Financing the American Dream
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: February 22, 1999
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 377
ISBN-13: 9780691058276
Subjects: Economics - General; History - General History; Consumption (Economics); Consumer Economics (General); United States - 20th Century; Business & Economics; History; Business/Economics; Finance; Economic History; 20th century; Credit & credit institutions; Cultural studies; Social history; USA; c 1800 to c 1900; Consumer Behavior - General; United States; Consumer Credit; Consumers
Description: 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.