American Fair Trade explores the contested political and legal meanings of the term fair trade from the late nineteenth century through the New Deal era. This history of American capitalism argues that business associations partnered with regulators to create codes of fair competition that...

In the first decades of the twentieth century, a widespread trend emerged in the Western world that questioned the basic assumption of classical economic theory, that economic competition fostered the common good. Propelled by the First World War and the rise of “institutionalist” economics,...

An unlikely leader in the California fair trade movement, Edna Gleason, known as the “Mother of Fair Trade,” exemplified the dual appeal of woman as citizen-consumer and businessperson as protector of the public interest. A self-taught pharmacist and entrepreneur, Gleason spearheaded first...