This is an award under the Grants for Improving Doctoral Dissertation Research program. It is a study of the debates and political currents leading up to the ratification of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, mandating an income tax, in 1913. The project will primarily make use of historical documents to comparatively analyze how the 16th Amendment was ratified in three states: New York, Wisconsin, and Virginia. Results will be analyzed in order to shed light on how ideas about distributive justice evolve in the real world. This research will contribute to the growing effort to study important values and social processes outside of the experimental social psychology laboratory. In this case the central ideas involved are conceptions of distributive justice, and the debates over ideas of fairness that occurred during the several decades prior to the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913 will provide the data to illuminate how such conceptions evolve. In addition to the scientific gains to be achieved by the research, this award will materially assist a highly promising student in completing research for the Ph.D. dissertation. Thus it contributes to the future scientific manpower of the nation and the thorough training of the next generation of sociologists.
