Author: ABDULLAH ALI

My overall experience with this course was very positive. I learned a lot about the business history of America which I previously did not think that deeply about. I was only expecting to learn about the various business policies/ history of business in America. It was very interesting to learn how intertwined the history of business in America is with its geopolitical and social history. From 13 colonies to the world economy empire it is today, America has come a long way in a short few hundred years. But that is not without adversities such as slavery and the great depression. One of my biggest takeaways from this course is the connection between slavery and capitalism. And the policies that helped America recover from the great depression and become one of the largest economies of the world that it is today.

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In the Richard White excerpts from Railroaded, Introduction, the main issue White brings up is the construction of the railroads at a time and place where it did not seem like it was really needed. Large amounts of resources and manpower was used to construct these railroads without much proven benefit at the time. Instead of bringing order and modernization, they brought political corruption, financial exploitation and environmental destruction. The railroad companies enjoyed some form of political protection due to the friends they made in the government. Through bribery and lobbying they secured subsidies and protection. Manipulating politics for financial gain. White argues that the social and environmental costs of the railroads outweighed their benefits. I agree with White that the railroads, although beneficial to some extent, were harmful and the timing was not right. 

When FDR came into the presidency he essentially inherited a crumbling system. He immediately jumped into fixing it. He did not make promises of taking specific actions, instead he chose to try a variety of different methods to bring the country back up to speed and kept the public informed through a series of “fireside chats”. The FDR administration’s policies worked. Resulting in a growth of “at averaged rates of around 8 to 10 percent a year.” (Rauchway, 1)

Although some of FDR’s actions were constitutionally questionable, it got results and the support of the electorate and the people.
Rauchway goes into great detail about some of the policies describing them as susceptible to corruption. The problems were later addressed by restricting who could benefit from the programs based on citizenship, race/ ethnicity, etc.

By the end FDR’s policies were polarizing.
“When asked to name “the worst thing the Roosevelt Administration has done,” 23 percent of Americans picked “Relief and the WPA,” making it the most unpopular New Deal measure.” “The same poll found that, when asked to name “the greatest accomplishment of the Roosevelt administration,” 28 percent of Americans picked “Relief and the WPA,” making it the most popular New Deal Measure.” (Rauchway, 8)
According to Rauchway, although polarizing, the New Deal policies worked to improve America and had the goal of making “sure the Depression could not happen again.” (Rauchway, 8)

Overall, Chapter 4 gives an in depth look at the New Deal policies and how it majorly changed the way government operated in the United States. I agree with Rauchway that the New Deal certainly helped the country recover from the Depression. 

In the fourth chapter of the Mandell reading, “Wealth and Power in the Early Republic” there is great insight into the post-revolutionary period of America as a young nation. The detailed political and economic discussions of the time provide a deeper understanding into how this nation, which today is a world leader in terms of both politics and economics, developed in its early years.

One of the quotes that stood out to me in the chapter is “there is not under the whole canopy of heaven such another place as America, while free, for the encouragement of the poor, in their pursuits for obtaining comfortable livelihoods”(Mandell 81) which  I believe translates into what we call the “American Dream” today. From the very early days of the nation, an idea of individual freedom and social mobility was present. Perhaps at first only for white males, but eventually expanding to include more people in the American Dream.

There was an “equality of property” (Mandell 82) present in early America that gave its citizens a pride of enjoying freedom more than the “subjects of any government in Europe”(Mandell 83). Although this idea of equality of property seemed great to those who hoped for the rise of a more equal society, some of the elite felt threatened by this idea. Political power and wealth were interlinked and the aristocrats were not ready to give up that power. There were many debates over whether the ability to vote should remain restricted so only property owners of a certain level could vote. Another issue that came up was the elite benefiting from war debt that would eventually create even more inequality and later led to Shays’s Rebellion.
From what is highlighted in this chapter, it seems America has always had an idea of freedom and equality but the reality has always fallen short. From the very early days to modern America, there seems to be an ever present division between the wealthy elite and the rest of the population as “Benjamin Lincoln Jr., articulated “the many who labored for a living and the few who lived on the labor of others”(Mandell 86).