The price of progress
Subtitle: public services, taxation, and the American corporate state, 1877 to 1929
By: R. Rudy Higgens-Evenson
Series: Reconfiguring American political history
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 168
Subjects: Government spending policy -- United States -- States; Taxation -- United States -- History -- States; Corporate state -- United States -- History; United States -- Politics and government; United States -- Economic conditions
Description: "Between the Civil War and the Great Depression, twin revolutions swept through American business and government. In business, large corporations came to dominate entire sectors and markets. In government, new services and agencies, especially at the city and state levels, sprang up to ameliorate a broad spectrum of social problems. In The Price of Progress, R. Rudy Higgens-Evenson offers a fresh analysis of the relationship between those two revolutions.".

"Using previously unexploited data from the annual reports of state treasurers and comptrollers, he provides a detailed, empirical assessment of the goods and services provided to citizens, as well as the resources extracted from them, by state governments during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Focusing on New York, Massachusetts, California, and Kansas, but also including data on thirteen other states, his comparative study suggests that tax policies designed to finance new and innovative government services led to the emergence of the modern "corporate state.""--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [135]-154) and index
Table of contents: title: Compromise, corruption, and confrontation : tax reform in the 1870s; title: Progress, bit by bit : school and insane asylum spending, 1880 to 1900; title: From charter-mongering to catching corporate freeloaders : corporation taxes, 1880-1909; title: The second era of internal improvements : transportation spending, 1890 to 1929; title: Consent, control, and centralization : school and hospital spending, 1900 to 1929; title: Giants of history : income and gasoline taxation, 1907 to 1929; title: The test of democracy : controlling spending in the corporate state, 1907 to 1929