Inflation Decade, 1910-1920

Americans Confront the High Cost of Living
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-3-031-55392-9
Verlag: Springer

Buch, Englisch, 335 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 568 g

This book shows how inflation can disrupt politics and society. With no recent precedent, mild inflation spurred mass protests, myriad remedial schemes, and partisan political reversals between 1910 and 1914. Then wartime demand and inflationary fiscal policy doubled consumer prices from 1915 to 1920, triggering waves of strikes, food riots by immigrant housewives, class conflict, and elite fears of revolution. Middle-class households resented falling real incomes. Even more than today, food prices dominated consumer concerns. Yet farmers wanted high commodity prices. Accordingly, both sides blamed and attacked meatpackers, wholesalers, and retailers. Then as now, inflation hurt whichever party held the White House. Fumbling responses by Wilson’s administration and the Federal Reserve led to hesitant price controls, punitive raids and prosecutions, and a now-familiar fallback—high interest rates in 1920 and subsequent recession. An epilogue traces continuing popular and political responses to changes in the consumer price index down to 2020. 

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Macleod, David I.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte Regionalgeschichte der USA: Einzelne Staaten, Städte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction.- Prelude: Declining Prices, 1865-1897.- 1. Prices Begin a Slow Rise, 1897-1909.- 2. Concern Intensifies in 1910: What or Whom to Blame?.- 3. Reform in Detail: Attempted Remedies for Rising Prices, 1910-1914.- 4. Food Prices, Democratic Political Gains, and Resulting Legislation, 1911-1914.- 5. The High Cost of Living: Respite and Upsurge, 1915 to Early 1917.- 6. The Inflation Muddle, 1915 to June 1917.- 7. War Finance and Prices.- 8. One Commodity at a Time: Wartime Attempts to Restrain Prices and Profiteering.- 9. Getting By: Earners Confront Changing Real Incomes.- 10. Postwar: Brief Respite and Resurgent High Cost of Living, 1919-1920.- 11. Confronting High Prices: Pursuing Profiteering and Systemic Causes, 1919-1920.- 12. Inflation vs. Deflation, 1920: Anxiety, Indecision, Delayed Reversal, and Electoral Upheaval.- 13. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Cost-of-Living Index.- 14. Deflation’s Consequences: Winners, Losers, and a Brief New Normalcy.- 15. Epilogue: 1920s to the Present.- Conclusion.- Notes.

Über Autor(innen)

David I. Macleod is Professor Emeritus of History at Central Michigan University, where he taught American social and political history. His publications include Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870-1920 and The Age of the Child: Children in America, 1890-1920.