Trust and Power: Consumers, the Modern Corporation, and the Making of the United States Automobile Market (review)

Most of our professional rewards go to projects that explore the theme of equality and the issue of identity in the United States. We give far fewer rewards to works that examine directly the making of American capitalism. Scholars have recently rediscovered the allure of studying consumer society but little economically sophisticated or business centered work has made a major mark in Americanist fields of study.

Clarke's theoretically sophisticated book is unlikely to change that pattern, though it should. Written for a specialist audience, the pages turn very . . . . . slowly. Then, too, the work's seemingly narrow focus and economic orientation distance it from questions that currently rule American Studies. Clarke, however, has much to tell us about how American consumers and managers battle for power in the marketplace. Her analysis of how corporate auto managers struggled to maximize their companies' profits, while both maintaining necessary and workable relations with car dealerships and building the trust and credit-capacity of auto consumers, is brilliant—and explains how a critically important aspect of Americans' marketplace experiences unfolded in twentieth-century America.

Above all, Clarke has written a substantial history of American political economy. In a study deeply informed by information economics, Clarke links arguments about how corporate auto manufacturers did their best to win over consumers to the virtues of their products but at the same time used whatever power they could exercise—through business-friendly courts and legislators, control of franchised auto dealers, development of credit mechanisms, and via marketing manipulations—to pass "social costs" on to consumers and to maximize their dominance of critical marketplace relationships.

To give one example, Clarke shows how early-days auto manufacturers learned to limit their liability—i.e. keep angry and/or injured auto buyers from suing them—in order to develop their business. She shows in particular how court rulings, based partly on masculinist notions of adventurous risk-taking, gave early manufacturers a pass on product defects. Auto company lawyers successfully argued that consumers, in other words, and not entrepreneurs, were the real risk-takers in early 20th century America (courts similarly bestowed upon injured or killed workers the same heroic role). Clarke explains that auto buyers, in those early days, often resorted to "sociability" (e.g., joined auto clubs) to learn how to safely control their dangerous machines. During the late progressive era, the courts turned against the manufacturers, forcing them to instigate research and testing to make safer, more reliable products; unable to rely on a privileged legal position they had to, instead, win their customers' trust. Clarke argues that as auto makers sought a mass market, not only did they turn to marketing style and design to increase sales, they also learned that it was actually good business to show customers that owning an auto was not a risky adventure but was safe and fun. Clarke gives an equally remarkable account of the evolution of the auto credit market and the role the government played in that development.

Using the twinned themes of "trust" and "power," Clarke has given us a model for how to understand the historic battle—mediated by the government—between corporate managers fixated on profits and consumers seeking safe and satisfying products.