The Public Philosophy: Interest-Group Liberalism

1967 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore Lowi
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Part ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Philosophy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Public Sphere

Until astonishingly recent times American national government played a marginal role in the life of the nation. Even as late as the eve of World War I, the State Department could support itself on consular fees. In most years revenues from tariffs supplied adequate financing, plus a surplus, from all other responsibilities. In 1800, there was less than one-half a federal bureaucrat per 1,000 citizens. On the eve of the Civil War there were only 1.5 federal bureaucrats per 1,000 citizens, and by 1900 that ratio had climbed to 2.7. This compares with 7 per 1,000 in 1940 and 13 per 1,000 in 1962—exclusive of military personnel.The relatively small size of the public sphere was maintained in great part by the constitutional wall of separation between government and private life. The wall was occasionally scaled in both directions, but concern for the proper relation of private life and public order was always a serious and effective issue. Americans always talked pragmatism, in government as in all other things; but doctrine always deeply penetrated public dialogue. Power, even in the United States, needed justification.Throughout the decades between the end of the Civil War and the Great Depression, almost every debate over a public policy became involved in the larger debate over the nature and consequences of larger and smaller spheres of government. This period was just as much a “constitutional period” as that of 1789–1820. Each period is distinguished by its effort to define (or redefine) and employ a “public philosophy.”

War and the Next Lesson

Money ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith ◽  
James K. Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
The Great Depression

This chapter examines the lessons of World War II with respect to money and monetary policy. World War I exposed the fragility of the monetary structure that had gold as its foundation, the great boom of the 1920s showed how futile monetary policy was as an instrument of restraint, and the Great Depression highlighted the ineffectuality of monetary policy for rescuing the country from a slump—for breaking out of the underemployment equilibrium once this had been fully and firmly established. On the part of John Maynard Keynes, the lesson was that only fiscal policy ensured not just that money was available to be borrowed but that it would be borrowed and would be spent. The chapter considers the experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States with a lesson of World War II: that general measures for restraining demand do not prevent inflation in an economy that is operating at or near capacity.

From the Civil War to the Great War

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-53
Author(s):  
Aaron Shaheen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Phantom Limb ◽  
Artificial Limbs ◽  
World War ◽  
Oliver Wendell Holmes ◽  
Spiritual Potential ◽  
The Great War

The chapter first shows how the spiritualized version of prosthetics originated in the Civil War, which rendered approximately 60,000 veterans limbless. Prominent physicians such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and S. Weir Mitchell postulated that artificial limbs gave both physical and emotional solace to shattered soldiers, especially among those who suffered phantom limb syndrome. The devices’ “spiritual” potential proved limited, if not illusory; in fact, they were often so fragile, cumbersome, and painful that amputees simply preferred to go without them. Upon entering World War I, the United States created a rehabilitation and vocational program that aided injured veterans to reenter the workforce. Reflecting the way in which “personality” had come to replace a more traditional notion of spirit, orthopedists such as Joel Goldthwait and David Silver, both employed at Walter Reed Hospital, designed artificial limbs for both physical and psychological compatibility.

Defining and Defending Valid Citizenship During War: Jewish Immigrant Businesses in World War I Britain

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
STEPHANIE SEKETA
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Business Networks ◽  
Hostile Environment ◽  
World War ◽  
Business Decisions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Behavior ◽  
Political Associations ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Corporate Actions

Beginning in the 1870s and 1880s, many British companies relied on transnational business networks and global associations. However, the tensions produced by World War I created an environment in which consumers, journalists, and politicians actively promoted economic protectionism and consumer nationalism through various Buy British movements. Entrepreneurs under scrutiny took a variety of approaches to manage this hostile environment and avoid the financial, political, and cultural ramifications of suddenly having their and their family members’ valid citizenship questioned and outright attacked in the public sphere. During the war, neutral, passive, or absent patriotism drew suspicion. Any suspicions about loyalty could spark an avalanche of attacks, with each one being exponentially more difficult to defend as fear built in people’s minds. Citizenship was more than a legal matter; it was a layered set of dynamic activities and enterprises in which corporate actions became tied to expression of loyalty. People were judged by their cultural behavior, political associations, legal citizenship, and business decisions. I argue that some firms reacted by defining themselves, their products, and their services as “British,” erasing their “foreignness” as a defense against attacks on their citizenship and loyalty.

Manufacturing Productivity Growth in American Economic History

2018 ◽  
pp. 212-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander J. Field
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Manufacturing Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Manufacturing Productivity ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

This chapter provides an overview of labor and total factor productivity growth in the manufacturing sector in the United States from colonial times to the present. An introductory section defines concept and terms. This is followed by an historical survey of improvement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and sections on the manufacturing revolution of the 1920s and the sector’s contribution during the Great Depression. The remainder of the chapter provides a quantitative perspective on manufacturing productivity growth and its contribution to the overall economy from the end of World War I through the first decade of the twenty-first century.

The Post-Heroic Generation: American Independent Inventors, 1900–1950

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 732-748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric S. Hintz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Research And Development ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Polaroid Camera ◽  
Samuel Ruben

By World War I, the public (and later, many historians) had come to believe that teams of anonymous scientists in corporate research and development (R&D) laboratories had displaced “heroic” individual inventors like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell as the wellspring of innovation. However, the first half of the twentieth century was actually a long transitional period when lesser known independents like Chester Carlson (Xerox copier), Earl Tupper (Tupperware), Samuel Ruben (Duracell batteries), and Edwin Land (Polaroid camera) continued to make notable contributions to the overall context of innovation. Accordingly, my dissertation considers the changing fortunes of American independent inventors from approximately 1900 to 1950, a period of expanding corporate R&D, the Great Depression, and two world wars. Contrary to most interpretations of this period, I argue that individual, “post-heroic” inventors remained an important, though less visible, source of inventions in the early twentieth century.

Breaking the Taboo: Architects and Advertising in Depression and War

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Shanken
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Public Relations Campaign ◽  
American Institute Of Architects ◽  
Second World

Breaking the Taboo: Architects and Advertising in Depression and War chronicles the fall of a professional interdiction in architecture, precipitated by the Second World War. For much of the history of their profession in the United States, architects——unlike builders and engineers, their main competition——faced censure from the American Institute of Architects if they advertised their services. Architects established models of professional behavior intended to hold them apart from the commercial realm. Andrew M. Shanken explores how the Great Depression and the Second World War strained this outdated model of practice, placing architects within consumer culture in more conspicuous ways, redefining the architect's role in society and making public relations an essential part of presenting the profession to the public. Only with the unification of the AIA after the war would architects conduct a modern public relations campaign, but the taboo had begun to erode in the 1930s and early 1940s, setting the stage for the emergence of the modern profession.

SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY AND TAX REGIMES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1763 TO THE PRESENT

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Elliot Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
World War ◽  
Ability To Pay ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Tax Regimes ◽  
The Republic

The essay explores how ideas about social justice and economic performance shaped the debates over federal taxation in the United States since the origins of the republic. The debates were most intense during major national emergencies (the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II), and each debate produced a new tax regime-a tax system with its own characteristic tax base, rate structure, administration apparatus, and social purpose. The criterion of "ability to pay" and a concern for economic efficiency powerfully shaped the formation of every tax regime, but "ability to pay" became the more influential of the two considerations during the national crises of the twentieth century.

The Alawis

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Procházka
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
French Mandate ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Economic Influence ◽  
Written Sources

The ʿAlawis are adherents of an Islamic sect, the origin of which can be traced back to 9th-century Iraq. They are an offshoot of early Shiah Islam with ancient Iranian, Christian, and Gnostic influences. Outsiders often call them “Nusayri,” after the sect’s founder Ibn Nusayr. Practically all ʿAlawis are Arabs. Their total number is about four million, among which some 2.5 million reside in Syria, where they constitute roughly 12 percent of the population. Many ʿAlawi beliefs and rites are still kept secret by the community, being revealed only to initiate male members. One key element in their faith is the belief in a divine triad that has manifested itself to the ʿAlawi community in seven cycles. Other characteristics are an extraordinary veneration for Muhammad’s son-in-law ʿAli, the belief in the transmigration of the soul, and a very large number of holy shrines, which are frequent in all regions settled by ʿAlawis. Because of the esoteric nature of the ʿAlawi religion and the scarcity of authentic written sources, many details of their creed are subjects of vigorous public and scholarly discussion. For many centuries, the ʿAlawis were an economically weak, socially marginalized, and persecuted group whose heartland was western Syria. The public rise of the community began with the establishment of the French mandate over Syria after World War I and reached its zenith when the ʿAlawi Hafiz al-Assad became president of Syria in 1971. Since then, the disproportionate political and economic influence of the ʿAlawis in Syria has fueled confessional conflicts with the Sunni majority, which culminated in the civil war that began in 2011.

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