States. Macy died on March 29, 1877. Reference Ralph M. Hower, History of Macy’s of New York, 1943.

MADISON, JAMES James Madison was born in Port Conway, Virginia, on March 16, 175l. He graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1771 and served as the chairman of the

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committee for public safety in Orange County, Virginia, in 1775. Madison was an early advocate of separation from England. After serving as a member of the Council of State of Virginia from 1778 to 1779, Madison took a seat in Congress from 1780 to 1793. A gifted negotiator, Madison saw to it that Virginia ceded its western land claims so that the Articles of Confederation* government could get under way. After a few years, he realized that the Articles of Confederation were hopelessly weak and that constitutional revision was necessary if the new country was going to survive. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Madison was a leading advocate of a stronger central government so long as there were built-in safeguards to prevent the abuse of power. Madison served as the secretary to the convention, and during the ratification process, he penned twenty-nine of the Federalist Papers supporting the document. As a congressman from Virginia from 1789 to 1797, Madison helped draft the Bill of Rights and emerged as a leader of the fledgling Democratic-Republican Party. Eventually, he came to favor states’ rights, oppose the national bank, and work for lower tariff rates. Madison served as secretary of state during the Jefferson* administration and was elected president of the United States in 1808; he served from 1809 to 1817. Madison presided over the government during the War of 1812* and decided to recharter the national bank and raise tariff rates. Madison died on June 28, 1836. Reference Irving Brant, The Fourth President: A Life of James Madison, 1970.

M A H A N , A L F R E D T H AY E R Alfred Thayer Mahan, an officer in the U.S. Navy, was born September 27, 1840, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. His father was an influential professor there. Young Mahan entered the Naval Academy in 1856 and graduated second in his class in 1859. Although he went to sea several times, Mahan was a scholar who preferred academic life. The most important assignment of his career was his appointment to teach at the new Naval War College in Newport, R.I., from 1886 to 1893. There he published The Influence of Seapower upon History, 1660–1783 (1890) and its companion work, The Influence of Seapower upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (1892), earning him a reputation as the world’s foremost naval scholar. Mahan analyzed the reasons for the rise of the British Navy to its commanding position among the world’s navies. Mahan explained the intricate role of the merchant marine, trade, and colonies as sources of national power and the essential role that the navy played in all three. His ideas on seapower convinced German leaders of the importance of having a powerful navy. He also convinced Theodore Roosevelt* and Henry Cabot Lodge of the same thing. Mahan reluctantly went back to sea after 1892, serving as commanding officer of U.S.S. Chicago until 1895. He retired from the navy in 1896 and then filled several diplomatic posts. His last published historical work, The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence, was published in 1913. Mahan died on December 1, 1914.

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References William E. Livezey, Mahan on Sea Power, rev. ed., 1980. Robert Seager, Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Man and His Letters, 1977.

M A N H AT TA N P R O J E C T The Manhattan Project, or the Manhattan Engineer District, was the name for the crash program by which the federal government developed an atomic bomb during World War II. During the first eighteen months of the war, the project was part of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, but it was transferred to the U.S. Army on May 1, 1943. General Leslie R. Groves commanded the project. At a cost of more than $2 billion, Groves created the Manhattan Project. He established a 235U separation plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to develop a supply of radioactive material; he also constructed a bomb development program at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and established the Argonne Project at the University of Chicago to bring about a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The three projects all came together scientifically early in 1945, and the first atomic bomb was detonated at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Two other atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in August 1945 before the war ended. The Manhattan Project has since been viewed as one of the most successful research efforts in world history. Reference Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 1988.

MANIFEST DESTINY First coined in 1845 by John L. O’Sullivan, editor of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, the phrase “Manifest Destiny” became a diplomatic and popular catchword in the late 1840s and 1850s to justify U.S. expansion across the North American continent. It referred to an idea held by many Americans that God intended the United States to reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and that accordingly Great Britain and Mexico should surrender their territorial possessions in North America to fulfill that destiny. “Manifest Destiny” played an important role in providing political support for the annexation of Texas in 1845, the acquisition of the Oregon Territory in 1846, and the Mexican War (1846–1848), as a result of which the United States eventually acquired much of the American Southwest. Reference Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny, 1935.

MANN–ELKINS ACT OF 1910 Ever since the late nineteenth century, Populists*, Greenbackers*, and Progressives* had called for more federal regulation of railroads and public utilities. The Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC) begun in 1887 had been a start. Subsequent legislation in the Elkins Act* of 1903 and the Hepburn Act* of 1906

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increased ICC’s authority over the railroads. In 1910, Congressman James R. Mann of Illinois and Senator Stephen B. Elkins of West Virginia successfully sponsored federal legislation giving the ICC the authority to regulate the wireless, telephone, telegraph, and cable companies that did business across state lines. The law gave the ICC the power to suspend rate increases pending court review. The Mann– Elkins Act also strengthened the long-short-haul clause of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Although it allowed railroads to cooperate in setting rates, in fact almost legitimizing pooling* arrangements, the Mann–Elkins Act also allowed the ICC to suspend such rates until the railroads proved their reasonableness. Reference Ari Hoogenboom and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative, 1976.

M A R C Y – E L G I N T R E AT Y O F 1 8 5 4 In 1854, Secretary of State William Marcy and Governor-General Lord Elgin of Canada negotiated the Marcy–Elgin Reciprocity and Fisheries Treaty. In addition to giving the United States fishing rights off the Canadian coast and Canada fishing rights off the United States all the way south to Norfolk, Virginia, the treaty provided trade reciprocity on a number of manufactured goods and permitted free navigation on large contiguous bodies of water. When a group of Canadians invaded St. Alban’s, Vermont, and killed several Americans in 1864, the United States reacted angrily, terminating the treaty in 1866. Reference W. L. Morton, The Kingdom of Canada, 1969.

MARGIN BUYING The term “margin buying” refers to the practice of purchasing a share of stock with borrowed money and using the purchased share as collateral for the transaction. During the 1920s, the business of margin buying boomed, with some investors putting as little as 10 percent down on the purchase and borrowing 90 percent of the money they needed. Margin buying is an effective tool for making money in a rising stock market, but if stock prices begin to fall, investors must produce more cash (in what are called “margin calls”) to cover the difference between the amount they borrowed and the value of the stock. If stock prices fall rapidly, as they did in fall 1929, the margin calls themselves produce new sales of stocks, creating a vicious circle of declining values. In 1934, when Congress passed the Securities and Exchange Commission Act*, the practice of margin buying came under federal supervision, and minimum down payments went up from 10 percent to 50 percent of the price of the stock. Reference John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929, 1955.

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MARKET REVOLUTION The Market Revolution is a period of U.S. history, roughly from 1790 to the 1840s, associated with drastic economic changes solidified by the countries transportation and communication system and the Industrial Revolution. Increased industrialization and the proliferation of goods and services across the United States tied the national economy during this period, ending the isolation of various regions and establishing a solid national market for U.S. goods and services. Canals, roads, and other infrastructural improvements, many created by public and private concerns, allowed for the development of the Market Revolution. Industrial goods were created in the industrial base along the eastern seaboard using extracted recourses and agricultural products from the West and the South. The Market Revolution, while contributing to the growth of industry in the North, also contributed to the expansion of slavery in the South, particularly thanks to the reliance of the textile industry on Southern cotton. Reference Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846, 1991.

M A R R I O T T, J O H N W I L L A R D J. Willard Marriott was born in Ogden, Utah, on September 7, 1900, to a poor Mormon ranching family. Marriott served a three-year mission for the Mormon Church in New England when he was a young man. He returned to Utah and graduated from the University of Utah in 1926. Marriott taught school for a while and sold root beer from a stand. He purchased a Washington, D.C., franchise for the root beer and moved east in 1927. Early in 1928, Marriott added barbecue to his root beer sales and called his little stand the Hot Shoppe. Marriott expanded his operation into a fast-food restaurant, featuring good food at cheap prices and a “drive-through” window. By 1932, he had seven Hot Shoppes in the Washington, D.C., area, and in 1937, he added airline catering to his activities. The business continued to expand, and in 1957, Marriott opened his first hotel. By the time that Marriott handed the operation over to his son in 1964, the Marriott Corporation had 122 restaurants, hotels, cafeterias, and airline flight kitchens. Since then, the expansion has become global, with more than 1,500 such institutions. Reference “The CEO on the Move,” Business Week (October 21, 1988), 49–51.

MARSHALL, JOHN John Marshall was born on September 24, 1755, near Germantown, Virginia. Private tutors educated him, and after a tour in the Virginia militia during the American Revolution*, he read law privately and entered the bar in 1780. Marshall practiced law privately in Richmond, Virginia, and served in the state legislature from 1782 to 1784, then again in 1787. By the mid-1790s, Marshall was a leading

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figure in the Federalist Party in Virginia. He served in the House of Representatives from 1799 to 1800, when President John Adams named him secretary of state. In 1801, Adams appointed him chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Marshall remained chief justice for the next thirty-four years, and he wrote the majority opinion in some of the most important court decisions in American history, including Marbury v. Madison (1803), Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Dartmouth College v. Woodward* (1819), M’Culloch v. Maryland* (1819), and Gibbons v. Ogden* (1824). In all of those opinions, Marshall provided the foundation for vigorous economic growth by upholding the sanctity of contracts, broadly interpreting the commerce and implied powers clauses, guaranteeing the supremacy of the federal government over states’ rights, asserting the principle of judicial review, and eliminating state barriers to the flow of commerce. Marshall died on July 6, 1835. Reference Leonard Baker, John Marshall: A Life in Law, 1974.

MARSHALL PLAN The Marshall Plan was a post–World War II program financed by the United States to rebuild the shattered economies of Europe. In April 1947, at the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow, Secretary of State George Marshall expressed concern about Soviet expansionism in Europe, as well as about the vulnerability of Western European nations, whose economies were in ruins, to Communist political subversion. The United States was also concerned about the return of the Great Depression* after World War II and hoped that a revitalized European economy would result in large purchases of American goods. Marshall then asked George Kennan to draw up a plan for massive U.S. economic investment in Europe. Undersecretary of State Will Clayton* assisted Kennan. Originally, the United States was prepared to offer capital to Soviet bloc nations as well, but they eventually decided not to participate. In a speech at Harvard University in June 1947, Marshall outlined the plan, which promised up to $17 billion in four years to keep Communism out of political power in Europe and to rebuild the economies of Europe along capitalist lines. Congress appropriated more than $13 billion for the program, and sixteen countries participated. Over half of the money went to Great Britain, France, and West Germany. It was enormously successful. References John Gimbel, The Origin of the Marshall Plan, 1977. Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–1975, 1976.

M A R T I N , WA R R E N H O M E R Warren H. Martin was born in Marion, Illinois, on August 16, 1902. He graduated from a Baptist seminary and began his career as a minister in Leeds, Missouri; he lost that post because some members of the congregation found him too liberal politically. Martin went to work for General Motors in 1932, and he soon joined

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the United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of America* (UAW) union. General Motors fired him, and he became a full-time UAW organizer. He became president of the UAW in 1936 and led the union out of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) and into the new Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO). Martin led the UAW to its great successes in the late 1930s. His temperamental personality led to his ouster as UAW president in 1939. He tried to lead some UAW rebels back into the AFL, but the effort was stillborn. Martin later tried his hand at farming for a while before he died on January 22, 1968. Reference New York Times, April 23, 1968.

MASS PRODUCTION The term “mass production” refers to the process of manufacturing goods through assembly lines, made possible by specialization of labor and interchangeable parts. Some economic historians credit Eli Whitney* with first using interchangeable parts in his gun manufacturing system in the early 1800s. Until then, goods were produced by craftsmen and artisans who made each product completely from scratch. Several developments brought about the rise of mass production. The use of interchangeable parts provided greater precision and saved time in assembling final products. The factory system triumphed over the putting-out system* and brought all laborers under a single roof. Specialization of labor allowed workers to concentrate on one part of the production process, which greatly increased their speed. The scientific management ideas of people such as Frederick Taylor* minimized unnecessary movements and led to the assembly line, in which products were brought automatically to workers for assembly. Mass production had an enormous effect on the American economy and American society. Mass production dramatically reduced the unit cost of manufactured goods, making them far more affordable to large numbers of consumers. In doing so, mass production inevitably led to the creation of the consumer culture that has permeated modem American values. References Edwin Perkins, Men and Organization, 1977. Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and American Economic Growth, 1972.

M AY E R , L O U I S B U R T Louis B. Mayer was born on July 4, 1885, in Minsk, Russia, and immigrated to New Brunswick, Canada, in 1888. He left school in 1899 and worked for several years in his father’s ship salvage business. Young Mayer was fascinated by motion pictures, and in 1907, he moved to Haverhill, Massachusetts, and bought an old theater. He started buying up other theaters and established his own production company in 1914. In 1915, he established Metro Pictures to distribute films. In 1918, Mayer decided to devote his energies to producing films, so he moved to

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Los Angeles, California, where he established the Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation. In 1924, Marcus Loew* purchased Mayer’s companies and formed the MetroGoldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Corporation, which soon became a corporate giant in the film industry. Mayer was named vice president of the new company. Over the next twenty-five years, Mayer brought a galaxy of film stars to MGM and personally became known as the “czar of Hollywood” because of his power in the industry. When MGM’s business fortunes declined with the nationwide drop in movie attendance after World War II*, Mayer was moved out of his position with the company. One of the founders of the movie industry in the United States, Mayer died on October 29, 1957. References Bosley Crowther, The Lion’s Share, 1957. New York Times, October 30, 1957. Leo Rosten, Hollywood, 1945.

M AY S V I L L E R O A D During the 1820s, Senator Henry Clay* of Kentucky became a leading advocate of the “American System”*—a plan for the American economy involving cheap land sales, federally financed internal improvements, a national bank, and a high tariff to protect American industry. In 1830, Clay succeeded in getting a bill passed providing for federal financing of the Maysville Road to connect Maysville, Kentucky, with Louisville, Kentucky. President Andrew Jackson*, who generally opposed federal internal improvements, vetoed the bill on the grounds that the federal government should not engage in such projects, especially those falling within a single state. Clay claimed that the road was part of a larger interstate system that he had planned, but Jackson would not change his mind. References Marquis James, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 1937. Peter Temin, The Jacksonian Economy, 1969.

M AY TA G , F R E D E R I C K L E W I S Frederick L. Maytag was born July 14, 1857, in Elgin, Illinois, to German immigrant parents. He spent only a few months in school, working instead on the family farm. In 1880, Maytag became a salesman for a farm implements dealer in Newton, Iowa, and in 1890, he went into lumber retailing. Maytag invested money in a small farm implements company in 1893, then lost money on some railroad and automobile* investments. But in 1907, he started manufacturing washing machines, founding the Maytag Company in 1909. Because of the increasingly widespread use of electricity, the demand for electrical appliances was soaring, and Maytag’s new product was perfectly timed to exploit the new demand. In 1922, his company invented the “gyrafoam washer,” which cleaned clothes through rough water rather than by rubbing movements. The washing machine was an instant hit.

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Sales increased from $2 million in 1921 to $53 million in 1926. Maytag remained president of the company until 1921 and remained chairman of the board until 1937. During the 1920s, the term “Maytag” became synonymous with washing machines, and its models were some of the most recognizable consumer items in the country. Maytag died on March 26, 1937. References Charles Kelly Jr., The Sky’s the Limit, 1963. National Cyclopedia of American Biography 27 (1939): 361. New York Times, March 27, 1937.

MCCORMICK, CYRUS HALL Cyrus Hall McCormick was born in Krockbridge County, Virginia, on February 15, 1809. His father was an inventor, and in 1831, young McCormick succeeded where his father had failed—in building an efficient reaper. He patented the invention and built a factory in New York, but in 1847, he moved to Chicago to build another plant. The reaper revolutionized the harvesting of corn, and McCormick became a multimillionaire marketing the invention. Production exceeded 1,000 reapers a year in 1851, and the implements company that McCormick built played a great role in bringing about the transition from subsistence to commercial agriculture throughout the United States. McCormick died on May 13, 1884. Reference William T. Hutchinson, Cyrus Hall McCormick, 1935.

M C K I N L E Y, W I L L I A M William McKinley was born in Niles, Ohio, on January 29, 1843. He studied law at Allegheny College before joining the army during the Civil War*. After the war, McKinley studied more law and opened up a practice in Canton, Ohio. A devoted conservative Republican, he served as the district attorney for Stark County, and he was elected to Congress in 1876. McKinley served in Congress until 1890; there he was known for his support for high tariffs and sound money policies. His name was attached to the McKinley Tariff Act* of 1890. McKinley was elected governor of Ohio in 1891, reelected in 1893, and in 1896 he secured the Republican presidential nomination. McKinley handily defeated William Jennings Bryan* as well as the Democrats and Populists* who supported him. McKinley’s administration was characterized by the passage of the protectionist Dingley Tariff of 1897, the Gold Standard Act* of 1900, and the Spanish–American War, in which the United States acquired Hawaii*, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. McKinley was reelected in 1900, but he was assassinated by an anarchist on September 6, 1901. Reference H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America, 1963.

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M C K I N L E Y TA R I F F A C T O F 1 8 9 0 The McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 was the work of William McKinley*, a Republican congressman from Ohio. With the Republicans back in control of the White House after Benjamin Harrison’s defeat of President Grover Cleveland* in the election of 1888, the drive by American manufacturing concerns for tariff increases gained momentum. The McKinley Tariff imposed the highest tariffs thus far in American history. The major exception was raw sugar, from which the tariff was removed. The tariff also ended reciprocity with Hawaii*, an arrangement that had been worked out in the Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty* of 1875. The Hawaiian economy went into a tailspin. The McKinley Tariff led to new reciprocity agreements with several other countries, but all of these arrangements, as well as its own tariff schedules, were superseded by the Wilson–Gorman Tariff* Act of 1894. References Harold U. Faulkner, Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1959. F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 1931.

M C N A RY – H A U G E N P L A N After the end of World War I, the industrial sector of the American economy surged ahead, but agriculture went into a depression that did not really end until the outbreak of World War II. Huge surpluses were deflating commodity prices while farmers were stuck with large, fixed debt payments that they had incurred during the war. From 1920 to 1932, one farm in every four was sold to pay debts or taxes. Republicans and Democrats from farming states tried to organize in Congress, and they proposed a variety of schemes to relieve their constituents. The proposal that gained the most attention was the McNary–Haugen Bill, named after Senator Charles L. McNary of Oregon and Representative Gilbert N. Haugen of Iowa. The bill was actually the brainchild of George N. Peek*, head of the Moline Illinois Plow Company. Peek had served under Bernard Baruch* on the War Industries Board* and had faith that the federal government could do something to help farmers cope with the economic crisis. In its particulars, the McNary–Haugen Bill proposed creating a government Agricultural Credit Corporation to buy farm surpluses on the American market at a price computed in a ratio to commodity prices from 1905 to 1914. The Agricultural Credit Corporation would sell the surpluses on the world market at whatever price it could get and then charge an equalization tax to farmers for the crops that they themselves sold in the United States to make up the difference. McNary and Haugen submitted the bill to Congress in 1924, but it did not reach a vote until 1927. By that time, the bill had changed somewhat. It covered only five crops— cotton, wheat, corn, rice, and hogs—and provided a twelve-member Federal Farm Board* to administer the program. The equalization fee would be imposed not on producers, but rather upon processors, transporters, and retailers. After suffering defeats in both the House and the Senate, the McNary–Haugen Bill finally passed through Congress in February 1927, only to receive a stinging veto from

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President Calvin Coolidge on the grounds that the federal government had no business entering the agriculture markets and setting prices. In April 1928, the bill again passed the Senate 53–23, and it passed the House 204–121 in early May. Coolidge vetoed it again on the grounds that it approved price fixing, would only make surpluses worse, and was an unconstitutional use of the taxing power. The McNary–Haugen plan was dead. References Gilbert C. Fite, George N. Peek and the Fight for Farm Parity, 1954. Frederic L. Paxson, “The Agricultural Surplus: A Problem in History,” Agricultural History 6 (1932): 51–58.

M ’ C U L L O C H v . M A RY L A N D In the wake of the Panic of 1819*, resentment toward the Second Bank of the United States* increased dramatically, especially throughout the West and the South. The state of Maryland attempted to impose a $15,000 tax on its Baltimore branch office. When the bank refused to pay the tax, the state of Maryland sued its cashier, James W. M’Culloch. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 6, 1819, the Court, led by Chief Justice John Marshall*, concluded that the state tax was unconstitutional on the grounds that the federal government was sovereign and therefore immune to state taxation. The case constituted a judicial triumph for the nationalist ideology in early America. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

MEANS, GARDINER COIT Gardiner C. Means was born in Windham, Connecticut, on June 8, 1896. Means was passionately interested in economics, and he took all of his degrees at Harvard (bachelor’s 1918, masters 1927, Ph.D. 1933). He served in the infantry during 1917 and then as an army aviator in 1918 and 1919. During graduate school, Means focused his attention on the corporate economy and published The Holding Company. In 1932, with Adolph Berle*, he wrote The Modern Corporation and Private Property and argued that American economic life was controlled by about 2,000 people actively directing the largest 600 corporations. Rather than being an economic aberration, monopoly had become the rule, and the market system of classical economics no longer existed. Competition was gone, so prices did not have to respond to market conditions. Means and Berle, therefore, advocated increased cooperation between government and business, marked by federal spending to supplement consumer demand, regulation of the stock markets, centralization of the banking system, federal regulation of concentrated industries (not in any antitrust crusade but only to guarantee social and economic responsibility), and health, old-age, and unemployment insurance. The book was one of the most influential works of the 1930s. Because of his work at Columbia University in

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the 1920s, Means became an economic adviser to Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace* from 1933 to 1935, as well as a member of the Consumer’s Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration*. From 1935 to 1939, Means served as director of the Industrial Section of the National Resources Committee and from 1939 to 1940 as an economic adviser to the National Resources Planning Board*. Means also continued his prolific writing career, producing The Modern Economy in Action (1936), The Structure of the Modern Economy (1939), Jobs and Markets (1946), Pricing Power and the Public Interest (1962), and The Corporate Revolution in America (1962). Reference Who’s Who in America, 1976–1977, 2:2142.

M E A N Y, G E O R G E George Meany was born on August 16, 1894, in New York City. After graduating from high school, he became a plumber’s apprentice, and after advancing to journeyman plumber, he joined the United Association of Plumbers and Steam Fitters union (UA). Meany proved to be an able union politician, and in 1934, he was elected president of the New York State Federation of Labor. He campaigned actively for work relief from the state legislature. In 1939, Meany was elected secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL). He found William Green*, the president of the AFL, too conservative and cautious, and when Green died in 1952, Meany became the new president of the AFL. Meany played the key role in negotiating the merger between the AFL and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1955, and he was elected the first president of the new union. A committed anticommunist and a committed Democrat, Meany exercised great influence within the Democratic Party during the 1950s and 1960s. Frustrated with the direction that the party was taking, Meany refused to endorse George McGovern for president in 1972. Meany died on January 10, 1980. Reference Archie Robinson, George Meany and His Times: A Biography, 1981.

M E AT I N S P E C T I O N A C T O F 1 9 0 6 In 1890, Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act permitting the Department of Agriculture to inspect live animals and meats designed for export markets. When necessary, the department could quarantine certain animals. An amendment in 1891 authorized the department to do the same for meat prepared for domestic consumption. The progressive movement* was at the time demanding increased federal attention to consumer rights*, and in 1906, Upton Sinclair’s* novel The Jungle, a story of immigrant life in Chicago that tangentially described the conditions of the Chicago packinghouses, created a national scandal. President Theodore Roosevelt* advocated strengthening the Meat Inspection Act of 1890, and Congress did so with the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. The legislation authorized

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the Department of Agriculture to establish meat inspection stations throughout the country to grade beef quality and guarantee minimum processing standards. Reference Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, 1938.

MEDICARE In 1946 President Harry Truman* first called for a system of national health insurance, and in 1953 his Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation made a similar recommendation. By that time the nation was entering a more conservative period in terms of public policy, and the Eisenhower administration was not inclined to act on the recommendation. Twelve years later President Lyndon B. Johnson* picked up on the idea as part of his Great Society* program. On July 30, 1965, Congress amended the Social Security Act* by adding the Medical Care for the Aged Program. Medicare provided for a basic hospital insurance program for individuals over the age of 65 who were part of the Social Security system. It also provided for a supplementary, voluntary medical insurance program to cover physicians*, surgeons*, and home health care costs. Finally, it included the Medicaid program to provide basic medical services to the needy and disabled who were not part of Social Security. Medicaid was designed to be a state aid program, with the federal government providing half of the funds to cover costs. Reference Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 1984.

MELLON, ANDREW WILLIAM Andrew W. Mellon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on March 24, 1855. He attended Western University of Pennsylvania (University of Pittsburgh) and then went into the family lumber and banking business. When he took control of the businesses in 1886, the Mellon National Bank was one of the largest in the country. He then built what can only be considered a megafortune by founding the Aluminum Company of America, the Union Trust Company, and the Union Savings Bank. By 1920, Mellon was one of the richest men in the world. A dedicated conservative Republican, Mellon became secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of President Warren G. Harding in 1921, and he remained in that post under presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover*. There Mellon is best remembered for his commitment to reducing federal government spending, paying off the national debt*, and limiting the tax burden on the rich—who, Mellon believed, were more capable than the government of prudently investing their own money for the national good. In 1932, President Hoover appointed Mellon to be ambassador to Great Britain. Mellon returned to the United States in 1935 and died on August 26, 1937. References Burton Hersh, The Mellon Family, 1976. New York Times, August 27, 1937.

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MERCANTILISM Mercantilism was a theory of political economy that dominated European thinking from about 1500 to about 1800. In a mercantilist system, the state attempts to strengthen itself through the acquisition of bullion; the acquisition of bullion is best achieved by creating a surplus of exports over imports. In practice, this involved a unique partnership between capitalists and the state, for in a strong symbiotic relationship, both groups stood to prosper. Although the ingredients of mercantilism were different in each country, there were certain core policies and concepts that were generally found in all major European nations. A fundamental principle of mercantilism was bullionism, which called for the acquisition and retention of as much gold and silver as possible, that being the key to national wealth. Most of the other policies recommended by mercantilists were linked to bullionism. They called, for example, for the development of gold and silver mines domestically or in colonies. Laws were promulgated to prohibit or at least restrict the export of bullion, the strategy being to keep whatever gold and silver that flowed into a nation. Some countries, of course, had no gold or silver mines. Under these circumstances, mercantilists advocated increasing exports and decreasing imports so as to gain funds from international trade. To achieve a favorable balance of trade; mercantilists called for import and export duties; government promotion of industry, mining, and agriculture; the building of a large merchant marine; and colonial possessions. Colonies provided an additional market for the mother country’s manufactured goods and served as sources of supply for raw materials. Colonial trade would also provide income for the merchant marine, and colonies were sources of inexpensive labor. Reference Shepard B. Clough and Charles W. Cole, Economic History of Europe, 1952.

MERCHANT MARINE ACT OF 1920 Because of the activities of the U.S. Shipping Board during World War I*, the United States enjoyed one of the largest merchant fleets in the world during the 1920s. Second only to that of Great Britain, the U.S. merchant fleet was carrying more than half of all goods entering or leaving American ports by 1920. Most of the fleet, however, was government owned, and in the shift back to “normalcy*,” the transition back to private ownership had to occur. Therefore, on June 5, 1920, President Woodrow Wilson* signed the Merchant Marine Act into law. It repealed all emergency war legislation concerning shipping, extended the tenure of the U.S. Shipping Board, ordered the sale of government-owned ships to private companies, and provided a fund of $25 million from the sales to supply capital for private builders to construct new ships. The U.S. Shipping Board was given the authority to designate shipping routes and operate government ships until the shift to private control was completed. Reference John B. Hutchins, “The American Shipping Industry Since 1914,” Business History Review 28 (June 1954): 109–111.

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MERCHANT MARINE ACT OF 1936 Ever since the Civil War*, except for the World War I* years, the U.S. merchant marine had declined as trade fled to cheaper foreign vessels. The Great Depression* only accelerated the industry’s problems. To remedy the situation, Congress passed the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. It essentially subsidized the American merchant marine for shipbuilding costs with low-interest loans, authorized a training program for American seamen, encouraged American shippers to use domestically chartered vessels, and established the U.S. Maritime Commission as a quasi-judicial, independent regulatory agency. References Samuel A. Lawrence, United States Merchant Shipping Policies and Politics, 1966. Gerard 1. Mangione, Marine Policy for America, 1977.

MERIAM REPORT In 1926, at the request of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work asked the Institute for Government Research, later known as the Brookings Institution*, to conduct a study of Indian affairs. Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller* agreed to finance it. Dr. Lewis Meriam, a social scientist working for the institute, headed the study. After a seven-month field trip and nearly a year writing the report, the commission published The Problem of Indian Administration, commonly known as the Meriam Report, in 1928. The report charged that Indians suffered from poverty, poor health, poor educational levels, and widespread discrimination. The culprit, they charged, was the Dawes Severalty Act* of 1887, which had systematically reduced Indian landholdings and destroyed the governing structures of the reservations. The Meriam Report recommended that the practice of “allotting” Indian land by taking it from the tribe and giving it to individual Indians and whites be stopped, that appropriations for the Bureau of Indian Affairs be increased, and that the federal government end its attempts to wipe out tribal government and tribal cultures. The Meriam Report paved the way for the “Indian New Deal” of the 1930s. Reference James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, 1984.

MESABI RANGE The Mesabi Range is a huge iron ore deposit located in northern Minnesota. In the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842 between the United States and Canada, negotiators agreed to give to the United States the land south of a line running from Lake Superior to Lake of the Woods. That area included the Mesabi Range. The iron ore deposits were discovered in 1866 and played a key role in the Industrial Revolution. Iron ore was shipped in large barges through the Great Lakes to steel mills in the Midwest, making American steel the most competitive in the world. Reference Phil Strong, The Iron Mountain, 1942.

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M E TA L S R E S E R V E C O M PA N Y On June 28, 1942, Jesse Jones*, at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt*, established the Metals Reserve Company as a subsidiary of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). Its purpose was to acquire such strategic metals as aluminum, chrome, copper, manganese, tin, nickel, mica, tungsten, platinum, and quartz crystals. Charles Henderson, a director of the RFC, became president of the Metals Reserve Company. During the next four years, the Metals Reserve Company spent $2.75 billion acquiring fifty different minerals and metals, plus another $1 billion in subsidies to such companies as Phelps–Dodge and Anaconda Copper Company to finance the marginal production of those metals. Reference Jesse Jones, Fifty-Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945, 1951.

M E T R O - G O L D W Y N - M AY E R See MAYER, LOUIS BURT. MEXICAN CESSION The Treaty of Guadalupe–Hidalgo* ended the U.S.–Mexican War of 1846–1848. Nicholas P. Trist signed the treaty for the United States on February 2, 1848, with the government of Manuel de la Pena y Pena, a moderate who had replaced General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna as president of Mexico after the fall of Mexico City. In the treaty, Trist achieved for the United States the basic objectives set forth in his original instructions from Secretary of State James Buchanan. The critical Article V of the treaty set forth the new boundaries between the United States and Mexico: the Rio Grande boundary for Texas from the Gulf of Mexico to El Paso, then westward to the Pacific giving the United States possession of New Mexico and Upper California. The treaty recognized the right of Mexican residents in the acquired territories either to remain or to remove themselves to Mexico without loss of their property or assets; it guaranteed civil rights to Mexican residents in the acquired territories and their right to citizenship in due course. The United States agreed to pay $15 million for the territories. Other articles of the treaty dealt with the return of prisoners of war, navigation rights on the Gila and Colorado rivers, and resolution of debt claims against both countries. After intense debate and more than a little concern from northerners about the question of slavery* in the newly acquired territories, the Senate approved the treaty on May 30, 1848. It has become known in U.S. history as the Mexican Cession. Reference Otis Singletary, The Mexican War, 1960.

MEXICAN LAND ACT OF 1951 See BRACEROS.

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M E X I C A N WA R During the 1840s, the spirit of Manifest Destiny* became stronger and stronger in the United States, and it found political expression in the presidential candidacy of Democrat James K. Polk*, who openly called for American expansion from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When Congress annexed Texas early in 1845, Mexico severed diplomatic relations with the United States and claimed the Nueces River as the boundary between Texas and Mexico. The United States claimed the Rio Grande River, which was much farther south. War between the United States and Mexico broke out in 1846 when United States troops penetrated the disputed area between the Nueces and Rio Grande rivers and were fired upon by Mexican troops. The Mexican War proved to be a controversial one in the United States, primarily because so many northerners were suspicious that President Polk was using the conflict as a pretext for seizing huge amounts of territory from Mexico, territory which could be put into cotton cultivation using slave labor. At the time, the question of whether slavery* should be allowed to expand out of the South was becoming increasingly controversial. An intense debate raged in Congress and throughout the United States during the war over the question of whether territory acquired from Mexico in the war would be slave territory or free territory. The United States did acquire nearly one-third of Mexico as a result of the Treaty of Guadalupe–Hidalgo*, and the ensuing debate over the slave status of the region was not settled until the Compromise of 1850*. Reference K. J. Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848, 1974.

MEYER, EUGENE, JR. Eugene Meyer Jr. was born on October 31, 1875, in Los Angeles, California. Meyer graduated from Yale in 1895 and then spent several years working in international banking houses in Paris, London, and Berlin with friends of his father. On a whim, he left the family banking firm in 1901, established Eugene Meyer Jr. and Company, and spent every penny he had purchasing a seat on the New York Stock Exchange*. It was a fortunate decision: There he met, and formed a friendship with, Bernard Baruch*. Through judicious investments, Meyer became a real power in the American copper industry by the time of World War I*, as well as a major stockholder in Allied Chemical. In 1917, Baruch brought Meyer to Washington as a division head in the War Industries Board*, and in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson* named him managing director of the War Finance Corporation* (WFC). Meyer remained with the WFC until it was dissolved late in 1925. Meyer helped reorganize the Federal Farm Loan Board in 1927. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover* appointed him Governor of the Federal Reserve* Board, a move that progressive Republicans bitterly resented because of Meyer’s strong Wall Street* connections. In 1932, Hoover made him chairman of the new Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). Meyer resigned from the RFC after the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt*, and in 1933, he purchased the Washington Post. Meyer

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used the Post as a vehicle to criticize the New Deal* and to urge an internationalist foreign policy on Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1941, the president named Meyer to the National Defense Mediation Board. Five years later, Meyer was appointed president of the World Bank. He died on July 17, 1959. References New York Times, July 18, 1959. James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977. Merlo Pusey, Eugene Meyer, 1974. Chalmers Roberts, The Washington Post: The First 100 Years, 1977.

MICROSOFT Microsoft Corporation is a U.S.-based multinational corporation* headquartered in Redmond, Washington, known for its development of software, electronics, and computer services. Its best-known products include the Microsoft Windows operating system, the Microsoft Office software suite, the Internet Explorer hypertext browser, and the Xbox video game console. Its 2013 acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone business was indicative of Microsoft’s search to enter the smartphone* market. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates* as a company focusing on operating systems, it has expanded into other products and services that have made it a leader and an innovator in computer and Internet* technologies. References Michael Becraft, Bill Gates: A Biography, 2014. James Wallace, Jim Erickson, Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, 1992.

M I L I TA R Y – I N D U S T R I A L C O M P L E X In an important speech delivered in 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the United States about the existence of a “military–industrial complex” that was growing in power and that had the potential of affecting American foreign policy. The idea that there was an important relationship between the military and private industry was not new. During the 1930s, Senator Gerald P. Nye* of North Dakota had charged that munitions manufacturers were responsible for getting the United States involved in World War I*. Eisenhower argued, however, that the Cold War with the Soviet Union had created huge and permanent defense expenditures and that the military and the industries producing the weapons had a vested interest in the continuation of international tensions. Since Eisenhower’s speech, the term “military–industrial complex” has continued to be used by those who oppose massive defense spending. Reference Paul A. C. Koistinen, The Military–Industrial Complex: A Historical Perspective, 1980.

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MILLER–TYDINGS ACT OF 1937 When the Supreme Court declared the National Industrial Recovery Act* unconstitutional in 1935, the New Deal’s* efforts at rational planning seemed shattered. Congress tried to resurrect some of the elements of planning in a variety of legislation in 1937. The Miller–Tydings Act was one of those efforts. The law stated that manufacturers and producers could establish a minimum resale price for their goods and that such clauses did not constitute a restraint of trade as long as rival manufacturers were free to offer those goods at lower prices. Trade associations especially supported the legislation as a means of ending destructive competition. The contracts for price maintenance, however, covered only branded products that were nationally advertised and destined for interstate markets; any collusion between competing manufacturers to fix prices was illegal. Reference Dictionary of American History, 1976, 2:482–484.

MILLS, OGDEN LIVINGSTON Ogden Mills was born in Newport, Rhode Island, on August 23, 1884. He graduated from Harvard in 1904 and received a law degree there in 1907. Mills practiced law in New York City, served in the state legislature as a Republican from 1914 to 1917, and after a stint in the army during World War I*, he returned home to win a congressional seat in 1920. He was a member of Congress from 1921 to 1927. Mills failed in his bid for the governorship of New York in 1926, losing to Alfred E. Smith*, but in 1927, he was appointed undersecretary of the treasury by President Calvin Coolidge. In 1932, Herbert Hoover* appointed Mills secretary of the treasury, a post that he held until the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt* in March 1933. Mills then returned to his law practice, wrote several books, including What of Tomorrow (1935) and Liberalism Fights On (1936), also speaking widely on the lecture circuit. Mills died on October 11, 1937. References David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 1979. New York Times, October 12, 1937. James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977.

MINES, BUREAU OF In December 1907, a series of explosions killed nearly 1,000 miners in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and Alabama. From 1890 to 1906, nearly 23,000 coal miners had been killed on the job, largely because of unsafe working conditions. Congress began investigating the situation, spurred on by muckrakers* who were exposing a variety of problems in the American economy. In 1910, Congress established the Bureau of Mines within the Department of the Interior to monitor mine

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safety, prevent accidents, and explain the proper use of explosives and electricity. In 1913, Congress broadened the bureau’s authority to the general areas of mining, metallurgy, and mineral technology. Beginning in 1941, the Bureau of Mines began periodic mine safety inspections. Its responsibilities were strengthened again by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, which increased the bureau’s authority to enforce stricter safety codes. The authority was strengthened again with passage of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. However, in 1995, Congress voted to end the Bureau of Mines and transfer its responsibilities to other federal agencies. References Fred W. Powell, The Bureau of Mines, 1922. Richard H. K. Vietor, “The Synthetic Liquid Fuels Program: Energy Politics in the Truman Era,” Business History Review 54 (spring 1980), 1–34.

M I N I M U M WA G E The idea of a “minimum wage” for workers has long been a demand of labor unions and social welfare advocates as a way of dealing with industrial, urban poverty. Massachusetts passed the first minimum wage law in 1912, but the Supreme Court overturned the legislation in the Adkins v. Children’s Hospital case in 1923. The first major federal minimum wage legislation came in 1933 with the National Industrial Recovery Act*, which established basic labor standards and a minimum wage in NRA-approved industries. The Walsh–Healey Public Contracts Act* of 1936 required all employers with government contracts to pay a minimum wage as determined by the Department of Labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act* of 1938 set that minimum wage at 40 cents an hour. Congress raised that to 75 cents an hour in 1949, to $1.00 an hour in 1956, and to $1.25 an hour in 1961. It went to $1.40 in 1966 and $1.60 in 1968. The minimum wage rose to $2.25 an hour in 1974 and then rose steadily, up to $4.25 in 1991. By 2009, the federal minimum wage was $7.25 an hour. Although labor unions supported the legislation, conservative economists argue that minimum wage legislation actually eliminates jobs at those socioeconomic levels, particularly for unskilled workers, students, and part-time workers. Reference James S. Olson, Historical Dictionary of the New Deal, 1985.

MISSOURI COMPROMISE The Missouri Compromise of 1820 reflects the bitter debate over nationalism and sectionalism that dominated U.S. politics from the Constitutional Convention up through the Civil War*. The issue came to a head when the territory of Missouri applied to Congress to enter the Union as a slave state. The question then arose whether Congress could insist on preconditions for admission to the Union—in this case, forbidding slavery in Missouri. The economic implications were clear:

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If Congress could determine whether prospective states would be slave or free, it would simultaneously determine those states’ labor systems and settlement patterns, their future representation in Congress, and the economic policies for the whole nation (on banking, land grants, internal improvements*, tariffs, and, of course, slavery* itself) that the already sectionally divided Congress would make in years to come. For all sections of the country, the stakes were high. Up until Missouri’s request, new states had entered the Union in pairs—one slave and one free, thus maintaining an even balance in Congress. Were Missouri to join as a slave state, that balance would tilt toward the South, opening the door for slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase* area. Congress was deadlocked over the issue through 1819, until Maine, then a part of Massachusetts, applied for admission as a free state. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state while stipulating that slavery henceforth be banned from any portion of the Louisiana Purchase above the parallel of 36 degrees 30 minutes north latitude (Missouri’s southern border). A second compromise became necessary the following year, when Missouri submitted a constitution banning free blacks from entering the state, which would effectively diminish the rights of the black citizens of other states. After much wrangling, Henry Clay* achieved an agreement to the effect that the new Missouri constitution be accepted if it were never construed as preventing citizens of any state from enjoying their constitutional privileges and immunities; in other words, that it never be construed to mean what it said. The Missouri Compromise clearly did not resolve the complex issues of slavery, race, and sectionalism, but it postponed the breakdown of the Union for another forty years. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, 1970.

M I S S O U R I PA C I F I C R A I L R O A D Organized out of St. Louis before the Civil War*, the Missouri Pacific Railroad (MP) at first had ambitions of building all the way to the Pacific Ocean, but those plans never materialized. Under Jay Gould’s* direction from 1879 to 1892, the MP completed its connection between St. Louis and the Gulf of Mexico, and in 1917, it merged with the St. Louis & Iron Mountain Railroad to become the Missouri Pacific Railroad. Oris and Mantis Van Swearingen* got control of the MP in the 1920s, but the railroad went bankrupt in 1933 and was not effectively reorganized until 1956. After that, the MP began another period of expansion by taking over the Texas & Pacific Railroad and the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad, increasing its mileage from 10,000 to 12,000. The MP came to an end as an independent railroad in 1980 when it merged with the Union Pacific* and the Western Pacific railroads.

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References Joe G. Collias, Mopac Power, 1980. Craig Miner, The Rebirth of the Missouri-Pacific, 1956–1983, 1983.

MITCHELL, CHARLES EDWIN Charles E. Mitchell was born on October 6, 1877, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and educated at Amherst, where he graduated in 1899. Mitchell began work with the Western Electric Company in 1899, became assistant manager in 1904, and went into banking as president of the Trust Company of America in New York in 1907. In 1911, he founded Charles E. Mitchell & Company Investments and became president of National City Bank in 1921. During the 1920s, Mitchell transformed National City into a truly international bank, as well as a modem, full-service retail bank that included checking accounts, savings accounts, and personal loans. From 1929 to 1933, Mitchell was chairman of the board of the National City Bank. In 1932 and 1933, the investigations of the Pecora* Committee put Mitchell in the national spotlight as a series of bank frauds and shady loan deals to bank officers were exposed at National City Bank. A conservative Republican, Mitchell tried to defend the bank’s practices and laissez-faire* values by praising private property and individual liberty. Pecora was relentless in his questioning, however, and Mitchell’s reputation was seriously tarnished, especially after it was learned that he had been speculating in National City Bank stock. He resigned from National City in 1933 and joined the firm of Blyth & Company, an investment banking concern, in 1935. Mitchell died on December 14, 1955. References New York Times, December 15, 1955. Ferdinand Pecora, Wall Street under Oath, 1939. Giulio Pontecorvo, “Investment Banking and Security Regulation in the late 1920s,” Business History Review 32 (1958), 57–74. Earl Sparling, Mystery Men of Wall Street, 1930.

MITCHELL, JOHN John Mitchell was born in Braidwood, Illinois, on February 4, 1870. He began to work in the coal mines when he was only 12, but he also attended night school, including a year of law school. Mitchell joined the Knights of Labor* in 1885, and he was a charter member of the new United Mine Workers* (UMW) in 1890. Within a few years, he was working full-time for the UMW as an organizer, and he rose quickly through the union’s ranks. Mitchell was elected international vice president of the UMW in 1897 and president in 1899. Mitchell increased UMW membership from about 30,000 to more than 300,000 members in the ten years he served as president, and he presided over the successful anthracite coal strike of 1902. Mitchell also served as a vice president of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) from 1900 to 1914 and was a close associate of Samuel Gompers*. Mitchell was active in a variety of other civic groups as well. He died on September 9, 1919.

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References Elsie Gluck, John Mitchell: Miner, 1929. James O. Morris, “The Acquisitive Spirit of John Mitchell, UMWA President,” Labor History 20 (winter 1979): 5–43.

MODEL T See FORD, HENRY. M O L LY M A G U I R E S During the Depression of 1873–1878, labor unions in general in the United States went into a period of serious decline. Men and women in desperate need of jobs are usually not willing to risk union membership when the management atmosphere is intensely anti-union. But there were militant labor advocates, and none were more militant than the Molly Maguires. The Molly Maguires were a secret group of radicalized Irish mineworkers who had once been members of an Irish group known as the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The Molly Maguires were first organized in 1862 to protest poor treatment at the hands of mine operators, but during the depression of 1873, they resorted to violence to promote the labor cause. Operators hired Pinkerton detectives to investigate and expose the Molly Maguires, and late in 1875, twenty-four of the labor advocates were convicted of murder. Ten were executed for the crime while the others were sentenced to varying jail terms. The sentences were carried out beginning in 1876, and the Molly Maguire organization never recovered. Reference Harold W. Aurand, From the Molly Maguires to the United Mine Workers, 1971.

M O N E TA R Y A C T O F 1 9 3 9 With the Thomas amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933, the president acquired the authority to devalue the dollar, and early in 1934, he set the value of the dollar at 59 cents. Because Congress renewed that power over the years, Franklin D. Roosevelt* still had the right to devalue the dollar by 9 cents in 1939. Previously, Congress had willingly renewed the president’s authority, but in 1939, Republicans in the House almost unanimously opposed the move. By April, the bill authorizing devaluation had been approved 225–158 in the House, and in mid-June, the Senate Banking and Currency Committee reported it out favorably. The Senate silver bloc then came out against the measure unless Roosevelt would raise the price that the government paid for silver, end purchases of foreign silver, and issue another $2 billion in new currency. Because the government was already paying nearly 65 cents an ounce for silver (about 21 cents above the world price), Roosevelt refused to agree: The proposal would only mean a windfall to silver producers. Silverites joined with southern Democrats and conservative Republicans and defeated the devaluation bill 47–31. Conservatives then voted with the

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silverites and raised the government price for silver to more than 77 cents an ounce and prohibited foreign silver buying. In a compromise that Roosevelt engineered, the Senate restored his devaluation power, eliminated the prohibition on foreign buying, and set the domestic silver price at 71 cents. After the silverites agreed to the measure in the conference committee hearings, the bill passed early in July 1939. Reference James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal, 1967.

MONROE DOCTRINE The Monroe Doctrine was a policy statement drafted by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and pronounced by President James Monroe in his 1823 message to Congress. In effect, Monroe stated that European nations should no longer establish new colonies in the Western Hemisphere, that European nations should no longer interfere in the internal political affairs or international disputes of nations in the Western Hemisphere, and that the United States would reciprocate by not intervening in the affairs of the European countries. Over the next century, the Monroe Doctrine evolved into a fundamental premise of American foreign policy. The warning to the European nations continued, but the reach of the Monroe Doctrine expanded. In the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary* to the Monroe Doctrine, President Theodore Roosevelt* announced that the United States could intervene in the internal affairs of any western hemispheric nation if its political or economic problems were likely to inspire European intervention. The Lodge Corollary* to the Monroe Doctrine in 1911 announced to foreign corporations that the United States would not tolerate the construction of any private economic facilities in the Western Hemisphere if those facilities had any military potential. References Ernest R. May, The Making of the Monroe Doctrine, 1975. Dexter Perkins, The Monroe Doctrine, 1823–1826, 1927.

MONSANTO The Monsanto Company is a U.S.-based multinational* chemical company, with headquarters in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto is a prominent producer of genetically engineered (GE) seed as well as herbicides. Founded in 1901, and involved in the production of controversial insecticide DDT and the manufacture of Agent Orange, it is perhaps most notorious for its genetic modification of a plant in 1983. Since then, Monsanto has created significant public debate by its development of genetically modified seeds and its relationship to the proliferation of genetically modified foods. It has also drawn vast criticism for its use and enforcement of biological patents, which worry many in the public over the ownership of produce and other agricultural products. Its ability to lobby government agencies and its significant political clout in the enacting of legislation have also drawn public concern.

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Reference Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World’s Food Supply, 2010.

M O N T G O M E R Y WA R D A N D C O M PA N Y See WARD, AARON MONTGOMERY. MORGAN, JOHN PIERPONT John Pierpont Morgan was born on April 17, 1837, in Hartford, Connecticut, to an important American banking family. Morgan attended a number of schools and traveled in Europe before joining his father’s firm—J. S. Morgan & Company—in 1856. Over the years, he learned the intricacies of international finance and the securities markets, and in 1893, he founded J. P. Morgan & Company. Morgan took an active interest in the railroad industry, usually in the reorganization of financially troubled lines, and made his company the leading investment banking firm in the world. Morgan came to national attention in 1895 when he put together a syndicate to lend the U.S. government $65 million to keep the country on the gold standard. Morgan and his associates earned a profit of $16 million on the transaction and the wrath of much of America. Morgan also became heavily involved in the electrical utility and steel industries, both of which required enormous amounts of capital. By the time of his death on March 13, 1913, J. P. Morgan had played an intimate and powerful role in developing the American railroad, public utility, steel, and investment banking industries. Reference Frederic Lewis Allen, The Great Pierpont Morgan, 1948.

M O R G A N , J O H N P I E R P O N T, J R . The third generation of America’s most prominent banking dynasty, John Pierpont Morgan Jr. was born on September 7, 1867, at Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. He attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, and graduated from Harvard in 1889. He immediately entered the banking business with Jacob C. Rogers and Company in Boston and in 1891 joined his father’s firm Drexel, Morgan & Company in New York. From 1898 to 1905, his banking apprenticeship continued in London as a partner in J. S. Morgan & Company. When his father died in 1913, Morgan became senior partner of J. P. Morgan & Company. For the next two decades, he was a leading figure in the international banking community. By the time of the New Deal*, Morgan was the leading symbol of private capitalism in the United States. He at first welcomed President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* activism and initiative, especially in closing down the banking system, but his enthusiasm was short-lived. The Pecora* investigations embarrassed and made a spectacle of Morgan, and he opposed the Banking Act* of 1933 because it forced

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him to separate his banking and securities-underwriting affiliates. J. P. Morgan & Company remained a bank, while a new company—Morgan, Stanley & Company took over the underwriting business. Morgan came to view the New Deal as hopelessly antibusiness and narrowminded, a tool of reform-minded lawyers and economists. In addition, the higher taxes and regulatory legislation cut into his personal income, a fact that did little to endear the New Deal to him. Morgan gradually withdrew from his business affairs in the 1930s, liquidating large volumes of assets, and died on March 13, 1943. Reference John D. Forbes, J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1867–1943, 1981.

M O R G E N T H A U , H E N R Y, J R . Henry Morgenthau Jr. was born on May 11, 1891, in New York City. His father was a lawyer and investor who made a fortune in real estate in Harlem and the Bronx. In 1909, the younger Morgenthau enrolled at Cornell University to study architecture, but having no real interest in the subject, he left after three semesters, apparently with no other plans for a career. On a visit to a Texas ranch while recuperating from an attack of typhoid fever in 1911, he became interested in farming and ranching and returned to New York determined to become a farmer. Morgenthau went back to Cornell to study agriculture but left in 1913 without a degree. With his father’s help, he purchased a farm in Dutchess County, New York. Soon after, he met Franklin D. Roosevelt*, and they formed a lifelong friendship. With the coming of the New Deal* in 1933, Morgenthau, who had hoped to become secretary of agriculture, was instead made chairman of the Federal Farm Board*; less than a year later, he became secretary of the treasury. Morgenthau remained in the post until the end of World War II. He offered the so-called Morgenthau Plan* for postwar Germany, which would have dismantled that nation’s industry and made it an agricultural state, but Roosevelt opposed the idea. After Roosevelt died in April 1945, Morgenthau, who did not get along with President Harry S. Truman*, resigned in July 1945. After his resignation, Morgenthau devoted much time to Jewish causes, serving as general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal from 1947 to 1955 and as chairman of the board of governors of the American Financial and Development Corporation for Israel from 1951 to 1954. Morgenthau died on February 6, 1967, aged 75. References John Morton Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries (3 vols.), 1959, 1965, 1967. New York Times, February 8, 1967.

MORGENTHAU PLAN In July 1944, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.* drew up what became known as the Morgenthau Plan for the deindustrialization of Germany. Morgenthau was convinced that although Germany was on the road to defeat in

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World War II, it would remain a threat to world peace as long as it maintained its industrial power. World Wars I and II were proof that the Germans could not be trusted. The plan therefore suggested dismantling Germany’s industrial facilities, shutting down its mines, and returning the country to an agricultural past. Never again would Germany pose a military threat to France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, or the United States. The plan also had the added advantage of providing a boon to postwar British manufacturers, who were anxious to take over German markets. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt* flirted with the idea for a few months, it was vigorously opposed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Secretary of State Cordell Hull*. After the war was over and Cold War fears about the Soviet Union heightened, the Morgenthau Plan was completely dead. A strong Germany had become a necessity in order to stop Soviet aggression in Europe. Reference Warren F. Kimball, Swords or Ploughshares? The Morgenthau Plan for Defeated Nazi Germany, 1943–1946, 1976.

MORRILL ACT OF 1862 Also known as the College Land Grant Act of 1862, the Morrill Act of 1862 was sponsored in Congress by Congressman Justin S. Morrill of Vermont. It was designed to make substantial improvements in higher education and agricultural research throughout the United States. The law assigned to each state approximately 30,000 acres of public land for each senator and representative the state had. The land would be set aside to build colleges dedicated to the “agriculture and mechanic arts.” In the South, a series of separate land grant colleges were built for blacks and whites. The law was amended in 1890 to provide an additional annual stipend of $25,000 from the federal government to each land grant college. Since then, the land grant colleges have become leading institutions in the world in higher education research. Reference William Belmont Parker, Life and Public Service of Justin Smith Morrill, 1924.

M O R R I L L TA R I F F A C T O F 1 8 6 1 Ever since the 1830s, the Whig Party and then the Republican Party had been campaigning for higher tariff rates to broaden the federal revenue base and to protect American industry from foreign competition. When Southerners began seceding from the Union at the end of 1860 and the beginning of 1861, the Democrats lost power in Congress, giving Republicans the power they needed to enact sharply higher tariffs. Congressman Justin S. Morrill of Vermont sponsored legislation that became the Morrill Tariff Act of 1861. The law imposed specific duties in place of ad valorem duties and generally raised rates by about 10 percent. The law was amended in 1862, 1863, and 1864; in each case, levels went higher.

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Reference William Belmont Parker, Life and Public Service of Justin Smith Morrill, 1924.

M O R R O W, D W I G H T W H I T N E Y Dwight Morrow was born in Huntington, West Virginia, on January 11, 1873. He received an undergraduate degree from Amherst College and a law degree from Columbia University. From 1899 to 1913, Morrow practiced corporate law in New Jersey, but in 1914, he joined the J. P. Morgan* & Company. Except for an army tour as an aide to General John J. Pershing during World War I, Morrow remained with Morgan banking interests until 1927, when President Calvin Coolidge appointed him ambassador to Mexico. He arrived in Mexico City in the middle of an extraordinary controversy. In 1925, Mexico had passed legislation providing for the retroactive confiscation of all American-owned oil rights in Mexico. Morrow’s diplomatic tour was a stunning success. He gave the Mexican government excellent advice on rearranging its internal finances, negotiated an end to the violence between the Mexican government and the Catholic Church, and brought about a repeal of the oil rights law that the United States was protesting. Morrow returned to the United States in 1930 and won a seat in the Senate as a Republican, but he died on October 5, 1931. Reference Harold Nicholson, Dwight Morrow, 1935.

MORSE, SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE Samuel F. B. Morse was born on April 27, 1791, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He graduated from Yale in 1810 and then lived in London for four years while studying painting at the Royal Academy. Morse returned to the United States in 1815 and tried to make a living as a portrait painter in Boston, New York, and Charleston, but he found it a difficult business to sustain. In 1826, Morse founded the National Academy of Design and in 1832 became a professor of art at the University of the City of New York. By the mid-1830s, Morse was ready for a career change, and he began experimenting with the electronic transfer of messages. He built an electromagnetic recording telegraph and devised a special dot-and-dash code. Morse’s invention of the telegraph was particularly successful because he was able, through electromagnetic renewers, to transmit messages over long distances. Intrigued by Morse’s invention, Congress constructed a special transmission line from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., and on May 24, 1844, Morse transmitted the first electronic message by wire. He then founded a company, which became known as Western Electric, to build transmission facilities. Morse died on April 2, 1872. References Oliver W. Larkin, Samuel F. B. Morse and American Democratic Art, 1954. Jean Latham, Samuel F. B. Morse, 1961.

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“ M O S T- FAV O R E D - N AT I O N ” The term “most-favored-nation” is used in bilateral tariff and trade agreements to state that a signatory to the agreement will have the same trading privileges given to any other trading partner. The effect of “most-favored-nation” clauses in trade agreements is to reduce tariff barriers, equalize competition, and increase international trade. Reference Elmer Plischke, Conduct of American Diplomacy, 1967.

MOTHERS’ PENSIONS See AID TO FAMILIES WITH DEPENDENT CHILDREN. MOTOR CARRIER ACT OF 1935 By 1935, a state of confusion and nearanarchy reigned in the trucking industry. The development and widespread use of the internal combustion engine had changed the social and economic landscape of America. Because of cutthroat competition and depression-level prices, trucking rates had fallen dangerously. Common carriers, contract carriers, and private operators had all undermined rates and brought tremendous competition to the railroads. Joseph Eastman* of the Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC) proposed to rationalize the trucking industry by the extensive regulation of common carriers, partial regulation of contract carriers, and no regulation of private carriers. Not only would such a program bring order and stability to the trucking industry, it would help the railroad industry by making it more competitive. Eastman’s proposal got support from railroads, motorized common carriers, big truckers, buses, and organized labor. Small truckers, truck manufacturers, farmers, and shippers opposed it, however, fearing it would raise freight rates. When Eastmen agreed to exemptions for the haulers of livestock, newspapers, and unprocessed farm products, he received support from the American National Livestock Association, the National Grange*, and the American Newspaper Publishers Association. The Eastman bill became the Motor Carrier Act on August 9, 1935. The Motor Carrier Act gave the ICC several powers: to prescribe employee qualifications, the maximum hours they could work, and motor carrier equipment standards; to issue certificates of public convenience and necessity; to issue certificates for common carriers in operation on June 1, 1935; to control maximum and minimum rates, service, accounting, finances, organization, and management of common carriers; and to issue permits to contract carriers. For contract carriers, the Motor Carrier Act regulated only minimum rates and accounting procedures. Except for hours and safety regulations, the act ignored private carriers. The Motor Carrier Act established a Bureau of Motor Carriers in the ICC to regulate the trucking industry. By the end of 1936, the bureau had received 85,836 certificate and permit applications, 52,979 tariff publications, 16,897 schedules, and 1,867 contracts.

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With only 110 employees, the bureau was understaffed and unable to enforce many of its regulations, especially because many truckers simply ignored the rules. Rates were already depressed, so there were not many complaints from shippers and relatively few cases. Although the Motor Carrier Act increased trucking rates and gave the railroads a chance to be more competitive, the ICC approach was to base rates on the value-of-service method rather than on the cost-of-service method. This left the railroads chronically unable to compete with trucks. The Motor Carrier Act of 1935 did dramatically increase the scope of ICC power, however. Reference Ari Hoogenboom and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative, 1976.

MOTOR CARRIER ACT OF 1980 By the mid-1970s, even while the federal government was increasing the level of its regulation of consumer products industries, momentum was gathering to deregulate* some of the more traditionally regulated industries in the United States. A prime target of the deregulation movement was the Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC) and the trucking industry. Critics charged that ever since passage of the Motor Carrier Act* of 1935, the ICC’s management of the industry had resulted in more and more gross inefficiencies. The ICC had permitted the trucking industry to establish regional rate bureaus that were permitted to fix prices. It was not at all uncommon for truckers to have to follow the most circuitous routes to comply with the law or to have to drive empty trucks on return trips. The regulations also severely restricted access to the industry by new truckers. The ICC, originally designed to protect competition in the transportation industry, had actually allowed a situation in which little competition existed. That situation became intolerable in the 1970s, especially after oil prices skyrocketed in the wake of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the subsequent Arab oil boycott*. The economy went into an inflationary spiral, and a price-conscious America wanted nothing to do with antiquated ICC regulations that actually raised freight costs. Moreover, the ICC’s rules often required truckers to drive longer distances and use precious fuel. The Council of Economic Advisors* urged President Jimmy Carter* to promote the necessary legislation, and Congress soon passed the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. The law made it much easier for independent truckers to enter the market, and it allowed real price competition to exist. References Mansel G. Blackford and K. Austin Kerr, Business Enterprise in American History, 1986. James Q. Wilson, ed., The Politics of Regulation, 1980.

MUCKRAKERS The term “muckrakers” has been used to describe the group of journalists and writers in the early twentieth century who exposed business and political corruption,

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pollution, and greed. Such magazines as Collier’s, McClure’s, and Cosmopolitan regularly featured such articles. Some of the leading muckraking writers were Henry Demarest Lloyd, whose book Wealth and Commonwealth (1896) dealt with the power of monopolies; Ida Tarbell, whose book History of Standard Oil Company (1903) exposed the power of the trust*; Lincoln Steffens, whose 1904 book Shame of the Cities described widespread municipal corruption; David Graham Phillips, whose book The Treason of the Senate (1906) focused on political corruption; and Upton Sinclair*, author of The Jungle (1906), which described the problems of immigrants and the working conditions in the Chicago packinghouses. Muckraker journalism provided the Progressive movement* with much of the emotional ammunition it needed to implement federal and state reform legislation in the early 1900s. Reference David M. Chalmers, The Social and Political Ideas of the Muckrakers, 1964.

MULLER v. OREGON (208 U.S. 412) The Supreme Court case of Muller v. Oregon was critically important in upholding the regulatory legislation of the Progressive*era. The Oregon legislature passed a law in 1903 limiting the workday for women to ten hours. A number of employers sued, claiming that the law denied the freedom of contract guarantees implied by the Fourteenth Amendment*. The case reached the Supreme Court in 1908, and the justices upheld the constitutionality of the state law. Attorney Louis D. Brandeis* (who later served on the court) marshaled volumes of statistical data to justify the law and argued that contemporary reality was more important in this instance than judicial and legal precedent. The case amounted to a significant victory in the development of sociological jurisprudence. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

M U LT I N AT I O N A L C O R P O R AT I O N A multinational corporation (MNC) is a company with various operations of its production, management, and distribution across different companies. By dividing a company’s various components, MNCs can ensure maximum profit by lowering costs of labor, ensuring access to resources, and guaranteeing presence in the most profitable markets. Although precedents for MNCs exist in history, such as the English East India Company, initially formed in 1600, it is a mostly modern phenomenon that has drastically expanded since the 1960s and 1970s as U.S.-based industries have offshored* production facilities. Reference Paz Estrelaa E. Tolentino, Multinational Corporations: Emergence and Evolution, 2000.

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M U N I C I PA L B A N K R U P T C Y A C T O F 1 9 3 4 Because of declining tax revenues associated with depression unemployment levels in the early 1930s, hundreds of towns and cities across the country were unable to meet current expenses as well as the fixed costs of their own bonds. As a result, the municipal bond market in the United States was in shambles, and such industry groups as the Investment Bankers* Association as well as urban machines were demanding some type of federal action. Early in 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt*, seeing widespread support for the measure in the banking and municipal government communities, sponsored legislation that reached the floor of the House and Senate in May 1934. It encountered a good deal of opposition from some conservatives, who were convinced that cities had wasted their resources through mismanagement. Senator Carter Glass* of Virginia was convinced the bill would destroy the municipal bond market. In mid-May, Senator Patrick McCarran of Nevada offered a compromise that provided cities with the opportunity to scale down their debts with federal court approval. With the consent of 51 percent of the holders of its outstanding obligations, a city hovering on the verge of bankruptcy could take a refinancing plan to the federal courts. If the court found it equitable and 75 percent of its debtholders agreed, the plan could go into effect. Cities had an application period of two years in which to apply for reorganization. Roosevelt signed the measure on May 24, 1934, and in the next several years, it contributed greatly to the revival of the municipal bond market. Reference New York Times, May 25, 1934.

M U N N v. I L L I N O I S See GRANGER LAWS. M U R R AY, P H I L I P Born on May 25, 1886, in Blantyre, Scotland, Philip Murray came to the United States in 1902. He had already been working as a coal miner for six years, and he went to work near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Murray finished his education through correspondence courses and became active in the United Mine Workers* (UMW). He was elected president of District 5 of the UMW in 1916. During World War I*, Murray served as a member of the War Labor Board and the National Coal Production Committee, and by 1920, he had obtained the vice-presidency of the UMW, a position he held for twenty-two years. During the New Deal years, while serving under John L. Lewis* in the UMW, Murray was also a member of the board of the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) and helped draft the Guffey–Snyder Act of 1935. In 1935, Murray played a major role, along with Lewis and Sidney Hillman* of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers*, in forming the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO). When the National Labor Relations Act* of 1935 guaranteed the right of workers to organize, the CIO made a massive organizational

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assault on the heavy industries. Murray served as chairman of the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee in its campaign against “Big Steel” and the United States Steel Corporation*. He also served as president of the CIO, a founder of the United Steelworkers of America*, and a close adviser to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt* and Harry S. Truman* on labor affairs. He died on November 9, 1952. Reference New York Times, November 10, 1952.

MUSCLE SHOALS See NORRIS, GEORGE and TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY.

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N NADER, RALPH Ralph Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut, on February 27, 1934. He graduated from Princeton in 1955 and received a law degree from Harvard in 1958. Highly suspicious of big business, Nader wrote Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, in which he attacked the automobile* industry for its lack of concern with passenger safety. He singled out General Motors* and the Corvair automobile as examples of the industry at its worst. When it became clear that industry officials were trying to harass him and put him under the surveillance of private investigators, the book became a bestseller and made Nader the leader of the consumer rights* movement in the United States. Congress also responded by passing the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in 1966. In 1969, Nader established the Center for the Study of Responsive Law; the law students he hired became known as “Nader’s Raiders” for the crusading zeal they brought to the task of consumer protection. Nader’s efforts also inspired the establishment of dozens of Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) to investigate consumer issues and promote consumer interests. Single-minded, Nader has earned a reputation for honesty and brilliance. Nader has been candidate for the president of the United States, having run as a write-in candidate in the 1992 New Hampshire Democratic primary, as the Green Party nominee in 1996, and then again in 2000, as well as as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008. Reference Charles McCarry, Citizen Nader, 1972.

NASDAQ NASDAQ, short for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, is a U.S. stock exchange. It is the second-largest stock exchange in the United States after the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), who later divested themselves of ownership in 2001, founded NASDAQ in 1971. NASDAQ OMX Group owns and operates NASDAQ. NASDAQ was the first electronic stock exchange, replacing the overthe-counter methods that preceded it. Reference Mark Ingebretsen, NASDAQ: A History of the Market That Changed the World, 2002.

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N AT I O N A L A E R O N A U T I C A N D S PA C E A D M I N I S T R AT I O N When the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, on October 4, 1957, the United States entered a technological identity crisis. In the wake of that crisis, Congress established the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. During the next two years, a number of existing military space programs were transferred to the new agency, but it was during the Kennedy administration that NASA experienced huge growth when the president announced his intention of placing an American on the moon before the end of the decade. The manned spacecraft center was placed in Houston in November 1961, and over the next decade—through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs—NASA achieved the president’s goal. The first lunar landing occurred in July 1969. The rest of the Apollo programs to the moon seemed somewhat anticlimactic during the 1970s, and NASA had to search for a new mission. Public support for space exploration also waned, primarily because of its expense and the apparent domestic needs of the country. NASA personnel declined in number from 37,000 in 1967 to only 24,000 in 1980. Although the emphasis on manned flight declined, improving satellite technology gave NASA a new mission in terms of commercial economics, scientific research, and military security. NASA satellite missions provided dramatic improvements in weather forecasting, resource exploration on earth, and telecommunications. The space shuttle, or Space Transportation System, became dominant in the 1980s. The Challenger disaster in 1986 compromised the program, however, and during the Bush administration after 1989, NASA found itself under increasing pressure to de-emphasize its scientific research program in favor of commercially profitable programs. The Space Shuttle program was concluded in 2011 with the last flight of Atlantis. Reference Frank W. Anderson, Orders of Magnitude: A History of NACA and NASA, 1915–1976, 1976.

N AT I O N A L A L L I A N C E O F B U S I N E S S M E N In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson* asked Henry Ford II to create the National Alliance of Businessmen to generate jobs for the hard-to-employ—Vietnam veterans, former convicts, members of minority groups, and high school dropouts. Organized labor as well as the Department of Labor* cooperated in the program, and Ford established the organization in 1969. He recruited business leaders from more than 150 cities to form employment teams and locate job opportunities. Participating corporations supplied 75 percent of the funding for the alliance, and the federal government provided the other 25 percent. From 1969 to 1986, the National Alliance of Businessmen spent more than $100 million and created more than 10 million jobs. Reference Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Political Parties and Civic Action Groups, 1981.

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N AT I O N A L A S S O C I AT I O N O F M A N U FA C T U R E R S The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) was founded in 1895 at Cincinnati, Ohio, with the primary purpose of promoting business. Gradually, the NAM came to represent the needs of big business in the United States. During the 1920s, it became an inveterate foe of collective bargaining, labor strikes, and union organization. To counter the power of such groups as the United Mine Workers* (UMW) and the American Federation of Labor* (AFL), the NAM sponsored the “American Plan*,” a system of company unions* operating in an open shop legal atmosphere. The organization opposed the McNary–Haugen plan*, federal development of Muscle Shoals, and federal public works programs, but it championed the idea of free enterprise and little government regulation. The Great Depression* dealt a real blow to the NAM. From a high of 5,350 member businesses in 1922, it dropped to only 1,500 in 1933. When the New Deal* appeared during the 1930s, the NAM became a bitter opponent, claiming that New Dealers represented only the needs of radicals and labor agitators. It opposed the candidacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt* in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. It likewise opposed the Fair Deal* of Harry S. Truman* and the entire range of social welfare legislation supported by Democrats in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. During the 1980s, the NAM had a membership of nearly 40,000 people, most of whom represented the interests of large businesses and opposed federal spending, environmental legislation*, and government regulation. References Albert K. Steigerwalt, The National Association of Manufacturers, 1964. Richard S. Tedlow, “The National Association of Manufacturers and Public Relations during the New Deal,” Business History Review 50 (1976): 25–35.

N AT I O N A L B A N K I N G A C T O F 1 8 6 4 Ever since President Andrew Jackson* saw to the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States* in 1832, Whigs and then Republicans had been clamoring for the establishment of some type of national banking system, primarily to stop the speculation of so many rural banks and to stabilize the currency. When the Civil War* broke out, southern Democrats left Congress, giving Republicans a majority. In 1864, the largely Republican Congress passed the National Banking Act. The legislation required national banks to have at least one-third of their capital assets invested in U.S. government securities, but they could issue national bank notes on up to 90 percent of those investments. To eliminate the plethora of state bank notes in circulation, the government imposed a 10 percent tax on them, and they rapidly disappeared from the money supply. Although more centralized control of the money supply had to wait until the Federal Reserve* Act of 1913, the National Banking Act of 1864 did impose a rationality that the system had not enjoyed in decades. Reference Margaret Myers, Financial History of the United States, 1970.

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N AT I O N A L C H I L D L A B O R C O M M I T T E E Established in 1904, the National Child Labor Committee was supported by social work professionals who were concerned about the educational and social needs of children, as well as by northern industrialists worried about cheap wages in the South. A variety of northern states had already passed laws controlling child labor, but southern states had not. Southern mill owners therefore had a competitive advantage in lower labor costs. Comprehensive national legislation was the only answer. Congress first addressed the issue in the Keating–Owen Act of 1916, providing federal prohibition of the shipment of goods made by the labor of children in interstate commerce. In particular, the law prohibited the labor of any child younger than 14. In 1918, in Hammer v. Dagenhart*, the Supreme Court overturned the law. The National Child Labor Committee then helped to sponsor a new law that added a 10 percent federal tax on all goods entering interstate commerce if they had been produced by children. In Bailey v. Drexel Furniture* (1922), the Supreme Court overturned that law also, arguing that the tax was an impermissible use of Congress’s police power. During the political conservatism of the 1920s, the National Child Labor Committee could do little more than try to educate the public, serious federal legislation simply not being forthcoming. Success with the child labor issue on the national scale had to wait until the New Deal of the 1930s. The National Child Labor Committee received its real boost in 1933, when the National Industrial Recovery Act imposed the first direct federal restrictions on child labor. Reference Clarke Chambers, Seedtime of Reform: American Social Service and Social Action, 1918–1933, 1967.

N AT I O N A L C I V I C F E D E R AT I O N The National Civic Federation (NCF) was established in 1893 in Chicago. Its leader was Ralph M. Easley, who wanted to provide a means of mediating disputes between labor and management. In 1901, Republican businessman Mark Hanna became president of the NCF, and Samuel Gompers*, president of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL), became vice president. After World War I*, the NCF became directly involved in the First Red Scare, assisting Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in rounding up radicals; in the process, the NCF lost some of its labor support. When Gompers died in 1924, labor turned away from the mediation efforts of the NCF, because unions were convinced it had become a tool of management. The NCF disbanded in 1925. Reference Marguerite Green, The National Civic Federation and the Labor Movement, 1900–1925, 1956.

N AT I O N A L C R E D I T C O R P O R AT I O N On September 21, 1931, Great Britain went off the gold standard and sent money markets all over the world into a tailspin. In the United States, this event only

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exacerbated the banking crisis, bringing about the closing of hundreds of banks when panic-stricken depositors began withdrawing their funds. Committed to voluntarism and the strength of the private sector, President Herbert Hoover* wanted the banking community to work out a plan to rescue weak banks. Early in October 1931, Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon* held a meeting at his Washington apartment for a number of prominent New York bankers. There they organized the National Credit Corporation, a private pool of $500 million to lend out to troubled banks. The National Credit Corporation was soon an obvious failure. In the first place, the dimensions of the banking crisis dwarfed its meager resources. Not until the New Deal* had invested billions of dollars in the banking system would stability return to the money markets. Second, the directors of the National Credit Corporation lent money only to sound banks that were able to post adequate collateral, making sure that troubled banks did not have access to its funds. By December 1931, the National Credit Corporation had lent only $10 million, and President Hoover had to call for the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). Reference James S. Olson, “The End of Voluntarism: Herbert Hoover and the National Credit Corporation,” Annals of Iowa 41 (fall 1972): 1104–1113.

N AT I O N A L D E B T The national debt, also known as public debt, is the debt owed by the U.S. government necessary to fund government operations. These funds are attained through the sales of government bonds, to both domestic and foreign lenders. The solvency and stability of the government ensures that consumers will purchase bonds to fund the government. These loans are then paid off with tax revenues. The mere size of the national debt, currently in the trillions, is of concern to supporters of government austerity policies. Reference Lawrence Malkin, The National Debt, 1987.

N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E E D U C AT I O N A C T OF 1958 The successful launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957 came as a surprise to the United States. At the time, the United States and the Soviet Union were in the midst of the Cold War, and tension levels were high. The fact that the Russians had the ability to launch such an object into orbit led many Americans to conclude that there was a technology gap and that U.S. education was inferior to its Russian counterpart. One answer to that perceived gap was increased federal aid to education, so on September 2, 1958, the National Defense Education Act became law. The legislation was an omnibus measure. It provided $295 million to fund

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student loans for higher education; interest rates were only 3 percent, amortization programs stretched out to ten years, and if the student taught school for five years after graduation, 50 percent of the principal would be forgiven. In addition to the loan provisions, the National Defense Education Act appropriated $280 million for grants to schools to strengthen science and mathematics education. In addition, the law provided $28 million for grants to improve language study in the schools, $18 million for public education programs, and 5,500 fellowships for graduate students preparing for university teaching and research careers. Reference Charles C. Alexander, Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952–1961, 1975.

N AT I O N A L E C O N O M I C A N D S O C I A L P L A N N I N G A S S O C I AT I O N Founded in 1934, the National Economic and Social Planning Association represented a wide variety of business, labor, farming, and professional groups that believed in the idea of economic planning rather than laissez-faire*. Beardsley Ruml, the economist and tax planner, headed the association, which helped promote the Reorganization Act of 1939 as well as the New Deal’s* efforts at national planning through the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) and the National Resources Planning Board*. That National Economic and Social Planning Association changed its name to the National Planning Association in 1941. Reference J. D. Millett, The Process and Organization of Government Planning, 1947.

N AT I O N A L E C O N O M I C A S S O C I AT I O N The National Economic Association was a bipartisan governmental commission established by Congress in 1987 to set guidelines to balance the federal budget* and reduce the huge federal deficits that had accumulated throughout the 1980s. The commission had cochairmen: the prominent Democratic party leader Robert Strauss and Republican Drew Lewis, former head of the Department of Transportation. Although the commission met throughout 1988 and early 1989, its efforts were aborted by political infighting and public scrutiny. The Democrats on the commission insisted on reducing the deficit through cuts in defense spending and tax increases, whereas the Republicans wanted deep spending cuts, particularly in social programs. A federal court order in 1988 requiring all commission meetings to be open to the public prevented serious debate and political compromise. Reference David E. Rosenbaum, “Ruling Limited Budget Panel’s Effectiveness,” New York Times, March 1, 1989.

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N AT I O N A L E N V I R O N M E N TA L P O L I C Y A C T O F 1970 By 1969, the environmental movement* was making enormous political strides in the United States, and politicians as well as businessmen had no choice but to acknowledge its power. The National Environmental Policy Act, which became law on January 1, 1970, was such an acknowledgment. The law required all federal agencies to include environmental impact statements—studies of the effects of government policies and legislation on the environment—in all new program proposals and suggested that business do the same. The law also established the Council on Environmental Quality as an advisory body to the president. Reference R. L. Miller, The New Economics of Richard Nixon, 1972.

N AT I O N A L FA R M E R S O R G A N I Z AT I O N The National Farmers Organization (NFO) was founded in 1955 in Corning, Iowa. Its leader was Oren L. Staley. Convinced that middlemen were robbing farmers of their profits, the NFO tried to organize itself as a type of labor union, using collective bargaining tactics to negotiate with processors, wholesalers, and transportation firms. By getting farmers to sign exclusive contracts, the NFO hoped to gain control of farm supplies and force commodity price increases. It also sought to reduce commodity supplies by keeping crops off the market or even destroying them. By the 1970s, the NFO had engaged in such attempts to gain media attention, but in the process, they alienated the general public as well as large numbers of non-NFO farmers. Over the years, the NFO has preferred Democratic policies of rigid, high price supports for farm commodities rather than Republican policies of flexible price supports. Ever since 1960, the NFO has endorsed Democratic candidates for president. The current membership of the NFO is approximately 25,000 people. Reference Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Political Parties and Civic Action Groups, 1981.

N AT I O N A L FA R M E R S ’ U N I O N The National Farmers’ Union was established in 1902 by Isaac N. Gresham, a Texan, to improve the life of small farmers. Charles S. Burrett became its first national president and focused its work around the establishment of farm cooperatives, warehouses, and insurance programs for small farmers. In the 1920s, the National Farmers’ Union called for federal price supports through the McNary– Haugen plan*. John Simpson led the National Farmers’ Union during the Great Depression,* at which time the organization adopted a radical profile and called for cheap money and inflation as the answer to farm problems. Simpson also demanded, but failed to achieve, programs of federal guarantees for the entire

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cost of production. The National Farmers’ Union, under the leadership of James G. Patton in the 1940s and 1950s, supported the Democratic Party’s call for rigid, high price supports and opposed the flexible price supports advocated by Ezra Taft Benson, the secretary of agriculture under President Dwight Eisenhower. The close affiliation between the National Farmers’ Union and the Democratic Party was wounded somewhat in the late 1970s by President Jimmy Carter’s prohibition of grain sales to the Soviet Union. For the most part, the National Farmers’ Union and its 225,000 members still represent the interests of the small family farmer. Reference William P. Tucker, “Populism Up-to-Date: The Story of the Farmers’ Union,” Agricultural History 21 (1947): 198–208.

N AT I O N A L F O R E I G N T R A D E C O U N C I L The National Foreign Trade Council was a pre–World War II* lobbying* group in the United States. When Congress passed the first Neutrality Act* in 1935, prohibiting the shipment of war materials to belligerent powers, a number of manufacturing interests became concerned that even more restrictionist legislation would be enacted in order to keep the United States out of World War II. They formed the National Foreign Trade Council to promote revision of the neutrality acts. Reference Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality, 1962.

N AT I O N A L G R A N G E Originally established in 1867 as the Patrons of Husbandry, the National Grange was at first a secret fraternal organization of farmers that was designed to meet the social needs of an isolated, rural population. After the panic of 1873*, the Grange became more overtly political, lobbying* for legislation beneficial to farmers, particularly state regulation of railroads and grain elevators. It lobbied for the Interstate Commerce Act* of 1887 bringing the railroads under federal regulation, and during the 1890s, the Grange movement was closely associated with Populism*. After 1900, when the farm economy improved, the Grange campaigned for federal antitrust legislation, paved roads in rural areas, a system of government rural credit banks, parcel post, and regulation of the securities exchanges and futures markets. During the 1920s, the Grange campaigned for the enactment of the McNary–Haugen plan* to dump farm surpluses in foreign markets. By the early 1930s, the Grange had come to support crop reduction and soil conservation schemes, and it became an early advocate of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration* (AAA) in the 1930s. Along the with National Farmers’ Union* and the American Farm Bureau Federation*, the National Grange was the most influential farm lobbying group in the United States during the 1930s. Since World War II*, the Grange has represented the broad center of American farm politics, between the conservatism of the American Farm Bureau Federation and the liberalism of the National Farmers’ Union.

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References Solon J. Buck, The Granger Movement, 1963. Dennis S. Nordin, The Rich Harvest: Mainstreams of Granger History, 1867–1900, 1974.

N AT I O N A L H O U S I N G A C T O F 1 9 3 4 The bursting of the real estate bubble in the late 1920s and the crash of the stock market in 1929 devastated the construction industry and building trades. Major financial institutions—banks, savings banks, building and loan associations, and insurance companies—were frightened by the liquidity crisis in the money markets and were increasingly reluctant to make construction and mortgage loans. At the same time, as unemployment increased and delinquent mortgages became more common, the public demand for housing money also declined. Most economists and political officials were convinced that any recovery would have to include the construction industry. On July 22, 1932, under the direction of the Herbert Hoover* administration, Congress established the Federal Home Loan Bank* System to discount the home mortgages of building and loan associations. The administration assumed that with more liquidity, lending institutions would start extending more money and stimulate a recovery in the construction industry. In addition to the concern about unemployment in the construction industry, there were calls for a federal agency to construct low-cost housing on a permanent basis. These appeals were opposed, of course, by landlord and real estate interests afraid of having rental markets undercut by low-cost housing. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* was more inclined to worry about unemployment in the construction industry than about slum housing conditions in the cities. In his view, the federal housing program should be directed at reviving the construction industry, not at undertaking massive slum renewal projects. The Roosevelt administration thus created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation* (HOLC) in 1933 to assist people who were about to lose their homes, and it also developed a comprehensive housing program embodied in the National Housing Act, which the president signed into law on June 28, 1934. Designed both to make more private credit available for the repair and construction of homes and to stimulate the building trades and heavy industry, the National Housing Act established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to insure banks, mortgage companies, and building and loan associations against losses that they might sustain as a result of home improvement and new construction loans. Insured loans on home improvement were not to exceed $2,000, and the FHA would not insure loans totaling more than 20 percent of the institution’s assets; it could also insure first mortgages not exceeding $16,000 and 80 percent of the appraised value. The FHA had the power to insure low-cost housing project loans up to $10 million. Under the law, the FHA could create national mortgage associations to buy first mortgages from banks and building and loan associations. In addition, the law raised HOLC borrowing power to $3 billion. Finally, the National Housing Act established the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation* (FSLIC) to insure the deposits in building and loan associations, savings and loan associations, homestead

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associations, and cooperative banks. Although the FHA met important needs of middle-class families and homeowners, it did not really address the needs of the poor, so Senator Robert F. Wagner* and the social work profession continued to lobby for a more comprehensive federal housing program. That was not achieved until the Wagner–Steagall Housing Act* of 1937. References Pearl Janet Davies, Real Estate in American History, 1958. Monthly Labor Review 39 (1934): 369–370.

N AT I O N A L I N D U S T R I A L R E C O V E R Y A C T OF 1933 During World War I*, the United States developed an ambitious series of government–business arrangements designed to spur war production. Most of them, especially the War Industries Board*, were considered eminently successful. When the Great Depression* struck the nation, a number of economists, labor leaders, and businessmen proposed a similar arrangement to deal with the country’s economic plight. They hoped that the federal government would eliminate destructive competition, encourage national economic planning, and improve business confidence and profits. The National Industrial Recovery Act became law on June 16, 1933. It established the National Recovery Administration* (NRA), with power for two years, to assist businessmen to enter voluntary agreements to eliminate unfair trade practices, expand production, reduce unemployment, and stabilize prices. The NRA would establish industrial codes which were exempt from antitrust laws. The law provided for a minimum wage*, outlawed yellow-dog contracts*, guaranteed labor’s right to collective bargaining, and established a $3.3 billion Public Works Administration to provide work relief. Reference Bernard Bellush, The Failure of the NRA, 1975.

N AT I O N A L L A B O R R E L AT I O N S A C T O F 1 9 3 5 Described by William Green* of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) as “the Magna Carta of Labor of the United States,” the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 was the most significant piece of labor legislation, up to its time, in American history. Although Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act* had guaranteed labor’s right to bargain collectively, the National Labor Board and its successor, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), had no real power to enforce the law. Under the direction of Lloyd Garrison and then Francis Biddle, the NLRB enjoyed only a quasi-judicial function, investigating violations of Section 7(a) and creating a body of common law referring to labor; still, the board had no real authority to punish violators. Although the board had referred thirty-three cases of noncompliance with Section 7(a) to the Department of Justice by March 1, 1935, judgments were received in none of the cases. The board thus had responsibility

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without power. The overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, elected in November 1934, was determined to give teeth to the NLRB, and Senator Robert Wagner* of New York led the way. Late in 1934, Wagner had his secretary, Leon Keyserling, resurrect his earlier unsuccessful labor law and redraft it with the assistance of the NLRB legal staff. They were determined to institutionalize the right of labor to organize and bargain effectively with employers. The bill upheld the right of collective bargaining as the only way through which workers could hope to deal effectively with concentrated industrial power. It insisted that employers bargain in good faith with the full intention of reaching amicable settlements; prohibited employers from engaging in anti-union espionage, blacklisting, strikebreaking, yellow-dog contracts*, or discrimination against union members or leaders on wages and promotions; forbade employers from dominating or even interfering with the operations of company unions*; specifically stated that the union elected by a majority of workers in free elections would be the sole bargaining agent for all the workers in a company; and established the new NLRB as an independent agency to act as a “supreme court” in labor disputes. With the power to subpoena witnesses and order federal court action, the NLRB now had the power to enforce its decisions. Senator Wagner introduced the measure in the Senate in late February 1935, and William P. Connery Jr. sponsored it in the House. Proponents of the measure viewed it as a recovery measure as well as a labor measure. They argued that the law would promote higher wages, a more equitable distribution of income, and greater mass purchasing power all of which would stimulate production and employment. The business community, which overwhelmingly opposed the law, viewed it as an unconstitutional, totalitarian scheme to destroy free enterprise. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt* took a neutral stand, the legislation passed and gave organized labor the boost it needed to launch the great organizing drives of the late 1930s that led to the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO). Ever since then, the NLRB has served as the federal agency designed to protect the rights of organized labor to collective bargaining. After World War II, however, the NLRB was somewhat limited in its authority by the Taft–Hartley Act* of 1947 and the Landrum–Griffin Act* of 1959, as well as by the conservative mood of the late 1940s and 1950s. Some of its authority was restored during the 1960s and early 1970s, however. Legislation in 1974 extended the board’s authority to health care institutions. References Cletus E. Daniel, The ACLU and the Wagner Act: An Inquiry into the Depression-Era Crisis of American Liberalism, 1980. James A. Gross, The Making of the NLRB: A Study in Economics, Politics, and the Law, 1974. James A. Gross, The Reshaping of the NLRB: National Labor Policy in Transition, 1981.

N AT I O N A L L A B O R R E L AT I O N S B O A R D See NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT OF 1935.

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N AT I O N A L L A B O R R E L AT I O N S B O A R D v. J O N E S & L A U G H L I N S T E E L C O R P O R AT I O N ( 3 0 1 U . S . 1 ) In 1935, employees of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation claimed that the company was discriminating against union members. Hearings of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) upheld their claim and ordered the company to cease such practices. Jones & Laughlin refused to comply and the NLRB went to court to force compliance. The company claimed that the board had no jurisdiction because Jones & Laughlin Steel was an intrastate manufacturing company over which the federal Commerce Clause had no jurisdiction. The Supreme Court heard the case and on April 12, 1937, decided in favor of the government. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes* wrote the majority opinion. He applied the “stream of commerce” idea to Jones & Laughlin’s operations, arguing that their corporate activities clearly crossed state lines and were therefore subject to the Commerce Clause. He also stated that the National Labor Relations Act* of 1935 did not violate the Fifth Amendment due process clause. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

N AT I O N A L L A B O R U N I O N During the 1850s, the United States witnessed the formation of the first of its national labor unions. The National Typographical Union was established in 1852, and in 1859 William Sylvis* established the Iron Molders Union. During the 1860s several dozen other national unions were formed, although the most powerful of them was the Iron Molders. In 1866, to try to push the idea of an eight-hour day for workers, William Sylvis and others formed the National Labor Union (NLU), a federation of the other national unions. In addition to pushing the idea of the eight-hour day, the NLU experimented with establishing workers’ productive cooperatives—groups designed to produce goods and compete with large corporations. All these experiments were short-lived. The National Labor Union soon evolved into a political organization in its efforts to achieve the eight -hour day, and in 1872 it became known as the National Labor Reform Party. Judge David Davis of Illinois was nominated at its presidential candidate in 1872, but he suddenly withdrew his nomination and all but destroyed the NLU as a political force. The economic malaise that swept through the country in the 1870s finished the job. Reference Roy A. Rozenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will, 1983.

N AT I O N A L O R G A N I Z AT I O N F O R W O M E N The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in Washington, D.C., in January 1967 by Betty Friedan (author of The Feminine Mystique) and twenty-seven other women. The organization has sought to further the political agenda

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of the feminist movement, including abortion rights, equal pay for equal work*, and the end of sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination against women and homosexuals. NOW played an important role in getting Congress to submit the Equal Rights Amendment* (ERA) to the states in 1972 and in winning an extension for it in 1979. Membership in NOW peaked at around 220,000 in 1982, then fell off precipitously when the ERA failed. Although not a partisan movement, NOW has tended to endorse Democratic candidates as being more likely to vote with the group on women’s issues. When the predominantly Democratic Congress went along with Republican administration policies in the 1980s, however, especially in confirming Supreme Court nominees who seemed hostile to women’s concerns, NOW decided to withdraw its support from the Democrats, choosing instead to work for more explicitly feminist candidates. The bitter confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in October 1991 contributed to NOW’s resurgence. In January 1992, membership in NOW had climbed to around 250,000. In the 21st century, NOW has remained a pivotal advocate for women’s equality. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Felicity Barringer, “On 25th Year, NOW Reasserts Its Role as Outsider,” New York Times, January 12, 1992.

N AT I O N A L R A I L R O A D PA S S E N G E R C O R P O R AT I O N See AMTRAK. N AT I O N A L R E C O V E R Y A D M I N I S T R AT I O N The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act* of June 16, 1933. Its primary purpose was to bring about an economic recovery by developing an industrial code system that would control prices, production, trade practices, and labor relations. By eliminating destructive competition and suspending the antitrust laws, the NRA was supposed to bring about new business investment, production, profits, and employment. The idea for the NRA originated back in World War I when such agencies as the War Industries Board* successfully developed institutions of government–business planning and cooperation. General Hugh S. Johnson, a former member of the War Industries Board, was named to head the NRA. Using the methods of a patriotic crusade (including a blue eagle as its symbol), the NRA soon developed 541 industrial codes regulating business practices and guaranteeing collective bargaining rights to organized labor. The codes did reduce competition and improve business and labor organization, but they did not lead to an economic recovery. Most economic historians believe that the NRA actually contributed to a further downturn in late 1933, and by early 1934, the code

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structures were becoming the subject of mounting criticism. Labor leaders felt that the codes retarded genuine unionization; small business and consumer spokesmen were concerned about the growth of “monopoly,” left-wing critics talked about the rise of a “corporate state*,” and big business became increasingly afraid of “government control.” Serious demands for reform of the NRA became more and more common. On May 27, 1935, in the case of Schechter v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the code system involved both an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power and an unconstitutional attempt to expand the federal power to regulate interstate commerce. References Bernard Bellush, The Failure of the NRA, 1975. Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study in Economic Ambivalence, 1966. Robert F. Himmelberg, The Origins of the National Recovery Administration: Business, Government, and the Trade Association Issue, 1921–1933, 1976.

N AT I O N A L R E S O U R C E S P L A N N I N G B O A R D Title II of the National Industrial Recovery Act* of 1933 established the National Planning Board. It was America’s first experiment in peacetime national planning. The personnel staffing the board remained remarkably continuous, although the agency changed names several times: National Planning Board (1933–1934), National Resources Board (1935), National Resources Committee (1935–1939), National Resources Planning Board (1939–1943). By then, the board had established committees to study land-use planning, multiuse water planning, mineral policy, population changes, industrial resources, transportation, energy, the effect of changes in science and technology, and the structure of the economy. The board also established regional planning agencies in New England and the Pacific Northwest, sponsored state planning agencies in a majority of the states, and stimulated numerous city planning groups. Criticism of the board mounted during World War II, especially when opponents compared it to Nazi and Soviet planning programs. Congress abolished the board on August 31, 1943. Reference Philip Warken, A History of the National Resources Planning Board, 1933–1943, 1979.

N AT I O N A L R O A D During the 1790s, it became more and more clear to many American policymakers that major improvements in the economic infrastructure were necessary if the different sections of the new nation were to be linked together into a national market. During the first half of the nineteenth century, a boom took place in the construction of highways, canals, and railroads, all of which were designed to bring about that economic unity. The most significant highway building project was the construction of the National Road, also known as the Cumberland Road.

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Construction was financed by the federal government, which began the project in 1811 in Cumberland, Maryland. The road had been a matter of considerable controversy over the years. States rights advocates argued that the federal government should not be engaged in such projects, and southerners worried that the highway and canal system would link the West with the East, altering forever the alliance between the agrarian South and West. Construction of the National Road continued for twenty-seven years until its completion in 1838 in Vandalia, Illinois. The road is now part of U.S. Route 40. Reference P. D. Jordan, The National Road, 1948.

N AT I O N A L S M A L L B U S I N E S S M E N ’ S A S S O C I AT I O N The National Small Business Men’s Association was founded in 1938 by Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper. As part of the New Deal’s* growing concern after 1935 with the problems of monopoly, competition, and small business, the Department of Commerce sponsored a special conference in February 1938 that was attended by nearly 1,000 small businessmen. They complained loudly and bitterly about the dictatorial power of big business, big banking, and big government. The bad publicity from the conference and the manifest frustration of small businessmen throughout the country prompted the administration to action on two fronts. First, Roper founded the National Small Business Men’s Association to serve as the collective voice of small businessmen, to advise them of government services, and to lobby for favorable legislation. Second, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* had the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) increase its small loan program. During World War II*, the National Small Business Men’s Association helped win war contracts for small businesses, and after the war, the association helped secure favorable tax legislation and right-to-work laws. In 1962, the National Small Business Men’s Association and the Association for Small Business merged to form the National Small Business Association. Reference Harmon Zeigler, The Politics of Small Business, 1961.

N AT I O N A L T R A F F I C A N D M O T O R V E H I C L E SAFETY ACT OF 1966 In 1965, Ralph Nader* wrote the book Unsafe at Any Speed, which became a bestseller. The book exposed dangerous design problems in the Chevrolet Corvair model and accused all automobile manufacturers of being more concerned with profits than with public safety. The automobile companies denied the charges and took to harassing Nader, but he was not about to be intimidated. The whole incident created a grounds well of support for consumer protection, so in September 1966, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. The legislation required the

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federal government to mandate basic safety standards on all automobiles beginning with the 1968 model year and on used cars by 1970. Congress also passed the Highway Safety Act, requiring all states to develop highway safety programs by December 31, 1968. Noncompliance would mean the loss of federal highway funds. Reference Charles McCarry, Citizen Nader, 1972.

N AT I O N A L WA R L A B O R B O A R D When the United States entered World War I* in 1917, the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) gave President Woodrow Wilson* a no-strike pledge, but even then there were widespread concerns about whether American war production would be disrupted by labor disputes and strikes. To prevent that from happening, Wilson established the National War Labor Board in April 1918 to act as a court of arbitration. During the war, the National War Labor Board successfully arbitrated more than 1,500 cases and prevented strikes from occurring. In May 1918, Wilson also established the War Labor Policies Board to set maximum hours and minimum wages for workers. The board prohibited employers from firing workers who engaged in union activities. When World War I ended, labor union membership in the United States had grown from 2,722,000 people to 4,046,000, the average work week had declined from 53.5 hours to 50.3 hours, and the real income of American workers had increased by 20 percent. Reference Seward W. Livermore, Politics Is Adjourned: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1966.

N AT I O N A L Y O U T H A D M I N I S T R AT I O N President Franklin D. Roosevelt* established the National Youth Administration (NYA) by executive order on June 26, 1935. Initially, the NYA was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and was known as the “junior WPA.” It was designed to deal with the problem of more than 5 million unemployed young people in the United States. During its tenure, the NYA provided part-time work to 620,000 college students and 1,514,000 high-school students, as well as 2,677,000 full-time jobs to young people not in school. Through NYA work, 1,500 miles of roads were paved, 6,000 public buildings erected, 1,429 schools and libraries were constructed, and 2,000 bridges were built. The NYA was discontinued in 1943. Reference John A. Salmond, A Southern Rebel: The Life and Times of Aubrey Willis Williams, 1890–1965, 1983.

NEOLIBERALISM Neoliberalism is a political philosophy that supports the liberalization of the economy, free trade*, the privatization of state-owned industries, and a greater role for

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the private sector in society. It emerged as an economic philosophy in the 1930s as a counter to the collectivism supported by liberalism, socialism, fascism, and communism. In contrast with classical liberalism*, neoliberalism supported an active state guiding the economy but limiting its level of interference in the private sector. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, neoliberalism was embraced by U.S.-supported regimes in the Cold War, and later by New Democrats*, such as President Bill Clinton*. Neoliberalism’s embrace of deregulation of the financial sector led to abuses that would later lead to the Great Recession* that began in 2008. Reference David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2005.

NEUTRALITY President George Washington* issued his famous Neutrality Proclamation in the early 1790s, and for the next 150 years the United States used neutrality as the backbone of its foreign policy. Part of the motivation for neutrality was ideological. Most Americans believed European civilization was corrupt and wanted nothing to do with its squabbles. But there was also a powerful economic dimension to American neutrality. When war broke out in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars of the 1790s and early 1800s, as well as during World War I, the United States sold raw materials and finished products to all the belligerents, making huge amounts of money from the conflicts. To prevent the belligerents from seizing American vessels on the high seas, the United States promulgated the doctrine of “freedom of the seas.” But in the case of the War of 1812* and World War I, the United States was gradually drawn into the conflicts. During the 1930s, Congress passed the Neutrality Acts* in hope of keeping the United States out of World War II*, but they failed in their mission. After World War II, the United States became deeply involved in the Cold War* and abandoned any pretense of neutrality in most international disputes. References Roger H. Brown, The Republic in Peril: 1812, 1964. Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945, 1983. John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899– 1915, 1981. Felix Gilbert, To the Farewell Address, 1961.

NEUTRALITY ACTS As European politics destabilized in the 1930s, increasing numbers of Americans became concerned that the United States would slowly be drawn into World War II as it had been drawn into World War I. To prevent that possibility, isolationist forces in Congress succeeded in passing a series of Neutrality Acts in the 1930s. Each of the laws was designed to prevent American interests from becoming intertwined with those of one of the belligerent powers. The Neutrality Act of 1935

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authorized the president to suspend exports of war matériel to belligerents and to prohibit Americans from traveling on belligerent ships. Congress wanted no repeat of the Lusitania sinking, in which large numbers of Americans lost their lives, causing their relatives to demand retribution against Germany. The Neutrality Act of 1936 prohibited American banks from making loans to belligerent nations; the Nye* Committee hearings had accused American banks of getting the United States into World War I in order to protect their loans. The Neutrality Act of 1937 consolidated the previous legislation by providing, concurrent with the outbreak of war in Europe, an automatic arms embargo, a loan prohibition, a prohibition on passenger travel on the ships of nations at war, and a ban on arming American merchant vessels. The act also provided for the “cash-and-carry” principle, which insisted that belligerent nations purchasing noncontraband goods had to pay cash for them and carry them away from the United States in foreign ships. These laws remained in effect until 1939. When war broke out between Germany, Great Britain, and France, American sympathy for the Allies led to a relaxation of the laws in the Neutrality Act of 1939. Reference Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality, 1962.

NEW CONSORTIUM In 1911, the United States, Japan, and several European nations joined together in a consortium to construct railroads and other facilities in China. The United States subsequently withdrew from the consortium, but in 1917, several European bankers, worried about Japan’s increasing financial leverage in China and Manchuria, asked the United States to return to the consortium. In July 1918, the Woodrow Wilson* administration asked Great Britain, France, and Japan to consolidate all of their individual China loans into one consortium obligation. Japan resisted the proposal, accurately seeing an attempt to limit its freedom of action in China, but in May 1920, Japan agreed. The consortium did not make any future loans to China, however. Reference Roy Watson, Woodrow Wilson and Far Eastern Policy, 1913–1921, 1957.

NEW DEAL No political slogan or campaign theme has been more familiar to more people in the United States and abroad than the New Deal. The term has been synonymous with the origins of big government—the massive intervention of federal power into the private economy. Conservatives have treated the term with contempt, associating it with the rise of impersonal, inefficient, political bureaucracies and the demise of personal property and individual rights. For each disgruntled conservative bemoaning modem society, however, there has been an enthusiastic liberal convinced that the New Deal redeemed capitalism and preserved the social

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order by relieving the suffering of millions of people. More recently, a small group of New Left historians have vilified the New Deal for what it did not do—lead the country down the road to socialism* and planned economy. The term “New Deal” became public property in 1932 when Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt* of New York accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in Chicago. In his acceptance speech to the convention, he said: “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people. Let us all here assembled constitute ourselves prophets of a new order of competence and courage.” Samuel I. Rosenman, a close political adviser and speechwriter for the governor, had drafted that portion of the address, perhaps drawing on a series of articles by Stuart Chase in The New Republic entitled “A New Deal for America.” One article had already appeared in the June issue. A political cartoonist picked up on the phrase, and Chase published his essays as The New Deal in August 1932, seeing the book go through seven printings by the time of the election in November. Throughout Roosevelt’s presidency, politicians and the press used the term to describe his political and economic policies. During World War II, the president even became frustrated occasionally, insisting that the time had come for “Dr. New Deal” to give way to “Dr. Win-the-War.” For American historians, the New Deal has come to symbolize Roosevelt’s political philosophy as well as the role of the Democratic Party and the federal government in dealing with the Great Depression* of the 1930s. Reference Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 1: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933, 1957.

N E W D E M O C R AT S The New Democrats are associated with President Bill Clinton’s* 1992 centrist economic position. To align Republican voters on his side after the election 1992, Clinton supported neoliberal* policies of deregulation and enhancing the role of the private sector at the expense of the public sector. The New Democrats’ support of the further deregulation of the financial sector contributed to the widespread abuses later associated with the 2001 Enron* scandal and the Great Recession* that began in 2008. Reference Al From, The New Democrats and the Return to Power, 2013.

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY The term “New Economic Policy” was used by the Nixon administration to describe its attempts to revive the economy and control inflation. President Richard Nixon announced the program on August 15, 1971, after a secret meeting at Camp David with his economic advisers. It represented a major shift in traditional peacetime economic policies. To increase the demand for American goods in foreign markets, Nixon devalued the dollar, announcing an end to its gold convertibility and

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allowing its price to float on world markets. To prevent that decision from triggering a new inflationary spiral, however, the president imposed a rigid wage, price, and rent freeze on the economy. He also presented legislation to Congress to repeal the excise tax on automobiles, provide a tax credit for business investment, and reduce individual income taxes. The wage and price freeze lasted for ninety days. In November 1971, Nixon introduced the second phase of his economic program, which created a Price Commission and a Pay Board, supervised by a Cost of Living Council, to monitor wage and price increases. Some of the controls were relaxed with the third phase in January 1972; with the fourth phase in July 1972, companies could raise prices and wages, but not higher than changes in the Consumer Price Index. The rest of the controls were phased out in 1973 and 1974. Reference Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

NEW FREEDOM The term “New Freedom” has been applied by historians to the progressive* philosophy of the Woodrow Wilson* administration. Ever since the 1880s, Americans had been seriously debating the role of the federal government in dealing with large and monopolistic corporations. The antitrust movement argued that monopolistic companies should be broken up by the federal government to guarantee the advantages of true competition. First conceived by Louis D. Brandeis*, the “New Freedom” viewed the federal government as an arbiter of conflicting interests, but not one assuming the role of partisan of one group over another. Eventually, by his second term, Wilson had moved beyond the New Freedom to embrace the ideas of what other progressives were calling the New Nationalism*. Reference Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1954.

N E W N AT I O N A L I S M The term “New Nationalism” was first developed by Herbert Croly* in his book The Promise of American Life in 1909. Croly argued that large and monopolistic companies were not necessarily evil. In fact, consumers could benefit from the economies of scale that large companies implemented; the federal government should intervene only if monopolies were behaving irresponsibly and exploiting consumers. Beyond that, the New Nationalism argued that the federal government should help disadvantaged farmers and workers through a variety of legislation providing new sources of credit and “safety net” programs. Croly’s version of the New Nationalism became the policy formulations of Theodore Roosevelt’s* “Bull Moose” presidential campaign in 1912. By 1916, President Woodrow Wilson* had adopted many of its principles as well. The New Nationalism was thoroughly implemented during the New Deal* years of the 1930s.

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Reference Morton White, Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism, 1949.

NEW SOUTH In 1870, Edwin Deleon of South Carolina called for a “New South, whose wants and wishes, ends and aims, plans and purposes, are as different from those of 1860, as though a century instead of a decade only, divided the two.” The term “New South” in the years after Reconstruction* was used to describe the industrialization of the South. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, railroad construction increased dramatically in the South, as did the textile industry. A steel industry appeared in Birmingham, Alabama, and James Duke* introduced the cigarette industry to North Carolina. Visionaries such as Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, knew that northern capital would be needed to finance the changes, so he described the New South as industrialization, diversification of southern agriculture, and racial accommodation. Grady and others, to secure support for their ideas in the South, linked their idea of modernization with a celebration of the romanticized virtues of the Old South. Booker T. Washington* also appeared as the African American spokesman for the New South, preaching his own version of accommodation and enlightenment. Actually, the vision of the New South was not achieved until later in the twentieth century. Until the 1960s, the South remained far behind the North in its economic growth and diversification. References Orville Vernon Burton and Robert C. McMath Jr., Towards a New South? Post–Civil War Southern Communities, 1982. C. Vann Woodward, The Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, 1951.

NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD Although the Erie Canal* connected Albany and Buffalo in 1825, it was still a long journey, requiring barges to pass through a number of lock systems. Railroads soon began to appear along the route, and in 1853, a total of twelve railroads along the way were consolidated into the New York Central Railroad. Just before and during the Civil War*, the railroad and a number of others came under the control of Cornelius Vanderbilt* and came to be known as the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad. Throughout the 1860s, Vanderbilt brought other railroads, like the Erie & North East and the Buffalo & Erie, into the New York Central system. The acquisition of other lines, farther to the west, occurred in the 1880s, 1890s, and early 1900s until the New York Central had track mileage throughout the states of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. Coming on hard times after World War II, the New York Central merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 to form the Penn Central, but the Penn Central went bankrupt in 1970. That system became part of Conrail* in 1976.

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Reference George H. Drury, “New York Central System,” in Keith L. Bryant Jr., Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980, 1988.

NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE The New York Stock Exchange had its beginnings when Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton* began issuing federal government securities to fund the national debt*. That step created a market for securities, so on May 17, 1792, a group of influential New York merchants founded the organization that is today called the New York Stock Exchange; it took that name in 1863. The exchange began selling memberships in 1868, and today there are more than 1,350 members who buy and sell securities. The New York Stock Exchange is located at Broad and Wall streets in New York City. Reference Robert Sobel, Inside Wall Street, 1977.

N E W L A N D S R E C L A M AT I O N A C T O F 1 9 0 2 By the early 1900s, the progressive* movement was gaining momentum, and one of its most popular dimensions was the demand for conservation of natural resources. By far the most precious natural resource of the United States was its land, and people, especially in the western states, wanted to develop it as a renewable resource. The Desert Land Act* of 1877 and the Carey Act* of 1894 had been designed to do this, and in 1902, Congressman Francis G. Newlands of Nevada sponsored a new piece of legislation that became law on June 17, 1902. The Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 provided for the development of land and irrigation resources by directing the federal government, through a new agency called the Reclamation Service (later the Bureau of Reclamation*) to construct irrigation projects in sixteen states. Financing was to come from the sale of public lands in parcels of up to 160 acres (later 320 acres) and a subsequent ten-year assessment for use of the developed water. Reference Roy E. Huffman, Irrigation Development and Public Water Policy, 1953.

NIXON, RICHARD MILHOUS Richard M. Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California, on January 9, 1913. He graduated from Whittier College in 1934 and the Duke University Law School in 1937. Nixon practiced law in Whittier from 1937 to 1942, and after a six-month stint with the Office of Price Administration*, he joined the U.S. Navy during World War II. Nixon won a seat as a Republican in Congress in 1946, and he rocketed to national attention as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee when he accused Alger Hiss of being a Communist spy. In 1950, running

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on an anticommunist platform, Nixon was elected to the U.S. Senate. Two years later, Dwight D. Eisenhower selected him as his running mate, and in 1953 Nixon was sworn in as vice president of the United States. Nixon ran for the presidency in 1960 but lost an extremely close election to John F. Kennedy. Two years later Nixon failed in his bid to become governor of California. Nixon seemed doomed to political obscurity, but the unpopular Vietnam War* gave him a new lease on political life, and he won the presidency in the election of 1968. He then gradually reduced the American commitment in Vietnam, achieving a peace settlement in 1972 and bringing home the American prisoners of war in 1973. Nixon inherited a serious inflation problem when he came into the White House in 1969, and to deal with the problem, Nixon made a surprise announcement on August 15, 1971, imposing a freeze on wages, prices, and rents. In mid-November, the program entered Phase II when a price commission and a pay board imposed a broad system of mandatory controls. To stimulate the economy, Nixon also openly endorsed the use of Keynesian* policies. Those price, rent, and wage controls were gradually phased out in 1972 and 1973. By that time Nixon’s presidency was in a shambles because of the Watergate scandal. He was forced to resign the presidency on August 9, 1974. Since impeachment, Nixon remained in public life despite his notoriety. Nixon died on April 22, 1994, in New York City at the age of 81. References Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913–1962, 1987. Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972, 1989.

NIXONOMICS The term “Nixonomics” was used by liberal economists during the 1970s to describe the economic policies of Richard Nixon*. Although Nixon had campaigned for president in 1968 by calling for cuts in government spending and less government interference in the economy (what he called the “New Economic Policy*”), Nixon found himself facing the expensive Vietnam War* and a growing inflation problem when he took office. In 1971, to put a lid on prices, Nixon dramatically imposed a government-mandated freeze on all wages and prices for six months. When decontrols went into effect early in 1972, prices began to rise again, and so did unemployment. Nixon then declared that he was a “Keynesian,”* meaning that he was willing to use government spending as a tool to stimulate the economy. He urged Congress to reduce taxes and the Federal Reserve Board* to lower interest rates. Critics dubbed these policy gyrations “Nixonomics.” Reference R. L. Miller, The New Economics of Richard Nixon, 1973.

N O B L E , E D WA R D J O H N Edward J. Noble was born on August 8, 1882, in Gouverneur, New York. He graduated from Yale in 1905 and then spent several years in the advertising business.

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Along with a partner, J. Ray Allen, Noble bought the rights to a mint candy product called Life Savers. They began marketing the product out of New York City, but they were unsuccessful until 1914, when they began using a foil packaging that preserved the product’s flavor. In the beginning, they hired young people to go into business for themselves as Life Savers salesmen. Sales jumped from 940,000 packages in 1914 to 6,725,000 in 1915. Sugar shortages hurt the business during World War I*, but after the war, sales increases were rapid, especially after they added the famous fruit candy line in 1924. By the end of the 1920s, Life Savers was one of the best known candy products in the United States. Noble stayed on as chairman of the board until 1938. In 1940, he purchased WMCA radio station in New York City, sold it in 1943, and late that year purchased the Blue Network from RCA for $8 million. The Blue Network became the American Broadcasting Company in 1944, where he presided over the early years of the company. From 1938 to 1939, Noble also served as the first head of the Civil Aeronautics Authority* and, briefly in 1940, as secretary of commerce. He died on December 28, 1958. Reference New York Times, December 29, 1958.

N O N - I M P O R TAT I O N A C T O F 1 8 0 6 During the Napoleonic Wars, the United States grew increasingly frustrated with British commercial restrictions and the practice of impressment*. Eventually these abuses led to the War of 1812*. The Non-Importation Act of 1806 was an American attempt at economic sanctions in order to force the British to stop their obnoxious activities. It prohibited the importation from Great Britain of a number of commodities, including beer, leather goods, glass, and silverware. The United States hoped that the Non-Importation Act would create economic problems in England and internal political pressures to stop seizing American merchant vessels and impressing American sailors. The act actually had little effect, though it remained in force until the end of the War of 1812. Reference Reginald Horsman, The Causes of the War of 1812, 1962.

NON-INTERCOURSE ACT OF 1809 The Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 superseded the Embargo Act* of 1807. The Embargo Act had proven to be an economic disaster for the United States, but pressure to deal with the impressment* issue and the violation of U.S. neutral rights by British and French seizures of American ships still existed. The Non -Intercourse Act of 1809 was an attempt to deal with those two problems. It prohibited all commercial trade with France and Great Britain, outlawed armed British and French vessels from using American ports, and permitted the president to repeal the prohibition for any nation that rescinded its trade decrees

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and respected American neutral rights. The Non-Intercourse Act had little effect on American foreign policy and was replaced by Macon’s Bill Number Two* in May 1810. Reference Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War, 1961.

N O N - PA R T I S A N L E A G U E The Non-Partisan League was organized in 1915 by Arthur C. Townley. It was rooted in farm problems in North Dakota as well as in radical politics, since the league was actually a fusion of the Equity Cooperative Exchange and the Socialist Party*. The league demanded government ownership of grain elevators, warehouses, meat-packing plants, milling operations, and grain exchanges, as well as state-provided crop insurance and credit. The Non-Partisan League ran its own political ticket and managed to elect Lynn J. Frazier as governor of North Dakota in 1916. The league spread into neighboring states and the Farmer–Labor Party* of Minnesota was one of its offspring. But in 1917, the Non-Partisan League openly opposed the American entry into World War I*, and the league never recovered from the scorn it received. By the 1920s, it was a socialist organization in the age of normalcy*. By 1924, it had disappeared. Reference Robert L. Morlan, Political Prairie Fire: The Nonpartisan League, 1915–1922, 1955.

N O N P R O F I T O R G A N I Z AT I O N S A nonprofit organization is an organization that uses surplus revenue (or profit) to implement its plan of action. Many nonprofit organizations operate as agents of social programs for the federal and state governments or for private enterprise. Some are operated by paid employees and/or volunteers. In the United States, nonprofits must disclose their financial records. Any surplus is to be used rather than to be taken as profit. Nonprofits can apply for tax-exempt status to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). However, they must still pay some federal taxes, such as employment taxes. Reference Colin B. Burke, Establishing a Context, 2000.

“NORMALCY” Journalists and historians have used the term “normalcy” to describe the business culture and conservative politics of the 1920s. In May 1920, during a speech in Boston, Massachusetts, Senator Warren G. Harding called for “not heroism, but healing, not nostrums but normalcy.” After years of war, disillusionment, and social strife, most Americans were ready for tranquility, and Harding’s use of the term

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“normalcy” captured the mood of a nation. Once Harding won the Republican nomination in 1920, the GOP campaigned on the theme of a “return to normalcy.” Ever since, historians have found the word useful for describing American politics in the 1920s. “Normalcy” has become synonymous with probusiness legislation in the form of high tariffs, low taxes, and generous subsidies. Reference Robert K. Murray, The Politics of Normalcy: Governmental Theory and Practice in the Harding– Coolidge Era, 1973.

N O R Q U I S T, G R O V E R Grover Glenn Norquist is a prominent U.S. spokesperson and president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), an organization that is opposed to tax increases at all levels of government. He is an advocate of taxpayer protection pledges, which are signed by many Republican lawmakers in support of his no taxes views. He is considered a right-leaning libertarian*, focused more on fiscal policy rather than social conservatism. Norquist was born on October 19, 1956, in Sharon, Pennsylvania. He received his bachelor of arts in economics in 1978 and his master of business in 1981, both from Harvard University. In his early career, he worked as executive director of the National Taxpayers Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Norquist founded Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) in 1985. The goal of this organization was to significantly reduce government revenues as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Norquist has actively opposed federal tax increases proposed by the Bill Clinton* and Barack Obama* administrations. His most recent effort has been assuring that new Republican members of Congress sign taxpayer protection pledges promising not to vote for new taxes or for tax increases. Reference Grover Glenn Norquist, Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives, 2008.

NORRIS, GEORGE WILLIAM George Norris was born in Sandusky County, Ohio, on July 11, 1861. He worked to help support his family and attended Baldwin University for two years. He graduated and received a law degree from the Northern Indiana Normal School and Business Institute in 1883. Norris taught school for two years and then moved to Nebraska to practice law. Norris prospered in the 1880s and in the 1890s began his public career, serving as the prosecuting attorney for Furnas County (1890– 1895) and state judge for the fourteenth Judicial District (1896–1902). In 1902, he won a seat in Congress as a Republican. Norris quickly evolved into a powerful progressive* congressman, favoring railroad regulation, lower tariffs, and political reform. In the election of 1912*, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate.

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In domestic policy, Norris supported most of Woodrow Wilson’s* progressive reform program, but he strongly opposed internationalism in foreign policy. In 1917, Norris voted against arming American merchant ships and against the declaration of war on Germany. Reelected in 1918, Norris opposed American entry into the League of Nations. During the 1920s, Norris was constantly at odds with the business-dominated, conservative Republican administrations. Domestically, Norris was a thorn in Republican sides. No issue was more emotionally charged than that concerning the future of facilities built at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, during World War I*. Norris opposed administration attempts to sell the facilities to private interests at virtual give-away prices. Instead, he demanded that Muscle Shoals’s hydroelectric facilities be operated by the government for the welfare of the people of the Tennessee River Valley. By 1928, he had succeeded in gaining congressional approval for government operation of Muscle Shoals, only to have it vetoed by President Calvin Coolidge. A similar bill passed in 1931 was vetoed by President Herbert Hoover*. Norris did succeed in passing the Norris–La Guardia Labor Relations Act* of 1932. In the elections of 1928* and 1932*, Norris endorsed Alfred E. Smith* and Franklin D. Roosevelt* for president. Under a Democratic administration, Norris finally succeeded with his Muscle Shoals plan when Congress passed and Roosevelt signed a bill creating the Tennessee Valley Authority* in 1933. Norris also sponsored the Rural Electrification Act of 1936. He became a faithful supporter of Roosevelt. Norris lost his bid for reelection in 1942 and died on September 2, 1944. References Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Making of a Progressive, 1861–1912, 1963. Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Persistence of a Progressive, 1913–1933, 1971. Richard Lowitt, George W. Norris: The Triumph of a Progressive, 1933–1944, 1978.

N O R R I S – L A G U A R D I A L A B O R R E L AT I O N S ACT OF 1932 Early in the 1900s, organized labor viewed “government by injunction” as a new and dangerous form of oppression whereby federal judges became at once legislators, judges, and executioners. The courts exercised sweeping judicial controls over labor unions under the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890, and they used the antistrike injunction* frequently. Progressives* put political pressure on Congress, and the Clayton Act* of 1914 stated that labor unions did not necessarily come under antitrust laws. It prohibited the use of injunctions unless the court believed that a strike would cause irreparable damage to property and made boycotts, strikes, and peaceful demonstrations legal. Samuel Gompers*, head of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL), called the Clayton Act the “Magna Carta” of labor. But despite the law, the federal courts were full of justices from the old school, who looked on labor unions with suspicion. In addition, it was the custom of businesses early in the 1900s to extract a promise from employees

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not to join a labor union as a condition of employment. Such promises were called “yellow-dog contracts*” by workers. The Supreme Court had upheld such agreements. Organized labor felt the need to deal with the problems of injunctions and yellow-dog contracts. In 1932, Senator George Norris* of Nebraska and Congressman Fiorello La Guardia of New York submitted legislation to Congress. Professor Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School wrote the measure. It prohibited federal courts from issuing injunctions against ordinary collective bargaining practices—such as strikes, picketing, and boycotts—and made yellow-dog contracts unenforceable. Although reluctant about the measure, President Herbert Hoover* signed it on March 23, 1932. Court injunctions could no longer be used against legitimate union activities. The Norris–La Guardia Labor Relations Act of 1932 was one of the few genuinely progressive laws passed since the Wilson* administration. Reference C. O. Gregory and H. A. Katz, Labor and the Law, 1979.

NORTH AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was an economic agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States establishing a free trade* bloc between those three countries. It was enacted on January 1, 1994. NAFTA established lower tariffs, loosened regulations for transport, and established close trade ties between members. Moreover, it benefited the development of the national economies by taking advantage of labor supplies, natural resources, and investment opportunities in North America. Critics of NAFTA argued that it benefited the United States at the expense of Mexico and Canada and that it allowed for U.S. companies to seek cheaper labor in Mexico, thus contributing to the further deindustrialization of the United States. Reference Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, NAFTA Revisited: Achievements and Challenges, 2005.

N O R T H E R N PA C I F I C R A I LWAY Congress chartered the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1864 to build a transcontinental line from Lake Superior in Minnesota to Puget Sound in what is today Washington. Construction began in 1870 and was completed in 1883. During the depression of 1893*, the road went bankrupt and was reorganized by J. P. Morgan in 1896 as the Northern Pacific Railway*. It became part of James J. Hill’s* Northern Securities Company* in 1901 but was separated out again in 1904 when the Supreme Court, in the Northern Securities case, ordered the dissolution of the holding company*. The Northern Pacific Railway prospered until the 1920s. By that time, heavy debt structures and motor competition cut into its operating revenues.

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It only got worse during the Great Depression*, but with the advent of World War II, the Northern Pacific’s fortunes rose again. The road ceased to exist in 1970 when it merged with the Great Northern, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy*, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle railroads to become the Burlington Northern* System. Reference Louis T. Renz, The History of the Northern Pacific Railroad, 1980.

N O R T H E R N S E C U R I T I E S C O M PA N Y In 1901, J. P. Morgan* & Company and James J. Hill* cooperated to form a huge holding company*—the Northern Securities Company—to control the Northern Pacific Railway* and the Great Northern Railroad*. President Theodore Roosevelt* firmly believed that the holding company was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act*, so in February 1902, Roosevelt instructed Attorney General Philander C. Knox* to file suit for its dissolution. The case made its way to the Supreme Court and in 1904, in Northern Securities Company v. U.S. (193 U.S. 197), the Court upheld the government by a narrow majority and ordered the company’s dissolution. The decision was a major victory for reformers committed to antitrust activities. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

NORTHWEST ORDINANCE The Land Ordinance of 1785, which had provided for the orderly survey and sale of land in the so-called Old Northwest, had opened the region to settlement; the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided for its governance. The ordinance virtually repeated the colonial experience in the United States. In the earliest stage of development, the territory would be governed by a governor, secretary, and three judges appointed by Congress. When the population reached a total of 5,000 free, male inhabitants of voting age, the first representative government would emerge with the election of a bicameral legislature. From the Northwest Territory, no more than five nor fewer than three states would be formed; the area eventually became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. When a population of 60,000 was achieved, the people of the territory could draft a constitution and request admission to statehood in the Union, equal in all respects to the original states. During the territorial stage, all rights of citizenship were guaranteed. The ordinance barred slavery* and involuntary servitude from the Northwest Territory forever and encouraged “schools and the means of education.” Reference Merrill Jensen, The New Nation, 1950.

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N U C L E A R R E G U L AT O R Y C O M M I S S I O N By the 1960s, criticism of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began to appear on the grounds that a government agency responsible for regulating the atomic energy industry and protecting public health and safety, should not also be involved in promoting the industry itself. The apparent discrepancy first came to light in 1956. The AEC had approved the construction of a 100-megawatt fast-breeder reactor in Lagoona Beach, Michigan, by the Power Reactor Development Company, even though the AEC’s own safety experts had serious reservations about the project. There were other examples in subsequent years, and the rise of the environmental movement* in the 1960s intensified those concerns. In 1974, Congress passed the Energy Reorganization Act. It abolished the AEC and created the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to protect public health and safety and the Energy Research and Development Administration to promote the uses of nuclear energy. Reference Elizabeth S. Rolph, Nuclear Power and the Public Safety, 1979.

N U L L I F I C AT I O N C O N T R O V E R S Y See TARIFF OF 1828. NYE, GERALD PRENTICE Gerald P. Nye was born in Hortonville, Wisconsin, on December 19, 1892. He graduated from high school in 1911 and moved to Iowa to a career in journalism. Later he moved to North Dakota where he bought the Fryburg Pioneer in 1919 and the Griggs County Sentinel-Courier in 1920. In November 1925, Senator Edwin F. Ladd died, and Nye was appointed to fill the unexpired term. In an extremely close election, Nye won his own seat in 1926. He was critical of the Coolidge administration, seeing the president as the tool of big bankers and businessmen. During the Hoover* administration, Nye pushed hard for farm relief, and during the New Deal he was an especially vocal critic of the National Recovery Administration* and the National Labor Relations Board*. Nye gained national attention in 1934 by lobbying* against the military armaments industry, insisting that a special Senate committee investigate its practices. He chaired the Senate Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry, which met periodically between September 1934 and February 1936. Its purpose was to investigate possible connections between American banks and munitions, chemical, and powder manufacturers, whom Nye suspected of conspiring to get the United States into World War I. An ardent isolationist, Nye helped secure the Neutrality Acts* of the 1930s. He eventually accused Franklin D. Roosevelt* of intentionally leading the country into World War II*. In the election of 1944, Nye suffered a stunning defeat and abandoned his political career. He died on July 17, 1971.

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References Richard S. Kirkendall, The United States, 1929–1945: Years of Crisis and Change, 1974. New York Times, July 18, 1971. John E. Wiltz, In Search of Peace: The Senate Munitions Inquiry, 1934–1936, 1963.

NYE COMMITTEE See NYE, GERALD PRENTICE.

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O OBAMA, BARACK Barack Hussein Obama is the forty-fourth president of the United States, serving since 2009. Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979 and transferred to Columbia University in 1981. He graduated from Columbia with a bachelor of arts in political science in 1983. He worked as a community organizer in Chicago in the mid1980s. He later attended Harvard Law School in 1989, attaining his JD in 1991. Later that year, he took a two-year teaching position at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1992, he worked in a voter registration project in Illinois until 1993, when he joined a law firm focused on civil rights litigation. Obama was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996, serving in this office until 2004. He ran for the U.S. Senate from Illinois in 2004, serving in that capacity until 2008. In 2008, he was the Democratic candidate for president, running against Republican U.S. senator John McCain in an election that he won handily. Obama entered office at the height of the Great Recession*, to which he responded immediately, rushing stimulus polices and continuing George W. Bush’s* bailout policies to help resuscitate the faltering economy. During his first term in office, President Obama worked to implement health care reform. Known as “Obamacare,” his health care reform plan, the Affordable Care Act*, was signed into law in 2009. However, critics of the plan, particularly the Tea Party movement* and the Republican Party, alleged that it was a slippery slope into socialism and accused it of interfering with free enterprise in the health care market. Obama ran for a second term in 2012, defeating Republican candidate Mitt Romney by a comfortable margin. Reference David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, 2010.

O C A L A P L AT F O R M In 1890, representatives of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance* met in Ocala, Florida, to discuss the option of fielding a third political party in the elections of 1892. At the time, farm prices and farm income were severely depressed, and farmers were demanding the free coinage of silver, as well as a number of other government programs to regulate the railroads and banks. During the conference, the Southern Farmers’ Alliance issued a political platform, known historically as the Ocala Platform, calling for a graduated federal income tax*, 2 percent federal loans to farmers, creation of the subtreasury* program, lower tariffs, expansion of the

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money supply until there were $50 in circulation for every American, government ownership of the railroads, and direct election of U.S. senators. Although the Southern Farmers’ Alliance did not make any decision about whether to start a third party, the Ocala Platform did become important when the Populist Party* emerged shortly thereafter. Reference Theodore Saloutos, Farmer Movements in the South, 1865–1933, 1960.

O C C U PAT I O N A L S A F E T Y A N D H E A LT H ACT OF 1970 Ever since the late nineteenth century, the labor movement had demanded improved working conditions in factories and on farms, and they had come to believe that only the federal government had the muscle to monitor corporate safety practices. Businessmen tended to oppose that point of view, arguing to keep government out of business establishments and to allow market conditions to prevail. During the early twentieth century, the muckrakers* exposed safety problems in many American industries, and a number of companies undertook voluntary safety improvement programs. The passage of workmen’s compensation* laws also accelerated the drive to improve working conditions. Businessmen began to realize that productivity improved in safe plants. The Walsh–Healey Public Contracts Act* of 1936 required businesses with government contracts to observe basic safety standards, while the Metal and Nonmetallic Mine Safety Act of 1946 and the Federal Coal Mines Safety Act of 1952 launched federal regulation of mine safety. As part of his Great Society* program, President Lyndon B. Johnson* pushed for comprehensive health and safety legislation, but it was not until the Nixon* administration, in 1970, that Congress passed the Occupational Health and Safety Act. A year earlier, a mine explosion in Farmington, West Virginia, had killed seventy-eight miners. After this disaster, Congress passed the Coal Mine and Safety Act. The Occupational Safety and Health Act established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and empowered OSHA inspectors to enter any workplace, without a warrant or notice, to inspect it for safety violations. The law also established a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to conduct research. OSHA’s first years were highly controversial. Labor unions believed that the government was not vigorous enough in going after safety violations, whereas businessmen accused OSHA of being petty, bureaucratic, and insensitive. Reference John Mendelhoff, Regulating Safety: An Economic and Political Analysis of Occupational Safety and Health, 1979.

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET In 1921 Congress passed the Budget and Accounting Act and created the Bureau of the Budget. Its charge was to annually develop the federal government’s budget

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in a nonpolitical atmosphere. In 1937, the Committee on Administrative Management recommended an expansion of the Bureau of the Budget’s mission to include budget development and assistance to the office of the President of the United States. On April 25, 1939, as part of Reorganization Plan No.1, Congress established the Executive Office of the President and transferred the Bureau of the Budget to it. It soon developed into an indispensable presidential staff agency. The Bureau of the Budget was replaced by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in 1970 during the Nixon* administration. Soon, however, the Office of Management and Budget became quite controversial. As the Nixon administration became more deeply mired in the Watergate mess, the OMB assumed more and more responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the executive branch, often making decisions that the president or cabinet officials should have been making. It became known in Washington as the “Office of Meddling and Bumbling.” Subsequent presidents have worked to depoliticize the OMB. References Larry Berman, The Office of Management and Budget and the Presidency, 1921–1979, 1979. Aaron Wildavsky, The Politics of the Budgetary Process, 1974.

O F F I C E O F P R I C E A D M I N I S T R AT I O N When prices shot up in 1940 and 1941 because of the war in Europe and the expansion of the economy at home, many Americans became concerned about a severe inflationary spiral. That concern became even more intense after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the United States entered World War II. To prevent rapidly escalating prices, Congress passed the Emergency Price Control Act on January 31, 1942, establishing the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA became one of the most powerful and successful government agencies in U.S. history. It established rent control programs in most American cities and launched rationing programs for such things as gasoline, sugar, meat, and tires. Local offices of the OPA carefully monitored price and wage increases. The OPA was eminently successful. Although the gross national product doubled from 1941 to 1946, the Consumer Price Index rose only 27 percent. The OPA was dissolved in 1946. Reference Andrew H. Bartels, “The Politics of Price Control: The Office of Price Administration and the Dilemmas of Economic Stabilization,” Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1980.

OFFSHORING Offshoring is the process of relocating a labor process or an entire business process from one country to another, typically operational processes such as manufacturing. By relocating its operations abroad, multinational corporations* can save on labor costs. However, this process leads to the mass unemployment when

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employees are downsized* to save the company money. The deindustrialization of the U.S. Rust Belt* in the 1970s and 1980s, when heavy industries relocated much of their operations abroad, shows the devastating consequences of this process on large segments of the populations when thousands of people are thrown out of work in a region that lacks a diverse economy. Reference Jagdish N. Bhagwati et al., The Offshoring of American Jobs: What Response from U.S. Economic Policy, 2009.

OHIO AND ERIE CANAL The Ohio and Erie Canal, which was constructed from 1825 to 1833, ran a total of 308 miles and reached from Portsmouth on the Ohio River north to Cleveland on Lake Erie. When it was completed, the canal allowed freight traffic from upstate New York to move across the Erie Canal* to Lake Erie, down the Ohio and Erie Canal to the Ohio River, and from there down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. The canal dramatically dropped the prices of the manufactured goods reaching Cleveland and allowed farmers throughout Ohio to ship their commodities to market more efficiently. Reference Fon W. Boardman Jr., Canals, 1959.

O I L , C H E M I C A L , A N D AT O M I C W O R K E R S I N T E R N AT I O N A L U N I O N In the years after World War II*, the oil and gas industry was divided into a complex variety of labor organizations, including such groups as the Oil Workers International Union (OWIU), the United Gas, Coke, and Chemical Workers International Union (UGCCW), and the National Coalition of Oil Unions, a collective bargaining unit for a number of smaller independent unions. In 1955, the OWIU and the UGCCW merged to form the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union (OCAW). That move brought some consolidation to the industry, although there are still several competing unions. OCAW membership has not grown much past its original 160,000 members because of labor-saving technological changes in the industry. Its major rival is the 100,000-member International Chemical Workers Union, which was organized in 1940. Reference Harry Seligson, Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, 1960.

“OKIES” “Okie” was a derogatory term applied by Californians to the hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Southwestern states who entered California during the 1930s.

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The Okie migration began during the 1920s, but it multiplied during the 1930s, when the Great Depression* prompted a general increase in migration throughout the country. The word “Okie” was used indiscriminately for some 300,000 to 400,000 migrants originating not only in Oklahoma, but also in such states as Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Perhaps 100,000 of them truly came from Oklahoma. Designations such as “Texie” or “Arkie,” although used, were less common. The migrants came to California mainly by automobile, the most common route to the west being U.S. Route 66. Drought, dust storms, and falling commodity prices drove them west, but they were also drawn by rumors that California was the “land of milk and honey.” Most of them arrived during the years 1935–1937, coinciding with the Dust Bowl* on the Plains. Floods left many without shelter early in 1938. In mid-1939 came publication of John Steinbeck’s* novel, The Grapes of Wrath, a sympathetic portrayal of the migrant Joad family. The book let an entire nation know of the poverty that tens of thousands of “Okie” families were suffering. In 1940, Congress created the Select Committee to Investigate Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens, which traveled extensively and interviewed more than 500 witnesses. Its recommendations had little significance for the Okies, however, for by the time of the committee’s report, defense industries had absorbed most of the unemployed, conferring upon the Okies an enduring place in the economy and society of California. Reference Walter J. Stein, California and the Dust Bowl Migration, 1973.

O L D A G E R E V O LV I N G P E N S I O N S , LT D . See TOWNSEND, FRANCIS E. O N L I N E E D U C AT I O N In the twenty-first century, online education in post-secondary education has grown by leaps and bounds by both private and public institutions. The University of Phoenix, founded in 1979, launched its online program in 1989. Since its online efforts, University of Phoenix has become a major for-profit higher education institution that has students nationwide. Moreover, it also set the standard of what was possible for online education. Other schools, like DeVry University, Southern New Hampshire University, as well as some public state university programs have followed suit. Although the convenience of online education has afforded veterans, working adults, and nontraditional students access to a college education, it arguably has eroded the stability of the traditional brick-and-mortar school as it has lowered labor costs. Reference Regina L. Garza Mitchell, Online Education, 2010.

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OPEN DOOR POLICY In 1898, as a result of the Spanish–American War, the United States acquired the Philippine Islands from Spain in the Treaty of Paris. One of the primary American objectives in acquiring the Philippines was to gain access to lucrative Asian markets for U.S. goods. The largest market by far was China. But just when the United States had acquired a foothold in Asia, the British, French, and Germans were busy expanding their “spheres of influence” in China. Afraid that the European powers would transform China into one colony or a series of colonies, effectively locking out the United States, Secretary of State John Hay* issued what he called his “Open Door Notes”—proposals to the European powers that the territorial integrity of China be respected and that the country remain open to the commerce of all nations. The so-called “Open Door Policy” became the backbone of the U.S. Far East policy in the twentieth century. Reference Marvin Kalb and Elie Abel, Roots of Involvement: The U.S. in Asia, 1784–1971, 1971.

OPEN SHOP The term “open shop” refers to a working environment in which an employee does not need to join a labor union in order to be hired. During the 1930s and 1940s, when labor unions gained great power in the United States because of such legislation as the National Labor Relations Act* of 1935 and the National Industrial Recovery Act* of 1933, the closed shop* environment became increasingly common, especially in the heavily industrialized and heavily unionized regions of the Northeast and Midwest. A backlash set in after World War II and resulted in passage of the Taft–Hartley Act* of 1947, which outlawed closed shops. Reference R. Alton Lee, Truman and Taft–Hartley, 1966.

OREGON TRAIL The so-called “Oregon Trail” was a 2,020-mile path across the United States connecting St. Joseph, Missouri, with the Oregon Territory. Along the Oregon Trail were Fort Laramie in what is today Wyoming, the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, Fort Bridger, Fort Hall on the Snake River, and then the Columbia River. Tens of thousands of American settlers followed the Oregon Trail in the 1840s, giving the United States an unshakable claim to the region, which the British ultimately recognized in the Oregon Treaty* of 1846. Reference David Lavender, Westward Vision: The Story of the Oregon Trail, 1972.

O R E G O N T R E AT Y O F 1 8 4 6 When the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory* from France in 1803, the question of boundaries was left undetermined. After the War of 1812*, the

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Convention of 1818 between the United States and Great Britain extended the northern boundary from the Lake of the Woods westward to the crest of the Rocky Mountains along the 49th parallel. Beyond that, the territory west to the Pacific (Oregon country) was unresolved. Both nations agreed to joint occupation, an arrangement to be continued as of 1827. The Oregon country extended from the 42nd parallel, the northern limit of Mexican California, to 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude, the southern boundary of Russian America. As U.S. interest in the region increased, demands for a resolution of the boundary question became stronger. In the election of 1844, the issue was one of the major proposals of the Democratic Party. After his election to the presidency, James K. Polk* pursued the issue aggressively, and the dispute was finally settled by the Oregon Treaty of June 15, 1846. It split Oregon at the 49th parallel, with the land south of the line becoming United States territory. Reference Henry S. Commager, ed., Documents of American History, 1948.

O R G A N I Z AT I O N O F A M E R I C A N S TAT E S The Organization of American States (OAS) was created after World War II as part of a U.S.-inspired anticommunist collective security arrangement around the globe. Although initially conceived at the 1945 Mexico City Conference, the OAS was not organized until the 1948 Bogota Conference. It was an inter-American defense structure which was integrated into the United Nations under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The OAS included most of the independent nations of the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of Canada. Cuba was excluded from the OAS in 1962. Essentially, the Monroe Doctrine* was the heart and soul of the OAS. It constituted a warning to the Soviet Union and other Communist states that an attack on one OAS member would be considered an attack on all of them. At the same time, the OAS charter preserved the right of the United States to act unilaterally in protection of its own national security. Critics of the OAS charged, from the very beginning, that it was only a subterfuge for increasing U.S. economic domination of Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. References M. Margaret Ball, The OAS in Transition, 1969. O. C. Stoetzer, The Organization of American States: An Introduction, 1965.

O R G A N I Z AT I O N O F P E T R O L E U M E X P O R T I N G COUNTRIES In response to oil price cuts by the international oil companies, five oil-producing nations—Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela—founded the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in September 1960. In subsequent years, other countries have joined OPEC, including Algeria, Qatar, Libya, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Ecuador, Nigeria, and Gabon. The oil-producing nations enjoyed a fifty–fifty split of oil profits with the major oil companies, but they had no

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power in setting oil prices. They initially formed OPEC to gain some power over oil prices. Throughout the 1960s, however, OPEC had relatively little power. But in the 1970s, the organization became an enormously powerful cartel. Increased global oil consumption combined with declining oil production in the United States to give OPEC new economic leverage in the early 1970s. OPEC became committed to raising oil prices as well as nationalizing foreign-owned production and refining facilities. In 1973, Middle Eastern politics gave OPEC even more leverage. When the Yom Kippur War broke out between Israel and the Arab states, a number of Arab leaders concluded that the United States had sided with the Israelis. The Arab members of OPEC thus imposed an oil embargo and massive price increases. From 1973 to 1978, the international price of oil increased from $3 a barrel to $16 a barrel. The Iranian Revolution disrupted Iranian production and drove oil prices even higher—to $36 a barrel early in 1981. Dependent on OPEC oil production, the United States became more conscious of Arab needs in its foreign policy in the 1970s and 1980s, increasing arms shipments to them and trying to be more even-handed in negotiating Arab–Israeli differences. In the 1980s, OPEC lost some of the punch it had enjoyed during the 1970s. The high price of oil in the 1970s stimulated conservation measures on the consumption side. American oil consumption began a steady decline that eased the upward pressure on prices. At the same time, global production of oil increased because of the high prices and new discoveries. Oil prices declined gradually until early 1985, when they collapsed, at one point reaching only $9 a barrel. They stabilized and eventually recovered to about $22 a barrel in 1990, but OPEC, with excess capacity, lost some of its political power and suffered from a great deal of internal squabbling. OPEC has tried to impose production quotas to stabilize prices, but the efforts have failed. References Abdul Amir Q. Kubbach, OPEC: Past and Present, 1974. Dankwart A. Rustow and John F. Mugno, OPEC: Success and Prospects, 1976.

OUTSOURCING Outsourcing is the process of contracting out work from a business to third parties, often freelancers or independent contractors. This can include the process of offshoring*, meaning that a job process is sent abroad, while some processes are maintained domestically. The term outsourcing was widely used in the early twenty-first century as many businesses sought to reduce labor costs by eliminating positions and contracting work out to individuals willing to work for cheaper, often merely working on contractual piece work rather than an hourly wage. As many white-collar professions have become prone to being outsourced, they also lose their own potential for higher wages, because employers can just outsource the work. Reference Mike Johnson, Outsourcing, 1997.

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OWEN, ROBERT DALE Robert Dale Owen was born in Great Britain in 1771 and made his fortune in the textile industry. Although he enriched himself and his family, Owen had severe misgivings about the exploitation of workers in a capitalist system, and he began to think about socialist and communitarian alternatives. In 1825, Owen decided to act on his misgivings and try a utopian experiment in the New World. He purchased land near New Harmony, Indiana, and launched a utopian community, with all property held in common. The experiment lasted only three years before internal bickering destroyed the colony. Owen subsequently confined his activities to the British economy. He died in 1858. Reference Richard W. Leopold, Robert Dale Owen, 1940.

OWENS–GLASS ACT OF 1913 See FEDERAL RESERVE ACT OF 1913.

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P PA C K E R S A N D S T O C K YA R D S A C T O F 1 9 2 1 On August 15, 1921, Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act. The law did not exactly fit the pattern of “normalcy*” prevailing early in the 1920s. Pushed by the farm bloc* in Congress, the act gave the Department of Agriculture* the power to prohibit unfair trade practices in the livestock, poultry, and dairy industries. Gross overproduction had drastically reduced commodity prices after World War I*, but large numbers of farmers were saddled with high fixed costs because of debts they had undertaken to increase war production. By the early 1920s, a new farm crisis was emerging, and farmers were once again, as they had done in the 1890s, blaming middlemen and processors for their plight. The Packers and Stockyards Act forced all operators of stockyards and marketing cooperatives to register with the Department of Agriculture and to refrain from artificially manipulating prices. Although the general tone of the legislation was not consistent with normalcy’s retreat from government interference in business, conservative Republicans had little choice but to go along with the farm bloc. Reference James H. Shideler, Farm Crisis, 1919–1923, 1957.

PA L E Y, W I L L I A M S A M U E L William S. Paley was born September 28, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois, to Russian immigrant parents. His family had made a fortune in the cigar business in the United States, and Young Paley graduated from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania in 1922. He immediately entered the family business as a vice president. In 1924, Paley signed a contract with WCAU radio* to advertise the “La Palina” cigar line. In the process, he became fascinated with the new medium. In 1928, Paley purchased the United Independent Broadcasters Network, a small radio chain; in 1929, he changed its name to the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). He then pioneered the network system by offering programming free to affiliates in return for advertising revenues. By 1930, there were seventy radio stations in CBS. By the end of the 1930s, CBS consisted of 114 stations, and advertising revenues were twenty times greater than they had been in 1930. Paley was also the father of broadcast journalism, a new program format that became successful during World War II with Edward R. Murrow’s broadcasts from England. With the jump into television in the 1950s, CBS became the largest advertising medium in the world, its revenues exceeding $4 billion in 1983. Paley continued to play a direct role in supervising CBS in the 1980s. He died on October 26, 1990.

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References Erik Barnouw, A History of American Broadcasting (3 vols.), 1966, 1968, 1970. Les Brown, Television: The Business Behind the Box, 1974. David Halberstam, The Powers That Be, 1979.

PA N A M A C A N A L Z O N E The Panama Canal Zone was an area granted to the United States “in perpetuity” by the Republic of Panama in the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903. The zone of territory was ten miles wide (five miles on each side of the center line of the Panama Canal), beginning in the Caribbean Sea three miles from the low-water mark and extending through Panama into the Pacific Ocean to a distance of three miles from the low-water mark. The zone did not include the cities of Panama and Colon or the harbors adjacent to the cities. Other lands outside the zone were also granted that were deemed necessary for the construction, maintenance, operation, and protection of the canal. In all, the area granted totaled 552.8 miles, of which 361.86 square miles were land. The region was of enormous strategic and economic significance to the United States. Before the completion of the Panama Canal, freight traveling from the west coast to the east coast of the United States had to go one of three ways: overland; by water to the isthmus, across the isthmus by land, and then back up the coast to its destination; or all the way around Cape Horn through the Strait of Magellan. The Panama Canal was an enormous improvement in the American transportation infrastructure. In terms of geopolitics, the canal gave the United States the ability to move naval vessels from ocean to ocean with much greater speed. In 1932, Harmodio Arias was elected president of Panama, and a dispute broke out between Panama and the United States in 1934 when he refused to accept the annual $250,000 payment from the United States. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* had devalued the dollar in 1933, thereby undermining the value of the payment in Arias’s opinion. Negotiations took place to resolve this dispute, along with other problems, and in 1936, the United States signed a treaty that was ratified in 1939. In the treaty, the United States received the right to send troops to Panama to defend the Panama Canal but lost the right to interfere in Panamanian internal affairs. In 1951, the U.S. Congress passed the Panama Canal Act, which provided for a U.S.-appointed governor to preside over the Panama Canal Zone, with the Panama Canal Company, a U.S. government–owned corporation, operating a variety of commercial enterprises. That political arrangement lasted until 1977 when the U.S. Senate ratified a new treaty with Panama gradually turning over control of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians. Under the terms of that treaty, the government of the Panama Canal Zone was dissolved in 1979. Reference Michael J. Hogan, The Panama Canal in American Politics: Domestic Advocacy and the Evolution of Policy, 1986.

PA n I C o F 1 8 1 9

PA N A M A R E F I N I N G C O M PA N Y v. R YA N The first major Supreme Court assault on the New Deal came on January 7, 1935, in Panama Refining Company v. Ryan. Section 9(c) of the National Industrial Recovery Act* (NIRA) of 1933 had given the president power to regulate petroleum shipments. Franklin D. Roosevelt* had established the Petroleum Administrative Board (PAB) to administer the National Recovery Administration’s (NRA) petroleum code. Executive orders from the president then prohibited the shipment of “hot oil” (oil exceeding quota production limits) across state lines. The PAB hoped to increase oil prices gradually by limiting production. The Panama Refining Company argued that the executive orders had failed to mention any criminal penalties and that one of its employees had been arrested and jailed for violating the rule, which was not a true law. By an 8–1 majority, with only Justice Benjamin Cardozo dissenting, the Court declared Section 9( c) of the NIRA unconstitutional because it essentially delegated legislative power to the executive branch. This was a bad omen for the entire NRA, whose constitutionality would soon be tested in the Schechter* case. Late in 1935, as part of the “Little NRA,” Congress responded to the Panama decision by passing the Connally Act*, which did prohibit the interstate shipment of “hot oil.” References Peter H. Irons, The New Deal Lawyers, 1982. Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law, 1956.

PA N I C O F 1 8 1 9 After the War of 1812*, the United States entered a period of political quiescence, known as the “Era of Good Feelings,” which did not end until the economic decline known to historians as the Panic of 1819. From 1815 to 1819, the American economy had boomed. Along with the economic growth went a period of frantic speculation and growth in the number of new banks. The Second Bank of the United States* pursued an extremely loose money policy that pushed the financial system toward serious overextension. So-called “wildcat banks” appeared all over the country. These took their name from their location in areas so remote that “only wildcats lived there.” They recklessly printed bank notes that could be redeemed only at the issuing bank, which usually meant not at all. By 1819, there were more than 420 banks in the United States, all of them printing bank notes and making loans, with little central direction, to say nothing of control. The administration of President James Monroe grew increasingly concerned about the speculation, and in 1819, the Bank of the United States began calling in its loans and insisting that all state banks redeem their paper bank notes in gold and silver, which all had contractually promised to do. The problem, of course, was that most of those banks had printed paper currency far in excess of their hard currency reserves. A panic swept the country as hundreds of banks went under, unable to make the promised redemptions. The financial panic only intensified an industrial downturn that had begun in 1818. Finally, throughout the South and

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West, where farmers had gone deeply into debt to finance production increases after 1815, bankruptcies and land foreclosures became commonplace as farm prices collapsed. All these problems were part of the Panic of 1819. In terms of its political consequences, the Panic of 1819 exacerbated sectionalism in the United States by magnifying the differences between the industrial North, the commercial agriculture of the South, and the small farming of the West. Many southerners also blamed the Bank of the United States in particular, and northerners in general, for the calamity they experienced. Never again would southerners trust the North. The “Era of Good Feelings” was indeed over. Reference George Dangerfield, The Era of Good Feelings, 1952.

PA N I C O F 1 8 3 7 During the second administration of President Andrew Jackson*, the United States experienced an economic boom that was accompanied by reckless financial expansion and speculation. The federal debt had been liquidated in 1834, and foreign trade was booming. The federal government was able to pay its bills easily through customs duties and the proceeds from booming sales of public land. But beneath the superficial prosperity were serious and fundamental problems in the economy. When Jackson began withdrawing federal money from the Second Bank of the United States* in 1833 and depositing it in so-called “pet banks,” the infusion of money into state banks inspired an irresponsible expansion of loans, paper currencies, and the chartering of new, undercapitalized banks. Farmers buying land in western areas usually used bank notes to make their payments, and the U.S. Treasury was soon awash in the unreliable paper currency. Then, in 1836, the federal government distributed more than $36 million in surplus funds to the states, which only fueled more speculation and expansion. Finally, the demise of the Second Bank of the United States during the Jackson years eliminated the only existing check on the activities of the state banks. From 1829 to 1837, the volume of bank notes in circulation increased from $48 million to $150 million. The Panic of 1837 was precipitated by Jackson’s decision to suppress the speculation. On July 11, 1836, he issued the famous Specie Circular*, which required that in the future all purchases of public lands had to be paid for in hard currency or in paper currency backed by hard currency. Combined with a financial depression in Great Britain, which drastically reduced British investment in the United States, the Specie Circular led to a financial panic in the United States. Cotton prices dropped drastically, businesses failed by the thousands, public land sales all but ceased, and unemployment increased alarmingly. The subsequent depression lasted until 1841. References J. M. McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance, 1972. Peter Temin, The Jacksonian Economy, 1969.

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PA N I C O F 1 8 5 7 During the 1850s, the American economy was dangerously weak thanks to serious overbuilding of railroads and overextension by banks to finance the construction. On August 24, 1857, the New York City branch of the Ohio Life Insurance Company failed, triggering a financial panic throughout much of the Northeast. Several hundred banks failed, most banks suspended specie payments, and unemployment increased. The Panic of 1857 had serious political ramifications, however, because the South was affected hardly at all by the economic downturn. Southerners saw the Panic of 1857 as proof that their own economic and social institutions were vastly superior to those of the North. Reference Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s, 1978.

PA N I C O F 1 8 7 3 During and immediately after the Civil War*, the American economy boomed. Large areas of the West had been opened up to agriculture, and in the process, there had been an unprecedented volume of railroad construction. From 1867 to 1873, more than 30,000 miles of new roads had been constructed at an enormous capital cost. In September 1873, the large firm of Jay Cooke* & Company, which at the time was actively engaged in financing the building of the Northern Pacific* Railroad, went into bankruptcy, precipitating a financial panic throughout the Northeast. A wave of bank and brokerage failures ensued, and stock prices collapsed. Consumer prices began a steady decline that did not really end until the mid-1890s, and unemployment increased dramatically. Economic historians consider the Panic of 1873 to be the opening stage in a period of economic instability that lasted for more than twenty years. References John F. Stover, The Life and Decline of the American Railroad, 1970. George R. Taylor and Irene D. Neu, The American Railroad Network, 1861–1890, 1956.

PA N I C O F 1 8 9 3 See DEPRESSION OF 1893. PA N I C O F 1 9 0 7 The Panic of 1907 was brief in duration but significant in its financial implications. In March 1907, the New York Stock Exchange* went into a drastic decline. The subsequent public panic led to runs on banks and the failure of thousands of businesses. The Panic of 1907 exposed real weaknesses in the financial system, particularly the inability of banks to acquire additional currency during emergencies. The panic led to passage of the Aldrich–Vreeland Act on May 30, 1908. That law gave national banks permission, for a period of six years, to issue notes backed by

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commercial paper and state, county, and municipal bonds; the notes could be fully circulating. The purpose of the bill was to provide a measure of elasticity to the currency, allowing banks in times of financial emergency to locate needed reserves. The act also established a National Monetary Commission, headed by Senator Nelson Aldrich, to study the nation’s currency system and make policy recommendations. These recommendations, reported in 1912, led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. References George Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement, 1962. Henry P. Willis, The Federal Reserve System, 1923.

PA R I T Y The term “parity” in American economic history refers to a method for determining a ratio of equality between the prices that farmers receive for their commodities and the prices they have to pay for their supplies. From the late nineteenth century into the 1930s, farmers experienced a long-term decline in commodity prices even as the cost of their supplies often climbed. Farmers began to demand “parity” between their income and their costs. During the 1920s, people such as Henry C. Wallace, Henry A. Wallace*, George Peek*, and George Warren* began making statistical comparisons to demonstrate the declining buying power of rural Americans. It was not until the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933 that Congress formally implemented the parity concept by establishing the years 1909–1914—the so-called “Golden Years of Agriculture”-to determine an equitable ratio between costs and income for farmers. That formula was then used in determining price supports for various commodities. The Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1938 set the ratio at 75–90 percent, and subsequent legislation in the 1940s moved it up to 90 percent. The notion was amended again in the Agriculture Act of 1954* to use the previous decade’s production market price ratios to determine price supports. Reference John D. Black, Parity, Parity, Parity, 1972.

PAT M A N , W R I G H T Wright Patman, the twentieth-century populist* congressman from east Texas, was born on August 6, 1893, in Patman’s Switch, Texas. After graduating from high school, Patman went to Cumberland University and left there in 1916 with a law degree. While studying law, Patman had also been a cotton farmer. He was admitted to the Texas bar in 1916 and began practicing law at Hughes Springs. He became assistant county attorney for Cass County that year but left when World War I* broke out. Patman was a machine gun officer during the war and stayed in the army until 1919. For the rest of his life, he had a powerful sympathy with the interests of dirt farmers and veterans. He resumed his law practice after the war,

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serving in the Texas state legislature from 1921 to 1924 and as district attorney for the 5th Judicial District in Texas from 1924 to 1929. Patman was elected to Congress as a Democrat in the election of 1928, and he remained there for the next forty-six years. During the New Deal* era, Patman consistently promoted federal legislation offering assistance to veterans and farmers in the form of bonuses, mortgage moratoriums, and credit assistance. Suspicious of banks, railroads, and large corporations, Patman was also a consistent supporter of antitrust actions. Although generally loyal to the New Deal, he was still independent enough on matters affecting veterans and poor farmers to occasionally frustrate the White House. Patman died on March 8, 1976. Reference New York Times, March 9, 1976.

PAT M A N B O N U S B I L L O F 1 9 3 5 See ADJUSTED COMPENSATION ACT OF 1936. PAT R O N S O F H U S B A N D R Y See NATIONAL GRANGE. PAT T E R S O N , J O H N H E N R Y John Henry Patterson was born on December 13, 1844, near Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from Dayton High School, joined the Union army during the Civil War*, and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1867. He returned home and went into the coal-selling business with his brothers. To stop employees from stealing from the cash box, Patterson installed a cash register, which had been recently invented by James Ritty. Patterson spent the next seventeen years in the coal-marketing business and in managing coal properties, but in 1884, he decided to buy a controlling interest in the National Manufacturing Company, a small, weak, cash register company. Patterson renamed it the National Cash Register Company late in 1884. Patterson engaged in an ambitious advertising and marketing campaign and set up a research department to keep improving his machines. He had come upon a product that was destined to be a necessity in every retail establishment in the country. When Patterson died on May 7, 1922, the National Cash Register Company had 10,000 employees and annual sales exceeding $30 million. Reference Samuel Crowther, John H. Patterson: Pioneer in Industrial Warfare, 1923.

PAT T E R S O N , W I L L I A M A L L E N William Allen Patterson was born on October 1, 1899, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He went to work as an office boy in San Francisco for the Wells Fargo Bank and Trust

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Company* in 1914; fifteen years later, he was a vice president. Patterson moved to Seattle in 1929 to become an assistant to Philip Johnson, the president of the Boeing* Airplane Company. In 1931, Patterson and Johnson together established United Air Lines, of which Patterson became president in 1934. He served as president until resigning in 1966, by which time United Air Lines was the largest domestic airline in the country. Reference Charles Kelly Jr., The Sky’s the Limit: A History of the Airlines, 1963.

PAY N E – A L D R I C H TA R I F F O F 1 9 0 9 During the presidential campaign of 1908, Republican candidate William Howard Taft* promised tariff reform and a strong push to force tariff rates down, which the progressives* were generally demanding. Conservatives in the Republican Party, however, were more in tune with the sentiments of big business, and they wanted to maintain or even increase tariff levels. When Congress convened, progressives hoped to see Taft act on his pledge, but in the hands of Congressman Sereno E. Payne and Senator Nelson Aldrich, the reform never took place. Although there were modest reductions on some items, the tariff escalated into a series of increases on a wide variety of more than 800 products. Progressives expected Taft to veto the bill but he surprised them by signing it into law. The Payne–Aldrich Tariff of 1909 disillusioned a number of prominent progressive Republicans, including Senator Robert M. La Follette* of Wisconsin, and led to the formation of the insurgent Progressive, or “Bull Moose,” Party in the election of 1912*. Reference Horace S. Merrill and Marion G. Merrill, The Republican High Command, 1897–1913, 1971.

PEACE CORPS When John F. Kennedy* entered the White House in 1961, he was riding the crest of a wave of youthful optimism in the United States. In his inaugural address, he asked Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Using the Civilian Conservation Corps* of the 1930s as a model, Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961 to train young Americans by the thousands to live and work in the Third World on temporary assignments, teaching English, vocational skills, nutrition, preventive health care, and agriculture to poor people around the world. Tens of thousands of Americans participated in the program during the next decade. In 1971, the Peace Corps, VISTA, and several other volunteer programs were combined into the federal government’s ACTION agency. References David Burner, John F. Kennedy, 1988. Roger G. Carey, The Peace Corps, 1970.

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PECORA, FERDINAND Ferdinand Pecora, who gained a national reputation as legal counsel to the Senate Banking and Currency Committee in 1933 and 1934, was born in Nicosia, Sicily, on January 6, 1882. His family immigrated to the United States in 1887. Pecora graduated from the City College of New York and then took a law degree from the New York Law School in 1906. After practicing law for several years, Pecora became assistant district attorney in New York County from 1918 to 1922 and chief assistant district attorney from 1922 to 1930. A Theodore Roosevelt*–style progressive* who converted to the Democratic Party in the 1920s, Pecora was hired by Senator Peter Norbeck of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee in January 1933 to serve as legal counsel for its investigation into banking and securities fraud. When the new Democratic Senate took over in March 1933, Senator Duncan Fletcher of Florida took over the chairmanship of the committee and gave Pecora a free hand. During 1933 and 1934, Pecora worked tirelessly exposing tax and securities fraud, rigged stock market pools*, complicated holding company* networks, and unethical as well as criminal business practices by such people as J. P. Morgan*, A. H. Wiggin*, Clarence Dillon, Winthrop Aldrich*, Thomas W. Lamont*, and George and Richard Whitney*. The hearings led directly to the Securities Exchange Act* of 1934, which Pecora helped draft. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* named him to serve as one of the original members of the Securities and Exchange Commission* (SEC). Pecora resigned from the SEC in January 1935 to accept Governor Herbert Lehman’s appointment as justice of the Supreme Court of New York, and he served there until 1950. Pecora died on December 7, 1971. References Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 2: The Coming of the New Deal, 1959. Who Was Who in America, 1973, 5:561.

PEEK, GEORGE NELSON George N. Peek was born in Polo, Illinois, on November 19, 1873. In 1885, the family moved to a farm near Oregon, Illinois. Peek graduated from high school in 1891 and attended Northwestern University for a year before going to work as a salesman for Deere and Company in Minneapolis. He rose quickly in the company and in 1901 was named general manager of the John Deere* Plow Company in Omaha, Nebraska. Within a few years, Peek had transformed the company into a highly profitable concern. He moved to Moline, Illinois, in 1911 to become vice president of sales for Deere and Company. These were prosperous times for farmers, and Peek’s reputation grew. When the United States entered World War I*, Alexander Legge*, an executive of International Harvester Company, recommended Peek as the industrial representative to the War Industries Board* (WIB). Peek resigned from Deere and served with distinction, gaining national attention and the respect of WIB chairman Bernard Baruch*. In 1918, Baruch had Peek appointed head of the postwar Industrial Board (IB) to lower prices and stimulate industrial growth. Frustrated because of the IB’s lack of power, Peek resigned and returned to Illinois as president of the Moline Plow Company.

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Early in the 1920s, the agricultural depression swept through the country. Peek realized that if farmers in general and Moline Plow in particular were going to prosper, American agriculture had to be made profitable again. In 1922, Peek developed a comprehensive farm relief plan, using protective tariffs, marketing cooperatives, government loans, and a domestic price support scheme. He proposed that the federal government purchase surplus crops at a fair price and export them at the world price. An equalization fee for each unit of a commodity sold by the farmer would be collected to make up the difference when the domestic price was higher than the export price. In Congress, the proposal became known as the McNary– Haugen plan*, and Peek resigned his position at Moline Plow to lobby full-time for the legislation. The bill faced concerted opposition from agricultural processors, middlemen, urban politicians, and conservative Republicans. When it finally passed Congress in 1927 and 1928, President Calvin Coolidge vetoed it both times. Frustrated as a Republican, Peek endorsed Alfred E. Smith* for president in 1928 and Franklin D. Roosevelt* in 1932. In return, Roosevelt named him head of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration* (AAA) in 1933. It was a post that Peek hated. He believed in an export solution to the farm crisis, not in production cuts. Peek resigned from the AAA in 1933 and was appointed head of the Export– Import Bank*, but he quit that, too, in 1935. Peek returned to the Republican Party in 1936 and died on December 17, 1943. Reference Gilbert C. Fite, George N. Peek and the Fight for Farm Parity, 1954.

PENDLETON ACT OF 1883 Throughout U.S. history, the political party in power in Washington has dictated and controlled much of the federal employment structure. As the United States industrialized, however, the demands for a civil service of competent individuals who were free of political corruption increased dramatically. Reformers began calling for civil service reform. When President James Garfield was assassinated by a disappointed office-seeker in 1881, demands for reform became even more intense, so in 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, sponsored by Senator George H. Pendleton of Ohio. The law established a Civil Service Commission, called for the development of a competitive civil service examination, prohibited the levying of political campaign contributions on federal employees, and initially classified one-tenth of federal jobs as protected civil service jobs. It was the beginning of the modern civil service system. Reference Ari Hoogenboom, Fighting the Spoilsmen, 1961.

P E N N E Y, J A M E S C A S H J. C. Penney was born on September 16, 1875, in Hamilton, Missouri. He graduated from high school in 1893 and went to work in a local dry goods store.

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Penney worked in several dry goods stores in Ohio and Colorado until 1899, when he moved to Evanston, Wyoming, to work in yet another dry goods store. He moved to Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 1902 to manage a store in which his employers allowed him to purchase a one-third interest for $2,000. Penney began buying up other small stores and established his headquarters in Salt Lake City in 1904. By 1911, Penney owned twenty-two stores in the intermountain west; that total increased to forty-eight in 1917, when Penney bought out his partners and moved the corporate offices to New York City. After World War I, Penney expanded his chain store department stores enormously. By 1929, they totaled 1,450 stores with $209 million in annual sales. When World War II broke out, there were more than 1,600 J. C. Penney department stores throughout the United States, and the company had become the most successful chain store operation in the country. Penney remained chairman of the board until 1948 and remained a member of the board of directors until his death on February 12, 1971. References N. Beasley, Main Street Merchant: The Story of J.C. Penney, 1948. New York Times, February 13, 1971. James Cash Penney, Fifty Years with the Golden Rule, 1950.

P E N N S Y LVA N I A C A N A L William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, long dreamed of a canal connecting the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers, but realization of that dream did not occur until the nineteenth century. Completion of the Erie Canal* in upstate New York in 1825 had hurt Pennsylvania by drawing commercial traffic north. To offset that problem, the state financed construction of the Pennsylvania Canal, which was completed in 1834. It connected Philadelphia with Pittsburgh through a series of interconnecting canals and railroads. It was an engineering marvel that managed to carry freight over the Allegheny Mountains. The average trip took four days and covered 394 miles. Reference Fon W. Boardman Jr., Canals, 1959.

P E N N S Y LVA N I A R A I L R O A D The Pennsylvania Railroad (PR) was first chartered in 1846, and by 1854, the line reached from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The line then extended outward from Harrisburg to Erie, Buffalo, Baltimore, Jersey City, and New York City in the 1860s. The railroad also leased a number of other lines to expand its network. By 1900, the PR had more than 10,000 miles of track in thirteen states and employed more than 265,000 people. Because of conservative management, the PR had a reputation for financial soundness. Despite that leadership, the PR suffered steady erosions in its revenues after World War II because of air and truck competition. To eliminate track duplication, the PR merged with the New York Central Railroad* in

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1968 to form the Penn Central system, but it went bankrupt in 1970. Later in the decade, Conrail* and Amtrak* took over most of the PR’s financial and physical assets. References Stephen Salisbury, No Way to Run a Railroad, 1982. H. W. Schorter, The Growth and Development of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 1927.

P E O P L E ’ S PA R T Y See POPULIST PARTY. PERKINS, FRANCES Frances Perkins was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 10, 1880. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1902, taught school for five years, and then moved to Chicago where she worked at Jane Addams’s Hull House. Perkins received a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1910 and then became secretary of the New York City Consumers* League. In 1912, she became secretary of the New York Committee on Safety, a position that brought her to the attention of state legislators Alfred E. Smith* and Robert Wagner*, both of whom shared her concerns about the needs of immigrants and the working poor. After she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City in 1912, which killed 146 women laborers, she spent the rest of her life working on behalf of state and federal labor legislation. In 1919, Governor Smith appointed her to the New York State Industrial Commission, which administered the state’s labor legislation, and in 1926, she became chairman of the commission. Perkins had also become close to Eleanor Roosevelt* in Democratic Party activities for women in New York. In 1929, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt* appointed Perkins the state industrial commissioner. Four years later, Roosevelt named her secretary of labor, the first woman to hold a cabinet position in American history. In that position, she headed the New Deal’s* drive for prolabor legislation and headed the president’s Committee on Economic Security*, which led to the Social Security Act* of 1935. Perkins served as secretary of labor until 1945. From 1946 to 1953, Perkins was a member of the United States Civil Service Commission. She died on May 14, 1965. References George Martin, Madame Secretary: Frances Perkins, 1976. New York Times, May 15, 1965.

P E R K I N S , G E O R G E W. George W. Perkins, whose origins are quite obscure, went to work as a cigarmaker when he was still a teenager and rose steadily through the ranks of the Cigarmakers’ International Union* of America (CMIU). Perkins became a close associate of Samuel Gompers*, and like Gompers, he was a devotee of craft unionism and an

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enemy of industrial unionism. Perkins became president of the CMIU in 1891. In that post, he was an inveterate foe of any form of political radicalism, including socialism*, communism, and anarchism. Perkins served as president of the CMIU until 1926. He died on February 5, 1934. References Rowland H. Harvey, Samuel Gompers: Champion of the Toiling Masses, 1935. Bernard Mandel, Samuel Gompers: A Biography, 1925.

P E R O T, H E N R Y R O S S H. Ross Perot was born on June 27, 1930, in Texarkana, Texas. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and after a four-year tour of duty, he went to work for International Business Machines* (IBM). With personal savings of $1,000, Perot started Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in the 1950s, and within twenty years, he was a billionaire. During the 1970s and 1980s, Perot came to national attention with his attempts to free American prisoners of war in North Vietnam and his successful rescue of several company employees imprisoned in Iran. Perot sold EDS to General Motors for $2.5 billion in the early 1980s but retained directorship of the company. Perot also became a strong advocate of educational reform in Texas in the late 1980s. Perot ran for president as an Independent Party candidate in 1992 and a Reform Party candidate in 1996. Reference “A Billionaire for the Common Man,” Fortune, January 5, 1987.

P E R R Y, M AT T H E W C A L B R A I T H Matthew C. Perry was born on April 10, 1794, in Newport, Rhode Island. He entered the U.S. Navy in 1809 and spent his entire career rising through the ranks. He saw action in the War of 1812* and the Mexican War. In 1845, Perry played an important role in establishing the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Commanding a four-ship squadron, Perry arrived in Japan in July 1853 to discuss the problem of Japanese captures of shipwrecked American sailors and to negotiate a commercial treaty opening Japan to western trade. The subsequent treaty was known as the Treaty of Kanagawa* of 1854. Perry then returned to the United States, and he died on March 4, 1858. Reference Samuel E. Morison, “Old Bruin”: Commodore Matthew C. Perry, 1794–1858, 1967.

P E R S I A N G U L F WA R The Persian Gulf War resulted from the Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait. In July 1990 U.S. intelligence detected an Iraqi military buildup along the Kuwaiti border. On July 17 Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein threatened military action

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against Kuwait for its violation of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil caps. Overproduction had driven down the price of oil. Because of Iraq’s recently completed eight-year war with Iran (1980–1988), it had accumulated a war debt of some $80 billion, and Baghdad was anxious to keep oil prices high. There was also an ongoing Iraqi border dispute with Kuwait over charges of Kuwaiti slant-drilling into Iraqi-controlled oil fields. Finally, Iraq had long claimed Kuwait as a province. Washington had been increasingly concerned over Iraq’s expanding nuclear industry and its chemical and biological weapons, some of which Hussein had used in the war against Iran and even against his own people, the Kurds. But U.S. policy was ambiguous, and Iraqis knew that Washington had tacitly supported them in the war with Iran, providing satellite intelligence information on Iran. U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad April Glaspie delivered mixed messages on behalf of the George H. W. Bush administration that seemed to allow Hussein free rein in the Persian Gulf. Hussein thus believed that Washington would probably not challenge a move against Kuwait. For its part, the State Department did not believe that Hussein would actually mount a full-scale invasion. If military action occurred, Washington expected only a limited offensive to force the Kuwaitis to accede to Iraqi oil production demands. Clearly, Washington underestimated Hussein’s ambitions. On August 2, 1990 Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait and speedily overran the country. The United States demanded that Hussein recall his troops from Kuwait. When he refused, the Bush administration took action. Washington feared that an unchecked Iraq would threaten Saudi Arabia, which possessed the world’s largest oil reserves, and thus would be able to control both the price and flow of oil to the West. Bush also saw Hussein as a new Adolf Hitler and was determined that there would be no Munich-like appeasement of aggression. On paper, Iraq appeared formidable. Its army numbered more than 950,000 men, and it had some 5,500 main battle tanks (MBTs), of which 1,000 were modern Soviet-built T-72s; 6,000 armored personnel carriers (APCs); and about 3,500 artillery weapons. Hussein ultimately deployed forty-three divisions to Kuwait, positioning most of them along the border with Saudi Arabia. In Operation Desert Shield, designed to protect Saudi Arabia and prepare for the liberation of Kuwait, the United States put together an impressive coalition that included Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, as well as Britain, France, and many other states. Altogether, coalition assets grew to 665,000 men, 3,600 tanks, and substantial air and naval assets. Hussein remained intransigent but also quiescent, allowing the buildup of coalition forces in Saudi Arabia to proceed unimpeded. When the deadline for Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait passed on January 15, 1991, coalition commander U.S. Army General H. Norman Schwarzkopf unleashed Operation Desert Storm on January 16. It began with a massive air offensive, striking targets in Kuwait and throughout Iraq, including Baghdad. In only a few days the coalition had established absolute air supremacy over the battlefield. Iraq possessed nearly 800 combat aircraft and an integrated air defense system controlling 3,000 antiaircraft missiles, but it was unable to win a single air-to-air engagement, and coalition

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aircraft soon destroyed the bulk of the Iraqi Air Force. Air superiority ensured success on the ground. The air campaign destroyed important Iraqi targets along the Saudi border. Night after night B-52s dropped massive bomb loads in classic attrition warfare, and many Iraqi defenders were simply buried alive. Schwarzkopf also mounted an elaborate deception to convince the Iraqis that the coalition was planning an amphibious assault against Kuwait. This feint pinned down a number of Iraqi divisions. In reality, Schwarzkopf had planned a return to large-scale maneuver warfare, which tested the U.S. Army’s new AirLand Battle doctrine. Schwarzkopf’s campaign involved three thrusts. On the far left, 200 miles from the coast, XVIII Airborne Corps of the 82rd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile), supplemented by the French 6th Light Armored Division and the U.S. 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, were to swing wide and cut off the Iraqis on the Euphrates River, preventing resupply or retreat. The center assault, the mailed fist of VII Corps, was to be mounted some 100 miles inland from the coast. It consisted of the heavily armored coalition divisions: the U.S. 1st and 3rd Armored Divisions, the 1st Cavalry Division, the 1st Infantry (Mechanized) Division, and the British 1st Armored Division. VII Corps’s mission was to thrust deep, engage, and then destroy the elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions. The third and final thrust was to occur on the coast. It consisted of the U.S. 1st Marine Expeditionary force of two divisions, a brigade from the U.S. 2nd Armored Division, and allied Arab units, and it was to drive on Kuwait City. On February 24, Allied forces executed simultaneous drives along the coast while the 101st Airborne Division established a position fifty miles behind the border. As the Marines moved up the coast toward Kuwait City, they were hit in the flank by Iraqi armor. In the largest tank battle in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps, the Marines, supported by coalition airpower, easily defeated the Iraqis. The battle was fought in a surrealist day-into-night atmosphere caused by the smoke of oil wells set afire by the retreating Iraqis. As the Marines, preceded by a light Arab force, prepared to enter Kuwait City, Iraqi forces fled north with whatever they could steal. Thousands of vehicles and personnel were caught in the open on the highway from Kuwait City and were pummeled by air and artillery along what became known as the “highway of death.” The Allies now came up against an Iraqi rear guard of 300 tanks covering the withdrawal north toward Basra of four Republican Guard divisions. In perhaps the most lopsided tank battle in history, the Iraqi force was defeated at a cost of only one American death. Lieutenant General Frederick Franks, commander of VII Corps to the west, angered Schwarzkopf by insisting on halting on the night of February 24 and concentrating his forces rather than risking an advance through a battlefield littered with debris and unexploded ordnance and risking casualties from friendly fire. When VII Corps resumed the advance early on February 25, its problem was not the Iraqis but the supply of fuel; because of the speed of the advance, the M1s needed to be refueled every eight to nine hours. The afternoon of February 27 saw VII Corps engaged in some of its most intense combat. Hoping to delay the coalition, an armored brigade of the Medina

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Republican Guard Division established a six-mile skirmish line on the reverse slope of a low hill, digging in their T-55 and T-72 MBTs. The advancing 2nd Brigade of the 1st Armored Division came over a ridge, spotted the Iraqis, and took them under fire from 2,500 yards. The American tankers used sabot rounds to blow the turrets off the dug-in Iraqi tanks. The battle was the largest single armor engagement of the war. In only forty-five minutes, U.S. tanks and aircraft destroyed sixty T-72s, nine T-55s, and thirty-eight Iraqi armored personnel carriers. Allied tanks, especially the M1A1 Abrams and the British Challenger, had proved their great superiority over their Soviet counterparts, especially in night fighting. Of 600 M1A1 Abrams that saw combat, not one was penetrated by an enemy round. Conversely, the M1A1’s 120mm gun proved lethal to Iraqi MBTs. It could engage the Iraqi armor at 3,000 meters (1.86 miles), twice the Iraqis’ effective range, and its superior fire control system could deliver a first-round hit while on the move. Overall, the coalition maneuver strategy bound up in the AirLand Battle worked to perfection. As VII Corps closed to the sea, XVIII Corps to its left, with a much larger distance to travel, raced to reach the fleeing Republican Guards’ divisions before they could escape to Baghdad. In only 100 hours of ground combat, Allied forces had liberated Kuwait. On February 28, President Bush halted the war. He feared the cost of an assault on Baghdad and was also concerned that Iraq might then break up into a Kurdish north, a Sunni Muslim center, and a Shiite Muslim south. Bush wanted to keep Iraq intact to counter a resurgent Iran. The war was among the most lopsided in history. Iraq lost 3,700 tanks, more than 1,000 other armored vehicles, and 3,000 artillery pieces. In contrast, the coalition lost 4 tanks, 9 other combat vehicles, and 1 artillery piece. In human terms, the Allies sustained 500 casualties (150 dead), many of these from accidents and friendly fire. Iraqi casualties totaled between 25,000 and 100,000 dead, with the best estimates being around 60,000. The coalition also took 80,000 Iraqis prisoner. Perhaps an equal number simply deserted. Following the cease-fire, Hussein reestablished his authority. He put down, at great cost to the civilian population, revolts by the Shiites and Kurds. He also defied UN inspection teams by failing to account for all of his biological and chemical weapons, the so-called weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Ultimately, President George W. Bush* would use the alleged presence of WMDs as an excuse to send U.S. and allied forces to invade and occupy Iraq in another war in 2003, code-named Operation Iraqi Freedom. Spencer C. Tucker References James F. Dunnigan and Austin Bay, From Shield to Storm, 1992. John L. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post–Cold War, 1997. Robert H. Scales Jr., Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War, 1997. Frank N. Schubert and Theresa L. Kraus, eds., Whirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, 1994. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, 1992.

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PFIZER Pfizer is a U.S.-based multinational* pharmaceutical corporation, headquartered in New York City with research facilities based in Groton, Connecticut. Pfizer was founded in 1849 by Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart as a chemical company. By 1950, it was developing into a research-focused pharmaceutical company. It absorbed other pharmaceuticals, including Warner–Lambert in 2000, Pharmacia in 2003, and Wyeth in 2009. Pfizer is known for its development and production of a wide variety of medications, most notably Lipitor, Lyrica, Viagra, and Celebrex. Reference Jeffery L. Rodengen, The Legend of Pfizer, 1999.

PHELPS, ANSON GREENE Anson Greene Phelps was born in Simsbury, Connecticut, on March 24, 1781. Orphaned as a boy, he apprenticed out in the saddlery trade and in 1800 moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where he worked in the business. He went into business for himself, opened a second saddlery business in Charleston, South Carolina, and also began trading in cotton. Phelps moved to New York City in 1812 and, with an associate Elisha Peck, formed Phelps, Peck, and Company; the business branched out into metal imports and exports as well. In 1832, after splitting with Peck, Phelps invited his two sons-in-law into the business and renamed it Phelps, Dodge and Company. They aggressively invested in minerals and railroads, and all were soon millionaires. Late in the 1840s, Phelps, Dodge and Company began developing the copper deposits around Lake Superior in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Phelps died on November 30, 1853, but the company went on to become one of the leading mining concerns in the world. Reference Robert G. Cleland, History of Phelps Dodge, 1834–1950, 1952.

PHILLIPS, FRANK Frank Phillips was born on November 28, 1873, in Scotia, Nebraska. Phillips was a born entrepreneur. He quit school when he was 14 and went to work, first as a ranch hand and then as a barber. He eventually had three barbershops but was also making money hawking baldness cures. By the time he was 25, he had saved $75,000 from his sales schemes. Phillips then moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and established the Anchor Oil Company to drill oil. In 1905, he established the Citizen’s Bank and Trust Company to make loans to other drillers, who had purchased sizable oil leases on the reservation of the Osage Indians. When oil was discovered there in 1917, Phillips and his brothers established Phillips Petroleum Company to drill the oil. Within three years, they had made $30 million. Phillips proved to be a farsighted corporate leader. During the 1930s, he diversified the company vertically, from the drilling of oil to its retail marketing through “Phillips 66” gas stations. He also committed corporate funds to research and development*.

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When Phillips retired in 1938, Phillips Petroleum had assets of more than $600 million. He died on August 23, 1950. Reference Richard O’Connor, The Oil Barons, 1971.

PIECEWORK Piecework is a system of compensation whereby a worker is paid according to the number of units produced, rather than the amount of time worked. Such a system is meant to reward more productive workers for their efficiency. From a worker’s point of view, piecework has several disadvantages. Employers can obtain more work from employees by cutting the price per unit (in effect, demanding more hours of work for the same amount of payment) or by a speedup (demanding that more units be produced in the same amount of time), always with an implied threat of firing. More explicitly than other systems of compensation, piecework tends to treat employees as one more interchangeable part in the production process. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Jerold S. Auerbach, ed., American Labor in the Twentieth Century, 1969 Leslie Woodcock Tender, Wage Earning Women: Industrial and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930, 1979.

P I N C H O T, G I F F O R D Gifford Pinchot was born on August 11, 1865, in Simsbury, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale in 1889 and studied forestry at the French National Forestry School. He began his career as a forester with the Phelps, Dodge and Company in 1890, and in 1898 he became chief forester for the Department of Agriculture*. Primarily interested in conservation, Pinchot had the backing of President Theodore Roosevelt* in the creation of the U.S. Forestry Service and for the federal regulation of natural resources. Pinchot was also a progressive* reformer committed to federal regulation and perhaps even ownership of the railroads, public utilities, mines, and forests. Pinchot was also committed to the Prohibition* movement. In 1909, President William Howard Taft* fired Pinchot after he complained that Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger was planning to lease Alaska coal reserves to private developers. Pinchot supported Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” candidacy for president in 1912, and in 1922, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania nominated him for governor. Pinchot won that election, failed in a subsequent bid for a U.S. Senate seat, and then was reelected governor in 1930. From that post in Harrisburg, Pinchot bitterly attacked President Herbert Hoover* for not providing more federal relief to the unemployed. Although Pinchot did not want to see the Eighteenth Amendment repealed, he nevertheless endorsed Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt* for

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president in 1932 because he believed the suffering of the Great Depression* had to be relieved. Pinchot died on October 4, 1946. References Martin L. Fausold, Gifford Pinchot: Bull Moose Progressive, 1961. Harold T. Pinkett, Gifford Pinchot: Private and Public Forester, 1970.

P I N C K N E Y ’ S T R E AT Y O F 1 7 9 5 Also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo, Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795 was an important diplomatic achievement for the United States. For American settlers living west of the Appalachian mountains, the economic lifeline was the Mississippi River. The only real way for them to ship products to market was down the Ohio and Tennessee rivers to the Mississippi River, then down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Access to New Orleans was therefore critical to their economic survival. Thomas Pinckney negotiated the treaty with Spain. The United States secured navigation rights on the Mississippi River, established clear title to the territory of the Old Southwest south to 31 degrees north latitude, and received the right of deposit at New Orleans. Western farmers and shippers now had the economic access they needed to world markets. Reference Samuel F. Bemis, Pinckney’s Treaty, 1960.

PINK COLLAR The term “pink collar” first appeared in the 1970s to refer to jobs that are poorly paid and disproportionately held by women, mostly in the service sector of the economy. These jobs include low-level clerical positions, food and domestic service, child care, and cosmetology work that require little or no formal training beyond a high school education. Unlike blue-collar factory employees, pink-collar workers are rarely unionized, and workers who hold them have less economic power to improve their pay, hours, or working conditions. Many of these jobs might well profit from the implementation of comparable worth* policies. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference “The Rise of the Pink Collar Ghetto,” Ms. Magazine, March 1977.

PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE The concept of planned obsolescence refers to the deliberate strategy by companies to create a product that has a limited shelf life. Accordingly, as part of its design, the product will be obsolete or considered functional after a period of time. Notable examples of this include smartphones*, particularly Apple’s* iPhone. After

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a newer version with expanded capabilities enters the market, many consumers feel obliged to purchase it. The term originated in the automobile industry in the 1930s as a way to continue to create demand for durable goods. Critics of planned obsolescence maintain that its practice hinders innovation and takes advantage of consumers seeking the most recent model available. Reference Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Planned Obsolescence, 2011.

P L AT T A M E N D M E N T When the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, the country also assumed control of the Cuban Revolution. At the time, the rebellion in Cuba was anti–upper class as well as anti-Spanish. Many corporations, both Spanish-owned and American-owned, were worried about losing their assets in a genuine revolution. After the United States had defeated Spain, Congress therefore insisted that Cuba incorporate what became known as the Platt Amendment into its new constitution. The Platt Amendment gave the United States control over Cuban foreign policy and the right to intervene in Cuban internal affairs whenever legitimate property interests were threatened. Most Cubans considered the amendment an affront to their national sovereignty but felt they had no choice but to acquiesce. On several occasions, the United States did intervene militarily in Cuba pursuant to the provisions of the Platt Amendment. The amendment remained in force until 1934. Reference Louis H. Perez, Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 1981.

PLUMB PLAN By the end of 1917 the nation’s transportation system was in such serious disarray that President Woodrow Wilson* reached the drastic decision that if war needs were to be met, the federal government would have to take control of the industry. On December 26, 1917, Wilson placed the railroads under government operation. At the time there were 397,014 miles of track and 2,905 individual companies that fell under the direction of the new U.S. Railroad Administration*. Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo headed the new agency. The Railroad Control Act of March 21, 1918, set the rates by which the government would compensate the railroads. Government operation brought order and prosperity to the industry. When the war ended, a number of labor interests, led by the Railroad Brotherhoods, wanted government operation to continue. They proposed what became known as the “Plumb Plan” in which the government would purchase the railroads and then run them through a federal agency managed by industry, labor, and government officials. The American Federation of Labor* endorsed the proposal at its 1920 convention. By that time, however, Congress had already passed the Transportation Act of 1920* providing for the return of the railroads to private control. The United States was not ready for such an experiment in socialism.

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Reference K. Austin Kerr, American Railroad Politics, 1914–1920, 1968.

POLK, JAMES KNOX James K. Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, on November 2, 1795. His family moved to Tennessee in 1806, but he graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1818. Polk began practicing law in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1820. He was elected to the state legislature as a Democrat in 1823 and then to Congress in 1825. Polk served in the House of Representatives until 1839, when he became governor of Tennessee. He was not reelected in 1841, failed in a second gubernatorial bid in 1843, but then managed to secure the Democratic presidential nomination in 1844. Polk went on to defeat Henry Clay* and become the eleventh president of the United States. Polk’s election campaign in 1844 was based on aggressive territorial expansionism as well as anti-Whig rhetoric, and during his term in office, he achieved all that he set out to do. In 1846, he secured control of the Oregon Territory from Great Britain (Oregon Treaty of 1846*), repealed the high tariff the Whigs had passed, reestablished the Independent Treasury*, and successfully prosecuted the Mexican War*, which gave the United States control of what became California, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Polk did not seek a second term, and he died on June 15, 1849. Reference Charles G. Sellers, James K. Polk: Continentalist, 1843–1846, 1966.

PONY EXPRESS With the settlement of the Great Salt Lake Valley, the Oregon Territory, and California in the 1840s and early 1850s, the need for rapid postal service became imperative. It took months for a letter to go from New York to San Francisco, because it either had to go all the way around the tip of South America or be carried overland across Central America for shipment up the Pacific coast. In 1861, the firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell launched the Pony Express, which carried small volumes of high-priced mail by horseback, at breakneck speeds, from St. Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco, California. With rest stations every ten miles or so, riders could cover the 1,966-mile distance in about ten days. The cost for delivery of a single letter approached $40. After the transcontinental railroads and telegraphs were built in the late 1860s, the Pony Express could no longer compete. Reference Raymond W. Settle and Mary L. Settle, Saddles and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga, 1972.

POOLS During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the term “pool” was used to describe an informal agreement by several corporate entities to conspire to limit

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supplies, to allocate markets, or to fix prices as a means of containing the effects of competition and improving profits. The practice was especially severe in the badly overbuilt railroad industry in the late 1880s. Critics reacted with reform measures that eventually included the Interstate Commerce* Act of 1887, the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890, the Federal Trade Commission* Act of 1913, and the Clayton Antitrust Act* of 1914. Reference Sidney Fine, Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State, 1964.

P O P U L I S T PA R T Y Founded in 1891 at Cincinnati, Ohio, the Populist Party was the political expression of farm problems in the United States. Gross overproduction as well as the application of capital-intensive techniques to farming was putting increasing pressure on small farmers, who were squeezed between their incomes and their costs of doing business, especially bank interest rates and railroad freight charges. The Populists proposed free and unlimited coinage of silver to inflate prices, a graduated income tax*; government ownership of the telegraph, telephone, and railroad industries, a federal civil service system, and the creation of the subtreasury* system. In the election of 1892, the Populists nominated James B. Weaver for president, and he garnered 1,041,028 popular votes and twenty-two electoral votes. When the depression of 1893* brought ruin to millions of Americans, the appeal of the Populists increased. During the congressional elections of 1894, they elected six U.S. senators and seven congressmen. In the election of 1896*, the Populists nominated William Jennings Bryan* for president. The Democrats had already nominated Bryan and had also endorsed the principle of free silver*, so the Populists joined with them in a fusion ticket. They were handily defeated by William McKinley* and the Republicans. The Populist Party declined after the election of 1896. They were never able to appeal to urban workers, primarily because their inflationary proposals threatened to raise food prices, hardly something that poor workers wanted. Moreover, for a variety of reasons, the farm economy improved after 1896. The Populists ran a presidential ticket in the elections of 1900, 1904, and 1908, but by that time the party was already dead. Many of its proposals, however, were enacted by subsequent administrations. References Robert F. Durden, Climax of Populism: The Election of 1896, 1965. Lawrence Goodwyn, Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America, 1976. John D. Hicks, The Populist Revolt, 1931.

P O T O F S K Y, J A C O B S A M U E L Jacob Samuel Potofsky was born in the Ukraine, Russia, on November 16, 1894. He immigrated with his family to Chicago in 1905, and after school, he got a job as a garment worker. In 1908, Potofsky joined the United Garment Workers of

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America. He participated in the famous strike against Hart, Schaffner, and Marx in 1910 and became a charter member of the new Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America* (ACWA) when it was organized shortly after the strike. From 1916 to 1934, Potofsky served as assistant general secretary of the ACWA, and from 1940 to 1946 Potofsky was its secretary-treasurer. He was an early promoter of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO). When Sidney Hillman* died in 1946, Potofsky was elected president of the ACWA. He remained in that post until his retirement in 1972. Potofsky died on August 5, 1979. References Louis Finkelstein, American Spiritual Autobiographies: Fifteen Self-Portraits, 1948. New York Times, August 6, 1979.

P O W D E R LY, T E R E N C E V I N C E N T Terence Vincent Powderly was born in Carbondale, Pennsylvania, on January 22, 1849. When he was 13, he went to work on the railroads and eventually became a machinist. In 1876, Powderly joined the Knights of Labor* and steadily became more and more influential in union politics. In 1878, Powderly was elected mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, on the Greenback* Labor ticket. Powderly was an opponent of craft unionism, because he felt that skilled workers had an obligation to assist the unskilled in labor organization. He was also an opponent of militant unionism. From 1879 to 1893, Powderly headed the Knights of Labor. After leaving office in 1893, he became an attorney in Pennsylvania and an active Republican. Powderly died on June 24, 1924. Reference Vincent J. Falzone, Terence V. Powderly: Middle Class Reformer, 1978.

PREEMPTION ACT OF 1841 Central to Whig politics in the 1830s, and to Senator Henry Clay’s* “American System”* was the idea of using the proceeds from western land sales to finance internal improvements. Cheap land sales would encourage western expansion, and the money from those sales would finance improvements in the national infrastructure. Southerners often opposed the idea, because they believed most of the improvements would be located in the North and West. Nevertheless, in 1841, Congress passed the Distribution–Preemption Act. The law allowed settlers to stake out a land claim before the sale and then pay $1.25 an acre for that same land when the sale commenced. Proceeds from the sale would then be distributed to the states for constructing internal improvements. In 1842, the distribution part of the law was repealed, but the preemption provisions continued, and they greatly accelerated the westward movement. Reference Ray Allen Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1830–1860, 1964.

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PRESIDENT’S EMERGENCY COMMITTEE ON UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF See PRESIDENT’S ORGANIZATION ON UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF. P R E S I D E N T ’ S O R G A N I Z AT I O N O N UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF Late in 1930, as unemployment continued to grow worse, Herbert Hoover* was faced with congressional demands for a vigorous government program of public works construction and work relief. Hoover preferred a private sector initiative, so he established the President’s Emergency Committee on Unemployment Relief at the cabinet level to coordinate the work of the federal government, industry, state and local governments, women’s groups, and social welfare agencies. Arthur Woods headed the group. A few months later, frustrated by the increasing unemployment problem, Woods proposed a $375 million federal employment program, which Hoover summarily rejected. Woods then left the committee, and on August 13, 1931, it was absorbed by the new President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief. It was headed by Walter S. Gifford, president of American Telephone and Telegraph*. Like its predecessor, it shied away from promoting direct federal relief programs in favor of coordinating private and local government options. As unemployment reached 15 percent in 1931 and then 20 percent in 1932, however, the organization’s work appeared hopelessly inadequate, leading to passage of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act* of 1932. References David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 1979. Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert Hoover, 1985.

P R O D U C T I O N C R E D I T A S S O C I AT I O N S See FARM CREDIT ACT OF 1933 and FARM CREDIT ADMINISTRATION. P R O F E S S I O N A L I Z AT I O N Professionalization is the process by which workers transform their own and the public definition of their work from being a job into being a profession. A profession carries with it the unmistakable cachet of being middle-class in terms of education, aspiration, and style, if not always of money. In the United States, the process of professionalization first became prominent in the mid-nineteenth century, coinciding with the development of universities; some have even argued that American universities exist to promote professionalism. In any event, the second half of the nineteenth century saw the rise of professional culture in the United States. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and those in many other occupations began setting up professional organizations (e.g., American Medical Association*, American

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Bar Association, National Educational Association, etc.), requiring formal university training, and establishing standards for professional credentials, behavior, and ethics. In the process, they changed what work and education meant for themselves and for the wider society. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism: The Middle Class and the Development of Higher Education in America, 1976.

PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT The progressive movement was a complex, diverse political movement of small businessmen, professionals, farmers, labor unions, and social workers designed to bring political and economic reform to the United States. At its most fundamental level, progressivism implied a belief in the need for governmental action—at the local, state, and national level—to accomplish a wide range of goals: to prevent excesses by big business, eliminate political corruption, preserve competition and fair prices, promote good government, find the proper balance between conservation of natural resources and economic development, reduce tariff rates, bring about some form of immigration restriction, develop proper safety net programs for the urban poor, secure some measure of control over bank credit and the money supply, and provide for consumer protection. Although the progressive movement sometimes found expression in third-party efforts, such as the Progressive Party of 1912 and the Progressive Party of 1924, its real influence can be found in the “Square Deal” and “New Nationalism*” of people such as Theodore Roosevelt* and Herbert Croly* and the “New Freedom*” of people such as Woodrow Wilson* and Louis D. Brandeis*. The progressive movement—as expressed in legislation such as the Interstate Commerce* Act of 1887, the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890, the Elkins Act* of 1903, the Hepburn Act* of 1906, the Pure Food and Drug* and Meat Inspection Acts* of 1906, the Mann–Elkins Act* of 1909, the Federal Reserve Act* of 1913, and the Clayton Antitrust Act* of 1914—was probably the most successful political movement in American history. Reference Lewis L. Gould, The Progressive Era, 1974.

PROHIBITION The crusade against alcohol began as early as the 1790s, but it was not until the 1820s and 1830s that it began to gain momentum. In 1830, the annual per capita consumption of whiskey in the United States had reached ten gallons, and evangelical Protestants had linked the temperance movement to their own revivalism. Justin Edwards and the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance began holding temperance revivals and extracting from people pledges to abstain. By the

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mid-1830s, more than a million people had made that promise, and by 1850, per capita consumption of alcohol had dropped to 2.1 gallons a year. In 1851, Maine became the first state to outlaw alcohol, and more states followed in the 1850s. For middle-class Protestants, Prohibition reflected their own beliefs in personal discipline and social control. After the 1880s, groups such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League campaigned for national prohibition, and most southern and western states passed prohibition laws. By the time of World War I*, 75 percent of Americans lived in “dry” counties. Congress submitted the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol, to the states in 1917, and it was ratified in January 1919. Later in the year, Congress passed the Volstead Act, defining alcoholic beverages as those containing more than 1 percent alcohol. William Jennings Bryan* proudly announced that liquor was a dead issue, as dead as slavery*. How wrong he was! Prohibition precipitated a cultural crisis in the United States during the 1920s. A whole illegal industry rose to fill the demand that legitimate businessmen could no longer meet. Illegal distillers and smugglers filled the marketplace, speakeasies flourished, and bootleggers made fortunes peddling alcohol. Federal agents trying to enforce the Eighteenth Amendment often encountered wholesale resistance from police and local officials in major urban areas. In Chicago, mobster Al Capone* built a multimillion-dollar empire, complete with a private army and a ruthless willingness to use violence to enforce his will. In urban areas, the vast majority of Americans were demanding the repeal of Prohibition by 1924. Groups such as the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment opposed the Eighteenth Amendment because they considered it an unwarranted intrusion on the prerogatives of local government. For rural Americans, especially in the South, the issue had still greater cultural meaning, however. Prohibition was wrapped up in ruralism, religious fundamentalism, and isolationism. For them, the North represented a new, secular, immigrant America, filled with vices of which alcoholism was only one. They insisted on enforcing Prohibition. In the Democratic Party, especially during the election of 1924*, the struggle over Prohibition found its most intense political expression. Urban Democrats in the North rallied around New York governor Alfred E. Smith*, who openly called for repeal, while southerners supported William Gibbs McAdoo, who supported enforcement. In the end, the party turned to John W. Davis*, a weak compromise candidate, because they could not agree on what to do about Prohibition. But the tide was turning in favor of those who wanted Prohibition repealed. By the late 1920s, the law was virtually unenforceable and the organized crime surrounding it rampant. Smith won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1928 on an anti-Prohibition platform, and although he lost the election to Republican candidate Herbert Hoover*, he had dealt a death blow to Prohibition. Hoover appointed a Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement to investigate the question, and a former attorney general of the United States, George W. Wickersham, headed it. The report was issued in January 1931 and stated clearly that

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enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment had broken down completely. Still, the commission did not openly advocate repeal. In the election of 1932*, both the Democrats and the Republicans advocated returning liquor control issues to the states. In February 1933, Congress approved the Twenty-First Amendment repealing the Eighteenth Amendment, and submitted it to the states. One month later, Congress passed the Beer Tax Act*, which legalized beverages with less than a 3.2 percent alcohol content. The Twenty-First Amendment was ratified and went into effect in December 1933. Prohibition was over. References Herbert Asbury, The Great Illusion, 1950. Norman H. Clark, Deliver Us From Evil: An Interpretation of American Prohibition, 1976. Andrew Sinclair, The Age of Excess, 1962.

P R O T E C T I V E L E G I S L AT I O N The term “protective legislation” generally refers to laws designed to protect women workers from work conditions, including overly long hours, deemed detrimental to their health, safety, or morals; sometimes such laws concern themselves as much with women’s prospective roles as mothers as with the health of the women themselves. Most protective legislation has addressed real abuses in the workplace, including sweatshop* conditions in the textile and garment industries. Because of the wage gap between men and women, women have often needed to work longer hours to earn the same pay and have thus been more easily exploited in terms of hours and working conditions. In fact, it was statistical evidence about unhealthful conditions that led the Supreme Court to rule in favor of protective hours legislation in the landmark case of Muller v. Oregon* (1908). Like many other laws, however, protective legislation can act as a two-edged sword. By limiting the total number of hours per week that a woman may work, for example, some protective laws effectively shut all women out of certain jobs altogether, when women, but not men, are prohibited from putting in overtime. By a similar logic, the courts have sometimes upheld company policies that bar fertile women, who are prospective mothers, from working with dangerous chemicals. Both such policies channel women workers into lower-paying jobs—the situation that led to the need for protective legislation in the first place. Protective legislation became an aspect of the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment* (ERA). Opponents of the amendment argued that it would undo all the truly protective aspects of such laws, whereas proponents insisted that it would simply mandate safer, healthier, and more humane conditions for all workers, male and female alike. In spite of this debate, deregulation* may eventually have a greater effect on protective legislation than the proposed ERA. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Leo Kanowitz, Women and the Law: The Unfinished Revolution, 1969.

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Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, 1970.

PUBLIC DEBT ACT OF 1941 To generate more revenue to finance World War II, Congress passed the Public Debt Act in 1941. It was an innovation in public finance, because the measure required that in the future, all interest on federal government securities would be subject to income taxes. Reference Margaret Myers, Financial History of the United States, 1970.

P U B L I C U T I L I T Y H O L D I N G C O M PA N Y ACT OF 1935 Perhaps no legislation was more symbolic of the “Second New Deal” and its Brandeisian faith than the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. With his faith in national planning largely ruined by the bureaucratic entanglements of the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) and business criticism of the New Deal*, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* adopted an antitrust philosophy consistent with the views of Louis D. Brandeis* and Woodrow Wilson’s* earlier “New Freedom*.” In March 1935, the president addressed Congress and called for the dissolution of the holding company* structure of the electric power industry because the utilities exploited consumers and evaded state regulation. Memories of the Samuel Insull* empire provided the backdrop for the accusation. Roosevelt had Benjamin Cohen* and Thomas Corcoran* draft the legislation, and Senator Burton K. Wheeler* of Montana and Representative Sam Rayburn of Texas sponsored it in Congress. The key to the bill was the “death sentence” clause requiring the Securities and Exchange Commission* (SEC) to dissolve any utility holding company after January 1, 1940, if it could not justify its existence. Spending more than $1 million, the utility industry launched an intense lobbying* campaign against the bill. In June 1935, the Senate approved it by a single-vote margin, but the House rejected the mandatory “death sentence” 216–146. The House then approved the rest of the bill 323–81. Although Senator Hugo Black of Alabama initiated a congressional investigation of the utility industry’s lobbying campaign, the House would still have nothing to do with the mandatory “death sentence.” Roosevelt had to settle for a scaled-down version, which he signed into law on August 28, 1935. The Public Utility Holding Company Act gave the Federal Power Commission* the authority to regulate interstate shipments of electrical power and the Federal Trade Commission* the same authority over natural gas shipments. The act also eliminated all holding companies more than twice removed from their operating companies. All utility holding companies had to register with the SEC, and the SEC could supervise their financial transactions. Although there was no mandatory “death sentence,” the SEC did have the discretionary power to dissolve any holding company that could not, after a term of five

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years, demonstrate its local usefulness. The burden of proof rested on the government, however. Under the provisions of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, the SEC forced or inspired American utilities to divest themselves of 753 holding company affiliates worth more than $10 billion by 1952. Reference Philip J. Funigiello, Toward a National Power Policy: The New Deal and the Electric Utility Industry, 1933–1941, 1973.

PUEBLO LAND ACT OF 1924 In 1921 and 1922, Senator Holm O. Bursum of New Mexico introduced a bill in Congress to divest the Pueblo Indians, who numbered about 8,000 people, of large sections of their land along the Rio Grande River in favor of 12,000 white squatters who had settled there. Some of the squatters had purchased the land legally, some had moved there thinking that it was part of the public domain, and others had simply encroached on Pueblo property illegally. Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall and Bursum wanted to legalize these settlers’ claim to the land. Such groups as the Indian Rights Association, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and the American Indian Defense Association protested the measure, as did prominent Americans such as Zane Grey, Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, and John Collier. In November 1922, the Pueblos formed the All Pueblo Indian Council to fight the Bursum bill. As a compromise, Congress passed the Pueblo Land Act in 1924. It established the Pueblo Lands Board, located in Santa Fe, to determine rightful ownership and to compensate claimants, both Indian and non-Indian. When the board found in favor of a settler, Congress made cash compensation to the Pueblos. Initially, the Pueblo Indians received $600,000 as compensation for the loss of land, but in 1933, Congress passed the Pueblo Relief Act, which gave another $761,958 to the Pueblos and $232,986 to settlers who had been denied their claims. References James S. Olson and Raymond Wilson, Native Americans in the Twentieth Century, 1984. Kenneth Philp, “Albert B. Fall and the Protest from the Pueblos, 1921–1923,” Arizona and the West 12 (fall 1970): 237–254.

PUJO COMMITTEE During the Progressive* Era, many reformers decided that antitrust action on the part of the federal government was the only way to preserve competition and maintain fair prices in the economy. They identified the “Meat Trust,” the “Whiskey Trust,” and the “Tobacco Trust,” as well as a variety of others. Because the Panic of 1907* had been so devastating to capital markets, many reformers also believed there was a “Money Trust,” so in 1912, Congress authorized the House Committee on Banking and Currency to conduct an investigation of the banking industry. Congressman Arsene Pujo, Democrat from Louisiana, chaired the committee. During the course of the hearings, a host of prominent bankers paraded before the

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committee. The final report, issued in 1913, argued that there had been a steady consolidation of power in the banking industry through mergers, leveraged buyouts, interlocking directorates, and consortiums for purchasing securities, insurance, railroads, and public utilities. The Pujo committee’s findings helped to pave the way for the Federal Reserve* Act, which was passed later that year. Reference Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1954.

PULLMAN STRIKE The Pullman Company, based outside of Chicago, manufactured railroad sleeping cars. Most of its employees lived in a company town where they were paid in company scrip and forced to shop in company stores. In 1893 and 1894, because of the depression, the Pullman Company cut worker wages several times without reducing the rent on the company-owned homes. Pullman workers protested, and Eugene V. Debs* and the American Railway Union* supported them, calling for a nationwide boycott of all Pullman cars by railroad workers. Rail traffic in the Midwest virtually halted. With the assistance of U.S. Attorney General Richard Olney, the Pullman Company secured a federal court injunction* prohibiting Debs and the American Railway Union from interfering in company business. The boycott continued in spite of the injunction until President Grover Cleveland* sent 2,000 National Guard troops to Chicago to enforce the injunction. In the ensuing riot, the soldiers killed twelve strikers. The Cleveland administration had broken the strike. Because of the outcome of the strike, Debs went to jail and converted to socialism*. Reference Almot Lindsay, The Pullman Strike, 1942.

PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT OF 1906 One of the most important pieces of legislation during the Progressive* Era was passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. During the 1890s and early 1900s, increasing numbers of Americans became concerned about how food and drugs were processed and sold in the United States. The most influential figure in the movement was Dr. Harvey Wiley*, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture. Wiley was alarmed by the chemicals that manufacturers used in preserving meat and dairy products and by the dishonest labeling of patent medicines. As the American medical establishment became more powerful and increasingly emphasized scientific accuracy in diagnosis, its own demands for reliable pharmaceutical products increased. Consumer groups also called for federal regulation of food processors to ensure reliable standards. Finally, a number of large agribusinesses* with enough capital to invest in the latest production technologies saw federal regulation and higher production standards as a way of driving smaller, marginal producers out of business. When President Theodore

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Roosevelt* threw his support behind the idea of federal regulation in 1905, it gained the momentum it needed. On June 30, 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act became law. Until passage of the law, the doctrine of caveat emptor—“let the buyer beware”—governed the marketplace. But the Pure Food and Drug Act prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of adulterated food, drug, or liquor products. It also required that labels on drug products specifically explain what the contents actually were. The law was subsequently strengthened by the Wheeler– Lea Act* of 1938, which substantially increased the Federal Trade Commission’s* (FTC) control over food and pharmaceutical advertising, and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, which outlawed the mislabeling of products, required manufacturers to list on labels all products used in processing, and outlawed false or misleading advertising claims. The Food and Drug Administration enforced most of the law, except for misadvertising, which remained under the FTC. Reference O. E. Anderson, The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food, 1958.

PUTTING-OUT SYSTEM The term “putting-out system” was used before the rise of the factory system to describe the process by which merchants distributed raw materials, production specifications, and tools to individual craftsmen who would then manufacture the products in their homes. The merchant would collect the finished goods and market them. The factory system destroyed the “putting-out system.” By bringing all workers under a single roof, the factory system allowed the former merchant/ businessman to save time distributing raw materials and collecting finished goods and allowed him or her to take advantage of mechanized production, technology, and new energy sources, all of which greatly increased production and reduced the unit cost of goods. Reference David Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production, 1984.

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Q QUITRENT Quitrent was an anachronistic holdover from the medieval period that the settlers brought to the American colonies in the seventeenth century. During the feudal period, serfs owed a portion of their annual crop to their liege lord; the quitrent became a money substitute for the in-kind payment. By paying the annual rent, the payer was “quit” from all other feudal obligations during the year. In North America, the quitrents survived longer in proprietary colonies than in royal colonies, probably because the landowner was also the government. The proprietors were in a difficult position. They wanted to encourage settlement, but a feudal system with high quitrents would discourage that goal. Moreover, there was just too much land in America for settlers to put up with paying rent on someone else’s land for very long. The typical payment was two to four shillings a year for each 100 acres. In Maryland, the proprietors tried to collect the quitrents regularly, but the settlers resisted, either by protesting through their legislature or avoiding payment. No colony ever managed to collect more than a third of the total due. Gradually, the quitrent system died out, especially after each colony completed the transition to royal control. References Beverly Bond, The Quit-Rent System in the American Colonies, 1919. M. W. Jemegan, Laboring and Dependent Classes in Colonial America, 1931.

R RADIO Because of the growing number of radio broadcasts by ship operators, amateurs, and musical performers, Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912, requiring station operators to secure licenses from the Department of Commerce*. Radio KDKA in Pittsburgh was the first station to broadcast commercially in 1920, but the first station to begin regular broadcasting was WWJ in Detroit in 1920, which began explaining election returns. In 1921, WJZ in Newark, New Jersey, broadcast the World Series and KYW in Chicago presented performances of the Chicago Civic Opera. In 1922, more than 500 new stations began broadcasting. During the 1920s, sales of radios went from $60 million in 1922 to $843 million in 1929. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover* convened a series of radio conferences in the 1920s to deal with the problems created by this extraordinary growth, and these led up to the Radio Act of 1927, which brought the airwaves under federal control. American Telephone and Telegraph* (AT&T) initiated the first network broadcast in 1923, and Calvin Coolidge’s address the night before the election of 1924 reached more than 20 million people. The Radio Corporation of America, led by David Sarnoff, was founded in 1919, and in 1923, it spun off a subsidiary, the National Broadcasting Company. The Columbia Broadcasting System was formed in 1927 and headed by William S. Paley*. Radio’s effect on American culture was immediate, especially after regular programming began with such programs as “Amos and Andy” in 1928. Even before that, its potential for bringing the country together had been demonstrated in 1925 with the death of Floyd Collins in a Kentucky cave, which was broadcast to a national audience. Soon people all across the country were tuning in to the same programs, recognizing the same kinds of “stars” and heroes, and enjoying a new mass culture only hinted at before in mass-produced books and magazines. Although the rise of television in the 1950s brought massive changes to the radio industry, the radio still remained a powerful tool for conveying information and entertainment to the American public. Because it was less capital-intensive than television, the opportunities for increased numbers of broadcasters, as well as for targeting specific audiences, were much greater with radio than with television. By the twenty-first century, with innovations in streaming technologies and satellite radio, radio has continued to be a relevant media despite developments in Internet* technologies that rival its influence. Reference Eric Bamouw, A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States to 1933, 1966.

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RAIL ACT OF 1980 See STAGGERS RAIL ACT OF 1980. RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS Historically, the railroad industry has been the most organized, in terms of labor union activity, of any economic sector in the country. The first unions began as fraternal organizations and quickly evolved into collective-bargaining entities. The first railroad unions were the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers (1863); the Order of Railroad Conductors & Brakemen (1868); the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Engineers (1873); the Switchmen’s Union of North America (1877); the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen (1883); the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders, Blacksmiths, Forgers, and Helpers (1881); the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (1886); the Order of Railroad Telegraphers (1886); the International Association of Machinists (1888); the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union (1890); the Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association (1891); the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers* (1891); the International Brotherhood of Firemen and Oilers (1898); the Brotherhood of Railway, Airline, & Steamship Clerks, Freight Handlers, Express & Station Employees (1899); the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (1908); the American Train Dispatchers Association (1917); the Railroad Yardmasters Association (1918); the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (1925); and the American Railway and Airline Supervisors Association (1934). The railroad brotherhoods were organized along craft lines, and the first successful attempt at industrial unionism did not occur among them until 1969 when the United Transportation Union was established. Reference Walter Licht, Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century, 1983.

RAILROAD LAND GRANTS Because of the enormous capital investment required to build a railroad, federal and state governments in the nineteenth century donated land to railroads to help finance construction. The practice began with the first state land grants in 1830 and ended with the federal land grant to the Texas & Pacific Railroad in 1871. During those years, a total of 179 million acres were donated to seventy roads, but 130 million of those acres went to the Union Pacific*, the Southern Pacific*, and the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe* railroads. Reference Lloyd J. Mercer, Railroads and Land Grant Policy, 1982.

RAILROAD RETIREMENT ACT OF 1934 Although many railroads had pension plans by the early 1930s, the retirement programs varied greatly from road to road, with many smaller railways lacking

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programs altogether. For years, the railroad brotherhoods had lobbied in Congress for a federal retirement program, but not until the New Deal did they find a sympathetic administrative and legislative ear. Senator Robert Wagner* of New York sponsored the legislation, which became the Railroad Retirement Act on June 27, 1934. A Railroad Retirement Board administered the law, and the pensions were financed by a 2 percent payroll tax on all employees, matched by a 4 percent contribution from the carriers. By requiring railroad employees to retire at age 65, the law sought to create 150,000 new jobs in a matter of a few years. The Association of Railway Executives opposed the law, calling it an unconstitutional violation of private property. They immediately launched test cases in the federal courts, and in 1935, in Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton RR Company, the Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional, since mandatory pensions did not fall under the Commerce Clause. Congress then responded with what became the Wagner– Crosser Railroad Retirement Act of 1935 and later the Railroad Retirement Act of 1937*. Reference “Railroads and Their Employees,” Monthly Labor Review 39 (1934): 352–355.

RAILROAD RETIREMENT ACT OF 1937 When the Supreme Court declared the Railroad Retirement Act* of 1934 unconstitutional in the Railroad Retirement Board v. Alton case, Congress immediately moved to fill the void. On August 29, 1935, Congress passed a new Railroad Retirement Act. The law established a Railroad Retirement Board of three members to administer the law. It also exempted railroad employees from the old-age pension provisions of the Social Security Act. To deal with the Supreme Court ruling that pensions were not included in the Commerce Clause, Congress passed separate legislation to fund the bill. Employees would pay an excise tax of 3.5 percent of their income payrolls; and employers an equal percentage in the form of an income tax. The Association of Railway Executives contested both laws, and on June 26, 1936, a U.S. District Court declared the financing measure unconstitutional, forcing Congress to pass the Railroad Retirement Act of 1937. On June 29, 1937, the Carriers Taxing Act, an income tax on the carriers and the railroad employees, was passed. Together, the laws set up a Railroad Retirement Board to administer the pension, with funds coming from the Carrier Taxing Act. Reference “Railroad Retirement Act of 1937,” Monthly Labor Review 45 (1937): 377–379.

RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1877 Because of the economic downturn in 1877, a number of large railroads imposed wage cuts on their workers, and in July, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad levied a second 10 percent cut in wages. Protesting workers began stopping trains in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and the strike soon spread. More than 200 federal troops were sent by President Rutherford B. Hayes into West Virginia to reopen the

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lines, and the troops killed nine strikers in a pitched battle. The strike spread to Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and a number of other major cities. In Pittsburgh, strikers attacked machine shops and tore up railroad tracks; federal troops killed twenty-six of them. The strike had largely run its course by the end of July 1877, but railway labor leaders were convinced that the federal government and the railroad owners were cooperating together against worker interests. Reference Louis Adamic, The Story of Class Violence in America, 1934.

RAILROAD STRIKE OF 1922 Because of increased competition from long-haul trucks in the 1920s, railroad freight volumes declined, as did revenues. In 1922, the roads announced an acrossthe-board wage cut for railway workers. In protest, railway shopmen went on strike. Attorney General Harry Daugherty was convinced that the strike was a communist conspiracy. Over the protests of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes* and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover*, he had a federal district court issue a broad restraining order on September 1. Arguing that the railroad brotherhoods* had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act*, the court prohibited workers from taking any action furthering the strike, including interviews, telephone calls, and planning sessions. President Warren G. Harding vigorously supported the injunction*, and the strike was broken. Reference Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920–1932, 1960.

R A I LWAY L A B O R A C T O F 1 9 2 6 The Railway Labor Act of 1926 was the only major piece of labor legislation passed at the federal level during the 1920s. The railroad strike of 1922* had proven that the arbitration mechanisms of the Transportation Ad of 1920 had failed, so the Railway Labor Act of 1926 was designed to prevent future strikes. The outgrowth of extended negotiations between representatives of the major railroads and the railroad brotherhoods*, the bill was sponsored by Senator James Watson of Indiana and Congressman James Parker of New York. Between March and May 1926, it made its way through Congress, and President Calvin Coolidge signed it on May 20, 1926. The law created a five-member Board of Mediation, appointed by the president of the United States, to evaluate contract disputes between railroad workers and railroad management. The board was to investigate disputes, propose solutions, and, if necessary, convince the interested parties to submit to voluntary arbitration. In the end, the measure proved to be a failure, primarily because the railroads were not willing to eliminate their company unions*, which the railroad brotherhoods hated and which the Railway Labor Act had seemed to prohibit. Because of that difference of opinion, the Board of Mediation was unable to resolve

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disputes. Not until the Railway Labor Act* of 1934 created the National Railroad Adjustment Board and the New Deal eliminated company unions did real progress occur in negotiating labor disputes in the railroad industry. Reference Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920–1933, 1960.

R A I LWAY L A B O R A C T O F 1 9 3 4 Because Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act* had guaranteed workers in the manufacturing sector the right to bargain collectively, the railroad brotherhoods* began demanding similar protection. In June 1934, Senator Clarence Dill of Washington and Representative Robert Crosser of Ohio sponsored legislation to amend the Railway Labor Act* of 1926. The Railway Labor Act of 1934 amended its 1926 counterpart by replacing the Board of Mediation with a National Railroad Adjustment Board with offices in Chicago. With power to penalize either labor or management for refusing to settle mutual disputes, the new board had more power than its predecessor. The act also upheld the right of railroad employees to organize and to bargain collectively using representatives of their own choosing. Reference “Railroads and Their Employees,” Monthly Labor Review 39 (1934): 352–354.

R A N D C O R P O R AT I O N The RAND Corporation is an independent, nonprofit* think tank founded jointly by the U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1945 to ensure the continuation of technological advancements begun during World War II. Since its foundation, the RAND Corporation (RAND being short for “Research and Development*”) has served both the public and private sectors. Although it mostly addressed the defense concerns of the U.S. Air Force during its initial years, it was later expanded to tackle social problems as well. RAND played a significant role in the advancement of technology during the Cold War. Project RAND, precursor to the RAND Corporation, began in October 1945 as the brainchild of Henry “Hap” Arnold, commanding general of the U.S. AAF. He worked in collaboration with a number of influential individuals from both the public and private sectors—including Edward Bowles, Donald Douglas, and Maj. Gens. Lauris Norstad and Curtis LeMay—to establish an institution that could successfully coordinate efforts among the military, government, industry, and academia to promote the development of science and technology. In March 1946 Project RAND was inaugurated as a division of the Douglas Aircraft Company. RAND reported to the U.S. AAF’s deputy chief of air staff for research and development, which was established in December 1945 and headed by LeMay. The RAND staff grew to include several fields including mathematics, engineering, aerodynamics, physics, chemistry, economics, and psychology. RAND

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produced its first study in May 1946 and has since produced many volumes of original research. Project RAND split from Douglas Aircraft in May 1948 and thereafter became the RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan research and design enterprise. Both its goals and purpose are explicitly set forth in its articles of incorporation, which seek “to further and promote scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare and security of the United States.” The exigencies of the Cold War, more than anything else, dictated RAND’s research agenda during its first years. Its directors’ insistence on cross-fertilization and free inquiry culminated in innovative approaches to defense problems that included systems analysis and game theory. Essential to RAND’s innovation was its interdisciplinary approach to problem solving. RAND is also responsible for having created a number of precursors to modern-day technologies that were essential to both the space age and the computer age. These innovations ranged from infrared detection, missile targeting, and reentry technology to video recording, computers, and the Internet*. In the 1960s RAND began to move beyond defense matters, addressing domestic policy issues as well. This was in part because of a decrease in U.S. Air Force contracts as other research and design organizations emerged. Moreover, the armed forces had learned much about how to conduct their own research from years of collaboration with RAND. Aside from science and technology, RAND began to specialize in education, civil and criminal justice, the environment*, population studies, terrorism, and transportation. Despite this shift, however, in the 1990s two-thirds of RAND’s research focused on national security issues. R. Matthew Gildner References Martin Collins, Cold War Laboratory: RAND, the Air Force, and the American State, 1945– 1950, 2002. Sterling Michael Pavelec, ed., The Military–Industrial Complex and American Society, 2010. RAND Corporation, http://rand.org.

RANDOLPH, ASA PHILIP A. Philip Randolph was born in Crescent City, Florida, on April 15, 1889. As a black student, he graduated from the Cookman Institute in Jacksonville, Florida, and moved to New York City, where he worked as a railroad porter and attended City College. Randolph converted to socialism* and in 1917 founded the Messenger, a socialist monthly. He ran unsuccessfully for several New York City offices as a socialist in the early 1920s but found his real skill as a labor organizer. In 1925, Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters*. Ten years later, the brotherhood won its first contract, with the Pullman Palace Car Company. In 1941, Randolph led the March on Washington Movement, which forced President Franklin D. Roosevelt* to establish the Fair Employment Practices

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Committee* (FEPC). In 1947, Randolph founded the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation. When the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) merged in 1955, Randolph was elected to the executive council and named vice president of the AFL-CIO. Randolph stayed in the post until his resignation in 1974. He died on May 16, 1979. References Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait, 1972. William H. Harris, Keeping the Faith: A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1927–1937, 1977.

RASKOB, JOHN JACOB Forced to leave school and go to work after his father’s death, John J. Raskob (born March 17, 1879, in Lockport, New York) went on to become a leading industrialist and a prominent figure in the Democratic Party. Starting as a stenographer for the Worthington Pump Company, Raskob soon had a job as a secretary to Pierre S. du Pont*, who was then president of street railway companies in Ohio. Raskob’s association with the du Pont family thus began in 1902 and lasted for years. Raskob rose to be assistant to du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, then treasurer of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, and eventually to director and vice president. At the same time, Raskob was investing in General Motors (GM) and became a major stockholder. In the late 1910s, as chairman and director of finance at GM, Raskob played a major role in restructuring the company and paving the way for the large-scale installment selling of automobiles. A loyal Democrat, Raskob became influential in the party, rising to the head of the Democratic National Committee in 1928 and helping to engineer the Roosevelt* landslide in 1932. Also during the 1920s, Raskob was a prominent member of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, a group that opposed Prohibition* because it represented a concentration of too much power at the federal level of government. Because of that perspective, Raskob soon became alienated from the New Deal. Although a Democrat, Raskob had a conservative political philosophy, and under the New Deal, the federal government simply became too powerful for his tastes. He was alarmed by the antibusiness flavor of the New Deal and the cult following that Roosevelt enjoyed. Raskob soon became a leading figure in the American Liberty League, an anti-Roosevelt group in the 1930s. To eliminate his influence from the party, Democrats paid off a $120,000 debt to Raskob in 1934. Late in the 1930s, Raskob completely severed his connections to the Democratic Party. He died on October 15, 1950. References David Burner, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918–1932, 1967. New York Times, October 16, 1950.

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“READING FORMULA” On July 5, 1933, more than 10,000 workers of the American Federation of FullFashioned Hosiery Workers went on strike when the Berkshire Knitting Mills refused to recognize the union. The National Labor Board brought labor and management together for mediation on August 10 and shortly thereafter announced the “Reading Formula” interpretation of Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act: the union would terminate the strike, employees would be rehired without discrimination, and workers would select their own bargaining agent in secret elections by majority rule. In September 1934, the employers agreed to the settlement. Reference Bernard Bellush, The Failure of the NRA, 1975.

REAGAN, RONALD Ronald Reagan’s presidency may well be regarded as one of the most important in twentieth-century U.S. history, both for undermining the liberal tradition that had dominated U.S. politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt and, according to some, for preparing the way for the end of the Cold War. Reagan began his political career as a Roosevelt Democrat and eventually grew to hate high taxes, big government, and communism. As a leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, he emphasized the desirability of economic freedom and incentives and of removing the federal government from the regulation of industry and commerce. Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois. After graduating from Eureka College in 1932, he began working as a sports announcer for a small radio station in Davenport, Iowa, and in 1933 for a Des Moines station. Reagan, who had done some acting in college, was recruited by a Hollywood talent scout for the Warner Brothers studio while covering baseball spring training on the radio in California. Over the course of a film career that lasted until 1964, he made more than 50 movies and became, he later observed, “the Errol Flynn of the Bs” (low-budget movies). During World War II, Reagan served for three years in the U.S. Army making training films. After his discharge with the rank of captain, he returned to his film career. In 1947, he was elected to the first of five consecutive one-year terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild. It was a difficult period in which to lead the union, thanks to the investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee into the alleged infiltration of the Hollywood movie industry by communists. Reagan cooperated with the blacklisting of suspected communist sympathizers, including the Hollywood 10, in the industry. Though he was convinced that they were trying to subvert well-meaning liberals in the film business, but he also viewed the committee and its chairperson, J. Parnell Thomas, as “a pretty venal bunch.” Reagan revered the efforts of President Roosevelt to alleviate the suffering of such people as his unemployed shoe salesman father during the Great Depression. He began to change his liberal Democratic allegiance during the late 1940s and

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1950s, however, in the face of the massive increase in the size of the federal government. During that period, he occasionally acted in and served as the host of the television program General Electric Theater. In 1962, Reagan became a Republican. After he taped an effective speech for use in television ads—“A Time for Choosing”—in support of Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful campaign for president in the election of 1964, many wealthy Republican conservatives became convinced that he was the best candidate available for representing their views. A number of them agreed to finance a bid by him to run for governor of California. In 1966, Reagan won the Republican nomination for governor and then the general election on a campaign platform that promised to crack down on college campus radicals, eliminate welfare fraud, and reduce taxes. He was reelected four years later by a wide margin. Through pragmatic compromise and a masterful ability to marshal public opinion, Reagan managed to fulfill many of his campaign pledges while governor. The dramatic growth in welfare payments was halted; and by freezing state government hiring and reducing social spending, budget surpluses were obtained that were used to reduce local property taxes. Reagan decided not to run for reelection in 1974 as governor to concentrate on securing the Republican Party nomination for president in the election of 1976. Although he came within 60 convention votes of winning the nomination in 1976, convincing a majority of Republican delegates to abandon the popular incumbent Gerald Ford proved too difficult. After Ford was defeated by Democrat Jimmy Carter, Reagan began campaigning for the Republican nomination in the election of 1980. At first, Reagan adopted a conservative front-runner campaign strategy. However, after he lost the Iowa caucus to George Bush, who would later become his vice president, he adopted a vigorous approach that quickly overwhelmed Bush and eliminated the perception that at age 68, Reagan might be too old to be president. President Carter, burdened by soaring inflation, high unemployment, and the unresolved American hostage situation in Iran, attempted to portray Reagan as a trigger-happy extremist who would involve the nation in war. Democrats also attacked Reagan’s support for antiabortion legislation, advocacy of the use of federal funds for parochial schools, and support for a constitutional amendment to reestablish prayer in public schools. Reagan disarmed Carter’s charge that he was an unstable extremist by projecting a warm and friendly image during several television debates. He managed to keep the campaign focused on domestic economic and foreign policy issues. At the end of his final televised debate with Carter, Reagan succinctly summed up the race in many voters’ minds: “Ask yourself—are you better off now than you were four years ago?” During the campaign, Reagan promised that, if elected, he would lower taxes, increase defense spending, and reduce the budget deficit. He said that an economic theory known as supply-side economics (quickly nicknamed Reaganomics) would make those apparently contradictory goals possible. The idea was that reduced taxes would spur investment, which would increase productivity and jobs. More

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people working and increased business revenue would produce greater tax revenues. Social programs could be cut, because fewer people would need them. Two months after assuming office, an assassination attempt by a deranged gunman was barely averted. The president was shot in the chest but survived thanks to swift medical care. He recovered while Congress debated his tax and budget proposals, and he made a dramatic return to address a joint session of Congress in support of his goals. Budget cuts totaling $39 million were followed by the enactment of a 25 percent tax cut for individuals spread over three years and faster writeoffs of capital investments for business. Reaganomics achieved mixed results from 1981 to 1989. The nation experienced a recession in 1982 that was induced by the tight money supply policy of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve’s goal was to smother inflation with high interest rates. Unemployment dropped from double-digit levels in 1982 to 7 percent by 1987, and inflation declined from 13.5 percent in 1980 to 5 percent by 1982. From 1983 to 1990, the nation enjoyed one of the longest stretches of uninterrupted economic growth in its history. On the other hand, Reagan’s balanced budget never materialized. Instead, by 1988, the national debt* had soared past $3 trillion. To fund the debt, the Federal Reserve was forced to keep interest rates high to attract foreign capital. In effect, the budget deficits of the Reagan spending and tax-cutting approach had resulted in a new tax many Americans had to pay through high interest rates, the profits from which flowed to relatively small groups of lenders at home and abroad. Although growth was slowed, the federal government was not, as promised, reduced in size. The results of deregulation have been ambiguous at best: If it stimulated vigorous economic growth, it also encouraged certain economic practices that seriously weakened important sectors of the U.S. financial system. Those problems did very little to dampen enthusiasm for Reagan, who continued to be hailed for his opposition to government spending and for his reinvigoration of the capitalist economy. He further satisfied his supporters by placing two conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court: Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia. In the area of foreign policy, Reagan adopted a hostile attitude toward the Soviet Union, which he described as the “Evil Empire.” He proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (dubbed Star Wars by the press) to provide the United States with a protective shield from nuclear attack as part of the largest peacetime military buildup in U.S. history. In October 1983, he ordered the invasion and occupation of Grenada, allegedly to prevent a communist takeover of that nation. On October 23, just two days before Marines landed on Grenada, 241 Marines were killed by a terrorist bombing attack in Beirut, Lebanon, where they had been acting as peacekeepers. The event led Reagan to order the swift withdrawal of U.S. forces from Lebanon. Reagan also authorized U.S. funding of anticommunist guerrillas (contras) in Nicaragua. By the election of 1984, most Americans felt better off economically; inflation and unemployment were down and the economy was expanding. Further, their fears about becoming involved in a war were diminished. As a result, Reagan was reelected by the largest number of electoral votes in history.

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Reagan’s greatest pride as president was to have started down the road toward nuclear disarmament through one-on-one diplomacy with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. His foreign policy will ultimately be judged by his role in bringing about the end of the Cold War. Reagan’s supporters claim that his vast defense expenditures and determination to battle communist aggression everywhere brought the Soviet Union to its knees. His critics contend that the capitulation of the Soviet Union was due to long-brewing problems inside the Soviet Union and not to U.S. pressure. Continuing anticommunist efforts in Nicaragua combined with a hostage situation in Lebanon led to the most serious crisis of the Reagan administration. Reagan had pledged never to deal with terrorists. However, in 1986 it was discovered that he had, at the very least, not attempted to stop subordinates from arranging a complicated arms-for-hostages swap by circumventing congressional restrictions and selling weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages in Lebanon. Much of the profits from those sales were then used to obtain equipment for the contras in Nicaragua. Reagan denied all knowledge of the existence of the arms-for-hostages deal when challenged by the press and a special congressional prosecutor; but such a statement, though it relieved him from guilt of any wrongdoing in the Iran–Contra scandal, was an admission that he did not know what his subordinates were doing. Despite the scandal, Reagan recovered his prestige and popularity before he left office. He retired to his home in California in 1989 after seeing his former vice president sworn into office as his successor. In November 1994, Reagan released a handwritten letter to America reading, “I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease.” Alzheimer’s, a degenerative brain disease that affects the elderly, took Reagan out of the public eye. It was hoped that Reagan’s affliction would raise public awareness of Alzheimer’s and help increase research efforts. Nearly ten years later, Reagan succumbed to the disease at his Los Angeles home on June 5, 2004. References Robert Dallek, Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism, 1984. Michael K. Deaver and Mickey Herskowitz, Behind the Scenes, 1987. Anne Edwards, Early Reagan, 1987. Ronald Reagan, An American Life: The Autobiography, 1990. Larry Speakes, Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House, 1988. Garry Wills, Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home, 1987.

REAGANOMICS The term “Reaganomics” was used during the 1980s to refer to the economic policies of the Ronald Reagan* administration. Reagan had campaigned for the White House on the promise that he would restore economic prosperity by cutting federal spending and reducing taxes. Known as “supply-side economics,”* the theory argued that such an arrangement would stimulate the economy by increasing

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business confidence, business investment, and consumer spending. Reductions in federal regulation would also restore competition and efficiency to the economy. Reagan did manage to cut taxes, but federal spending skyrocketed during his administration. Nevertheless, because of falling oil prices, the inflation rate declined and the economy improved. The term “Reaganomics” described the irony of tax cuts, huge federal deficits, falling prices, and rising employment during the 1980s. Reference James S. Olson, “The Presidency of Ronald Reagan,” in The American Presidency, vol. 3, 1988, 821–841.

REAPER See McCORMICK, CYRUS HALL. R E B AT E The rebate was a secret arrangement between a privileged shipper and a railroad whereby the railroad provided a kickback to the shipper for its exclusive use of the railroad. As a result, many large-scale shippers enjoyed freight rates well below the scheduled rates, whereas small farmers paid full rates. Populists* and progressives* all protested the arrangement, and a series of federal laws—the Interstate Commerce* Act of 1887, Elkins Act* of 1903, and Hepburn Act* of 1906—outlawed the practice. Reference W. Z. Ripley, Railroads: Rates and Regulation, 1973.

RECESSION OF 1937–1938 Between September 1937 and June 1938, New Deal* efforts at economic relief, recovery, and reform suffered severe setbacks. Industrial production declined by 33 percent, durable goods production by more than 50 percent, national income by 13 percent, profits by 78 percent, payrolls by 35 percent, industrial stock averages by more than 50 percent, and manufacturing employment by 23 percent. The recession generated new debates about economic recovery and led to a shift from pump-priming to the partial adoption of a compensatory government spending policy in the spring of 1938. During 1936, the federal government employed the policy of deficit spending to provide net contributions of $4.1 billion to national income. Most of the expenditures came from the release of the veterans’ bonus certificates after June 1936. Net governmental contributions in 1937 declined to $800 million because of the deflationary effect of new social security* taxes. Changes in monetary policy also created economic disruptions. Between August 1936 and May 1937, the Federal Reserve* Board doubled its reserve requirements, leading to a contraction of money and credit out of a misplaced fear of inflation. From December 1936 through April 1938, the treasury’s gold stabilization program had similar consequences.

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Because the recession came in the wake of New Deal economic recovery measures, many critics renewed their attacks on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* administration, saying that the recession stemmed from mistaken fiscal and monetary policies that undermined private sector investment and business confidence. The basic analyses of the causes of the depression—underconsumption and underinvestment—were brought out again in political debate during a period of increasing business–government tension. The recession brought renewed debate to policymaking circles within the administration. Conservatives such as Jesse Jones* and Henry Morgenthau Jr. argued that the government must retreat from reform to regain the confidence of the business community. They advocated balancing the federal budget*, revising the tax laws, and conciliating business. Antimonopolists such as Thomas Corcoran*, Marriner Eccles, and Benjamin Cohen* argued that business was engaging in a “sit-down strike” of capital, using monopoly power to manipulate prices and destroy free competition. They argued for a resumption of federal spending to increase purchasing power and national income. The recession of 1937–1938 brought the debate over industrial recovery to new heights. The debate created increasing tensions between the New Deal and the business community that would not be resolved until World War II. Most important, the debate revealed the internal confusion, doubt, and ignorance of New Deal administrators who were torn between competing economic traditions. Although that debate was never completely resolved, the adoption of a compensatory spending policy indicated a turning point in New Deal economic policymaking. References Dean May, From New Deal to New Economics, 1982: Albert U. Romasco, The Politics of Recovery: Roosevelt’s New Deal, 1983. Theodore Rosenhof, Dogma, Depression, and the New Deal: The Debate of Political Leaders over Economic Recovery, 1975.

RECESSION OF 1982 When President Jimmy Carter left office in 1981, the American economy was in desperate straits. The prime rate was in excess of 21 percent, stifling the availability of credit, and the annual inflation rate had reached 13 percent. Most of the problems in the economy, however, were external in nature. The revolution in Iran and fall of the Shah had disrupted Iranian oil production, creating a global shortage of petroleum and driving the price of oil to $34 a barrel. Relatively large-scale federal deficits, however, had helped to reduce the unemployment rate. Ronald Reagan* campaigned in 1980 on a simple theme—that severe reductions in federal spending, combined with tax cuts, would cut the inflation rate and restore American economic strength. By the time Reagan took office, the economy was entering a recession, and by early 1982, the unemployment rate was approaching 10 percent. Reagan kept his promise to cut taxes in July 1981, but federal spending was not cut. On the contrary, the federal government began to accumulate unprecedented deficits. Contrary to most people’s expectations, however, the inflation rate did not go up. Interest rates and prices began

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to decline. After the revolution in Iran had ended, oil production increased steadily. When Iran and Iraq went to war, both countries pumped huge amounts of oil into the global market to finance their armies. World oil prices dropped, as did the inflation rate. With more disposable income, American consumers stimulated the economy. The combination of increased government spending, falling oil prices, and tax cuts lifted the country out of the recession of 1982 and led to the longest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history. Not until the recession of 1991* did the expansion come to a stop. Reference James S. Olson, “The Presidency of Ronald Reagan,” in The American Presidency, vol. 3, 1988, 821–841.

RECESSION OF 1991 From 1982 to late 1990, the United States experienced the longest peacetime economic expansion in American history. Massive government spending, federal tax cuts, and falling oil prices explained the prosperity. By the late 1980s, however, the economic expansion seemed to have run its course. Severe weaknesses in the savings and loan and banking industries reduced the availability of credit, and changing demographics weakened the construction industry. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 and the subsequent war between the United States and Iraq led to higher oil prices, reduced consumption, and declining demand. RECESSION OF 2002–2003 The U.S. Recession of 2002–2003 was a result of slowing economic activity after the boom of the 1990s. Though not as severe as prior recessions, it did result in increased unemployment and the slow growth of gross domestic product in the early 2000s. Moreover, it was also indicative of the end of the dot-com bubble*, which had burst in 2001, as tech stocks crumbled across the board, showing the limits of Internet*-based businesses. Reference Frank K. Martin, A Decade of Delusions: From Speculative Contagion to the Great Recession, 2011.

RECESSION OF 2008 See GREAT RECESSION. RECIPROCAL TRADE AGREEMENTS ACT OF 1934 By the early 1930s, many economists and New Dealers* had become convinced that the restrictive Republican trade policies of the 1920s had produced a decline in American exports and contributed to the Great Depression*. Secretary of State Cordell Hull* launched a crusade in 1933 to reform American trade policy, not only to stimulate exports and economic recovery, but also to improve U.S. foreign relations. From 1929 to 1932, American exports had fallen by nearly a third, so

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Hull’s bill called for bilateral trade agreements based on reciprocal reductions of tariff rates. The act passed the House of Representatives in March 1934 by a vote of 274–111 and passed the Senate in June, 57–33. It authorized the president to make reciprocal trade agreements with other nations without specific congressional approval and to raise or lower tariff rates in these agreements by up to 50 percent of the levels of the Hawley–Smoot Tariff of 1930. Congress renewed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act in 1937, 1940, 1943, and 1945. By that time, the United States had negotiated agreements with thirty-seven countries. Although the act did not lead to spectacular increases in American exports, it did help the United States to open new markets abroad and improved foreign relations with its reciprocity partners. Reference James C. Pearson, The Reciprocal Trade Agreements Program: The Policy of the United States and Its Effectiveness, 1942.

R E C L A M AT I O N , B U R E A U O F During the late nineteenth century, pressure mounted in the western states for federal legislation in the area of land reclamation. Western interests believed that a federal program would strengthen local economies, relieve population pressure in the cities, and improve conservation. President Theodore Roosevelt* strongly supported the idea, and in 1902 Congressman Francis G. Newlands of Nevada pushed the Reclamation Act, or Newlands Reclamation Act*, through Congress. A new federal agency, the Reclamation Service, was established to administer the program. The new agency was charged with surveying the western states in order to develop reasonable reclamation projects, and the program was to be funded from public land sales. Farmers who received government funds for land reclamation had a ten-year period to repay the funds. Legislation in 1913 extended that time to twenty years. An immediate shortcoming in the law was that it allowed virtually any farmer or settler, even the most inexperienced ones, to launch reclamation projects on government land, and as a result there were a high number of failed projects. Soon, however, the Reclamation Service was engaged in dozens of major irrigation projects and the construction of dams and reservoirs, the most important of which eventually became Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River in Arizona, Elephant Butte Dam on the Rio Grande River, and Pathfinder Dam on the Platte River in Wyoming. The Reclamation Service soon also found itself involved in hydroelectric projects, recreation opportunities, and conservation. By 1922 the Reclamation Service had spent more than $135 million. It was renamed the Bureau of Reclamation in 1923. The bureau’s mission changed dramatically during the Great Depression*, primarily because it began to emphasize multipurpose planning, integrating hydroelectric projects, flood control, irrigation, and recreation for large river basins rather than just limited areas. The most ambitious of those projects was the Boulder Canyon project, which constructed Hoover Dam*, Parker Dam, the All-American

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Canal, the Colorado Aqueduct, and power transmission lines all along the Colorado River basin. Its largest project during the 1940s and 1950s was the Columbia River Project, which linked power transmission lines from the Columbia River Power System to southern California. More recently, since the 1960s, the Bureau of Reclamation found itself confronting the environmental movement*, which often opposes the economic development which gave the bureau its beginnings. Nevertheless, by the late 1980s, the Bureau of Reclamation had completed work on more than 1,000 projects, including 330 storage reservoirs; thousands of miles of canals, tunnels, and pipelines; hundreds of irrigation projects; and more than 16,000 miles of electric power transmission lines. Reference Michael C. West, Water for the West: The Bureau of Reclamation, 1902–1977, 1979.

R E C L A M AT I O N A C T O F 1 9 0 2 See NEWLANDS RECLAMATION ACT OF 1902. R E C L A M AT I O N P R O J E C T A C T O F 1 9 3 9 The Reclamation Project Act of 1939 was a New Deal* measure that built on the foundation established by the Newlands Reclamation Act* of 1902. The law expanded the authority of the Bureau of Reclamation* and instructed that federal reclamation programs should be multipurpose in scope—that they should engage, where possible, in flood control, irrigation, hydroelectric power, and establishing water reserves. Unlike the Newlands Act, which required complete amortization of the cost of the projects over ten years, the Reclamation Project Act of 1939 simply established a water utility service charge on a monthly basis. Reference Michael Robinson, Water for the West: The Bureau of Reclamation, 1902–1977, 1979.

RECONSTRUCTION The era of Reconstruction in American history usually refers to the years 1863– 1877, when Union troops occupied some or all of the southern states. At the time, the U.S. federal government was under the control of the Republican Party. Federal policy was aimed at strengthening American industry through subsidies and tariff protection, encouraging industrialization in the South, promoting western settlement, and improving the transportation infrastructure. Federal agencies such as the Freedmen’s Bureau attempted to build public schools and distribute land to poor African Americans, precipitating violent reactions in the form of such vigilante groups as the Ku Klux Klan. Those Northerners who came down South to assist the former slaves* or to make some easy money were known as “carpetbaggers,” and those Southerners who assisted them were called “scalawags.” As long as Union soldiers were stationed in the South, the projects aimed at improving the economy and

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the status of black people made some headway. When the troops were withdrawn in the mid-1870s, the white ruling class returned to power in the South, black people were disenfranchised, and the system of plantation agriculture was revived. Reference Robert H. Jones, Disrupted Decades: The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1973.

R E C O N S T R U C T I O N F I N A N C E C O R P O R AT I O N In December 1931, with the money markets in a state of collapse and the failure of the National Credit Corporation, President Herbert Hoover appealed to Congress for the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). He wanted the RFC to receive $500 million and to enjoy the right to borrow up to $2 billion more to make loans to banks, savings banks, building and loan associations, credit banks, industrial banks, credit unions, mutual savings banks, and life insurance companies. With these loans, the institutions could meet depositor demands, forestall the banking panics that had closed more than 5,000 banks during the 1920s, lead to an increase in commercial lending, and lift the country out of the depression. Congress responded to his request, and Hoover signed the RFC Act into law on February 2, 1932. The RFC also had the power to make loans to railroads. Competition from cars and trucks had seriously eroded railroad freight volume, as had the economic decline after 1929. Large numbers of roads could not meet their bonded indebtedness payments. When they defaulted on their bonds, the banks and life insurance companies holding such assets were badly hurt. Under the direction of Charles G. Dawes, the RFC immediately began making loans, and for a while in 1932, it stemmed the tide of bank failures. In the process, however, the RFC encountered tremendous criticism. The bulk of its funds went to the largest banks, which was hardly surprising, because those banks controlled disproportionately large shares of money market assets. Democratic critics had a field day with the RFC loans, accusing the Hoover administration of taking care of big business while ignoring the suffering of the poor. The attacks grew more intense in June 1932 when Dawes resigned from the presidency of the RFC to return to Chicago and see after his own troubled bank—the Central Republic Bank. When the RFC granted the Central Republic a loan of $90 million to keep it open and prevent a banking panic in the Midwest, the charges that the Hoover administration was pro-rich and pro-business gathered momentum. The fact that the national unemployment rate was reaching 25 percent in an election year only made Hoover’s plight worse. In July 1932, Hoover consented and Congress passed the Emergency Relief and Construction Act*, which authorized the RFC to increase its indebtedness to $3 billion and to use the money to provide up to $300 million in relief loans to state and local agencies and $1.5 billion in public works construction. Although the legislation should have been a political plus for Hoover, it came just one week before the disastrous Bonus Army* riots, which sealed for a generation Hoover’s reputation as a miserly, insensitive president.

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Although the RFC had lent out all of the $300 million for relief and more than $1 billion to various money market institutions, the nation’s economy was on the verge of collapse by early 1933. Frightened depositors were hoarding huge volumes of currency, businessmen were laying off workers in record numbers, and bankers were accumulating large amounts of excess reserves with Federal Reserve* Banks. Because all RFC loans had to be paid back, borrowing banks did not have enough time to stabilize their capital structures. By February 1933, banking panics were spreading throughout the country, and it would have taken billions of RFC dollars even to begin to deal with the situation. When Hoover left office in March 1933, banking holidays were in effect throughout most states, and the Hoover administration was bankrupt. The RFC, although the largest government agency up to its time in American history, had been unable to deal with the magnitude of the crisis. During the years of the New Deal, however, the RFC expanded enormously. Under the authority of the Emergency Banking Act* of 1933, the RFC received the power to invest in the preferred stock of commercial banks. Within two years, the RFC owned more than $1 billion in the stock of thousands of banks. The RFC also invested in railroads, savings and loan associations, and insurance companies to maintain the liquidity of the money markets. Although it could also lend money directly to businesses, it was its bank rescue operation in the 1930s that made it one of the most important agencies of the New Deal. During World War II*, the RFC expanded even more, lending out a total of more than $40 billion and establishing such subsidiary corporations as the Defense Supplies Corporation*, the War Plants Corporation, the Metals Reserve Company*, and the U.S. Commercial Company* to promote the war effort. The RFC went into small business loans after World War II and was dissolved in 1951. References James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977. James S. Olson, The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940, 1988.

R E PA R AT I O N S Reparations (fines imposed by conquering nations on their defeated enemies to pay for the war) were central to the diplomatic negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The Allied nations wanted massive reparation payments imposed on Germany. The Treaty of Versailles established a Reparations Commission to determine the size of the German obligation and to collect payments. Although the United States took a moderate position on reparations, the U.S. Senate’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Versailles brought about the expulsion of the U.S. representative from the commission and the loss of a moderate voice. Initially, the Reparations Commission saddled Germany with a $10 billion debt, but in 1921, the commission added an extra $23 billion to pay for estimated veterans’ pensions in France and Great Britain. The reparations proved absurdly high and sent the German economy into a tailspin, leading to the Dawes Plan* (1924), the Young

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Plan* (1929), the Hoover Moratorium* (1931), and the Lausanne Conference* (1932), each of which reduced the reparations substantially. In 1933, Adolf Hitler renounced all reparations payments. The issue was dead. References Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace, 1954. Philip Mason Burnett, Reparations at the Paris Peace Conference from the Standpoint of the American Delegation, 1940.

R E P O R T O N M A N U FA C T U R E S On December 5, 1791, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton* sent Congress his Report on Manufactures. Convinced that American greatness depended on the development of the industrial sector of the economy, Hamilton proposed protective tariffs that would keep foreign goods out of the country or at least make them less competitive. Such a policy, Hamilton believed, would provide a needed boost to American industry. The report generated opposition from agricultural regions of the country, which feared having to pay higher prices for farm equipment and receiving tariff retaliation on American farm products. Although Congress did not act on Hamilton’s proposals immediately, the debate that he set in motion affected American tariff policy for much of the next century. Reference John C. Miller, Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation, 1959.

REPORT ON THE PUBLIC CREDIT In January 1790, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton* sent to Congress his Report on the Public Credit, an ambitious plan to restore the federal government’s financial credibility. Hamilton argued that the federal government should pay all its foreign debts in full, pay the domestic debt at face value, and assume all unpaid state debts. Taxes would be raised to pay the new obligations. The proposal triggered a vigorous protest in Congress. People such as Thomas Jefferson* and James Madison* argued that paying the debt at face value to those holding the bonds would benefit speculators who had only recently acquired the debt instruments instead of those who had lent money to their country in its hour of need. Hamilton retorted that it would be impossible to trace the bonds back to their original owners. Southerners objected to the assumption of state debts because the southern states had already paid their debts in full; they feared that they would be taxed to payoff northern state debts. Hamilton eventually prevailed, and the $75 million debt was funded by issuing new government bonds bearing interest rates of between 3 and 6 percent. In doing so, Hamilton guaranteed the loyalty of wealthy investors to the new government that had the responsibility of paying the interest on the bonds. Reference John C. Miller, Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation, 1959.

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RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (R&D) The concept of research and development (R&D) refers to the twentieth-century business practice of developing new products through testing, research, and the creation of new knowledge. Individual companies and corporate partnerships with universities and/or government agencies typically practice R&D. R&D is an important business strategy in ensuring the growth and development of the industry and well as the creation of new products. During the Cold War, R&D was a cooperative venture between the U.S. government, public universities, and defense industries in the development of weapons systems. Reference Pertha Dasgupta, Economics: A Very Short Introduction, 2007.

R E S E T T L E M E N T A D M I N I S T R AT I O N By the mid-1930s, it had become obvious to most Americans that the plight of the rural poor in the United States was desperate. By encouraging acreage reduction and production cuts, government policies had actually displaced sharecroppers* and tenant farmers from the land. A large-scale migration to California began on the part of unemployed, landless, rural workers looking for jobs. To deal with the plight of the rural poor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* established the Resettlement Administration by executive order on April 30, 1935. He selected Rexford G. Tugwell* to head the agency and charged him with the responsibility of developing rural rehabilitation and resettlement projects, as well as operating decent camps for migrant farm labor families. The Resettlement Administration also began work on so-called “Greenbelt Towns”—planned communities to which poor people could be relocated. It provided loans to poor families and experimented with community farming projects. Not surprisingly, the Resettlement Administration encountered intense opposition from agribusiness* groups that feared that their supply of cheap labor might be threatened. In 1937, the Resettlement Administration became part of the Farm Security Administration*. Reference Rexford G. Tugwell, “The Resettlement Idea,” Agricultural History 33 (1959): 159–164.

RESUMPTION ACT OF 1875 See SPECIE RESUMPTION ACT OF 1875. R E U T H E R , WA LT E R P H I L I P Walter Philip Reuther was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, on September 1, 1907, to a working-class family. He went to work after high school as a tool and die maker for the Wheeling Steel Corporation, but he was fired for union activities. He then moved to Detroit, Michigan, and went to work for the Ford Motor Company* as a tool and die maker. He was again fired for union activities. Reuther spent the

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next three years working and traveling throughout Europe. When he returned to Detroit in 1936, he became a volunteer organizer for the United Automobile Workers* of America (UAW). He was eminently successful and soon rose through the union ranks. Reuther was a leading figure in the successful sit-down strikes against the auto makers in the late 1930s, and in 1942, he became a UAW vice president; in 1946, he became its president. Reuther successfully negotiated the contract in 1948 that fixed the wages of UAW members to the consumer price index. He became president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) in 1952 and helped to negotiate the merger with the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) in 1955. Convinced, however, that the UAW would be better off outside the large union, he led the UAW out of the AFL-CIO in 1969. Reuther died in a plane crash on May 10, 1970. Reference Frank Cormier and William 1. Eaton, Walter Reuther: Labor’s Rugged Individualist, 1972.

REVENUE ACT OF 1861 After South Carolina had fired on Fort Sumter and the military phase of the Civil War* was underway, most people in the North realized that federal taxes would have to be raised to finance the drive to restore the Union. Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861 to achieve those financial goals; among other things, the new law relied on a federal income tax*. The first tax rates were 3 percent on all annual income between $600 and $10,000 and 5 percent on all incomes over $10,000. The Revenue Act of 1861 was superseded by the Revenue Act* of 1864. Reference William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors, 1948.

REVENUE ACT OF 1864 Because of the enormous cost of prosecuting the Civil War*, President Abraham Lincoln* and the Congress by 1864 decided that new revenues had to be generated. In addition to imposing excise taxes on a number of new items, including tobacco, the Revenue Act of 1864 amended the Revenue Act of 1861*, increasing federal income tax* rates. A 5 percent tax was imposed on annual incomes between $600 and $10,000, and a 10 percent tax was imposed on incomes in excess of $10,000. Reference William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors, 1948.

REVENUE ACT OF 1921 A central premise of Republican “normalcy”* early in the 1920s was income tax* reform, by which Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon* meant reductions

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for business and the well-to-do. Mellon and other conservative Republicans were convinced that such reductions would encourage capital investment and strengthen the economy. In July 1921, Mellon submitted his proposal to Congress. The existing law provided for a 4 percent tax on the first $4,000 in income and 8 percent on the rest. There was also a surtax that escalated from 1 percent on incomes over $5,000 to 65 percent on incomes in excess of $1 million. The corporate income tax was 10 percent, and there was also an excess profits tax. Mellon wanted the excess profits tax eliminated, the surtax reduced to a maximum of 32 percent, the corporate tax reduced by an indefinite amount, and the general tax rates of 4 and 8 percent to remain the same. In Congress, the bill encountered a storm of protest from southern and western congressmen as well as from such progressives* as Senator Robert M. La Follette* of Wisconsin. President Warren G. Harding vacillated on the bill for a while but eventually came out strongly in favor of tax reform, even appearing before the Senate to plead Mellon’s case. Progressive Republicans and liberal Democrats did not have the clout to stop the bill altogether, but they did amend it substantially. The excess profits tax was eliminated, but the corporate income tax was raised to 12 percent. The maximum surtax was reduced to 50 percent. General rates were left the same, but low-income people were helped when the head-of-household exemption was raised from $2,000 to $2,500 and the dependent exemptions were raised from $200 to $400 for all families with incomes less than $5,000. In addition, the bill, for the first time, imposed a 12.5 percent tax on capital gains, which had previously been taxed at normal rates. President Harding signed the measure on November 23, 1921. References Roy G. Blakey and Gladys C. Blakey, The Federal Income Tax, 1940. Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson, The Presidency of Warren G. Harding, 1977.

REVENUE ACT OF 1924 Dedicated to tax reduction as a matter of economic philosophy and also anticipating the 1924 elections, the Republican administration under Calvin Coolidge and Secretary of the Treasury Andrew W. Mellon* wanted badly to follow up on the Revenue Act* of 1921 with further reductions. Coolidge signed the Revenue Act of 1924 on June 2, 1924, and the bill was retroactive to January 1. The new law replaced the general rates of the Revenue Act of 1921—4 percent on the first $4,000 in income and 8 percent on the rest with a 2 percent rate on the first $4,000, 4 percent on the next $4,000, and 6 percent on the rest. The maximum surtax was reduced from 50 percent to 40 percent and was imposed only on income in excess of $500,000, not $200,000, as it had been previously. The Revenue Act of 1926 reduced the maximum inheritance tax and surtax rates to 20 percent and repealed the gift tax outright. The corporate income tax rate, however, was increased from 12 to 12.5 percent in 1926 and to 13.5 percent in 1927. Mellon was convinced that the money left in the hands of investors would be put to better use than

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the government could ever have imagined. Personal exemptions were raised from $1,000 to $1,500, and from $2,500 to $3,500 for heads of household. The tax rate schedule was 1.5 percent on the first $4,000 of income, 3 percent on the next $4,000, and 5 percent on the rest, compared to the previous rates of 2, 4, and 6 percent. The Revenue Act of 1928 then reduced the corporate income tax rate from 13.5 percent to 12 percent. References Roy G. Blakey and Gladys C. Blakey, The Federal Income Tax, 1940. J. F. Sherwood, Federal Tax Accounting, 1934.

REVENUE ACT OF 1926 See REVENUE ACT OF 1924. REVENUE ACT OF 1932 The onset of the Great Depression* greatly reduced federal tax revenues just as demands on the federal budget* were increasing. President Herbert Hoover* wanted to achieve a balanced budget, and the only way to do that was to seek a tax increase. At first, an alliance of southern Democrats and conservative Republicans talked of imposing a 2.5 percent manufacturers’ sales tax, as well as increases in the maximum surtax and general rates schedules, to raise an additional $1.25 billion. President Hoover endorsed the idea of the sales tax, but a rebellion by insurgent Republicans and liberal Democrats in the House and Senate doomed the proposal. Instead, Congress eventually raised the corporate income tax* to 13.75 percent, the maximum surtax from 25 percent to 55 percent, and the general rate schedules to 4 percent and 8 percent. The law also imposed a 5 percent excess profits tax. Hoover signed the measure on June 6, 1932. Reference Martin L. Fausold, The Presidency of Herbert C. Hoover, 1985.

REVENUE ACT OF 1935 No other New Deal measure symbolized the shift in public policy during the 1930s better than the Revenue Act of 1935, or the Wealth Tax Act. With its steep increases in income tax* schedules, estate and gift taxes, and excess corporate profits taxes, the Revenue Act of 1935 demonstrated Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* shift away from the cooperative, self-regulating business planning of the early New Deal to the Brandeisian* and later Keynesian* emphasis of the mature New Deal. One year later, the Revenue Act of 1936 included an undistributed profits tax on corporate income that included a new range of tax surcharges. The business community rose up in righteous indignation against the measure, but it passed through Congress nonetheless during the election. In the wake of President Roosevelt’s landslide victory in November 1936, Congress quickly passed the Revenue Act of 1937,

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closing several loopholes in earlier income tax laws that had permitted widespread evasion. But the antibusiness, anticorporate tax measures of 1935, 1936, and 1937 received a setback in 1938 from a most unlikely coalition. The Supreme Court fight and the revival of the conservative forces in Congress, as well as a widely perceived sense that some of the president’s magical popularity was slipping away, encouraged Democratic and Republican opponents of the New Deal. In addition, many people, including anti–New Deal businessmen as well as Keynesian advocates, were arguing that the recent tax increases had triggered the recession* of 1937 and 1938. Both groups were calling for tax cuts, although for different reasons. Conservatives were arguing that tax cuts on business and corporate income would revive confidence and stimulate a new wave of investment. The Keynesians believed that the cuts would stimulate purchasing power and raise employment. Senators Pat Harrison of Mississippi and James Byrnes of South Carolina then sponsored the Revenue Act of 1938. It repealed the undistributed profits tax and the progressive normal tax passed in 1936, and it greatly reduced capital gains taxes. The president threatened to veto the measure, so the undistributed profits tax was restored in the House, but only in the most superficial way. A 19 percent tax was imposed on corporations whose income exceeded $25,000, but the tax was reduced by 2.5 percent of the dividends paid out of income subject to the tax. The president still threatened to veto the measure, which he viewed as a step backward in New Deal policy. Eventually, after assessing congressional support for the bill, he let it become law on May 27, 1938, without his signature. Reference Randolph E. Paul, Taxation in the United States, 1954.

REVENUE ACT OF 1936 See REVENUE ACT OF 1935. REVENUE ACT OF 1937 See REVENUE ACT OF 1935. REVENUE ACT OF 1938 See REVENUE ACT OF 1935. REVENUE ACT OF 1940 When the German armies overran France with such ease in June 1940, the American public realized that the war in Europe might very well have a dramatic effect on the United States. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* began to promote national defense preparedness, and that required money. On June 22, 1940, Congress

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passed the Revenue Act, which, through a variety of tax measures, was designed to raise nearly $1 billion a year. The law also raised the ceiling on the national debt* from $45 billion to $49 billion. Reference Randolph E. Paul, Taxation in the United States, 1954.

REVENUE ACT OF 1964 The Revenue Act of 1964, also known as the Tax Reduction Act, was initiated by President John F. Kennedy* as an overhaul of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code of 1954. It resulted in nearly $13 billion in tax reductions. Kennedy wanted to reduce corporate and individual taxes as well as to restructure the income tax* itself. The 1954 legislation, in his opinion, was essentially a “tax break” since it removed liquid capital from the economy by excessively high rates. Lower taxes, Kennedy believed, would put more discretionary money in consumer pockets and augment overall demand, which would in turn stimulate investment, production, and employment. It reduced the maximum personal tax rate from more than 90 percent to 70 percent and the maximum corporate rate from 52 to 48 percent. It became law early in 1964 under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Reference David Burner, John F. Kennedy, 1988.

REVENUE ACT OF 1971 Because of the growing inflation and unemployment problem that the country was facing in 1971, President Richard Nixon made a surprise announcement on August 15, 1971. He imposed a freeze on wages, prices, and rents; devalued the dollar on the international exchanges; and proposed the Revenue Act of 1971. Congress passed the tax legislation in December 1971. It reduced taxes on individual incomes, repealed the excise tax on automobiles, and provided substantial tax credits for business investment. The legislation was expansionist in nature and designed to stimulate the economy. Reference Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

REVENUE-SHARING “Revenue-sharing,” or what President Richard Nixon called his “New American Revolution,” was the centerpiece of the president’s domestic program. At the time, the administration wanted to cut federal spending. Revenue-sharing involved distributing federal money to cities and states in bloc grants rather than in the mandated programs of the past. The policy went into effect in 1973 with the distribution of $5.4 billion. The program soon became highly controversial, however,

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because the governors and mayors discovered that they were actually receiving less money than before. By that time the program had become institutionalized, as so many federal programs do, but it did not set a permanent pattern for federal funding. Reference Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978.

REYNOLDS, RICHARD JOSHUA Richard J. Reynolds was born in Patrick County, Virginia, on July 20, 1850. He came from a wealthy family whose assets were tied up in land, slaves*, and tobacco manufacturing. Reynolds went to work in the family business after finishing school, and in 1875, he relocated the tobacco factory to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He specialized in chewing tobacco, and the business grew steadily. In 1907, Reynolds came out with his “Prince Albert” chewing tobacco, and in 1908 he added the “Prince Albert” pipe tobacco. They both became bestsellers. Reynolds Tobacco Company became the most successful in the industry during World War I*. Reynolds brought out Camel cigarettes in 1913 and then distributed them for free to American soldiers in Europe. Although Reynolds died on July 29, 1918, Camel cigarettes went on to become the best-selling cigarette in the country in the 1920s. Reference Richard B. Tennant, The American Cigarette Industry, 1951.

RHODE ISLAND SYSTEM See WALTHAM SYSTEM. “ R I G H T- T O - W O R K ” The concept of “right-to-work” describes a situation in which individual workers are free to seek and conduct employment without being afraid of labor unions. Passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act* of 1933 and the National Labor Relations Act* of 1935 gave union organization a real boost during the 1930s, as did the labor demands of World War II. After World War II, however, a backlash set in since many Americans, especially corporate leaders, believed that the unions were becoming too strong. Some states, especially those in the Northeast and Midwest, had even given labor unions a basis in law, requiring employees to join unions before they could be hired. The Taft–Hartley Act* of 1947 specifically banned the closed shop*, which prohibited the hiring of nonunion men and women. Since that time, a number of states have passed similar so-called “rightto-work” laws. Reference Edward A. Keller, The Case for Right to Work Laws: A Defense of Voluntary Unionism, 1956.

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ROARING TWENTIES The Roaring Twenties refers to the cultural milieu that existed in the United States during the 1920s. Characterized by jazz, flappers, and the modernity associated with major U.S. cities, the economic expansion triggered by widespread speculation in investment also marked this unique era in U.S. history. Reference Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, 1931.

ROBBER BARONS The term “Robber Barons” was coined by historian and journalist Matthew Josephson in his 1934 book of the same name. The book consists of descriptions of the great business tycoons of the nineteenth century—people like John D. Rockefeller*, Andrew Carnegie*, and Jay Gould*—who were the leading figures in the Industrial Revolution and the rise of big business in America. The book was written in the depths of the Great Depression*, when American public opinion of businessmen was decidedly negative. Josephson portrayed big businessmen as greedy, unscrupulous scoundrels who would stop at nothing to enrich themselves. Reference Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons, 1934.

R O C K E F E L L E R , J O H N D AV I S O N John D. Rockefeller was born in Richford, New York, on July 8, 1839; he was educated in Cleveland, Ohio. After working as a clerk and bookkeeper, he started his own firm known as Clark & Rockefeller. The 1859 discovery of oil at Titusville, Pennsylvania, proved to be Rockefeller’s great break. He joined in a business partnership with his brother William Rockefeller and with Samuel Andrews, an inventor who had developed a cheap method of refining crude oil. He established the Standard Oil Company in 1867 to refine oil. Rockefeller was named president of the new company, and he proved to be a competitive and organizational genius. By 1880, Standard Oil Company controlled virtually the entire refining business in the United States. During the next thirty years, Standard Oil found itself engaged in a battle for survival with the federal government, a battle that the company actually won. In 1892, the U.S. government ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil under the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890. Rockefeller reorganized it as a holding company* named Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, which was dissolved in 1911 and reorganized again. By that time, Rockefeller had retired with a fortune in excess of $1 billion. He spent the rest of his life in philanthropic activities and died on May 23, 1937. Reference David Horowitz and Peter Collier, The Rockefellers, 1975.

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R O C K E F E L L E R , J O H N D AV I S O N , J R . John D. Rockefeller Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on January 29, 1874. He graduated from Brown University in 1897 and then entered his father’s business, Standard Oil of Ohio. Rockefeller served as vice president of Standard Oil from 1908 to 1911, but after that, he became involved primarily with the operation of his father’s philanthropic concerns. During the last twenty-five years of his life, John D. Rockefeller* gave away more than $550 million, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. handled the distribution of the money through charitable institutions: the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation. Beginning in 1931, the younger Rockefeller supervised the construction of the Rockefeller Center in New York City. He was also highly interested in industrial relations, and in 1922, he founded Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., to lead the fight against the twelve-hour day in American business. John D. Rockefeller Jr. died on May 11, 1960. References Raymond B. Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr.: A Portrait, 1956. David Horowitz and Peter Collier, The Rockefellers, 1975.

R O O S E V E LT, A N N A E L E A N O R Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October II, 1884, in New York City. She was raised in a wealthy and prominent family, but by the time she was 10, both her parents had died. She attended the Allenswood School near London, and in 1905, she married Franklin D. Roosevelt*, a distant cousin. She had five children and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1913, when her husband became assistant secretary of the navy. After her husband’s defeat for the vice presidency in the election of 1920, she returned to live in New York and became active in the Women’s Trade Union League* (WTUL) and the women’s division of the Democratic Party. She was also active in campaigns for minimum wage legislation, passage of a child labor amendment, and expansion of the Sheppard–Towner Act*. When her husband was elected governor of New York in 1928, Roosevelt worked diligently to assist women in gaining political appointments. During the 1920s, she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment* because she believed that the role women played in American society at the time demanded protective legislation. Eleanor Roosevelt’s real prominence, however, came after her husband’s election as president of the United States in 1932. Many people considered her the conscience of the New Deal. She was outspoken about the need for social welfare legislation and unemployment relief. She also became the chief civil rights advocate of the New Deal, insisting that black workers find places in government relief agencies and endorsing a federal anti-lynching law. After Franklin Roosevelt’s death in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt became the best-known woman in the world, campaigning tirelessly against poverty, suffering, and discrimination. She died on November 7, 1962.

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References Tamara R. Hareven, Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Conscience, 1968. Joseph P. Lash, Eleanor and Franklin, 1971.

R O O S E V E LT, F R A N K L I N D E L A N O Franklin D. Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York, on January 30, 1882. An only child, Roosevelt was pampered by an elderly, indulgent father (James Roosevelt) and a loving, doting mother (Sara Delano). His family’s wealth on both sides reached back into commercial and maritime businesses of the early nineteenth century, and Roosevelt’s childhood world was one of economic security amidst an atmosphere of gentility common to the “old rich.” At the family estate at Hyde Park, he enjoyed servants, pets, limitless toys, money, and family, as well as manicured lawns and fields, thick but well-kept forests, and herds of cattle and sheep. The Roosevelts managed their business interests carefully, not as an end in itself but as a means of maintaining the protected, secure world at Hyde Park. Thus, Roosevelt grew up with a personality that was competitive but not acquisitive, with a relentless business instinct for constant economic aggrandizement. Extremely self-assured from a life of ego reinforcement, Roosevelt was insensitive to the emotional moods of others and at the same time at ease with large numbers of people. His childhood at Hyde Park proved the perfect breeding ground for political success. Schooled at Groton, Harvard (1904), and the Columbia University Law School, Roosevelt enjoyed a sense of noblesse oblige characteristic of his economic class. His view of life was conventional and conservative, but Roosevelt was also a man of action, willing to try different things without becoming wedded to abstract concepts or fixed positions. His political career began in 1911 when he won a seat in the New York state legislature by opposing Tammany Hall and advocating open, honest government. Eventually, he made peace with the New York City machine, realizing that its support was essential to any statewide Democratic candidate. Exploiting the family name, he followed Theodore Roosevelt* by becoming assistant secretary of the navy and served in that post under President Woodrow Wilson* from 1913 to 1920. He ran unsuccessfully for vice president of the United States, along with presidential candidate James Cox, in 1920. A polio attack in 1921 condemned Roosevelt to a wheelchair and hastened his retreat into private life. The illness brought the first real crisis to Roosevelt, forcing him back to Hyde Park to evaluate his future. He emerged emotionally unscathed. At the Democratic national conventions in 1924 and 1928, he nominated Alfred E. Smith* for president, and in the election of 1928*, he himself won the governorship of New York. Reelected in 1930, Roosevelt’s administration in Albany was noted for its emphasis on conservation, state regulation of public utilities, prison reform, oldage pensions, and unemployment relief through the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration*. Because he had remained relatively free of the bitter party fights of 1924 and 1928 and had a national reputation, he was a leading figure for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1932. He secured the nomination and, in

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the depths of the Great Depression*, swamped President Herbert Hoover* in the election of 1932*. His promise of a “new deal*” to end the depression became the theme of his administration. During his presidency, Roosevelt presided over the greatest changes in public policy in the history of the country. Under his leadership, the federal government became a major force in the economy, working to regulate business corporations, protecting the rights of workers, providing relief to the unemployed, and using fiscal policy to guarantee full employment. All those achievements were slow in coming during the 1930s and accelerated during World War II*. Facing both the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt was reelected in 1936, 1940, and 1944, becoming one of the most influential presidents in American history. When compared to that of 1932, the public policy landscape of the United States in 1945 was almost totally unrecognizable. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. References James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox, 1956. Paul Conkin, The New Deal, 1967. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal, 1973.

R O O S E V E LT, T H E O D O R E Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 27, 1858, to a prominent family, He graduated from Harvard in 1880, spent several months reading law, and then worked as an amateur historian, writing The Naval War of 1812 (1882) and The Winning of the West, a multivolume work published from 1889 to 1896. Roosevelt served a term as a Republican in the state legislature from 1882 to 1884, but, enamored of a life of adventure, he moved out to North Dakota for several years where he lived and worked on a ranch. In 1889, he was appointed civil service commissioner for the United States, and he filled the post with dignity and effectiveness, giving the civil service the reputation for integrity that it needed. From 1895 to 1897, Roosevelt headed the board of police commissioners for New York City. He served as assistant secretary of the navy in 1897 and 1898. When the Spanish–American War* erupted, Roosevelt resigned his post and helped to organize the first U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, nicknamed the “Rough Riders,” who saw considerable combat in Cuba* during the war. Roosevelt returned to the United States with a reputation as a war hero, and he was elected governor of New York in 1898. William McKinley* named Roosevelt as his running mate in the election of 1900, and when McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Roosevelt became president of the United States. He was reelected in his own right in 1904. Roosevelt’s presidency was one of great accomplishment. He was vigorous in his opposition to monopolies, especially those that exploited the public. As he later announced in his “New Nationalism,*” Roosevelt could distinguish between good trusts and bad trusts. He wanted to regulate the good ones, so that consumers could benefit from their economies of scale, while breaking up bad trusts, so that consumers could benefit from competition. His administration was noted for its legislation regulating the railroad, food, and drug industries and also for his

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commitment to conservation. In foreign affairs, Roosevelt acquired the Panama Canal* for the United States and won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a settlement of the Russo–Japanese War. Roosevelt retired from politics in 1909 when he left the White House, but his opposition to what he perceived to be the conservatism of President William Howard Taft* brought him back into politics. When he failed to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1912, Roosevelt bolted the party, formed the Progressive* or “Bull Moose” Party, and ran for president. He split the Republican vote with Taft, thereby guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson*. When World War I* broke out, Roosevelt was critical of Wilson’s neutrality position. Roosevelt died in Oyster Bay, New York, on January 6, 1919. Reference George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 1958.

R O O S E V E LT C O R O L L A R Y The so-called “Roosevelt Corollary” was a refinement of the Monroe Doctrine* that was issued by President Theodore Roosevelt* in 1904. At the time, a number of Caribbean and Latin American nations were heavily in debt to European powers that were threatening to intervene militarily in order to force debt collection. Roosevelt announced that he would consider any such intervention a threat to U.S. suzerainty over the region of the proposed Panama Canal* and thus a threat to American national security. To prevent European intervention, Roosevelt asserted the right of the United States to intervene militarily in the internal affairs of debt-ridden Latin American countries and see to the debt payments itself. During the next twenty years, the United States intervened a number of times in various Latin American countries under the terms of the Roosevelt Corollary. Reference Dexter Perkins, The Monroe Doctrine, 1867–1907, 1937.

R O O S E V E LT – L I T V I N O V A G R E E M E N T S O F 1 9 3 3 After the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, the United States refused to extend diplomatic recognition to the new Soviet government. The United States still hoped that more moderate forces would come to power in Moscow. By the early 1930s, however, the United States was in a more conciliatory mood. The Soviet Union seemed somewhat less bellicose and more ready to cooperate with the West. Moreover, the Great Depression* had severely damaged the American economy, raising hopes in some circles that increased trade with the Russians might help stimulate the economy. Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov came to Washington to negotiate the outstanding issues, and on November 16, 1933, he signed a series of agreements with President Franklin D. Roosevelt*. In return for diplomatic recognition, the Soviet Union agreed to protect the religious freedom of U.S. citizens living in Russia, work against organizations and groups dedicated to

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the overthrow of the U.S. government, and pay $75 million in extra interest on the prerevolutionary debts it had incurred with American lenders. Reference Donald G. Bishop, The Roosevelt–Litvinov Agreements: The American View, 1965.

R O S E N WA L D , J U L I U S Julius Rosenwald was born on August 12, 1862, in Springfield, Illinois, to German Jewish immigrant parents. After leaving high school, he went into the wholesale clothing business, and in 1895, he purchased a one-quarter interest in Sears, Roebuck and Company*, a mail-order firm. Rosenwald rose quickly in the company, becoming vice president in 1895 and president in 1910. He immediately expanded the company’s mail-order business beyond its original products, watches and jewelry, to a wide variety of consumer goods. Exploiting the demand for goods in rural areas, Sears, Roebuck became one of the largest retailers in the United States. In 1925, aware that the automobile* was inevitably going to reduce mail-order sales and expand shopping areas, Rosenwald decided to go into direct retailing. He hired Robert E. Wood* away from Montgomery, Ward* and put him in charge of sales. Wood opened eight stores in 1926 and sixteen more in 1927. He became president of Sears, with Rosenwald as chairman of the board, in 1928; that year, they opened 168 new retail stores. By 1929, when the onset of the depression prevented more expansion, there were 324 retail stores. Gross sales for Sears had gone from $1 million in 1896 to $443 million in 1929. Rosenwald was an enlightened employer, committed to health, dental, and profit-sharing plans for his workers. He died on January 6, 1932. References John E. Jeuck, Catalogues and Counters: A History of Sears, Roebuck and Company, 1950. New York Times, January 7, 1932.

ROSIE THE RIVETER “Rosie the Riveter” was an emblem that stood for the millions of women who joined the workforce during World War II, especially those at shipyards, airplane factories, and other jobs in heavy industry. She became the subject of songs and posters as part of the propaganda to make defense work a socially acceptable role for women. Dressed in a blue work shirt and with her sleeves rolled up to show her muscles, Rosie declared, “We Can Do It,” assuring women that they had an active and vital role to play in the war effort. Like many of the women she graphically represented, Rosie was mustered out of her job when the men in the armed forces returned after the war. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Sherna Berger Gluck, Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change, 1987.

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Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II, 1984.

R O S T O W, WA LT W H I T M A N Walt Rostow was born on October 7, 1916, in New York City. He received a bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1936 and a Ph.D. in economics there in 1940. During that time, he was also a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. Rostow worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and then had a stint at the head of the State Department’s German–Austria desk. After teaching at Columbia for a year and working for two years for the Economic Commission for Europe, Rostow joined the Harvard faculty, where he taught until 1960. A brilliant economic historian, Rostow wrote a number of books during those years, including British Economy of the Nineteenth Century (1948) and the highly influential The Stages of Economic Growth (1960), in which he looked at the processes of modernization and industrialization. When John F. Kennedy* was elected president in 1960, Rostow went to the White House as a deputy special assistant for national security affairs. A devoted cold warrior, Rostow advocated American intervention in South Vietnam and continued, under both Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson*, to support escalation of the conflict. After Johnson left the White House, Rostow joined the faculty of the University of Texas. In 1978, he wrote The World Economy: History and Prospect. Rostow died on February 13, 2003. Reference Walt W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power, 1972.

R U B B E R R E S E R V E C O M PA N Y On June 28, 1940, after meeting with representatives of Goodyear, Firestone, B. F. Goodrich, General Tire, and United States Rubber, Jesse Jones* of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) established the Rubber Reserve Company as an RFC subsidiary. Howard J. Klossner was named president of the new government-owned company. Its initial goal was to accumulate a supply of rubber and thus end American dependency on Japanese-controlled supplies in Indochina. The Rubber Reserve Company was soon the sole importer of crude rubber in the United States, stockpiling reserves and selling them as needed, at cost plus carrying charges, to the major rubber corporations. By the end of 1941, its stockpile had reached 630,356 tons, enough to supply the war machine for a year. The string of Japanese victories in southern Asia early in 1942 sealed off that source, however, so Jesse Jones had the Rubber Reserve Company embark on an ambitious synthetic rubber development program. By 1945, the Rubber Reserve Company had invested $677 million and was managing fifty-one plants producing 760,000 tons of synthetic rubber a year. Reference Jesse Jones, Fifty-Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945, 1951.

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R U R A L E L E C T R I F I C AT I O N A D M I N I S T R AT I O N On May 11, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* created the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) by executive order. The goal of the REA was to provide affordable electrical power to rural areas. At the time, private power companies were reluctant to extend transmission lines into rural areas because of the high cost and relatively low return. They charged high rates to rural customers, who then cut back on consumption in order to save money. The REA was designed to establish rural electrical cooperatives and lend them low-interest money so that lines could be constructed to rural families. The REA reduced the initial cost of rural service by extending low-interest, long-amortization loans to cooperatives. Rural dwellers organized the cooperatives, applied for the loans, built the systems, and purchased electricity from power companies. On May 21, 1936, Roosevelt signed a bill making the REA a permanent agency with statutory authorization. By 1939, it had assisted 417 cooperatives to provide service to 268,000 households. By the mid-1950s, only the most remote and marginal of American farms were without electricity. Reference D. Clayton Brown, Electricity for Rural America: The Fight for the REA, 1980.

R U R A L F R E E D E L I V E RY During the 1890s, farmers were agitating for a variety of federal programs, and the Populist Party* became a force to be reckoned with politically. Ever since the early 1880s, the National Grange* and the Farmers Alliances* had been demanding free mail delivery to farmers’ homes. At the time, farmers either had to go to town or village post offices to pick up their mail or pay extra to have it delivered. Congress authorized an experimental program in 1893 with an appropriation of $10,000, and in 1896, Postmaster General William L. Wilson implemented the program. Rural Free Delivery helped to integrate rural America into the national economy. Reference Wayne E. Fuller, RFD: The Changing Face of Rural America, 1964.

RURAL POST ROADS ACT OF 1916 See FEDERAL AID ROAD ACT OF 1916. R U S S I A N A M E R I C A N C O M PA N Y Founded in 1750, the Russian American Company was a fur-trading concern that enjoyed a monopoly of hunting and trapping over a huge region of northwest North America. From 1799 to 1824, its headquarters was located at Sitka. As British and American interests expanded in the area, conflict became inevitable. In 1820, the Russian American Company claimed that its monopoly extended south to 51 degrees north latitude, a claim that both the United States and Great Britain contested. In response, President James Monroe espoused the Monroe Doctrine*, which warned

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the European powers against any further colonization of the Western Hemisphere. The Russians and British negotiated their dispute, and in an agreement of April 17, 1824, the Russians agreed to 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude as the southern boundary of their territory. The United States received the right to trade and trap in the unsettled regions of the area. The Russian American Company was dissolved in 1824. Reference Samuel F. Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy, 1949.

R U S T B E LT The Rust Belt refers to the geographic expanse that roughly covers the U.S. Midwest, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic, which used to be the industrial heartland of the country. As deindustrialization of the region took place in the 1970s and 1980s, the closure of industrial plants contributed to the impoverishment of communities that relied on industry for their livelihood. Because these cities had little in the way of diversified economies, deindustrialization hit these cities particularly hard, leading to widespread unemployment, poverty, and crime. Reference Stephen C. High, Industrial Sunset: The Making of North America’s Rust Belt, 1969–1984, 2003.

R YA N , J O H N A U G U S T I N E John A. Ryan was born on May 25, 1869, in Vermillion, Minnesota. Like many other young Irish American men, he decided to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood, graduating from the St. Thomas Seminary in 1892. Shortly after his ordination, he became interested in Populist* and labor politics, and Ryan spent the rest of his life campaigning for social justice. He taught at St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota from 1902 to 1915 and at the Catholic University of America from 1915 to 1939. Ryan firmly believed that society and the economy were not independent entities functioning according to natural law, but rather were subject to social control and morality. He argued that social and labor legislation were the obligations of government. Ryan became a widely read author and a tireless campaigner on behalf of minimum wage laws. From 1919 until his death, Ryan also served as director of the department of social action of the National Catholic Welfare Conference. Ryan wrote widely, especially for such journals as Catholic Action and the Catholic Charities Review. During the 1920s, he began calling for social security, government health insurance, and labor standards legislation. Ryan was also the author of several books, including A Living Wage (1906), Distributive Justice (1916), and Social Doctrine in America. Widely recognized as the leader of the Catholic social justice movement, John Ryan died on September 16, 1945. Reference Patrick W. Gearty, The Economic Thought of Monsignor John A. Ryan, 1953.

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S SACHS, SAMUEL Samuel Sachs was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 28, 1851. He worked in a variety of mercantile establishments before joining his uncle’s banking business in 1882. They formed a partnership that became known as Goldman, Sachs and Company in 1885. Marcus Goldman died in 1904, and Sachs ran the business for the next quarter of a century. Until 1904, the business concentrated on providing short-term credit, based on commercial paper, to a variety of businesses. After 1904, Sachs changed the company’s focus, turning it into an international investment banking concern that underwrote new securities issues. He formed a partnership with Lehman Brothers, another large investment banking firm, and carried the securities of light industries and retail companies, such as Sears, Roebuck*, which had traditionally been denied the opportunity to float securities issues. The decision of Goldman, Sachs to do that type of business came just at a time in American history when hundreds of businesses similar to Sears were ready to go public with securities issues. In the process, Goldman, Sachs and Company became one of the leading investment banks in the world. Sachs retired in 1928 and died on March 2, 1935. Reference Vincent P. Carosso, Investment Banking in America, 1970.

S A F E T Y VA LV E The notion of the safety valve appeared in much of the popular literature of the nineteenth century and in the historical thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner. In his influential essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1890), Turner argued that one explanation for the history of political stability and the lack of social revolution in United States was the presence of a frontier where discontented, dissatisfied people could move to find a new start in life. The fact that land was so available throughout much of American history also contributed to the “safety valve.” Since Turner’s essay, historians have vigorously debated the merits of the idea of the safety valve. Reference Ellen von Nardoff, “The American Frontier as Safety Valve: The Life, Death, Reincarnation, and Justification of a Theory,” Agricultural History 36 (July 1962): 123–142.

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S T. L AW R E N C E S E AWAY Ever since the age of exploration and colonization, Europeans had hoped to find some way of penetrating into the interior of the North American continent. For more than a century, they searched for a “Northwest Passage,” and a number of them hoped the St. Lawrence River would prove to be that fabled water route to Asia. But it was not until the 1950s that a northwest passage of sorts was finally developed along the river. There had been talk for years of dredging the river, but it did not seem economically important until the 1950s, when the U.S. steel industry in the Midwest was becoming increasingly dependent upon iron ore shipments from the Quebec and Labrador regions of northeast Canada. Shipping iron by bulk barge would reduce freight costs enormously. In 1953, after the State Department had completed negotiations with Canada, Congress passed the Wiley–Dondero Act authorizing joint U.S.–Canadian construction of a St. Lawrence Seaway. The legislation established a St. Lawrence Seaway Corporation to supervise the construction of a channel from Lake Erie to Montreal. The St. Lawrence Seaway was formally opened in June 1959. Reference Theodore L. Hills, The St. Lawrence Seaway, 1959.

SANDERS, HARLAND Harland Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, in Henryville, Indiana. As a teenager, Sanders went to work as a farmhand, and during the next decade he held a variety of jobs. Sanders served in the U.S. army for a little more than a year, and while he was there, he earned a law degree by correspondence from Southern University. In 1929, Sanders opened a gas station in Little Rock, Arkansas, and began cooking part-time in a room behind the station. Food sales soon surpassed gasoline sales, so Sanders closed down the service station and opened Sanders’ Café. He specialized in southern cuisine and became regionally famous for his fried chicken. In 1939, using a pressure cooker, Sanders developed a technique for quick-frying chicken that still retained the meat’s moisture. He also developed a special seasoning, and by 1956, the café was worth nearly $200,000. Sanders then decided to franchise his recipe, and he personally drove around the country cooking the chicken and signing up investors. By 1960, there were 200 Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in the United States. That number jumped to 600 in 1964 when Sanders sold out his interests for $2 million and a lifetime salary for doing promotional work. Sanders died on December 16, 1980. By that time, there were more than 4,500 Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises around the world. Reference New York Times, December 17, 1980.

S A N TA F E T R A I L The famous Santa Fe Trail was a route for westward settlement in the nineteenth century. The trail connected Franklin, Missouri, with Santa Fe, New Mexico,

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passing through what are today Kansas City and Fort Atkinson. William Becknell first mapped out the Santa Fe Trail in 1821, and during the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, it was a major path for the westward movement to the American Southwest. Use of the Santa Fe Trail dropped precipitously during the Civil War*, and the completion of the transcontinental railroads in the 1860s and 1870s finally eliminated it as a major settlement artery. Reference Stanley Vestal, The Old Santa Fe Trail, 1939.

S A R N O F F, D AV I D David Sarnoff was born in Uzlian, Russia, on February 27, 1891. He studied the Talmud in Russia before the family immigrated to New York City in 1900. Sarnoff worked as a paperboy, studied Morse* code on his own, and in 1906 got a job as an office boy for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. He diligently studied technical manuals, took classes at the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn, and in 1913 was hired to operate a powerful radio* station from the top of Wanamaker’s Department Store in New York City. In 1914, Sarnoff began receiving news of the Titanic disaster and for three days passed the information on to various news bureaus and newspapers. Sarnoff was an early believer in the consumer potential of home radios. In 1919, he wrote a long memo to Owen D. Young*, chairman of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), detailing the future of the radio; RCA had absorbed the Marconi company that year. Sarnoff broadcast the Dempsey–Carpentier fight from Hoboken, New Jersey, into dozens of Marcus Loew’s* theaters, where 200,000 people listened to it. In 1921, RCA began manufacturing radio sets, and Sarnoff was named vice president of the company. By 1925, net sales exceeded $85 million, and in 1926, to increase the market for radios, RCA launched the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), with Sarnoff at its head. Sarnoff became the most important person in American broadcasting. In 1930, Sarnoff became president of RCA. He headed RCA until 1966 and remained chairman of the board until his death on February 12, 1971. References Carl Dreher, Sarnoff: An American Success, 1977. Eugene Lyons, David Sarnoff, 1966.

S AV I N G S A N D L O A N C R I S I S The savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the most severe portion of the general crisis facing the money markets in the United States. The beginnings of the crisis were located in the 1970s. Because the bulk of savings and loan assets have traditionally been invested in long-term fixed-rate home mortgages, savings and loans found themselves in trouble during the inflationary spiral of the 1970s. When oil prices shot up, so did the consumer price index, and in order to attract new deposits, savings and loan executives had to offer steadily

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higher interest rates. The problem, of course, was that most of their assets consisted of low-interest, long-term loans. Savings and loan institutions found their profit margins narrowing drastically by the late 1970s. Those problems were compounded in 1980 when Congress passed the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act*, which deregulated financial institutions in the United States and eliminated many of the restrictions on the types of investments open to savings and loans. To make up for their losses, thousands of savings and loan institutions entered new financial investment areas where they hoped to reap large profits. During the Reagan* administration, federal examiners were inclined to let them do as they pleased. The house of cards crashed in the 1980s. When oil prices collapsed, savings and loan institutions throughout the South and Southwest—especially Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, and New Mexico—were hurt badly, depending on how high a percentage of their assets were invested in oil properties. Later in the 1980s, real estate markets in New England soured, placing new pressure on savings and loan institutions there. Finally, by the early 1990s there was evidence that the California real estate market was softening, posing a new threat to the money markets. Even the most conservative financial analysts argued that it might take an investment of $500 billion by the federal government to bail out those institutions by the end of the century. References Martin Lowy, High Rollers: Inside the Savings and Loan Debacle, 1991. Martin Mayer, The Greatest Ever Bank Robbery: The Collapse of the Savings and Loan Industry, 1990. James O’Shea, The Daisy Chains: How Borrowed Billions Sank a Texas Savings & Loan, 1991.

SCAB “Scab” is a pejorative term emerging in the mid-nineteenth century to describe workers who willingly take the jobs of other workers who are on strike. The term is most relevant to mass production and unskilled or semiskilled industries in which striking workers can be easily replaced because the time and effort required to train new workers is minimal. Reference John Barnard, Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto Worker, 1983.

S C H E C H T E R P O U LT R Y C O R P O R AT I O N v. U N I T E D S TAT E S ( 2 9 5 U . S . 4 9 5 ) On April 13, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* approved the National Recovery Administration’s* (NRA) “Live Poultry Code” for the metropolitan area in and around New York City. The code established the forty-hour work week and a $0.50 per hour minimum wage for poultry workers; it prohibited certain practices termed “unfair methods of competition” and required the submission of weekly

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reports reflecting the volume of sales and range of daily prices for the produce sold. A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corporation and Schechter Live Poultry market operated wholesale poultry slaughterhouse markets in Brooklyn, New York. They purchased live poultry from commission men in New York or occasionally in Philadelphia. Poultry sold by Schechter was slaughtered immediately before delivery under the provisions of Jewish law. Schechter did not sell in interstate commerce. The Schechters were indicted for conspiracy to violate the poultry code. Among other charges, they were accused of violating the hours-and-wages provision of the code. They were convicted in the district court, and the Circuit Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) upheld the conviction on the count of conspiracy and on sixteen counts of violating the code. But the circuit court reversed two counts of charging violation of the maximum hours and minimum wage provisions. The court contended that such matters were beyond the regulatory powers of Congress. The case went on to the U.S. Supreme Court, and on May 27, 1935, the Court found that the Schechter Corporation was not engaged to any meaningful extent in interstate commerce; thus, the “stream of commerce” doctrine did not apply. Therefore, the poultry code had unconstitutionally attempted to impose federal regulation over intrastate commerce. On the basis of the conclusions, the Court found that the code provisions of the National Industrial Recovery Act* (NIRA) were unconstitutional, and the conviction of the Schechter Corporation was reversed. The effect of this unanimous decision was to invalidate the NIRA. References Gerald O. Dykstra and L. G. Dykstra, Selected Cases on Government and Business, 1937. Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970. Supreme Court Reporter 55 (1935): 837–854.

S C H WA B , C H A R L E S M I C H A E L Charles Schwab was born on February 18, 1862, in Williamsburg, Pennsylvania. He graduated from St. Francis College in 1880 and then went to work in a grocery store near the huge Carnegie Steel Company. Schwab accidentally got to know William R. Jones, the general superintendent of the Edgar Thompson Steel works of Carnegie Steel, and Jones got him a job as an engineer’s helper. Schwab was brilliant, both scientifically and managerially, and by the time he was nineteen, he was chief engineer of the steel works. After Jones’s death in 1889, Schwab succeeded him as general superintendent of the plant. After the Homestead strike* of 1892, Andrew Carnegie* named Schwab general superintendent of the Homestead works as well. In 1897, Schwab became president of Carnegie Steel at a salary of $1 million a year. Four years later, J. P. Morgan* saw to it that Schwab was made president of the new U.S. Steel Corporation*, at a salary of $2 million a year. By 1904, Schwab also owned the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. He had become one of the leading industrialists in American history. Schwab died on September 18, 1939. Reference Robert Hessen, Steel Titan: The Life of Charles M. Schwab, 1975.

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SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT See TAYLOR, FREDERICK WINSLOW. SEABOARD AIR LINE RAILROAD The Seaboard Air Line Railroad was organized in 1892 through the combination of the Seaboard & Roanoke Railroad, the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad, the Raleigh & Augusta Air Line Railroad, the Carolina Central Railroad, and the Georgia, Carolina & Northern Railway. In 1899, it added the Florida Central & Peninsular Railroad and at the end of the year named the new system the Seaboard Air Line Railway. Because of poor management and intense competition, the line went into receivership in 1908. It limped along until the depression sent it into bankruptcy in 1930. The reorganization was not complete until 1945 when it was renamed the Seaboard Air Line Railway. It merged with the Atlantic Coast Line in 1967 to become the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, with routes reaching from Richmond, Virginia, down to Miami, Florida, and west to Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama. Reference Richard E. Prince, Seaboard Air Line Railway, 1969.

S E A R S , R O E B U C K A N D C O M PA N Y In 1886, Richard Sears founded the company that would become Sears, Roebuck. His original intention was to sell watches through the mail. His assistant, Alvah Roebuck, was responsible for repairing the watches. In 1893, they joined together into Sears, Roebuck and Company. They also decided to expand their merchandise line beyond watches. Sears, Roebuck maintained a central warehouse in Chicago, distributed merchandise catalogues, and took orders through the mail from farmers. Because of organizational problems, Roebuck left the firm in 1895 and Sears brought Julius Rosenwald*, a clothing merchant from Chicago, into the business. By 1900, with $10 million in sales, it was the largest mail order firm in the country; by 1920, sales were in excess of $200 million. Robert Wood* joined the firm in 1925, and he decided to focus on the growing urban market for consumer goods. The mail order business continued, but Wood also began opening retail outlets. By 1929, retail sales accounted for 40 percent of the company’s business, and by 1939, they equaled 67 percent. When Wood retired in 1954, Sears was the world’s largest merchandising business, with nearly 700 retail stores, 570 catalogue offices, 200,000 employees, and annual sales of $3 billion. Not until the 1980s, when consumers began to perceive Sears as the lowest common denominator of merchandising, did the company’s market position begin to deteriorate seriously. Reference Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Strategy and Structure, 1962.

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S E AT T L E G E N E R A L S T R I K E O F 1 9 1 9 When World War I* ended in 1918, federal contracts for the manufacture of war goods disappeared as well. Throughout the country, labor unions and workers were concerned about losing many of the gains they had achieved from 1914 to 1918. Labor leaders were militant in their insistence on higher wages, shorter hours, and the right of collective bargaining. From the public perspective, however, such demands were frightening, especially because the First Red Scare and the fear of radicalism were gaining momentum in 1919. In the Pacific Northwest, where radical organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World* (IWW) had long been making strident demands, fears of radicalism and subversion were especially acute. On January 21, 1919, 35,000 Seattle shipyard workers went on strike, and the next day the Seattle Central Labor Council, which represented all organized labor in the area, called a general strike of all workers to support the shipyard workers. On February 6, the day of the strike, more than 60,000 workers failed to show up on the job. To a nation frightened of communism and bolshevism, the words “general strike” smacked of Marxism, and the general public had little sympathy for the workers. Mayor Ole Hanson called in federal troops and threatened to take over all the jobs of striking workers and operate them with government help. The public hailed his defiant stand, and the strike was broken. The Seattle general strike of 1919 was the opening event in the First Red Scare, which would consume American attention in 1919 and 1920. Reference Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920, 1955.

S E C O N D B A N K O F T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S Although President James Madison* and the Democratic-Republicans had let the Bank of the United States* disappear instead of rechartering it in 1811, the War of 1812* convinced them that some type of national bank was necessary. The war had severely destabilized the currency system and financial markets, leading to a suspension of specie payments. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander J. Dallas recommended the creation of a Second Bank of the United States, and in 1816, Congress passed the enabling legislation. The new bank, with a capital of $35 million, was headquartered in Philadelphia. It was to serve as the repository of government funds and had to pay no interest on them. It opened for business on January 1, 1817, with William Jones as its first president. The honeymoon was short-lived. Jones proved to be a miserable businessman, and the behavior of the bank during the Panic of 1819* was politically shortsighted at best. A speculative bubble had been created in the buying and selling of western lands. Resentment of the Second Bank of the United States became widespread, especially in rural areas of the South and West, where the bank insisted that the most speculative state banks redeem their notes in specie. In addition, those state banks wanted some deposits of federal monies themselves. Finally,

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Southerners argued that the national bank was unconstitutional. Democrats began calling for the liquidation of the bank. During the 1820s, however, the Second Bank of the United States found support among National Republicans. To people such as Henry Clay*, national economic development depended upon a stable currency and an adequate supply of credit to industrial establishments, both of which could be provided by the national bank. Moreover, the capable Nicholas Biddle* took over leadership of the bank in 1823 and stabilized its management. The bank prospered and expanded its operations during the 1820s. In 1829, President Andrew Jackson* decided to exploit the opposition to the bank, questioning its constitutionality and criticizing its policies. Although the bank was not due for rechartering until 1836, Biddle decided to seek rechartering early. The bill doing so passed through Congress in July 1831, but Jackson vetoed it, and Congress could not override the veto. After his reelection in 1832, Jackson went after the bank again. In October 1833, he announced that the U.S. government would no longer use the Second Bank of the United States as the depository of government funds. Over the next several months, the government withdrew its funds and distributed them among state banks. The Second Bank of the United States was not rechartered in 1836 and instead secured a state charter as the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania. Reference Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Bank War, 1967.

SECOND IMPORT–EXPORT BANK See EXPORT–IMPORT BANK. SECURITIES ACT OF 1933 The stock market crash* of 1929 forced leading politicians to recognize the fact that private investors needed protection. Tremendous paper losses, as well as the collapse of large numbers of fraudulent investment companies, had brought the government into the investigation of dishonest securities representations, high pressure salesmanship, and the exaggeration of prospective returns. By 1932, President Herbert Hoover* had become convinced that corruption and greed on the securities exchanges had helped to trigger the crash of the stock market, and he believed that public exposure of the fraud might stop similar speculation in the future. Senator Peter Norbeck* of North Dakota began the investigation in April 1932. In November, he hired Ferdinand Pecora*, a Theodore Roosevelt*–style progressive* and converted Democrat who had served for twelve years as assistant district attorney of New York, to direct the investigation. During 1932, 1933, and part of 1934, the Pecora investigation made headlines, exposing an enormous variety of securities fraud and corruption involving broker loans, holding companies*, fictitious securities, margin buying, and gross misrepresentation. Out of his investigation came intense public demands for the regulation of the securities markets.

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On March 29, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* sent a message to Congress demanding full disclosure of all issues of new securities so investors would be properly informed. The bill that the administration sent up to Congress required full disclosure of all material and the right of the Federal Trade Commission* (FTC) to postpone the issuance of new securities if full disclosure had not been made. Out of House and Senate negotiations, led by Congressman Sam Rayburn and Senators Joseph Robinson of Arkansas and Duncan Fletcher of Florida, came the Securities Act of 1933, which President Roosevelt signed on May 27, 1933. The Securities Act of 1933, commonly known as the Fletcher–Rayburn Bill, required that companies issuing stock file the fullest possible information concerning new securities with the FTC. The sworn statement had to include all commission or discounts to be paid, directly or indirectly, by the issuer to the underwriter, full description of all factors surrounding the physical issuance of the securities, the names of officers and directors of the issuing company, and a detailed description of the business and financial conditions of the company, as well as the salaries of its officers. After the sworn statement had been filed, twenty days had to elapse before the securities could be promoted and sold. Even with FTC approval, a company was not relieved of future liability. Evidence of untrue statements could be made the basis of criminal prosecution and civil suits by investors against the company. Similar restrictions were imposed on foreign securities, except that liability rested on the domestic agent of the issuer. Penalties for misstatement or misrepresentation included up to five years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to $5,000, or both. The only exceptions to these regulations were for federal, state, and municipal bonds; railroad securities; and the securities of religious, charitable, and educational groups. The Securities Act of 1933 gave the FTC a number of new powers, including the power to summon witnesses, subpoena evidence, require production of any books, papers, and necessary documents, obtain injunctions against a company for selling a particular security, and hold hearings to gather information. The FTC could issue stop orders to suspend the effectiveness of a registration statement if it did not comply with the law. Any sales of the security after the stop order were illegal. The Securities Act of 1933 was designed to prevent further exploitation of the public through the sale of fraudulent or worthless securities. It placed adequate information about new securities before investors and protected honest securities dealers from guilt by association. For the first time, the federal government directly entered the securities markets in a regulatory capacity. References Michael Parrish, Securities Regulation and the New Deal, 1970. Donald A. Ritchie, James M. Landis, Dean of the Regulators, 1980.

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Dealers came to office in 1933 with a commitment to reforming the securities industry. The stock market crash*, they believed, came from the lavish extension of credit that supported unjustified speculation,

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the reckless behavior of investment bankers who marketed securities of dubious value, and the unethical behavior of “insiders” on the stock exchanges who fleeced unwary investors. The New Deal’s* first attempt at securities reform was the Securities Act* of 1933. Designed to promote and encourage the truthful marketing of securities, the law provided stiff criminal and civil penalties for people who intentionally withheld information or who filed false registration statements. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934* was next. It established a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the securities exchanges. Such subsequent legislation as the Federal Bankruptcy Act of 1939, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, and the Investment Company and Investment Advisers Ad of 1940 gave the SEC even more power. By 1940, the SEC was charged with investigating securities fraud, registering securities dealers and investment advisers, establishing professional standards for securities dealers and investment advisers, closely watching stock trading by members of the exchanges, and seeing to financial disclosures by the management of companies marketing new securities. Since that time, the SEC has vigorously served as a watchdog over the securities industry. Reference Hazel E. Haining, “Federal Regulation of the Securities Industry,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nebraska, 1972.

SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 The stock market crash* of 1929, and its subsequent problems, precipitated widespread demands in the United States for regulation of the securities industry. During the Hoover* administration, a congressional investigation led by Ferdinand Pecora* exposed widespread fraud in the industry, and it continued into 1934. In the political atmosphere created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Deal, federal regulatory legislation was guaranteed. Benjamin Cohen* and Thomas Corcoran* drafted the legislation, and Congress passed it on June 6, 1934. The law, known as the Securities Exchange Act, created the Securities and Exchange Commission* (SEC) to regulate the securities exchanges and charged the SEC with eliminating unfair and misleading practices in the industry. Each exchange had to secure a SEC license and was forbidden to artificially manipulate securities prices. To curb dangerous, excessive securities speculation, the Securities Exchange Act authorized the Federal Reserve Board to establish regulations governing margin buying*. Reference Michael Parrish, Securities Regulation and the New Deal, 1970.

SECURITIES INVESTOR PROTECTION C O R P O R AT I O N The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) was established by Congress in a 1970 amendment to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934*. The legislation

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required all registered brokers to pay a fee, or insurance premium, to fund the SIPC. The SIPC was designed to function like the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation* (FDIC) and protect investors* assets. Essentially, the SIPC insured an investor’s account for up to $50,000 in losses for fraud perpetrated by a securities dealer. Reference Hazel E. Haining, “Federal Regulation of the Securities Industry,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nebraska, 1972.

S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 0 1 , T E R R O R I S T AT TA C K S See WORLD TRADE CENTER AND PENTAGON ATTACKS. S E RV I C E I N D U S T RY While the service industry has always existed in some form, in the postindustrial United States of the twenty-first century, it has become a major source of employment for many Americans. Due to the offshoring* and deskilling* of white collar and blue collar professions in the 1970s and 1980s, the service industry became an essential source of employment as industry declined throughout much of the United States. Jobs like retail, sales, fast food, and other low-paying service occupations were open to people with high school educations. However, by the twentyfirst century, as the numbers of white collar professions dwindled further, college graduates would also have to join the ranks of the service industry. Many of these occupations often pay little more than minimum wage, with some exceptions. This often results in a precarious existence for people, particularly those with children or those who were laid off from white collar professions. By the 2010, much of the job growth in the United States came in the form of service industrial jobs. Reference Albert W. Niemi, U.S. Economic History, 1980.

SERVICEMEN’S READJUSTMENT ACT OF 1944 See G.I. BILL OF RIGHTS. S H A R E O U R W E A LT H M O V E M E N T In 1934, Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana founded the Share Our Wealth Movement in Washington, D.C. Anticipating a run for the presidency in 1936, Long wanted to steal some of the New Deal’s* political thunder and secure support from the working classes and the unemployed. He called for a guaranteed annual income of $5,000 per family, social security pensions, veterans bonuses, public works construction for the unemployed, a new homestead law for people who wanted to go into farming, confiscation of all estates in excess of $5 million, and a tax rate designed to prevent people from accumulating more than $1 million. Long’s slogan was “Everyman a

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King.” Some historians argue that it was in response to Long’s growing popularity that President Franklin D. Roosevelt* launched the “Second New Deal,” which included the Social Security Act* and a number of prolabor and antimonopoly measures. Long’s movement, however, died out when he was assassinated in 1935. Reference T. Harry Williams, Huey Long, 1969.

SHARECROPPER The term “sharecropper” refers to a landless, tenant farmer who works for a share of the final crop he produces, with the landowner and merchants getting the rest. Sharecropping received its real beginning after the Civil War* when plantation owners gave former slaves* a mule, cottonseed, tools, and a shack in which to live, in return for which the plantation owner received half of the worker’s crop. As time passed, sharecropping often evolved into forms of debt peonage because the seeds and tools were often extended at extremely high interest rates, leading to ever higher levels of debt. State and county law prohibited any sharecropper in debt from relocating to another area, so sharecroppers were often bound to this destructive cycle. During the twentieth century, sharecropping has gradually disappeared, primarily because large-scale production rendered it inefficient and noncompetitive as a production system. Reference David E. Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers: The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal, 1965.

S H AY S ’ S R E B E L L I O N Daniel Shays was a farmer in western Massachusetts when the post-Revolutionary inflation wreaked havoc with poor landowners. Farmers and small landowners were hard pressed to pay their taxes when economic conditions were so bad. When state authorities began auctioning off property to pay delinquent taxes, an insurgent rebellion developed with Daniel Shays in the lead. In 1786, Shays marched on Springfield, Massachusetts, to protest the auctions and to prevent the state supreme court from meeting to consider indictments for treason against the rebels. Eventually, the rebellion was crushed, and Shays fled to Vermont to avoid prosecution. He was pardoned in 1788. Shays’s Rebellion is generally credited with convincing many Americans that a stronger central government than that under the Articles of Confederation* was needed to prevent anarchy in the United States. The Constitutional Convention was the result of that conviction. Reference Marion L. Starkey, A Little Rebellion, 1955.

S H E P PA R D – T O W N E R A C T O F 1 9 2 1 In 1912, President William Howard Taft* established the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Labor because the United States had a relatively high rate of infant

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and maternal mortality. In 1918, the bureau announced that in 1916, 16,000 women had died in childbirth and 250,000 children had failed to survive their first year. Under the direction of Julia Lathrop*, the bureau began to campaign for federal programs to improve the income levels for all people and to provide hygiene instruction. Despite the opposition of the American Medical Association*, which resisted any government involvement in medical care, Warren G. Harding threw his support behind the program for hygiene instruction. On November 13, 1921, he signed the Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act. It appropriated $1.5 million for distribution to state hygiene instruction programs in 1922, and $1.25 million a year for 1923–1927. The Coolidge administration did not sustain the legislation, and the Herbert Hoover* administration let it lapse in 1929. Reference Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s, 1973.

SHERMAN, JOHN John Sherman was born in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1823. He studied law privately and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1844. Sherman was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1854, and he won an Ohio Senate seat in 1860. He was reelected in 1866 and 1872. In the Senate, Sherman resisted the demands of farmers and workers for an expansion of the currency, and he was a leading figure in the so-called “Crime of 1873”*—the Coinage Act of 1873 that demonetized silver. Sherman resigned his Senate seat in 1877 to become secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of President Rutherford B. Hayes. In that post, Sherman saw to it that greenbacks were withdrawn from circulation. He was reelected to the Senate in 1880. Ten years later, convinced that the federal government would have to respond to some of the demands of farmers and workers, Sherman sponsored two landmark pieces of legislation. Although the law was actually drafted by Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, it became known as the Sherman Antitrust Ad of 1890, and it outlawed monopolies in manufacturing industries. Sherman also sponsored the Sherman Silver Purchase Act* of 1890. In 1897, Sherman resigned his Senate seat again to become secretary of state in the cabinet of President William McKinley*, but ill health forced him to resign that position shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898. Sherman died in 1900. References T. E. Burton, John Sherman, 1906. D. L. Rothman, Politics and Power: The United States Senate, 1869–1901, 1966.

SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT OF 1890 Because of the widespread resentment among farmers, workers, and small businessmen toward the monopolistic practices of the railroad, beef, lead, oil-refining, and sugar industries, a number of states enacted antitrust laws, beginning with

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Kansas in 1889. Still, everyone realized that state legislation would have little effect on nationwide trusts operating in interstate commerce. Demand for national legislation became more and more insistent. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 had established the Interstate Commerce Commission* to outlaw pools* among the railroads, and in 1890, Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts drafted legislation outlawing monopolies in manufacturing industries. The law gave the federal government the power to use the federal court system to dissolve such trusts* and monopolies. Senator John Sherman* of Ohio shepherded the bill through Congress, and it became law on July 2, 1890. Because of its vague language and the conservative administrations in Washington, D.C., the law was not enforced vigorously during the 1890s. During the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt* and William Howard Taft*, progressive* sentiments dramatically increased the antitrust activities of the federal government. The Clayton Antitrust Act* of 1914 tightened the language of the law. Reference James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900–1918, 1968.

S H E R M A N S I LV E R P U R C H A S E A C T O F 1 8 9 0 Throughout the 1880s, demands by farmers and silver producers for a rapid expansion of the money supply through increased production of silver money gained momentum. Silver interests, of course, wanted the unlimited coinage of silver, whereas hard money interests wanted simply a gold standard. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 was a compromise measure. It ordered the federal government to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver each month at market prices and to issue in payment for it Treasury notes that were legal tender and redeemable in gold or silver. In effect, the law repealed the Bland–Allison Act of 1878. Because the law overvalued silver, it tended to drive gold out of circulation and thereby threatened the viability of gold as a medium of exchange. The law was repealed in 1893. References T. E. Burton, John Sherman, 1906. Walter T.K. Nugent, Money and American Society, 1968.

SHIPPING ACT OF 1984 The Shipping Act of 1984 permitted shipping companies to quote their freight rates all the way to inland destinations, instead of the previous practice of allowing them only to quote a rate to the first rail depot and then requiring a railroad carrier to complete the rate quotation. After the law was passed, major American steamship companies began negotiating contracts with railroads to haul their freight to Chicago, St. Louis, and other inland cities. The change has had the effect of encouraging such technological improvements in the railroad industry as five-car articulation units in double-stack formats, electric braking, and slack-free coupling, as

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well as permitting specialized carriers that are separate from the owners of the rail track to carry freight. This innovation, too, was believed to make the industry more competitive. The change was part of the deregulation* movement that emerged in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Reference George W. Hilton, “Staggers Rail Act of 1980,” in Keith L. Bryant Jr., Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980, 1988.

“SICK CHICKEN CASE” See SCHECHTER POULTRY CORPORATION v. UNITED STATES. S I L I C O N VA L L E Y The term Silicon Valley refers to the South Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, which serves as a hub for computer and Internet* technology businesses. Located in the Santa Clara Valley, which used to be a center for the production of silicon chips, from where the moniker came, it later came to be associated with the large number of high-tech industries and startups in the region as they rapidly increased in number in the 1990s and 2000s. Major technology companies, such as Google*, Apple*, and Facebook*, are located in the cities of Silicon Valley. The term Silicon Valley is also used to refer to the high-tech industry in the United States as a whole, regardless of its geographical location. Reference Michael Lewis, The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, 2000.

S I LV E R A C T O F 1 9 6 3 The Silver Act of 1963 repealed the Silver Purchase Act* of 1934. By the 1960s, silver was in short supply, so the new law permitted the Treasury Department to withdraw all silver certificates—currency redeemable in pure silver—from circulation. The government no longer had to purchase new silver from mines at fixed prices, a change that allowed silver prices to seek a market-determined level. Reference Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age, 2007.

S I LV E R D E M O C R AT S The term “Silver Democrats” referred to the Western and Southern wings of the Democratic Party that were committed to free coinage of silver at a ratio of sixteen to one in the 1880s and 1890s. They broke with the hard-money Eastern Democrats and fused with the Populist Party* in the election of 1896*. The split in Democratic ranks in 1896 virtually assured the election of William McKinley* and the Republicans.

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S I LV E R P U R C H A S E A C T O F 1 9 3 4 Despite the general prosperity of the 1920s, western mining and farming interests had suffered economically. Agricultural and metals prices declined while production costs climbed. The economic squeeze on producers of cotton, wheat, and silver was especially difficult and became disastrous during the 1930s. Western senators began demanding federal assistance, arguing that expanding the stock of monetary silver would ease the gold shortage, expand the money supply, increase the price of silver, and, as so many Westerners believed, increase farm purchasing power. Issuing silver certificates in exchange for silver bullion would provide employment in the mining industry. These arguments by such “silver senators” as Burton K. Wheeler* of Montana, Key Pittman of Nevada, William Borah of Idaho, and William King of Utah attracted strong support from other congressmen in the West, South, and Midwest. Their demands verged on the radical. After 1932, Senator Wheeler called for the free coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one with gold, a throwback to the Populist* days. Congressman Martin Dies of Texas wanted the export of agricultural surpluses in exchange for silver. Congressman William Fiesinger of Ohio demanded the purchase of 50 million ounces of silver each month until 1 billion ounces had been acquired by the federal government. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* rejected such extreme proposals, but he did accept two measures to appease the silver senators as well as to supplement the “gold-buying” theory of recovery—that by expanding the money supply and manipulating its value, the federal government might be able to stimulate purchasing power. First, Roosevelt approved Senator Elmer Thomas’s amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933, authorizing the Treasury Department to exchange silver certificates for silver bullion; Roosevelt then ordered the purchase of all newly mined domestic silver, ratifying the Silver Agreement of 1933 signed at the London Economic Conference*. Second, the president signed the Silver Purchase Act of 1934, which declared that the proportion of silver to gold in the monetary system should be increased until the monetary stock of silver was one-third that of gold or until the market price of silver reached $1.29 per ounce; that the Treasury Department issue silver certificates to equal the amount paid for the silver; that the president could nationalize silver stocks at a price not to exceed $.50 per ounce; and that all profits above original costs on the transfer of silver should carry a 50 percent tax. The silver speculation did little to aid agriculture. Indeed, although a boon to silver producers, it was not to consumers, because silver prices rose in the absence of legitimate demand. Roosevelt had no real commitment to the program. He was generally skeptical of the merits of monetary tinkering, but had to appease the silver bloc. The silver program had unfortunate international consequences, for nations with silver monetary systems saw their bullion flowing to the United States and creating monetary crises at home. By 1935, most of the silver senators agreed to stabilize silver prices and to stop the speculation that had been generated by the Silver Purchase Act of 1934. Reference John A. Brennan, Silver and the First New Deal, 1969.

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S I LV E R R E P U B L I C A N PA R T Y In 1896, Senator Henry Moore Teller of Colorado established the Silver Republican Party after the Republican Party refused to endorse the idea of free and unlimited coinage of silver. The party was composed of Republicans from the western silver states, who viewed the free coinage of silver as a potential bonanza; it was closely allied to the American Bimetallic League*. The Silver Republican Party had one issue: to abandon the gold standard and remonetize silver. At its presidential nominating convention in 1896, the Silver Republican Party joined the Democrats and the Populists* in nominating William Jennings Bryan*. When Bryan lost the election to Republican William McKinley*, the Silver Republican Party dissolved. Reference Stanley L. Jones, The Presidential Election of 1896, 1964.

SINCLAIR, UPTON BEALL Upton Sinclair was born on September 20, 1878, in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1897. During his life, Sinclair wrote ninety books and hundreds of articles, most of which promoted his socialist* ideals and criticized big business and materialism in America. His novel The Jungle (1906) directly influenced the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act*, and his subsequent novels—such as King Coal (1917), Oil (1927), and Boston (1928)— were similar works of social criticism. He ran for governor of California in 1934 on the “End Poverty in California*” slogan, a socialist platform. Republican Frank Merriam wound up waging a vicious press campaign in order to defeat him. Sinclair won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for his antifascist novel Dragon’s Teeth, and he is considered the father of social criticism in the United States. Sinclair died in 1968. References William A. Bloodsworth Jr., Upton Sinclair, 1977. Leon Harris, Upton Sinclair, American Rebel, 1975.

S I N G L E TA X M O V E M E N T In 1879, Henry George* founded the Single Tax Movement to promote his taxation scheme. Earlier in the year, George had published Progress and Poverty, in which he argued that increasing land values gave landlords an “unearned increment” that perpetuated class divisions. George proposed his “single tax” on such accumulated values and believed that it would raise enough revenue to eliminate all other taxes. He also called for federal ownership of utilities and a vigorous federal antimonopoly program. The Single Tax Movement consisted of thousands of Single Tax Clubs at the local level. Although the movement was absorbed by the Populist Party* in 1892, it nevertheless played an important part in demanding social reforms, some of which were realized during the Progressive* Era and the New Deal*. Reference Steven B. Cord, Henry George: Dreamer or Realist?, 1965.

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S I T- D O W N S T R I K E The “sit-down” strike was a labor union tactic pioneered on December 28, 1936, when General Motors* employees in Flint, Michigan, went on strike. Instead of picketing outside the plant, they sat down in the factory and refused to leave. Labor organizers from the United Automobile Workers* then took the tactic to other General Motors plants, seizing them and fighting off attempts by the company to retake them. The sit-downs lasted for six weeks, and production at General Motors collapsed. On February 11, 1937, General Motors executives gave in and recognized the UAW. Rather than face similar sit-down strikes from workers in the steel workers’ organizing committee, the United States Steel Corporation* gave up without a fight, recognizing the union and agreeing to a contract. Throughout 1937 other unions in the Congress of Industrial Organizations* won similar victories. Because federal, state, and local officials refused to use police or National Guard troops to dislodge the strikers, the sit-downs were enormously successful. A generation later, civil rights activists would use a similar tactic—the “sit-in”—to eliminate segregation in public facilities throughout the South. Reference John Barnard, Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto Worker, 1983.

SLAUGHTERHOUSE CASES The Slaughterhouse Cases involved the initial decision by the Supreme Court about the breadth of the civil rights protections of the new Fourteenth Amendment* to the Constitution. The state legislature of Louisiana had granted a statewide monopoly to a single company involved in the slaughtering of livestock. Competing companies argued that the legislative action constituted a violation of the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and should be declared unconstitutional. But by a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court upheld the law as a power reserved to the states. In essence, the Slaughterhouse decision provided a very narrow definition of the civil rights power of the Fourteenth Amendment. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

S L AV E T R A D E The first African slaves were taken by the Portuguese in 1443. The Portuguese began the trans-Atlantic slave trade to supply their Brazilian sugar plantations. Late in the seventeenth century, after tobacco and sugar plantations were established in North America and the Caribbean, the English created the Royal African Company, ending the Portuguese and Dutch monopolies. From that time until its demise in the nineteenth century, the slave trade was dominated by the British. There were three stages in the Atlantic slave trade. First, the slaves had to be captured, and European traders relied on other Africans to do this. At first, the slave trade was a casual affair; Africans sold their prisoners of war to the Europeans. By the

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eighteenth century, however, the trade had assumed economic importance and had become a major cause of war in Africa as coastal tribes competed to supply the New World plantations. The next stage involved moving the captives to the West African coast. They changed hands several times through various African middlemen. Then came the dreaded “Middle Passage” when the slaves were transported across the Atlantic. The mortality rate from flu, dysentery, pleurisy, pneumonia, and smallpox was devastating. Twenty percent of the Africans did not survive the passage. Because perhaps 10 million slaves were taken from Africa to all the colonies in the Western Hemisphere from 1600 to 1800, it can be assumed that 2 million died in transit. Historians estimate that approximately 400,000 of these Africans were brought to the United States. Opposition to the slave trade, both the Atlantic slave trade and the domestic slave trade, surfaced during the American Revolution*, and during the debates over the Constitution in 1787, northerners successfully campaigned for an end to the importation of new slaves from Africa after the end of 1807. The domestic slave trade was also damaged by the rhetoric of the American Revolution. From 1776 to 1786 the domestic slave trade was abolished or severely taxed in eleven northern states. In 1850, as part of the Compromise of 1850*, Congress passed legislation outlawing the slave trade in Washington, D.C. The domestic slave trade in the South did not die out until the end of the Civil War*. Reference Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 1969.

S L AV E R Y Because of the long growing season in the South and the abundance of land in America, it was often difficult to find laborers to work someone’s land. People were too busy finding land of their own. Under those circumstances, some form of involuntary servitude was all but inevitable in the American colonies. European traders turned to West Africa as a source of slaves, and the first Africans were brought into Virginia in 1619. Those first slaves, however, were more like indentured servants, since they were released after several years of service. By 1650, however, the length of black servitude was increasing, and by the early 1670s in Virginia and somewhat later in Maryland, formal slavery came into existence—lifetime and hereditary servitude, whereby an individual inherited the legal status of his or her black parents. By 1776, there were approximately 600,000 people of African descent in the United States. Of that total, approximately 550,000 of them were slaves, with 95 percent of them working on the cotton, tobacco, hemp, sugar, and indigo plantations of the South. During the nineteenth century, the number of slaves in the South grew to approximately 4 million by 1860. Beginning with Pennsylvania in 1776, the northern states had all abolished slavery by 1820. As critics in the North began to call for the abolition of slavery, Southerners defended it as a positive good, for blacks as well as whites. The sectionalism that developed out of slavery eventually resulted in the Civil War*. The North inflicted a devastating military defeat on the South. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln* issued the Emancipation Proclamation,*

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liberating the slaves in the rebellious states, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery outright. References John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, 1972. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross, 1974.

SLOAN, ALFRED PRITCHARD, JR. Born on May 23, 1875, in New Haven, Connecticut, Alfred P. Sloan Jr. was a prominent corporation executive and philanthropist who headed General Motors (GM) during the New Deal* era. Graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1895 with a degree in electrical engineering, Sloan joined the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company and became its president and general manager in 1898 when his father purchased the firm. In 1909, Hyatt Roller Bearing Company became a supplier to both General Motors* and Ford*. GM formed United Motors Corporation in 1916 as a holding company* for the purchase of firms making auto parts, and Sloan sold Hyatt to them. He then became president of United Motors and vice president and director of GM. During 1919 and 1920, Sloan completed three internal reports recommending major changes in transfer pricing, capital budgeting, and organizational structure. When Pierre du Pont* became president of GM in 1920, he quickly implemented the recommendations. The reorganization created autonomous operating divisions, producing and selling different makes of cars in vertically integrated* activities and having delegated authority to act, all coordinated by central staff units. Corporate management was freed to turn its attention to major policy and planning issues. The GM approach, still largely in place, is the basic pattern for large industrial firms today. In 1923, Sloan became president and chief executive officer of GM. During the Great Depression*, Sloan turned his attention to philanthropy and emerged as a major spokesman for the business community, expressing concern about the growth of the federal government. At the same time, many New Dealers focused on Sloan as an example of incredible wealth existing in an impoverished America. Secretary of Commerce Daniel C. Roper recruited Sloan to serve on the Business Advisory Council* in 1933, but Sloan was among the more conservative businessmen. In 1934, upset about the drift of the New Deal*, he resigned from the council, along with John J. Raskob* and du Pont, to help form the American Liberty League. In 1937, Sloan became chairman of the GM board. He retired as chief executive officer in 1946 and finally retired from the board in 1956. During his tenure of office, GM grew from 25,000 to over 600,000 employees; from under 3,000 to over 1 million shareholders; from 205,000 ($270 million) to over 5 million ($14.6 billion) unit sales annually; and from $100 million to $6.9 billion in total capital. Sloan died on February 17, 1966. References Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Giant Enterprise: Ford, General Motors, and the American Automobile Industry, 1964.

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Kim McQuaid, “The Frustration of Corporate Revival during the Early New Deal,” Historian 41 (1979): 682–704.

S M A L L B U S I N E S S A D M I N I S T R AT I O N During the 1930s, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) first noticed a pattern in the economy whereby small businesses had unique credit needs and were often unable to secure necessary financing, even when they were creditworthy. The RFC embarked on small business loans after 1934, and during World War II the RFC supervised the Smaller War Plants Corporation and the Small Defense Plants Administration. In response to a continuing perception after the war that small businesses had special credit needs, Congress passed the Small Business Act of 1953. The legislation established the Small Business Administration (SBA) as a temporary, independent federal agency. The Small Business Act of 1958 gave the SBA permanent statutory footing. Congress also passed the Small Business Investment Act in 1958, authorizing the SBA to license Small Business Investment Companies (SBIC), private companies which can reloan SBA money to small businesses. Minority Enterprise SBICs (MESBIC) have also appeared. The SBA prefers to make loans indirectly, however, by guaranteeing up to 90 percent of the loans of other private lenders. Over the years, the SBA has been plagued by problems. It has been unable to decide just what constitutes a small business, but more serious than that has been its loss rate in federal funds. By most estimates, only half of the SBA loans are ever repaid, and in 1976 the SBA lost $130 million in bad loans. Senator William Proxmire launched a crusade to eliminate the SBA. Nevertheless, the volume of outstanding SBA loans increased from $212 million in 1958 to $737 million in 1968 to more than $7 billion in the late 1980s. References James S. Olson, The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940, 1988. Addison W. Parris, The Small Business Administration, 1968.

SMALL BUSINESS CONFERENCE OF 1938 See NATIONAL SMALL BUSINESS MEN’S ASSOCIATION. SMARTPHONES Smartphones are phones that have enhanced capabilities, including Web browsers, email, texting, photography, music, video, games, and other applications (or apps). In the twenty-first century, the Apple* iPhone and the RIM Blackberry were among the most innovative of these devices, gradually displacing the mobile phone in the market among consumers. Apple’s competitors, most notably Samsung, eventually adopted Google’s* Android smartphone operating system, eventually taking a larger market share. Microsoft’s* acquisition of Nokia in 2012 introduced a new player into the international smartphone market.

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Reference Jon Agar, Constant Touch: A Brief History of the Mobile Phone, 2013.

SMITH, ALFRED EMMANUEL Born on December 20, 1873, in New York City, Al Smith grew up in the social atmosphere of immigrant Irish America: Roman Catholic, hardworking, and Democratic. He was a devout Catholic and attended parochial school, but his father died in 1886, and young Smith had to go to work in a variety of laboring jobs. He also became involved in the religion of politics in New York City’s Fourth Ward. Smith dutifully performed the errands of ward politicians as a young man, and in 1903 he won a seat in the state assembly. He proved to be an excellent politician, solicitous of constituent needs, loyal to party leadership, and adept at legislative maneuvering. In 1911, he was named majority leader of the assembly and then speaker of the assembly in 1912. After the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, Smith became a vocal advocate of strong social welfare responsibilities for the government, including labor standards laws, child labor restrictions, workmen’s compensation*, and regulation of business monopolies. His political stature grew, and he won the governorship of New York in 1918, lost in 1920, and then won again in 1922, 1924, and 1926. In that post, he presided over a reorganization of New York state government, a conservation program, a comprehensive housing program, workmen’s compensation improvements, public health, limits on child labor, and public works job development. In the process, Smith became a national figure. He was a prominent candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1924, representing the northern, urban, “wet” (anti-Prohibition*) wing of the Democratic Party, struggling against the southern, rural, Klan-supported, “dry” (pro-Prohibition) candidacy of William Gibbs McAdoo. Both of them eventually lost out to the dark horse compromise candidacy of John W. Davis*. By 1928, however, the urban wing had come to dominate the Democratic Party, and Smith won the nomination. But his Roman Catholicism, opposition to Prohibition, and immigrant sympathies, combined with the prevailing “Republican prosperity,” cost him the election, putting Herbert Hoover* in the White House. Smith went into private business after the election but gradually grew resentful of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* growing status as the new governor of New York. He doubted Roosevelt’s political convictions and wanted the presidential nomination again in 1932. Roosevelt won both the nomination and the presidency, and Smith drifted into alienation. As a 1920s liberal, he had fought for civil liberties, individual rights, freedom from government interference in people’s lives, and against bureaucracy and Prohibition. By the 1930s, jealous of Roosevelt and appalled by the New Deal* bureaucracy, Smith began calling for a repudiation of the New Deal, joining the anti-Roosevelt American Liberty League and endorsing Republican presidential candidates Alf Landon in 1936 and Wendell Willkie in 1940. Smith died on October 4, 1944. References Oscar Handlin, Al Smith and His America, 1958. New York Times, October 5, 1944.

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SMITH–LEVER ACT OF 1914 In 1914, Senator Hoke Smith and Congressman Asbury F. Lever sponsored legislation to link up the work of the Department of Agriculture’s* extension service and the research mission of the land grant colleges. The law was designed to provide improved dissemination of research in home economics and agriculture. Each state received a grant of $10,000 to establish extension services at the land grant colleges, with a county agent to have a dual appointment. Since that time, the role of the county agent and the land grant college has mushroomed and has played a central role in distributing useful research information. Reference Roy V. Scott, The Reluctant Farmer: The Rise of Agricultural Extension to 1914, 1970.

S M O O T, R E E D Reed Smoot was born on January 10, 1862, in Salt Lake City, Utah. He graduated from the Brigham Young Academy in 1879 and entered a business career that brought him into ranching, real estate, insurance, and banking, as well as the corporate presidencies of the Hotel Utah, the Home Fire Insurance Company, and the Smoot Investment Company. In 1900, Smoot was named an apostle in the Mormon Church, a position he held for the rest of his life. In the election of 1902, Smoot ran as a Republican and was elected to the U.S. Senate. Evangelical Protestants contested his seating in the Senate because of his ties to the Mormon Church, but after a thorough investigation, Smoot was allowed to take the oath of office. For the next thirty years, he was a faithful member of the Republican “Old Guard,” becoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in the 1920s. Smoot favored high tariffs, low taxes on the well-to-do, reductions in government spending, and an isolationist foreign policy. In 1930, he sponsored the Hawley–Smoot Act* in the Senate; it raised tariff rates and, unfortunately, contributed to reductions in foreign trade and domestic employment. In the election of 1932, Smoot could not withstand the tidal wave of support for the Democratic Party, and he lost his bid for reelection. For the remainder of his life, he devoted his energies to the Mormon Church. Smoot died on February 9, 1941. Reference Salt Lake Tribune, February 10, 1941.

SOCIAL DARWINISM In 1859, Charles Darwin published his book Origin of Species and argued that all life on earth had evolved from simpler forms according to the law of natural selection. The theory stirred up a sustained controversy in Europe and the United States between fundamentalist Christians, who interpreted the Bible literally, and the scientific community. Some people applied the theory of natural selection to the human class structure. In England, Herbert Spencer argued in Social Statics that an individual’s place in the class structure was the result of natural law, not of

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circumstances or the environment. The poor were poor because they were genetically unable to succeed. In the United States, William Graham Sumner of Yale University became the leading advocate of what came to be known as Social Darwinism. Because the class structure was determined by natural law, government should not interfere, because such interference would only perpetuate weakness in society. Social Darwinism reinforced the laissez-faire* ideology advocated by conservative businessmen, as well as the arguments of the advocates of the eugenics movement and immigration* restriction. References Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915, 1944. Walter T.K. Nugent, From Centennial to World War: American Society, 1876–1917, 1977.

SOCIAL GOSPEL The term “Social Gospel” refers to a political and social movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which liberal Christian ministers called for the use of government—local and national—to ameliorate the suffering of the poor and unemployed through safety-net legislation. People such as Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden argued that the competitive focus of modem capitalism and industrialization had gone too far and that the exploitation of the working poor had to stop. Although their hope of “Christianizing” the social and economic order was never realized, the Social Gospel movement did provide a philosophical rationale for the rise of much of the welfare state in the twentieth century. Reference Robert T. Handy, ed., The Social Gospel in America, 1966.

SOCIAL MEDIA The term “social media” refers to networks that facilitate the interaction between individuals in virtual communities and networks that emerged early in the twenty-first century as part of Web 2.0, considered a second phase of Internet* innovations. Networks, such as Facebook*, Twitter, Google+*, Instagram, and LinkedIn, allow for the exchange of user-generated content. Social media allows for the increased interaction of users around commonalities for the dissemination of information. Moreover, it has allowed for newer innovation in computer and Internet-based technologies to accommodate for the volume of users, such as applications for use on smartphones* and tablets. However, social media networks have also used the information accumulated from their users to market goods through advertising and by selling the information to other companies for marketing purposes. Although concerns over privacy have been pronounced, the continued expansion and popularity of social media show that users are willing to overlook that dilemma. Reference Michael Mandiberg, The Social Media Reader, 2012.

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SOCIAL SECURITY ACT OF 1935 On August 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed the Social Security Act into law. The act created a Social Security Board to provide for unemployment compensation, old-age insurance, assistance to the destitute blind, and assistance for homeless, crippled, dependent, and delinquent children. The act established a cooperative federal–state system of unemployment compensation, financed by a federal tax on employer payrolls equal to 1 percent in 1936, 2 percent in 1937, and 3 percent thereafter. The program was administered by each state, which received a credit of up to 90 percent of the federal tax. A program for old-age and survivor’s insurance was financed by equal taxes on employers and employees, starting at 1 percent in 1937 and increasing to 3 percent by 1949. The old-age and survivor’s insurance was exclusively a federal program. A national fund would accumulate until January 1, 1942, at which time pensions would begin to be paid to eligible people sixty-five years of age and over. Benefits ranged from $10 to $85 a month, depending on how many years the employee had contributed to the program. The Social Security Act also provided for federal grants to the states to assist them in meeting the costs of state old-age pension systems as well as payments to the blind and eligible children. The origins of the Social Security Act reach back to the early twentieth century. German and English models of health, old-age, and unemployment insurance had emerged in the late nineteenth century, but the American social insurance movement was not really launched until the early 1900s. The American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL), led by people like John R. Commons* and Isaac M. Rubinow, began calling for unemployment and old-age insurance as a means of income maintenance in industrial economies. By the 1920s, compulsory unemployment insurance had spread throughout Europe, and similar bills were introduced in many American state legislatures. Wisconsin enacted an unemployment compensation program in 1932, using an AALL model with employer funds providing the resources. To some social insurance advocates such as Rubinow, the Wisconsin plan was inadequate for resting on too narrow a financial base. They instead preferred a federal program financed by general revenues as the best way of maintaining purchasing power during periods of economic decline. The American Federation of Labor* (AFL) endorsed unemployment insurance in 1932. By 1935, Wisconsin was the only state to have compulsory unemployment insurance. The first state old-age pension programs of the early twentieth century were diverse, sporadic, and usually confined to police, firemen, and teachers. By the late 1920s, municipal retirement plans were universal for firemen and police, and teacher pension systems were common. Several states had comprehensive retirement systems for all state employees by the late 1920s, and by 1930, there were more than 400 corporate pension systems in the United States. Abraham Epstein had founded the American Association for Old-Age Security* in 1929 to campaign for a comprehensive federal insurance program. As with Rubinow’s stand on unemployment insurance, Epstein wanted the program to be comprehensive, compulsory, and funded out of general revenues as a means of sustaining

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purchasing power and redistributing income. During the 1920s, several congressmen, including William P. Connery Jr. of Massachusetts and Senator Clarence Dill of Washington, submitted old-age insurance bills to Congress, but they could not prevail against the popular bias in favor of voluntarism. The onset of the Great Depression* all but destroyed faith in voluntarism and generated even more intense demands for unemployment and old-age insurance. In June 1934, President Roosevelt established the Committee on Economic Security*, headed by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins*, to develop a social insurance program. They studied the issue and quickly came to agree on a national system of contributory old-age and survivor’s insurance. The Townsend* movement’s growing popularity, as represented by Congressman John McGroarty’s bill providing for monthly pensions of $200, helped them decide on a comprehensive old-age security system. The unemployment insurance question was more difficult, because the administration was divided. National planners such as Henry A. Wallace* and Rexford G. Tugwell* wanted a uniform, national system, whereas the president favored the Wisconsin plan for a federal–state system. The committee ultimately endorsed the latter. In January 1935, Senator Robert Wagner* of New York and Congressman David Lewis of Maryland introduced the measure in Congress. The bill encountered intense opposition from a variety of sources. Business conservatives argued that it was un-American, a “cradle-to-the-grave” welfare measure leading the country down the road to socialism*. Some Southerners did not like blacks’ eligibility to receive pensions. More liberal followers of Francis Townsend and Huey Long felt that the bill was too stingy and that it did not offer enough to old people. Social insurance advocates such as Rubinow and Epstein bitterly criticized the federal–state nature of the unemployment provisions and the contributory method of financing the benefits. In their view, such provisions would prevent the Social Security Act from maintaining purchasing power or redistributing income. Indeed, they found the regressive tax on payrolls counterproductive. Still, public sentiment for some type of unemployment and old-age insurance was overwhelming, and the bill passed the House in April and the Senate in June. After conference committee hearings, Congress approved the bill and the president signed it on August 14, 1935. In the summer of 1939, a series of amendments set up the modem social security program for unemployment compensation and old-age insurance. The date for starting monthly payments was advanced to January 1, 1940; supplementary benefits were provided for aged wives; average wages replaced total wages as the means for determining the size of benefits; increased payroll taxes were postponed until 1943; the maximum federal grant for each destitute blind person and each aged person not covered by Social Security was increased by $15 to $20 per month; and the federal share of state aid to dependent children went from 33 percent to 50 percent of the amount granted to each individual. Reference Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935, 1968.

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S O C I A L S E C U R I T Y A D M I N I S T R AT I O N The Social Security Administration is one of the largest and most powerful bureaucracies because of the volume of money it disburses and because of the support it enjoys from the constituency of older and working-class Americans. The Social Security Act of 1935 created the three-person Social Security Board to report directly to the president. Congress replaced the board in 1946 with the Social Security Administration, a government agency headed by the Commissioner of Social Security. The Social Security Administration was transferred to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 and then to the Department of Health and Human Services in 1979. At its inception, the Social Security Administration handled the three programs created by the Social Security Act of 1935: a federal–state program of public assistance, a federal–state unemployment insurance program funded by employer taxes, and a federal old-age pension program funded by taxes on workers and employers. Congress added survivors and dependent benefits in 1939, disability benefits in 1956, and Medicare in 1966. Unemployment insurance was shifted to the Department of Labor in 1949 and the public assistance program went to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1963. During the Nixon administration, Congress also created the escalator clause, which automatically dictated that annual increases in Social Security benefits must exceed the rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index. References Roy Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900–1935, 1968. Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State, 1974. Edwin E. Witte, The Development of Social Security, 1962.

SOCIALISM Socialism refers to a form of political economy in which the government owns the means of production and distribution. During the nineteenth century, there were a number of socialist experiments in the United States. Charles Fourier established several socialist-like “phalanxes” in the United States. The best known of them was Brook Farm* in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Other experiments included those of Robert Owen and John Humphrey Noyes. All of these attempts at establishing socialist utopias were short-lived. The primary theorist of socialism in the nineteenth century, whose ideas survived throughout the twentieth century, was Karl Marx. He postulated an inevitable power struggle between capitalists and employees that would end in revolution and universal socialism. Because of widespread property ownership and the culture of opportunity, socialist ideas never attracted more than a small minority in the United States. The most success that socialists had in American political history occurred in the election of 1912* when Eugene V. Debs* and the Socialist Party* secured more than 6 percent of the national vote for president. By giving the American public a reasonable alternative to conservatism Republicanism during the Great Depression*, the New Deal* all but destroyed socialism in the United States.

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Reference David Shannon, The Socialist Party of America, 1955.

S O C I A L I S T L A B O R PA R T Y The Socialist Labor Party was founded in 1877 as the first Marxist organization in American history. Its leading figure until his death in 1914 was Daniel DeLeon. The Socialist Labor Party was committed to transforming America into a classless society through revolutionary trade unionism, but it made little headway. DeLeon was a true ideologue with a personality to match. The Socialist Party of America*, led by Eugene V. Debs*, emerged as the leader of responsible, pragmatic socialists in the United States, while the Socialist Labor Party served as a political home for only a radical fringe. References Don K. McKee, “Daniel DeLeon: A Reappraisal,” Labor History 1 (fall 1960): 16–28. James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925, 1967.

S O C I A L I S T PA R T Y O F A M E R I C A Founded in 1901 by people opposed to the radical socialism of Daniel DeLeon and the Socialist Labor Party*, the Socialist Party of America was led by Eugene V. Debs*, former president of the American Railway Union*. From the outside, the Socialist Party adopted the most conservative position among American radicals, insisting that socialism would have to come to the United States through peaceful political campaigning, not revolution. The Socialist Party proved to be ahead of its time. Its original platform called for women’s suffrage, federal old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, an end to child labor, prohibition of the use of force to break up labor strikes, a minimum wage for workers, and a shorter work week, all of which were eventually enacted in the United States. The Socialist Party also called for government ownership of the transportation, communication, and banking systems. Debs was the perennial Socialist candidate for president, and in the election of 1912*, he surprised most Americans by winning 6 percent of the vote in the presidential election. In the election of 1920, Debs was again the Socialist nominee, but this time, he ran for president from the federal penitentiary at Atlanta, where he was serving time for opposing American entry into World War I*. Debs died in 1926, and the mantle of Socialist leadership fell to Norman Thomas*. Even in the depths of the Great Depression*, the Socialist Party had little appeal to the mass of American workers. When the New Deal* passed much of the Socialist domestic agenda in the 1930s, the party was left with no real issues, and it declined even further. References Ray Ginger, The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs, 1949. David A. Shannon, The Socialist Party of America, 1955. James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912–1925, 1967.

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S O I L C O N S E R VAT I O N A C T O F 1 9 3 5 The severe droughts that devastated the Great Plains in 1934 and 1935 and the subsequent flooding and soil erosion led to demands for a federal program to deal with the problem. There was already a Soil Conservation Service, headed by Hugh Hammond Bennett, that functioned in the Department of the Interior. In 1935, with the passage of the Soil Conservation Act on April 27, Congress put the service on a permanent basis and transferred it to the Department of Agriculture*. The law also authorized the establishment of soil conservation districts throughout the country. With Civilian Conservation Corps* (CCC) and Works Progress Administration* (WPA) labor, the soil conservation districts began providing a variety of programs to farmers, including research on wind and water erosion; model projects; land-use planning for general areas as well as for farms and ranches; financial and technical advice; loans or gifts of seed, supplies, and conservation equipment; removal of steep slopes from cultivation; use of grasses and thick-growing crops; implementation of strip cropping, terracing, and crop rotation; and widespread wind and water control projects. The Soil Conservation Service, under Bennett’s dynamic leadership, was one of the New Deal’s* most successful programs. In October 1938, Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace* added substantially to its responsibilities, by including the program to develop submarginal land under the Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act* of 1937, flood control programs under the Flood Control Act of 1936, the development of small-scale farm and range water storage facilities under the Water Facilities Act of 1937, and the farm forestry work of the Farm Forestry Act of 1937. Reference Richard Lowitt, The New Deal and the West, 1984.

S O I L C O N S E R VAT I O N A N D D O M E S T I C ALLOTMENT ACT OF 1936 By the early 1930s, the ideas of professors John Black* and Milburn Wilson*, who advocated raising farm prices through acreage and production reductions, were becoming increasingly popular among agricultural economists. With the passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act* (AAA) of 1933, the “domestic allotment plan” received congressional and bureaucratic life. But on January 6, 1936, in U.S. v. Butler*, the Supreme Court invalidated the AAA because of its federal controls on farm production and the processors* tax that financed the acreage reductions. Enraged about the latest Supreme Court assault on the New Deal, the Roosevelt administration immediately responded with new legislation. Congress rushed the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act through committee to the floor of both houses, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt* signed the measure on February 29, 1936. Because of the quick passage of the new law, most farmers did not miss a check from the Department of Agriculture. Although the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act was full of reassurances that it was not designed to discourage agricultural production, it was

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still a rather carelessly veiled attempt to keep acreage out of production. It also differed from the earlier AAA in its provision that congressionally appropriated funds, rather than a processing tax, would finance the “soil conservation.” Two payments were provided to farmers. One was an allotment payment, which could be made for not growing “soil-depleting” crops such as corn, cotton, tobacco, and wheat. Instead, farmers were to raise “soil-conserving” crops like grasses, clover, or hay on AAA-idled acres. The second payment, known as an Agricultural Conservation Payment, was to provide farmers with money to purchase lime, potash, and phosphate fertilizers to restore soil fertility or for terracing and anti-erosion measures. Farmers were invited to participate. Payments averaged about $10 an acre for taking land out of production; the soil-depleting crops were usually those found in surplus quantities. The law also provided $500 million to finance the “soil conservation.” The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act did not succeed in restricting production. The actual acreage planted increased, for many farmers simply took their poorest, most marginal land out of production and increased the yields on their better land. The combination of production increases in 1937 and the price collapse of 1938 led to new legislation—the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1938. Reference Dean Albertson, Roosevelt’s Farmer: Claude R. Wickard and the New Deal, 1961.

SOUTHERN HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1866 With the Civil War* over and Radical Republicans in control of Congress, the United States embarked on a vigorous program of Reconstruction*. One problem was improving the economic status of the recently emancipated African American slaves* in the South. To assist them, Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act, which became law on June 21, 1866. The measure allowed freed slaves to secure title to 160 acres of public land for free if they would agree to live on and improve the land. Like many other Reconstruction programs, it was stillborn. Southern plantation owners, afraid of losing their supply of cheap labor, bitterly resisted the measure, and Northern Republicans did not have the political will to enforce it. By 1872, only 4,000 African Americans had taken advantage of the measure, and it was repealed by Congress. References George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 1955. Vernon L. Wharton, The Negro in Mississippi, 1865–1890, 1947.

S O U T H E R N PA C I F I C R A I L R O A D The Southern Pacific Railroad was organized in 1884 under the leadership of Charles Crocker*, Mark Hopkins*, Leland Stanford*, and Collis P. Huntington*, with the older Central Pacific Railroad* proving truly central to their system. They

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expanded the road, and in 1900, the Southern Pacific had more than 8,000 miles of track and reached from Portland, Oregon, to Los Angeles, California, and then east to New Orleans, Louisiana. Railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman* took control of the Southern Pacific in 1900 and managed it jointly with the huge Union Pacific Railroad*, but in 1913, the federal government forced him to break the system back in two. The Southern Pacific added the St. Louis Southwestern Railway in 1932. The railroad became one of the most successful in the industry after World War II. Reference Don L. Hofsommer, The Southern Pacific, 1901–1985, 1986.

S O U T H E R N T E N A N T FA R M E R S ’ U N I O N Rural poverty was catastrophic during the 1930s, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act* (AAA) of 1933 only made that worse. The AAA paid cotton planters 3½ cents per pound of the average yield for every acre that they removed from production. In addition, the planter received 1 cent per pound as a parity* price. Half of this latter amount was to be shared with his tenant. In other words, the planter received 4 cents out of the 4½ cents paid by the government. Many planters defrauded sharecroppers* and tenants of all payments, forcing them to live on what they could make from the cotton left in production. Compounding the problem, reduced cotton acreage also reduced the number of tenants required for production. Perhaps 20 percent of all sharecroppers and tenants were displaced as a result of the AAA program. Henry Clay East, a gasoline station owner in Tyronza, Arkansas, and Harry Leland Mitchell, owner of a dry cleaning establishment next door to East’s station, organized a small socialist* group in Tyronza. This group evolved into the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union (STFU). The STFU was formally organized on July 26, 1934, in Searcy, Arkansas. Although the STFU conducted a public relations and letter-writing campaign on behalf of poor farm workers, its greatest success occurred in 1935 when its members struck for higher wages for picking cotton. The strike, at the height of picking season, caught the planters off guard. Unable or unwilling to delay the sale of their cotton, they quickly settled with the STFU. Under the terms of the settlement, pickers’ wages were increased from 41 cents to 75 cents for each 100 pounds. The strike was settled, but the violence continued. President Franklin D. Roosevelt* announced that he was appointing a special commission on farm tenancy. The principal outgrowth of the investigations was an admission that something had to be done about the tenant problem. No one, however, could agree on a solution. Senator John Bankhead and Representative J. Marvin Jones introduced a bill that, had it been left in its original form, would have provided loans for homes and farm land. Although the bill had Roosevelt’s support, Congress balked at the cost and trimmed the measure down to the point that it would have taken over a thousand years to help purchase small farms for the approximately 3 million tenants and sharecroppers. The resulting Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act* of 1937 did,

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however, lead to the creation of the Farm Security Administration*. Late in the 1930s, the STFU was badly divided by tactical and ideological factionalism, and when World War II restored economic prosperity, the union died out. References David E. Conrad, The Forgotten Farmers: The Story of Sharecroppers in the New Deal, 1965. Donald H. Grubbs, Cry From the Cotton: The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and the New Deal, 1971.

S PA N I S H – A M E R I C A N WA R During the 1880s and 1890s, American interest in Cuba* began to increase for a variety of reasons. Many Americans sympathized with the desire of Cuban nationalists to throw off their Spanish yoke; groups in the State Department and War Department were anxious to expel Spanish influence from the Caribbean in the name of national security; and American sugar companies, which had heavy investments in the island, wanted to preserve political stability and a positive atmosphere for business activity. The William McKinley* administration actively expressed sympathy with Cuban revolutionaries and condemned Spanish heavy-handedness, and in 1898 the president dispatched the battleship Maine to Havana as a show of American strength. When the battleship exploded and sank under suspicious circumstances, the American public was outraged and the United States declared war on Spain. The war was over within a few months, but it had enormous significance for the United States: As part of the war and subsequent settlement, the United States acquired Hawaii*, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, becoming an imperial country in the process. Economic interests wanted to secure Pacific way stations to improve trade with East Asia, and American naval interests wanted to have naval stations to protect that traffic. Protestant religious groups were also interested in converting Asians to Christianity, and those territorial acquisitions had the potential of making that task easier. In order to guarantee political stability in Cuba, the McKinley administration imposed the Platt Amendment* which gave the United States virtually complete control over the new Cuban government, thereby protecting the interests of American corporations with investments in Cuba. References Frank Freidel, The Splendid Little War, 1958. L. L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley, 1980. David F. Trask, The War with Spain, 1980.

S P E C I A L C O M M I T T E E O N FA R M T E N A N C Y Because of continuing economic problems on the farm and the displacement of tenant farmers in the South as a result of Agricultural Adjustment Administration* (AAA) acreage reductions, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* created the Special Committee on Farm Tenancy in November 1936, under the chairmanship of Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace*. At the urging of Rexford G. Tugwell*, head of the Resettlement

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Administration*, Wallace toured the South and came back astounded at the extent of rural poverty in the United States. The special committee made its report to the president in February 1937, and Congress responded with the Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act* of 1937 and the establishment of the Farm Security Administration*. Reference Samuel 1. Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941.

SPECIE CIRCULAR OF 1836 During the 1830s, the number of state banks, and of the bank notes they issued, grew dramatically. That growth was fueled largely by the decision of the Jackson administration to withdraw federal money from the Second Bank of the United States* and deposit it in the state banks. The policy also fueled an enormous speculative fever since public lands were purchased with the abundant state bank notes. In order to reign in the speculation, President Andrew Jackson* issued the Specie Circular* in 1836, which ordered that thenceforth any public lands in excess of 320 acres were to be paid for in gold and silver (specie), not in state bank notes. The requirement that hard money be used triggered the Panic of 1837*. Reference John M. McFaul, The Politics of Jacksonian Finance, 1972.

SPECIE RESUMPTION ACT OF 1875 Because of the financial crisis of 1873, intense demands from soft-money advocates developed in the United States, and on April 14, 1874, Congress passed legislation increasing the volume of legal tender notes to $400 million. President Ulysses S. Grant felt the law was financially unsound, and he vetoed it. Congress then responded with legislation placing a ceiling of $382 million on the volume of greenbacks in circulation. Subsequent legislation, known as the Specie Resumption Act of 1875 (passed on January 1, 1875), provided for the resumption of specie payments by January 1, 1879, and imposed a lid of $300 million on the total volume of greenbacks in circulation. Reference Walter T. K. Nugent, Money and American Society, 1968.

S TA G F L AT I O N The term “stagflation” became a common expression during the 1970s and early 1980s to describe the peculiar economic problem of excess capacity and unemployment coexisting with inflation. Prevailing economic assumptions claimed that slowing demand would automatically bring down prices, but those assumptions had not anticipated the impact of the dramatic increase in oil prices during the 1970s. Higher oil prices placed inflationary pressures on the entire economy while reducing

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the volume of consumer purchasing power. People were spending more on oil produced by foreigners and less on consumer goods, which made unemployment even worse. Stagflation did not ease until oil prices began to fall in the 1980s. The inflation rate abated, and the increased purchasing power stimulated the economy. Reference David Brooks, “Supply-Side Squabbles,” National Review 38 (October 24, 1986): 28–33.

S TA G G E R S R A I L A C T O F 1 9 8 0 Because of the energy crisis and severe inflation, increasingly large numbers of Americans in the 1970s became concerned about cutting business costs. One means to achieve that was through deregulation* of certain industries, especially the transportation industries. The railroads were ripe for deregulation. Over the years, the Interstate Commerce Commission* had become a bureaucratic monstrosity that was crippling the industry. In 1980, Congressman Harley O. Staggers of West Virginia sponsored and Congress passed the Staggers Rail Act. It was part of the Jimmy Carter administration’s attempt to deregulate part of the railroad industry in hopes of improving competition and cutting rates. In effect, the law deregulated much of the freight business from the control of the Interstate Commerce Commission but retained regulation of “controlled commodities,” such as bulk grain and coal, that shippers had no choice but to move by rail. The law allowed railroads to raise their rates by 6 percent a year until 1984 and 4 percent annually thereafter if they were not covering the cost of their capital. They could also raise rates beyond that, according to the annual inflation rate. Finally, the law allowed railroads to negotiate rates with individual shippers for what were called “habitual” or “continual movements.” The effect of the law was to convert a highly regulated industry back to a market-oriented industry. Reference George Hilton, “Staggers Rail Act of 1980,” in Keith L. Bryant Jr., Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980, 1988.

S TA N D A R D O I L C O M PA N Y O F N E W J E R S E Y See EXXON. S TA N D A R D O I L C O M PA N Y O F N E W J E R S E Y ET AL. v. U.S See EXXON. S TA N F O R D , L E L A N D Leland Stanford was born in Watervliet, New York, on March 9, 1824. He studied law privately and entered the New York bar in 1848. Stanford relocated to the

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West Coast in 1852 and began a mercantile business in Sacramento. After an initial defeat in 1859, Stanford was elected governor of California in 1861. He was convinced that the future of the California economy depended upon connecting the state with the East Coast, so in 1861, he joined with Mark Hopkins*, Charles Crocker*, and Collis Huntington* to form the Central Pacific Railroad*. Stanford left office in 1863 and committed himself to the railroad industry. He was president and director of the Central Pacific from 1861 until his death on June 21, 1893. Stanford was also president of the Southern Pacific Railroad* from 1885 to 1890. It was the Central Pacific Railroad that linked up with the Union Pacific Railroad* in 1869 to become the first transcontinental line. Stanford was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican in 1885, the same year in which he endowed Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. He remained in the Senate for one term. Reference Norman E. Tutorow, Leland Stanford: Man of Many Careers, 1971.

S T E A G A L L , H E N RY B A S C O M Henry B. Steagall was born in Clopton, Alabama, on May 19, 1873. After taking a law degree at the University of Alabama in 1893, he practiced law in Ozark, Alabama. Imbued with Populist* values, Steagall was a faithful Democrat and a follower of William Jennings Bryan*. He was appointed county solicitor in 1898 and served one term in the state legislature in 1906–1907. In 1914, Steagall was elected to Congress, and he served there until his death in 1943. Steagall was assigned to the House Committee on Banking and Currency. He was an early proponent of federal deposit insurance. When the Democrats won control of Congress in 1930, Steagall became chairman of the committee and cooperated with the Herbert Hoover* administration’s proposal to create the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). Steagall supported Franklin D. Roosevelt* in 1932. He helped rush through the Emergency Banking Act* of 1933 and then cosponsored the Glass–Steagall Banking Act*. In part, this reform was to be achieved through Steagall’s long-advocated federal insurance of bank deposits: The bill provided for the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation* (FDIC). Steagall supported most New Deal* measures out of a sense of party loyalty, though he privately thought some of the administration’s programs were “socialistic.” Steagall devoted much attention to agricultural matters, supporting the Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act* of 1937, maintaining close ties with the American Farm Bureau Federation*, and working to ensure that wartime economic controls did not have an adverse effect on prices for farm products. He died on November 22, 1943. Reference Jack Brien Key, “Henry B. Steagall: The Conservative as Reformer,” Alabama Review 17 (1964): 198–209.

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S T E E L C O M PA N Y S E I Z U R E O F 1 9 5 2 In 1952, the United Steelworkers of America* announced their intention to go out on strike, but President Harry S. Truman* pleaded with union leadership to postpone the decision and with management to bargain in good faith with the union. The president was concerned about a strike’s effects on the economy and on the Korean War* effort. Union leaders decided to go ahead with the strike anyway, and on April 8, 1952, using federal troops, President Truman seized the steel mills. In the case of Sawyer v. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company in 1952, the Supreme Court declared the seizure unconstitutional. Truman returned the steel mills to the owners, and on July 24, 1952, the strike was settled by wage and price increases. Reference Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S Truman and American Liberalism, 1973.

STEEL STRIKE OF 1919 Throughout 1919, Americans had been preoccupied with radicalism, social change, and violence. The Bolshevik Revolution had succeeded in the Soviet Union, and communists around the world were predicting global revolution. Disillusionment with the outcome of World War I* was already setting in, as were concerns about economic readjustment. The Seattle general strike* in February 1919 had sent a shock wave of concern throughout the country, as had a series of summer race riots, particularly those in Chicago and Washington, D.C. In August 1918, a number of labor leaders had established the National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers, with Samuel Gompers*, head of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL), as honorary chairman, John Fitzpatrick as acting chairman, and William Z. Foster* as secretary-treasurer. The steel companies had resisted all the efforts of the committee to organize steel workers, but in 1919, the fact that Foster was a genuine radical gave rise to rumors that the steel-organizing drives were really covers for communist agitation. In June 1919, the committee had asked Elbert H. Gary*, head of U.S. Steel*, to begin negotiations for a wage increase, but he refused to meet with them. Gary would not back down from the long-held open shop* policy of U.S. Steel. The National Committee for Organizing Iron and Steel Workers then called for a steel strike to begin on September 22. It demanded the right of collective bargaining, the reinstatement of all men discharged for union activity, an eight-hour day, seniority rights, the abolition of company unions*, and higher pay. The strike call came amid the turmoil over the Boston police strike, in which public sentiment had sided heavily against the police. President Woodrow Wilson* asked for a postponement of the strike. Nevertheless, 275,000 workers struck on the first day, and by September 25, nearly 400,000 workers were out. Early in October, rioting broke out between strikers and employer-hired strikebreakers, and state militia were called in to quell the disturbances. Twenty people died in the rioting. At that point, public fears of revolutionary upheaval in the United States doomed the strike. It continued for another two months, but on January 8, 1920, the National Committee ended it. The workers gained absolutely nothing from the companies.

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Reference Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920, 1955.

STEEL WORKERS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE See UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA. STEINBECK, JOHN Born in 1902 in Salinas, California, John Steinbeck attended Stanford University off and on from 1920 to 1925. After a brief stint working and writing in New York, he returned to California and in 1929 published his first novel, A Cup of Gold. In 1935, he achieved success with the publication of Tortilla Flat, a humorous novel about the poor workers of Monterey that satirize middle-class values. After that, Steinbeck’s work took on a more working-class form as he focused on the struggles between large farms and underpaid farm workers. In Dubious Battle (1936) is considered the finest American strike novel. His novel Of Mice and Men (1937) continued the theme of working-class exploitation. In 1936, Steinbeck began visiting the camps and shanty towns of migrant farm laborers. He was outraged by the conditions of the poor workers, and the result was The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s most famous work. During World War II, Steinbeck worked for the Writers* War Board, the Office of War Information, and the Office of Strategic Services. He also wrote two propaganda books during the war—Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team and The Moon is Down. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1962. Steinbeck died on December 20, 1968. References Jackson J. Benson, The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer, 1984. Warren French, John Steinbeck, 1961. Thomas Kiernan, The Intricate Music: A Biography of John Steinbeck, 1979.

STEPHENS, URIAH SMITH Uriah Smith Stephens was born in Cape May County, New Jersey, on August 3, 1821. He was apprenticed out to a tailor when he was still a teenager and worked at that trade for a number of years. During the late 1840s, Stephens traveled widely throughout the Western Hemisphere, and in California during the 1850s, he became an abolitionist and a Republican. Stephens eventually saw labor organization as the key to economic progress for working-class people. In 1862, he organized the Garment Cutters Association. When it failed, he became a founding member of the Knights of Labor* in 1869. As Stephens envisioned it, the Knights of Labor was to be a fraternal organization, complete with secret oaths and rituals, that would oppose the wage system in favor of worker-owned cooperatives. He also wanted to organize all workers in America, skilled and unskilled alike, into the single union. In 1878, Stephens became grand master of the Knights of Labor. That

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same year, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress on the Greenback Labor* ticket. Stephens resigned from the Knights of Labor in 1879 and died on February 13, 1882. Reference Norman J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895, 1929.

STOCK-RAISING HOMESTEAD ACT OF 1916 After passage of the Homestead Act* of 1862, it became more and more clear that 160 acres of land would not be enough to provide for successful dry farming and grazing operations. Westerners began clamoring to expand the maximum number of acres available under the Homestead Act. In 1909, Congress passed the Enlarged Homestead Act, which allowed for 320-acre homesteads in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, Washington, and Arizona. Of that 320 acres, only 80 acres had to be farmed. The law also specifically made timber and mineral lands off-limits to homesteaders. But some westerners claimed that even 320 acres was inadequate, and in 1916, Congress passed the Stock-Raising Homestead Act, which increased the maximum acreage to 640 so long as the land had no irrigation potential and was to be used for grazing and forage. Reference Marshall Harris, Origins of the Land Tenure System in the United States, 1953.

STONE, HARLAN FISKE Harlan Fiske Stone, the eleventh chief justice of the Supreme Court, was born in Chesterfield, New Hampshire, on October 11, 1872. He graduated from Amherst College in 1894 and from the Columbia University Law School in 1898. Stone came from a Republican political tradition, but he developed a flexible pragmatism that later characterized his years on the Supreme Court. He opened a law practice in New York City and became a member of the Columbia law faculty in 1899. He was appointed dean of the law school in 1910 and served there until 1923. In the wake of the Harding political scandals, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Stone attorney general of the United States in 1924. Stone quickly undertook a reform of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, appointing J. Edgar Hoover as acting director to replace William J. Burns. Stone also helped reform the federal prison system and the Alien Property Custodian’s Office. In the process, he gained a national reputation as a loyal Republican with impeccable credentials for honesty and scholarship. President Coolidge named him to replace Judge Joseph McKenna on the Supreme Court in 1925. Stone’s judicial philosophy was well developed by the mid-1920s. At Columbia University, he had earned a reputation as a defender of civil liberties and as a believer in “sociological jurisprudence”—the conviction that the law must adjust to changing social and economic conditions. A Victorian liberal by instinct and sympathy, Stone resented the rigid legal formalism of the conservative justices during the 1920s. He came to believe that the Court was too zealous in protecting property rights from legislative encroachment by Congress and the state legislatures.

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Indeed, Stone viewed the Constitution as a living document subject to changing interpretation, not as a product of rigid judicial formulas. By the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stone was clearly identified with Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis D. Brandeis* as the “liberal minority” on the Supreme Court. Although a close friend of President Herbert Hoover*, Stone grew impatient with Republican conservatism during the early years of the Great Depression*. He hated laissezfaire* economic principles in the face of massive social and economic dislocation, nor did he agree with the majority decisions of the Court invalidating many state taxation and regulatory statutes in the 1920s. In his view, state legislatures did not automatically violate Fourteenth Amendment property rights by passing progressive tax laws. During the years of the New Deal*, Stone’s views became those of the majority, especially after the crisis of 1937, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt* tried to “pack the court.” Roosevelt named Stone chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1941. Stone died on April 22, 1946. Reference Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law, 1956.

S T O N E , WA R R E N S TA N F O R D Warren Stone was born in Ainsworth, Iowa, on February 1, 1860. He attended Western College of Iowa for two years before going to work as a fireman on the Rock Island Railway in 1879. Stone was promoted to engineer in 1884 and joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. He rose to head the union in 1904. Stone was tireless in his efforts to achieve an eight-hour day for railroad workers. Although conservative about the use of strikes, he eventually came to believe strongly in government ownership of the railroads. In 1924, Stone served as treasurer of the Conference for Progressive Political Action*, which sponsored the presidential candidacy of Robert M. La Follette*. Stone died on June 12, 1925. References New York Times, June 13, 1925. Reed C. Richardson, The Locomotive Engineer, 1863–1963: A Century of Railway Labor Relations and Work Rules, 1963.

SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRISIS The subprime mortgage crisis of the mid- to late 2000s, which resulted in the Great Recession* that began in 2008, was a result of unscrupulous practices by financial institutions and federal deregulation. As a result of lax criteria allowed by financial institutions in granting mortgages to consumers, a series of mounting delinquencies and foreclosures allowed for the decline of the financial sector. People with low credit ratings and other high risk factors that would have otherwise marked them as potential problem clients were granted mortgages for the purchase of property in overwhelming numbers, which contributed to the developing crisis. New housing tracts were foreclosed en masse and the financial sector teetered on the brink of collapse, resulting in the federal Troubled Asset Relief Program* to bail

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out troubled banks. However, many homeowners were ruined as they lost their homes and were forced to file for bankruptcy as the economy worsened. Reference Frank K. Martin, A Decade of Delusion: From Speculative Contagion to the Great Recession, 2011.

SUBSISTENCE HOMESTEADS In 1933, the Department of the Interior launched an experimental program designed to encourage factory workers to develop subsistence gardens or farm plots for their own consumption. The Subsistence Homesteads Division also worked to relocate tenant farmers to marginal land to raise crops for their own consumption. The director of the program was M. L. Wilson*, a prominent agricultural economist. In 1935, the program was taken over by the new Resettlement Administration*. Reference Russell Lords and Paul H. Johnson, eds., A Place on Earth: A Critical Appraisal of Subsistence Homesteads, 1942.

S U B T R E A S U RY P L A N The subtreasury plan was a central proposal of many farm groups in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Farmers were plagued by low commodity prices, and one reason for that phenomenon, they believed, was that all farmers delivered their crops to market at harvest time. With such abundant supplies, prices were artificially low. They wanted a more orderly method of marketing commodities throughout the year. Charles McCune first developed the subtreasury plan, and it was adopted as an essential proposal by the Southern Farmers’ Alliance in 1889. The Populist Party* called for the creation of a subtreasury system in the elections of 1892 and 1896*. The subtreasury plan envisioned a series of government-owned warehouses and grain elevators where farmers could store their crops. The farmer would receive a loan of up to 80 percent of the value of the stored crops and would be charged only 1 percent interest. When the farmers marketed their crops, they would repay the loan. The subtreasury program would end the glutted fall commodity markets and provide farmers with a steady source of income during the year. Although the subtreasury plan was not implemented, most of its provisions were fulfilled by the creation of the Commodity Credit Corporation* in 1933. Reference James C. Malin, “The Farmers’ Alliance Subtreasury Plan and European Precedents,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31 (1944): 255–260.

SUBURBS The term “suburb” has been used to refer to housing developments located at some distance from urban centers, where workers can travel to their places of

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employment on a daily basis through relatively efficient means of public and private transportation. After World War I*, suburbs grew much more rapidly than urban centers as prosperous upper- and middle-class whites fled the crowding, noise, and pollution of the cities. After the Civil War*, the development of trolley cars and streetcars had allowed workers to live in areas outside a walking distance to work, and after World War I the automobile* accelerated that trend. Congress even subsidized the trend with the Federal Aid Road Act* of 1916. Soon, however, there were traffic jams at rush hours in cities throughout the United States. After World War II, the pattern of suburban growth continued. Real estate developers like William Levitt of New York began building, even mass-producing, suburban housing, and the federal government continued to subsidize highway construction. Levitt’s development on Long Island became known as Levittown— thousands of houses, all built around a few architectural patterns connected to New York City by the Long Island Expressway (what some critics called the longest parking lot in the world). Similar housing developments appeared throughout the country in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Industrial parks were developed to use nonurban workers. Huge shopping malls were constructed to meet the consumer needs of suburban dwellers. In the process, American cities lost their tax base and increasingly became centers of poverty, crime, pollution, and minority ghettoes. References Herbert Gans, The Levittowners, 1957. Stephen M. Rose, The Betrayal of the Poor: Transformation of Community Action, 1972.

S U N B E LT After World War II, the United States began to witness a large-scale demographic shift out of the industrial cities of the North and Northeast and into the cities and towns of the South and West. That large body of states stretching from Virginia south to Florida and then west to California was known for warm weather, cheap labor costs, and a weakly organized labor movement, so thousands of corporations relocated there. This region became known as the Sunbelt. As the liberal, Democratic Northeast lost population and the more Republican areas of the West gained in population, the political power of conservatives and Republicans was enhanced. Those Sunbelt trends were still extremely powerful in the 1990s. Reference S. D. Krunz, “Sunbelt USA,” Focus 36 (spring 1986): 34–35.

S U P P LY- S I D E E C O N O M I C S The term “supply-side economics” has three primary meanings in American economic history. First, it was central to the ideas of the classical economists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who argued that the lack of credit, not

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lack of demand, explained the swings in the business cycle. Second, monetary economists such as Milton Friedman* and the Chicago school have argued that the swings in the business cycle correlate directly with expansions and contractions in the volume and velocity of the money supply. Finally, the term was used widely during the Reagan* years of the 1980s, and promoted by Professor Arthur Laffer* of the University of Southern California, to justify tax cuts and reductions in federal spending. Reference David Brooks, “Supply-Side Squabbles,” National Review 38 (October 24, 1986): 28–33.

S W E AT S H O P The term “sweatshop” denotes an undesirable work environment characterized by job insecurity, long hours, poor wages, and unhealthful or unsafe conditions. The workplace may be provided by the employer or may be in the workers’ own homes, in a variation on the putting-out system*. The practice of using sweated labor appeared particularly in the ready-to-wear (as opposed to custom-tailored) clothing field in both Britain and the United States, and the invention of the sewing machine* in 1846 merely mechanized the process; cigar-making also lent itself to this system of production. The system thrived when there was a high demand for cheap goods and a large supply of poor, unskilled, or otherwise easily exploitable labor. Such conditions prevailed in the period after the American Civil War* when urban centers grew at an astonishing rate and immigrants* from Eastern and Southern Europe entered the country in record numbers. With few skills, a limited command of the English language, and a desperate need to support themselves and their families, immigrant women and children often found sweatshops the only places where they could find work. In the United States, the first effort to eliminate sweatshop conditions was a New York law of 1884 to prohibit the production of tobacco products in living quarters. Such narrow statutes had only limited effectiveness, however. It took unionization and the passage of minimum wage/maximum hours legislation to improve conditions noticeably. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Dictionary of American History, 1976. Leon Stein, ed., Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy, 1977.

S W I F T, G U S TAV U S F R A N K L I N Gustavus Franklin Swift was born on June 24, 1839, near Sandwich, Massachusetts. He went to work as a butcher when he was still a teenager and soon began to slaughter cattle himself and sell the meat from door to door. Swift opened his own butcher shop in Eastham, Massachusetts in 1859. He opened other stores and meat markets, and in 1872, he became a buyer for the Hathaway Meat Company.

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Swift and Hathaway formed a partnership and in 1875 moved their operations out to Chicago. At that time, cattle were shipped east by rail and then slaughtered there. Swift saw the inefficiencies of this operation, since some cattle died on the way and freight still had to be paid on the entire animal. Because most of the animal was then not salable, large amounts of money were wasted on freight. Swift wanted to slaughter the cattle in Chicago and then ship the dressed meat to eastern markets. He wanted to develop refrigerated railroad cars, but the railroads, for obvious reasons, refused to cooperate. Swift persisted, however, and developed the refrigerated car. He also vertically integrated* the business, from purchasing live cattle to selling dressed meat to retailers. Swift organized Swift and Company in 1885, and by 1908, the company was worth $50 million and was annually slaughtering 8 million animals. Swift died on March 27, 1903. Reference Louise Neyhart, Giant of the Yards, 1952.

SWOPE, GERARD Gerard Swope, prominent businessman and an early architect of the idea of business–government cooperation, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on December 1, 1872. In 1895, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in electrical engineering and went to work for Western Electric Company. Swope rose quickly through the company, becoming general sales manager of the New York office in 1908 and vice president of the national office in 1913. He was named president of General Electric* in 1919 and chairman of the board in 1922. Swope kept that position until his retirement in 1939. During the 1920s and 1930s, Swope rose to a position of national prominence as a spokesman for business interests, but he was not a typical conservative. He was a friend of Jane Addams and sympathized with the needs of working people. Swope was also a prominent figure in the trade association movement. As the first president of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Swope believed in the ability of industry to regulate itself. During the 1920s, he became a close associate of Herbert Hoover*, who as secretary of commerce worked to encourage trade associations as a means of rationalizing the industrial economy, eliminating wasteful competition, and improving productivity. When the depression swept through the country after 1929, Swope believed its source was overproduction. He began urging the federal government to adopt a plan of industrial self-regulation through trade associations, suspension of antitrust laws, and national economic planning through the establishment of codes of “fair competition.” His proposals were later embodied in the National Industrial Recovery Act* of 1933. During the New Deal, Swope served as a member of the Business Advisory Council, the Coal Arbitration Board*, the National Labor Board, and the Committee on Economic Security. He died on November 20, 1957. References David Loth, Swope of GE: The Story of Gerard Swope and General Electric in American Business, 1958.

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New York Times, November 21, 1957.

S Y LV I S , W I L L I A M William Sylvis was born in Armagh, Pennsylvania, on November 26, 1828. As a teenager, he apprenticed out to a foundry and became a journeyman molder. Sylvis tried his hand at running his own business, but it failed, so he reconciled himself to his status as a worker. He became active in labor organizing activities in the 1850s, but he was convinced that workers would need a national union if they were going to be able to counter the power of the increasingly national corporations. In 1860, Sylvis helped to organize the Iron Molders* International Union (lMIU), and he became its president in 1863. Sylvis succeeded in building the IMIU into a successful union. In 1866, he organized the National Labor Union* and called for the union to build worker cooperatives, secure an eight-hour workday, and replace the existing wage system with new forms of currency. Sylvis was elected president of the National Labor Union in 1868, but he was convinced that neither the Republican nor the Democratic party could meet worker needs. Sylvis wanted the National Labor Union to become a political party—a workingmen’s party to compete with the other two. Sylvis died on July 27, 1869, and the National Labor Union soon dissolved. Without his charismatic leadership and badly divided over the question of political action, the union broke apart. References Jonathan Grossman, William Sylvis: Pioneer of American Labor, 1945. J. C. Sylvis, The Life, Speeches, Labors, and Essays of William H. Sylvis, 1872.

T TA F T, W I L L I A M H O WA R D William Howard Taft was born on September 15, 1857, in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Yale in 1878 and received a law degree from the Cincinnati Law School in 1880. Active in Republican Party politics, Taft served as a collector of internal revenue in Cincinnati in 1882, practiced law privately from 1883 to 1887, and was appointed a judge of the superior court of Ohio in 1887. In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison appointed Taft to be solicitor general of the United States and in 1892, a judge in the federal circuit court. President William McKinley* named Taft head of the Philippine Commission in 1900, and he served as governor general of the Philippines from 1900 until 1904. He returned to the United States in 1904 when President Theodore Roosevelt* named him secretary of war in the cabinet. As secretary of war, Taft served as a diplomatic troubleshooter for Roosevelt throughout the world, working to promote American economic interests in Latin America and Asia, supporting the Open Door* policy, and limiting Japanese influence in the Pacific. By 1908, his national reputation was firmly established, and Taft was elected president of the United States to succeed Roosevelt. Despite the criticisms of many Republicans, Taft accumulated an enviable record as a progressive*, but he was defeated for reelection in 1912 when liberal Republicans, led by Roosevelt, bolted the party, divided the vote, and handed the White House to Woodrow Wilson* and the Democrats. Taft then became a professor of law at Yale. When the Republicans returned to power in 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to be chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. His judicial philosophy was a conservative one that generally extended broad powers to the states, narrow ones to the federal government, and upheld property rights as superior to the needs and demands of labor unions and minority groups. Taft wanted badly to be the leader of a united court, but this proved impossible, because Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Louis D. Brandeis*, and Harlan Fiske Stone* came to constitute a liberal minority during the 1920s. Still, Taft was not a rigid, doctrinaire ideologue on the Court, preferring a more pragmatic approach to economic and social problems. He voted with the majority in restricting the use of injunctions* in labor disputes and upholding minimum wage legislation. But generally, Taft was part of the conservative majority on the court, which extended full property rights to businesses, protecting them from legislative interference unless the business was directly involved in what Taft called the “public interest.” Toward the end of his life, Taft became more and more conservative, fearing that America was being taken over by radicals. He died on March 8, 1930.

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Reference Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, 1939.

TA F T – H A R T L E Y A C T O F 1 9 4 7 The Taft–Hartley, or Labor Management Relations Act, was passed by Congress on August 22, 1947, as an amendment to the National Labor Relations Act* (Wagner Act) of 1935. Under the protection of the Wagner Act, union membership had increased dramatically, and in such industries as construction, railroading, coal mining, and trucking, union leaders had enormous power. In 1946, labor strikes closed steel mills, ports, automobile* factories, and a variety of other industries. At the same time, the onset of the Cold War had magnified fears of labor radicalism and Communism. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio sponsored legislation to bring the unions under more control. In spite of President Harry S. Truman’s* veto, the bill passed the House 331–83 and the Senate 68–25. The Taft–Hartley Act prohibited the closed shop*, allowed management to sue unions for losses caused by strikes, established the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, forced unions to submit a sixty-day notice as a “cooling off” period before terminating a labor contract, allowed the federal government to secure injunctions* postponing strikes for eighty days when those strikes would compromise national health or security, forced unions to make their financial statements open to the public, prohibited union contributions to political campaigns, outlawed the “check-off” system whereby employers collected union dues, required union leaders to certify that they were not Communists, gave employees the right to reject union organization drives, prohibited secondary strikes, and prohibited strikes by U.S. government employees. Reference Cabell Phillips, The Truman Presidency, 1966.

TA N E Y, R O G E R B R O O K E Roger B. Taney was born into an aristocratic Maryland plantation family on March 17, 1777. This background influenced some of the views that he later expressed as chief justice of the Supreme Court; for example, he was far from hostile to slavery* as an institution (although he personally freed his own slaves) and approached political issues from a more agrarian perspective than did some of his contemporaries. He backed the Federalist Party up to the outbreak of the War of 1812* but broke with it over its opposition to the war. Law rather than politics engaged his early interest, and he even argued a case before John Marshall’s* Supreme Court. By the mid-1820s, he had become an ardent supporter of Andrew Jackson* and the Democratic Party, and when Jackson reshuffled his cabinet in 1831, he named Taney to be attorney general, in recognition of both his legal and political talents. Taney proved his loyalty during the crisis over the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States*, first by drafting a strong defense of the presidential veto power and later, as secretary of the treasury, by removing the federal deposits from the

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Bank. Jackson nominated him to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court, but the Senate rejected his nomination. After the death of Marshall in 1835, however, he was confirmed as chief justice. Compared to Marshall, Taney leaned more in the direction of power for the states, rather than the national government. Especially in the absence of federal action, states could take the initiative; moreover, he did not see the question of federalism as an either/or proposition, favoring instead the notion of concurrent powers for both levels of government. Taney showed less interest than Marshall in supporting vested rights of property for their own sake, particularly when such rights might conflict with the general welfare. An example of this approach is the case of Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837), in which the court ruled against a transportation monopoly (a bridge that, by a corporate charter, had been granted an implied exclusive right to traverse a river) in favor of the benefit to the community of another bridge that did not charge tolls. Taney is probably best known for one of his worst rulings—the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford* (1857). Although the court could have ruled on narrow grounds of precedent in this case of a slave suing for his freedom, Taney chose to address larger questions of the legal rights of slaves (stating that slaves had no standing in court) and of the right of the federal government to limit slavery in any way (ruling the Missouri Compromise* unconstitutional). Because the Missouri Compromise had shaped the legal status of slavery in the territories and Western land settlement for nearly forty years, this ruling proved inflammatory at best. It contributed to the growing animosity between North and South and narrowed the prospects for a peaceful settlement of sectional conflict. It also damaged the reputation of the Supreme Court for many years to come. In spite of his great intelligence and creative leadership on the Court, Taney will always be remembered as the man who wrote the disastrous majority opinion in Dred Scott. He died on October 12, 1864. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References R. Kent Newmyer, The Supreme Court under Marshall and Taney, 1968. Carl Brent Swisher, Roger B. Taney, 1961.

TA R I F F C O M M I S S I O N A C T O F 1 9 1 6 In 1882, Congress established a nine-member Tariff Commission to act as a permanent body studying tariff rates and recommending changes in them. Although the commission could recommend changes, it had no authority to change tariff schedules without congressional approval, a process that was laced with political infighting and bargaining. One of President Woodrow Wilson’s* campaign objectives in 1912 had been tariff reduction, but he also believed that some measure of objectivity had to be injected into the tariff-making process. In 1916, he recommended and Congress passed the Tariff Commission Act, which permitted the president to change individual tariff rates if the Tariff Commission so recommended. The only

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limit on the president was the stipulation that no change exceed 50 percent of the congressional schedule. Reference Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1954.

TA R I F F O F A B O M I N AT I O N S See TARIFF OF 1828. TA R I F F O F 1 7 8 9 Shortly after the inauguration of the new government, the United States faced the challenge of raising sufficient revenues to pay its bills and restore its badly damaged credit reputation. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton* proposed and the Congress passed a tariff bill on July 4, 1789. The act enumerated eightynine articles and levied specific taxes on thirty of them, including molasses, hemp, steel, and nails. The other fifty-nine articles had ad valorem tax rates, ranging from 7.5 to 15 percent, imposed on them. The average ad valorem levy was 8.5 percent. All other goods coming into the United States had a 5 percent tax imposed on them. Two weeks later, Congress passed an associated measure—the Tonnage Act—that imposed taxes on ships serving U.S. markets. Ships that were American-built and American-owned carried a 6 cents per ton charge, but the tax was 30 cents a ton for American-built, foreign-owned ships, and 50 cents for foreign-built, foreign-owned ships. Revenues from the Tariff of 1789 proved insufficient for the new government, and during the 1790s and early 1800s, a steady escalation took place. The 5 percent general levy was raised to 7.5 percent in 1792, and the ad valorem rate gradually rose to an average of 12.5 percent by 1812 and to 25 percent during the War of 1812*. Reference F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 1931.

TA R I F F O F 1 8 1 6 Although the Democratic-Republicans had promoted lower tariffs since the 1790s, the War of 1812* had unleashed a wave of fear in the United States about the economic effects of large-scale imports of British manufactured goods. Congress responded to those fears in 1816 by passing a new tariff act. It placed duties of 25 percent on woolen, cotton, and manufactured iron imports, as well as ad valorem rates of 30 percent on paper, leather, and hats. There was a 15 percent ad valorem tax on all other products. The subsequent Tariff Act of 1818 extended most of those rates for several years and increased the rate on imported iron products. Reference F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 1931.

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TA R I F F O F 1 8 2 4 The trend toward higher tariffs continued in the 1820s, when the National Republican Party began to appear, and Henry Clay* promoted his American System*. President James Monroe signed the Tariff of 1824 into law on May 22, 1824. It increased the levies on lead, iron, glass, and hemp, raised the duty on cotton and wool from 25 to 33 percent and raised the rate on raw wool by 15 percent. The South bitterly protested the tariff, as did New England commercial interests, but it passed nonetheless. Reference F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 1931.

TA R I F F O F 1 8 2 8 The Tariff of 1828, also known as the “Tariff of Abominations,” raised tariff levels to their highest point before the Civil War*. At the time, the National Republicans were in power, John Quincy Adams was president of the United States, and Henry Clay* was arguing that high tariffs constituted an “American System*” that would strengthen the entire country. Duties on all imported products went up sharply, although the hardest-hit items were raw wool, which had a 50 percent ad valorem duty as well as another duty of four cents per pound. The ad valorem duty on most woolen products hit 45 percent, and the rates on pig iron and manufactured iron products went up sharply. Both the South and the West bitterly protested the measure, and the Tariff of 1828 played no small role in the defeat of Adams and the victory of Andrew Jackson* in the presidential election of 1828*. In the wake of the Tariff of Abominations, the nullification movement emerged in South Carolina. John C. Calhoun claimed the right of a state to invalidate federal legislation, and his target was the Tariff of 1828. Although Congress revised some tariff rates downward in 1832, the principle of protectionism was retained, so in protest, the legislature of South Carolina passed an Ordinance of Nullification. The ordinance prohibited federal customs officials from collecting tariff duties inside South Carolina. President Jackson immediately sent a Force Bill to Congress authorizing the use of military force to collect the duties in South Carolina; at the same time, Senator Clay drafted the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which provided an increase in the numbers of products on the free list and which implemented a steady decline, over the course of eight years, of rates exceeding 20 percent. Both bills were passed by Congress at the same time, and the South Carolina legislature then backed down, ending the nullification crisis. Reference Richard B. Latner, The Presidency of Andrew Jackson: White House Politics, 1829–1837, 1979.

TA R I F F O F 1 8 4 2 During the 1840s and 1850s, tariff rates rose and fell with the political party in power. Because of their strength in the South and West, Democrats tended to oppose higher rates, whereas the Whigs, with their power center in the Northeast,

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were more likely to favor protective tariffs. In the election of 1840, William Henry Harrison was elected president and the Whigs returned to power. They responded with the Tariff of 1842, a measure that restored tariff rates back to their 1832 levels. Reference F. W. Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States, 1931.

TA R I F F O F 1 8 4 6 See WALKER TARIFF OF 1846. TA R P See TROUBLED ASSET RELIEF PROGRAM. TA X PAY M E N T A C T O F 1 9 4 3 To generate the revenues needed to finance World War II, Congress passed a variety of new tax measures during the war. Although the Tax Payment Act of 1943 did not increase tax levels, it provided for the withholding of income taxes from individual paychecks throughout the year, introducing the “pay-as-you-go” system that still operates in federal government revenue collection. Reference Margaret Myers, Financial History of the United States, 1970.

TA X R E F O R M A C T O F 1 9 8 6 The Tax Reform Act of 1986 emerged as a bipartisan effort to simplify the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) tax codes. In 1986, congressional lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, decided to attempt to overhaul the complicated IRS codes. They also hoped to reduce the highest tax brackets to encourage saving and investment, as well as to eliminate the most notorious of the tax shelters. They intended the legislation to be what they called “revenue neutral”—that is, it would raise no additional revenues for the government. They succeeded in reducing tax rates. They lowered the highest tax bracket from 50 percent to 38.5 percent with the objective of reaching a maximum 28 percent tax rate in 1991. Also, the lowest rate paid was reduced from 19 percent to 15 percent. The average rate paid by middleclass families went from 37 percent to 27 percent. The legislation also eliminated deductions for consumer interest, investment tax credits to businesses, and real estate tax shelters. The goal of simplifying the tax code was not achieved. Reference “Tax Reform—At Last,” Business Week, September 1, 1986, pp. 54–65.

TAY L O R , F R E D E R I C K W I N S L O W Frederick W. Taylor was born on March 20, 1856, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1874 and then went to work as a

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machinist. In 1878, Taylor went to work for the Midvale Steel Company, but he spent his nights studying engineering. Taylor then developed what he called “scientific management”—the efficient coordination of human and mechanical labor in order to raise productivity. Management at Midvale saw the genius in his work, and over the next ten years, he increased output there by more than 300 percent. Pay raises at Midvale also reached up to 100 percent during the same period. In 1893, Bethlehem Steel hired Taylor as its scientific management consultant, and he then became internationally known for his theories. Among his major publications were Principles of Scientific Management in 1911 and A Treatise on Concrete: Plain and Reinforced in 1905. Taylor died on March 21, 1915. Reference Daniel Nelson, F. W. Taylor and Scientific Management, 1980.

TAY L O R G R A Z I N G A C T O F 1 9 3 4 During the early 1900s, it became increasingly clear to farm and land management experts that large portions of the arid West were better suited to livestock raising than to intensive farming. Stock raisers were also worried that the government would try to homestead the region. In 1935, Congressman Edward T. Taylor of Colorado sponsored and Congress passed legislation reserving 175 million acres of the public domain in the western states for grazing, mining, and timber-cutting leases, but not for homesteading. The Department of the Interior was charged with managing the leasing or the licensing of the public lands. Reference Wesley Calef, Private Grazing and Public Lands: Studies of the Local Management of the Taylor Grazing Act, 1960.

TEA ACT OF 1773 See BOSTON TEA PARTY. T E A PA R T Y M O V E M E N T A populist development derived from the more conservative wing of the Republican Party, the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party movement erupted in 2009 in reaction to the economic stimulus package passed by President Barack Obama*. Although, as recorded by a 2010 CBS/New York Times 2010 news poll, the party is mostly composed of middle-aged or older white, Republican, married males, the 18 percent of U.S. citizens who consider themselves Tea Partiers also stem from other political leanings. The common ground of tea partiers is a libertarian* philosophy; across the spectrum, members of the Tea Party movement decry any form of fiscal liberalism or big government that they think challenges constitutional boundaries, whether in the realm of policy, spending, taxation, or bureaucracy. Tea Party members generally have favored low taxes, less government spending, fewer federal entitlement programs, and states’ rights.

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The early seeds of the Tea Party movement were planted in the final days of the George W. Bush* administration. The housing market bust and Bush’s willingness to pass the Troubled Asset Relief Program* (TARP), which authorized the U.S. Treasury to purchase or insure up to $700 billion in troubled assets, provoked some discontent within more fiscally conservative segments of the Republican Party. These fiscal conservatives criticized Bush for deviating from sound Republican tenets. It was not until the onset of the Obama administration and its $777 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, however, that the Tea Party movement began to form as a cohesive unit under a common name. Fiscal conservatives, in protest of what they considered reckless government spending in the form of the economic stimulus package, began to gather for local “tea party” demonstrations in early 2009. One of the first Tea Party protests was organized in Seattle in February 2009 by stay-at-home mom and conservative blogger Keli Carender, who relied on such social networking sites as Facebook* and Twitter to publicize the event. Carender’s demonstration in turn received media attention from popular right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin, which spurred profuse Tea Party publicity throughout the blogosphere and other social media* networks. Rick Santelli, a CNBC conservative commentator, has also been credited as a primary instigator of the Tea Party movement. On February 19, 2009, he delivered his televised “rant-heard-round-the-world” (as it became widely known in the media and blogosphere), in which he mockingly denounced Obama’s Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan and called for a modern-day Chicago Tea Party, evoking the Revolutionary-era rhetoric of the Boston Tea Party that would become a hallmark of the movement. He argued that “the government is promoting bad behavior” with its bailouts and entitlement programs and created uproar across a Chicago trading floor when he asked, “How many people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgages that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” After the Santelli speech, the movement gained in organization and popularity as tea partiers showed up at more than 100 tax revolt rallies nationwide on April 15. Donning tricornered hats, other colonial garb, and “Don’t Tread on Me” signs, the tea partiers proclaimed that the Founding Fathers would be “rolling in their graves” at the extent of government intrusion into the lives of the country’s citizens. More Tea Party demonstrations continued throughout the summer of 2009 in protest of Obama’s efforts toward health care reform. The movement gained additional momentum from a series of election upsets that occurred throughout 2010. One of the most unexpected boosts came with the election of Tea Party–backed candidate Scott Brown on January 19, 2010, to the Massachusetts Senate seat that had been previously held for more than four decades by the late Democrat senator Edward M. Kennedy. Other Tea Party candidates, some causing upsets over the GOP-preferred candidate, secured the Republican vote in state primaries in the months preceding the midterm November 2010 elections, including Christine O’Donnell of Delaware, Joe Miller of Alaska, Carl Paladino of New York, and Rand Paul of Kentucky. All these Tea Party victors beat out more moderate Republican candidates.

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Although the Tea Party lacked a unified, official platform going into the 2010 midterm elections, several candidates receiving significant Tea Party backing secured victories among the landslide of Republican wins, particularly in the House of Representatives. Foremost among these included Rand Paul of Kentucky (Senate), Nikki Haley of South Carolina (governor), Mike Lee of Utah (Senate), Marco Rubio of Florida (Senate), and reelected incumbent senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Despite the boost that Tea Party fervor gave to the GOP, the staunchly libertarian* principles of the movement’s elected officials also presents potential challenges for the more moderate ranks of the Republican congressional caucus; Tea Party candidates have largely espoused more radical ideas, such as repealing the 2010 health care bill and financial regulations, passing a balanced budget amendment, and extending the Bush tax cuts permanently and favor a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Political analysts and party members on both sides have debated the influence of the Tea Party, as well as the degree to which it should be considered a populist movement. Tea Party activists have cited the movement’s success as an indication of growing antigovernment sentiment toward the Obama administration and its policies. Liberals, on the other hand, have denied populist sentiment as the source of the Tea Party’s growth and have pointed instead to radio and cable news networks such as Fox News Channel, such wealthy Republican backers as oil giants Charles and David Koch, and Republican pundits such as Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck as providing the movement with fuel. ABC-CLIO References Kathleen Hennessey and Michael A. Memoli, “‘Tea Party’ Candidates Win GOP Contests in Delaware, New York,” Los Angeles Times. Michelle Malkin, “Tea Party U.S.A.: The Movement Grows,” http://michellemalkin.com. John M. O’Hara, A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes, 2010. Brian Stelter, “CNBC Replays Its Reporter’s Tirade,” New York Times. Tea Party Patriots, http://teapartypatriots.org.

TEAPOT DOME The Teapot Dome scandal was the most infamous example of corruption during the Warren G. Harding administration in the early 1920s. Rumors of graft and corruption circulated around Washington right after Harding and his “Ohio Gang” were installed in power. Senator Thomas J. Walsh, a Democrat from Montana, decided to launch a special investigation of the Department of the Interior after he heard rumors of graft in the leasing of government oil supplies. The investigation led to revelation of the Teapot Dome scandal. In 1921, Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall convinced Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby to transfer jurisdiction over the U.S. naval oil reserves at Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to the Department of the Interior.

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Ignorant of the graft behind the transfer, President Harding approved the move. At the time, oilman Edward L. Doheny made Fall an interest-free, noncollateral, indefinite loan of $100,000. On April 25, 1922, Fall secretly leased the Elk Hills reserve to Doheny. Fall also leased the Teapot Dome reserves to oilman Harry F. Sinclair on April 7, 1922. In March 1923, after he had resigned as secretary of the interior, Fall received another “loan,” this time $25,000 from Sinclair. Fall used the money to buy a ranch in New Mexico. Early in 1924, Walsh’s committee found out about the loans and then the leases. Walsh pushed a joint resolution through Congress condemning the deal and calling on the attorney general to return indictments. In June 1924, a federal grand jury indicted Fall on bribery and conspiracy charges. He was eventually convicted, sentenced to one year in prison, and fined $100,000. In subsequent trials, Sinclair and Doheny were acquitted on the bribery charges, although Sinclair spent nine months in a federal prison for contempt of court. Although the scandal had the potential of ruining the Republicans’ chances in the election of 1924*, it did not have that outcome. Harding died on August 2, 1923, before the revelations came out, and the new president, Calvin Coolidge, had not been involved. Coolidge’s reputation for honesty was unimpeachable, and the Republicans weathered the political storm. In the election, the Democrats self-destructed. Reference Burl Noggle, Teapot Dome: Oil and Politics in the 1920s, 1962.

TECHNOCRACY From June 1932 through early 1933, the technocracy movement intrigued millions of Americans as a possible answer to the Great Depression*. Howard Scott, the leader of the movement, claimed that capitalism was dying because increasingly efficient production and decreasing manpower requirements had precipitated the crisis. With the assistance of Columbia University, Scott conducted an exhaustive study of technology in the American economy and finally predicted an era of prosperity after the collapse of capitalism because the natural resources and technological capabilities of the country would be shared through a system of “energy certificates.” The certificates, representing the yearly conversion of resources to energy, would be equally distributed among the population. Critics called technocracy socialism*, fascism, or communism, and criticized its economic theories. When Scott accused President Franklin D. Roosevelt* in 1933 of trying to lead the country down the road to fascism, he lost much of his support, especially at Columbia University. Journalists then discovered that he had forged his academic credentials. Scott then disappeared from public view, although he did establish Technocracy, Inc., which became a protofascist group in its own right in the late 1930s. Reference William A. Akin, Technocracy and the American Dream: The Technocrat Movement, 1900– 1941, 1977.

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TELECOMMUTING The availability of personal computers, modems, and fax machines began transforming the way Americans worked in the 1980s. It became possible, especially for those in information services, to do the bulk of their work at home. In what approximated an electronic putting-out system*, such workers could receive and complete work assignments without having to commute to a central workplace. In the process, the experience of work itself began to change as well. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Thomas B. Cross, Telecommuting: The Future Technology of Work, 1986.

T E M P O R A RY E M E R G E N C Y R E L I E F A D M I N I S T R AT I O N One of the real criticisms leveled at the Herbert Hoover* administration from 1930 to 1933 was its lack of commitment to a federal relief program to assist the poor and unemployed. That criticism became especially clear after New York, under the leadership of Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt*, established the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA) in September 1931 to provide such assistance. Harry Hopkins, a Roosevelt aide, was named executive director of the TERA. The TERA relied on a system of matching grants to stimulate local funding and to provide direct assistance to the unemployed. The TERA issued bonds to finance its grants and encouraged cities and counties to develop work relief projects for the jobless. Hopkins also insisted that local TERA committees be staffed by social work professionals. The TERA became a prototype for New Deal* relief agencies during the 1930s, such as the Works Progress Administration* (WPA). At the same time, it boosted the presidential chances of Governor Roosevelt by giving him the image of a politician concerned about the plight of the poor and unemployed. Reference Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins, 1948.

T E M P O R A R Y N AT I O N A L E C O N O M I C C O M M I T T E E Concerned about the concentration of economic power and its effect on declining business competition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* delivered a monopoly message to Congress on April 20, 1938, calling for an investigation of antitrust enforcement. Congress formed the Temporary National Economic Committee (TNEC), which held hearings between December 1, 1938, and March 11, 1941, and analyzed the concentration of power in every major industry in the economy. Although the TNEC provided the most thorough analysis to date of the problem of monopoly and trade restrictions in the economy, little came of its work. The TNEC staff produced forty-three technical research monographs of interest to historians, but most of these were quickly buried, and the outbreak of war in Europe in 1940

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diverted all attention. World War II ended domestic concerns about monopoly. Massive government spending and a cooperative spirit between government and business ended public interest in the antitrust question. References Robert Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 1929–1964, 1981. Ellis Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study in Economic Ambivalence, 1966. Dwight MacDonald, “The Monopoly Committee: A Study in Frustration,” American Scholar 8 (1939): 295–308.

T E N N E S S E E VA L L E Y A U T H O R I T Y In April 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* asked Congress to create an agency to plan for the use, development, and conservation of the Tennessee River Valley. Congress responded the next month, and on May 18, 1933, the president signed legislation creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The TVA had the responsibility for improving the navigability of the river, providing for flood control, planning reforestation and marginal lands programs, assisting industrial and agricultural development, and aiding national defense by operating government nitrate and other properties at Muscle Shoals in northern Alabama. The government owned Muscle Shoals, where the Tennessee River drops 140 feet in the space of some thirty miles. Because of its hydroelectric potential, the government began constructing two dams and two nitrate plants there during World War I, but the war ended before the dams were completed. Whether the property should be publicly or privately controlled was a major public policy debate of the 1920s. Senator George W. Norris* of Nebraska led the fight for continued government ownership of the properties, and that fight was won with the establishment of the TVA in 1933. Despite opposition from private power companies, led by Wendell Willkie and his Commonwealth and Southern Company, the TVA accomplished many of its objectives. A series of nine main river dams, augmented by dams along tributaries, converted the Tennessee River into a series of large lakes that provided a navigation channel 300 feet wide and capable of handling ships of nine feet draft from Knoxville, Tennessee, 640 miles north to the Ohio River at Paducah, Kentucky. Flood control was implemented along the Tennessee River and its tributaries in the lower Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys. Chemicals for fertilizer and defense were manufactured; reforestation and other erosion control work began; recreational facilities were constructed; experimental farms were established to test crops, fertilizers, and agricultural methods; industrial development and education were encouraged; roads, bridges, and model cities were built; and, during the Great Depression*, jobs were created in an area inhabited by 3 million people whose income was but 45 percent of the national average. By 1940, the TVA was also the largest producer of electrical power in the country. Reference Marguerite Owen, The Tennessee Valley Authority, 1973.

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TEXTILE WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA Dozens of labor unions had appeared in the textile industry since the 1830s, but it was not until the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) established the Textile Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC) in 1937 that a successful national organization effort got underway. The TWOC was led by Sidney Hillman* of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers* (ACWA). Although Frank Gorman* led a number of locals out of the TWOC in 1939, Hillman formed the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) that year. Emil Rieve was its first president. Employment in the textile mills boomed during World War II and TWUA membership climbed rapidly, but the end of the war brought a long period of stagnation. By the 1980s, its membership was under 170,000 workers. Reference Joseph Y. Garrison, “Textile Workers Union of America,” in Gary M. Fink, Labor Unions, 1977, 383–386.

THREE-FIFTHS COMPROMISE The issue of slavery* has posed constitutional problems from the beginning of the Constitution itself. The three-fifths clause of the Constitution addresses the question of how to apportion congressional representation when a large segment of the population is legally defined as property, not people. Should such individuals—slaves—be counted as people for purposes of representation? Southerners at the Constitutional Convention argued that they should, for such a plan would maximize the South’s representation in Congress and produce pro-Southern policies. Northerners generally argued the opposite in order to enhance their own position; if slaves could not vote and were denied other benefits of citizenship, why should they be counted as citizens for this purpose? In order to maintain the fragile agreement emerging at the Constitutional Convention, the framers agreed on the three-fifths compromise (Article I, Section 2). According to the compromise, the free population and three-fifths of the remaining population (excluding Indians) were to be counted in apportioning both representation and taxation; the word “slaves” was not mentioned. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, 1970.

TIMBER AND STONE ACT OF 1878 See TIMBER CUTTING ACT OF 1878. T I M B E R C U LT U R E A C T O F 1 8 7 3 The Timber Culture Act of 1873 was part of the U.S. drive to develop the West and create a “fee simple” empire of small landowners. The Homestead Act* of

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1862 had allowed individuals to acquire up to 160 acres of public domain land for free, and the Timber Culture Act eleven years later permitted any citizen to do the same for 160 acres of forested land as long as forty permanent acres of timber were maintained; that requirement was reduced to only ten acres in 1878. The law remained in existence until 1891 when it was repealed. Reference Paul Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, 1968.

TIMBER CUTTING ACT OF 1878 One problem faced by homesteaders and miners in the West was the need for timber to build houses, barns, and fences. Since they were often short of working capital to develop their land, they began to demand access to the public domain. Congress responded with the Timber Cutting Act, or the Free Timber Cutting Act, of 1878, which allowed settlers and miners to cut public domain timber for their own use so long as they did not try to market it commercially. That same year, Congress passed the Timber and Stone Act, which allowed farmers or miners to purchase public land that did not have agricultural potential. Because it might have timber or stone potential, the government valued it at $2.50 an acre and allowed a maximum purchase of 160 acres per person. At first, the law extended only to California, Oregon, Nevada, and Washington, but it was gradually extended to the rest of the country. Reference Paul Gates, History of Public Land Law Development, 1968.

T O TA L Q U A L I T Y M A N A G E M E N T In the 1970s and 1980s, America’s productivity and reputation for quality products began to decline, especially by comparison with Japan’s. This was particularly true in terms of electronics and automotives. American manufacturers therefore began to study Japanese production methods to learn what accounted for their apparent superiority. Among other things, they learned that quality was designed in from the beginning, not ensured by massive inspections, and was built into the product at every stage, partly by making everyone on production teams feel responsible for the finished product. This concept was known as Total Quality Management (TQM), which might be achieved through quality circles where team members contribute their suggestions for constant, incremental improvement. Ironically, an American, W. Edwards Deming, had come up with the concept of TQM in the 1950s and had approached General Motors* (GM) about implementing it. When that company turned him down, he offered the idea to Japanese entrepreneurs, who were working to rebuild that nation’s industrial base after the destruction of World War II. They accepted and implemented TQM; the Japanese government even created a Deming Prize to reward outstanding examples

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of quality management. Now American firms eagerly compete to win the Deming Prize and the even greater prizes of productivity, high quality, and market share. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Thomas H. Berry, Managing the Total Quality Transformation, 1989. W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis, 1986.

TOWNSEND, FRANCIS EVERETT Francis E. Townsend was born near Fairbury, Illinois, in 1867, into a deeply religious, poor farm family. They moved to Nebraska, and eventually Townsend went on to southern California in search of productive land. He worked at a number of jobs, finally settling in Omaha, Nebraska. There he attended the University of Nebraska Medical School and graduated in 1903. He practiced medicine in Bear Lodge, South Dakota, for twenty years. After serving in the army during World War I*, Townsend moved to Long Beach, California, in 1920. His medical practice proved so limited that he had to work part-time for a realtor. A former classmate helped Townsend secure a job in the Long Beach Health Office, but he was laid off a short time later. Townsend was 67 years old and destitute in 1935, so he began calling for a plan whereby the government would give $200 per month to everyone older than 60 who did not have that income. Although the money would come from a business tax, Townsend believed it would pump money into the economy, help end the depression, and create jobs for the young. The idea took hold, and Townsend eventually built a national movement demanding federal legislation. He founded Old-Age Revolving Pensions, Ltd., to promote the scheme. Within two months, the group was sending out 1,500 pamphlets a week at 25 cents each. They started a newspaper called The Townsend National Weekly, hired an office staff of ninety-five people, and by September 1934, were receiving more than 1,000 letters a day. “Townsend Clubs” began to form, and by January 1935, there were more than 3,000 of them, with a membership of more than 500,000 people. The clubs were based on congressional districts and designed to serve as lobbying* organizations for old-age pensions. The Townsend plan appeared at a time when only twenty-eight states had any type of old-age pension, running from $7.28 per month in Montana to $30 per month in Maryland. In 1935, there were more than 7.5 million people in the United States older than 65, and large numbers of them were in desperate financial condition. Townsend was a political threat to Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the Democrats. For that reason, among others, they sponsored the legislation that became the Social Security Act* of 1935. Passage of the Social Security Act took some of the wind from Townsend’s sails. For the remainder of his life, Townsend supported the Republican candidates. The passage of Social Security and the prosperity of the 1940s made his demands for old-age pensions seem anachronistic. He died in Los Angeles on September 1, 1960.

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Reference David H. Bennett, Demagogues in the Depression: American Radicals and the Union Party, 1932–1936, 1969.

T O X I C S U B S TA N C E S C O N T R O L A C T The environmental movement* gained rapid momentum in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency* (EPA) as an independent regulatory agency gave the federal government more power in making environmental policy. Research indicated that some substances did not break down after they had been disposed of in the landfills or in the ocean. To deal with the problem, Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976. Among a variety of provisions, the legislation prohibited chemical manufacturers from distributing a product that had not already been thoroughly tested to determine its environmental impact. After 1979, the law also prohibited the manufacture of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which were proven carcinogens and which did not break down in the environment. The EPA was charged with enforcing the new legislation. Reference Haynes Johnson, Governing America, 1980.

TRADE DEFICIT A trade deficit refers to the situation in which the balance of trade between two countries is characterized by imports exceeding exports. The balance of trade is typically divided into services and goods, which are also accounted for trade deficits. Trade deficits are problematic because they hurt domestic industries. Trade deficits have been an issue in the United States since the mid to late twentieth century as foreign-made goods have affected the growth of domestic industry thanks to competition from manufacturing abroad. Reference Pertha Dasgupta, Economics: A Very Short Introduction, 2007.

T R A D E E X PA N S I O N A C T O F 1 9 6 2 The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 replaced the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act* of 1934 and authorized President John F. Kennedy* to negotiate mutual tariff reductions of up to 50 percent with other countries. The negotiations began in 1967 as the “Kennedy Round*.” Reference David Burner, John F. Kennedy, 1987.

T R A D E R E L AT I O N S C O U N C I L O F T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S In 1885, Henry S. Eckhert established the American Protective Tariff League to promote high tariffs in the United States. It was renamed the Trade Relations

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Council of the United States in 1959. Since its establishment, the Trade Relations Council has consistently endorsed high tariffs (the McKinley Tariff of 1890, the Dingley Tariff of 1897, the Payne–Aldrich Tariff of 1909, the Emergency Tariff of 1921, the Fordney–McCumber Tariff of 1922, and the Hawley–Smoot Tariff of 1.930) and consistently opposed low tariffs (the Wilson–Gorman Tariff of 1894, the Underwood Tariff of 1913, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act* of 1934, and the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade*). The Trade Relations Council of the United States is still active today, even though general policy in recent years has favored low tariffs. Reference Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Political Parties and Civic Action Groups, 1981.

TRADING WITH THE ENEMY ACT OF 1917 Once the United States entered World War I*, it soon became apparent that legislation would be necessary to restrict trade with enemy nations. The war created unprecedented economic opportunities for American businessmen, and some were not above selling goods to Germany or Austria–Hungary. President Woodrow Wilson* requested and Congress passed the Trading With the Enemy Act in October 1917. It prohibited all commercial activities with enemy nations and gave the president emergency powers, when necessary, to embargo exports and imports. The War Trade Board was given responsibility for enforcing the legislation, whereas the Office of Alien Property Custodian was charged with the responsibility of supervising enemy assets that had been seized in the United States. The law remains in effect today, except for a few amendments over the years. Reference Seward Livermore, Politics Is Suspended: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1966.

T R A N S C O N T I N E N TA L T R E AT Y See ADAMS–ONÍS TREATY. TRANS-MISSISSIPPI WEST The term “Trans-Mississippi West” generally refers to the region of the United States reaching from the Mississippi River in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the West. Reference Ray A. Billington, The Far Western Frontier, 1956.

T R A N S P O R TAT I O N , D E PA R T M E N T O F The Department of Transportation was created as a cabinet-level federal agency in 1966. It consolidated the duties of a variety of federal programs and was charged with creating a national transportation policy, which emphasized efficiency, capital

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investment, and protection of the environment*. Under its direction is the United States Coast Guard, the Federal Aviation Administration*, the Federal Highway Administration*, the Federal Railroad Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, and the Research and Special Programs Administration. Reference Grant M. Davis, “The Department of Transportation: A Study in Organizational Futility,” Public Utility Fortnightly 87 (May 27, 1971), 29–33.

T R A N S P O R TAT I O N A C T O F 1 9 2 0 Railroads expanded rapidly across the United States after the Civil War*, and as the economy came to depend more and more on the lines for the distribution of goods, demands for federal regulation of the railroads from farmers, shippers, and manufacturers increased. Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887 to deal with the problem, establishing the Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC) to regulate the railroads. Subsequent legislation strengthened the ICC. In the meantime, railroad construction had created a crazy-quilt, overbuilt transportation system beleaguered by huge debts, new competition from automobiles* and trucks, and gross duplication of facilities. During World War I*, the government took over the railroads to insure their efficient operation. After the war, the roads were returned to private control, and the Transportation Act of 1920 was the means for that transition. Congressman John J. Esch, chairman of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, sponsored the bill in the House, and Senator Albert B. Cummins did so in the Senate. The bill moved through Congress late in 1919 and early in 1920, gathering support among traditional Republicans and conservative Democrats but raising the ire of progressives* in both parties. After a good deal of arguing in a conference committee, the Esch–Cummins Bill passed both houses of Congress on February 21, 1920. President Woodrow Wilson* signed the bill into law on February 28. The law returned the railroads to private control as of March 1, 1920. It called on the ICC to draw up a comprehensive plan for railroad consolidation with exemption from antitrust laws; it also authorized the ICC to control pooling* arrangements, regulate service, and supervise new issues of railroad securities. The law empowered the ICC to assess the value of railroad property, set maximum and minimum freight and passenger rates, and establish fair rates of return to railroad stockholders. It also guaranteed railroad profits for a six-month period during the transition to private control and provided a recapture clause for all net earnings in excess of 6 percent, the money returning to an ICC pool to be distributed to low-income railroads. Finally, the Transportation Act of 1920 established a Railroad Labor Board to adjudicate disputes between management and unions. Although the Transportation Act was a noble attempt to bring order to the industry, declining freight volume, heavy debt structures, and new competition doomed the railroads to long-term economic problems. In just a few years, the depression exposed those weaknesses.

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References Ari Hoogenboom and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative, 1976. K. Austin Kerr, American Railroad Politics, 1917–1920: Rates, Wages, and Efficiency, 1968.

T R A N S P O R TAT I O N A C T O F 1 9 4 0 Although the Motor Carrier Act* of 1935 had tried to set minimum rates for motor carriers and help railroads remain competitive in the freight industry, the railroads seemed doomed by the late 1930s, caught in an impossible squeeze between intense competition, depressed rates and economic activity, and huge fixed costs due to their overwhelming debt burdens. After a March 1938 conference of Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC), Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC), treasury, commerce, and agriculture officials to examine the railroad crisis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* appointed a Committee of Three, headed by ICC Chairman Joseph Eastman* to summarize the conference. They recommended that in addition to RFC loans of equipment and credit to troubled lines, the ICC should be authorized to consolidate and unify American railroads to do what the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act* of 1933 had failed to do. Both labor and management resisted the proposal—labor because it would eliminate thousands of jobs and management because it would destroy several corporate entities. Congress rejected the measure. Later in the year, Roosevelt appointed a committee of labor and railroad management to make an alternate proposal, but they jointly agreed to keep the problem out of the hands of the federal government. Not until 1940 did Congress pass the Transportation Act, but it did not really address the problem. In fact, it relieved the ICC of its 1920 obligation to develop a consolidation plan. The Transportation Act of 1940 did, however, give the ICC jurisdiction over coastwise, intercoastal, inland, and Great Lakes common and contract water carriers in interstate and foreign commerce. Still, Congress exempted bulk shipments, which made up most inland waterway traffic. Finally, the act set up a Transportation and Research Board to determine the place of rail, motor, and water carriers in the national transportation system. Reference Ari Hoogenboom and Olive Hoogenboom, A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative, 1976.

T R I A N G L E S H I R T WA I S T F I R E Although men’s workplaces usually contain far more hazards than do those of women, fire has represented a particular danger for working women. Light industry, which has traditionally employed a disproportionate number of women, is often situated in buildings designed for other purposes and without provision for fire prevention or evacuation. Moreover, in the textile and garment industries, the work materials themselves are highly flammable. Set against a background of labor unrest, these conditions produced the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of March 25, 1911.

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As part of a much larger effort by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union* (ILGWU), the women workers at the ten-story Triangle factory in New York City had struck for better wages and safer conditions in 1909. The strike won limited concessions from some employers, but not from the Triangle Company. Fearing that the women would steal pieces of fabric, Triangle’s management locked the doors of the workrooms from the outside. Thus, when fire broke out, the women were trapped in the burning building. Dozens perished in the blaze near the locked doors; others, trying to escape down the elevator shafts, jammed the mechanisms and died there; still others leaped from the windows to their deaths. Altogether, 146 young women died. Subsequent investigations uncovered similar conditions in factories in other large cities as well. Outrage over the tragedy eventually led to better factory safety laws at the state level and quickly won support for the demands of ILGWU, which by 1914 had become the third largest union in the American Federation of Labor* (AFL). Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Leon Stein, The Triangle Fire, 1962. Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930, 1979.

TRIANGULAR TRADE The term “triangular trade” was used during the colonial period to describe an intricate trading relationship in which New England imported molasses from the West Indies in order to manufacture rum. With that rum, they bought slaves in West Africa and sold them to West Indian plantations for more molasses. Reference Saunders Redding, They Came in Chains, 1950.

T R I C K L E - D O W N T H E O RY Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, classical economic theory, as applied to the United States, argued that shortages of capital explained the fluctuations in the business cycle. They assumed, for all intents and purposes, that demand was a given—a constant. When investment capital was available, demand consumed it, and the economy expanded. When investment capital was limited, the economy stagnated. When the Great Depression* hit the United States in 1929, President Herbert Hoover* eventually decided that the federal government would have to provide that capital to banks and other financial institutions, and that it would then “trickle down” to businesses and consumers. He established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* and Federal Home Loan Bank* system to funnel several billion dollars into the money markets. The persistence of the depression, however, in spite of these infusions of capital, destroyed the

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credibility of the “trickle-down” theory. Keynesian* economics, with its emphasis on the demand for goods rather than on the supply of credit, became prominent late in the New Deal* years. During the next half-century, Democrats often criticized Republican policies for their “trickle-down” aspects, even though Keynesian economics remained the fundamental paradigm in public policy. Reference James S. Olson, Saving Capitalism: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940, 1988.

T R O U B L E D A S S E T R E L I E F P R O G R A M ( TA R P ) The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was a policy by the U.S. federal government, enacted at the end of the George W. Bush* administration, to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to bolster the financial sector. This was an attempt to alleviate the fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis*. Labeled a “bailout” by its critics, it allowed for the consolidation of the nation’s banking systems, as larger banks absorbed smaller struggling banks and financial institutions. Moreover, critics were also concerned about using taxpayer money to bail out banks that had created the situation through their irresponsible practices. Reference Frank K. Martin, A Decade of Delusions: From Speculative Contagion to the Great Recession, 2011.

T R U M A N , H A R RY S . Harry S. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884. He worked on the family farm until World War I, in which he served in the artillery. After the war, Truman tried his hand at haberdashery and studied law at night school. A machine Democrat in Kansas City loyal to Tom Prendergast, Truman was appointed a Jackson County court judge in 1922 and chief judge in 1924. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934, reelected in 1940, and selected as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* running mate in 1944. He became president upon Roosevelt’s death in 1945. Truman’s administration was dominated by foreign policy events, including the end of World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, and the Korean War*. In terms of domestic policy, he sponsored what he called the “Fair Deal*” to promote civil rights and labor legislation, as well as a continuation of basic New Deal institutions. Truman was elected in his own right in 1948 and left the White House in 1953. He died on December 26, 1972. Reference Robert J. Donovan, The Presidency of Harry Truman, 1977.

TRUMAN DOCTRINE After World War II*, the British announced their decision to reduce their military commitment in the region of the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans. At that

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time, there was considerable communist insurgency activity in Greece and Turkey, financed by the Soviet Union. The United States became increasingly concerned about the possible fall of the Near East to Soviet control, and in October 1946, President Harry S. Truman* announced a program of $400 million in economic and military assistance to Greece and Turkey. Since then, the program has been dubbed the “Truman Doctrine,” and it was an early example of the “containment policy” that became the mainstay of American foreign policy in Europe from 1946 to the late 1980s. Reference Thomas G. Patterson, Soviet–American Confrontation: Postwar Reconstruction and the Origins of the Cold War, 1974.

T R U M P, D O N A L D J O H N Donald Trump was born in 1946 in Queens, New York. His father, Fred Trump, was a wealthy real estate developer. The younger Trump graduated from Fordham University and then earned an MBA at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. He soon went to work in the family real estate business. He showed a gift for recognizing an opportunity and had the tenacity of a bulldog in resisting lawsuits against him. When New York real estate dropped in value during the bad times of the 1970s, Trump bought huge options and then became a multimillionaire (near billionaire) when property values boomed in the early 1980s. He also earned a reputation for glitz and arrogance. His most famous landmark was the Trump Tower in Manhattan. In the mid-1980s, Trump invested heavily in the New Jersey casino business. Like all of his other investments, this, too, was heavily leveraged. When real estate values in the Northeast began to fall again in the late 1980s, Trump suffered huge losses and faced bankruptcy because the collateral backing of his loans was too weak. Trump continues to be in the public spotlight through his appearance on NBC’s The Apprentice and for his controversial political views. Reference Donald J. Trump, The Art of the Deal, 1989.

TRUST The term “trust” was generally used in the late nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century to describe an economic situation in which one company or group of companies has gained control of a particular sector of the economy. Among the targets of the Populist* and Progressive movements* were the so-called Sugar Trust, Beef Trust, and Railroad Trust. The major pieces of legislation aimed at controlling the trusts were the Interstate Commerce* Act of 1887, the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890, and the Clayton Antitrust Act* of 1914. Reference Hans B. Thorelli, The Federal Antitrust Policy, 1955.

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TUGWELL, REXFORD GUY Born on July 10, 1891, in Sinclairville, New York, Rexford Tugwell earned his B.S., A.M., and Ph.D. (1922) in economics from the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce at the University of Pennsylvania. Starting in 1920, he taught economics at Columbia University, rising to the rank of full professor in 1931. He specialized in agricultural economics and believed strongly in national economic planning and government regulation of business. Before joining the Franklin D. Roosevelt* administration, Tugwell had written the following books: The Economic Basis for Public Interest (1922), The Trend of Economics (1924), American Economic Life (1925), Industry’s Coming of Age (1927), Soviet Russia in the Second Decade (1928), and The Industrial Discipline (1933). Tugwell first served as assistant secretary of agriculture under Secretary Henry A. Wallace*, but his major role was as economic adviser to President Roosevelt. Roosevelt appointed Tugwell undersecretary of agriculture in 1934, and he served in that capacity until 1935. During the “hundred days,” Tugwell played a major role in drafting the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933. In 1935, Tugwell was named to head the newly created Resettlement Administration*. From 1935 to 1937, the Resettlement Administration worked to assist poor farmers to resettle in other areas, provide soil conservation programs, establish flood control and reforestation projects, grant loans to poor farmers, and establish subsistence homestead communities with low-income housing called Greenbelt towns. The Resettlement Administration proved quite controversial among large commercial growers who feared losing their cheap labor. In 1937, the Resettlement Administration was absorbed by the Farm Security Administration*. Tugwell resigned, accepting the position of chairman of the planning department with the New York City Planning Commission. He became chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico in 1941, and Roosevelt named him governor of Puerto Rico shortly thereafter. Tugwell stayed there until 1946 and then returned to academia with an appointment to the faculty of the University of Chicago. He died on July 21, 1979. Reference Bernard Sternsher, Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal, 1964.

TURNPIKE Ever since the late eighteenth century, the term “turnpike” has been used to describe private roads built for profit for which tolls were levied on users. In the twentieth century, with the advent of the automobile*, the expense of road construction demanded government financing, and the term turnpike has often been used to describe highways for which tolls are charged to offset the cost of construction and maintenance. The early turnpikes were important improvements in the infrastructure that allowed farmers to ship their products more quickly to market. Reference George R. Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1816–1860, 1951.

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U U N D E R W O O D TA R I F F O F 1 9 1 3 Throughout the nineteenth century, the Democrats had consistently campaigned for lower tariff schedules, but during the post–Civil War* years of the Republican ascendancy, they had few opportunities to act on their wishes. Times changed when Woodrow Wilson* was elected to the White House in 1912. The next year, Representative Oscar Underwood of Alabama sponsored tariff reform legislation. President Wilson signed it into law on October 13, 1913. The law reduced tariff rates on more than 900 items and placed iron, steel, raw wool, and sugar on the free list. Although Democrats were encouraged by the reform, it was short-lived. When Republicans returned to power in 1921, the Fordney–McCumber Tariff raised tariff rates all over again. Reference Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era, 1913–1921, 1956.

UNEMPLOYED COUNCILS Late in the 1920s, young Communist activists began trying to organize unemployed workers throughout the country into unemployed councils. That effort accelerated during the early years of the Great Depression*. They sponsored International Unemployed Day on March 6, 1930, when the unemployed councils held demonstrations across the country. Eventually, more than 4,000 people were arrested. The Unemployed Councils often extracted supplemental assistance from relief authorities through public demonstrations. After 1933, the local councils became a more orderly movement that sought to represent the jobless in their dealings with relief authorities. In 1936, the councils merged with the socialist-led Workers’ Alliance. Reference Roy Rosenzweig, “‘Socialism in Our Time’: The Socialist Party and the Unemployed,” Labor History 20 (1979), 485–509.

UNEMPLOYED LEAGUES In the summer of 1931, Carl Branin, a labor editor, organized the Unemployed Citizens’ League (UCL) of Seattle. At first, the organization was envisioned as a selfhelp cooperative that would acquire firewood, food, and clothing for its members, but it soon evolved into a political interest group trying to elect its own people to local public offices. At the same time, some segments of the UCL began to experiment with such insurgent tactics as physically resisting evictions and restoring cutoff electric and gas services. Similar groups began to emerge in other parts of the

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country, and in July 1933, delegates from thirteen states convened in Columbus, Ohio, and created the National Unemployment League. Nevertheless, the Unemployed Leagues never expanded beyond a regional base and the approximately 150,000 members that they had attracted by mid-1933. Indeed, the organization gradually declined over the next few years because of the emergence of New Deal* relief and reform programs. Reference Roy Rosenzweig, “Radicals and the Jobless: The Musteites and the Unemployed Leagues,” Labor History 16 (1975): 52–77.

U N I O N PA C I F I C R A I L R O A D Under the aegis of the Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864, the Union Pacific Railroad received a charter and 11 million acres of federal land grants to construct a transcontinental railroad from Omaha, Nebraska, west to San Francisco, California. Shortly thereafter, however, several California businessmen won a charter for the Central Pacific Railroad*. They built eastward and met up with the Union Pacific at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869. General Grenville M. Dodge supervised the engineering of the project. To raise the extra money they needed, Union Pacific developers founded the Credit Mobilier, a construction company that eventually became involved in huge national scandals over kickbacks and official corruption. During the Panic of 1873*, Jay Gould* rescued the Union Pacific from near bankruptcy, expanded its trunk lines throughout Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming, and in 1880, brought about a merger with the Kansas Pacific Railroad. The road came upon hard times again during the depression of 1893*, declaring receivership and not being formally reorganized until E. H. Harriman* did the job in 1898. Harriman then brought the Southern Pacific Railroad* under Union Pacific control until the Supreme Court dissolved the arrangement in 1913. The Union Pacific was part of Harriman’s Northern Securities Corporation* until 1904, when the Supreme Court dissolved that relationship as well. In 1902, however, the Union Pacific successfully acquired the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad, which gave it track into California. Since then, the Union Pacific has weathered a number of financial storms. In 1981, it merged with the Missouri Pacific Railroad* and the Western Pacific Railroad to become the Union Pacific System with more than 21,000 miles of track. Today it is part of the Union Pacific Corporation. References Maury Klein, Union Pacific, vol. 1: The Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893, 1987. Maury Klein, “Union Pacific Railroad,” in Keith L. Bryant Jr., Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980, 1988. Nelson Trottman, History of the Union Pacific, 1923.

UNITED AUTOMOBILE WORKERS Up to the 1920s, unionization of the automobile industry was retarded by jurisdictional disputes within the various metal trades and by Communist infiltration

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of such unions as the Auto Workers Union. It was not until the protections of the New Deal* were implemented in the 1930s that successful organization drives emerged. The American Federation of Labor* (AFL) began the organization drives in 1933, and in 1935, William Green* issued a charter to the United Automobile Workers (UAW). In 1936, the UAW joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) in hopes of organizing a broader spectrum of workers in the industry. In 1937, the UAW launched “sit-down strikes,” occupying factories but refusing to work. General Motors signed with the UAW in 1937, Chrysler Corporation* in 1939, and Ford Motor Company* in 1941. The UAW had organized the entire industry. Walter Reuther* became the UAW president in 1946, and in 1948, he secured the so-called “escalator clause” with General Motors, tying wages automatically to the national cost of living. Reuther played a leading role in the CIO merger with the AFL in 1955. By the mid-1980s, the UAW had a total membership of more than 1.2 million people. Reference Frank Cannier and William J. Eaton, Walter Reuther: Labor’s Rugged Individualist, 1972.

U N I T E D FA R M W O R K E R S U N I O N Although the New Deal* achieved remarkable gains in the status of American workers, migrant farm laborers were still largely unprotected by the law. In 1962, Cesar Chavez* established the National Farm Workers Association to represent them; that group merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in 1967 to form the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). Chavez headed the union, and through boycotts and strikes, he successfully organized and secured recognition and contracts for migrant farm workers in California. Eventually, the union ran into opposition from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters*, which resented the UFW’s territorial gains and claimed that the union was more interested in assisting Chicano and Filipino workers than poor white workers. During the 1970s and 1980s, the UFW tried to organize farm workers in Texas and Florida, but they encountered intense opposition there. Reference Mark Day, Forty Acres: Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers, 1971.

U N I T E D F R U I T C O M PA N Y The United Fruit Company has played a major role in U.S.–Latin American relations in the twentieth century. In 1899, Andrew Preston of the Boston Fruit Company and Minor C. Keith*, a prominent fruit grower and railroad builder in Central America, merged their companies, as well as several smaller enterprises, into the United Fruit Company. United Fruit grew into the largest American-owned corporation in Central America, producing enormous quantities of bananas, coca, and sugar for shipment to U.S. markets. In 1930, United Fruit merged with the Cuyamel Fruit Company, and Samuel Zemurray emerged as its leader. In 1953,

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when the Guatemalan government, under the leadership of Jacobo Arbenz, seized 234,000 acres of United Fruit property, the company protested and won support from the Central Intelligence Agency for a successful coup d’état. Reference Charles Morrow Wilson, Empire in Green and Gold, 1947.

UNITED MINE WORKERS Although a number of labor unions emerged among coal miners during the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1880s that success was achieved in the development of a national union. A number of unions appeared during that decade, including the Amalgamated Association of Miners, the National Federation of Miners and Mine Laborers, and the National Progressive Union of Miners and Mine Laborers. They were reorganized into the United Mine Workers (UMW) of America, an American Federation of Labor* (AFL) union, in 1890. The UMW also died out during the depression of 1893*, especially after the miserable failure of its 1894 strike. By the time that the depression ended in 1896, the union’s membership had fallen from 100,000 to only 10,000 members. But the union proved successful in its 1897 strike in the Midwest, and membership rocketed to more than 250,000 during the next year. John Mitchell* was then the president of the union. He took the union out on strike again in 1902, demanding higher wages and the eight-hour day. President Theodore Roosevelt* intervened in order to secure an arbitrated settlement. The union had been quite successful, even though its strength outside Ohio and Pennsylvania was weak. In 1920, John L. Lewis* was elected to head the 500,000-member union, but he proved to be a poor leader, demanding authoritarian control of the entire organization. Membership fell to only 100,000 members by 1930, but the New Deal saved him. Under the protection of Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act, the UMW organized workers throughout the United States, and in 1936, Lewis took the union into the new industrial union—the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO). Lewis withdrew the union from the CIO in 1940, however. Except for a brief time back in the AFL in 1946–1947, the UMW has remained independent. The great modem challenge to the UMW came with the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement of 1950. In return for complete UMW organization of the entire industry, the UMW agreed to allow coal operators to proceed with mechanization and modernization plans. Those changes led to substantial unemployment in the industry, and UMW membership fell from 416,000 in 1950 to 130,000 by 1965. Lewis resigned the presidency in 1960. During the 1960s, the union was dominated by W. A. “Tony” Boyle*, who was eventually convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the killing of Joseph A. Yablonski*, a rival for the union leadership. In the early 1980s, the UMW membership exceeded 220,000 people. Reference Joseph E. Finley, The Corrupt Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of the United Mine Workers, 1972.

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UNITED RUBBER WORKERS Although the rubber industry emerged and grew dramatically in the late nineteenth century, its first national union—the Amalgamated Rubber Workers of North America Union—did not make much headway in securing industrial recognition. Not until the New Deal labor protection legislation of the 1930s did organization of the rubber industry take place successfully. In 1935, William Green* of the American Federation of Labor* (AFL) called a special convention and organized the United Rubber Workers of America (URWA). The URWA joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations* (CIO) in 1936 and soon thereafter signed its famous agreement with Firestone* Rubber Company. The union subsequently won federally supervised representation elections at Goodyear, Goodrich, and U.S. Rubber. The URWA made important gains during World War II* and added new workers, changing its name in 1945 to the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers of America. By the mid-1980s, the union’s membership exceeded 230,000 members. Reference John N. Thurber, Rubber Workers History, 1935–1955, 1955.

U N I T E D S TAT E S C H A M B E R O F C O M M E R C E Formed in 1912 to promote business cooperation and economic growth in the United States, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce became one of the most powerful interest groups in the country. A response to the organizational demands of the Progressive* era, the chamber evolved into the recognized voice of the general business community. During the New Deal*, the Chamber of Commerce soon became Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* most bitter and consistent critic, although it had at first been sympathetic to the National Recovery Administration* and the idea of a business commonwealth. Henry I. Harriman led the chamber during the first years of the New Deal and tried to work closely with the administration, but in 1935, Harper Sibley became its president and the chamber became openly anti– New Deal. Unlike the Business Advisory Council*, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was a bastion of laissez-faire* and openly opposed the National Labor Relations Act*, the Social Security Act*, the Walsh–Healey Act*, the Robinson–Patman Act, the Guffey coal acts, the Banking Acts* of 1933 and 1935, antitrust policy, and all forms of labor standards legislation. At their 1935 convention, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce formally censured Roosevelt and the New Deal and in 1936 launched a pamphlet campaign blaming him for the persistence of the depression. The president openly chastised the chamber for its parochial, self-serving attitudes. Although a tenuous truce existed between them after 1936, the chamber still demanded “fiscal responsibility” and balanced budgets as the answer to the problem of unemployment. Since that time, the Chamber of Commerce has maintained its conservative position, generally supporting conservative political candidates, calling for reduced federal expenditures and fewer regulations on business enterprise, and promoting economic growth.

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References Robert M. Collins, “Positive Business Response to the New Deal: The Roots of the Committee for Economic Development, 1933–1942,” Business History Review 52 (1978): 369–391. Arthur Johnson, Government–Business Relations, 1981.

U N I T E D S TAT E S C O M M E R C I A L C O M PA N Y When World War II disrupted normal global commercial patterns, American policymakers became concerned about the flow of raw materials, especially about the volume of materials headed for Germany and Japan. At President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* request, Jesse Jones* of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC) established the United States Commercial Company on March 26, 1942. The U.S. Commercial Company was charged with the responsibility of entering neutral markets and purchasing raw materials that the Axis war machine needed, regardless of price, in order to deprive the enemy of necessary resources. By the end of the war, the U.S. Commercial Company had spent a total of $2 billion. Reference Jesse Jones, Fifty-Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC, 1932–1945, 1951.

U N I T E D S TAT E S R A I L R O A D A D M I N I S T R AT I O N When the United States entered World War I*, the demand for railroad services boomed. To avoid confusion and the problems of competition, years of undermaintenance, labor union difficulties, and freight car shortages, President Woodrow Wilson* set up the United States Railroad Administration (USRA) on December 26, 1917. For all intents and purposes, the ruling suspended Interstate Commerce Commission* (ICC) supervision of the railroads and gave the federal government a lease on them. The Railroad Control Act of 1918 guaranteed the railroads an income minimum based on a three-year average ending June 30, 1917, provided $500 million to the USRA to implement the program, and guaranteed to return the railroads to private control within twenty-one months of the end of the war. Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo was named director general of the USRA. He filled his staff with railroad directors, suspended antitrust controls, and built a program of cooperation, centralized control, and railroad unification. McAdoo eliminated destructive competition, prohibited indirect shipping, consolidated duplicative facilities and services, and standardized equipment and procedures. Although the USRA did not go as far as advocates of the Plumb Plan wanted— government ownership of the railroads—it did constitute a successful regulatory effort that cut costs, substantially raised profits, and prevented wasteful competition while guaranteeing shipping availability. The railroads were freed of the USRA in 1920, but the agency remained in existence until 1939. Reference William R. Doezema, “United States Railroad Administration,” in Keith L. Bryant Jr., Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980, 1988.

U N I T E D S TAT E S v. B U T L E R ( 2 9 7 U . s . 1 )

U N I T E D S TAT E S R A I LWAY A S S O C I AT I O N A N D C O N S O L I D AT E D R A I L C O R P O R AT I O N See CONRAIL. U N I T E D S TAT E S S T E E L C O R P O R AT I O N The U.S. Steel Corporation was formed in 1901 under the leadership of Chicago industrialist Elbert Henry Gary*. Although U.S. Steel represented the merger of eighteen separate companies, its major components were the Carnegie* Steel Company and the Federal Steel Company. It had a capitalization in excess of $1 billion and immediately became the largest industrial corporation in the world. Its directors also saw to it that U.S. Steel became vertically integrated*, producing the raw materials that went into steel, manufacturing the steel, and then marketing steel products. In 1907, in spite of the Sherman Antitrust Act*, President Theodore Roosevelt* allowed U.S. Steel to acquire the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. The President told company executives that it was necessary because of the Panic of 1907* and assured them that the government would not seek antitrust action. In 1911, however, the federal government did file an antitrust case against U.S. Steel. In spite of the government’s antitrust efforts, the company remained the giant in the industry. After World War II*, the company also went into marketing plastics and chemicals, although steel production remained central to its corporate mission. During the 1970s, U.S. Steel suffered from foreign competition. It was renamed USX Corporation in the 1980s and began to enjoy the benefits of investments in new technologies. Reference Douglas Alan Fisher, The Fifty Year Story of United States Steel, 1951.

U N I T E D S TAT E S v. B U T L E R ( 2 9 7 U . S . 1 ) Under sections 9 and 16 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act* (AAA) of 1933, the federal government attempted to collect a claim from the receivers (William H. Butler et al.) of the bankrupt Hoosac Mills Corporation for processing and floor taxes on cotton. The receivers rejected the claim, and the case went to the federal district court. That court found the government’s claim valid and ordered payment of the taxes. The decree was appealed by Butler to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the order. The United States brought a writ of certiorari, and the Supreme Court accepted the appeal. The case was argued on December 9 and 10, 1935, and decided on January 6, 1936. By a 6–3 decision, the AAA was declared unconstitutional. Writing for the majority, Justice Owen J. Roberts agreed with the circuit court that the processing tax was not a “tax” at all in the sense of the Constitution but “a mere incident in the scheme of regulation.” Although that did not in itself invalidate the act, Justice Roberts then proceeded to ask whether such regulations could be justified under the general welfare clause of the Constitution. He defended Alexander Hamilton’s*

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broad construction—that is, that the clause gave Congress a general grant of power to tax and appropriate funds for the general welfare. Roberts then reached the startling conclusion, however, that agricultural overproduction and the resultant collapse of the farm economy were local, not national, problems. Therefore, the AAA violated the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Justice Roberts also protested that the system of voluntary crop reduction provided for in the AAA was not in fact voluntary, but coercive. “Congress has no power,” he asserted, “to enforce its command on the farmer to the ends sought by the Agricultural Adjustment Act. It must follow that it may not indirectly accomplish those ends by taxing and spending to purchase compliance.” Roberts warned that if such powers were affirmed, Congress could seize control over every aspect of American life. To demonstrate his point, he adduced several examples of Congress run amuck. Thus, speaking for the majority, Roberts affirmed the judgment of the circuit court in striking down the AAA. References Gerald Dykstra and L. G. Dykstra, Selected Cases on Government and Business, 1937. Alfred Kelly and Winfred Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970. Supreme Court Reporter 56 (1936): 312–329.

U N I T E D S TAT E S v. E . C . K N I G H T C O M PA N Y ( 1 5 6 U.S. 1) Shortly after Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890, the federal government decided that the E. C. Knight Company had a virtual monopoly over the sugar refining industry in the United States. The E. C. Knight Company argued that it was essentially an intrastate business and therefore exempt from the commerce power of the federal government. The case moved through the federal courts, and in 1895, the Supreme Court voted 8–1 against the government’s claim. It made a firm distinction between commercial and manufacturing enterprises and argued that the Sherman Antitrust Act had no jurisdiction over manufacturing businesses that were essentially intrastate, even if the products they produced were marketed across state lines. The decision was a major setback for the antitrust movement and severely confined the Sherman Act’s jurisdictional boundaries. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

U N I T E D S TAT E S v. T R A N S - M I S S O U R I F R E I G H T A S S O C I AT I O N ( 1 6 6 U . S . 2 9 0 ) Because of heavily overbuilt railroads and declining freight volume, many American railroads during the 1890s were suffering from severe downward pressure on freight revenues and profits. To put a stop to falling revenues and bitter competition, eighteen railroads joined together to form the Trans-Missouri Freight Association, a cooperative group that tried to eliminate waste and inefficiency in the

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industry and to stop falling revenues by agreeing to fix freight rates. The U.S. government claimed that such arrangements were clear violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act* of 1890. The case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, and by a narrow 5–4 majority, the Court agreed with the government. Attorneys for the Trans-Missouri Freight Association based their argument on the “rule of reason”— that the rates charged were not an unreasonable restraint of trade. Although the Supreme Court sided with the federal government in this instance, the “rule of reason” would soon become the primary method by which the Court judged the antitrust issue. Reference Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, 1970.

U N I T E D S T E E LW O R K E R S O F A M E R I C A The United Steelworkers of America (USWA) originated in the 1936 agreement between the Committee for Industrial Organization and the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers* (AA) to form the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC). By that time, John L. Lewis* believed that the AA had completely failed to organize the steel industry. Philip Murray* headed the SWOC, and after bitter and violent organizational drives from 1936 to 1941, he succeeded in securing contracts from most of the major and minor steel producers in the United States. In 1942, the AA was dissolved and the United Steelworkers of America union was established. It was part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO),. During the 1940s, the USWA concentrated on improving fringe benefits in the industry. Murray died in 1952 and was succeeded by David J. McDonald. Membership reached 1.2 million people in 1956. I. W. Abel* took over leadership of the union in 1965, and by 1973, membership exceeded 1.4 million people. That was the peak. The 1970s and 1980s were a difficult time for the steel industry. New competition from modem Japanese steel companies eroded corporate profits and dramatically cut employment in the American industry. References David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era, 1960. John Herling, Right to Challenge: People and Power in the Steelworkers Union, 1972.

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V VA N D Y K E , J O H N W E S L E Y John Wesley Van Dyke was born on December 27, 1849, in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. He went to work in the oil fields as a young man. When he. was 24, he found a job as a mechanic with a subsidiary of Standard Oil. Van Dyke became an expert in refinery engineering and worked his way up through management levels in several refineries. In 1903, he became manager of a plant for the Atlantic Refining Company, and in 1911, when the Supreme Court broke up Standard Oil, Atlantic Refining split off and became independent. Van Dyke was named president of the company that same year and remained in that position until 1927. During those years, he built the Atlantic Refining Company into a fully integrated oil corporation and served for a time as head of the American Petroleum Institute. Van Dyke died on September 13, 1939. Reference New York Times, September 17, 1939.

VA N S W E A R I N G E N B R O T H E R S Oris Paxton Van Swearingen was born in Wooster, Ohio, in 1879, and his brother Mantis James was born there two years later. They moved to Cleveland when they were teenagers and went into the real estate business. In 1900, they managed to purchase 1,400 acres of land on the eastern edge of the city and began to develop it into a residential suburb. For the project to have real merit, however, they needed transportation between downtown and the suburb, so in 1916, they bought the Nickel Plate Railroad from the New York Central* for $8 million. With that economic base, they built a huge business empire during the 1920s. They purchased the Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad, the Lake Erie and Western Railroad, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad*, the Hocking Valley Railroad, the Erie Railroad, and the Missouri Pacific Railroad: But the Van Swearingen empire was heavily leveraged. When the stock market crash hit in 1929, they found themselves in impossible economic circumstances. Not only had collapsing securities values wiped out much of their asset structure, but declining freight volumes were ruining the railroads. In 1935, the Van Swearingens defaulted on a $48 million loan to J. P. Morgan* & Company, and their financial empire crumbled. Mantis James Van Swearingen died on December 12, 1935, and Oris died on November 23, 1936. References Taymor Hampton, The Nickel Plate Road, 1947. New York Times, December 13, 1935, and November 24, 1936.

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VA N D E R B I LT, C O R N E L I U S Cornelius Vanderbilt was born in Port Richmond, New York, on May 27, 1794. Vanderbilt was the prototypical self-made man, amassing a fortune in the shipping business as a young man. During the 1850s, after establishing the American Atlantic and Pacific Steamship Company, he shipped goods across the isthmus of Panama. In 1867, Vanderbilt gained control of the New York Central Railroad*, as well as several other New York railroads. He died in New York City on January 4, 1877, with a net worth of more than $100 million. Reference Arthur D. H. Smith, Commodore Vanderbilt: An Epic of American Achievement, 1927.

VA N D E R B I LT, C O R N E L I U S , I I I Cornelius Vanderbilt III was born on September 5, 1872, in New York City. He graduated from Yale in 1895 and earned a master’s degree there in 1899. Heir to the family railroad fortune, Vanderbilt worked for the New York Central Railroad* from 1895 to 1899. Then he went to London and Paris to analyze their subway systems. After returning to New York, he joined forced with August Belmont in building the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the city’s first subway system, in 1904. Vanderbilt served on the boards of a dozen American railroads and came to symbolize the strength of American industry during the 1920s. Vanderbilt was a conservative Republican. He retired from business in 1939 and died on March 1, 1942. Reference New York Times, March 2, 1942.

VEBLEN, THORSTEIN BUNDE Thorstein B. Veblen was born in Cato Township, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on July 30, 1857. He graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota in 1880 and then taught and went to graduate school at Cornell and Johns Hopkins University. Veblen went on to receive a Ph.D. from Yale in 1884. A brilliant economist and intellectual, Veblen spent his career teaching at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the University of Missouri, and the New School for Social Research. Veblen was a prolific writer, but his most influential works were The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), in which he proposed the idea of “conspicuous consumption,” and The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904). Veblen became one of the founders of modem social science, arguing that the economic system did not necessarily adjust automatically according to the functioning of natural laws and that intervention and management by a meritocracy was necessary to guarantee stability and fairness. Government must be an agent of regulation to ensure that pecuniary and powerful business interests did not control economic life. Veblen retired from the New School in 1920 and died on August 3, 1929. Reference Douglas Dowd, Thorstein Veblen, 1966.

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V E R T I C A L I N T E G R AT I O N The term “vertical integration” is used by economists to describe the process by which a corporation attempts to secure control of its suppliers and distributors as a means of both maximizing profits and minimizing vulnerabilities and risks. The first industry in the United States to integrate vertically was the oil industry. John D. Rockefeller* and other oil refiners integrated vertically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by securing sources of crude oil, acquiring drilling equipment to bring it to the surface, using railroads, pipelines, and tankers to bring the crude to refineries, employing trucks and pipelines to carry refined petroleum products to wholesalers, and then establishing retail outlets to sell the products to consumers. Other industries made similar, if not as complete, attempts to integrate themselves vertically. Reference Arthur Johnson, Government–Business Relations, 1981.

V I E T N A M WA R Until 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson* introduced United States ground troops into the conflict, the Vietnam War had only a minor effect on the American economy. But as the war escalated, government expenditures increased dramatically. President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to fight the Vietnam War as well as maintain his Great Society* domestic programs. In 1964, federal spending totaled $118 billion. It had been $118 billion in 1964 as well, and $111 billion in 1963. But in 1966 federal spending jumped to $134 billion and then to $158 billion in 1967, $179 billion in 1968, $185 billion in 1969, $197 billion in 1970, $212 billion in 1971, $232 billion in 1972, and $247 billion in 1973. The total federal debt increased from $286 billion in 1960 to $458 billion in 1973. The large-scale federal spending fueled an inflationary spiral during the late 1960s. Because cutting federal spending was impossible for Johnson because of his domestic agenda, the only alternative was a tax increase, but the Vietnam War was politically unpopular, and Johnson did not feel he could secure much of a tax increase as a way of dampening consumer purchasing power. When inflation reached 6 percent in 1968, Congress passed a 10 percent income tax surcharge in hopes of slowing spending and lessening inflation, but it was too little too late. President Richard Nixon* imposed wage, price, and rent controls on August 15, 1971, in an attempt to stop the inflationary spiral. The controls had little effect, and when the energy crisis hit in 1973, the inflationary spiral got worse. Although the Vietnam War’s most dramatic impact on American society was social and political, it did set in motion the inflationary spiral that plagued the economy throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Reference Anthony S. Campagna, The Economic Consequences of the Vietnam War, 1991.

V O L U N TA R Y D O M E S T I C A L L O T M E N T P L A N See AGRICULTURAL ADJUSTMENT ACT OF 1933.

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W WA B A S H , S T. L O U I S & PA C I F I C R A I L R O A D v. I L L I N O I S O F 1 8 8 6 See GRANGER LAWS. WA B A S H A N D E R I E C A N A L During the great canal boom of the 1830s, promoters and shippers wanted to provide water transportation routes connecting the Ohio River, the Wabash River, and the Maumee River to Lake Erie, from which point it would be possible to ship goods to the Atlantic Ocean. Construction started in 1832 but the Wabash and Erie Canal encountered a bewildering array of financial and engineering problems. It was not completed until 1856, and by that time, railroad construction had eliminated much of its utility. Reference Fon W. Boardman Jr., Canals, 1959.

WA G E S TA B I L I Z AT I O N B O A R D Because of massive government spending during World War II, as well as shortages of consumer goods, the United States experienced a severe inflation problem. Although the inflation problem gradually eased during the war, it started up again in 1950 when the Korean War* broke out. On December 31, 1945, Congress eliminated the National War Labor Board and created in its stead the Wage Stabilization Board. The Wage Stabilization Board functioned for the next seven years in an attempt to make sure that labor unions did not extract from management wage increases greater than productivity gains in various industries. President Harry S. Truman* also established the Office of Economic Stabilization on February 21, 1946, to watch price increases. Chester Bowles directed the new agency. Over the next several months, price controls were dropped from a variety of commodities. The Office of Economic Stabilization continued to function until 1953. Reference Bert Cochran, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency, 1973.

WA G E S A N D H O U R S A C T O F 1 9 3 8 See FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938.

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WA G N E R , R O B E R T F E R D I N A N D Robert F. Wagner was born in Hesse-Nassau, Germany, on June 8, 1877. When he was eight, the family immigrated to New York City. He received his political education in the Tammany machine and developed a political philosophy involving an urban, progressive*, pragmatic approach to domestic reform. Wagner won a seat in the state assembly as a Democrat in 1904 and was president pro tem of the state senate by 1911. With House Speaker Alfred E. Smith*, Wagner served on the New York Factory Investigating Commission and guided fifty-six industrial and labor reforms through the legislature by 1914. As a legislator, he emphasized the rights of organized labor and the need for government programs to guarantee economic stability. In 1926, Wagner was elected to the U.S. Senate and quickly earned a reputation as a hardworking, passionate, pragmatic liberal. Wagner specialized in employment problems, especially in terms of establishing the principle of federal responsibility for stabilizing labor markets. He introduced three measures in Congress to deal with employment problems. Herbert Hoover* signed one of the bills, aimed at improving the gathering of statistics, in early 1930. In 1931, Hoover also signed legislation establishing a Federal Employment Stabilization Board. Wagner’s third bill, one to reorganize the U.S. Employment Service (USES), was vetoed by Hoover in 1930 and not passed until June 1933, when it became known as the Wagner–Peyser Act*. When unemployment mounted after 1929, Wagner became a leading advocate of unemployment relief in Congress. In December 1931, he submitted a plan for a $2 billion emergency public works program, part of which was implemented in the Emergency Relief and Construction Act* of 1932. In 1933, Wagner sponsored the Federal Emergency Relief Act, which provided $500 million in relief grants to the states. The National Industrial Recovery Act* (NIRA) of 1933 included Wagner’s proposal for a $3.3 billion public works program. He was also instrumental in securing the labor standards provisions of the NIRA, as well as the National Labor Relations Act* of 1935. Wagner similarly played a central role in the passage of the Social Security Act* of 1935. Robert Wagner remained in the Senate until 1949, and he died on May 4, 1953. Reference J. Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism, 1968.

WA G N E R A C T O F 1 9 3 5 See NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS ACT OF 1935. WA G N E R – P E Y S E R A C T Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt* in June 1933, the Wagner–Peyser Act permanently chartered the U.S. Employment Service (USES), first established in 1914, and authorized federal matching grants to the states for establishing state employment offices. It placed the USES in the Department of Labor* and charged

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it with providing technical information to the states, maintaining services for veterans and farmers, and developing a system for the interstate matching of workers and jobs. Reference J. Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism, 1968.

WA G N E R – S T E A G A L L H O U S I N G A C T O F 1 9 3 7 When the Wagner–Steagall Housing Act became law in 1937, it marked the initial success in a long struggle to achieve government recognition of housing as a social need. Public housing in the United States became available for the first time during World War I*, but those programs ended with the war. Urban housing reformers, labor leaders, and social workers revived the idea when the Great Depression* allowed them to propose building government housing as a means of reviving the construction industry. Their major political impetus came from Senator Robert Wagner* of New York. The Wagner–Steagall Housing Act became law on September 1, 1937. It established the U.S. Housing Authority (USHA) and provided $500 million in loans for low-cost housing. The USHA could lend up to 90 percent of project costs, with mortgage periods extending up to sixty years. The total value of USHA loan contracts by the end of 1940 was $691 million, with 344 projects comprising 188,045 units completed and another 167 in planning stages. Reference J. Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism, 1968.

WA L G R E E N , C H A R L E S R U D O L P H Charles Walgreen was born on October 9, 1873, on a farm near Galesburg, Illinois. He attended a business college in Dixon, Illinois, worked as a bookkeeper for a year, and then labored in a shoe factory. When he lost part of a finger in an industrial accident, Walgreen decided to apprentice out as a druggist. He moved to Chicago in 1893, worked in a drug store during the day, and studied pharmacy at night school. Walgreen became a registered pharmacist in 1897 and served in the army during the Spanish–American War*. When the war was over, Walgreen returned to Chicago and in 1902 purchased a small drug store. He formed C. R. Walgreen and Company and began acquiring more stores. The number of stores that Walgreen owned grew from 7 in 1916 to 110 in 1927, then to 493 in 1939. Walgreen pioneered the modem drug store. He placed lunch counters in the store, along with a soda fountain, and he was the first to sell the malted milkshake. Walgreen also introduced modem, self-service retailing in which customers shopped in well-lit stores and carried their own items to a cash register. Merchandise was placed on open shelves instead of behind traditional showcases. Through a subsidiary company, Walgreen also manufactured his own ice cream, candy, and some pharmaceuticals. Walgreen died on December 11, 1939.

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References Dictionary of American Biography (1958), Supplement 2. New York Times, December 12, 1939.

WA L K E R TA R I F F O F 1 8 4 6 The Tariff of 1846, named after Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker, was part of the James K. Polk* administration’s program to reduce the higher tariffs that Whigs had imposed and that had been the general trend of American tariff policy since 1816. Democrats, especially farmers in the West and South, were suspicious of high tariffs promoted by Eastern manufacturing interests, because they led to higher prices for manufactured goods and increased the possibility of European tariff retaliation against American agricultural exports. The tariff, signed into law by President James K. Polk on July 30, 1846, ended the practice of substituting specific for ad valorem duties, reduced ad valorem rates by an average of 20 percent, and placed a number of items on the free list. Reference John Dobson, Two Centuries of Tariffs, 1977.

WA L L S T R E E T The term “Wall Street,” taken from the street of that name in New York City, has come to mean the financial center of the world. Located on Wall Street are the New York Stock Exchange* and NYSE MKT LLC (formerly the American Stock Exchange*, as well as the largest brokerages and investment banking firms in the United States. During World War I, when the American economy became the largest in the world, the global financial center shifted from London to New York City, and “Wall Street” became its popular designation. Reference Robert Sobel, Inside Wall Street, 1977.

WA L L A C E , H E N R Y A G A R D Henry A. Wallace was born near Orient in Adair County, Iowa, on October 7, 1888. In 1910, Wallace graduated from Iowa State College in Ames. From 1910 to 1933, he helped edit Wallace’s Farmer, the influential farm journal founded by his father, Henry Cantwell Wallace. Wallace’s genetic experiments with corn culminated in 1923 with the first successful hybrid seed corn for commercial use and led to the founding in 1926 of the Hi-Bred Seed Company (later renamed the Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company), of which Wallace was president until 1933. Wallace also had a profound interest in agricultural economics. Influenced by the ideas of Thorstein Veblen* and self-taught in statistical techniques, Wallace probed the economics of farm production and falling farm income in the hard times of the 1920s. He frequently made recommendations—for crop storage, collective action,

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planned production, and government assistance—that boldly challenged the laissez-faire* thinking of the day. From 1924 to 1928, Wallace vigorously supported the McNary–Haugen plan*, a measure designed to boost farm prices by authorizing the government to buy up surpluses and sell them abroad. Though the McNary– Haugenites failed to achieve their purpose, Wallace emerged from the struggle as a seasoned veteran of farm politics and a respected farm leader of national importance. Although a lifelong Republican, Wallace endorsed Alfred E. Smith* for president in 1928, and in 1933, the new president, Franklin D. Roosevelt*, named Wallace to be secretary of agriculture. In that post, he implemented the Agricultural Adjustment Act’s* crop reduction program. Wallace served as vice president of the United States from 1941 to 1945, and then as secretary of commerce from 1945 to 1946. By then, Wallace’s politics were leaning more and more to the left, and in 1948, he tried an independent run for the presidency under the banner of the Progressive* Party. After his defeat, he returned to private life and continued his scientific research. He died on November 18, 1965. References New York Times, November 19, 1965. Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H. Schapsmeier, Henry A. Wallace of Iowa: The Agrarian Years, 1910–1940, 1968.

WA L M A R T Walmart, or Walmart Stores, Inc., is a U.S.-based multinational* retail corporation based on chains of discount and warehouse big box stores. Its centralized distribution model and ability to buy consumer goods in vast amounts allows it to undercut competitors. Founded in 1962 by Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas, it has since expanded nationally in the 1980s and 1990s and abroad in the 2000s. In 2013, it became the largest private employer in the world, with approximately 2 million employees. It has come under severe criticism for paying its employees low wages and for ruining smaller competitors. Reference Charles Fishman, The Wal-Mart Effect, 2006.

WA LT H A M S Y S T E M Various types of small manufacturing had developed in eighteenth-century America, and by the 1790s, English immigrant Samuel Slater had already set up a cotton-spinning mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Although England had laws guarding against the export of plans for textile machinery (the technology that gave that country a huge advantage in the Industrial Revolution), Slater managed to smuggle them out to the United States; other technological innovations soon followed, including the power loom in 1814. The modern factory system really emerged, however, around the time of the War of 1812. New England entrepreneurs had been thwarted by the Embargo* and Non-Intercourse Acts*, and so they

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invested the extra money in the manufacture of cotton textiles. The war against England cut off the supply of English textiles while boosting the domestic demand, making such investments very profitable. Factory employment in the United States initially took two main forms. The first was the so-called Rhode Island system that had prevailed at Slater’s mill. This system more or less replicated the English pattern of employing whole families, especially children, with little regard for their welfare. Child labor* was often preferred, sometimes on the grounds that children’s small, nimble fingers performed the work better and always because their labor was cheaper. The second form was the Waltham system, introduced by Nathan Appleton and the Boston Associates at their mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, and for a time, this system seemed to offer industrialism with a human face. These entrepreneurs recognized the need for an ample, dependable workforce and also the aversion that many felt toward the squalid conditions and other abuses of the English factory system. Young New England farm women represented a large pool of underemployed labor who might be recruited successfully if factories offered an attractive alternative to life on hard-scrabble farms. The women lived in company boarding-houses, under the protective eye of guardians. In this setting, they enjoyed a cash wage, certain educational opportunities, and the companionship of other young women of similar background. The women even put out their own publication, the Lowell Offering. On the plus side, the Waltham system expanded the horizons and range of opportunities for young farm women; for the first time in some of their lives, they had money to call their own, to spend as they pleased or to save up as a dowry. On the minus side, the protection of the women’s health and morals often amounted to what one scholar has called “puritanical paternalism.” Moreover, the Waltham system could and eventually did degenerate into the impersonal regimentation that has too often characterized factory work. But at least at the beginning, the Waltham system represented a humane innovation in the history of industrialism. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Robert F. Dalzell, Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made, 1987. Hannah Josephson, The Golden Threads: New England’s Mill Girls and Magnates, 1949. Norman Ware, The Industrial Worker: 1840–1860, 1924.

WA N A M A K E R , J O H N John Wanamaker was born on July 11, 1838, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He quit school as a teenager and tried his hand at a number of jobs, but in 1861, Wanamaker bought a small men’s clothing business. He and his partner decided to specialize in ready-to-wear clothing, and by 1870, their store was the largest retail clothing business in the United States. The store was known as Wanamaker and Brown’s (because of his business associate, Nathan Brown); Brown died in 1868. In 1875, Wanamaker purchased a huge railroad freight terminal at Broad and Market

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streets in Philadelphia and converted it into a huge department store, which he called John Wanamaker and Company. Wanamaker then pioneered the modem department store, adding more and more consumer product lines, taking large, daily advertisements in newspapers, and putting restaurants, soda fountains, and music in the store. Wanamaker died on December 12, 1922. Reference H. A. Gibson, John Wanamaker, 1926.

WA R D E B T S During World War I* the United States lent more than $7 billion to the allied nations to assist them in fighting the war. After the war, to assist in reconstruction, the United States expanded those loans by $3.3 billion, bringing the total to $10,350,479,075. Although more than 90 percent of the money had been used to purchase U.S. agricultural and manufactured goods, creating unprecedented prosperity, the American public expected repayment in full, at 5 percent interest. At first, the debtor nations seemed willing to pay, because they expected to be receiving large reparations* payments from Germany. But when the German economy collapsed in 1921 and reparations were scaled down in the Dawes Plan* (1924) and the Young Plan* (1929), the allied nations claimed that they would be unable to repay the debt. American politicians, especially President Calvin Coolidge, demanded payment, but the Europeans argued that the United States should cancel the debts in the name of world prosperity. For a time, there was a triangle going on, with American bankers lending Germany more than $2 billion in the late 1920s, the Germans making reparations payments, and the allied nations then making approximately $2 billion in debt payments, but it was no solution to the problem. From 1923 to 1925, the United States reached agreements with its debtor nations, scaling down the size of the debt. It was not enough. When the depression struck the world in 1929, all hopes of paying the war debts died. On December 15, 1932, six nations, including Belgium and France, formally defaulted on their debts, and on June 15, 1934, the rest of them did so as well, except Finland, which paid its debt. Reference H. O. Moulton and Leo Pasvolsky, War Debts and World Prosperity, 1932.

WA R F I N A N C E C O R P O R AT I O N Congress set up the War Finance Corporation (WFC) in 1918 to strengthen the private capital investment markets and to make loans to industries engaged in wartime production. While stabilizing the money markets, the WFC also sustained the government’s financial program by periodically purchasing federal bonds. During World War I*, the WFC lent funds to a wide variety of enterprises, including public utilities, electric power plants, mining and chemical concerns, railroads, and banks. In the postwar years, the WFC underwent several important changes.

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During the depression of 1920–1921*, Congress transformed the WFC into a peacetime, emergency finance corporation, authorizing it to lend money to exporters and to grant agricultural loans to individuals, banks, and local credit agencies. By 1924, the WFC had lent out over $300 million for agricultural purposes. Congress considered its activities so successful that the Agricultural Credits Act* of 1923 established the Federal Intermediate Credit Bank System* to assume many of the duties and responsibilities of the WFC. The government began to liquidate the WFC in 1924, and five years later Congress officially dissolved it. By the fall of 1931, private bankers were clamoring for its reincarnation, and in 1932 Congress reestablished it as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation* (RFC). Reference James S. Olson, Herbert Hoover and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 1931–1933, 1977.

WA R I N D U S T R I E S B O A R D Soon after the United States declared war on Germany and Austria–Hungary in April 1917, it became clear that the country was going to have to mount a stupendous economic mobilization effort to provide the Allies with the margin of victory. On July 28, 1917, the Council of National Defense established the War Industries Board to coordinate war production and make sure that crippling bottlenecks did not occur. During the first few months of the war, the War Industries Board tried to do its job by encouraging voluntary cooperation by businessmen, but that quickly failed. A stronger hand was needed to stop the uncoordinated scramble for raw materials. On March 4, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson* reorganized the War Industries Board and gave it virtually dictatorial powers to harness raw materials and coordinate the production effort. He placed industrialist Bernard Baruch* at the head of the War Industries Board, and Baruch soon made a success of it by controlling prices and carefully allocating raw materials. The War Industries Board was discontinued after the war. Reference Robert D. Cuff, The War Industries Board: Business–Government Relations during World War I, 1973.

WA R L A B O R P O L I C I E S B O A R D See NATIONAL WAR LABOR BOARD. WA R M A N P O W E R C O M M I S S I O N In the 1930s, the problem had been to find enough work for people to do, but with the coming of World War II, the economy needed to find people to do the work. Not only did the demand for food, fuel, and defense production increase dramatically, but the domestic workforce shrank as able-bodied men joined the

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armed services. In response to the need for more labor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* put together a veritable crazy quilt of agencies to mobilize for the war effort, including the War Manpower Commission (WMC) under the chairmanship of Paul V. McNutt. One of the commission’s main goals was to bring women into the labor force, especially into nontraditional jobs in heavy industry, where the need was most pressing; for example, the goal for 1943 was to bring 5 million more women into the workforce. The commission accomplished its goal partly through propaganda (“Rosie the Riveter”*), partly through direct recruiting, and partly through persuading cities and manufacturers to provide services that the women needed to be able to work, such as all-night markets, more convenient public transportation, better street lighting, and on-site child care (although women who had small children were often actively discouraged from working). In 1942, Roosevelt placed the Selective Service System (the military draft) under the WMC’s jurisdiction; the commission also coordinated with the National Youth Administration* (NYA) to channel young people from training programs directly into jobs. In September 1945, President Harry S. Truman* placed several of the war agencies, including the Office of Economic Stabilization, Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, War Labor Board, United States Employment Service (USES), and the WMC, under the Department of Labor*. With the coming of peace, the task became finding jobs for the returning servicemen and convincing the women workers that their own services were needed at home. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Maureen Honey, Creating Rosie the Riveter: Class, Gender, and Propaganda during World War II, 1984. New York Times, September 5, December 17, 29, 1942; January 2, September 10, 19, 1945.

WA R O F 1 8 1 2 When the United States declared war on Great Britain in 1812, it came after a long series of perceived abuses at the hands of the British. For years, the British navy had been boarding American ships and impressing* sailors into service, arguing that they were just recapturing English sailors who had deserted. The United States had also protested the British practice of seizing American ships on the high seas in order to cut off trade with France, which was Britain’s enemy. Finally, there was strong sentiment in the Midwest in favor of war in the hope that the United States would be able to take control of Canada. The war itself proved indecisive. When the final peace treaty was negotiated in 1814, the war ended as it had started, with both nations in control of the same territory. But in terms of American economic history, the war convinced many people that a new national bank was necessary to provide financial coordination to the economy and that a tariff should be passed in order to protect American industry from British competition. Those two assumptions led to what has since been known as the “Era of Good Feelings” in American political history.

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Reference Reginald Horsman, The Causes of the War of 1812, 1962.

WA R P R O D U C T I O N B O A R D On January 16, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* established the War Production Board by executive order. It was an all-powerful economic mobilization and control agency, and Roosevelt placed Donald Nelson at its head. Nelson had almost dictatorial powers to establish production priorities, guarantee the flow of raw materials to factories, supervise a rationing system to assist in price controls, and prevent bottlenecks from inhibiting the production process. Although there were many problems with the American economy during the war and with the War Production Board’s management of that effort, the United States nevertheless did become the “Arsenal of Democracy*.” The War Production Board was discontinued on November 3, 1945. Reference Donald M. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy, 1946.

WA R B U R G , J A M E S PA U L Born on August 18, 1896, to a wealthy family in Hamburg, Germany, James P. Warburg came to the United States as an infant, graduated from Harvard University in 1917, and entered the New York financial community in the employ of the National Metropolitan Bank. He moved to the First National Bank of Boston and rose quickly through Wall Street* circles, becoming president of the International Manhattan Company in 1929. In political terms, however, Warburg was considered a renegade, at least among his Wall Street peers. A loyal Democrat, Warburg was not a laissez-faire* ideologue, but rather a brilliant, economically flexible pragmatist who saw in the federal government a means of stabilizing the economy. At first, he was suspicious of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* monetary views, so he turned down an offer to become the undersecretary of the treasury in the new administration. He became instead a close economic adviser to Roosevelt during much of 1933, working carefully on the draft versions of the National Industrial Recovery Act* and serving as a delegate to the London Economic Conference*. Warburg’s break with the New Deal* came with the gold-buying scheme of late 1933. When Roosevelt became enamored with the “commodity dollar*” ideas of economist George Warren*, Warburg grew frightened and critical, afraid that the proposal would destroy business confidence and prolong the depression. He pleaded with the president, but Roosevelt tired of the debate, deciding that Warburg was too tradition-bound and insensitive to the suffering of the poor. Warburg left the administration and publicly began attacking New Deal monetary policies. In 1935 and 1936, he wrote two pamphlets—Hell Bent for Election and Still Hell Bent—attacking the Roosevelt administration’s economic policies and accusing the president of leading the country down the road to socialism* and dictatorship. For a time in 1936, Warburg served as an economic adviser to Frank Knox, the old Bull

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Moose progressive* seeking the 1936 Republican presidential nomination. When the Republicans nominated Alf Landon, however, Warburg returned to the New Deal fold and endorsed Roosevelt’s reelection bid. Although he had lost the opportunity to have much influence in the New Deal, Warburg continued his financial successes, serving as president of the Bydale Company and as longtime director of the Polaroid Corporation. During World War II, he served as a special assistant to the Coordinator of Information and as deputy director of the Overseas Branch of the Office of War Information. Warburg died on June 3, 1969. Reference New York Times, June 4, 1969.

WA R B U R G , PA U L M O R I T Z Paul Warburg was born on August 10, 1868, in Hamburg, Germany, to one of Europe’s most prominent Jewish banking families. After graduating from gymnasium in Hamburg, Warburg joined the family firm, M. M. Warburg and Company, and became partner in 1895. That same year, he married Nina Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb, and in 1902 came to New York as a partner in Kuhn, Loeb and Company. Warburg spent the rest of his life investing his energies in the American firm. He specialized in railroad and international finance. After the panic of 1907*, Warburg became a leading advocate in the United States of the need for a central bank, and he served as an adviser to Senator Nelson Aldrich’s National Monetary Commission. The commission’s report led to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Warburg was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System* in 1914, but he resigned from that post during World War I*, largely because he feared that his German ancestry might create too many political problems for the agency. Warburg returned to Kuhn, Loeb and Company in the 1920s and headed two of its affiliates while serving as chairman of the Bank of Manhattan Company. By that time, he was a leading figure in American finance, helping to arrange the consortium loans that kept the German economy afloat in the later 1920s, calling for more centralization in the Federal Reserve System, and demanding government regulations to control the speculative mania that eventually brought on the stock market crash* of 1929. Warburg died on January 24, 1932, just a few years before the New Deal enacted many of the economic reforms he advocated. References David Farrer, The Warburgs: The Story of a Family, 1975. New York Times, January 26, 1932. E. Rosenberg and A. J. Sherman, M. M. Warburg & Co., 1798–1938, 1979.

WA R D , A A R O N M O N T G O M E R Y Aaron Montgomery Ward was born on February 17, 1843, in Chatham, New Jersey. Ward quit school as a teenager and worked as a laborer until 1862, when he

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moved to St. Joseph, Michigan, and went to work in a general store. Ward was manager of the store by 1865. During the late 1860s, Ward worked as a dry goods salesman in a number of businesses, and he also sold goods on the road for a time. It was during those rural trips that he noticed how farmers hated the exorbitant prices they had to pay at the local general stores. He returned to Chicago in 1872 and using all his life savings—$1,000—he started a mail order business. He started publishing a catalogue of merchandise, received an endorsement from the National Grange*, and by 1888 had sales of $1 million a year. When Ward died on December 7, 1913, his annual sales had reached more than $40 million. Reference N. B. Baker, Big Catalogue: The Life of Aaron Montgomery Ward, 1956.

WA R N E R B R O T H E R S The Warner brothers came from a working-class family. Harry Morris Warner was born near Warsaw, Poland, on December 12, 1881, and his brother Albert was born there on July 23, 1884. The family immigrated to the United States in 1885, and Samuel Warner was born in Baltimore on August 10, 1887. The family then moved to London, Ontario, Canada, where Jack Leonard Warner was born on August 2, 1892. They all then moved to Youngstown, Ohio, in 1894. After working odd jobs, the brothers eventually bought themselves a small movie projector and began displaying films for a fee. At first, they traveled from town to town showing a movie until the audience dwindled, after which they moved on. In 1903, they moved to New Castle, Pennsylvania, and opened their first theater. Because of difficulties in securing enough film rentals, they decided to begin producing their own. They moved to New York City and began producing films. In 1918, they moved their production facilities to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Warner Brothers became a household word in 1927 when they produced the first commercially successful “talking” picture—Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer. By 1930, the Warner Brothers* company was worth more than $250 million, an empire that included more than 500 theaters, a music publishing firm, a radio factory, and a controlling interest in First National Pictures. Their early films included Kismet and Little Caesar in 1930, Five Star Final in 1931, and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang in 1932. Samuel Warner died on October 5, 1927, but his brothers kept the enterprise going. During World War II, they produced a number of famous war films, including Destination Tokyo in 1943 and Casablanca in 1942. After the war, Warner Brothers diversified into the record and music business, cable television, and electronic games. Harry Warner died on July 25, 1958, Albert on November 26, 1967, and Jack on September 2, 1978. References New York Times, July 26, 1958, December 2, 1967, and September 3, 1978. Ted Sennett, Warner Brothers Presents, 1971. Jack L. Warner, Jack of All Trades, 1975.

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WA R R E N , G E O R G E F R E D E R I C K George Frederick Warren was born on February 16, 1874, at Harvard, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1897 with a degree in farm management. Warren received his master’s degree (1904) and his Ph.D. (1905) from the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell. For a year, he was a horticulturist with the New Jersey Experiment Station, after which he went back to Cornell as an assistant professor of agronomy. In 1920, Warren became professor of agricultural economics, a position he held until his death. Before his inauguration as president, Franklin D. Roosevelt* had been introduced to Warren and to Dr. Frank A. Pearson, Warren’s Cornell colleague, by Henry Morgenthau Jr.*, who had studied under Warren at Cornell. Warren and Pearson wrote the book Prices (1933), in which they argued that the prices of wheat, cotton, and other commodities rose and fell automatically with the price of gold in relation to paper currency. Therefore, the authors believed, if the government purchased gold in large amounts and raised its price gradually, the value of the dollar would fall and the prices of commodities would rise. Roosevelt, fascinated by both Warren and the theory, brought him to Washington as a monetary adviser. In the end, the Warren plan failed, and in 1934 Warren returned to Cornell. He died on May 24, 1938. References New York Times, May 25, 1938. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, vol. 2: The Coming of the New Deal, 1933– 1934, 1959.

WA S H I N G T O N , B O O K E R TA L I F E R R O Booker T. Washington was born a slave at Hale’s Ford in Franklin County, Virginia, on April 4, 1856. After receiving his freedom and working on the plantation for a few years, Washington got a job in a coal mine in Malden, West Virginia, and attended school on the side. In 1875, after working part-time as a janitor, Washington graduated from the Hampton Institute, a vocational college for African Americans. He taught school for two years, attended a seminary in Washington, D.C., for two years, and then returned as an administrator at Hampton. In 1881, Washington got the job of establishing a college for African Americans at Tuskegee, Alabama. After founding the Tuskegee Institute, Washington spent the rest of his life there. In the process, he became one of the country’s most prominent African American leaders. He was a strong proponent of education and economic preparation as prerequisites for political power and social equality. At times, he found himself at odds with leading black civil rights advocates, especially W.E.B. Du Bois. Washington’s primary constituency, however, was uneducated southern blacks, and he stood by his vision of their future. Washington died on November 14, 1915. Reference Louis Harlan, Booker T. Washington, 1972.

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WA S H I N G T O N , G E O R G E George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on February 22, 1732. He lived at Mount Vernon, Virginia, worked as a surveyor and land developer, and during the French and Indian War served with distinction as a lieutenant colonel in the British colonial army. Washington won a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1759, and during the 1760s, he became an early advocate of increased colonial independence from Great Britain. He served in the First and Second Continental Congresses, and in 1775, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. During the War for American Independence, Washington emerged as the country’s greatest leader. In 1787, he presided over the group that wrote the U.S. Constitution, and in 1788, he was unanimously elected the first president of the United States. As president, Washington promoted the fiscal policies of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton*, which included high tariffs, a national bank, and funding of the national debt*. He also insisted on the sovereignty of the federal government and on a neutralist foreign policy. In 1796, Washington decided not to seek a third term in office, and he retired to Mount Vernon in 1797. He died there on December 14, 1799. References James Thomas Flexner, George Washington and the New Nation, 1970. Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, 1957.

WAT E R P O W E R A C T O F 1 9 2 0 See FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION. WAT S O N , T H O M A S J O H N Thomas John Watson was born on February 17, 1874, in Campbell, New York. After finishing high school and attending a business college for a while, Watson went to work as a salesman. In 1895, he got a job with the National Cash Register (NCR) Company in Buffalo, New York. Watson proved to be an outstanding salesman, and he was brought to the head office of NCR in Dayton, Ohio, in 1903. Watson stayed there for ten years before being fired. He then secured a position as head of the Computing Tabulating Recording Company. The company manufactured punch cards and time-recording machines. Watson purchased the Pierce Accounting Machine Company in 1921, and in 1923, he formed International Business Machines* (IBM) Corporation to direct the companies and the Canadian offices that he had set up. Watson saw to it that IBM had a state-of-the-art engineering laboratory, and in 1939, he went into the electrical typewriter business when IBM purchased Electromatic Typewriters, Inc. The company expanded rapidly during World War II, and early in the 1950s, Watson brought IBM into the electronic computer industry. The company produced its first electronic calculator in 1946, and ten years later it brought out its first large electronic data processing system. When Watson stepped down from IBM in 1955, the company had 41,000 employees and annual sales of nearly $600 million. Watson died on June 19, 1956.

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Reference William Rodgers, THINK: A Biography of the Watsons and IBM, 1969.

W E A LT H TA X A C T O F 1 9 3 5 On June 19, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt* called for a major revision of the federal tax laws in hopes of redistributing national income and finding money to relieve the suffering caused by the depression. The bill included inheritance and gift taxes and higher taxes on large personal incomes and applied the idea of graduated taxation to corporations. Roosevelt also requested a constitutional amendment that would allow the federal government to tax interest income from future state and local security issues. The measure was enthusiastically endorsed by progressive insurgents and condemned by conservatives. The Revenue Act* of 1935, as passed, increased estate taxes and individual surtax rates (from a top rate of 59 percent to one of 75 percent on incomes over $50,000) and placed graduated net income taxes* on corporations and a tax on corporate dividends. Corporations could deduct gifts to charitable organizations up to 5 percent of their net income. Instead of the existing 13.75 percent tax on corporate income, the law imposed a 12.5 percent rate on small corporations and a 15 percent rate on corporations making more than $50,000 per year. An excess profits tax imposed a levy of 6 percent on corporate profits over 10 percent and 12 percent on profits over 15 percent. An amendment allowed deductions prior to taxation for the amount of value lost by an estate within one year of death, the result of the rapid decline of fortunes in the 1929 stock market crash*. References Ronald A. Mulder, “The Progressive Insurgents in the United States Senate, 1935–1936: Was There a Second New Deal?” Mid America 57 (1975): 106–125. Randolph E. Paul, Taxation in the United States, 1954. Sidney Ratner, American Taxation: Its History as a Social Force in Democracy, 1942.

W E AV E R , J A M E S B A I R D James B. Weaver was born in Dayton, Ohio, on June 12, 1833. As a young man, he became a devoted member of the Republican Party because of its commitment to cheap public land sales and opposition to the expansion of slavery*. He was unsuccessful in a bid for a congressional seat from Iowa in 1874 and for the gubernatorial nomination in 1875. He then abandoned the GOP, convinced that its conservative, big-business constituency had destroyed its earlier commitment to the needs of poor farmers. He strongly believed that monetary expansion and inflation were the answer to the farmers’ problems and in 1878, Weaver won a seat in Congress as a member of the Greenback Labor Party*. Weaver ran unsuccessfully for president in 1880 on the Greenback Labor ticket, but he was reelected to Congress in 1884 and 1886. Weaver was a founding member of the Populist Party* and ran as its first presidential candidate in 1892, an election in which he polled more than

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1 million popular votes (of 12 million) and twenty-two electoral votes (of 44). Weaver then took a backseat in Populist politics and died in 1912. Reference F. E. Haynes, James Baird Weaver, 1919.

WEBB–POMERENE ACT OF 1918 Passed on April 10, 1918, the Webb–Pomerene Act was designed to open international markets to American corporations after World War I*. Specifically, the act waived antitrust regulations for American trade associations and corporations selling abroad by allowing them to integrate vertically* and allocate markets regionally. On December 24, 1919, Congress passed supplementary legislation known as the Edge Act, which allowed banks to combine their capital to finance American business abroad. The Edge Act also permitted chartered corporations to make long-term loans to foreign governments and businesses. Although both the Webb– Pomerene Act and the Edge Act were designed to increase American exports, their effectiveness in the 1920s was negated by the protective tariff policies of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover* administrations, which strangled international trade and contributed to the onset of the Great Depression*. Reference Carl Parrini, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916–1923, 1969.

WEBSTER, DANIEL Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, on January 18, 1782. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1801, studied the law, and then began practicing in Boston in 1805. Webster relocated to Portsmouth, New Hampshire and was elected to Congress in 1812. During those early years, he opposed high tariff policies because he believed they hurt New England shipping interests. He was reelected in 1814 and 1816. In 1817, Webster returned to his law practice and earned a reputation as the greatest constitutional lawyer in the country. Webster argued the Dartmouth College Case*, M’Culloch v. Maryland*, and Gibbons v. Ogden* before the Supreme Court. Webster returned to Massachusetts, was elected to Congress in 1822, and reelected in 1824. By the late 1820s, because of the process of industrialization in New England, Webster became a prominent National Republican and then Whig, supporting high tariffs, the national bank, cheap land policies, and federally financed internal improvements. In the North–South debates, Webster was a determined nationalist. Webster was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1826 and reelected in 1832 and 1838. He tried but failed to secure the Whig presidential nomination in 1836 and 1840, but he served as secretary of state in the William Henry Harrison and John Tyler administrations. Webster returned to the Senate in 1844 and served until 1850. He died on October 24, 1852. Reference Sydney Nathans, Daniel Webster and Jacksonian Democracy, 1973.

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WEIR, ERNEST TENER Ernest Weir was born on August 1, 1875, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Weir’s father died in 1890 and Young Weir quit school and went to work as an office boy. In 1892, he went to work as an office boy for the Oliver Wire Company, and in 1901, he was named chief clerk of the Monongahela Tin Plate mills. Two years later, Weir became superintendent of the Monessen mills for U.S. Steel Company*. In 1905, Weir bought an old tin plate company in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and by 1916, the Weirton Steel Company was well known in the industry. Weir concentrated on the production of light sheet metal steel. When the automobile* industry boomed in the 1920s, creating enormous demand for such products, Weirton Steel had the advantage over older companies that were still tied to heavier products for railroads and bridges. In 1931, Weirton Steel merged with several other small companies to form the National Steel Company, which Weir headed. During the Great Depression*, Weir was noted for paying high wages to workers and bitterly opposing labor union activities. He became an implacable foe of Franklin D. Roosevelt* and the New Deal*. In 1940 and 1941, Weir was active in the America First Committee to keep the United States out of World War II and served as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Weir died on June 26, 1957. References New York Times, June 27, 1957. Gertrude Schroeder, The Growth of Major American Steel Companies, 1953. Robert Sobel, The Age of Giant Corporations, 1972.

W E L FA R E R E F O R M A C T O F 1 9 9 6 Formally known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), this federal legislation changed cash assistance policies to help the poor and required workfare* as a condition for receiving aid. President Bill Clinton* signed the PRWORA bill into law, on August 22, 1996. PWORA also replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with the Temporary Assistance for Need Families (TANF), which instituted significant changes in requirements for attaining entitlements. Reference Mary Ellen Hombs, Welfare Reform: A Reference Handbook, 1996.

W E L L S FA R G O B A N K Wells Fargo & Company is a U.S.–based multinational* banking and financial services company, headquartered in San Francisco, California. Established on March 18, 1852, by Henry Wells and William Fargo, it has grown to become the fourth-largest bank in the United States. In 1998, Wells Fargo merged with Norwest Corporation. In 2008, it acquired Wachovia. With these two acquisitions it was able to expand nationally. By 2012, Wells Fargo had expanded to more than 9,000 retail branches and 12,000 automated teller machines (ATMs).

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Reference Robert J. Chandler, Wells Fargo, 2006.

W E S T C O A S T H O T E L v. PA R R I S H ( 3 0 0 U . S . 3 7 9 ) West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, decided on March 29, 1937, was the first major Supreme Court case to reflect the shift of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes* and Justice Owen J. Roberts away from the conservative majority that had dismantled the Agricultural Adjustment Administration* (AAA) and the National Recovery Administration* (NRA) in 1935 and 1936. The decision also came in the wake of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* court-packing proposal, when he unsuccessfully tried to retire justices and increase the size of the court as a means of liberalizing its posture toward federal power. Although Chief Justice Hughes publicly condemned that proposal and Congress blocked it, the court nevertheless made a major philosophical change in 1937, beginning with the West Coast case, when Hughes and Roberts joined Louis D. Brandeis*, Benjamin Cardozo, and Harlan Fiske Stone* in upholding a Washington state minimum wage law. Conservative Justices James McReynolds, Willis Van Devanter, Pierce Butler, and George Sutherland found themselves in the minority. Only a year before, in Morehead v. Tipaldo, the Court had set aside a similar New York minimum wage law, arguing that private wage bargains were protected by the contract clause and therefore beyond even state legislative power. But Hughes reversed himself in the West Coast case, arguing that state legislation could protect “a class of workers who are in an unequal position with respect to bargaining power . . . and defenseless against the denial of a living wage . . . the community is not bound to provide what is in effect a subsidy for unconscionable employers.” Historians have debated whether the switch of Hughes and Roberts was philosophically genuine or politically designed to save the Court from the president’s assault. Roberts may have summed it up best when he offhandedly remarked, concerning the West Coast case, that a “switch in time saves nine.” Reference Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone: Pillar of the Law, 1956.

W E S T I N G H O U S E E L E C T R I C C O R P O R AT I O N In 1886, George Westinghouse, the inventor of the air brake and several other devices, founded the Westinghouse Electric Company. He was convinced that the market for alternating electrical current manufactured products was practically infinite. The company quickly branched out into the manufacture of all types of machinery and appliances using electricity as a power source. Bankruptcy loomed first in 1891 and again in 1907, when Westinghouse was eased out as head of the company. The company became known as the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1945. By that time, it was manufacturing products in every sector of the industry. Westinghouse was never able, however, to take the industrial lead from General Electric*, so in 1975, Westinghouse abandoned the home appliance market

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to General Electric. Since then, it has focused much of its corporate energy on military technology, coal gasification, solar and nuclear energy technology, and its subsidiary—the Westinghouse Broadcasting Company. Reference Harold C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers, 1953.

W H E AT B E LT The term “Wheat Belt” refers to the geographic region of the United States where winter wheat and dry farming have made wheat a valuable commercial crop. The heart of the wheat belt is in Kansas and radiates out to the surrounding states, including parts of Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, and Colorado. Reference James C. Malin, Winter Wheat in the Golden Belt of Kansas, 1944.

W H E AT C O N T R O V E R S Y O F 1 9 7 2 In 1972, the Richard Nixon administration made a decision to sell 97.6 million bushels of wheat to the Soviet Union at a price of $1.63 per bushel. At the time, wheat in the United States was selling for $2.78 a bushel, and the deal caused a dramatic surge in wheat futures prices, pushing them up to $5.80 a bushel. China purchased nearly 21 million bushels that year, and in 1973, it purchased another 95 million bushels and the Soviets 72 million bushels. American wheat reserves fell from 863 million bushels to only 178 million bushels. Critics charged that the sales contributed to the inflation of food prices in the United States and that middlemen, not farmers, were the only people who really profited from the sales. Reference David Calleo, The Imperious Economy, 1982.

WHEELER, BURTON KENDALL Born on February 27, 1882, in Hudson, Massachusetts, Burton K. Wheeler received a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1905. He moved to Montana in 1906 and was soon admitted to the Montana bar. In 1910, he was elected to the Montana legislature and served there until 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson* appointed him U.S. attorney for Montana. In 1918, Wheeler resigned that post to prepare a campaign for the governorship of Montana in 1920. He lost in the general election but was elected U.S. senator from Montana in 1922; he then served continuously until 1947. He was defeated for renomination in the primary of 1946. During the 1920s, Wheeler emerged as a progressive* Democrat, and in 1924, he refused to support John W. Davis* as the party’s presidential nominee. Davis was just too conservative for Wheeler. Instead, he accepted the vice-presidential

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nomination of the Progressive* Party and campaigned with its presidential nominee, Robert M. La Follette*. La Follette and Wheeler called for vigorous antitrust action against industrial monopolies, public ownership of water power, gradual government takeover of the railroads, abolition of antilabor injunctions*, federal guarantees of collective bargaining, election of federal judges to ten-year terms, and armaments reductions. In the general election, they carried only 16 percent of the popular vote, and in 1925, Wheeler returned to the Democratic Party. During the early New Deal, Wheeler was a vigorous supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt* and a strong advocate of the free coinage of silver and inflation. Later in the 1930s, however, Wheeler turned against Roosevelt, especially over the court-packing scheme. After 1937, he voted against every major piece of New Deal legislation. He opposed Roosevelt’s bid for a third term in 1940, announced his own candidacy for the presidency, and tried to get the Democratic Party to pledge not to “send our boys outside the United States unless the country was attacked.” Wheeler bitterly opposed the Selective Service Act of 1940 and the Lend Lease* bill, primarily because he saw both of them leading the country into war. After his defeat for the Senate in 1946, Wheeler operated a private law firm in Washington, D.C. He died there on January 7, 1975. References Kenneth C. MacKay, The Progressive Movement of 1924, 1947. New York Times, January 8, 1975. James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal, 1967.

WHEELER–LEA ACT OF 1938 For more than a decade before passage of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938* reformers had been calling for new legislation to protect consumers. They felt the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906* needed strengthening. The food, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries opposed everything that was proposed. In October 1937, however, more than 100 people died after taking the drug sulfanilamide for venereal disease and strep infections. The drug was produced by the S. E. Massengill Company, a veterinary medicine manufacturer. The drug did extensive kidney and liver damage. The scandal led to demands for federal legislation. Under the leadership of Senator Royal Copeland of New York and Clarence Lea of California, Congress prepared new legislation which was ultimately enacted in June 1938. As a stopgap measure until that time, Congress passed the Wheeler– Lea Act in March 1938 giving the Federal Trade Commission* control over the food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. Reference Charles O. Jackson, Food and Drug Legislation in the New Deal, 1970.

W H I P I N F L AT I O N N O W During the mid-1970s, the general price level in the United States increased dramatically because of the dramatic increases in the price of oil brought on by the

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Arab oil boycott* of 1973 and the actions of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries* (OPEC) cartel. This created a serious inflation problem. President Gerald Ford launched a public relations campaign called “Whip Inflation Now”— or WIN—to convince business leaders to exercise price restraint and union leaders to do the same in their wage demands. Little came of the campaign, except criticism of the president for his naive approach. Reference Gar Alperovitz and Jeff Faux, Rebuilding America, 1984.

WHISKEY REBELLION See WHISKEY TAX. W H I S K E Y TA X According to Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s* plans in his Report on the Public Credit, the federal government needed new sources of revenue in order to fund the national debt*. Hamilton decided on several excise taxes, including one on distilled whiskey. Congress passed the tax in March 1791. Not only would the tax raise a revenue, it would also imprint on the minds of western farmers that the central government was a strong, viable entity. Those farmers frequently moved their corn crop to market in liquid form, as distilled whiskey. Opposition to the tax was widespread, but nowhere more so than in western Pennsylvania, where farmers refused to pay the tax and, in 1794, attacked federal revenue officers. A mob of 500 people burned down the home of the chief tax collector. President George Washington* declared a state of rebellion and sent an army of 13,000 troops out to the area. The rebels dispersed in face of the army, and the authority of the federal government was upheld. The incident did, however, consolidate opposition to the Federalist Party in western regions. Reference John C. Miller, The Federalist Era, 1960.

WHITE-COLLAR The term “white-collar” has been used throughout much of the twentieth century to refer to workers who labor in professional and clerical capacities, as opposed to “blue-collar”* workers who labor directly in manufacturing capacities. During the twentieth century, blue-collar jobs in the United States have steadily declined in number as white-collar jobs, because they have been based on information, technology, and service, have steadily increased in number. Reference Adrian Paradis, Labor Almanac, 1983.

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W H I T N E Y, E L I Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765. He worked in the family metal shop, and young Whitney developed a strong mechanical aptitude. He graduated from Yale in 1792 and then went to Georgia to study law. There he became familiar with the tedious process for extracting cotton seeds from cotton fiber. The process was so labor-intensive that cotton could not be produced profitably. Whitney invented and patented (in 1794) his cotton gin, a mechanical device for removing the seeds. One individual could now remove the seeds from 300 pounds of cotton in the time that it had formerly taken to remove seeds from a single pound manually. The invention revolutionized the industry, and production boomed. Cotton became central to the southern economy. Whitney returned to New England where he became involved in manufacturing firearms. After winning a huge contract for 10,000 muskets from the federal government in 1798, he developed a manufacturing process using interchangeable parts. Less skilled workers could then be involved in the assembly of weapons, and the repair of malfunctioning guns became much simpler and cheaper. Whitney’s process was a harbinger of the Industrial Revolution. Whitney died on January 8, 1825. Reference Constance Green, Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology, 1956.

W H I T N E Y, R I C H A R D Richard Whitney was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, on August 1, 1888. He attended Groton and then graduated from Harvard in 1911. After leaving Harvard, Whitney worked for J. P. Morgan* & Company and then entered the family securities business, eventually becoming president of Richard Whitney & Company, a major Wall Street* investment firm. Shortly after the stock market crash* of 1929, he became head of the New York Stock Exchange* and presided over it during the sensational Pecora* investigations of the early 1930s. Despite all the revelations of stock fraud and manipulation of the public, Whitney remained a staunch defender of the securities industry in the United States, and he just as staunchly opposed government regulation, including the Securities Act* of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act* of 1934. Whitney resigned as president of the New York Stock Exchange in 1935 and returned to private business. In 1938, his opposition to government regulation became more understandable after the Securities and Exchange Commission* (SEC) forced disclosure of his corporate condition, exposing embezzlement of funds from the New York Stock Exchange and the New York Yacht Club and forcing him into bankruptcy. Whitney spent more than three years in prison after his conviction for fraud. He died on December 5, 1974. References New York Times, December 6, 1974. Michael Parrish, Securities Regulation and the New Deal, 1970.

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WICKHAM, CARL ERIC Carl Wickham was born on August 7, 1887, in Sweden, and immigrated to the United States in 1905. He worked at a number of jobs in Minnesota, and in 1914, he began driving miners from Hibbing to nearby towns in an automobile* taxi. With another Swedish immigrant friend, Andrew Anderson, Wickham began making regularly scheduled runs. Demand for the service was so heavy that he formed the Mesabi Transportation Company and began buying buses. By 1918, the company had eighteen buses and was covering routes throughout northern Minnesota. Wickham sold out of the business in 1925 and became president of the Northland Transportation Company, a bus subsidiary of the Great Northern Railroad*. Wickham moved to Duluth, Minnesota, to run the new firm and began aggressively purchasing smaller bus lines. In 1926, Wickham established the Motor Transit Corporation as a holding company* for several dozen bus lines, and in 1930, he changed the name of the company to the Greyhound Corporation. Under Wickham’s direction, Greyhound came to dominate the industry. He resigned as president of the company in 1946, and he died on February 5, 1954. References Milton Moscowitz, Everybody’s Business, 1980. New York Times, February 6, 1954.

W I G G I N , A L B E R T H E N RY Albert Henry Wiggin was born in Medfield, Massachusetts, on February 21, 1868. After graduating from high school in Boston in 1885, Wiggin found a job with the Commonwealth Bank of Boston. In 1891, he joined the federal government as a bank examiner but lost the job when Grover Cleveland* and the Democrats came back into office after the election of 1892. He went to work for the Third National Bank of Boston, and in 1897, became vice president of the Eliot National Bank. In 1899, Wiggin became vice president of the National Park Bank in New York City. His banking career made its big jump in 1904 when he helped to organize the Bankers Trust Company of New York, and in 1905, he became vice president of the Chase National (later the Chase Manhattan*) Bank. Wiggin became president of Chase in 1911 and chairman of the board in 1917. During his tenure at Chase National, the bank’s assets increased from $250 million to $2.5 billion, primarily through judicious investments and equally judicious mergers. A prominent Republican, Wiggin assumed a visible role in national finance after the crash* of the stock market in 1929. Wiggin tried to put together a consortium of money to stop the liquidation of the stock markets, but he failed. He also played a prominent role in the formation of the National Credit Corporation* in 1931, a private association of bankers hoping to funnel money into troubled banks. This plan also failed. At that point, Wiggin’s career dissolved. In 1932, Winthrop Aldrich*, the new president of Chase National and the representative of the Rockefeller* family (which now had controlling interest in Chase), forced Wiggin to resign because of speculative investments and the mixing of his personal funds

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with bank investments. In 1933, the revelations of the Senate’s Pecora* committee demonstrated that Wiggin had intentionally used affiliated companies to help the Chase avoid federal stock market regulations, used Chase money to finance his own economic ventures, and sold short on his own stock during the 1929 securities panic. Wiggin had unwittingly become a symbol of the speculative mania and questionable ethics common on Wall Street* in the 1920s. Wiggin died on May 21, 1951. References John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1929, 1955. Matthew Josephson, The Money Lords, 1972. New York Times, May 22, 1951. Marjorie Wiggin, New England Son, 1949.

W I L B U R , R AY LY M A N Ray Lyman Wilbur was born in Boonesboro, Iowa, on April 13, 1875. He graduated from Stanford University in 1896, where he became a close associate of future president Herbert Hoover*. Wilbur took a master’s degree from Stanford in 1897 and then earned his medical degree from Cooper Medical College in 1899. Wilbur practiced medicine for a while, but his real interests were academic, and in 1911, he returned to Stanford as a dean. In 1916, Wilbur was named president of Stanford University, a position he held until 1943. In 1929, President Hoover named Wilbur the new secretary of the interior. During his four years in that post, Wilbur saw to it that no new leases on naval oil reserve land were issued; he also settled the dispute between Arizona and California over use of Colorado River water. In addition, he had Charles J. Rhoads, former head of the Indian Rights Association, appointed commissioner of Indian affairs, and he doubled federal spending in that area. He initiated the philosophical change in federal Indian programs away from assimilation toward tribal independence and cultural pluralism. In 1943, Wilbur was elected “chancellor for life” by the trustees of Stanford University. He died on June 26, 1949. References David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life, 1979. New York Times, June 27, 1949 Edgar Eugene Robinson and Paul Carrol Edwards, eds., Ray Lyman Wilbur, 1960.

“ W I L D C AT S T R I K E ” The term “wildcat” strike is used in the labor movement to describe a spontaneous work stoppage by employees even when the labor union has not specifically authorized a strike. A wildcat strike can also occur even when the union has specifically prohibited it. Reference Adrian Paradis, Labor Almanac, 1983.

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WILDERNESS ROAD The Wilderness Road was one of the first east–west thoroughfares pushing into the Allegheny frontier during the colonial period. In 1775 Judge Richard Henderson and his Transylvania Company hired Daniel Boone to cut a trail through the Cumberland Gap of Maryland into the bluegrass region of Kentucky and Tennessee. With the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, the Cherokees agreed to the establishment of Wilderness Road. In April 1775, Boone established the settlement of Boonesborough, and the first group of settlers established the government of Transylvania in May of that year. Reference Malcolm Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier, 1775–1843, 1981.

W I L E Y, H A R V E Y See PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT OF 1906. WILSON, CHARLES ERWIN Charles E. Wilson was born on July 18, 1890, in Minerva, Ohio. The family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1906, and in 1909, Wilson earned an engineering degree from the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Wilson went to work for Westinghouse* in Pittsburgh. At Westinghouse, Wilson engineered the first electric ignition for automobiles* and, during World War I*, designed radio generators and dynamometers. Wilson joined General Motors (GM) in 1919. He soon became factory manager for the Remy Electric Company, a GM subsidiary. In 1926, Wilson became president of the Delco–Remy Company. Wilson rose steadily through the corporate ranks at GM, becoming a vice president in 1929, executive vice president in 1939, and president of the company in 1941. He became a national figure by directing GM’s wartime production from 1941 to 1945, and in 1946, Wilson was named chief executive officer of the company. He remained in that office until 1953, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower named him secretary of defense. Wilson resigned at the end of Eisenhower’s first term. He died on September 26, 1961. References Ed Cray, Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times, 1980. E. Bruce Geelhoed, Charles E. Wilson and Controversy at the Pentagon, 1979.

WILSON, MILBURN LINCOLN M. L. Wilson was born on October 23, 1885, in Atlantic, Iowa, and was educated at Iowa State College (B.S.A., 1907) and the University of Wisconsin (M.S., 1920), where he majored in agriculture. After working for a few years as a farmer, he joined the staff of Montana State College as an agronomist in 1910. From 1910 to 1924, Wilson rose through the ranks of the county extension agent network,

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finally becoming the extension agricultural economist in 1922. In 1924, he spent two years as a consultant with the U.S. Department of Agriculture*, specializing in large-scale wheat farming, and in 1926, he returned to Montana State as chairman of the department of agricultural economics. In 1932, Wilson read Professor John D. Black’s* book Agricultural Reform in the United States and translated the ideas for controlled production into his own “domestic allotment plan.” At the 1932 meetings of farm economists in Chicago, Wilson promoted the idea, and it gained a wide following. Rexford G. Tugwell* picked up on the concept of acreage reductions to control overproduction and invited Wilson to come back to Albany, New York, and present the plan to Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt*, the Democratic nominee for president. Wilson met with Roosevelt and told him of his plans to have farmers sign “production control contracts,” reduce their production, and receive payments from processing taxes. Wilson published those ideas in Farm Relief and the Domestic Allotment Plan in 1933. These became the basis for the Agricultural Adjustment Act* of 1933. When the New Dealers* came to Washington, D.C., in 1933, Wilson was among them. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace* named him chief of the Wheat Production Section of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration* (AAA), and in September, he became head of the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, a forerunner of the Resettlement Administration*. From July 1934 to February 1940, Wilson served first as assistant secretary of agriculture and then as undersecretary of agriculture. When Wallace left the Department of Agriculture to serve as Roosevelt’s running mate in 1940, Wilson stepped down as the undersecretary and became head of the department’s extension work. Wilson stayed there until his retirement in 1953. He died on November 22, 1969. References Dean Albertson, Roosevelt’s Farmer: Claude R. Wickard in the New Deal, 1961. Milburn L. Wilson, Farm Relief and the Domestic Allotment Plan, 1933.

WILSON, THOMAS WOODROW Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia. He graduated from Princeton in 1879, received law and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia in 1881 and 1882, and then earned a Ph.D. in history and government at Johns Hopkins University in 1886. Wilson briefly practiced law in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1882 and 1883 before accepting an appointment as an associate professor at Bryn Mawr College in 1885. Wilson went to Wesleyan University in 1888 and then accepted a full professorship at Princeton in 1890. In 1902, Wilson became president of Princeton University. A progressive* Democrat, he was elected governor of New Jersey in 1910, and in 1912, when the Republicans split into two parties, one supporting President William Howard Taft* and the other backing former president Theodore Roosevelt*, Wilson was elected president of the United States. During his first term in office, Wilson supported the progressive measures that resulted in the reduced rates of the Underwood Tariff, the Federal

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Reserve Act* of 1913, the creation of the Federal Trade Commission*, and the Clayton Act* of 1914. Wilson was a strong idealist committed to international peace based on democratic principles, and when he led the United States into World War I* in 1917, he hoped to “make the world safe for democracy.” When he went to Paris in 1919 to help negotiate the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson was committed to his “Fourteen Points,” a vision of the postwar world based on disarmament, freedom of the seas, free trade*, national self-determination, and a League of Nations. He chaired the commission at Paris that drafted the covenant of the League of Nations, the only one of his Fourteen Points that European leaders ever really supported. The great irony of his life was that the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaty. Although most Americans approved the idea of the League of Nations, they feared that it might be too powerful, might try to interfere with the country’s immigration or tariff policies, or might limit U.S. control of the Western Hemisphere. After the election of 1918, Republicans controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lodge attached a number of reservations to the Treaty of Versailles designed to make sure that the League of Nations would not have the power to interfere with American foreign or domestic policy. Wilson refused to accept the reservations. Wilson appealed to the American public to throw their support behind the Treaty of Versailles without reservations, and he traveled widely throughout the country campaigning for its ratification. He suffered a debilitating stroke in the process. In the end, Wilson would not agree to the reservations, and Lodge and the Republicans would not agree to withdraw them. On March 19, 1920, the Senate failed to approve the treaty by seven votes. His health destroyed along with his vision of a world order, Wilson left the White House at the end of his term in 1921 and died on February 3, 1924. References Thomas A. Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace, 1944. N. Gordon Levin Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics, 1968. Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Diplomat, 1957.

W I L S O N – G O R M A N TA R I F F O F 1 8 9 4 During the presidential campaign of 1892, Grover Cleveland* and the Democrats called for tariff reform in protest against the high Republican tariffs characteristic of the post–Civil War* era. When Cleveland defeated President Benjamin Harrison, people expected to see tariff reform, and those expectations were realized with the passage of the Wilson–Gorman Tariff of 1894. Sponsored by Congressman William L. Wilson and Senator Arthur P. Gorman, the tariff reduced general tariff levels by nearly 40 percent and placed wool, copper, and lumber on the free list. President Cleveland, disappointed that the legislation had not gone further, refused to sign the bill, letting it become law without his signature. The Wilson–Gorman Tariff was the first major revision of American tariff policy since the Civil War, but

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it was short-lived. When William McKinley* and the Republicans were returned to power in the election of 1896*, the subsequent Dingley Tariff* of 1897 raised the levels to new highs. Reference John Dobson, Two Centuries of Tariffs, 1977.

WISCONSIN IDEA The term “Wisconsin Idea” has been used to describe the rise of the progressive* reform movement at the state level in the 1890s and early 1900s. The Wisconsin Idea revolved around beliefs in overcoming political corruption by returning government to the electorate and then using legislative power, combined with administrative and scientific expertise, to promote good government and fairness. The leading political figure in the movement was Governor Robert La Follette* of Wisconsin, and the leading intellectuals behind the movement were people like Richard Ely* and John R. Commons* of the University of Wisconsin. Together, they attacked the connection between organized wealth and machine politics. Wisconsin led the way in establishing a state income tax, a railroad commission, and direct primary elections. Reference David P. Thelen, The New Citizenship: Origins of Progressivism in Wisconsin, 1885–1900, 1972.

WOMEN’S TRADE UNION LEAGUE In 1903, two Boston social workers, William English Walling and Mary O’Sullivan, established the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL). Mary Morton Kehew became its first president. Its purpose was to organize women workers and to promote women’s issues. When the New York City garment workers went on strike in 1909–1910, the league joined them and gained national attention. The league then began a national campaign for the eight-hour day, the end of night work for women, the prohibition of child labor, the minimum wage, and improved working conditions for women. The WTUL set its sights on organizing women in the southern textile mills, but it was too formidable of a task. The idea of organizing women workers also took a blow in the 1940s when many women working in defense industries joined the mainline labor unions. By 1947, the WTUL was dead. Reference Allen Davis, “The WTUL: Origins and Organization,” Labor History (winter 1964).

WOOD, ROBERT ELKINGTON Robert Wood was born on June 13, 1879, in Kansas City, Missouri. Wood graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1900 and then served with the army in the Panama Canal Zone* from 1905 to 1915. He left the army in 1915, only to be recalled to service in 1917 to serve with the 42nd “Rainbow” Division in France. By 1918, he had earned the rank of brigadier general and was serving

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as quartermaster general of the U.S. Army. When he left the army in 1919, Wood became a manager with Montgomery Ward* and Company. Immediately recognizing the change that the automobile* was bringing to American shopping patterns, Wood tried to convince Montgomery Ward executives to follow the lead of J. C. Penney* and Company in building retail chain stores in small towns to supplement the mail order business. When they refused, he quit and joined Sears, Roebuck and Company* in 1924. Julius Rosenwald* named him president of Sears in 1928. With farm income and mail order volume way down, Wood gave Sears the same advice that he had given Montgomery Ward—to move aggressively into chain store retailing, especially in large cities. The company followed his advice and had built more than 500 such stores by 1939. Gross sales that year totaled more than $575 million. In 1931, Wood also got Sears into the insurance business by establishing the Allstate Insurance Company to handle automobile insurance. Under Wood’s leadership, Sears became the largest retailing business in the world. Although a Republican, Wood supported Franklin D. Roosevelt* and much of the New Deal* during the 1930s. He was a member of the America First Committee opposing American involvement in World War II*. After the war, Wood was an active anticommunist and helped to finance Senator Joseph McCarthy. Wood retired in 1954 and died on November 6, 1969. References Leon Harris, Merchant Princes, 1979. Tom Mahoney and Leonard Sloan, The Great Merchants, 1955. New York Times, November 7, 1969. Gordon L. Weil, Sears, Roebuck, U.S.A., 1977.

W O O D R U F F, R O B E R T W I N S H I P Robert Woodruff was born on December 6, 1889, in Columbus, Georgia. His father was a prominent Atlanta businessman who, along with several other investors, purchased the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in 1919. Woodruff attended Emory University from 1908 to 1910 but then began a career as a salesman for a variety of firms. In 1919, he was named vice president and in 1923 general manager of the White Motor Company in Cleveland. When Coca-Cola sales dropped from 1920 to 1923, the board of directors invited Woodruff to assume the presidency of the company. Almost immediately, he shelved all plans to acquire competing bottling companies and soft drink establishments, instead focusing on a brilliant sales campaign to market Coca-Cola. Using the phrase “The pause that refreshes,” the company made Coca-Cola* as American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie. Profits soared from $4.5 million in 1923 to $13 million in 1930, and Coca-Cola became the most widely recognized consumer product in the country. When he resigned as president in 1939, profits had climbed to over $38 million, in spite of the Great Depression.” After World War II, Woodruff, as chairman of the board, led Coca-Cola into the international market, making it a global consumer product, with 1985 sales totaling more than $4 billion. Woodruff retired as chairman of the board in 1955. Reference E. J. Kahn, The Big Drink, 1959.

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W O O D WA R D , E L L E N S U L L I VA N Born in Oxford, Mississippi, on July 11, 1887, Ellen Sullivan Woodward had a good background for the work she eventually performed during the New Deal* and after. Her father served in the U.S. House and Senate from 1897 through 1901, giving her an early taste of life in Washington. Her husband was also involved in politics, and she directed his successful campaign for the Mississippi state legislature. When he died suddenly in 1925, she succeeded him in the 1926 session, decisively defeating her male opponent. She declined to run again, however, and instead took a position with the state board of development, becoming its executive director in 1929. She worked for the election of Alfred E. Smith* in 1928 and for Franklin D. Roosevelt* in 1932. This activity brought her to the attention of Molly Dewson*, who recommended her to Harry L. Hopkins* when he sought a director of women’s work programs under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration* (FERA) and later the Works Progress Administration* (WPA). In this post, she supervised direct and work relief programs for nearly 500,000 women. Most of the programs promoted traditional kinds of jobs for women, especially sewing and canning projects and public health services. In 1936, her role expanded to include cultural projects for out-of-work artists as part of the Women’s and Professional (nonconstruction) Division of WPA. Although in some ways a traditionalist, she work hard to assure women a fair share of work relief jobs (proportional to their representation on the unemployment rolls) and equal pay for equal work*. In 1938, she left the WPA to take one of the three positions on the Social Security* Board, where she concentrated on programs for women and children. During World War II*, she focused on new job opportunities for women, extension of unemployment insurance to women, and women’s participation in postwar policymaking. From 1943 to 1946, she served on the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman* appointed her director of the Office of Inter-Agency and International Relations of the Federal Security Administration, from which she continued participating in the activities of the United Nations. She retired from government service in 1954 and died in Washington on September 23, 1970. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Martha H. Swain, “Ellen Sullivan Woodward,” in Edward T. James, Janet Wilson James, and Paul S. Boyer, eds., Notable American Women, 1971.

WORK RELIEF The concept of work relief has been around at least since the time of the New Poor Law in Britain (1834). Basically, it ties public relief for the unemployed to the performance of work for whatever employer the relief agency may specify. In Britain,

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this meant that families on relief went into the workhouse and were hired out to local employers to defray the cost of their upkeep. The harsh conditions in the workhouses were intended to make this form of relief “less eligible” (less attractive) than trying to survive without public assistance and hence to minimize the use of public welfare. In the United States, the New Deal* cast work relief in a more positive light, perhaps because such a large proportion of the population during the Great Depression* needed some form of public assistance. Franklin D. Roosevelt* and many of his advisers saw work relief as a means by which the unemployed could perform useful public service, support themselves and their families, and maintain their skills and self-respect. Whenever possible, New Dealers preferred to offer work relief rather than direct relief (“the dole”), although “mothers’ pensions,” as the aid for families with dependent children* (AFDC) provisions of the Social Security Act* were originally called, in effect forced some women into accepting direct relief. Agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps* (CCC), the Civil Works Administration* (CWA), the Works Progress Administration* (WPA), and the National Youth Administration* (NYA) all reflected, at least partially, the New Deal’s commitment to work relief. Republican administrations in the 1970s and 1980s revived the concept under the name of “workfare*.” Seeing welfare policies themselves as a cause of unemployment and other social ills, proponents of workfare argued that tying work to public assistance would ensure that public money went only to those who deserved it and had earned it. In this, they seemed to hark back to the British origins of work relief, separating the deserving poor from the undeserving. In spite of some initiatives in this direction, direct relief, in many different forms, now predominates over work relief. References Arthur Burns and Edward A. Williams, Federal Work, Security, and Relief Programs, 1971. Betty Reid Mandell, ed., Welfare in America, 1975.

W O R K E R S ’ C O M P E N S AT I O N Workers’ compensation is a type of insurance, typically provided through public or private means, proving wage replacement and medical benefits to employees who were injured at work. Typically, this insurance does not allow the employee to sue his employer. Federal and state legislation pertaining to workers’ compensation typically allow for these types of regulations to apply only to certain professions. These laws were initiated at the state level in the nineteenth century and were expanded significantly in the twentieth century with the growth of unions and a more proactive federal government in ensuring worker’s rights. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Peter M. Lencsis, Workers Compensation: A Reference and Guide, 1998.

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W O R K E R S ’ E D U C AT I O N Workers’ education is a form of adult education designed to teach students with little formal schooling to think about their economic, social, and political roles. Its goal is to involve workers as citizens in the life and government of their communities. The first school of workers’ education was founded in 1921 at Bryn Mawr College by Hilda Worthington Smith and M. Carey Thomas, the president of Bryn Mawr; there women workers from the Philadelphia area studied for brief sessions during the summers. The school emphasized self-government and in this way resembled the mainstream progressive education of its time. The curriculum, however, included labor history, employer–employee relations in industry, the history of cooperatives, ethics in local politics, and the impact of government policy and technology on wage levels and the cost of living. Harry L. Hopkins* named Smith to be Director of Workers’ Education under the Federal Emergency Relief Administration* (FERA). In this capacity, she introduced classes into sewing rooms, construction projects, youth camps, and other unlikely venues. Many of these programs continued under the Works Progress Administration* (WPA) while others were gradually phased out. In addition to providing intellectual stimulation to workers, the program also offered out-of-work teachers a chance to work with eager learners. No longer promoted by the federal government, workers’ education still survives among alternative communities and remains an aspect of the cooperative movement. Susan Wladaver-Morgan Reference Joyce L. Kombluh, A New Deal for Workers’ Education: The Workers’ Service Program, 1933– 1942, 1987.

W O R K FA R E Workfare is a requirement, stipulated by the Welfare Reform Act of 1996*, that welfare recipients must work at least part-time or participate in community service in exchange for their entitlements. This program has been controversial considering the socioeconomic situation of the participants already in such programs and the hardships that these requirements impose on them, particularly on single women with children. References Jamie Peck, Workfare States, 2001. Nancy Ellen Rose, Workfare or Fair Work: Women, Welfare, and Government Work Programs, 1995.

W O R K M E N ’ S C O M P E N S AT I O N See WORKERS’ COMPENSATION.

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W O R K S P R O G R E S S A D M I N I S T R AT I O N The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was established under the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1935*, replacing the Federal Emergency Relief Administration* (FERA) and complementing the incipient Social Security* program. The FERA had operated through grants-in-aid to state relief administrations, to be expended as the states saw fit; the states came up with a wide variety of programs, in the form of both work relief and direct relief (the “dole”). The WPA, by contrast, had its own parallel state administrations, all dedicated to providing work relief. In this goal, it resembled the short-lived Civil Works Administration* (CWA). Work relief meant that people received money from the federal government in return for working, not as a dole to keep them from starvation. This approach was seen as allowing unemployed people to keep their dignity while they recovered their skills and self-confidence. Although some WPA projects were mocked as little more than “leaf-raking” or make-work, many left a lasting legacy in the form of schools, post offices, bridges, and other public structures. The Public Works Administration* (PWA) authorized projects and provided funds for building materials, and the WPA paid the workers’ wages. Other projects provided much-needed services through school health and nutrition programs, statistical surveys, adult education, and paralegal and medical activities. These reflected the WPA’s commitment to finding appropriate work for unemployed professionals as well as for blue-collar workers. The National Youth Administration* (NYA) was initially placed under the WPA, and its out-of-school work programs were sometimes known as the “junior WPA.” The WPA even took unemployed artists into account with its Federal Arts, Writers, Music, and Theatre projects; the last proved to be controversial, because they explicitly addressed social problems (for example, the “living newspaper” skits). Fears of communist influence in the arts programs undermined popular support for the WPA. What really finished the agency off, however, was the return of prosperity that accompanied the coming of war in Europe. As full employment approached, the need for work relief seemed over. The WPA was discontinued in 1943. Susan Wladaver-Morgan References Arthur Burns and Edward A. Williams, Federal Work, Security, and Relief Programs, 1971. Betty Reid Mandell, ed., Welfare in America, 1975.

W O R L D T R A D E C E N T E R A N D P E N TA G O N AT TA C K S The World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, also known as the September 11 attacks, were a series of coordinated attacks on the United States by Islamist terrorist organization al Qaeda that occurred on September 11, 2001. These attacks were aimed at the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Nineteen al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger airliners and redirected

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them to crash into buildings in massive suicide attacks. Only three of these attacks succeeded, with the fourth being resisted by passengers and resulting in a crash in rural Pennsylvania. There were no survivors in any of these airliners. Approximately 3,000 people died as a result of these attacks. The aftermath of the 9/11 attacks resulted in a slowing of the U.S. and world economy brought about by investor fears over potential future attacks. The United States retaliated by attacking Afghanistan, which served as a staging ground and refuge for al Qaeda, later that year. Reference Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, 2006.

W O R L D T R A D E O R G A N I Z AT I O N ( W T O ) The World Trade Organization (WTO) began operation on January 1, 1995, succeeding the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as the world’s most important overseer of international trade. The new body was designed to have the same stature as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It has 148 member countries. All 125 members of GATT were eligible to join upon signing the Final Act of the Uruguay Round of negotiations, which established new rules for international trade. The WTO establishes powers for negotiating reduced trade barriers and is empowered to monitor international trade agreements and resolve disputes among nations through its constituent bodies. It had a more formalized structure from the start, unlike GATT, which started out with a very ad hoc administration. The WTO will forge agreements over a broader range but will not permit some members to ignore some of its rules, as was the case with GATT. The WTO is available to all GATT’s contracting parties if they also agree to all the provisions of the Uruguay Round and submit schedules for providing market access. The organization addresses commercial activities that were beyond the reach of GATT, including intellectual property rights, investment, and services. Among the elements of the code of conduct the WTO developed is the goal of nondiscrimination in international trade. One of its functions is to help manage world trade by studying important trade issues and evaluating the health of the world economy. Language in the preamble of the agreement establishing the WTO recognizes the importance of environmental concerns*. Ironically, it was the perception that the WTO lacks concern regarding the environment and other issues that led to a disastrous meeting in Seattle, Washington in December 1999. In what was the most furious outbreak of activism in the United States since protests over civil rights and the Vietnam War, individuals from all over the world descended on downtown Seattle, charging the WTO with enabling worker exploitation, clear-cutting of rain forests, killing endangered species, and many other offenses. The demonstrations and marches at the Seattle meeting and the subsequent WTO meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, displayed the tensions present when countries attempt to create a global economy. The WTO’s main decision-making body is the Ministerial Conference; directly below it is the General Council. Decisions are made by consensus. The Secretariat

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of the WTO has about 600 staff members. In a 1999 agreement, the WTO established consecutive three-year terms for each of the two leading candidates for director general. The WTO is based in Geneva. References Konstantinos Adamantopoulos, ed., An Anatomy of the World Trade Organization, 1997. Bhagirath Lal Das, The World Trade Organisation: A Guide to the New Framework for International Trade, 1999. William Lovett, U.S. Trade Policy: History, Theory, and the WTO, 1999. World Trade Organization, www.wto.org.

W O R L D WA R I When the United States entered World War I in 1917, few people had any idea what effect the war would have on the economy and public policy. The war brought the federal government into the economy in ways that had been unimaginable only a few years before. Congress passed the Lever Act* of 1917 and the Overman Act of 1918, giving the president absolute authority over farm production, commodity prices, and the uses and prices of industrial raw materials. President Woodrow Wilson* created the U.S. Railroad Administration* and assumed virtually complete control over American railroads to guarantee the uninterrupted shipment of goods. The Food Administration* supervised rationing programs and helped augment American food production, while the Fuel Administration stimulated coal production by bringing marginal mines into service. To prevent debilitating labor strikes, Wilson created the National War Labor Board* to arbitrate management– labor problems, and his War Labor Policies Board guaranteed labor’s right to bargain collectively and set minimum wages and maximum hours. The War Industries Board* was given broad authority over industrial prices, allocation of raw materials, and production priorities in order to guarantee sufficient war production and to meet domestic economic needs. The working relationship between the federal government and the private sector, which would later come to characterize much of the American political economy, had its beginnings during World War I. World War I was also enormously profitable to the United States. Protected from the physical ravages of war by the Atlantic Ocean, the American economy boomed from 1914 to 1918. The U.S. economy became the largest in the world in terms of gross national product (GNP), and the financial center of the world shifted from London to Wall Street*. Reference Daniel R. Beaver, Newton D. Baker and the American War Effort, 1917–1919, 1966.

W O R L D WA R I I World War II had a dramatic effect on the American economy, not only in terms of its size, but also in terms of the role the federal government played in directing the course of the political economy. From 1941 to 1945, federal spending totaled

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more than $321 billion, twice as much as all federal spending from 1789 to 1941. Also, the gross national product (GNP) grew by more than 75 percent from 1941 to 1945. In a matter of only a few years, the federal government had become the leading sector of the U.S. economy. The outbreak of the war and the demands of the allied powers for huge war production gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt* no choice but to use almost dictatorial federal authority to manage the economy. On April 18, 1942, he established the War Manpower Commission under the leadership of Paul V. McNutt to see to it that priorities were both established and enforced on the utilization of human resources during the war. The War Manpower Commission took control of the Selective Service (the draft) and the U.S. Employment Commission. The president also directed that until the war was over, the normal work week would be forty-eight hours. Taking a cue from the experience of Woodrow Wilson* during World War I*, Roosevelt established the War Production Board*, under the chairmanship of Donald M. Nelson, to guarantee the efficient mobilization of production resources and their efficient distribution. To assist in that process, the president created the Board of Economic Warfare to control the use of critical and strategic materials; the Defense Plants Corporation* to finance factory production; the Smaller War Plants Corporation to finance smaller-scale facilities; the Rubber Reserve Company* to purchase raw rubber on world markets and to develop a synthetic rubber program; the Metals Reserve Company* to purchase strategic metals; the U.S. Commercial Company* to keep strategic materials out of the hands of the Axis Powers; the Petroleum Administrator to control oil supplies; and the Solid Fuels Administrator to control the production and use of coal. Other federal agencies to assist in the war production process included the Office of Economic Stabilization, the Office of War Mobilization, the Office of Defense Transportation, and the War Shipping Administration. In addition to guaranteeing the efficient mobilization and distribution of productive resources, the government was extremely concerned about the possibility of crippling labor strikes during the war. At the same time, the federal government did not want to outlaw strikes altogether and then leave workers subject to the whims of management. President Roosevelt set up and War Labor Board in January 1942. The board established guidelines for wages, hours, working conditions, and collective bargaining rights; with such federal protection, union membership in the United States expanded rapidly to 15 million people. The War Labor Board decided that wage increases during the war would be tied to the cost of living. The board first implemented that decision in 1943 when the 180,000 workers of the Bethlehem, Inland, and Republic steel companies—so-called Little Steel—asked for a pay increase of a dollar a day and were instead given a 15 percent raise, which the War Labor Board determined was the increase in the cost of living from January 1, 1941, to May, 1, 1942. This became known as the “Little Steel” Formula. Finally, to prevent destructive labor strikes, Congress passed the Smith–Connally Act (War Labor Disputes Act) of 1943. Passed over Franklin D. Roosevelt’s* veto, the legislation authorized the president to seize control of any industry producing

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war materials, forbade labor strikes in such seized industries, and increased the authority of the War Labor Board to arbitrate labor–management disputes. The massive federal spending and shortages of consumer goods inevitably led to inflation during the early years of the war. On January 30, 1942, the Emergency Price Control Act went into effect, establishing the Office of Price Administration* to fix prices (except on farm products) and to control rents in areas where defense needs were creating housing shortages. Leon Henderson was appointed to head the agency. The rationing of tires had already started before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and during the rest of the war a number of other products—sugar, rubber, butter, coffee, gasoline, meat, cheese, processed foods, and shoes—were added to the rationing program. The World War II government programs proved to be an extraordinary success. Although there were some labor strikes during the war, the time lost constituted only a tenth of 1 percent of total working time. The American economy produced an enormous volume of goods during the war—275,000 military aircraft, 75,000 tanks, 650,000 pieces of artillery, 55,239,000 tons of merchant shipping, and more than 1.5 million tons of synthetic rubber. General prices increased only 31 percent during the four years of the war, compared to more than 62 percent during the less than two years of World War I. References Bruce Catton, The War Lords of Washington, 1949. Lester V. Chandler, Inflation in the United States, 1940–1948, 1951. Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945, 1972.

W R I G L E Y, W I L L I A M , J R . William Wrigley Jr., was born on September 30, 1861, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Even though his father owned a relatively prosperous soap manufacturing company, Wrigley ran away from home at the age of ten to work for another soap factory; by age 13, he was traveling across the country by train selling soap. In 1891, with a $5,000 loan from his grandfather, Wrigley started his own soap company in Chicago and soon added the production of chewing gum. By the mid1890s, soap was dropped and he concentrated on selling chewing gum. In 1899, Wrigley added “Spearmint” gum to his line and advertised it widely, making it the best-selling gum in the United States by 1910. By the 1920s, the William Wrigley Jr. Company was selling gum in European, Asian, and Latin American markets as well. By 1932, sales had exceeded $75 million annually. Wrigley was an avid baseball fan and a loyal fan of the Chicago Cubs. From 1916 to 1921, he purchased a controlling interest in the franchise; Wrigley Field is named for him. He attended their games regularly until his death on January 26, 1932. References Paul M. Angle, Philip K. Wrigley, 1975. New York Times, January 27, 1932.

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Y YA H O O ! Yahoo! Inc., is a U.S.-based multinational* Internet* corporation with its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. Entrepreneurs Jerry Yang and David Filo founded it in 1994 as Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web. It was later incorporated on March 1, 1995. Since then, it has developed popular products, including its search engine, Yahoo! Search; its email service, Yahoo! Mail; its Internet directory, Yahoo! Directory; and other popular features and products showcased on its site. It is considered one of the most popular sites visited in the United States. Despite the emergence of Google*, Yahoo! has remained competitive. Reference David A. Kaplan, The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams, 1999.

YA Z O O L A N D F R A U D S See FLETCHER v. PECK. YELLEN, JANET LOUISE Janet Louise Yellen is a U.S. economist, best known for serving as the chair of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System since February 2014. Born on August 13, 1946, in Brooklyn, New York, Yellen graduated from Fort Hamilton High School in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. Yellen graduated from Pembroke College (now part of Brown University) in 1967 with a degree in economics. She went on to attain a PhD in economics from Yale University in 1971. From 1971 to 1976, Yellen was an assistant professor of economics at Harvard University. She was later a lecturer at The London School of Economics from 1978 to 1980. She also became an economist with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1977 to 1978. Since 1980, she began working at the Haas School at University of California, Berkeley, teaching microeconomics to undergraduate and graduate students. From 1997 to 1999, Yellen was chair of President Bill Clinton’s* Council of Economic Advisers. She also served as a member of the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors from 1994 to 1997. From 2004 to 2010, Yellen was president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. During this time, she voiced her concerns over the Fed’s monetary policy and its relationship to the housing bubble. However, she did little to move against such policies and in fact argued against intervening.

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In April 2010, President Barack Obama* nominated Yellen for vice-chair of the Federal Reserve System. In July, the Senate Banking Committee voted 17–6 to confirm her in office. On October 9, 2013, Yellen was nominated to replace Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve. On December 20, 2013, the U.S. Senate voted 59–34 for cloture on her nomination. By January 6, 2014, she was confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve by a vote of 56–26. Yellen is a Keynesian economist, supportive of federal intervention in the economy. Reference Annie Lowrey, “Senate Confirms Yellen as Fed Chairwoman,” New York Times, January 6, 2014.

Y E L L O W- D O G C O N T R A C T The term “yellow-dog contract” has been used by labor advocates throughout the twentieth century to describe the management practice of requiring prospective employees to promise not to join a labor union as a precondition of employment. Such contracts were effectively outlawed nationwide by Section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act* (NIRA) of 1933, which guaranteed labor’s rights of collective bargaining. This provision was strengthened by the Fair Labor Standards Act* of 1935, which defined “yellow-dog contracts” as an unfair labor practice. Reference Adrian Paradis, Labor Almanac, 1983.

YOUNG, OWEN D. Owen D. Young was born on October 27, 1874, in Van Hornesville, New York. He graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1894 and earned a law degree at Boston University in 1896. He practiced law in Boston, specializing in public utility negotiations. In 1912 Young went to work for General Electric* and became general counsel in 1913. In 1919, working closely with Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt*, Young established the Radio Corporation of America to take control of all radio patents owned by General Electric, American Telephone and Telegraph*, General Motors*, United Fruit Company*, and Westinghouse*. In 1922 he became chairman of the board of General Electric, while holding the same post for RCA. Young retired from RCA in 1929 and from GE in 1939. During the 1920s, Owen Young also participated in public affairs. An active Democrat, he nevertheless served on President Warren G. Harding’s Conference on Unemployment as well as on the international committee to evaluate German reparations*. The Dawes Plan* emerged from those conferences in 1924, and in 1928 Young developed his own program for reduction of German reparations, which the allied powers accepted. The Young Plan* remained in effect until the Hoover Moratorium* in 1931 and the Lausanne Conference* of 1932. Owen D. Young died on July 11, 1962.

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References New York Times, July 12, 1962. Ida M. Tarbell, Owen D. Young, 1932.

YOUNG PLAN The Young Plan, which devised a reduction in the reparations* imposed on Germany after World War I, was the work of Owen D. Young, a prominent New York banker. In 1924, the Dawes Plan* had reduced the original payments, but even the lesser amount proved too expensive for Germany. The whole reparations burden had ruined the German economy and destabilized the European economy in general. As a result of the Young Plan, which was developed in 1929 and implemented in 1930, Germany had to make thirty-seven payments of £100 million sterling and then twenty-two payments equaling the total amount of debts that the European nations owed to the United States. As the world slipped into the Great Depression* after 1929, even those reduced payments were impossible for Germany. The Hoover Moratorium* of 1931 suspended the reparations payments, and at the Lausanne Conference* of 1932, they were essentially canceled. Reference Joseph S. Davis, The World Between the Wars, 1919–1939: An Economist’s View, 1975.

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Z ZYNGA Zynga is a provider of social media* games, known primarily for its popular game Farmville. Zynga was founded in 2007 by Mark Pincus in San Francisco, California. Zynga has developed games that work on the Apple* iOS and Android platforms, making them accessible to smartphone* users. Through its relationship with Facebook*, Zynga’s games have attained a wide market of users, particularly Farmville, which reached an estimated 10 million users within six weeks of its release in 2009. Zynga began its sale of shares on NASDAQ* on December 16, 2011, under the ticker name ZNGA. Despite its success, questions about its profitability remain. Reference Sarah Machaiewski, Mark Pincus and Zynga, 2014.

Chronology of U.S. Economic History

1492 Columbus discovers the New World. 1498 John Cabot explores the northern coast of North America. 1509 Sebastian Cabot claims to have discovered Hudson Bay. 1513 Juan Ponce de Leon reaches Florida, and Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean. 1519 Ferdinand Magellan begins the voyage that will ultimately circumnavigate the globe. 1521 Juan Ponce de Leon unsuccessfully attempts to found a colony in Florida. 1526 Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon begins his unsuccessful attempt to establish a colony in Florida. 1527 Panfilo de Narvaez lands at Tampa Bay, Florida. 1534 Jacques Cartier begins his exploration of the coast of Canada. 1539 Hernando de Soto begins his exploration of the Gulf Coast, and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado begins his exploration of the American Southwest. 1542 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo explores the coast of California. 1559 Don Tristan de Luna y Arellano unsuccessfully attempts to establish a colony in Florida. 1562 France establishes the short-lived colony of Port Royal in South Carolina. 1565 Pedro Menendez de Aviles establishes a permanent settlement at St. Augustine, Florida. 1576 Martin Frobisher begins his exploration voyage to the northern coast of North America. 1583 Humphrey Gilbert launches an ill-fated attempt to establish a colony on Newfoundland. 1585 Walter Raleigh establishes the Roanoke colony on Roanoke Island, Virginia.

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1603 Samuel de Champlain begins his exploration of the St. Lawrence River. 1607 The London Company establishes a settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. 1608 Henry Hudson begins his exploration of the northern coast of North America, and Samuel de Champlain founds the French colony of Quebec. 1609 Spain establishes a settlement at Santa Fe, New Mexico. 1619 African slaves are brought to Virginia. 1620 The Plymouth Company finances the Plymouth settlement of Pilgrims in Massachusetts. 1623 The Council of New England provides land grants for the colonization of New Hampshire. 1624 The Dorchester Company establishes a colony near Gloucester, Massachusetts, and the Dutch establish their first permanent settlement at New Netherland (New York). 1630 The Massachusetts Bay Company establishes a settlement at Boston, Massachusetts, and brings its charter to the New World. 1634 George Calvert establishes the Maryland colony for persecuted Roman Catholics. 1635 Roger Williams is banished from Massachusetts Bay and establishes the Rhode Island colony at Providence. 1636 Thomas Hooker leads a settlement to Hartford, Connecticut. 1637 John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton establish the colony of New Haven, Connecticut, and the New Sweden Company establishes the New Sweden colony in New Jersey. 1653 Settlers from Virginia begin moving to the Albemarle region of North Carolina. 1660 The English Parliament passes the first Navigation Act. The Cape Fear Company unsuccessfully attempts a settlement at Cape Fear in the Carolinas. 1663 Parliament passes a Navigation Act. 1664 The English conquer New Netherland from the Dutch and establish the New York colony. John Berkeley and George Carteret receive proprietary land grants in New Jersey, which become known as East and West Jersey. Settlers from New England and Barbados establish the Carolina colony, which evolves into North and South Carolina. 1673 Parliament passes a Navigation Act.

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1675 King Philip’s (Metacomet’s) War begins in New England. 1676 Bacon’s Rebellion takes place in Virginia. 1682 William Penn establishes the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania. 1684 The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is abrogated, and the area becomes a royal colony. 1689 King William’s War begins in Europe. 1690 Commercial whalers begin large-scale operations out of Nantucket, Massachusetts. 1696 Parliament passes a Navigation Act. 1697 England establishes the vice-admiralty courts. 1699 Parliament passes the Woolens Act. 1702 Queen Anne’s War begins in Europe. 1705 Parliament establishes the list of Enumerated Articles. 1713 The Treaty of Utrecht is signed. 1732 English settlers establish the Georgia colony. Parliament passes the Hat Act. The first stagecoach line is established between Burlington and Amboy, New Jersey. 1733 Parliament passes the Molasses Act. 1739 The War of Jenkins’s Ear begins in Europe. 1740 King George’s War begins in Europe. 1750 Jacob Yoder invents the flatboat. Parliament passes the Iron Act. 1751 Sugar cane is introduced into Louisiana. 1754 The French and Indian War begins, and American colonists establish the Albany Congress. 1763 The Treaty of Paris ends the French and Indian War, and Canada becomes a British colony. Parliament issues the Proclamation of 1763, limiting colonial expansion westward. 1764 James Davenport invents spinning and carding machinery. Parliament passes the Sugar and Currency Acts. 1765 Parliament passes the Quartering Act and the hated Stamp Act; the colonial trade boycott of English goods begins.

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1766 Parliament repeals the Stamp Act by passing the Declaratory Act. 1767 Parliament passes the Townshend Acts, and the colonists renew the trade boycott. 1770 Parliament repeals all of the Townshend duties except the one on tea. The Boston Massacre occurs. 1773 Parliament passes the Tea Act, and the Boston Tea Party takes place. 1774 Parliament passes the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts and the Quebec Act. The First Continental Congress convenes. 1775 The Second Continental Congress convenes. Daniel Boone begins blazing the Wilderness Road. War between England and America breaks out at Lexington and Concord. 1776 American Independence is declared. 1781 The Articles of Confederation government are ratified. Robert Morris becomes superintendent of finance, and the Bank of North America is established. 1783 John Stevens invents the multitubular steam boiler. The Treaty of Paris ends the American Revolution. 1784 The American economy sinks into a depression. 1785 Congress passes the Land Ordinance to survey the western territory. 1786 John Fitch invents the steamboat. Shays’s Rebellion erupts in western Massachusetts. The Annapolis Convention meets to deal with problems of interstate commerce. 1787 The first cotton factory is established in New England, and John Evans invents the noncondensing steam engine. The Constitutional Convention meets in Philadelphia, and Congress passes the Northwest Ordinance. 1788 The U.S. Constitution is ratified and goes into effect. 1789 Congress passes the Tariff of 1789 and the Federal Judiciary Act setting up the federal court system. 1790 Samuel Slater reproduces the Arkwright textile machinery. Alexander Hamilton presents his Report on the Public Credit. 1791 Alexander Hamilton presents his Report on Manufactures. The Bank of the United States is established. Congress passes the Whiskey Tax. William Sprague builds the first carpet factory. 1792 The New York Stock Exchange is established.

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1793 Eli Whitney invents the cotton gin. 1794 The first major American turnpike connects Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the Whiskey Rebellion erupts in western Pennsylvania. Congress passes the Neutrality Act in response to the French Revolution. 1795 The Treaty of San Lorenzo (Pinckney’s Treaty) is ratified. 1796 Jay’s Treaty is ratified, and Congress passes a Land Act. 1798 Congress passes the Alien and Sedition Acts, in response to which the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions are passed. David Wilkinson invents the screw-threading machine. 1800 Congress passes the first federal bankruptcy law and a Land (Harrison) Act. 1803 The Jefferson administration completes the Louisiana Purchase; the Lewis and Clark expedition begins to explore the new territory. 1804 Congress passes a Land Act. 1805 Zebulon Pike begins his exploration of the American West. British admiralty court renders the Essex decision. 1806 Congress passes the Non-Importation Act. 1807 Congress passes the Embargo Act. Robert Fulton takes his steamboat up the Hudson River. 1808 Congress passes two additional Embargo Acts. Importation of slaves into the United States is prohibited, as stipulated in the Constitution. 1809 Congress passes the Enforcement Act. 1810 Congress passes Macon’s Bill No.2. The United States annexes West Florida. The Supreme Court decides Fletcher v. Peck case. 1811 The Bank of the United States is not rechartered, but construction of the Cumberland Road begins. 1812 The War of 1812 begins. 1814 Francis Lowell builds the first U.S. factory to manufacture cloth from raw cotton by machine. The Hartford Convention takes place. 1815 Andrew Jackson wins a spectacular victory at New Orleans and the Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812. 1816 Congress establishes the Second Bank of the United States and passes a new tariff.

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1817 Thomas Gilpin first manufactures machine-made paper, and construction of the Erie Canal begins. 1818 Monthly trans-Atlantic ship crossings begin between New York City and Liverpool. Congress passes the Tariff of 1818. 1819 The Panic of 1819 occurs. The United States purchases East Florida from Spain. The Supreme Court decides Dartmouth College v. Woodward and M’Culloch v. Maryland. Jethrow Wood invents the cast-iron, three-piece plow. 1820

Congress passes a Land Act and agrees to the Missouri Compromise.

1822

President James Monroe vetoes the Cumberland Road Bill.

1823

The United States adopts the Monroe Doctrine.

1824

Congress passes the Tariff of 1824. The Supreme Court decides Gibbons v. Ogden. Henry Clay proposes the “American System.”

1825 The Erie Canal begins operation. 1826 John Stevens runs the first railway steam locomotive on a track. 1827 The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is chartered. 1828 Congress passes the “Tariff of Abominations.” The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal begins operation. 1829 The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal opens. 1830 Robert Stevens invents the T-rail, and Peter Cooper builds the first American locomotive. The Webster–Hayne debate takes place. President Andrew Jackson vetoes the Maysville Road Bill. Congress passes the Indian Removal Act and the Pre-Emption Act. 1831 Thomas Bailey perfects the power knitting machine, and Cyrus McCormick invents the reaper. 1832 The Ohio and Erie Canal opens. Congress passes the Tariff of 1832. South Carolina passes the Nullification Ordinance against it, and President Andrew Jackson responds by issuing the Force Bill. He also vetoes the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States. 1833 President Andrew Jackson withdraws federal funds from the Second Bank of the United States. Congress passes a Compromise Tariff. 1836 President Andrew Jackson issues the Specie Circular. Texas wins its independence from Mexico. 1837 The Panic of 1837 occurs. John Deere builds the first steel plow in the United States.

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1839 Charles Goodyear successfully vulcanizes rubber. 1840 The first regular trans-Atlantic steamer service is inaugurated between New York and Liverpool. Congress passes the Independent Treasury Act, and the federal government mandates a ten-hour workday for all employees working on public works projects. 1841 Congress repeals the Independent Treasury Act of 1840, but passes a new federal bankruptcy law and the Distribution Pre-Emption Act. 1842 The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York is chartered. Congress passes the Tariff of 1842, and the Senate ratifies the Webster–Ashburton Treaty. 1843 Charles Thurber invents the typewriter. 1844 Samuel Morse invents the telegraph. 1845 In a joint resolution of Congress, the United States annexes Texas. 1846 Richard Hoe invents the rotary printing press, and Elias Howe invents the sewing machine. Congress passes the Walker Tariff. The United States acquires Oregon in the Oregon Treaty. Congress passes the Independent Treasury Act again. The United States war with Mexico begins. 1848 The Treaty of Guadelupe–Hidalgo ends the Mexican War. The first women’s rights convention meets at Seneca Falls, New York, and New York passes the first married women’s property law in the country. Gold is discovered in California. 1850 The Compromise of 1850 deals with the territory won from Mexico, and the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty is ratified. 1851 William Kelly invents the process for converting pig iron into steel. The Illinois Central Railroad, the first land-grant railroad, is chartered. 1853 The United States completes the Gadsden Purchase with Mexico. 1854 Matthew C. Perry visits Japan. Congress passes the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Graduation Act. The Senate ratifies the Canadian Reciprocity Treaty. The Ostend Manifesto expresses the proslavery expansionist position. 1856 The Western Union telegraph service is founded. Civil war erupts in Kansas. 1857 Congress passes the Tariff of 1857. The Supreme Court issues the Dred Scott decision. The Panic of 1857 occurs. 1858 Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate the question of slavery in the territories. 1860 Abraham Lincoln is elected, and the southern states begin to secede from the Union. The Pony Express is established.

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1861 The Civil War begins. Congress passes the Morrill Tariff. 1862 Congress passes the Homestead Act, the Morrill Act, and the Pacific Railway Act. 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, and Congress passes the National Banking Act. The Travelers Insurance Company is founded. 1864 Congress passes another Pacific Railway Act and the Southern Homestead Act. 1865 The Civil War ends, and the Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery. The great Texas cattle drives to railroad terminals in Kansas and Nebraska begin. 1866 Congress passes the Freedmen’s Bureau Act and the Civil Rights Act. It also passes the Pacific Telegraph Act to finance construction of a transcontinental telegraph line. The transatlantic cable telegraph line is completed. The National Labor Union is established. 1867 Congress passes a new federal bankruptcy act. The Granger movement begins among farmers. The United States purchases Alaska from Russia. 1868 The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified. William Davis receives a patent for the refrigerator car. 1869 The Knights of Labor are established. Congress passes the Public Credit Act. The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads link up at Promontory Point, Utah, completing the first transcontinental line. The “Black Friday” panic occurs on Wall Street. 1870 The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company is founded. Armour and Company is incorporated, as is Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Congress passes the Tariff of 1870, and the Supreme Court decides the Legal Tender Case. 1872 Congress passes the Tariff of 1872. 1873 Congress passes the Coinage Act (“Crime of ’73”), the Timber Culture Act, and the Coal Lands Act. The Supreme Court decides the Slaughterhouse Cases. The Panic of 1873 occurs. 1875 The gold rush in the Black Hills of South Dakota begins. 1876 Thomas Edison invents the mimeograph machine, and Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone. 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes is elected president through the Compromise of 1877, effectively ending Reconstruction. Congress passes the Desert Land Act.

CHRono L o G Y oF U. s. eCo no M I C H Is toRY

Wage cuts lead to the massive Railroad Strike of 1877. The Supreme Court decides Munn v. Illinois. 1878 Congress passes the Bland–Allison Act, and the Greenback movement begins. Congress passes the Timber and Stone Act and the Timber Cutting Act. Thomas Edison invents the phonograph. 1879 Thomas Edison invents the incandescent light bulb. 1881 Thomas Edison constructs the first central electric power plant. 1882 Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act and creates the Tariff Commission. 1883 Congress passes the Tariff of 1883 and the Pendleton Act. 1884 Ottmar Mergenthaler patents the first linotype automatic typesetting machine. Farm protest movements emerge in the South and the West. 1885 The American Economic Association is established. George Eastman patents the first successful roll film for cameras. Congress passes the Contract Labor Act. 1886 The Whiskey Trust is formed. The Supreme Court decides the Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois case. The Haymarket Massacre occurs. The Supreme Court declares that corporations are protected as individuals by the Fourteenth Amendment. The American Federation of Labor is formed. 1887 Congress passes the Interstate Commerce Act and the Dawes General Allotment (Severalty) Act. 1890 The American Tobacco Company is formed. Congress passes the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and the McKinley Tariff. The People’s Party (Populists) is formed. The Supreme Court decides Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Company v. Minnesota. 1891 The American Sugar Refining Company is created. Congress passes the Forest Reserve Act and repeals the Pre-Emption Act. 1892 The General Electric Company is formed. The Homestead Strike occurs. 1893 The National Bimetallic League is formed. The Panic of 1893 occurs. The Duryea brothers build the first gasoline-powered automobile. Congress repeals the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. 1894 The Pullman Strike takes place, and President Grover Cleveland sends in troops to break the strike. Congress passes the Wilson–Gorman Tariff and the Carey Act. Jacob Coxey’s protest army marches on Washington, D.C., and William H. Harvey publishes Coin’s Financial School.

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1895 Ignatius Donnelly publishes The American People’s Money. The Supreme Court decides United States v. E. C. Knight Company and the Income Tax Cases. 1896 The Wright brothers first successfully fly an aircraft. The Klondike gold rush begins in Alaska. William McKinley and the Republicans win against a coalition of Democrats and Populists. 1897 Congress passes the Dingley Tariff, and the Supreme Court decides United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association. 1898 Adolph Busch builds the first diesel engine in the United States. Congress passes a new Federal Bankruptcy Act. The Spanish–American War takes place, and the subsequent Treaty of Paris makes America an imperial power. The Supreme Court decides Smyth v. Ames. 1899 The Supreme Court decides Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. United States. Secretary of State John Hay announces the Open Door Policy. 1900 Congress passes the Currency (Gold Standard) Act. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union is established. 1901 United States Steel Corporation is formed, as is the Northern Securities Company. Congress passes the Platt Amendment concerning Cuba. 1902 President Theodore Roosevelt arbitrates the anthracite coal strike. Congress passes the Newlands (Reclamation) Act. 1903 The Ford Motor Company is established. Congress establishes the Department of Labor and Commerce. It also passes the Elkins Act. Theodore Roosevelt acquires the right to build the Panama Canal. 1904 Supreme Court decides Northern Securities Company v. United States. Theodore Roosevelt issues the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. 1905 Supreme Court decides Swift & Company v. United States and Lochner v. New York. 1906 Congress passes the Hepburn Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Meat Inspection Act, and the Forest Homestead Act. 1907 The Panic of 1907 occurs. 1908 Congress passes the Aldrich–Vreeland Act. The Supreme Court decides Adair v. United States, Loewe v. Lawler, and Muller v. Oregon. The Model T Ford is introduced, and General Motors is founded. 1909 Congress passes the Payne–Aldrich Tariff and the Enlarged Homestead Act. President William Howard Taft launches the program of “Dollar Diplomacy.”

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1910 Congress passes the Mann–Elkins Act. Theodore Roosevelt gives his “New Nationalism” speech, and the Ballinger–Pinchot controversy erupts. 1911 The Supreme Court decides Standard Oil Company of New Jersey et al. v. United States and United States v. American Tobacco. 1912 Senator Henry Cabot Lodge issues the Lodge Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In the presidential election, the Republican vote is split between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft; Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected. 1913 The Supreme Court decides the Minnesota Rate Cases. Sixteenth Amendment is ratified, allowing a federal income tax; the Seventeenth Amendment is also ratified. Congress passes the Federal Reserve Act and the Underwood Tariff. The Pujo committee issues its report. 1914 War breaks out in Europe, but America remains neutral. Congress passes the Panama Tolls Act, the Smith–Lever Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the Clayton Antitrust Act. 1916 Congress passes the National Defense Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act, the Warehouse Act, the Shipping Act, the Stock-Raising Homestead Act, the Keating–Owen Act, and the Adamson Act. 1917 The United States declares war on Germany and Austria–Hungary. The Supreme Court decides Wilson v. New. The United States purchases the Virgin Islands from Denmark. Congress passes the Smith–Hughes Act, the Liberty Loan Act, the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act, the War Revenue Act, and the Trading with the Enemy Act. The U.S. Railroad Administration and the War Industries Board are created. 1918 The Supreme Court decides Hammer v. Dagenhart. Congress creates the War Finance Corporation and passes the Webb–Pomerene Act. The National War Labor Board is created. 1919

Congress passes the Volstead Act. The Seattle general strike heightens fear of radicals.

1920

Congress passes the Esch–Cummins (Transportation) Act, the Merchant Marine (Jones) Act, the Water Power Act, and the Mineral Leasing Act. Radio station KDKA begins broadcasting commercially.

1921

Congress passes the Emergency Tariff, the Budget and Accounting Act, the Packers and Stockyards Act, the Grain Futures Trading Act, and the Sheppard–Towner Act. The Supreme Court decides Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deering.

1922

Congress passes the Fordney–McCumber Tariff and the Cooperative Marketing (Capper–Volstead) Act.

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1923 The Supreme Court decides Adkins v. Children’s Hospital. Congress passes the Intermediate Credit Act. 1924 Congress passes the Adjusted Compensation Act and the National Origins Act. The Dawes Plan reorganizes the German debt. 1925 The Chrysler Corporation is established. Congress passes the Kelly Act. 1926 Congress passes the Air Commerce Act. 1927 President Calvin Coolidge vetoes the McNary–Haugen Bill. 1928 President Calvin Coolidge again vetoes the McNary–Haugen Bill. The Young Plan reorganizes the German debt. Congress passes the Merchant Marine (Jones–White) Act, the Flood Control Act, and the Boulder Canyon Project Act. 1929 Congress passes the Agricultural Marketing Act. The stock market crashes. 1930 Congress passes the Hawley–Smoot Tariff. 1931 President Herbert Hoover declares a moratorium on World War I war debts. 1932 Congress creates the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and passes the Glass–Steagall Act, the Federal Home Loan Bank Act, and the Norris– LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act. 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a bank holiday. The United States recognizes the Soviet Union. Congress passes the Emergency Banking Act, the Economy Act, the Federal Emergency Relief Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Securities Act, the Home Owners Refinancing Act, the Farm Credit Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act. Commodity Credit Corporation is organized. President Franklin D. Roosevelt begins experimenting with the “commodity dollar,” and the United States abandons the gold standard. Congress sets up the Tennessee Valley Authority. 1934 Congress passes the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, the Gold Reserve Act, the Johnson Debt Default Act, and the Farm Mortgage Refinancing Act. President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the Export–Import Bank. Congress passes the Jones–Connally Farm Relief Act, the Cotton Control (Bankhead) Act, the Jones–Costigan Sugar Act, and the Home Owners Loan Act. Senator Gerald P. Nye begins his investigation of the munitions industry and World War I. Congress passes the Municipal Bankruptcy Act, the Securities Exchange Act, the Corporate Bankruptcy Act, the Farm Mortgage Foreclosure Act, the Communications Act, and the Silver Purchase Act. Congress establishes the National Labor Relations Board. Congress passes the Railroad Retirement Act, the Crosser–Dill Railway Labor Act, the Federal Farm Bankruptcy (Frazier–Lemke) Act, the National Housing Act, and the Tobacco Control Act.

CHRono L o G Y oF U. s. eCo no M I C H Is toRY

1935 The Committee for Industrial Organization (later the Congress of Industrial Organizations) is established. The Supreme Court decides the Gold Cases and Schecher Poultry Corporation v. United States. Congress passes the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act and the Soil Conservation Act. President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the Resettlement Administration, the Rural Electrification Administration, the National Resources Committee, and the National Youth Administration. Congress passes the National Labor Relations (Wagner–Connery) Act, the Motor Carrier Act, the Banking Act, the Public Utility Holding Company (Wheeler–Rayburn) Act, the Farm Mortgage Moratorium (Frazier–Lemke) Act, the Wagner–Crosser Railroad Retirement Act, the Guffey–Snyder Bituminous Coal Stabilization Act, the Revenue (Wealth Tax) Act, the Social Security Act, and the Neutrality Act. 1936 The first “sit-down” strikes occur in the automobile industry. The Supreme Court decides United States v. Butler. Congress passes the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, the Federal Anti-Price Discrimination (Robinson–Patman) Act, the Revenue Act, the Merchant Marine Act, the Walsh–Healy Government Contracts Act, and the Neutrality Act. 1937 The Supreme Court decides West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish & NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. Congress passes the Guffey–Vinson Bituminous Coal Act, the Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenant Act, the Miller– Tydings Enabling Act, the Revenue Act, the National Housing (Wagner– Steagall) Act, and the Neutrality Acts. The recession of 1937–1938 begins. 1938 Congress passes the second Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Revenue Act. The Temporary National Economic Committee is established. Congress passes the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Food Stamp Plan goes into effect. Congress passes the Civil Aeronautics Act. 1939 Hitler and Stalin sign a nonaggression pact, and Germany invades Poland. In response, Britain and France declare war on Germany. World War II begins in Europe. Congress passes the Neutrality Act and the Reclamation Act. 1941 Japan launches a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the war. The Office of Production Management, the National Defense Mediation Board, and the Office of Price Administration are established. Congress passes the Lend–Lease Act. The Supreme Court decides United States v. Darby. 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the War Manpower Commission, the National War Labor Board, and the War Production Board. The Congress passes the Price Control Act, which establishes the Office of Price Administration. Office of War Mobilization is established.

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1943 Congress passes the Labor Disputes (Smith–Connally Anti-Strike) Act. 1944 The Bretton Woods and the Dumbarton Oaks conferences are convened. 1945 The war in Europe ends in May and in the Pacific in August, after the United States drops the first atomic devices on Japan. The nuclear age begins. 1946 President Harry Truman issues the Truman Doctrine and establishes the Office of Economic Stabilization. Congress passes the Employment Act of 1946. The Bureau of Land Management is created. ENIAC, the first electronic computer, begins operations. 1947 Secretary of State George C. Marshall announces the Marshall Plan, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is reached. Congress passes the Taft–Hartley Act. 1948 Congress passes the Anti-Inflation Act and the Water Pollution Control Act. 1950 The Korean War begins, and Congress passes the Defense Production Act. 1952 The Supreme Court decides Sawyer v. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company. Congress passes the McCarran–Walter Act. President Harry Truman seizes the steel mills. 1953

Congress passes the Submerged Lands Act.

1954

Congress passes the Atomic Energy Act, the Wiley–Dondoro Act authorizing construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Housing Act, and the Internal Revenue Code.

1955

The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge into the AFL-CIO.

1956

Congress passes the Highway Act.

1957

The Soviet Union launches the Sputnik satellite into space. The United States nationally televises the first videotaped program.

1958

Congress passes the Agriculture Act, the Labor Pension Reporting Act, and the National Defense Education Act (in response to Sputnik).

1959

Congress passes the Landrum–Griffin Act.

1961

President John F. Kennedy announces the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress.

1962

Congress passes the Trade Expansion Act.

1963

Congress passes the Clean Air Act.

CHRono L o G Y oF U. s. eCo no M I C H Is toRY

1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson declares “War on Poverty.” Congress passes the Tax Reduction Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Agricultural Act, and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which is soon used to justify committing U.S. troops in Vietnam. 1965 Congress establishes the Medicare program and passes the Water Quality Act, the Clean Air Act Amendments, and the Immigration and Nationality Act. 1966 Congress establishes the Department of Transportation and passes the Clean Waters Restoration Act. 1967 Congress passes the Air Quality Act. 1968 The United States negotiates a two-tiered gold price system. 1969 Congress passes the National Environmental Policy Act and the Truth-inLending Act. 1970 Congress passes the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the Water Quality Improvement Act, and the Clean Air Act. The Environmental Protection Agency is established. The Penn Central Railroad declares bankruptcy. 1971 Congress establishes AMTRAK. President Richard Nixon imposes wage and price controls. 1972 Congress passes the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments and the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act. The United States negotiates a huge grain sale to the Soviet Union. 1973 The United States withdraws from Vietnam. Construction begins on the Alaskan oil pipeline, and the Arab oil boycott begins. 1974 Congress passes the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and ends the ban on the private possession of gold. 1976 Congress passes the Toxic Substances Control Act. 1977 The Alaska pipeline begins operation. The American Agricultural Movement launches a farmers’ strike to protest low commodity prices. 1978 Congress passes the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Act and the Airline Deregulation Act. 1979 A nuclear accident occurs at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. Congress passes legislation to bail out the ailing Chrysler Corporation with guaranteed loans. 1980 Congress passes the Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, the Staggers Rail Act, the Motor Carrier Act, and the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act.

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1981 President Ronald Reagan fires air traffic controllers for refusing to end their strike. 1982 American Telephone & Telegraph divests itself, under court order, of its twenty-two Bell Telephone operating systems. 1984 Standard Oil Company of California takes control of Gulf Oil. 1985 Congress passes the Agriculture Act. 1987 The Dow Jones Industrial Average passes the 2,000 mark for the first time. The stock market crashes in October. 1989 Congress creates the Resolution Trust Corporation to deal with the banking and savings and loan crisis. 1991 The Dow Jones Industrial Average passes the 3,000 mark for the first time. American Telephone & Telegraph purchases NCR. 1994 The North American Free Trade Agreement, a free trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is enacted. Its main goal was to eliminate barriers to trade and investment between those three nations through the elimination of tariffs and the liberalization of export regulations. 2000 The dot-com bubble, a speculative bubble that began in 1997, bursts. The failure of multiple Internet-based companies, known collectively as “dotcoms,” led to the severe loss of assets by investors. 2001 The World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., are attacked by al Qaeda in the largest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The tragic events of September 11 and their aftermath lead to a weakening of U.S. markets and contribute to the instability of the global economy. The 2001 Enron scandal showed the limits of deregulation policies by showcasing the level of corruption companies were prone under lax government oversight. 2008 The collapse of the housing bubble triggers the Great Recession of 2008. The practice of granting “subprime” mortgages leads to the financial collapse of large banks, such as Lehman Brothers. President George W. Bush signs the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to bail out the ailing U.S. auto industry, then at the verge of collapse. 2009 President Barack Obama signs into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, providing $787 billion dollars in stimulus through government spending programs and tax cuts.

Selected Bibliography

Abrams, Richard M. Conservatism in a Progressive Era. 1964. Aitken, Hugh G. J., ed. The State and Economic Growth. 1959. Albion, Robert G. The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1870. 1939. Alperovitz, Gar. Rebuilding America. 1984. Atherton, Lewis E. The Pioneer Merchant in Mid-America. 1939. Atherton, Lewis E. The Southern Country Store, 1800–1860. 1949. Bailyn, Bernard. The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century. 1964. Baltzell, E. Digby. The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America. 1964. Banner, Lois. Women in Modern America. 1974. Baughman, James P., ed. The History of American Management. 1969. Baxter, William T. The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–1775. 1945. Benson, Lee. Merchants, Farmers and Railroads: Railroad Regulation and New York Politics, 1850–1887. 1955. Berkowitz, Edward, and Kim McQuaid. Creating the Welfare State: The Political Economy of Twentieth-Century Reform. 1980. Bernstein, Irving. The Lean Years. 1960. Bernstein, Irving. Turbulent Years. 1970. Bernstein, Michael. The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and Economic Change in America, 1929–1939. 1988. Blackford, Mansell G. The Politics of Business in California, 1890–1920. 1977. Blackford, Mansell G. A Portrait Cast in Steel: Buckeye International and Columbus, Ohio, 1881–1890. 1982. Blackford, Mansell G. The Rise of Modern Enterprise in Great Britain, the United States, and Japan. 1988. Blackford, Mansell G., and K. Austin Kerr. Business Enterprise in American History. 1986. Blassingame, John. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Ante-Bellum South. 1972. Blum, John Morton. V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II. 1976. Bogue, Allan G. From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Frontier in the Nineteenth Century. 1963. Brand, Donald R. Corporatism and the Rule of Law: A Study of the National Recovery Administration. 1988. Bruchey, Stuart. The Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607–1861: An Essay in Social Causation. 1965. Bruchey, Stuart, ed. The Colonial Merchant: Sources and Readings. 1966. Bruchey, Stuart, ed. Small Business in American Life. 1980. Calleo, David. The Imperious Economy. 1982. Carosso, Vincent. Investment Banking in America. 1970. Carter, Paul A. The Decline and Revival of the Social Gospel. 1954.

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Cawelti, John G. Apostles of the Self-Made Man: Changing Concepts of Success in America. 1965. Chafe, William H. The American Woman. 1972. Chandler, Alfred D. Jr. Giant Enterprise. 1954. Chandler, Alfred D. Strategy and Structure. 1962. Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. 1977. Chandler, Alfred D., ed. The Railroads: The Nation’s First Big Business. 1965. Chandler, Alfred D., Jr., and Stephen Salisbury. Pierre S. du Pont and the Making of the Modern Corporation. 1971. Cheit, Earl F., ed. The Business Establishment. 1964. Cipolla, Carlo. Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700. 1976. Cochran, Thomas C. Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action. 1953. Cochran, Thomas C. American Business System: A Historical Perspective, 1900–1955. 1955. Cochran, Thomas C. Business in American Life: A History. 1972. Cochran, Thomas C. Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America. 1981. Coleman, D. C. The Economy of England, 1450–1750. 1977. Collins, Robert M. The Business Response to Keynes, 1929–1964. 1981. Cronin, David E. Labor and the New Deal. 1963. Cuff, Robert. The War Industries Board: Business–Government Relations during World War I. 1973. Danhof, Clarence H. Change in Agriculture: The Northern United States, 1820–1870. 1969. Derthick, Martha, and Paul J. Quirk. The Politics of Deregulation. 1985. Diamond, Sigmund. The Reputation of the American Businessman. 1955. Didrichsen, Jon. “The Development of Diversified and Conglomerate Firms in the United States, 1920–1970.” Business History Review 46 (summer 1972): 202–219. Dobson, John. Two Centuries of Tariffs. 1977. Doerflinger, Thomas M. “Commercial Speculation in Philadelphia’s Merchant Community, 1750–1791.” Business History Review 57 (spring 1983): 20–49. Dolan, J. R. The Yankee Peddlars of Early America. 1964. Domhoff, G. William. Who Rules America. 1967. Dorfman, Joseph. The Economic Mind in American Civilization. 2 vols. 1946–1959. Dunn, Richard S. Puritans and Yankees. 1962. Engal, Marc. “The Economic Development of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1720– 1775.” William and Mary Quarterly 32 (April 1975): 3–32. Fearon, Peter. War, Prosperity and Depression: The U.S. Economy 1917–1945. 1987. Fine, Sidney. The Automobile under the Blue Eagle: Labor. Management and the Automobile Manufacturing Code. 1963. Fine, Sidney. Laissez-Faire and the General Welfare State. 1966. Fine, Sidney. Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–1937. 1969. Fishlow, Albert. American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy. 1965. Flink, James. The Car Culture. 1975. Fogel, Robert. The Union Pacific Railroad. 1960. Fogel, Robert. Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History. 1964. Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. 1974. Foner, Philip S. Business and Slavery. 1941. Friedman, Milton, and Anna Schwartz. The Great Contraction, 1929–1933. 1972.

seLeC teD B I B L I o G R A P H Y

Galambos, Louis. Competition and Cooperation. 1966. Galambos, Louis, and Joseph Pratt. The Rise of the Corporate Commonwealth: U.S. Business and Public Policy in the Twentieth Century. 1988. Galbraith, John. The Great Crash, 1929. 1955. Gall, Gilbert J. The Politics of Right to Work: The Labor Federations as Special Interests. 1943– 1979. 1988. Gates, Paul. History of Public Land Law Development. 1968. Genovese, Eugene D. The Political Economy of Slavery. 1967. Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. 1974. Genovese, Eugene D. “The Significance of the Slave Plantation for Southern Economic Development.” Journal of Social History 28 (November 1962): 422–437. Gilbert, Charles, ed. The Making of a Conglomerate. 1972. Goodrich, Carter. Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890. 1960. Goodrich, Carter. “Internal Improvements Reconsidered.” Journal of Economic History 30 (June 1970): 289–311. Graham, Otis. Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon. 1976. Greenberg, Dolores. Financiers and Railroads, 1869–1889: A Study of Morton. Bliss & Company. 1980. Griffith, Robert. “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth.” American Historical Review 87 (February 1982): 87–122. Gutman, Herbert, ed. Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America. 1976. Habbakuk, H. J. American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century. 1962. Haber, Samuel. Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920. 1964. Hammond, Bray. Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War. 1957. Handlin, Oscar, and Mary Handlin. “Origins of the American Business Corporation.” Journal of Economic History 5 (May 1945): 88–101. Harrington, Virginia D. New York Merchants on the Eve of the Revolution. 1935. Harris, Howell John. The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s. 1982. Hartz, Louis. Economic Policy and Democratic Thought. 1948. Hartz, Louis. The Liberal Tradition in America. 1955. Hawley, Ellis W. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly. 1966. Hawley, Ellis W. “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of an ‘Associative State.’” Journal of American History 61 (June 1974): 116–140. Hays, Samuel P. “From Conservation to Environment: Environmental Politics in the United States since World War Two.” Environmental Review (fall 1982): 14–41. Heald, Morrell. The Social Responsibilities of Business: Company and Community, 1900–1960. 1970. Heath, Milton Sydney. Constructive Liberalism: The Role of the State in Economic Development in Georgia to 1850. 1954. Hidy, Ralph, and Muriel Hidy. The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance. 1949. Hidy, Ralph, and Muriel Hidy. Pioneering in Big Business: History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), 1882–1921. 1955. Higgs, Robert. The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865–1914. 1971. Himmelberg, Robert F. The Origins of the National Recovery Administration. 1976. Hirschman, Albert. The Strategy of Economic Development. 1958.

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673

Index

Pages for main entries appear in italics. Abbott, Grace, 108 Act to Regulate Commerce of 1887. See Interstate Commerce Commission Acts of Trade and Navigation, 33 Adair v. United States (208 U.S. 161), 1 Adam Opel Company, 260 Adams, John, 179, 230, 342 Adams, John Quincy, 1–2, 35, 117, 180, 341, 402, 573 Adamson Act, 1, 2, 322 Adams–Onís Treaty, 1, 2–3 Addyston Pipe and Steel Company v. U.S. (175 U.S. 211), 3 Adjusted Compensation Act of 1936, 3–4 Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (261 U.S. 525), 4, 398 advertising, 4–5 Affirmative Action, 5–6, 113, 199 Affordable Care Act, 6, 445 Afghanistan War and the War on Terror, 6–11 African Communities League, 256 Agency for International Development, 11 agribusiness, 12, 274, 508 Agricultural Act of 1981. See Farm Act of 1981 Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, 12 Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, 13–14, 15, 30, 130, 217, 460 Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 13, 14–15, 129, 169, 175, 217, 420, 464, 556, 624, 632 Agricultural Credits Act of 1923, 16, 210, 614 Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, 16–17, 210, 220, 306, 370 Agricultural Marketing Agreement of 1937, 17

Agricultural Revolution, 17 Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, 17–18 Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, 104, 595 Agriculture, Department of, 12, 15, 17, 18, 30, 455, 472, 553, 632 Agriculture Act of 1948, 18 Agriculture Act of 1954, 18–19, 460 Agriculture Act of 1970, 19 Agriculture Act of 1973, 19 Agriculture Act of 1981. See Farm Act of 1981 Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 19–20, 623 Air Commerce, Bureau of, 112, 215 Air Mail Act of 1925, 20–2`1 Air Mail Act of 1934, 21, 70 Air Quality Act of 1967, 118 Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, 21–22, 162 Airline Pilots Association, 22 Alaska Commercial Company, 22 Alaska Pipeline, 22–23 Aldrich, Winthrop Williams, 23, 463, 629 Aldrich–Vreeland Act of 1908. See Panic of 1907 Alien and Sedition Acts, 342 All Pueblo Indian Council, 483 Alliance for Progress, 11, 23–24, 62, 352 Altmeyer, Arthur Joseph, 24 Aluminum Company of America, 391 Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, 25, 154, 601 Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, 25, 135, 300, 410, 477, 581 Amazon.com, 26, 168 American Agricultural Movement, 26–27

676

InDeX

American Association for Old Age Security, 27, 549 American Association of Retired Persons, 27 American Bar Association, 43, 479 American Bimetallic League, 27–28, 541 American Broadcasting Company, 436 American Colonization Society, 28–29 American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), 29 American Farm Bureau Federation, 12, 14, 29–30, 57, 420, 559 American Federation of Labor, 30–31, 43, 72, 78, 81, 111, 121, 134, 135, 173, 273, 276, 281, 325, 329, 331, 355, 362, 363, 368, 372, 385, 390, 400, 415, 416, 422, 428, 439, 474, 495, 509, 549, 560, 588, 595, 596, 597 American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations, 31, 90, 104 American Federation of Teachers, 31–32 American Indians, 82, 141–42, 156–57, 245, 324, 483 American Medical Association, 32, 43, 349, 359, 478, 537 American Motors Corporation, 32–33, 103, 110 American Railway Union, 33, 158, 322, 484, 552 American Revolution, 33–35, 52, 73, 249, 320, 341, 367, 381, 543 American Stock Exchange, 35, 610, 646 American sugar companies, 556 American System, 1, 35, 114, 117, 328, 573 American Telephone and Telegraph, 35–36, 88, 478, 489 American Tobacco Company, 173, 299 Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP), 36–37 Amtrak, 37–38, 466 Anaconda Copper, 394 Annapolis Convention, 38, 138, 287 antitrust, 38–39 Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965, 39 Apple, 26, 39–40, 539, 545, 649 Arab Oil Embargo of 1973–1974, 40 arbitrage, 40–41

Armour, Philip Danforth, 41 “Arsenal of Democracy,” 41, 616 Articles of Confederation, 38, 41–42, 138, 380, 536 Ashwander et al. v. Tennessee Valley Authority (297 U.S. 288), 42 Association against the Prohibition Amendment, 480, 496 associationalism, 43, 101 assumption of state debts, 43–44 Astor, John Jacob, 44 Astor, William Vincent, 44–45 Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, 45 Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, 45–46 Atomic Energy Act of 1954, 46 automobile, 46–48, 73, 109, 144, 165, 174, 214, 221, 231, 234, 242, 244, 349, 386, 413, 520, 565, 570, 591, 623, 629, 635 Awalt, Francis Gloyd, 48, 189 “baby Bells, 36” Bailey v. Drexel Furniture (259 U.S. 20), 49, 108, 289, 416 bailout, 48, 63, 445. See also Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Bakke, Alan, 5–6 Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 49–50, 105 bank holiday, 48, 50–51, 54, 189 Bank of America, 51–52, 264 Bank of the United States, 52, 264 bank war. See Second Bank of the United States Bankhead Cotton Control Act of 1934, 14, 52–53 Bankhead–Jones Farm Tenancy Act of 1937, 53–54, 212, 553, 555, 557, 559 Banking Act of 1933, 54–55, 55, 218 Banking Act of 1935, 23, 55–56 barbed wire, 109 Barton, Bruce, 56 Baruch, Bernard Mannes, 57, 77, 220, 370, 388, 395, 463, 614 Beard, Charles Austin, 57, 138 Bechtel, Stephen Davison, 58 Beck, David, 58, 330 beef trust cases, 58–59 Beer Tax Act, 59, 314, 481 Bell, Alexander Graham, 59

In D e X

Bell Telephone Company, 36, 59, 131 benefits, 59–61 Bering Sea Controversy, 61 Berle, Adolf Augustus, 61–62, 74, 389 Bernanke, Ben, 62–64 Berry, George Leonard, 64, 121 Bethlehem Steel, 277, 529, 575 Biddle, Nicholas, 65, 532 bimetallism, 65–66 Birdseye, Clarence, 66 Bitcoin, 66 Black, Eugene Robert, 67 Black, Hugo, 21, 482 Black, John Donald, 12, 67, 553 Black Belt, 67–68 Black Codes, 68 “Black Monday” (October 28, 1929), 68, 143 “Black Monday” (May 27, 1935), 68 “Black Thursday,” 68–69, 143 “Black Tuesday,” 69, 143 Bland, Richard Parks, 27, 69 Bland–Allison Act of 1878. See Bland, Richard Parks blue-collar, 70, 114, 173, 627, 639 Blue Network, 436 Boeing Airplane Company, 462 Boeing 707, 168 Boeing, William Edward, 70 boll weevil, 70 Bolshevism, 70–71 Bonneville Power Administration, 71 Bonus Army, 4, 71, 306, 505 Boone, Daniel, 631 Borden, Gail, 71–72 Boston Police Strike of 1919, 72 Boston Tea Party of 1773, 72–73 Boulder Canyon Project Act of 1928. See Hoover Dam Boyer, Joseph, 73 Boyle, William Anthony, 73, 596 braceros, 74, 212 brain trust, 74 Brandeis, Louis Dembitz, 39, 61, 75–76, 118, 173, 177, 303, 409, 432, 479, 482, 563, 569, 624 breadlines, 76 Bretton Woods Conference, 76, 329, 332, 354

“broken voyage principle,” 201 Brook Farm, 76–77 Brookings, Robert Somers, 77 Brookings Institution, 77–78, 324, 393 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 78, 207, 494 Brown, Harvey Winfield, 78 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 343 Bryan, William Jennings, 28, 69, 79–80, 181, 271, 387, 476, 480, 541, 559 Bryce, James, 80 Bucareli Agreement of 1923, 80 Buckmaster, Leland Stanford, 81 Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, 81 buffalo, 81–82 Buffett, Warren, 82 Buick Motor Car Company, 109, 174, 260 Bulkeley, Morgan Gardner, 82–83 bull market, 83–84, 143 Bull Moose Party, 92, 128, 181, 182, 344, 432, 462, 472, 519 Burlington Northern Railroad, 84, 106 Burns, Arthur Frank, 84 Bush, George H. W., 85–87, 119, 185, 468 Bush, George W., 7, 63, 85, 87–88, 162, 197, 336, 470, 576, 589 Business Advisory Council, 88, 544, 597 Business Conferences of 1929, 89 Business Cycle Committee, 89 Business–Industry Political Action Committee, 90 Butterfield, John, 90 Cadillac Motor Car Company, 73, 174, 260 Capone, Alphonse, 91, 480 Capper, Arthur, 91–92, 210 Capper–Tincher Act of 1921, 92 Capper–Tincher Act of 1922. See Capper– Tincher Act of 1921 Capper–Volstead Act of 1922, 92–93 Carey Act of 1894, 93 Carnegie, Andrew, 93–94, 250, 515, 529 Carnegie Steel Company, 25, 250, 529, 599. See also United States Steel Corporation Carrier, Willis Haviland, 94 Carson, Rachel, 95, 197 Carter, Jimmy, 26, 95–98, 408

677

678

InDeX

Carter v. Carter Coal Company (298 U.S. 238), 99 cash or deferred arrangements (CODAs), 61 Cato Institute, 99–100 Celler–Kefauver Act of 1950, 100, 118, 229 Central Pacific Railroad, 100, 147, 310, 314, 554, 559, 594 Chamber of Commerce, 88, 89, 100–1 Chandler, Harry, 101–2 Chandler Act of 1938, 102, 335 Chapin, Roy Dikeman Jr., 102–3, 122 Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge. See Taney, Roger B. Chase Manhattan Bank, 103, 145, 629 Chavez, Cesar Estrad, 103–4, 114, 157, 595 Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, 104 Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, 104 Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, 50, 105 Chester, Colby Mitchell, 105 Chevron, 105–6 Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, 84, 106 Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, 106–7 Chicago & North Western Railway, 107 child labor, 49, 107–9, 134, 181, 209, 212, 273, 288, 348, 351, 369, 516, 546, 552, 612, 634. See also National Child Labor Committee Child Labor Tax Act of 1919, 49 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 109 Chisholm Trail, 109 Chrysler, Walter Percy, 109–10 Chrysler Corporation, 32, 110–11, 247 Cigarmakers’ International Union of America, 111, 466 Citizens’ Reconstruction Organization, 111 Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, 111–12, 112 Civil Aeronautics Authority. See Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 Civil Aeronautics Board, 21, 112–13 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 5, 113–14, 198, 343, 345 Civil Rights Movement, 113, 298 Civil War, 41, 45, 50, 67, 68, 72, 82, 106, 107, 108, 114–15, 133, 139, 141, 142, 162, 171, 187, 246, 257, 282, 303, 319, 322, 328, 351, 354, 367,

370, 374, 387, 393, 398, 415, 433, 461, 509, 527, 536, 543, 554, 565, 566, 573, 586, 593, 633 Civil Works Administration, 115, 219, 637, 639 Civilian Conservation Corps, 116, 169, 314, 343, 462, 553, 637 Clark, Joshua Reuben Jr., 116–17, 274 Clay, Henry, 28, 35, 117, 133, 180, 261, 328, 386, 399, 475, 532, 573 Clayton, William Lockhart, 117, 259, 384 Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, 39, 100, 118–19, 476, 479, 538, 590 Clean Air Act of 1970, 118–19, 197 Cleveland, Stephen Grover, 119, 161, 164, 169, 180, 293, 388, 484, 629, 633 Clinton, Bill, 86, 119–20, 162, 185, 197, 429, 438, 623 closed shop, 75, 120, 331, 450, 514, 570 Club of Rome, 120–21 Coal Arbitration Board, 121, 567 Coal Strike of 1919, 121–22 Coca-Cola Bottling Company, 635 Coffin, Howard Earle, 122 Cohen, Benjamin Victor, 122–23, 139, 482, 501, 534 Coinage Act of 1792, 123, 124 Coinage Act of 1834, 123–24 Coinage Act of 1873, 65, 537. See also Crime of 1873 Coinage Act of 1878. See Bland, Richard P. Coinage Act of 1890. See Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 Coin’s Financial School, 124–25 Cold War, 46, 125–26, 260, 429 Color Additives Amendment of 1960, 236 Columbia Broadcasting System, 5 Columbia River Basin Anti-Speculation Act of 1937, 126 Commerce, Department of, 88, 89, 111, 127, 216, 369, 489 Commerce Clause, 264, 289, 303, 424, 491 Committee for Economic Development, 127 Committee for Progressive Political Action, 127 Committee for the Nation, 127–28 Committee for the Nation to Rebuild Prices and Purchasing Power, 127. See also Committee for the Nation

In D e X

Committee of Forty-Eight, 128 Committee on Economic Security, 24, 128–29, 164, 466, 550 Commodity Credit Corporation, 13, 15, 17, 129–30, 191, 204, 217, 564 commodity dollar, 130, 270, 616 Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, 130 Commodity Exchange Authority. See Commodity Exchange Act of 1936 Common Market, 202, 259, 353 Commons, John Rogers, 131, 549, 634 Communications Workers of America, 131–32 Communist Party, 233, 245, 288, 368 company union, 132 comparable worth, 132, 199, 473 Compromise of 1850, 117, 132–33, 251 Compromise Tariff of 1833, 117. See also Tariff of 1833 Comstock Lode, 69, 133 Conference for Progressive Political Action, 128, 133–34, 182, 563 Conglomerate, 100, 134, 288, 374 Congress of Industrial Organizations, 25, 31, 81, 90, 104, 131, 135–36, 172, 233, 242, 267, 276, 281, 300, 368, 423, 495, 509, 542, 581, 595, 596, 597 Connally Act of 1935, 136 ConocoPhillips, 136–37 Conrail, 137, 433, 466 Conservation of Fish Act of 1934, 137 Consortium Chinese Loan of 1911, 137–38 Constitutional Convention, 42, 138, 287 Consumer Federation of America, 138 consumer rights, 138–39, 390, 413 Cooke, Jay, 139, 459 Coolidge, Calvin, 44, 72, 116, 128, 134, 154, 155, 181, 183, 203, 229, 305, 361, 389, 391, 397, 406, 439, 464, 492, 510, 562, 578, 613 Copeland, Royal, 236, 626 Corcoran, Thomas Gardiner, 122, 139–40, 482, 501, 534 Corn Belt, 140 Corporate Bankruptcy Act of 1934, 140–41 Corporation, 141, Cotton Belt, 141 cotton gin, 53. See also Whitney, Eli

Council of Economic Advisers, 141, 195, 290, 297 Council of Energy Resource Tribes, 141–42 cowboy, 142 Coxey’s Army, 142, 161 Crash of 1929, 68, 83, 143, 232, 306, 362, 532, 534, 617, 628 Crash of 1987, 143–44 credit cards, 144–45 Credit Mobilier, 145–46, 594 credit unions, 146, 505 Crime of 1873, 65, 69, 147, 537 Crocker, Charles, 100, 147, 310, 314, 554, 559 Croly, Herbert David, 39, 147–48, 432, 479 “Cross of Gold Speech,” 79, 148 crowdsourcing, 148 Crude Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act, 148 Cuba, 149,518, 556 Cumberland Pike, 149 Cummings, Walter J., 150 Currency Act of 1900. See Gold Standard Act of 1900 Currie, Lauchlin, 150–51 Curtis, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar, 151–52 Danbury Hatters case (208 U.S. 274), 153 Dartmouth College v. Woodward (4 Wheaton 122), 153, 233, 384 Davis, Hal C., 153–54 Davis, James John, 154 Davis, John William, 128, 154–55, 182, 480, 546, 625 Dawes, Charles Gates, 81, 155, 182 Dawes Plan, 155–56, 308, 311, 364, 369, 506, 613, 646, 647 Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, 119, 156–57, 367, 393 Day, Dorothy, 157 DeBow, James Dunwoody Brownson, 157 Debs, Eugene Victor, 33, 134, 158, 181, 322, 484, 551, 552 Deere, John, 158 Defense Plant Corporation, 158–59 Defense Production Act, 356 Defense Supplies Corporation, 159, 506 Delaware and Hudson Canal, 159 Delaware and Raritan Canal, 159 Deming, W. Edwards, 160

679

680

InDeX

Democratic Party, 6, 59, 95, 113, 119, 124, 158, 163, 181, 183, 207, 213, 262, 268, 328, 346, 390, 418, 420, 431, 451, 463, 466, 480, 495, 516, 539, 546, 547, 568, 570, 626 Democratic-Republican Party, 52, 117, 180, 256, 341, 342, 364, 380, 391, 572 Demonetization Act, 69, 147 Deposit Act of 1836, 160 Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980, 160, 162, 218, 528 depression of 1837. See Panic of 1837 depression of 1857. See Panic of 1857 depression of 1873. See Panic of 1873 depression of 1893, 28, 65, 142, 161, 329, 361, 369, 440, 476, 594, 596 depression of 1920–1921, 161–62, 175, 368 deregulation, 21, 112, 162, 228, 481, 539, 558 Desert Land Act of 1877, 162–63 deskilling, 163, 535 Dewson, Mary Williams, 163–64, 636 digital currency, 164 Dingley Tariff of 1897, 164, 387, 585, 634 Doak, William Nuckles, 164 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, 165 Dodge, William Earl, 165 Doheny, Edward, 165–66 Doherty, Henry Latham, 166 Dollar Diplomacy, 166–67, 273, 355 Domestic Allotment Plan, 12, 553, 632. See also Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 Dorrance, John Thompson, 167 dot-com bubble, 167–68, 502 Douglas, Donald Wills, 168 Douglas, Lewis William, 168–69 Douglas, William Orville, 75, 169–70 Dow, Herbert Henry, 170 Dow Jones Industrial Average, 143, 170 downsizing, 171 Dred Scott v. Sandford (19 Howard 393, 1857), 171–72, 571 Dryden, John Fairfield, 172 du Pont, Pierre Samuel, 88, 172, 175 Dubinsky, David, 135, 173, 331

Duke, James Buchanan, 173, 433 Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deering (254 U.S. 443), 174 Durant, William Crapo, 109, 174–75, 260 dust bowl, 175–76, 449 Eastman, George, 177 Eastman, Joseph Bartlett, 177–78, 192, 334, 407, 587 e-commerce, 167, 178 Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, 178, 476, 539, 634 Economy Act of 1933, 169, 178–79 Edge Act of 1919. See Webb-Pomerance Act of 1918 Edison, Thomas Alva, 179, 259, 326 Eighteenth Amendment, 59, 183, 232, 472. See also Prohibition Eisenhower, Dwight D., 18, 23, 30, 46, 84, 222, 238, 240, 310, 333, 368, 391, 396, 420, 435, 631 Election of 1800, 179–80 election of 1828, 2, 180, 573 election of 1896, 28, 79, 124, 161, 164, 180–81, 271 election of 1912, 128, 158, 181, 438, 462, 551, 552 election of 1924, 128, 155, 181–83, 480, 489, 578 election of 1928, 183, 306, 461, 517 election of 1932, 184, 306, 369, 481, 518, 547 election of 1964, 184, 497 election of 1980, 184–85, 209, 497 election of 1992, 185 election of 2000, 185 election of 2008, 185–86 Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, 186 Elkins Act of 1903, 186, 334, 381, 479, 500 Ely, Richard T., 187, 634 Emancipation Proclamation, 187, 374 Embargo Act of 1807, 188, 342, 436 Embargo Act of 1812, 188 Emergency Banking Act of 1933, 50, 189–90, 506, 559 Emergency Credits Act of 1921, 190 Emergency Farm Mortgage Act of 1933, 190–91

In D e X

Emergency Feed Grain Act of 1961, 191 Emergency Quota Act of 1921, 191–92 Emergency Railroad Transportation Act of 1933, 178, 192, 334, 587 Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932, 193, 306, 478, 608 Emergency Relief Appropriation Acts, 193–94 Emergency Tariff Act of 1921, 194 Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, 61, 194–95 Employment Act of 1946, 78, 141, 195, 227 End Poverty in California, 195–96, 541 Energy, Department of, 97, 196, 226 energy crisis, 185, 196–97, 225, 260, 605 Enron, 162, 197, 431 environmental movement, 47, 121, 197, 198, 419, 422, 504, 584 Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 198 Environmental Protection Agency, 118, 198, 317, 584 Equal Employment Act of 1972, 5, 114 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 198–99 “equal pay for equal work,” 132, 199, 425, 636 Equal Rights Amendment, 199–200, 425, 481, 516 “Era of Good Feelings,” 457–58, 615 Erdman Arbitration Act of 1898, 200–1 Erie Canal, 159, 201, 433, 448, 465 Esch–Cummins Act of 1920. See Transportation Act of 1920 Essex decision, 201–2 European Union, 202, 249, 284 “ever-normal granary,” 13, 15, 130, 202–3, 217 Export–Debenture Plan, 203, 220 Export–Import Bank, 204–5, 464 Exxon Mobil, 205 Facebook, 207, 333, 539, 548, 576, 649 Fair Deal, 207, 415, 589 Fair Employment Practices Commission, 207–8 Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, 60, 108, 208–9, 398 Farm Act of 1970. See Agriculture Act of 1970

Farm Act of 1981, 209 farm bloc, 13, 16, 92, 182, 190, 209–10, 220, 221, 223, 225, 455 Farm Credit Act of 1933, 210 Farm Credit Act of 1953. 211. See also Farm Credit Administration Farm Credit Act of 1971, 210–11 Farm Credit Administration, 204, 210, 211, 213 Farm Labor Supply Act of 1943, 211–12 Farm Security Administration, 53, 212, 213, 508, 556, 557, 591 Farmer–Labor Party, 212–13, 437 Farmers’ Alliances, 213 Farmers Home Administration, 212, 213, 235 Farmers Home Administration Act of 1946. See Farmers Home Administration featherbedding, 214 Federal Aid Road Act. See Federal Highway Act of 1921 Federal Aid Road Act of 1916, 214, 222, 565 Federal Anti–Price Discrimination Act of 1936, 214–15, 229 Federal Aviation Administration, 215, 586 federal budget, 81, 90, 169, 178, 215–16, 418, 501, 511 Federal Communications Commission, 216, 226 Federal Coordinator of Transportation, 192, 34. See also Emergency Railroad Transportation Act of 1933 Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1938, 217 Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, 13, 15. See Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1938 Federal Defense Spending, 217 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 55, 150, 218–19, 227, 535, 559 Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 169, 219, 228, 309, 636, 638, 639 Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act of 1934, 219–20 Federal Farm Board, 16, 210, 211, 220–21, 370, 388, 404 Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916, 210, 221 Federal Highway Act of 1921, 221, 222

681

682

InDeX

Federal Highway Administration, 222, 586 Federal Home Loan Bank Act of 1932, 222 Federal Housing Administration, 123, 140, 223, 224, 310, 421 Federal Intermediate Credit Bank System, 223–24, 614 Federal Maritime Commission, 224 Federal National Mortgage Association, 224–25 Federal Open Market Committee, 54, 56, 63, 225 Federal Power Commission, 196, 225–26, 482 Federal Radio Commission, 216, 226 Federal Reserve Act of 1913, 225, 415, 479, 617. See also Federal Reserve System Federal Reserve System, 54, 55, 162, 212, 218, 226–27, 232, 268, 460, 617, 645 Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, 227–28, 304, 421 Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation. See Federal Surplus Relief Corporation Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, 228, 348 Federal Trade Commission, 59, 68, 75, 100, 215, 228–29, 313, 476, 482, 485, 533, 626, 633 Federal Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1916, 229–30 Federalist Party, 179, 230, 288, 384, 570, 627 Firestone, Harvey Samuel, 81, 230–31, 597 Fisher, Frederick John, 231 Fisher, Irving, 127, 130, 231–32, 270 Fisher Body Corporation, 109, 231, 260 Fisk, James, 232, 277 Fitzgerald, Albert, 233 Fitzsimmons, Frank Edward, 233 Fletcher v. Peck (6 Cranch 87, 1810), 233–34, 384 flexible/cafeteria plans, 61 Florida boom, 234 Food Additives Amendment of 1958, 236 Food Administration, 235, 236, 237, 305, 371, 641 Food and Agriculture Act of 1962, 235 Food and Agriculture Act of 1965, 235 Food and Drug Administration, 235–36, 237, 485

Food Control Act of 1917, 236 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, 236–37, 485, 626 Food for Peace Act of 1965, 237 Food Production Act of 1917, 237 Food Stamp Act of 1964, 238 Food Stamp Program, 19. See also Food Stamp Act of 1964 Forbes, John Murray, 238 Forbes, Malcolm, 238–40 Ford, Gerald, 85, 96, 162, 196, 240, 240–42, 283, 325, 497, 627 Ford, Henry, 135, 231, 242–43 Ford, Henry, II, 243 Ford Motor Company, 32, 243–44, 288, 544 Fordney–McCumber Tariff of 1922, 244–45, 585 Foreign Miners Act of 1850, 245 “Forty-Niners,” 72, 271 Foster, William Zebulon, 245, 560 Fourteenth Amendment, 5, 108, 141, 200, 246, 409, 542, 563 Fox, William, 246–47, 376 Frankfurter, Felix, 61, 122, 139, 313, 440 Fraser, Douglas Andrew, 247 Frazier–Lemke Act, 65, 75 Frazier–Lemke Act of 1934. See Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act of 1934 Frazier–Lemke Act of 1935, 220. See also Federal Farm Bankruptcy Act of 1935 “Free Ships, Free Goods,” 247, 342 Free Silver, 28, 65, 79, 147, 181, 247–48, 271, 476 Free-Soil Party, 248 Free Timber Cutting Act of 1878, 582. See also Timber Cutting Act of 1878 free trade, 38, 69, 249, 259, 428, 440, 633 Freedmen’s Bureau, 249, 504 “freedom of the seas,” 188, 249–50, 429, 633 French and Indian War, 34, 377, 620 Frick, Henry Clay, 250, 272, 304 Friedman, Milton, 250–51, 566 frontier, 251, 367, 525 fuel efficiency, 47, 251 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, 251–52 Fuller, Alfred Carl, 252 Fulton, Robert, 252–53, 264 funding the national debt, 253

In D e X

Gadsden Purchase, 255, 367 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 255 Gallatin, Abraham Alfonse Albert, 256 Garfield, James, 145, 282, 464 Garvey, Marcus Mosiah, 256 Gary, Elbert Henry, 257, 560, 599 Gates, Bill, 257–58, 396 Geneen, Harold Sydney, 258, 332 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, (GATT), 118, 258–59, 352, 640 General Electric Corporation, 88, 89, 121, 179, 233, 259–60, 567, 624, 646 General Motors Corporation, 32, 63, 88, 109, 110, 135, 174, 231, 242, 243, 260–61, 356, 384, 413, 467, 495, 542, 544, 582, 595, 631, 646 General Survey Act of 1824, 261 Gentrification, 261 George, Henry, 261–62, 541 Gerber, Daniel Frank Jr., 262 Getty, Jean Paul, 262–63 G.I. Bill of Rights, 263 Giannini, Amadeo Peter, 51, 263–64 Gibbons v. Ogden (9 Wheaton 1), 264, 384, 622 Gilded Age, 264–65 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 265–66 Gimbel, Bernard, 266 Girdler, Tom Mercer, 266–67 Glass, Carter, 54, 267–68, 268, 410 Glass–Steagall Act of 1932, 54, 268–69 globalization, 269 global warming, 197, 269, 284 Glorious Revolution of 1688, 34 Gold Reserve Act of 1934, 270 gold rush, 133, 245, 270–71 Gold Standard Act of 1900, 271, 387 Gold Standard Joint Resolution Repeal of 1933, 271 See Gold Reserve Act of 1934 Goldman, Emma, 271–72 Goldwater, Barry Morris, 184, 272 Gompers, Samuel, 30, 59, 72, 135, 272– 73, 281, 400, 416, 439, 466, 560 Good Neighbor Policy, 117, 167, 273–74, 313 Goodnight, Charles, 274–75 Goodyear, Charles, 275 Google, 275, 539, 545, 548, 645 Gordy, Berry Jr., 276

Gorman, Frank J., 276, 581 Gould, Jay, 277, 355, 515, 594 Grace, Eugene Gifford, 277 Grace, William Russell, 277–78 Graduation Act of 1854, 278 Grange, 180, 278 Granger cases. See Granger laws Granger laws, 278–79 Grant, Ulysses S., 145, 557 Grant, William Thomas, 279 Grapes of Wrath, 449, 561. See also Steinbeck, John Gray Panthers. See Kuhn, Maggie Great Depression, 3, 19, 30, 31, 50, 51, 53, 60, 62, 65, 70, 71, 75, 76, 101, 105, 125, 142, 157, 160, 169, 175, 184, 195, 203, 210, 215, 227, 231, 244, 246, 258, 263, 277, 280, 301, 306, 308, 327, 329, 332, 334, 343, 346, 349, 384, 393, 415, 419, 422, 431, 441, 449, 473, 496, 502, 503, 511, 515, 518, 519, 544, 550, 551, 552, 563, 578, 580, 588, 593, 609, 622, 623, 635, 637, 647 Great Northern Railway, 84, 106, 280 Great Recession of 2008, 52, 62, 110, 162, 165, 219, 280, 429, 431, 445, 563 Great Society, 39, 178, 184, 186, 237, 238, 280–81, 345, 391, 446, 605 Green, William, 31, 135, 281, 363, 390, 422, 595, 597 Greenback Party, 281–82 Greenback–Labor Party, 281, 282 Greenspan, Alan, 283 Green Technology, 283 Griffith, David Lewelyn Wark, 284 Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 5, 114 Group of Eight, (G-8) 284–85 Guggenheim, David, 285 H. J. Heinz Company, 297 Hall, Joyce Clyde, 287 Hamilton, Alexander, 38, 43, 52, 123, 179, 230, 253, 287–88, 342, 434, 507, 572, 620 Hammer, Armand, 288 Hammer v. Dagenhart (247 U.S. 251), 49, 108, 288–89, 369, 416 Hansen, Alvin, 151, 289–90 Hard Money, 123, 290, 538, 539, 557

683

684

InDeX

Harding, Warren G., 44, 81, 154, 155, 158, 181, 190, 191, 194, 223, 226, 229, 244, 311, 391, 437, 492, 510, 537, 569, 577 Harriman, Edward Henry, 290, 555, 594 Harrington, Michael, 178, 291 Harris Treaty of 1858, 291 Harrison, Benjamin, 119, 180, 293, 388, 569, 633 Harrison, George, 291 Hartford, George Huntington, 292 Hartford Convention, 292 Hatch Act of 1887, 29–93 Hawaii, 293, 294, 322, 387, 388, 556 Hawaiian Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, 293, 388 Hawley–Smoot Tariff, 101, 245, 29–94, 503, 585 Hay, John Milton, 293–94, 450 Hayes, Rutherford B., 69, 491, 537 Haymarket, 271, 295, 355, 368 Haywood, William Dudley, 295–96, 325 Hearst, William Randolph, 296–97, 311 Heinz, Henry, John 297 Heller, Walter, 297 Hepburn Act of 1906, 297, 334, 381, 479, 500 Hepburn v. Griswold, 370 Heritage Foundation, 298 High-Performance Computing Act of 1991, 298 Highway Act of 1916. See Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 Highway Act of 1956. See Interstate and Defense Highway System Act of 1956 Highway Trust Fund, 222, 333 Hill, George Washington, 299 Hill, James Jerome, 299–300, 441 Hillman, Sidney, 25, 135, 300–1, 410, 477, 581 Hillquit, Morris, 301 Hilton, Conrad Nicholson, 301–2 Hoffa, James Riddle, 233, 302, 330, 368 holding company, 51, 55, 103, 123, 140, 166, 225, 300, 302–3, 320, 440, 441, 463, 515, 544, 629 Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr., 139, 289, 291, 303

Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, 204, 303–4, 421 Homestead Act, 114, 278, 304, 365, 366, 374, 562, 581 Homestead Steel Works, 94 Homestead Strike of 1892, 250, 304–5, 529 Hoosac Mills case. See United States v. Butler Hoover, Herbert Clark, 3, 16, 43, 48, 50, 89, 101, 111, 117, 154, 155, 164, 167, 183, 184, 190, 203, 222, 226, 235, 268, 274, 293, 305–7, 308, 313, 345, 346, 362, 370, 371, 391, 395, 397, 417, 421, 439, 442, 472, 478, 480, 489, 492, 511, 518, 532, 534, 537, 546, 559, 563, 567, 579, 588, 608, 622, 630 Hoover, Herbert William, 307 Hoover Dam, 58, 307–8, 349, 503 Hoover Moratorium, 308, 507, 646, 647 Hoovervilles, 308–9 Hopkins, Harry L., 219, 309, 636, 638 Hopkins, Mark, 100, 147, 310, 314, 554, 559 horizontal integration, 302, 310 Housing Act of 1954, 310–11 Hughes, Charles Evans, 156, 274, 311–12, 424, 492, 624 Hughes, Howard Robard Jr., 312 Hull, Cordell, 274, 312, 405, 502 Humphrey, Hubert, 213, 343 Humphrey, William Ewart, 68, 229, 313 “hundred days,” 74, 169, 192, 303, 313–14, 591 Hunt, Haroldson Lafayette, 314 Huntington, Collis Potter, 100, 147, 310, 314–15, 554, 559 Hurricane Katrina, 88, 315–16 hydraulic fracturing (fracking), 316–18 Iacocca, Lee, 110, 244, 319 Ickes, Harold L., 137 Illinois and Michigan Canal, 319 Illinois Central Railroad, 290, 319–20 immigration, 320–21, 369, 548 Immigration Act of 1924, 321 Immanuel decision, 201 imperialism, 321–22 impressment, 188, 322, 436

In D e X

In re Debs (158 U.S. 564), 322–23 income tax, 91, 114, 181, 282, 312, 323, 445, 476, 509, 511, 513 indentured servants, 543 Independent Treasury, 323–24, 475 Independent Treasury Act of 1846. See Independent Treasury Indian Removal Act of 1830, 324 Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, 78, 324 Industrial Revolution, 43, 163, 364, 383, 393, 515, 628. See also Waltham System Industrial Workers of the World, 157, 272, 296, 325, 347, 531 Information Revolution, 178, 325 Ingersoll, Robert Stephen, 325–26 Injunctions, 118, 134, 173, 182, 186, 212, 281, 326, 569, 570, 626 installment buying, 46, 326 Insull, Samuel, 326–27, 482 Inter-American Development Bank, 327 interlocking directorates, 118, 328, 484 internal improvements, 1, 114, 117, 261, 328, 341, 373, 386, 399, 477, 622 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 76, 151, 329 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 131, 329, 490 International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 58, 104, 233, 302, 329–30, 368, 595 International Business Machines, 330, 467, 620 International Labor Organization, 330–31 International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, 25, 172, 301, 331, 588 International Longshoremen’s Association, 331 International Monetary Fund, 76, 284, 329, 332, 640 International Telephone and Telegraph, 258, 332 Internet, 5, 66, 145, 167, 178, 275, 298, 325, 333, 396, 489, 494, 502, 539, 548, 645 Interstate and Defense Highway System Act of 1956, 333 Interstate Commerce Commission, 21, 177, 186, 192, 216, 297, 333–35,

381, 407, 408, 538, 558, 586, 587, 598 Interstate Commerce Commission Act of 1887, 186. See also Interstate Commerce Commission Investment Advisers Act of 1940, 335 Investment Company Act of 1940, 335–36 iPhone, 39, 344, 473, 545 Iraq War, 87, 336–39 J. C. Penney’s, 465, 635 Jackson, Andrew, 2, 65, 160, 180, 323, 324, 341, 386, 415, 458, 532, 557, 570, 573 Jackson, Jesse, 114 Jamestown, 346 Jay’s Treaty of 1794, 341–42 Jefferson, Thomas, 28, 52, 180, 188, 230, 256, 342, 372, 377, 380, 507 Jim Crow, 68, 113, 343 Job Corps, 178, 343 Jobs, Steve, 39, 344 John Deere Plow Company, 463 Johnson, Hiram Warren, 102, 344–45 Johnson, Hugh, 345 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 5, 11, 30, 113, 178, 184, 255, 272, 280, 345, 291, 297, 391, 414, 446, 521, 604 Joint Economic Committee of Congress, 195. See also Employment Act of 1946 Joint Stock Company, 346 Jones, Jesse Holman, 159, 244, 346–47, 394, 501, 521, 598 Jones, Mary Harris, 347 Jones–Connally Farm Relief Act of 1934, 14, 347–48 Jones–Costigan Sugar Act of 1934, 14, 348 Kaiser, Henry John, 349 Kanagawa, Treaty of, 349–50 Keating–Owen Act of 1916, 49, 108, 288, 369, 416. See also National Child Labor Committee Keith, Minor Cooper, 350, 595 Kelley, Florence, 163, 350–51 Kelley, Oliver Hudson, 351 Kellogg, Will Keith, 351–52

685

686

InDeX

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 11, 23, 30, 62, 113, 178, 235, 255, 291, 297, 345, 352, 368, 462, 513, 521, 584 Kennedy Round, 259, 352–53, 584 Keynes, John Maynard, 289, 353–54 Keynesian economic policies, 55, 88, 150–51, 195, 255, 289–90, 297, 352, 354, 435, 511–12, 589, 646 King, Martin Luther Jr., 113, 114 “King Cotton,” 354, 555 Knights of Labor, 30, 43, 281, 295, 347, 354–55, 362, 400, 477, 561 Know v. Lee, 370 Knox, Philander Chase, 166, 355–56, 441 Knudsen, William, 356 Korean War, 207, 277, 356–57, 560, 589, 607 Kraft, James Lewis, 357 Kresge, Sebastian Spering, 357 Kroc, Ray, 358 Krugman, Paul, 358 Kuhn, Maggie, 359 La Follette, Robert Marion, 128, 134, 155, 182, 187, 210, 301, 361–62, 462, 510, 563, 626, 634 La Follette, Robert Marion Jr., 193, 348, 362 Labor, Department of, 73, 362–63, 414, 608, 615 Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. See Landrum– Griffen Act of 1959 Labor’s League for Political Education, 363 Laffer, Arthur, 363, 576 laissez-faire, 21, 88, 306, 364, 372, 400, 418, 548, 563, 597, 611, 616 Lamont, Thomas William, 364–65, 463 Land, Emory Scott, 365 Land Act of 1796, 365 Land Act of 1800, 366 Land Act of 1804. See Land Act of 1800 Land Act of 1820, 366 Land Act of 1832. See Land Act of 1820 Land Management, Bureau of, 366–67 Land Ordinance of 1785, 342, 367, 441 Landrum–Griffin Act of 1959, 367–68, 423 Lane, Dennis, 368 Lathrop, Julia, 368–69

Lausanne Conference of 1932, 308, 369–70, 507, 646, 647 League of Nations, 232, 242, 306, 311, 312–13, 345, 355, 439, 633 Legal Tender Act of 1862, 370 Legge, Alexander, 370–71 lend–lease, 123, 345, 371 Lever Food and Fuel Control Act of 1917, 371 Lewis, John Llewellyn, 31, 64, 73, 121, 172, 267, 371–72, 410, 596, 601 Lewis and Clark Expedition, 342, 372 liberalism, classical, 372–73, 429 libertarianism, 373 Liberty Loan Act of 1917, 373 Lincoln, Abraham, 100, 187, 294, 373–74, 509, 543 Lincoln Motor Car Company, 242 Litton Industries, 374 lobbying, 27, 30, 138, 174, 321, 374, 420, 442, 482, 583 Lochner v. New York (198 U.S. 45), 374–75 lockout, 375 Lodge, Henry Cabot, Sr., 306, 375, 380, 633 Lodge Corollary, 375, 442 Loew, Marcus, 375–76, 386 London Economic Conference of 1933, 376–77, 540, 616 Long, Huey. See Share Our Wealth Movement Louisiana Purchase, 3, 44, 342, 377, 399 Lowell, Francis Cabot, 377–78 Macon’s Bills, 379 Macy, Rowland H., 379 Madison, James, 44, 52, 180, 188, 230, 253, 256, 379–80, 507, 531 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 380–81 Manhattan Project, 381 Manifest Destiny, 381, 395 Mann–Elkins Act of 1910, 334, 38–82, 479 Marcy–Elgin Treaty of 1854, 382 margin buying, 83, 143, 175, 382, 532, 534 Market Revolution, 383 Marriott, John Willard, 383 Marshall, John, 153, 234, 264, 383–84 Marshall Plan, 384

In D e X

Martin, Warren Homer, 384–85 mass production, 31, 135, 285, 356, 372, 385, 528 Mayer, Louis Burt, 385–86 Maysville Road, 341, 386 Maytag, Frederick Lewis, 386–87 McCain, John, 185–86, 445 McCormick, Cyrus Hall, 387 McKinley, William, 28, 155, 164, 181, 248, 271, 293, 294, 355, 387, 476, 518, 539, 556, 569, 634 McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, 387, 388 McNary–Haugen Plan, 16, 92, 345, 388–89, 415, 419, 420, 464, 611 M’Culloch v. Maryland, 384, 389 Means, Gardiner Coit, 389–90 Meany, George, 31, 390 Meat Inspection Act of 1906, 390–91 Medicare, 27, 60, 241, 345, 391, 551 Mellon, Andrew William, 83, 250, 391, 417, 509, 510 Mercantilism, 364, 392 Merchant Marine Act of 1920, 392 Merchant Marine Act of 1936, 224, 393 Meriam Report, 77, 324, 393 Mesabi Range, 94, 393 Metals Reserve Company, 394, 506, 642 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 376, 386. See also Mayer, Louis Bert Mexican Cession, 248, 394 Mexican Land Act of 1951. See Braceros Mexican War, 2, 132, 248, 251, 270, 322, 381, 395, 467, 475 Meyer, Eugene Jr., 395–96 Microsoft, 257, 396 military–industrial complex, 396 Miller–Tydings Act of 1937, 397 Mills, Ogden Livingston, 50, 268, 397 Mines, Bureau of, 398–99 minimum wage, 4, 20, 37, 60, 108, 163, 208, 212, 240, 242, 348, 398, 422, 516, 523, 528, 535, 552, 566, 569, 624, 634 Missouri Compromise, 117, 132, 171, 252, 398–99, 571 Missouri Pacific Railroad, 399–400, 594, 603 Mitchell, Charles Edwin, 400 Mitchell, John, 400–1, 596

Model T, 46, 242, 243, 356. See also Ford, Henry Molly Maguires, 355, 401 Monetary Act of 1939, 401–2 Monroe, James, 1, 2, 28, 65, 230, 402, 457, 522, 573 Monroe Doctrine, 1, 116, 273, 375, 402, 451, 519, 522 Monsanto, 402–3 Montgomery Ward and Company, 520, 635. See also Ward, Aaron Montgomery Morehead v. Tipaldo, 624 Morgan, John Pierpont, 153, 257, 290, 364, 403, 406, 441, 529, 603, 629 Morgan, John Pierpont Jr., 403–4 Morgenthau, Henry Jr., 76, 371, 404, 501, 619 Morgenthau Plan, 40–6 Mormon Church, 117, 383, 547 Morrill Act of 1862, 292, 405 Morrill Tariff Act of 1861, 114, 374, 405–6 Morrow, Dwight Whitney, 116, 406 Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 406, 527 “most-favored-nation,” 407 mothers’ pensions, 19, 369, 637. See also Aid to Families with Dependent Children Motor Carrier Act of 1935, 334, 407–8, 587 Motor Carrier Act of 1980, 162, 408 muckrakers, 397, 408–9, 446 Muller v. Oregon (208 U.S. 412), 75, 200, 375, 409 481 multinational corporation, 39, 205, 275, 285, 396, 409 Municipal Bankruptcy Act of 1934, 410 Munn v. Illinois, 279. See also Granger laws Murray, Philip, 410–11, 601 Muscle Shoals, 42, 182, 345, 415, 439. See also Norris, George; Tennessee Valley Authority Nader, Ralph, 413, 427 NASDAQ, 207, 413–14, 649 Nash Motor Company, 32 National Aeronautic and Space Administration, 414 National Alliance of Businessmen, 414–15

687

688

InDeX

National Association of Manufacturers, 90, 413, 415 National Banking Act of 1864, 124, 323, 415 National Broadcasting Company, 5, 489, 527 National Child Labor Committee, 108, 181, 416 National Civic Federation, 131, 416 National Consumers League, 163, 351 National Credit Corporation, 416–17, 505, 629 national debt, 83, 230, 253, 288, 391, 417, 434, 498, 513, 620, 627 National Defense Education Act of 1958, 417–18 National Economic and Social Planning Association, 418 National Economic Association, 418 National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, 197, 419 National Farmers Organization, 419 National Farmers’ Union, 12, 14, 419–20, 420 National Foreign Trade Council, 420 National Grange, 203, 213, 278, 281, 351, 407, 420–21, 522, 618 National Housing Act of 1934, 223, 224, 227, 304, 421–22 National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, 60, 68, 74, 99, 120, 136, 172, 208, 281, 300, 314, 372, 397, 398, 416, 422, 425, 426, 450, 457, 493, 496, 514, 529, 567, 596, 608, 616, 646 National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 88, 120, 135, 281, 410, 422–23, 424, 450, 514, 570, 597, 608 National Labor Relations Board, 64, 267, 422, 424, 442. See also National Labor Relations Act of 1935 National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation (301 U.S. 1), 424 National Labor Union, 424, 568 National Organization for Women, 424–25 National Railroad Passenger Corporation. See Amtrack National Recovery Administration, 23, 24, 64, 75, 99, 101, 121, 136, 140, 208,

300, 390, 410, 418, 422, 425–26, 442, 482, 597, 624 National Resources Planning Board, 390, 418, 426 National Road, 426–27 National Small Business Men’s Association, 427 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, 413, 427–28 National War Labor Board, 428, 607, 641 National Youth Administration, 345, 428, 637, 639 neoliberalism, 428–29 neutrality, 79, 429, 519 Neutrality Acts, 205, 429–30, 442 New Consortium, 430 New Deal, 12, 13, 17, 23, 27, 29, 31, 45, 49, 50, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 64, 68, 75, 88, 116, 123, 129, 131, 169, 193, 203, 204, 207, 219, 264, 289, 307, 312, 334, 348, 396, 404, 415, 417, 430–31, 432, 461, 500, 504, 544, 546, 551, 552, 559, 579, 589, 594, 595, 616, 635, 637 New Democrats, 119, 431 New Economic Policy, 431–32, 435 New Freedom, 39, 75, 118, 181, 432, 479, 482 New Nationalism, 39, 147, 181, 432–33, 479, 518 New South, 115, 433 New York Central Railroad, 433–34, 465, 604 New York Stock Exchange, 35, 57, 83, 170, 258, 395, 413, 434, 459, 610, 628 Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, 163, 434, 503, 504 Nixon, Richard Milhous, 146, 434–35, 435, 446, 605 Nixonomics, 435 Noble, Edward John, 435–36 Non-Importation Act of 1806, 202, 379, 436 Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, 188, 436–37, 611 Non-Partisan League, 64, 135, 301, 437 nonprofit organizations, 298, 437 “normalcy,” 81, 228, 392, 437–38, 455, 509 Norquist, Grover, 438

In D e X

Norris, George William, 190, 210, 281, 438–39, 440, 580 Norris–La Guardia Labor Relations Act of 1932, 281, 326, 439–40 North American Free Trade Agreement, 249, 440 Northern Pacific Railway, 84, 106, 280, 300, 440–41, 459 Northern Securities Company, 290, 300, 440, 441 Northwest Ordinance, 365, 441 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 196, 442 Nullification Controversy, 341See also Tariff of 1828 Nye, Gerald Prentice, 396, 430, 442–43 Nye Committee, 430. See also Nye, Gerald Prentice Obama, Barack, 6, 9, 63, 339, 438, 445, 575, 646 Ocala Platform, 213, 445–46 Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, 446 Office of Management and Budget, 363, 446–47 Office of Price Administration, 434, 447, 643 Offshoring, 447–48, 452, 535 Ohio and Erie Canal, 448 Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union, 448 “Okies,” 448–49 Old Age Revolving Pensions, Ltd. See Townsend, Frances E. online education, 449 Open Door policy, 294, 311, 450, 569 open shop, 101, 273, 415, 450, 560 Operation PUSH, 114 Oregon Trail, 450 Oregon Treaty of 1846, 322, 367, 450–51, 475 Organization of American States, 23, 327, 451 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, 451–52, 468, 627 Outsourcing, 452 Owen, Robert Dale, 453 Owens–Glass Act of 1913. See Federal Reserve Act of 1913

Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, 455 Paley, William Samuel, 455–56, 489 Panama Canal Zone, 322, 456, 634 Panama Refining Company v. Ryan, 136, 457 Panic of 1819, 389, 457–58, 531 Panic of 1837, 458, 557 Panic of 1857, 139, 354, 459 Panic of 1873, 139, 282, 319, 420, 459, 594 Panic of 1893. See Depression of 1893 Panic of 1907, 226, 459–60, 483, 599, 617 parity, 13, 14, 18, 19, 26, 30, 235, 334, 460, 555 Patman, Wright, 460–61 Patman Bonus Bill of 1935. See Adjusted Compensation Act of 1936 Patrons of Husbandry, 351, 420. See also National Grange Patterson, John Henry, 461 Patterson, William Allen, 461–62 Payne–Aldrich Tariff of 1909, 244, 462, 585 Peace Corps, 462 Pecora, Ferdinand, 403, 463, 532, 534, Pecora Committee, 335, 400, 628, 630 Peek, George Nelson, 388, 460, 463–64 Pendleton Act of 1883, 464 Penney, James Cash, 464–65, 635 Pennsylvania Canal, 465 Pennsylvania Railroad, 50, 93, 433, 465–66 People’s Party, 10. See also Populist Party Perkins, Frances, 129, 467, 550 Perkins, George W., 466–67 Perot, Henry Ross, 467 Perry, Matthew Calbraith, 349, 467 Persian Gulf War, 86, 185, 197, 336, 467–70 Pfizer, 471 Phelps, Anson Greene, 165, 471 Phelps–Dodge, 394 Phillips, Frank, 471–72 piecework, 472 Pinchot, Gifford, 121, 472–73 Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795, 473 pink collar, 199, 473 planned obsolescence, 473–74 Platt Amendment, 149, 274, 474, 556 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), 343 Plumb Plan, 474–75, 598

689

690

InDeX

Polk, James Knox, 323, 395, 451, 475, 610 Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company (1895), 323 Pony Express, 475 pools, 3, 224, 310, 463, 475–76, 538 Populist Party, 65, 79, 124, 161, 180, 213, 282, 446, 476, 522, 539, 541, 564, 621 potato famine, 320 Potofsky, Jacob Samuel, 476–77 Powderly, Terence Vincent, 355, 477 Preemption Act of 1841, 366, 477 President’s Emergency Committee on Unemployment Relief. See President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief President’s Organization on Unemployment Relief, 478 Production Credit Associations. See Farm Credit Act of 1933; Farm Credit Administration professionalization, 309, 478–79 progressive movement, 181, 186, 221, 225, 265, 323, 362, 374, 390, 409, 434, 479, 590 Prohibition, 59, 91, 182, 183, 184, 232, 472, 479–81, 495, 546 protective legislation, 108, 200, 481–82, 516 Public Debt Act of 1941, 482 Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, 39, 123, 140, 225, 237, 335, 482 Pueblo Land Act of 1924, 483 Pujo Committee, 483–84 Pullman strike, 161, 295, 484 Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, 235, 236, 297, 484–85, 541, 626 putting-out system, 385, 485, 566, 579 Quartering Act, 34 Quebec Act of 1774, 34 quitrent, 487 radio, 5, 36, 226, 312, 455, 489 Rail Act of 1980, 162, 335. See also Staggers Rail Act of 1980 railroad brotherhoods, 2, 43, 134, 474, 490, 492, 493 railroad land grants, 367, 490

Railroad Retirement Act of 1934, 490–91 Railroad Retirement Act of 1937, 491 Railroad Strike of 1877, 282, 347, 491–92 Railroad Strike of 1922, 492 Railway Labor Act of 1926, 492–93 Railway Labor Act of 1934, 493 Rand Corporation, 493–94 Randolph, Asa Philip, 78, 207, 494–95 Raskob, John Jacob, 175, 495, 544 Rayburn, Sam, 482, 533 “Reading Formula,” 496 Reagan, Ronald, 6, 30, 86, 98, 185, 196, 209, 218, 272, 283, 358, 363, 496–99, 501, 528, 566 Reaganomics, 497, 499–500 reaper. See McCormick, Cyrus Hall rebate, 186, 215, 297, 500 Recession of 1937–1938, 289, 500–1, 512 Recession of 1982, 501–2 Recession of 1991–1992, 185, 502 Recession of 2002–2003, 502 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, 78, 215, 313, 502–3, 584, 614 Reclamation, Bureau of, 434, 503–4 Reclamation Act of 1902, 163. See also Newland Reclamation Act of 1902 Reclamation Project Act of 1939, 504 Reconstruction, 249, 343, 433, 504–5, 554 Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 50, 51, 62, 67, 111, 122, 139, 155, 159, 189, 190, 193, 204, 211, 218, 224, 268, 303, 306, 320, 334, 347, 394, 395, 427, 505–6, 521, 545, 559, 587, 588, 598, 614 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 5–6 reparations, 155, 308, 311, 353, 364, 369, 506–7, 613, 646, 647 Report on Manufactures, 507 Report on the Public Credit, 253, 507, 627 Republican Party, 35, 65, 69, 72, 85–86, 91, 101, 117, 145, 180, 182, 184, 186, 239, 248, 249, 302, 304, 306, 311, 328, 362. 373, 405, 445, 462, 464, 472, 496–97, 504, 569, 575–76, 621 research and development (R&D), 43, 46, 127, 196, 330, 381, 442, 471, 493, 508 Resettlement Administration, 212, 508, 564, 591, 632

In D e X

Resumption Act of 1875, 508 Reuther, Walter Philip, 31, 247, 508–9, 595 Revenue Act of 1861, 509 Revenue Act of 1864, 509 Revenue Act of 1919, 162 Revenue Act of 1921, 509–10 Revenue Act of 1924, 510–11 Revenue Act of 1926. See Revenue Act of 1924 Revenue Act of 1932, 511 Revenue Act of 1935, 511–12, 621 Revenue Act of 1936. See Revenue Act of 1935 Revenue Act of 1937. See Revenue Act of 1935 Revenue Act of 1938. See Revenue Act of 1935 Revenue Act of 1940, 512–13 Revenue Act of 1964, 513 Revenue Act of 1971, 513 revenue-sharing, 513–14 Reynolds, Richard Joshua, 514 Rhode Island system. See Waltham system “Right-to-Work,” 101, 427, 514 Roaring Twenties, 515 Robber Barons, 265, 515 Rockefeller, John Davison, 205, 393, 515, 516, 605, 629 Rockefeller, John Davison Jr., 516 Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor, 163, 200, 466, 516–17 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 4, 13, 14, 21, 24, 44, 48, 50, 53, 55, 56, 57, 60, 64, 66, 67, 71, 74, 75, 88, 92, 102, 112, 115, 116, 121, 123, 127, 128, 130, 135, 136, 139, 140, 149, 150, 155, 158, 159, 163, 167, 169, 174, 178, 184, 190, 192, 193, 204, 207, 208, 211, 214, 216, 217, 219, 223, 224, 227, 228, 232, 237, 264, 267, 270, 274, 296, 301, 303, 306, 309, 312, 313, 327, 335, 345, 347, 348, 353, 362, 365, 371, 372, 376, 394, 395, 397, 401, 404, 405, 410, 411, 415, 421, 423, 427, 428, 431, 439, 442, 456, 457, 463, 466, 472, 482, 494, 508, 512, 517–18, 519, 522, 528, 533, 534, 536, 540, 549, 553, 555, 556, 559, 563, 578, 579, 580, 583,

587, 591, 608, 611, 615, 616, 619, 621, 623, 626, 632, 635, 635, 636, 637, 642, 646 Roosevelt, Theodore, 39, 127, 128, 181, 186, 257, 303, 311, 361, 380, 402, 441, 463, 472, 479, 485, 503, 518– 19, 532, 538, 569, 596, 599, 632 Roosevelt Corollary, 273, 402, 519 Roosevelt–Litvinov Agreements of 1933, 519–20 Rosenwald, Julius, 520, 530, 635 Rosie the Riveter, 520–21, 615 Rostow, Walt Whitman, 521 Rubber Reserve Company, 521, 642 Rural Electrification Act of 1936, 439 Rural Electrification Administration, 327, 522 Rural Free Delivery, 522 Rural Post Roads Act of 1916. See Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 Russian American Company, 522–23 Rust Belt, 448, 523 Ryan, John Augustine, 523 S. E. Massengill Company, 237, 626 Sachs, Samuel, 525 safety valve, 525 St. Lawrence Seaway, 526 Sanders, Harland, 526 Santa Fe Trail, 526–27 Sarnoff, David, 527 Savings and Loan Crisis, 527–28 Sawyer v. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company (1952), 560 scab, 528 Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States (295 U.S. 495), 528–29 Schwab, Charles Michael, 529 Scientific Management, 45, 109, 385. See also Taylor, Frederick Winslow Seaboard Air Line Railroad, 45, 530 Sears, Roebuck and Company, 127, 292, 520, 525, 530, 635 Seattle General Strike of 1919, 531, 560 Second Bank of the United States, 2, 35, 65, 180, 323, 341, 389, 415, 457, 458, 531–32, 557, 570 Second Import–Export Bank. See Export– Import Bank

691

692

InDeX

Securities Act of 1933, 122, 335, 532–33, 628 Securities and Exchange Commission, 75, 102, 169, 327, 335, 382, 463, 482, 533–34, 628 Securities Exchange Act of 1934, 67, 88, 122, 335, 463, 534, 628 Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 534–35 September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks, 6, 87, 336. See also World Trade Center and Pentagon Attacks service industry, 535 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. See G.I. Bill of Rights Share Our Wealth Movement, 535–36 sharecropper, 67, 212, 508, 536, 555 Shays’s Rebellion, 42, 138, 536 Sheppard–Towner Act of 1921, 369, 516, 53–37 Sherman, John, 537 Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, 3, 39, 58, 118, 153, 181, 224, 322, 328, 439, 441, 476, 479, 492, 515, 537–38, 590, 599, 600 Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, 28, 65, 537, 538 Shipping Act of 1984, 538–39 “Sick Chicken Case.” See Schechter Poultry Corporation v. United States Silicon Valley, 167, 333, 539 Silver Act of 1963, 539 Silver Democrats, 539–40 Silver Purchase Act of 1934, 66, 540 Silver Republican Party, 28, 541 Sinclair, Upton Beall, 409, 541 Single Tax Movement, 541 sit-down strike, 135, 242, 501, 509, 542, 595 Sixteenth Amendment, 323 Slater, Samuel, 611 Slaughterhouse Cases, 542 slave trade, 133, 542–43 slavery, 2, 28, 68, 132, 157, 171, 248, 304, 373, 394, 395, 399, 441, 480, 543–44, 570, 581, 621 Sloan, Alfred Pritchard Jr., 88, 260, 356, 544–45 Small Business Administration, 347, 545

Small Business Conference of 1938. See National Small Business Men’s Association Smartphones, 39, 325, 333, 473, 545–46, 548 Smith, Alfred Emmanuel, 154, 182, 183, 296, 306, 346, 397, 439, 464, 466, 480, 517, 546, 608, 611, 636 Smith–Lever Act of 1914, 29, 547 Smoot, Reed, 101, 547 Social Darwinism, 547–48 Social Gospel, 548 social media, 5, 178, 207, 325, 333, 548, 576, 649 Social Security Act of 1935, 19, 27, 60, 164, 281, 466, 549–50, 551, 583, 608 Social Security Administration, 219, 551 socialism, 190, 221, 431, 467, 484, 494, 550, 551–52, 578, 616 Socialist Labor Party, 158, 301, 350, 552 Socialist Party of America, 158, 245, 301, 552 Soil Conservation Act of 1935, 553 Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, 13, 30, 553–54 Southern Homestead Act of 1866, 554 Southern Pacific Railroad, 100, 147, 290, 310, 344, 554–55, 594 Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union, 555–56 Spanish–American War, 41, 293, 294, 322, 387, 450, 518, 537, 556, 609 Special Committee on Farm Tenancy, 53, 212, 556–57 Specie Circular of 1836, 557 Specie Resumption Act of 1875, 557 stagflation, 196, 557–58 Staggers Rail Act of 1980, 558 Stamp Act, 34 Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, 38, 205, 215. See also Exxon Standard Oil Company of New Jersey et al. v. U.S. See Exxon Stanford, Leland, 100, 147, 310, 314, 554, 558–59 Steagall, Henry Bascom, 54, 268, 559 Steel Company Seizure of 1952, 560 Steel Strike of 1919, 25, 245, 257, 347, 560–61

In D e X

Steel Workers Organizing Committee, 25, 135, 411, 542. See also United Steel Workers of America Steinbeck, John, 561 Stephens, Uriah Smith, 355, 561–62 Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916, 562 Stone, Harlan Fiske, 562–63, 569, 624 Stone, Warren Stanford, 563 Strader v. Graham, 171 subprime mortgage crisis, 162, 165, 280, 563–64, 598 subsistence homesteads, 564 subtreasury plan, 564 suburbs, 47, 564–65 Sugar Act, 34 Sunbelt, 565 supply-side economics, 185, 363, 497, 499, 565–66 sweatshop, 172, 351, 481, 566 Swift, Gustavus Franklin, 566–67 Swope, Gerard, 88, 121, 567–68 Sylvis, William, 424, 568 Taft, William Howard, 49, 79, 166, 181, 311, 355, 361, 362, 462, 472, 519, 536, 569–70, 632 Taft–Hartley Act of 1947, 78, 101, 120, 173, 240, 281, 363, 423, 450, 514, 570 Taney, Roger Brooke, 171, 570–71 Tariff Commission Act of 1916, 571–72 Tariff of Abominations, 2, 180, 573. See also Tariff of 1828 Tariff of 1789, 572 Tariff of 1816, 572–73 Tariff of 1824, 573 Tariff of 1828, 2, 573 Tariff of 1842, 573–74 Tariff of 1846. See Walker Tariff of 1846 TARP. See Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) tax-deferred annuities (TDAs), 61 Tax Payment Act of 1943, 574 Tax Reform Act of 1986, 574 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 385, 574–75 Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, 575 Tea Act of 1773. See Boston Tea Party of 1773 Tea Party Movement, 37, 373, 445, 575–77

Teapot Dome, 166, 182, 577–78 technocracy, 578 telecommuting, 579 Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, 219, 309, 517, 579 Temporary National Economic Committee, 101, 151, 579–80 Tennessee Valley Authority, 42, 116, 123, 140, 314, 327, 345, 439, 580 Textile Workers Union of America, 25, 581 Three-Fifths Compromise, 581 Timber and Stone Act of 1878. See Timber Cutting Act of 1878 Timber Culture Act of 1873, 581–82 Timber Cutting Act of 1878, 582 Total Quality Management, 582–83 Townsend, Francis Everett, 550, 583–84 Townshend Duties Act, 34 Toxic Substances Control Act, 584 trade deficit, 584 Trade Expansion Act of 1962, 352, 584 Trade Relations Council of the United States, 584–85 Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, 50, 189, 585 Transcontinental Treaty. See Adams–Onis Treaty Trans-Mississippi West, 366, 377, 585 Transportation, Department of, 215, 222, 418, 585–86 Transportation Act of 1920, 101, 361, 474, 586–87 Transportation Act of 1940, 334, 587 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, 466, 546, 587–88 triangular trade, 125, 588 trickle-down theory, 588–89 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), 563, 576, 589 Truman, Harry S., 123, 195, 207, 356, 391, 411, 415, 560, 589, 590, 607, 615, 636 Truman Doctrine, 125, 589–90 Trump, Donald John, 590 trust, 590 Tugwell, Rexford Guy, 12, 508, 550, 591, 632 turnpike, 591 Underwood Tariff of 1913, 585, 593 Unemployed Councils, 593

693

694

InDeX

Unemployed Leagues, 593–94 Union Pacific Railroad, 145, 290, 310, 555, 559, 594 United Automobile Workers, 31, 135, 242, 244, 247, 509, 542, 594–95 United Farm Workers Union, 595 United Fruit Company, 350, 595–96, 646 United Mine Workers, 43, 73, 121, 135, 281, 347, 372, 400, 410, 415, 596 United Rubber Workers, 81, 135, 597 United States Chamber of Commerce, 597–98 United States Commercial Company, 598 United States Railroad Administration, 598 United States Railway Association and Consolidated Rail Corporation. See Conrail United States Steel Corporation, 94, 135, 257, 267, 411, 542, 599 United States v. Butler (297 U.S. 1), 13, 15, 599–600 United States v. Darby (1941), 108 United States v. E. C. Knight Company (156 U.S. 1), 600 United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association (166 U.S. 290), 600–1 United Steelworkers of America, 25, 356, 411, 560, 601 Van Dyke, John Wesley, 603 Van Swearingen Brothers, 603 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 277, 433, 604 Vanderbilt, Cornelius III, 604 Veblen, Thorstein Bunde, 604, 610 vertical integration, 94, 100, 205, 376, 605 Vietnam War, 11, 96, 157, 241, 359, 435, 605, 640 Voluntary Domestic Allotment Plan. See Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad v. Illinois of 1886. See Granger laws Wabash and Erie Canal, 607 Wage Stabilization Board, 4, 607 Wages and Hours Act of 1938. See Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 Wagner, Robert Ferdinand, 129, 193, 422, 491, 550, 608, 609

Wagner Act of 1935, 570. See also National Labor Relations Act of 1935 Wagner–Peyser Act, 608–9 Wagner–Steagall Housing Act of 1937, 422, 609 Walgreen, Charles Rudolph, 609–10 Walker Tariff of 1846, 610 Wall Street, 35, 83, 103, 169, 182, 270, 395, 610, 616, 628, 630 Wallace, Henry Agard, 15, 130, 190, 217, 390, 550, 553, 610–11, 632 Walmart, 611 Waltham System, 611–12 Wanamaker, John, 612–13 war debts, 308, 369, 613 War Finance Corporation, 223, 395, 613–14 War Industries Board, 57, 77, 117, 220, 370, 388, 395, 422, 425, 463, 614, 641 War Labor Policies Board. See National War Labor Board War Manpower Commission, 208, 614–15, 642 War of 1812, 1, 292, 341, 378, 380, 429, 436, 450, 457, 467, 518, 531, 570, 572, 615–16 War on Poverty, 39, 178, 241, 281, 343 War Production Board, 616, 642 Warburg, James Paul, 616–17 Warburg, Paul Moritz, 617 Ward, Aaron Montgomery, 520, 617–18, 635 Warner Brothers, 246, 496, 618 Warren, George Frederick, 130, 460, 619 Washington, Booker Taliferro, 433, 619 Washington, George, 52, 342, 429, 620, 627 Water Power Act of 1920. See Federal Power Commission Watson, Thomas John, 330, 620–21 Wealth Tax Act of 1935, 621 Weaver, James Baird, 180, 282, 621–22 Webb–Pomerene Act of 1918, 622 Webster, Daniel, 153, 622 Weir, Ernest Tener, 623 Welfare Reform Act of 1996, 623, 638 Wells Fargo Bank, 461, 623–24

In D e X

West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (300 U.S. 379), 4, 624 Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 624–25 Wheat Belt, 625 wheat controversy of 1972, 625 Wheeler, Burton Kendall, 134, 182, 482, 540, 625–26 Wheeler–Lea Act of 1938, 229, 485, 626 Whig Party, 34, 35, 117, 132, 164, 248, 304, 323, 328, 373, 405, 415, 475, 477, 573, 610, 622 Whip Inflation Now, 626–27 whiskey rebellion See whiskey tax whiskey tax, 288, 627 white-collar, 70, 452, 627 Whitney, Eli, 385, 628 Whitney, Richard, 628 Wickham, Carl Eric, 629 Wiggin, Albert Henry, 629–30 Wilbur, Ray Lyman, 630 “wildcat strike,” 630 Wilderness Road, 631 Wiley, Harvey, 631 Wiley–Dondero Act, 526 Wilson, Charles Erwin, 631 Wilson, Milburn Lincoln, 631–32 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow, 2, 39, 57, 59, 75, 121, 122, 128, 138, 154, 177, 189, 194, 228, 235, 236, 274, 305, 311, 371, 392, 395, 428, 430, 432, 440, 474, 479, 517, 560, 569, 585, 586, 593, 598, 614, 625, 632–33, 641, 642 Wilson–Gorman Tariff of 1894, 119, 164, 323, 388, 585, 633–34 Wilson v. New, 2 Wisconsin Idea, 361, 634 women’s suffrage movement, 163, 181, 199, 265–66, 282, 368, 552

Women’s Trade Union League, 516, 634 Wood, Robert Elkington, 88, 520, 530, 634–35 Woodruff, Robert Winship, 635 Woodward, Ellen Sullivan, 636 work relief, 20, 23, 92, 115, 193, 219, 353, 390, 422, 478, 579, 636–37, 639 workers’ compensation, 637 workers’ education, 219, 638 workfare, 623, 637, 638 workmen’s compensation. See workers’ compensation Works Progress Administration, 20, 115, 193, 219, 309, 428, 553, 579, 636, 637, 638, 639 World Bank, 76, 284, 329, 396, 640 World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, 336, 639–40 World Trade Organization, (WTO) 259, 640–41 World War I, 83, 144, 155, 161, 163, 175, 189, 204, 237, 287, 305, 326, 369, 393, 428, 460, 519, 531, 560, 613, 633, 641 World War II, 54, 70, 103, 123, 136, 238, 277, 329, 332, 356, 420, 597, 641–43 Wrigley, William Jr., 643 Yahoo!, 645 Yazoo land frauds. See Fletcher v. Peck (6 Cranch 87, 1810) Yellen, Janet Louise, 645–46 yellow-dog contract, 646 Young, Owen D., 646–47 Young Plan, 156, 308, 369, 613, 647 Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer, 356 Zynga, 649

695

About the Authors

James S. Olson is distinguished professor of history at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas. He is the recipient of the university’s “Excellence in Teaching” award and “Excellence in Research” award. In 2004, the Council for the Advancement of Education and the Carnegie Endowment for Education named him “Professor of the Year, Texas, for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.” He is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of more than thirty books, including The Ethnic Dimension in American History; Saving Capitalism: The Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the New Deal, 1933–1940; Catholic Immigrants in America; Winning Is the Only Thing: Sports in America since 1945; Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam, 1945 to 1990; and John Wayne: American, which won the Ray and Pat Brown National Book Award from the Popular Culture Association. His book A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory won the Diolece Parmelee Award from the Texas Historical Foundation. His most recent book, Bathsheba’s Breast: Women, Cancer, and History, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History, won the 2002 History of Science Category Award from the Association of American Publishers, and was recognized by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best nonfiction books in America for 2002. Abraham O. Mendoza completed his bachelor’s degree in history at California Polytechnic State University in 2003 and his master’s degree in history at San Francisco State University in 2005. He also undertook further graduate study in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His fields of specialized study include modern European history, modern German history, U.S. history, Holocaust and comparative genocide studies, world history, and war studies.