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 pr...

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Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Calder, Lendol (Author)
Format:	Thesis Book
Language:	English
Published:	Princeton, NJ Princeton Univ. Press 1999
Subjects:	Geschichte 1890-1940 Consommateurs - États-Unis - Histoire Consommation (Économie politique) - États-Unis - Histoire Consumentenkrediet Consumidores - Estados Unidos - Historia Consumo (Economía) - Historia - Estados Unidos Crédit à la consommation - États-Unis - Histoire Culturele aspecten Geschichte Kultur Consumer credit > United States > History Consumers > United States > History Consumption (Economics) > United States > History Verbraucherverhalten Konsumentenkredit USA Hochschulschrift
Summary:	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.
Physical Description:	XV, 377 S. Ill.
ISBN:	069105827X