INT 200: Global Capitalism and its Discontents

American Capitalism1605-1945

American Capitalism

• “the chief business of the American people is business”• Colonial Period

– Virginia Charters– Exclusionary policy– Taxes– Mercantile Capitalism

• United States– Thomas Paine in 1776 and 1791– Formerly Indian-owned land served as capital – Indentured servants and slavery

American Capitalism

• The Industrial Revolution in the USA– Government involvement: Capital and land– Slavery– Two Working Classes

• African American and enslaved• White and free

– Poverty and Industrial Expansion– Steam-driven machinery, increased production, and profits

• Civil War to World War I– Between 1865 and 1920, the USA became the world's leading

industrial capitalist nation• 2 obstacles: a growing working class & competition• Solutions: price-cutting to monopolies

American Capitalism

• The Gilded Age and the Robber Barons (monopoly capitalism)– Era of rapid economic growth, especially in the North and West– But also of poverty and inequality– Labor unions and the Panic of 1873 and Panic of 1893– Robber Barons: the 24 men who held great industrial monopolies and

unprecedented wealth• denounced regulators in the name of the free market• but created monopolies

– Governments’ roles

American Capitalism

• 1920s to WWII– 1920s: Sharp increases occurred in productivity and profit; employer-

managed racism; tear gas and bullets; etc.– Great Depression: b 1933, nearly ¼ of the workforce was unemployed

(½ of black workers)• Productivity rose, goaded by fear of unemployment • Strikers were attacked by police and hired anti-labor forces

– WWII• Management of the economic side of the

war was left in the hands of large-scale industry• National labor policy increasingly penalized

unions for striking• Presidentially-appointed boards and the armed

forces high command controlled economic aspects of the war

• Summary