This just came in over the transom from John Murray, author of Origins of American Health Insurance: A History of Industrial Sickness Funds makes a point I should have made in my initial reaction to Siegel’s review.

Hi Jonah,
I look forward to reading your book (so, no, I haven’t yet, but still…) I think Siegel misrepresents a critical aspect of the Progressive movement when he says “The social safety-net reforms of David Lloyd George, during the Liberal Party governments in Britain from 1906 to 1914, mattered more to American Progressives and New Dealers, as a model, than Bismarck ever did. But Lloyd George goes unmentioned in “Liberal Fascism,” as does a key political moment.”
No no–it would be more accurate re the Progressives (don’t know about New Dealers) to say that they believed strongly in the merits of both Wilhelmine statism and Lloyd George’s variety and that influenced their program accordingly. But they also knew how each would be received in the US, and took considerable pains to *label* their projects as British even if they were inspired by the German example.
Health insurance (topic of my book) is a great example. The Progressive proposals for state level govt health insurance, 1912-1919, were based on the German example. But reformers worked hard to get people to call it “health insurance” rather than “sickness insurance” because the latter sounded too much like “Krankenversicherung.” As you can tell, they succeeded in their rhetoric, if not their politics. (my book, pp. 6-7, 18, and refs there)
If you think you might like the book, send me an address and I’ll ask Yale to send you a copy. Otherwise, if you have an opening for an economic history guy, my hat is in the ring.
Keep up the great work!
John Murray
John E. Murray
Dept. of Economics
Univ. of Toledo

Me: This raises a good point that I was going to get into. I think Siegel is just plain wrong that British inspiration dwarfed German inspiration in the progressive effort to build a welfare state. I have my own evidence, but Murray’s is perfect case in point.