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The article discusses the rise of the political, social, and economic power of the U.S. through a comparison to the birth and rise of basketball. It describes the idea of "Muscular Christianity" that emphasized masculinity, physicality, and practical religion, the role of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in popularizing a Christian cultural identity and work ethic, and the ways in which basketball symbolized the ideals of Muscular Christianity and practical religion. Other subjects under discussion include basketball inventor James Naismith, the characteristics of American identity in the early 20th century, and the International Training School in Springfield, Missouri.

This article presents an examination of the poetry collection "Bellocq's Ophelia," by Natasha Trethewey and its influences from the photography of New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1912 by E. J. Bellocq. The author presents the biographical and ideological perspectives of both artists along with a synthesis of their collective works on the final portrayal of New Orleans culture.

This article focuses on the depiction of African Americans in song and photography in the post-Civil War United States. Several popular stereotypical black-face minstrel songs are compared with the psychological nature of photography and the tendency to pose and present a certain expected image. The author presents comments regarding the popular image of African Americans and their actual perception by white culture.

This article presents an exploration of the ethical difficulties seen in war photography documenting the 1899 campaign of U.S. expansion into the central Americas. The author highlights an apparent moral questioning present by the camera operators throughout the imperialist expansion, and suggests a different interpretation of the common views during the Spanish-American War.

This article focuses on the social and political impact of the death of former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant in 1885, which helped to initiate the political reconciliation of North and South. The article includes a citation of the difficulty of Grant's work as a Reconstruction president, the preparation made by Grant for his funeral, the allusion of the deathwatch and funeral as exemplification of the desire to forge an emotional bond of unionism, and the strength of Grant's reputation as a military general.

We use univariate and multivariate techniques to estimate the expected price level changes for the U.S. during the pre-World War I period. We also examine contemporaneous evidence from agricultural commodity futures markets to measure inflationary expectations. Using previously neglected data on consumer prices and a variety of techniques, we draw three main conclusions not traditionally found for this period: (1) price level changes were not white noise, (2) a significant portion of deflationary and inflationary episodes was indeed expected, and (3) expected inflation is positively and significantly correlated with nominal interest rates, thus providing support for a short-run Fisher effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the trial records of civil cases between former slaves and their former slaveholders between 1865 and 1899 to consider the different, often competing, ways in which these parties portrayed the antebellum and postbellum worlds. In courtrooms around the post-war South, former slaves and former masters wove diverging narratives about slavery, capitalism and labor, family and authority, and sexual violence. Litigants sought to leverage these tales and their interlinked histories to win legal disputes against each other, while also working to advance their own visions of the post-war world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writers and critics in the Gilded Age United States frequently debated the relations between literature and science. A common contemporary interpretation of this relationship held that these two ways of knowing and writing were fundamentally opposed and that the advancement of science in American culture came at the expense of literary sensibilities. Nevertheless, and often as an effort to challenge this supposed opposition, many scientists also cultivated reputations as literary figures, and produced or planned diverse works ranging from travel writing and novels to verse drama. Such authors as Clarence King, J. Peter Lesley, Simon Newcomb and Nathaniel Southgate Shaler sustained a hybrid literary–scientific culture in the late nineteenth century. This interdisciplinary cultural zone was fragile and increasingly fractured by around 1900, as the emergence and consolidation of new categories of intellectual labour became increasingly wedded to the images of the "professional author" and the "scientist" as mutually exclusive identities. This article seeks to contribute to recurrent debates about the "two cultures" of literature and science by foregrounding the differentiation of these new forms of professional and intellectual identity as a decisive factor which constrained the possibility of a shared literary–scientific culture by the turn of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the note issue paradox of American banking in the post-Civil War era. An overview of the conundrum is given, highlighting national bank behaviors inconsistent with profit-maximizing principles and several historiographical interpretations of the behavior, namely that they did not expand note issues in beneficial conditions to do so. Additional examination is offered to free-regime state banks, noting similarities in cost and risk environments to the following national bank-regime era. Conclusions are offered suggesting unseen risk perceptions that prevented the profitable venture.

The article presents an empirical investigation of the nature of financial crises in the U.S. in the pre-World War I era from 1880-1914 in an attempt to shed light on their characteristics and their generating mechanisms. In particular, the paper addresses questions of whether there are variables that reveal conditions conducive to crises, whether financial crises could be forecast, and whether they were alike, in the sense that a set of statistical relationships was common to all episodes. The author considers business cycles, stock market performance, changes in the deposit to currency ratio, interest rates, bubble theory, and the effect of bank panics on historic U.S. financial markets.

The introduction of exchange-traded options in 1973 led to explosive growth in the stock options market, but put and call options on equity securities have existed for more than a century. Prior to the listing of option contracts, trading was conducted in an order-driven over-the-counter market. From 1873 to 1875, quotes for options contracts were published weekly in The Commercial and Financial Chronicle during a period that saw extensive marketing efforts by a number of brokerage firms. In this article we examine these quotes to determine why this seemingly sophisticated market existed for only a brief period in financial history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three fundamental observations have been made with respect to the historic behavior of the term structure of interest rates in the United States. (1) In general, yield curves ascend in periods when the level of long-term and short-term interest rates is low and descend in periods when the level of rates for both maturities is high. Yield curves which are invariant with term are more typical of periods when the level of rates is near the mid-point of the normal range. (2) Short- and long-term interest rates tend to move together cyclically, with the more volatile short-rates rising relative to long-rates during periods of economic expansion and falling relative to long-rates during periods of contraction. (3) The year 1930 is considered a benchmark in the long history of interest rates since the Civil War in that short-rates are thought to have been generally higher than long-rates prior to that date and were consistently below them for approximately thirty years thereafter. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether investors' responses to maturity-related interest-rate differentials in the late nineteenth century were, in fact, essentially different from those of later decades. To do so requires the generation of yield curve estimates for the period 1884-1900. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of financial intermediaries in the U.S. during the period 1898-1930. After a survey of theoretical considerations, the authors present empirical data for primary security issues and gross national product (GNP), and for both direct and indirect finance ratios. Figures indicate financial intermediation steadily declines from 1898 to 1920, but then grew rapidly during the 1920s. Accompanying charts show the relationship between corporate bond yields and GNP/money supply.

The article presents commentary on the address "Long-Term Trends in the Financing of Regulated Industries, 1870-1950," by Melville J. Ulmer, "Trends in Capital Formation and Financing in Agriculture," by Alvin S. Tostlebee, and Sergei Dobrovolsky's "Capital Formation and Financing Trends in Manufacturing and Mining, 1900-1953," all included within the issue addressing the development of the U.S. capital market. The application of the historical data to the development of other countries is discussed, outlining implications of U.S. economic history on general financial theory.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, first thousands, then tens of thousands of Americans traveled to Europe annually. Their designation in official statistics as "ocean-bound tourists" reflects that general view, both at the time and currently. At issue is only whether travel to Europe became sufficiently general to justify the label "mass" or "middle-class" tourism. In this article I show that American travelers to Europe, in fact, bore the stamp of the inequality that characterized their society. In steerage, mainly naturalized American citizens, precariously employed in the United States, crossed to Europe in numbers that fluctuated widely in response to changing conditions in the labor market. They were largely invisible among other emigrants responding to the same economic pressures. In contrast, cabin class witnessed a steadily growing and well-publicized summer exodus as the "habit" of European travel became general among wealthy Americans. Transatlantic tourism remained largely out of reach for the middle class. The article draws on official statistics on passenger volumes, original passenger lists, and contemporary press accounts to investigate the characteristics of travelers in cabin and steerage. The affordability of European travel is assessed using contemporary estimates of travel costs and income distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Britain and the United States began to respond to outbreaks of disease in the 19th century they developed two distinct systems of disease control. While not polar opposites, Britain focused primarily on sanitation, whereas the United States adopted policies of quarantine. Utilizing the approach of path dependency I argue that this divergence can be partly explained by the timing of disease control formation in each country. As Britain formed its system of disease control earlier, during the 1840s, it was influenced by a miasmatic understanding of disease (the belief that disease is caused by noxious gases that emanate from filthy environments), while as the United States formed its disease control system later, around the end of the 1870s, it was more influenced by new ideas about contagion and the rise of germ theory. Once formed, the public health system of each country began to travel down divergent historical paths; Britain came to connect disease control to the social problems of the working classes (e.g. poverty, working conditions, overcrowding) while the United States developed a militaristic approach that, at times, used quite coercive measures to isolate the contagious bodies of the sick. The origins of public health formation in each country helped shape the overall development of disease control in Britain and the United States over the long-term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the twentieth century, the National Consumers' League, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, and the Women's Co-operative Guild encouraged people to become ethical consumers. I argue that we can explain their common strategies by invoking commodity fetishism. By casting their consumer activism as a practical response to the fetish of commodities, we explain: 1) activists' use of sensory techniques - both figurative and literal - to connect producers, commodities, and consumers and 2) their commitment to the ethical power of the senses. This account reveals the virtues of commodity fetishism as a tool for understanding the dynamics of consumer activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustained energy price increases in the United States have preceded declines in economic activity as far back as 1890. This finding applies to two different historical GDP data sets. It suggests a much longer national experience with rising energy prices that began well before the period after World War Two. This problem emerged well before the U.S. transition towards petroleum products when coal was an important energy source. This relationship varies with the state of the economy and appears less evident during some periods, as in the years following the 1929 stock market crash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on author Henry Adams, 18th U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and the transformation of political temporality. Topics include the question of politics and time, the expansion of economies of scale and the administration welfare-warfare state, and Adams's two variations on a theme of Grant administration.

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries the United States became a significant imperial power with which an overstretched British Empire did not want conflict. The planting of numerous American flags in the Canadian Yukon, and especially in Dawson City, symbolized this dynamic, which was accompanied by some tension and apprehension on the part of British-Canadian authorities. At the same time, hints at a future friendly alliance between the United States and Britain can be seen in the mingling, in the Yukon Territory, of Yankees, Britons, and Canadians who all shared (among other things) a common literary heritage. Among these hints was an implausible but sincere proposal on the part of a US Congressman for the United States to cede the Alaska Panhandle to Canada. This article is part of a special collection of papers originally presented at a conference on "The North and the First World War," held May 2016 in Whitehorse, Yukon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past thirty years or so the study of American fraternity has been used to explore a variety of phenomena in the nation's evolution, especially around the turn of the twentieth century. Fraternities have been used to understand the exploration, taming and exploitation of the West. They have been shown to represent proof of the various turn-of-the century crises of gender, race and ethnicity. They have been seen as the very embodiment of bygone caring, sharing, communities. However, among the aspects to have escaped attention is the importance of fraternity in criminal organizations. Given that crime, then as now, was seen as one of the most pressing of social issues, and given that over these years there was a deep suspicion that there were a variety of ultra-secret fraternities organizing, facilitating and manipulating wide-ranging criminal activities, this may be considered a little odd. This article investigates the idea that there was really such a thing as a genuine criminal “fraternity.” Looking at three of the most famous of such organizations – the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the Molly Maguires and the Mafia – it demonstrates that not only were ideas of fraternity central to their very existence, but they are also crucial to our understanding both of them and of the period in which they were situated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The display of a “family crest” to signal family identity is prevalent in the contemporary United States. However, during the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, many American commentators perceived the widespread use of heraldry by the high bourgeoisie as at best a mark of social pretension and at worst a symptom of an un-American predilection for aristocracy. Over the course of a century, heraldic entrepreneurs sought to broaden the market for family crests, and in doing so Americanized heraldic practice. The early projects of Albert Welles, Frank Allaben and Frances M. Smith linked heraldry with new approaches to genealogical research and encouraged its use by a broad cross section of American society. In the late twentieth century, entrepreneur Gary Halbert sold millions of heraldic mementos that epitomized the modern commodification of history and identity. The result of a century of marketing is an American heraldry that is both more accessible than its European antecedents and less closely tied to verifiable genealogical relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the role of constitutionalism and constitutional theory in social change during the Progressive era of U.S. history. Emphasis is given to topics such as market equality and the laissez-faire economics of U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as Lochner v. New York, the moral aspects of democracy, and the development of the legal realist movement in addressing disparities in economic and political power.

A literary analysis of the travel book "The American Scene" by Henry James is presented. It suggests that the book's literary style has similarities with gay desire, which James uses to comment on public sexual life and alternative forms of sociality in American culture. The author goes on to comment on James' social criticism as a close reading, similar to literary criticism.

Do banks matter for growth, and if so, how? This paper examines the effects of national banks in the United States from 1870 to 1900. I use the discontinuity in entry caused by a large minimum size requirement to identify the effects of banking. For the counties on the margin between getting a bank and not, gaining a bank increased production per person by 10%. National banks in rural areas improved agriculture over manufacturing, moving counties toward geographic comparative advantage. Since these banks made few long-term loans, the evidence suggests that the provision of working capital and liquidity matters for growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the challenges facing U.S. soldiers of the U.S. Civil War between 1865 and 1872, particularly the personal and political costs of the war, the impossibility of forgetting the war for veterans, and the difficulties of returning to civilian life.