This book is the first major reinterpretation of the New Deal in thirty years. Employing archival research and insights from history, political sociology, and economics, the author reassesses the origins and premises of the industrial, labour, and welfare policies of the 1920s and 1930s. Gordon argues that the labour and welfare law of the latter New Deal - indeed the origins of the modern welfare state - grew from a piecemeal private response to the competitive instability of the 1920s. This study is both an economic history of the interwar era, and an examination of the relationship between political and economic power in the United States.