------------ 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.  
  
Copyright (c) 2006 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be   
copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to   
the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the   
EH.Net Administrator ([log in to unmask]; Telephone: 513-529-2229).   
Published by EH.Net (October 2006). All EH.Net reviews are archived   
at http://www.eh.net/BookReview.  
  
-------------- FOOTER TO EH.NET BOOK REVIEW  --------------  
EH.Net-Review mailing list  
[log in to unmask]  
http://eh.net/mailman/listinfo/eh.net-review