Working for Debt

Banks, Loan Sharks, and the Origins of Financial Exploitation in the United States

Simon Bittmann (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

376 Seiten

2024
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-20289-3 (ISBN)

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In the early twentieth century, wage loans became a major source of cash for workers all over the United States. From Black washerwomen to white foremen, Illinois roomers to Georgia railroad men, workers turned to labor income as collateral for borrowing capital. Networks of companies started profiting from payday and property advances, exposing debtors to the grim prospects of garnishments of their wages and possessions in order to mitigate the risk of default. Progressive and later New Deal reformers sought to eradicate these practices, denouncing “loan sharks” and “financial slavery” as major threats to a new credit democracy. They proposed fair credit as a universal solution to move past industrial poverty and boost consumer freedom—but in doing so, reformers, lenders, and bankers limited credit access to the white middle-class constituencies seen as worthy of protection against extortion.

Working for Debt explores how the fight against wage loans divided the American credit market along class, race, and gender lines. Simon Bittmann argues that the moral and political crusades of Progressive Era reformers helped create the exclusionary credit markets that favored white male breadwinners. The politics of credit expansion served to obscure the failures of U.S. capitalism, using the “loan shark” as a scapegoat for larger, deeper depredations. As credit became a core feature of U.S. capitalism, the association of legitimate borrowing with white middle-class households and the financial exclusion of others was entrenched. Blending economic sociology with business, labor, and social history, this book shows how social stratification shaped credit markets, with enduring consequences for class, race, and gender inequalities.

Simon Bittmann is a tenured researcher in sociology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and the University of Strasbourg.

Introduction
Part I: Exploitation
1. The Time of Credit: Debt and Social Stratification in Illinois, 1900–1917
2. A Racial Economy of Obligation: Credit, Work, and Justice in the Industrial South, 1900–1920
Part II: Regulation
3. Financial Slavery: Crusading for Markets in Georgia, New York, and Illinois
4. The Plight of the White Breadwinner: Money, Morals, and Welfare in the Progressive Era
5. White Loans, Black Sales: Fighting Georgia Salary Buyers, 1924–1931
Part III: Segmentation
6. From Usury to Consumer Credit: The Shame of Kentucky, 1928–1934
7. Leading the Middle Class Out of the Depression: Personal Finance in the 1930s
8. Is Banking Moneylending? Capital, Community, and Exclusion in the New Deal
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Appendix to Chapter 1: The Classification of Loan Justifications
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	13.06.2024
Zusatzinfo	35 figures
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
	Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre
ISBN-10	0-231-20289-X / 023120289X
ISBN-13	978-0-231-20289-3 / 9780231202893
Zustand	Neuware