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 including data on 13 other states, his comparative study suggests that the ''corporate state'' originated in tax policies designed to finance new and innovative government services. Business and government grew together in a surprising and complex fashion. In the late nineteenth century, services such as mental health care for the needy and free elementary education for all children created new strains on the states' old property tax systems. In order to pay for newly constructed state asylums and schools, states experimented for the first time with corporate taxation as a source of revenue, linking state revenues to the profitability of industries such as railroads and utilities. To control their tax bills, big businesses intensified lobbying efforts in state legislatures, captured important positions in state tax bureaus, and sponsored a variety of government-efficiency reform organizations. The unintended result of corporate taxationimposed to allow states to fulfill their responsibilities to their citizenswas the creation of increasingly intimate ties between politicians, bureaucrats, corporate leaders, and progressive citizens. By the 1920s, a variety of ''corporate states'' had proliferated across the nation, each shaped by a particular mix of taxation and public services, each offering a case study in how the business of America, as President Calvin Coolidge put it, became business.
Contents: AcknowledgementsIntroduction CORPORATE STATES AND JEFFERSONIAN REPUBLICSONE Compromise, Corruption, and Confrontation TAX REFORM IN THE 1870'STWO Progress, Bit by Bit SCHOOL AND INSANE ASYLUM SPENDING, 1880 TO 1900THREE From Charter-Mongering to Catching Corporate Freeloaders CORPORATION TAXES, 1880 TO 1907FOUR The Second Era of Internal Improvements TRANSPORTATION SPENDING, 1890 TO 1929FIVE Consent, Control, and Centralization SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL SPENDING, 1900 TO 1929SIX Giants of History INCOME AND GASOLINE TAXATION, 1907 TO 1929SEVEN The Test of Democracy CONTROLLING SPENDING IN THE CORPORATE STATE, 1907 TO 1929 Conclusion THE PRICE OF PROGRESSAppendix Notes Essay on Methods and Sources Index
""Should find a place in the libraries of historians, economists, political scientists, and public administrators, and it would be usefully added to the syllabi of graduate and upper-level undergraduate courses.""
