This Palgrave Pivot presents the first in-depth study of the pioneering Kansas Blue Sky Act of 1911, the first effort in American financial history to regulate the sale of securities in the US. Though offering a balanced examination of critiques of the legislation as a barrier to individual liberty, interstate commerce, and economic growth, the author challenges the prevailing view of the Kansas Act as a complete anomaly, instead exploring sensitively what ‘blue sky laws’ can tell us about small-town market values during the nineteenth-century.

Drawing on contemporary accounts...