Book Description: 

The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans (Oxford University Press, 2016) by Bruce Baker and Barbra Hahn offers striking parallels to contemporary debates about free markets and the role of regulation. It relates how competing groups of cotton brokers sought to control the price of cotton on unregulated exchanges in New York and New Orleans until the Cotton Futures Act of 1914 ended corruption.

 

Author Bio: 

Barbara Hahn is an associate professor of southern history at TTU and associate editor of Technology and Culture, the journal of the Society for the History of Technology. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and she studies the relationship between technological change and economic growth.

The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the-Century New York and New Orleans was co-authored with Bruce E. Baker.