Research Catalog

Title

Beyond the broker state : federal policies toward small business, 1936-1961 / Jonathan J. Bean.

Author

Bean, Jonathan J.

Publication

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [1996], ©1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 281 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

• Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln both considered small business the backbone of American democracy and free enterprise. In Beyond the Brocker State, Jonathan Bean considers the impact of this ideology on American politics from the Great Depression to the creation of the Small Business Administration during the Eisenhower administration.
• Bean's analysis of public policy toward small business during this period challenges the long-accepted definition of politics as the interplay of organized interest groups, mediated by a "broker-state" government. Specifically, he highlights the unorganized nature of the small business community and the ideological appeal that small business held for key members of Congress.
• . Bean focuses on anti-chain-store legislation beginning in the 1930s and on the establishment of federal small business agencies in the 1940s and 1950s. By demonstrating the continuing importance of small business to American political ideology, Bean's study challenges corporate-liberal historians' notion that by the 1930s America had reached a consensus that corporate capitalism and big business were good for the country.

Series Statement

Business, society, and the state

Uniform Title

Business, society & the state.

Subjects

• Small business > Law and legislation > United States
• Small business > Government policy > United States > History > 20th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [247]-272) and index.

Contents

Introduction: Small Business as the Backbone of Democracy -- Ch. 1. The Robinson-Patman Act: The Magna Charta of Small Business -- Ch. 2. Minnows Cannot Compete with Whales: The Politics of Small Business in the Tire Industry, 1936-1961 -- Ch. 3. Fair Trade: The Politics of Price Maintenance, 1937-1975 -- Ch. 4. Congressional Small Business Advocates: The People behind the Politics -- Ch. 5. War and Peace: The Politics of Small Business in the 1940s -- Ch. 6. The Small Defense Plants Administration and the Creation of the Small Business Administration, 1951-1953 -- Ch. 7. The Small Business Administration: Push-and-Pull Politics, 1953-1961 -- Conclusion: Federal Government Policy and Small Business.

ISBN

0807822965 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

96010868

OCLC

ocm34320506

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries