Prof. Richard Saunders -- 116 Hardin Hall
tel: 864-656-5373 e-mail: airedal@clemson.edu
This syllabus is also on the internet at: http:/people.clemson.edu/~airedal/

Class meets at 10:10 MWF in 233. If I am late to class, please have the courtesy to wait 10 minutes or until someone from the department instructs you.

TO CONTACT ME: regular office hours this semester are 1:30-4:30 Mondays and Wednesdays and all day Tuesdays. I am usually in my office on Thursdays as well, but ask before you come  Home phone is 864-654-2841. Please do not call during the evening news 6:30-7:30 or after 11:30. E-mail is a poor way to each me, as I hate it and put off even looking at it, sometimes for upwards of a month.
 

READING: (prices are quoted from a major on-line supplier for new copies, do not include shipping and are for your information only).

Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (Penguin, $23.80)
Jean Strouse,    Morgan; American Financier (HarperCollins Perennial, $12.60)
Robert McElvaine,  The Great Depression (Random House-Three Rivers, $11.20)
 

REQUIREMENTS:
   1. Submit three book reports, as directed.
   2. Pass the midterm and final examinations.
   3. Satisfy the attendance requirements, described below.

EXAMINATIONS:  There will be a midterm and a final. both will be primarily essay examinations. Grading is based on the accuracy and completeness of your information, the clarity of your expression and your ability to use historical facts to reach a conclusion. The midterm examination will be a good guide to whether or not you are understanding the material, but final grades can certainly go up or down from the midterm.

GRADES:  Final grades are ultimately a matter of judgment, NOT a matter of calculating minute percentages, because evaluating the essays on which the final grade rests reflects judgment, not mathematical precision. To guide me in that judgment, the midterm counts about 30% of your final grade, the papers 15% each and the final 40%.

ATTENDANCE: This is a lecture course. There is no substitute for being present and thinking, for 50 minutes, about the subject at hand. Getting notes from a friend can plug a few holes but not much more.

More than two cuts, and you can probably forget about an A. More than five cuts, and you can absolutely forget about a B. More than nine cuts, and an F is automatic. No point to even take the final. If you cut, whatever subject matter or announcements you miss are your responsibility. There is no distinction between "excused" or any other absences. although if you have special circumstances, I can take them into consideration.

BOOK REPORTS: You will write two book reports, one on the Hamilton book, and one on the Morgan  books.  Read the book, and write a paper about what you read. What is so hard about that? The minimum length of papers should be seven pages, maximum length 14 pages, double-spaced 12-point type. Minimum length papers should not necessarily expect maximum grades. Use quotations sparingly, if at all, and only for especially pithy prose that precisely sums up a point.

In the books, your papers will be about these men's political economy. You will concentrate on those aspects of their lives and careers that  pertain to the economic growth of the United States. You should not, except perahps for passing mention, talk about their childhoods, their sexuality, their familiy lives, their social lives, or Hamilton's military life. Indeed, you can skip over these matters in your reading, which will cut the volume of the Hamilton book by more than half. It is up to you make decisions on what, of these men's lives, shaped and pertains to their economic philosophies and accomplishments. Grades will hinge on what you include in your analysis. Papers that are full of irrelevant factoids are not going to get very good grades (or just because "the book said it" doesn't mean it belongs in your report.)

1. The Hamilton report should, among other things, answer the question: how did Hamilton create the economic giant the United States eventually became?
    DUE WEDNESDAY, SEPT 22
2. The Morgan report should, among other things, answer the question: how did Morgan make modern industrial capitalism possible?
    DUE FRI, NOV 12

Papers are due at class time on the dates designated in the syllabus. There is a grace period until 4:30 that afternoon. Papers submitted electronically will be counted on time if they are dated before the class hour, but a hard copy must be turned in within 24 hours. I WILL NOT GRADE electronic papers, and if no hard copy comes in, all late penalties will apply.

Late papers are docked a letter grade. Papers that come in AFTER the rest of the class has gotten its papers back are docked two letter grades. No papers will be acceptable after the end of class on Friday, DEC 3, the last day of class. The penalty for not turning in a paper at all (or turning it in AFTER class time Dec 3) is a full letter grade off your final grade for each paper outstanding.
 

SYLLABUS:

AUG 18      Quebec, Virginia, Pennsylvania--the economy is the product of the culture.
          20      Newfoundland to Carolina Plantations: The Mercantile System in Action

          23      Money & Morals
          25      Revolution
          27      The Articles; Daniel Shays & Charles Beard

         30       Hamilton & Jefferson
SEPT  1       Almy, Slater & Brown
           3       Erie Canal

           6       The Best Friend of Charleston
           8       The Corporation, the Public Good, and the Law
          10      Land and Wheat; the Illinois Frontier

          13      Money, Central Banks and (Andrew) Jacksonomics
          15      King Cotton
          17      The Economics of Civil War

          20       Gold, California & the Union Pacific
          22       Giant Enterprise, Robber Barons & the Southern Pacific                              HAMILTON PAPER DUE
          24       Wheat & Steel

          27       Rockefeller & Morgan
          29       Marx & Darwin; the Panic of 1893
 OCT   1       Populism, Strikes and the Meaning of 1896

            4       MIDTERM EXAMINATION
            6       Engineering Excellence: William Truesdale, & the Concept of the Lackawanna RR
            8       Tesla & the Promise of Alternating Current

           11      Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressives
           13      Ludlow, Big Bill Haywood and Solidarity Forever.
           15      Ford, Assembly Line and $5 Day

           18       Federal Reserve
           20       The War Production Board & Coming of Big Government
           22       Bitter Year 1919, the Battle of Matewan and the Railroad Shopmen's Strike of 1922

           25       The False Boom of the Roaring Twenties
           27       Charley Mitchell, Wall Street & Black Tuesday
           29       Depression & Dust Bowl

NOV    1      FALL BREAK
             3      The Collapse of World Trade and the Gold Standard
             5      The New Deal Takes Over

             8      Textile Strike of 1934
           10      TVA
           12      Social Security                                                                                              MORGAN PAPER DUE

           15      Sit Down
           17      Capital Returns: Streamliners, the DC-3 & Treasure Island
           19      The Arsenal of Democracy

           22      The Keynesian Analysis & the G.I. Bill
                     THANKSGIVING

           29      The Great Sustained Boom
DEC     1      Smog, & the Seven Sisters Oil Embargo
             3      Reaganomics

Dec       9     FINAL EXAMINATION:  Thursday,  Dec. 9 from  1 to 4 pm.