"The decline of the U.S. textile and apparel industries between the 1940s and 1970s helped lay the groundwork for the twenty-first century's potent economic populism in America. James C. Benton looks at how shortsighted trade and economic policy by labor, business, and government undermined an...

"The Revolutionary War has been won, and the newly independent nation is fraught with anxieties--threatened by enemies at home and abroad. In Manufacturing Advantage, Lindsay Schakenbach Regele shows how the government (especially the Departments of State and War) promoted industrial...

Introduction. The material (con)texts of global modernity -- I. The empire's new clothes: British publics and imperial politics, 1650-1720 -- Patterns for plantation: New World silk and the natural history of settler colonialism -- Indo-Atlantic modernity: the early cotton trade and the...

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- I. Wages from 1860 to I945 -- II. Labor Productivity -- III. Real Wages and the Standard of Living -- IV. Through Two World Wars -- V. Wage Differentials -- VI. Regional Differences -- VII. The Role of Trade Unionism -- VIII. Conclusion --...