Financing the American dream : a cultural history of consumer credit / Lendol Calder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Calder, Lendol Glen.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumer credit--United States--History.

Consumer credit.

Consumption (Economics)--United States--History.

Consumption (Economics).

Consumers--United States--History.

Consumers.

History.

United States.

Physical Description:

xv, 377 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [1999]

Summary:

Once there was a golden age of American thrift, when citizens lived sensibly within their means and worked hard to stay out of debt The growing availability of credit in this century, however, has brought those days to an end -- undermining traditional moral virtues such as prudence, diligence, and the delay of gratification while encouraging reckless consumerism. Or so we commonly believe. In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Lendol Calder shows that this conception of the past is in fact a myth.

Calder presents the first book-length social and cultural history of the rise of consumer credit in America. He focuses on the years between 1890 and 1940, when the legal, institutional, and moral bases of today's consumer credit were established, and in an epilogue takes the story up to the present. He draws on a wide variety of sources -- including personal diaries and letters, government and business records, newspapers, advertisements, movies, and the words of such figures as Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, and P.T. Barnum -- to show that debt has always been with us. He vigorously challenges the idea that consumer credit has eroded traditional values. Instead, he argues, monthly payments have imposed strict, externally reinforced disciplines on consumers, making the culture of consumption less a playground for hedonists than an extension of what Max Weber called the "iron cage" of disciplined rationality and hard work.

Throughout, Calder keeps in clear view the human face of credit relations. He re-creates the Dickensian world of nineteenth-century pawnbrokers, takes us into the dingy backstairs offices of loan sharks, into small-town shops and New York department stores, andexplains who resorted to which types of credit and why. He also traces the evolving moral status of consumer credit, showing how it changed from a widespread but morally dubious practice into an almost universal and generally accepted practice by World War II. Combining clear, rigorous arguments with a colorful, narrative style, Financing the American Dream will attract a wide range of academic and general readers and change how we understand one of the most important and overlooked aspects of American social and economic life.

Contents:

Introduction: Credit, Consumer Culture, and the American Dream 3

Pt. 1 Getting Trusted: Debt and Credit before Consumer Credit 35

Ch. 1 Beautiful Credit! The Foundation of Modern Society 37

Ch. 2 Debt in the Victorian Money Management Ethic 74

Pt. 2 Getting the Goods: The Making of a Credit Revolution 109

Ch. 3 Small-Loan Lending and the Rise of the Personal Finance Company 111

Ch. 4 Hard Payments: The Rise of Installment Selling 156

Pt. 3 Getting Credit: The Legitimization of Consumer Debt 209

Ch. 5 From Consumptive Credit to Consumer Credit 211

Ch. 6 Consumer Credit in the Great Depression 262.

Notes:

Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--University of Chicago, 1993.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-364) and index.

ISBN:

069105827X

OCLC:

39464979