The era of the rise of standardized goods was accompanied by a standardization of the regulation and measurement of those goods. Part of the drive toward regulative convergence was the need to coordinate state laws in an increasingly integrated national economy. One area of particular concern was the need to coordinate the regulation of road trafic across the country, and significant progress was made in the 1910s and 1920s toward “standardizing” (such was the terminology) laws covering motor vehicles across state lines.65 These early moves toward standardizing local and state regulations in order to better integrate the nation were to continue through the first half of the twentieth century. In the economic realm, they culminated in the passing of the Uniform Commercial Code in 1952, a comprehensive piece of legislation intended to harmonize disparate state laws covering commerce. As we shall see in the following chapter, the Uniform Commercial Code, significantly, also extended the implied product warranty to every state in the nation, marking a significant move away from the principle of caveat emptor.
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Time for Things