------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------
Published by EH.NET (October 2006)
Scott A. Sandage, _Born Losers: A History of Failure in America_.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. x + 362 pp. $17
(paperback), ISBN: 0-674-02107-X.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Susan Nance, Department of History, University
of Guelph.
Scott A. Sandage, Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University,
has given us a valuable new addition to the cultural history of
business. _Born Losers: A History of Failure in America_ was winner
of the 2003 Thomas J. Wilson Prize for the best first manuscript of
the year at Harvard University Press, and it is easy to see why the
book has drawn such favor. In this engagingly written account,
Sandage explains how generations of Americans internalized ideologies
of the self-made man even when so many failed financially and seemed
to be victims of the economic system. In these stories of famous and
forgotten men who struggled with capitalism, the author reveals how
the uncertainties of the Market Revolution created cultural change in
the U.S. Beginning with the panic of 1819, and accelerating as the
panics, bank collapses and bankruptcies continued with regularity
though the century, he shows how Americans came increasingly to see
one's credit rating as a representation of one's morality and power
in society. Sandage uses noted nineteenth-century "failures" like
Henry Thoreau to make his point. In Thoreau's day many American men
evaluated one another by way of easily measurable factors -- bank
account balances, credit ratings, work histories -- rather than
artistic output, community service or stable family lives. Sandage
discusses the inhumanity of such attitudes through many case studies.
Take for instance William Brisbane, who today would seem to stand out
as a hero of history. After he went bankrupt in the late 1830s, the
Tappan credit agency of New York warned he was no longer to be
trusted with loans and had not amounted to anything. In fact,
Brisbane had fallen on hard times after a change of heart inspired
him to spend his family fortune in freeing his slaves. Sandage
rightly calls him a character who "magnified contemporary tensions
between prosperity and integrity" (p. 139).
Indeed, during the nineteenth century, Sandage tells us, economic
failure by way of bankruptcy became more than a financial issue, it
became an identity for many men, whose status as individuals became
tied to their status as business owners. Failing changed from being
"incident" to "identity," he says (p. 11). Part of the blame for this
tradition of self-doubt in American life he lays with the rise of
credit networks, and the ensuing ubiquity of debt and bankruptcy. For
many, Sandage wisely observes, the hidden causes of bankruptcy "were
harder to see than a broken man" (p. 58), whose problems destroyed
marriages or put families at the mercy of charitable relatives. And
this cultural attitude was highly gendered, such that by mid-century
many held the belief that among white men, "it was not indolence but
impotence that caused failure" (p. 97).
The most profound evidence Sandage marshals for his argument comes
from the Tappan Mercantile Agency of New York, established in 1841.
As the earliest American credit bureau, the Tappan company used
postmasters, lawyers and other prominent citizens to collect data on
thousands of men, their businesses, debts, family situations, and any
other information that might shed light on that individual's ability
to repay loans or conclude business agreements. The details of what
information they chose to collect and the stories that this
information told about American men are truly fascinating in their
own right. "More than a bank balance or character reference," he
writes, "a credit reference folded morals, talents, finances, past
performance and future potential into one summary judgment" (p. 103).
Sandage goes on to assert that when the Tappan company began selling
this information, one's financial identity also became a commodity.
This was a serious turning point, in which those with economic
resources could consolidate their position further by purchasing
information that helped them limit risk and weather the ups and downs
of the economy even better. Yet, for those being evaluated by the
agency, mistaken reports could become self-fulfilling prophesies of a
sort if Tappan's customers began avoiding a man accused in his credit
report of fraud or foolishness, regardless of the truth of the
allegations.
Sandage does document many Americans who had their doubts about
capitalism. Among these was the National Bankruptcy Association, a
group of debtors, who lobbied for a workable bankruptcy law that
might give all men a second chance since they knew capitalism did not
always provide a meritocracy in which the most virtuous triumphed.
Ultimately, they were drowned out by all the business manual writers
and other boosters of entrepreneurial individualism and speculation
who sold the myth of guaranteed success, while a series of bankruptcy
acts came and went over the nineteenth century (1800, 1841, 1867)
without ultimately solving the problems capitalism created. For
bankrupts this was especially galling in the context of the crises of
the 1850s and the Civil War. As the Federal government was working
through how ex-slaves might be given a way to start over as full,
free citizens, debtors viewed their own plight as a kind of "white
slavery," in which honorable white men were refused the same
consideration because of their inability to weather the panics and
downturns of the period.
Still, the continuing puzzle here is why so many have internalized
capitalist ideologies that insist success or failure results from
one's character, rather than problems inherent in the economic
system. Why have so many people felt guilty when they did not measure
up, as did Henry Hill who admitted in 1853, "I wish I could feel more
like work -- toil hard and unremitting, but I do not and I may as
well own up" (pp. 62-63). Why have so many committed suicide after
repeated failures or bankruptcy? This may be a difficult question to
answer, and though Sandage does not state it explicitly, perhaps the
life histories he provides do show that there were enough people
apparently succeeding at any given time to perpetuate these myths.
Certainly powerful men like those running the Tappan credit bureau
had reason to perpetuate the idea that success resided "in the man,"
in order to give their information on individual American men value,
information which in fact kept its value in spite of the economic
climate at any given moment, Sandage tells us.
Yet, the 'why' behind the broad internalization of these beliefs in
the face of the failings of capitalism and many critics is an
important question that is not fully answered. The author has clearly
considered this question it seems, especially when he wonders aloud
what might have been had Americans chosen another way. Indeed, in
some self-revelatory moments Sandage reveals a deep uneasiness for
what he sees as the triumph of entrepreneurial individualism in the
U.S. Since his tone assumes the reader also views capitalism and its
identities as ultimately destructive, some may find these passages to
be unnecessarily pessimistic and wonder if he overemphasizes their
prevalence in society.
Nonetheless, this work of cultural history provides an indispensable
contribution to the literature on American capitalism. By exposing
the day-to-day cultural work Americans did to develop identities of
entrepreneurial individualism, Sandage's work provides crucial detail
for scholars seeking to understand why and how capitalism has
persisted in the United States.
Susan Nance is Assistant Professor of History at the University of
Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario.
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Published by EH.Net (October 2006). All EH.Net reviews are archived
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