“Few occupations are as misunderstood as pawnbroking. Wendy Woloson challenges the many myths associated with pawnbrokers: criminal accomplices, traffickers in stolen goods, immoral usurers, and predatory Shylocks. This original and insightful analysis of the informal and marginal economy explains how poor, working-class, and sometimes wealthy Americans adapted to economic hardship and temporary setback. In Hock reveals the forgotten evolution and hidden contradictions of the emerging consumer economy in modern America.”—Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Loyola University

Timothy J. Gilfoyle, Loyola University

"Wendy Woloson incisively probes the boundaries of American capitalism—how to distinguish ‘marginal’ markets from pivotal ones; what separates legitimate and illicit economic activities, both in the eyes of the law and according to the norms of ordinary citizens; which groups of Americans embraced consumer culture and its vision of alienable property rights, right down to the rings on one’s fingers and the bells on one’s toes; and which groups lambasted pawnbroking as an affront to Victorian sentimentalism and evangelical morality. In Woloson’s artfully interwoven account, the culture of pawning becomes not just an assessment of the ready cash value that many nineteenth-century urbanites attached to their possessions, but a site of creative commerce; at least sometimes, a terrain of neighborly exchange; and always, a social and political battleground."

Edward Balleisen, Duke University

“In Hock is a remarkable and remarkably original book. With her keen ear for the stories and anecdotes that make the milieus of the working poor come alive, Wendy Woloson captures the vivid and untold history of pawnbroking from the late eighteenth century through the Great Depression, and writes with panache on the many changes this period heralded. By combining economic, social, and cultural history in order to work in the new and mysterious terrain of the buyers, sellers, and lenders thriving at the edge of our ‘legitimate’ society, In Hock fulfills its promise to do what no other book has done.”—Ann Fabian, Rutgers University

Ann Fabian, Rutgers University

“Woloson frees the business from its nineteenth-century anti-Semitic entanglements and points to the highly symbiotic relationship among pawnshops, the industrial city, and wage-dependent workers in a cash-poor society. Well written and accessible to a wide and diverse audience. Highly recommended”

Choice

“This excellent study of a specialized small business is filled with insights about the economic behavior of the poor throughout history, up to today’s ‘Great Recession.’”

Journal of Interdisciplinary History