Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America
By Meg Jacobs
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About this ebook
"How much does it cost?" We think of this question as one that preoccupies the nation's shoppers, not its statesmen. But, as Pocketbook Politics dramatically shows, the twentieth-century American polity in fact developed in response to that very consumer concern.
In this groundbreaking study, Meg Jacobs demonstrates how pocketbook politics provided the engine for American political conflict throughout the twentieth century. From Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon, national politics turned on public anger over the high cost of living.
Beginning with the explosion of prices at the turn of the century, every strike, demonstration, and boycott was, in effect, a protest against rising prices and inadequate income. On one side, a reform coalition of ordinary Americans, mass retailers, and national politicians fought for laws and policies that promoted militant unionism, government price controls, and a Keynesian program of full employment. On the other, small businessmen fiercely resisted this low-price, high-wage agenda that threatened to bankrupt them.
This book recaptures this dramatic struggle, beginning with the immigrant Jewish, Irish, and Italian women who flocked to Edward Filene's famous Boston bargain basement that opened in 1909 and ending with the Great Inflation of the 1970s.
Pocketbook Politics offers a new interpretation of state power by integrating popular politics and elite policymaking. Unlike most social historians who focus exclusively on consumers at the grass-roots, Jacobs breaks new methodological ground by insisting on the centrality of national politics and the state in the nearly century-long fight to fulfill the American Dream of abundance.
Meg Jacobs
Meg Jacobs is a research scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Her first book, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (2005), won the Organization of American Historians' Ellis W. Hawley Prize for the best book on political economy, politics, and institutions of the modern United States, as well as the New England History Association's Best Book Award.
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Titles in the series (51)
American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gateway State: Hawai‘i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDefending America: Military Culture and the Cold War Court-Martial Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth-Century America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taken Hostage: The Iran Hostage Crisis and America's First Encounter with Radical Islam Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Rise of a Prairie Statesman: The Life and Times of George McGovern Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America's Public-Private Welfare State Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhite Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America's Favorite Welfare Program Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMorning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980's Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America - Updated Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5No Man's Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsState of the Union: A Century of American Labor - Revised and Expanded Edition Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Rock: Race and Resistance at Central High School Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmericans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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