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Contemporaries of Carroll D. Wright (1840-1909) lived through the transformation of American society by the industrial revolution. For the most part they thought the transformation represented growth and progress, but many also found occasion for doubt and fear in its consequences. Their anxieties collected around the notions of a "labor problem" and "labor reform." Whether from hope or fear, people felt a need for statistical information. On this popular demand Wright built his career as statistical expert and renowned master of "labor statistics." His investigations during thirty-two years of government service (1873-1905) gave form to contemporary ideas and set precedents for modern procedures, as in his seminal studies of wages, prices, and strikes. In telling how Wright took up this unprecedented career, Mr. Leiby shows the importance of Wright's early years and relates his work to the politics and religion of his time as well as to its social science. In this perspective, the history of the labor bureaus and their voluminous reports take on their original human purposes and meaning.
With the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912, Louis D. Brandeis emerged as the undisputed intellectual leader of those reformers who were trying to recreate a democratic society free from the economic and political depradations of monopolistic enterprise. But now these reformers had a champion in the White House, and direct access to him through one of his most trusted advisers. In this volume we see what was probably the high point of progressive reform--the first three years of the Wilson Administration. During these years Brandeis was considered for a Cabinet position, consulted frequently on matters of patronage, and called in at key junctures to determine policy. But he still kept up his...
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Why—contrary to much expert and popular opinion—more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality. For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality. The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger’s test case is the city of Boston, which spent heavily ...