In Hock
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€29.99
A01=Wendy A. Woloson
academic
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
america
american
anti semitic
archival
Author_Wendy A. Woloson
automatic-update
business
capitalism
capitalist
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBTB
Category=KCZ
Category=KFFL
Category=NHK
Category=NHTB
COP=United States
correspondence
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
economics
economy
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
era
finance
financial
great depression
historical
history
household
income
independence
Language_English
PA=Available
pawn shop
pawnbroking
pawning
poor
poverty
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
scholarly
softlaunch
stereotypes
textbook
time period
united states
usa
wages
wealth
worker
working
workplace
Product details
- ISBN 9780226905686
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 18 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 15 May 2012
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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The definitive history of pawnbroking in the United States from the nation's founding through the Great Depression, "In Hock" demonstrates that the pawnshop was essential to the rise of capitalism. The class of working poor created by this economic tide could make ends meet only, Wendy A. Woloson argues, by regularly pawning household objects to supplement inadequate wages. Nonetheless, businessmen, reformers, and cultural critics claimed that pawnshops promoted vice, and employed anti-Semitic stereotypes to cast their proprietors as greedy and cold-hearted. Using personal correspondence, business records, and other rich archival sources to uncover the truth behind the rhetoric, Woloson brings to life a diverse cast of characters and shows that pawnbrokers were in fact shrewd businessmen, often from humble origins, who possessed sophisticated knowledge of a wide range of goods in various resale markets. A much-needed new look at a misunderstood institution, "In Hock" is both a first-rate academic study of a largely ignored facet of the capitalist economy and a resonant portrait of the economic struggles of generations of Americans.
Wendy A. Woloson is an independent scholar and consulting historian living in Philadelphia. She is the author of Refined Tastes: Sugar, Consumers, and Confectionery in Nineteenth-Century American Culture.
