Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893 (review)

Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893. By Douglas Steeples and David O. Whitten (Westport, Greenwood Press, 1998) 261 pp. $59.95.

Steeples and Whitten's study of the depression of the 1890s is a welcome addition to the literature on economic dislocations. Despite scholarly recognition that depressions can profoundly affect society, the subject remains understudied. This broad-ranging account of the turbulence of the 1890s includes a survey that rests primarily on older secondary works and numerous contemporary publications, such as the financial press and Congressional reports.

The authors proceed topically, beginning with an overview of the economy leading up to the Panic of 1893, followed by a chapter on the financial crisis. Although admitting no paradigmatic preference, the authors tend to see the panic as a monetarist event, provoked by a contraction in Europe and a softening of business in the United States. These developments shook confidence in the gold standard and accelerated the export of American gold, thereby exacerbating the contraction of the money supply and the fall of prices.

Subsequent chapters profile the course of the decline and the recovery. Steeples and Whitten credit world grain shortages in 1897, a revival of U.S.-manufactured exports, new gold discoveries, the tariff of 1897, and new corporate efficiencies as triggering the expansion. Separate chapters review the impact of the depression on society, culture, and politics. The authors contend that the downturn affected government in numerous ways, ranging from stronger vagrancy laws at the local level and President Cleveland's intransigence about the gold standard, to federal suppression of the Pullman strike and President McKinley's intervention in Cuba. Looking beyond 1898, the authors claim that the "depression accelerated an irresistible gross movement of government toward the intervenionist, activist, administrative state" (210).

This conclusion and many others in the book rest more on assertion within the context of conventional historical synthesis than from the application of analytically explicit research designs. The authors eschew models or theory to aid their explanation of the business contraction. The measurement quandaries concerning the severity of the depression are not confronted, nor are the works of Williamson, Romer, Goldin, Carter and Sutch, and Keyssar, which have examined dimensions of this issue. ¹ Explicit comparisons of economic sectors, regions and sub-regions of the country, and specific firms could have enriched the analysis. The authors similarly disregard important work about the politics of the 1890s by Burnham, Kleppner, McCormick, and Skowronek, none of whom is cited. ² Nor is reference made to Teaford on urban finance, Kousser on disfranchisement, Fink on the Knights of Labor, or Forbath on injunctions. ³ This lack of familiarity with pertinent literature detracts from the quality of the synthesis and inhibits the authors' capacity to assess the depression's long-term impacts.

Ballard C. Campbell
Northeastern University

Notes

1. Jeffrey G. Williamson, Late Nineteenth Century American Development (Cambridge, 1974); Christina D. Romer, "The Prewar Business Cycle Reconsidered: New Estimates of Gross National Product, 1869-1908, Journal of Political Economy, XCVII (1989), 1-37; idem, "Remeasuring Business Cycles," Journal of Economic History, LIV (1994), 573-609; Claudia Goldin, "Labor Markets in the Twentieth Century," NBER Historical Paper no. 58 (June, 1994) (forthcoming in Stanley Engerman and Robert Gallman [eds.], Cambridge Economic History of the United States); Susan Carter and Richard Sutch, "The Depression of the 1890s: New Suggestive Estimates of the Unemployment Rate, 1890-1905," Research in Economic History, XIV (1992), 347-376; Alexander Keyssar, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (New York, 1986).

2. Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York, 1970); Paul Kleppner, Continuity and Change in Electoral Politics, 1893-1928 (New York, 1987); Richard L. McCormick, From Realignment to Reform (Ithaca, 1981); idem, The Party Period and Public Policy (New York, 1986); Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State (Cambridge, 1982).

3. Jon C. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph (Baltimore, 1984); J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping...