American Labor and Economic Citizenship

In the 1920s, a diverse group of social investigators and policy makers addressed a range of long-standing and seemingly intractable problems, confident that the period provided a unique moment full of opportunities. Led by Herbert Hoover, the group came to understand that a new, fair and prosperous version of capitalism could be achieved through steady economic growth.

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Once viewed as a distinct era characterized by intense bigotry, nostalgia for simpler times and a revulsion against active government, the 1920s have been rediscovered by historians in recent decades as a time when Herbert Hoover and his allies worked to significantly reform economic policy. Mark Hendrickson both augments and amends this view by studying the origins and development of New Era policy expertise and knowledge. Policy-oriented social scientists in government, trade union, academic and nonprofit agencies showed how methods for achieving stable economic growth through increased productivity could both defang the dreaded business cycle and defuse the pattern of hostile class relations that Gilded Age depressions had helped to set as an American system of industrial relations.