Title: Public markets and civic culture in nineteenth-century America /
Authors: Tangires, Helen, 1956-
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press,
Year: 2003
Subjects: Markets United States History
Abstract: "In Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth-Century America Helen Tangires examines the role of the public marketplace - social and architectural - as a key site in the development of civic culture in America. More than simply places for buying and selling food, Tangires explains, municipally owned and operated markets were the common ground where citizens and government struggled to define the shared values of the community. Public markets were vital to civic policy and reflected the profound belief in the moral economy - the effort on the part of the municipality to maintain the social and political health of its community by regulating the ethics of trade in the urban marketplace."--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: I: Building the common ground -- Market laws in the early republic -- The market house -- Marketplace culture -- II: Cracks in the market walls -- The legalizing of private meat shops in Antebellum New York -- Market house company mania in Philadelphia -- The landscape of deregulation -- III: Regaining a share of the marketplace -- Consumer protection and the new moral economy -- Rebirth of the municipal market.