Courses

History 174B

Wealth and Poverty in the United States, 1865-1950

This course must take a different turn in light of the Great Housing and Credit Crash of 2008. Although our primary time frame remains the one stated in the course title, we will begin and end the course looking backward from the present crisis for origins and historical parallels to the challenges Americans face today. Although we must always use analogies carefully, there are strong parallels from earlier capitalist crises to the present one. The U.S. economy entered what many historians know as the Long Depression in 1873, and that slump lasted—despite brief boom periods along the way—until 1897. During that time, an economy that ran on loan credit and overproduced appeared, matured, and was recognized by contemporaries as one fraught with “overproduction crises.” A second long slump, the Great Depression of the 1930s, followed nearly a decade of economic growth that had been buoyed by full application of assembly line production and dynamic growth in new industries, but also by wild speculation in stocks and excessive use of consumer credit. This time, the search for causes and cures shifted, leading to a diagnosis of underconsumption and constrained private investment. In the 1920s, as in recent decades, some held the false belief that the good times would never stop rolling. Only recently, business pundits and even some economists were still claiming that “it is different this time,” i.e., no more depressions. So much for pipe dreams. Yet we should recognize that, in modern times, hard times are made, not born. State policies, institutional structures, and the values and behaviors of citizens both high and low on the economic wealth scale have much to do with them. So too have rising levels of income and wealth inequality, a situation that characterized both the Old Gilded Age (1870s-1900s) and the New Gilded Age (1970s-2000s)
Thus warning signs have been there to be heeded. The personal fortunes taken from high finance, the high tech industries, oil, entertainment, and real estate development have dwarfed those of the Carnegies and Rockefellers of yesteryear. Yet economic indicators have recently warned of a disappearing U.S. middle class, as well-paying factory and white collar jobs were outsourced by the millions, wages and salaries fell behind inflation, pensions disappeared, homelessness increased, female and childhood poverty continued to rise, and personal and household credit card, student loan, and mortgage debts mushroomed in relation to incomes. Since the 1970s, most families have needed two adult earners.
The new inequality was inflected by gender, race, and class. Home ownership for all Americans peaked in early 2005 at over 69% (76% for whites), close to an all time overall high, but on 48% of African Americans and 50% of Hispanics owned their homes. Since then, default rates on subprime mortgages marketed to low earners have shot up as loans reset to higher rates just as home prices plummeted by as much as 25% in some regions. By mid-2008, nearly one in ten of U.S. mortgages were in default. To gain historical perspective on these issues, we will be looking at changing patterns of inequality in wealth and power between the U.S. Civil War and the end of World War II.

History 174B

Faculty Profile

Syllabus W'09
Writing Guide
Writing Tips
Finding Sources
Style Guide
Notes and Bibliography

Preparing an Abstract

Midterm Prep '09

Handouts:
Constituent Ideologies

Study Questions:
Banks
Byington
Cashman
Cohen and Sitkoff
Critics of Capitalism
Defenders of Wealth
Leach
Making Poor People
Gordon
Norris
Steinbeck