The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America » (1st Edition)

William J. Novak is associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.

Much of today's political rhetoric decries the welfare state and our maze of government regulations. Critics hark back to a time before the state intervened so directly in citizens' lives. In The People's Welfare, William Novak refutes this vision of a stateless past by documenting America's long history of government regulation in the areas of public safety, political economy, public property, morality, and public health. Challenging the myth of American individualism, Novak recovers a distinctive nineteenth-century commitment to shared obligations and public duties in a well-regulated society.

Novak explores the by-laws, ordinances, statutes, and common law restrictions that regulated almost every aspect of America's society and economy, including fire regulations, inspection and licensing rules, fair marketplace laws, the moral policing of prostitution and drunkenness, and health and sanitary codes. Based on a reading of more than one thousand court cases in addition to the leading legal and political texts of the nineteenth century, The People's Welfare demonstrates the deep roots of regulation in America and offers a startling reinterpretation of the history of American governance.

Library Journal

Novak (history, Univ. of Chicago) has produced an extraordinarily important historical work on American government regulation in the 19th century. In contradiction to previous accounts of American legal history, Novak argues, America was not a laissez-faire, freemarket nation but rather a highly regulated state profoundly concerned with public welfare and market involvement. His carefully crafted analysis focuses specifically on the implementation of local laws covering such topics as public safety and health, public space and transportation, economy, and morality. He thereby demonstrates that America's ambivalence or antipathy toward regulation is a relatively recent phenomenonan instructive point as politicians begin to deconstruct the welfare state. More leisurely readers may be put off by Novak's densely written introduction. Once readers complete the first chapter, however, they will find the rest of the book intensely interesting. This landmark treatise is recommended for all academic and larger public libraries.Steven Anderson, Baltimore Cty. Circuit Court Law Lib., Towson, Md.