Stories From The Stacks

THE TRANSPACIFIC MIDDLE Gregory Hargreaves interviews Sunny Xiang about her book project “The Transpacific Middle,” in support of which, Xiang, an assistant professor at Yale University, received an exploratory grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. In “The Transpacific Middle,” Xiang discusses her research on the culture of the American Cold War in Asia through the lens of ephemeral literature, including fashion magazines, pulp fiction, & advertisements. In so doing, Professor Xiang raises methodological questions about the nature of evidence, investigation, and the archive itself.

SORTING OUT THE MIXED ECONOMY: THE RISE AND FALL OF WELFARE AND DEVELOPMENTAL STATES IN THE AMERICAS In this episode Roger Horowitz interviews Amy C. Offner, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, about her new book. Sorting Out the Mixed Economy: The Rise and Fall of Welfare and Developmental States in the Americas (Princeton University Press, 2019). Among other honors, the book won the First Monograph Prize from the Economic History Society and the Michael H. Hunt Prize for International History from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In this book Amy Offner brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury state building. She follows the flood of U.S. advisors who swept into Latin America after World War II intent on lifting the region out of poverty. In Colombia, these “experts” sought to encourage economic growth by decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and

Arms of the State: A History of the Industrial Robot in Postwar America Gregory Hargreaves interviews Salem Elzway about his dissertation project “Arms of the State: A History of the Industrial Robot in Postwar America.” In support of his research, Elzway, a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, received an exploratory grant and a Henry Belin du Pont research grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. In “Arms of the State,” Elzway discusses his research on the political economy of industrial robots from 1940 to 1980, seeking out the ways social forces shaped the developing technology, and how the novel technology shaped society in-turn. State policies concerned with military power and economic productivity intersected with the work of an array of public & private actors to develop and deploy industrial robotics. Subscribe for more Hagley History Hangouts, or visit www.hagley.org/hhh

AMERICAN FAIR TRADE: PROPRIETARY CAPITALISM, CORPORATISM, AND THE 'NEW COMPETITION,' 1890–1940 Roger Horowitz interviews Laura Phillips Sawyer about her recent book, American Fair Trade: Proprietary Capitalism, Corporatism, and the 'New Competition,' 1890–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Phillips Sawyer, an associate professor at University of Georgia Law School, used the Chamber of Commerce of the United States collection at Hagley in her research. In American Fair Trade, Laura Phillips Sawyer argues that American small businesses created an influential fair trade movement in the early twentieth century. These firms formed trade associations to lobby and litigate to reshape competition policy to their benefit. Fair trade arguments borrowed from progressive law and economics, demonstrating a persistent concern with market fairness - not only fair prices for consumers but also fair competition among businesses. Proponents of fair trade collaborated with regulators to create codes of fair competition

THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT: COAL & CITIZENSHIP IN THE AGE OF ENERGY CRISIS Gregory Hargreaves interviews Trish Kahle about her book project “The Graveyard Shift: Coal & Citizenship in the Age of Energy Crisis.” Kahle, assistant professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University Qatar, received support for her research from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, including an exploratory grant and a Henry Belin du Pont research grant. In “The Graveyard Shift,” Kahle discusses her research on the post-WWII political economy of coal, and its role in struggles over the civic rights & responsibilities entailed in high production & consumption of energy, an issue she terms “energy citizenship.” During the energy crises of the1970s, Kahle argues, the problem of energy citizenship took on new urgency, especially in American coalfields, where she identifies the competing rights & obligations that flowed from the linkages of energy producers & consumers, and th

LANCE’S QUEST TO SOLVE THE MYSTERY OF A CIVIL WAR SUBMARINE In this episode, Ben Spohn interviews Dr. Rachel Lance, an Assistant Consulting Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Duke University School of Medicine on her new book, In the Waves: My Quest to Solve the Mystery of A Civil War Submarine (Dutton, 2020). Lance is a biomedical engineer and blast-injury specialist by training. Before earning her Phd. at Duke University, she worked as an engineer for the United States Navy, building specialized underwater equipment. In In the Waves: My Quest to Solve the Mystery of a Civil War Submarine (Dutton, 2020) Lance documents how she developed and tested her own theory on the sinking of the HL Hunley, a Confederate submarine lost after sinking just one Union ship, the U.S.S. Housatonic. Lance’s research at Hagley provided her with background knowledge on the finer points of blackpowder manufacture and explosions. Lance’s historical research and experiments with black powder explosions and her

ENGINEERING RULES: GLOBAL STANDARD SETTING SINCE 1880 Roger Horowitz interviews JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy about their recent book, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019). JoAnne Yates (Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, MIT) and Craig N. Murphy (the Betty Freyhof Johnson '44 Professor of Political Science, Wellesley College) used the Ralph Showers personal papers that are now in Hagley’s collections in their research. Engineering Rules provides the first global history of voluntary consensus standard setting. Private, voluntary standards shape almost everything we use, from screw threads to shipping containers to e-readers. They have been critical to every major change in the world economy for more than a century, including the rise of global manufacturing and the ubiquity of the internet. In Engineering Rules, JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy trace the standard-setting system's evolution through time, revealing a process with an astoni

AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY BETWEEN 1913 AND 1935 Program Officer Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Kevin Tennent about his recent research at the Hagley Museum & Library, funded by a grant from the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society. Dr. Tennent, Senior Lecturer at the University of York School of Management, used Hagley materials in his research on American industrial democracy between 1913 and 1935. Dr. Tennent’s research seeks to further our understanding of labor representation within industrial concerns, to determine how democratic institutions functions within American business of the period, and to investigate their relationship with organized labor unions and the relative empowerment of employees.

IN DEBT TO GROWTH: REAL ESTATE & THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PUBLIC FINANCE IN NEW YORK CITY, 1880-1943 Daniel Wortel-London is a recent PhD in American History from New York University, with a research focus on political, urban, and fiscal history. Dr. Wortel-London was the 2019-2020 Louis Galambos National Fellow in Business & Politics at the Hagley Center for the History of Business, Technology, & Society, and has worked as a public policy researcher for the Global Parliament of Mayors & the Adelphi Institute, an instructor at City College & the Jacob Riis Settlement House, and as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of the City of New York. Dr. Wortel-London’s dissertation, “In Debt to Growth: Real Estate & the Political Economy of Public Finance in New York City, 1880-1943,” investigates the changing relation of public finance and real estate development in New York City between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. Whereas many historians have viewed these topics in isolation, assuming that urban fiscal

Designing the Bombshell: Military-Industrial Materials & the Shaping of Women's Bodies in the United States Gregory Hargreaves interviews Dr. Isabelle Marina Held about her recent research at Hagley, funded by one of our grants. Dr. Held, a recent PhD in the History of Design, used Hagley materials in her research on the “bombshell assembly line,” the adoption of synthetic war-time materials, such as nylon, silicon, & plastic foam, by industries concerned with shaping or reshaping the bodies of American women. While Dr. Held used numerous Hagley collections, a cache of documents relating to “Miss Chemistry,” a DuPont spokesmodel responsible for promoting nylon stockings to visitors to the company’s display at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, provided unique research opportunities discussed at length here.

Gregory Hargreaves interviews Bernardo Batiz-Lazo about his book, Cash & Dash: How ATMs & Computers Changed Banking (Oxford, 2018). Batiz-Lazo, professor of FinTech History & Global Trade at Northumbria University, used Hagley collections related to the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society. In Cash & Dash, Batiz-Lazo discusses his research on the history of financial technology, including the development and adoption of ATMs & computer networks. Financial service firms found numerous reasons to adopt automation, while consumers found as many reasons to question the intrusion of devices between them and “their” bank. The resulting foment yielded Batiz-Lazo with abundant material to explore the intersections of banking with technology & society.

American educators in 1940s classrooms eagerly played corporate propaganda for their students. The source, Dupont’s Cavalcade of America, was a mid-twentieth century radio program designed to promote the values of free enterprise, productivity, & consumerism to the public through the medium of historical drama. Teachers introduced the program to classrooms to supplement lessons in the American past, and its fair historical accuracy made it potentially useful as a teaching tool. However, the program came with a heavy dose of messaging meant to promote a “liberal consensus” of corporate and government unity and competency in the face of social and political challenges. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Taylor Currie, graduate student at Queen’s University, discusses how she approached her project, how she discovered her source base at Hagley, and how she interprets the material to suit her research agenda. Attempting to trace the long history of what she terms the “project of liberal consensus,” C

Attitudes toward intoxication can be unstable. The government of Turkey, for example, within a single generation went from producing alcohol and promoting its consumption as civil and modern, to restricting the consumption of alcohol and prohibiting its advertisement, right down to cellphone ringtones that sound like beer bottles opening. A culture once known for its Bektashi Sufis and Janissary soldiers, both famous for enjoying alcohol, now faces increasing pressure to dry out. This remarkable turnaround is indicative of the ways in which societies regulate alcohol by cultural norms and legal statues that are all subject to change. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historical geographer Kyle Evered, associate professor at Michigan State University, discusses the culture and regulation of alcohol in Turkey, from the late Ottoman Empire through the early Republican period and up to the present day. Religion, ethnic & sectarian identity, and political ideals all played a role in shaping attitud

Leprechauns have hocked Irish goods to American consumers for generations. When one of the wee folk appeared on a bottle of Irish whisky, its familiar associations marked the drink as an authentic product of an antique culture for the American consumer. From the Blarney Stone to the shamrock, symbols laden with Irish associations in the American mind have proved useful marketing tools for businesses that sought to leverage the value of the word “Irish” in the American marketplace. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, historian of the Irish-American experience Marion Casey, professor at the Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, discusses the commercial use of Irish culture to sell goods to American consumers. The Irish people possessed an idea of Ireland and its identity that different from that held in the popular American mind. This forced Irish-American businesses to leverage popular preconceptions of Ireland as quaint, natural, and antique, even as they sought to reorient the Irish econo

In the 1950s, Vladimir K. Zworykin, an engineer recently retired from research at RCA, looked at the rising cost of health care and the shortage of medical personnel in America, and decided to do something about it. His solution was to apply computer engineering techniques to the problems of health care and medical diagnosis. To do so, Zworykin established an interdisciplinary research group of engineers, statisticians, and physicians, and tasked them with developing computer programs capable of aiding medical diagnosis. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Andrew Lea, PhD candidate in the history of science and medicine at the University of Oxford, discusses the work of Zworykin and company, tracing the origins of the push for bio-medical computing, its uneven reception in the medical world, and the unfolding legacy the movement has left. The Zworykin project focused on hematology, and worked on diagnostic software to assist the identification of blood diseases. Translating a vast and incomplete bod

Coming to America to start a new life is filled with challenges, even for the wealthy and well-connected. When the du Pont family crossed the Atlantic, they sought a new beginning in a land of opportunity. Burdened by sibling rivalries and divergent ideas about how best to make their fortune, the family compensated with dedication to one another and a boatload of capital invested by social and economic elites in France. Once landed, the du Ponts set to work figuring out how to remake themselves into Americans, and how to return a profit. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, Roma Beaufret, master’s student at L'École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, discusses the early history of the du Pont family’s business ventures. With a focus on the relationship between business practice and family intimacy, Beaufret seeks to understand the ways the du Ponts brought new ideals of economic and scientific rationality with them to America, and how they worked together to put them into practice. Using Hagley Library c

There are many reasons to give to charity: convictions of religious faith, values of service to others, and plain old greed. Charities can serve the public good, but they can also serve personal interests at the same time. In the twentieth century, some affluent Americans turned to philanthropy with mixed motivations. Faith and values mattered to them, but so too did maintaining control over their fortunes, and burnishing their public images. Giving with one hand allowed them to take with the other. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, scholar of religion Andrew Jungclaus, PhD candidate at Columbia University, discusses the development of major secular charities in the twentieth-century United States, and the private motivations that drove their wealthy and powerful founders to build philanthropic institutions. Jungclaus suggests that before the 1930s, American philanthropy had a small-scale, church-based orientation, and that the “secular behemoths” of modern American charity, including the Pew Cha

How much is a dollar worth? It depends who you ask, when, and where. Economic psychologists have a concept called ‘money illusion,’ which suggests that people are not actually very good at judging the value of money in the context of changing monetary conditions. Distinguishing between the perceived value of money and its “objective” market value introduces a new variable to analyses of debates over prices, wages, and social relations. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, economic historian Sebastian Teupe, junior professor at the University of Bayreuth, discusses the role of money illusion in wage arbitration in Germany, Britain, and the United States from the 1870s to the 1920s. The time range embraces a long deflationary period followed by an inflationary period of equal duration. According to classical economics, wages should have fallen in the first period and risen in the second. Outcomes in the labor market, however, proved to be more complicated, due to factors including money illusion and t

Americans value equality, but have competing visions of what it should look like. The twentieth-century women’s movement was riven by class divisions. Elite women within the movement favored the uncompromising Equal Rights Amendment; while working women feared that it would undermine gains they had made in gendered workplace protections, and so favored the Women’s Status Bill, which would preserve regulation against exploitation of women workers. This division opened the possibility of business interests appealing to and splitting off a segment of organized American women. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, labor historian Emily Twarog, associate professor in the School of Labor & Employment Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses how business interests appealed to the women’s movement with explicit validation of women’s socio-economic importance, and calls to rally women to the cause of free enterprise and the defense of the American way of life. Using Hagley Libra

The Athabasca country of Alberta once boasted the world’s premier fur hunting grounds. When the energy crises of the late twentieth century put a premium on the region’s tar sand deposits, rich in hydrocarbons useful for synthesizing oil, corporations built an industrial landscape of extraction and processing infrastructure that displaced former occupation and use of the land. The local environment, and the world economy would never be the same. In this episode of Stories from the Stacks, environmental historian Hereward Longley, PhD candidate at the University of Alberta, discusses the process by which people transformed the environment of northeast Alberta into one of energy resource extraction, and the impact this has had on indigenous communities, Canadian workers, and international energy markets. Using Hagley Library collections, including the J. Howard Pew papers, Sun Oil Company records, and more, Longley discovered that the motivations for building the Canadian tar sands industry varied over ti