bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Financing Occupational Pensions in the E.E.C.
Authors: Waites C.
Published: August 2016

1.1. One of the declared intentions of the European Economic Community is the harmonization of Social Security arrangements, including State pensions. To the extent that occupational pensions are regarded as an adjunct to Social Security to bring total benefits up to an acceptable level, it is to be expected that the achievement of this aim would have its own effect on occupational pensions and on the way in which these pensions are financed.

1.2. In practice progress along this path has been slow and both Social Security and occupational pension systems differ widely from country to country within the E.E.C. On the one hand there are the U.K. and Ireland providing very small State pensions by comparison with most of our neighbours, and at the other extreme Italy, where State pensions are at such a high level for the whole working population that private pensions are virtually non-existent.
Terence Vincent Powderly—An Appraisal
Authors: Carman Harry J.
Published: August 2016

T. V. Powderly, Grand Master Workman of the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor from 1879 to 1893, has been portrayed in many different ways—as idealist, reformer, humanitarian, windbag, renegade, crook, imposter, agitator, introvert, self-seeker, charlatan, cheap politician, turncoat, rabble rouser, and drippy sentimentalist. Some claim that he was a great labor leader; others just as vigorously maintain that he was utterly lacking in the qualities of leadership—that he was, in reality, an insignificant nobody swept along by the changing currents of the American labor movement. It is not the purpose of this short article to paint a full-length portrait of Powderly but rather, on the basis of newly discovered data, to indicate briefly which, if any, of the above characterizations fit the man.
Institutional Methodology in Economic History
Authors: Usher Abbott Payson
Published: August 2016

The task of reviewing general texts is especially difficult. Many different objectives may legitimately be attempted, and it is easy to allow one's personal interests to enter into the appraisal of objectives. It has long been my conviction that every author should be allowed to choose his objectives and to adopt such means as may be suitable in their fulfillment. Once these choices have been made, the author imposes a task upon himself which may legitimately be examined, both in respect of its intrinsic merit and in respect of the execution of the plan. Mr. Hacker's book presents a number of especially interesting problems in these regards.
Discussion of the Paper by Stanley Pargellis: The Corporation and the Historian
Authors: Budd Ralph , Warne Colston E.
Published: August 2016

Like Mr. Pargellis, I am concerned with the history of business and the businessman. He has a professional pride in seeing a better job done and he proposes to put into the hands of scholars the necessary tools to improve the quality of their work. My approach is that of a businessman who is disturbed by inadequate and sometimes prejudicial use of facts and the possible effect upon the general welfare of conclusions based on misstatements. Both of us want the writing and teaching of history to be factual and fair and as thorough as possible. I have no quarrel with Mr. Pargellis' point of view or with the remedy he suggests, and I agree readily that, in so far as imperfect knowledge of American history is due to lack of access to records, the cause should be removed. I cannot but feel that general acceptance of his proposal by companies whose files have been preserved will go a considerable way toward improving the situation and I do not see what harm could come from making such reports available to scholars, provided of course that in using them consideration be given, as Mr. Pargellis says, to “the ethical and legal standards of the time, with full appreciation of the political and competitive setting in which a businessman had to work.” The availability of corporate documents certainly would tend to prevent the making of careless or misleading statements, which without the records might go unchallenged.
The Standard Oil Company (New Jersey)
Authors: Hidy Ralph W.
Published: August 2016

The aim of this discussion is to elucidate the evolution of the management concepts, organizational patterns, and policies of the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey). In point of fact, these topics are discussed primarily with reference to the origin and development of the Standard Oil combination under its various legal titles prior to 1911. The policies and practices, both sound and unsound, of the men who administered the Jersey Company in its early years were largely those of the men who created the combination.
Notes on the Rate of Industrial Growth in Italy, 1881–1913
Authors: Gerschenkron Alexander
Published: August 2016

This paper represents an attempt to summarize the first stages of a research project, the completion of which is still remote. Its purpose is to pose one or two basic problems and to indicate the directions along which the answers may lie.

It is obvious that in the decades following its political unification Italy's economy remained very backward in relation not only to that of England, but also to the economies of industrially advancing countries on the continent of Europe. Whatever gauge one may choose for the purposes of comparison, be it qualitative descriptions of technological equipment, organizational efficiency, and labor skills in individual enterprises; or scattered quantitative data on relative productivity in certain branches of industry, or the numbers of persons employed in industry; or the density of the country's railroad network; or the standards of literacy of its population, the same conclusion will result.
Growth of the Rubber Industry of Great Britain and the United States
Authors: Woodruff William
Published: August 2016

Little more than a century ago India rubber was a curiosity. Today, it is vital to our existence. The purpose here is to examine the basic factors that have influenced the growth of the rubber industry in the United States and the United Kingdom. The method chosen is to review the industry's position before and after the introduction of the automobile, say at 1900 and 1950. Much of what is to be said might be compressed into current economic terminology. Neither disrespect for this procedure nor the inapplicability of many of its concepts to economic history has prevented this course from being adopted.
Criteria of Periodization in Economic History
Authors: Heaton Herbert
Published: August 2016

We economic historians can sympathize fully with Professor Gerhard in his search for criteria that will help to cut political history into meaningful periods. Like him, we are fully aware that periodizing seems an artificial intellectual trick in face of the fact that life continues even in the midst of destruction. We would add, “So do human wants and the efforts that have to be made for their satisfaction.”
Economic Stagnation in Europe in the Interwar Period
Authors: Dowd Douglas F.
Published: August 2016

It would not seem to be stretching matters unduly to assert that widespread agreement could be found on the following related propositions: (1) that the social crises and upheavals in Europe between the two World Wars, and the wars themselves, were not aberrations but are, rather, susceptible of a systematic, coherent explanation; (2) that such an explanation, though it would rest on a myriad of social relationships and processes, would place economic affairs at or near the center of Europe's troubles; and (3) that an understanding of European economic difficulties in the period might be efficiently achieved through an analysis of the factors stimulating and retarding the rate of economic growth of interwar Europe—or, that any thorough explanation would have to include such an analysis.
The Trade Crisis of the Early 1620's and English Economic Thought
Authors: Gould J. D.
Published: August 2016

The export crisis of the early 1620's, the causes of which formed the subject of an earlier paper, was without doubt one of the most widely discussed topics of the day. It figured largely in the Parliamentary debates of 1621 and 1624; it gave rise to much official inquiry and unofficial documentary discussion; and it produced a number of books which, though published as frank livres de circonstance, have come down to us as representative of the economic views of the period in general. A careful reconsideration of these works in the light of the immediate circumstances that prompted diem would help t o explain die peculiarity of some of the arguments put forward, and would be a valuable essay on die origins of Mercantilist concepts. The aim of the present paper is to select two particular topics which illustrate how close the connection was between die discussion of immediate issues and what passes for more abstract Mercantilist “theory.”
International Capital Flows and the Development of the American West
Authors: North Douglass C.
Published: August 2016

When the Chairman asked me to undertake this paper he reminded me that the general theme was the West as an underdeveloped area and suggested that some comparison be made with underdeveloped areas today. However, it should be made clear at the outset that the problems of the development of the American West in the nineteenth century are very different from the problems of achieving sustained growth in the underdeveloped areas today. The underdeveloped areas today are most typically characterized by a factor combination of abundant labor with scarce capital and land (and resources), usually complicated by a social and political structure not geared to economic advance. America in the nineteenth century, in contrast, was characterized by scarce labor and capital combined with seemingly endless land (and natural resources) set in a framework of social and political institutions that was highly favorable to economic growth.
The Locofocos: Urban “Agrarians”
Authors: Degler Carl N.
Published: August 2016

Most students of Jacksonian America are familiar with the Locofocos of New York through the interesting and informative history of the party which its secretary, Fitzwilliam Byrdsall, published in 1842. But Byrdsall himself was primarily interested in the antimonopoly features of his party's program, and therefore his history all but ignores the even more significant monetary policy of the Locofocos. At the present time in historical writing, it is fashionable to emphasize the role played by the Jacksonian movement as a whole in liberating the expanding American economy from the fetters of a dying mercantilistic approach to business enterprise. There is much to be said for such an interpretation. But the Jacksonians faced toward many meccas, and one of the most articulate and widely known groups which rallied around the Jackson standard—the Locofocos—cannot be trimmed to this pattern.
Royal Textile Factories in Spain, 1700–1800
Authors: la Force J. Clayburn
Published: August 2016

Spain ascended to dazzling heights in world affairs during the sixteenth century, thrust there by her political, military, and economic might. Until the seventeenth century began, her position seemed unassailable. Then, with agonizing helplessness, she slipped into a humiliating cycle of decline which persisted until only a shell of her greatness remained one hundred years later. Viewing Spain in such depths of misery, few observers could have guessed that her melancholy drift had ended when Charles II (1665–1700) died and Philip V (1700–1746) succeeded him in 1700. Yet as the Austrian lineage thus came to an end and the Bourbon dynasty began, Spain entered a new epoch marked by the unusually enlightened participation of government in Spanish economic affairs.
Agricultural Productivity and Economic Growth in England, 1700–1760: A Comment
Authors: Flinn M. W.
Published: August 2016

In his recent article in this Journal, A. H. John has attempted to show how low grain prices in the first half of the eighteenth century stimulated economic growth. His argument runs that after the Restoration,

…there followed almost a century of comparative plenty, bringing an increasing flow of food and raw materials. The most pronounced fall in prices occurred in grains … Because [the bread grains] entered very largely into the diet of most groups in society, a fall in their prices lowered the cost of living and so raised per capita real incomes …. Income tended to move into the hands of people, who, through habit and/or necessity, were more likely to spend than hoard …. Many of the growth points stemmed from a buoyant home market.
Gold as a Monetary Standard, 1914–1919
Authors: Brown William Adams
Published: August 2016

In 1914 I was a student in college and according to our textbooks the nature and operation of the gold standard was a subject that presented few difficulties. Countries, we learned, were on the gold standard if they selected as a unit of account a certain weight of gold of a certain fineness and made their currencies convertible into gold at the rate fixed by this definition. If, in addition, such countries placed no restrictions on the export or import of gold they were on an international gold standard. When the major trading countries of the world simultaneously adopted arrangements of this kind, we had what was, in effect, a sort of international convention concerning the treatment of gold which we described as the international gold-standard system.
American Technique and Steam Navigation on the Saône and the Rhône, 1827–1850
Authors: Rivet Félix
Published: August 2016

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Continental Blockade momentarily ruined the maritime commerce of Western Europe and, by the same token, increased the importance of the land routes of this area. More dian other regions, the valley of the Saone and the Rhône, squeezed between the Alps and the Massif Central on the isthmus separating the Mediterranean from the North Sea, profited from the dislocation and came to know an intense activity. For some 105 leagues from Marseilles to Chalon, the products of Provence and Languedoc, as well as colonial goods brought in along the Mediterranean, took this road leading to Paris and the countries of the Northwest on the one hand, to Strasbourg, Alsace, and Germany on the other. Superbly situated in an obligatory point of passage, Lyons enjoyed at that time an exceptional prosperity; placed as she was at the terminus of the new Cenis road, she added to the Rhone traffic proper the free importation of silk from Lombardy and the Piedmont and the trade in Illyrian and Levantine cotton which had crossed the plains of northern Italy. Thus was realized little by little that “Lyonnaise conquest of the peninsular market of the Empire” described by Marcel Blanchard. Coming ahead of even the traditional silk industry, transport constituted the primary source of wealth of a city where nearly two hundred truckers and shipping agents built up solid fortunes, all the while hoping that nothing would come to halt the process.
The Beginnings of British Legislation for Old-Age Pensions
Authors: Sires Ronald V.
Published: August 2016

In A society operating completely on the principles of economic individualism, each adult person would be expected to make provision for his own needs and for those of his dependents. He would have to earn enough to provide food, clothing, and shelter, as well as develop the necessary frugality to lay by enough to care for himself and dependents during periods of illness and unemployment. He would likewise be expected to make provision for old age and for funeral expenses. The duties of an adult person in society would be looked upon as being not only economic but also moral in nature, requiring the constant making of choices in expenditure, not merely of what goods to buy but of the spacing of expenditures over long periods of time. If a person met with economic reverses and could not provide, he showed himself to be incapable of dealing with the problems of a responsible adult and ought not to look to others to get him out of his predicament. His condition would be considered to result from lack of the moral qualities required of a person who had taken upon himself the responsibilities of adult life.
Factors in Economic Growth in Canada
Authors: Hartland Penelope
Published: August 2016

Within the sweep of Canada's economic progress, I should liketo devote special attention to one period—from about 1900 to the outbreak of World War I—as die period of most rapid growth in the history of Canada since die union of the separate provinces under Confederation in 1867, with die possible exception of die war-stimulated 1940's. I propose to point out certain parallels between that remarkable expansionary period and a much earlier one. I shall also attempt to isolate die important factors responsible for the upsurge of growdi after 1900.
Federalism, Pluralism, and Public Policy
Authors: Johnson E. A. J.
Published: August 2016

It is not chauvinism or instinctive egocentrism that leads Americans to believe they have evolved a beneficent form of economic organization. For despite all its shortcomings, and, alas, they are all too many, our volitional economy has demonstrated a capacity to stimulate human effort, increase investment, improve productivity, and gradually erode diat greatest evil of all commonwealths, perceived since Plato's days: the coexistence of great wealth and abject poverty. It is therefore entirely appropriate this year, when we are commemorating two great experiments in democratic public policy, that we should examine once again the origins of our polity, for I am convinced that it was the conscious and unashamed acceptance of a system of politico-economic pluralism that made possible the vigor and the catholicity of our developing institutions. The play of these pluralistic forces again and again has saved us from hardened dogma, so that the real virtue of our history—political, economic, and intellectual—has been our flexibility, our capacity to adapt ideas and instrumentalities to tasks of high social urgency. In the process we have created an economy so complex that it almost defies description, but one so tolerant ideologically that it can be called essentially private by those who find happiness in that ascription although there can be no burking the very obvious fact that it is today inherently socialistic. For whereas one can demonstrate statistically that two thirds of all capital formation is private, by an equally plausible demonstration it can be shown that, adding corporate and personal income taxes only, more than two thirds of the revenues of American enterprise are socialized. This mixed economy is, therefore, the great, ever-improving American invention, based on the quintessential content of our variant of democracy whose trinitarian elements have been well defined as shared respect, shared power, and shared knowledge.
Inventive Activity in Agriculture, 1837–1890
Authors: Feller Irwin
Published: August 2016

Recent studies into technological change in the American economy have stressed the importance of economic conditions that operate through the market mechanism on both the direction of the inventive activity which has generally provided the basis for this change and on the rate at which newly developed techniques are commercially adopted. Schmookler has argued the former point persuasively in several articles, while North, for the latter, has asserted that “productivity changes stemming from technological innovations are, in part at least, a nearly automatic response to successful expansion of industries in an acquisitive society under competitive market conditions.” With respect to American agriculture in the nineteenth century, our knowledge of the level of investment which incorporated new production techniques, and of the effects these techniques had on productivity and output has been greatly enhanced by the recent work of Kendrick, Gallman, and Towne and Rasmussen. Our account of inventive activity in agriculture, however, is still limited to mentioning and tracing through the effects of some of the more famous inventions in this field and to fragmentary patent citations. Accessibility to patent statistics since 1837 now makes possible a fuller treatment of agricultural inventions. In Part II of this paper I present a description of the level and composition of agricultural inventions between 1837–1890. In Part III, I attempt to test the importance of certain market conditions as determinants of this inventive activity.
Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping after 1870: A Comment
Authors: Walton Gary M.
Published: August 2016

The recent contribution by Knauerhase in this Journal raises some important issues regarding productivity change in ocean shipping in the late nineteenth century. The study is limited to the German fleet for the period from 1871 to 1887, but the findings do bear on the decline of freight rates after 1870. The traditional argument, which is now less in vogue, is that steam played the significant role in the last half of the nineteenth century and was the main source of advancing productivity. The novelty and importance of the findings by Knauerhase is that they support this hypothesis. The evidence given by Graham, on the other hand, points to the 1870's as a period when the sailing vessel underwent significant productivity change and experienced revived growth. This position has been buttressed by North, who argues that sail dominated the long-haul routes where most of the goods were carried and where the reduction in freight rates was most dramatic.
Thomas Southcliffe Ashton 1889–1968: A Memoir
Authors: Heaton Herbert
Published: August 2016

To those senior citizens and somewhat younger members of our guild who attended the 1949 annual meeting of the Association at Rutgers University, the death of Professor Ashton last September may revive memories of his lively participation in the program of that meeting. Others may have met him during his spring semester as visiting professor at Johns Hopkins in 1952, with side trips to some eastern campuses followed by a summer school stint at Columbia. Meanwhile the publisher's royalty statements indicate that tens of thousands of students in this continent and elsewhere yearly continue to buy his classic little volume The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (1948).
The Significance of Grain in the Development of the Tobacco Colonies
Authors: Klingaman David
Published: August 2016

The economic development of the American colonies is one of the least explored areas in American economic history. Since the several regions in the colonies followed somewhat different paths of development, the colonial puzzle can be gradually pieced together through research which concentrates on particular regions. The subject of this study is an important aspect of the development of the tobacco colonies during approximately the thirty years preceding 1770. George Rogers Taylor and Jacob M. Price have suggested that the second and third quarters of the eighteenth century brought “rapid economic growth” to the tobacco colonies and a “marked resumption of growth” in tobacco exports. The findings of this study will suggest some reservations concerning the leading role of tobacco during this time. The series on American tobacco exports to Great Britain suggests that there was virtual stagnation in the first quarter of the eighteenth century followed by perhaps a doubling of exports in the second quarter and then near stagnation in the third quarter until the year 1771. The reason for the leap in tobacco exports in 1771 to a high plateau of approximately 100 million pounds annually during 1771–1775 is unknown. What is important for analysis of the growth and development of the tobacco colonies, however, is that the exceptionally high exports in the last five years of the colonial period tend to mask what was apparently a slow and erratic growth in world demand for American tobacco exports in the immediately preceding decades. The assumption that tobacco was a booming sector in the economy of the upper South at this time is open to question.
Farm Capital Formation as a Use of Farm Labor in the United States, 1850–1910
Authors: Primack Martin L.
Published: August 2016

This article brings together some estimates of labor inputs in capital formation in American agriculture, compares the various forms of capital as uses of farm labor, and relates the labor input to the size of the labor force in agriculture in the period 1850–1910. Two major items of farm-formed capital—land clearing and farm construction—have been discussed in earlier articles. The present article adds to these estimates the material on the lesser forms of farm capital—fencing, drainage, and irrigation—and discusses the significance of the totals arrived at.
Mortgage Borrowing as a Frontier Developed: A Study of Mortgages in Champaign County, Illinois, 1836–1895
Authors: Severson Robert F. , Niss James F. , Winkelman Richard D.
Published: August 2016

This study of mortgage borrowing in the American West covers mortgage activity in Champaign County, Illinois, from 1836 through 1895, but emphasizes the years 1854 through 1895. This time span covers the county from the time it was a part of the American frontier until it became a developed geographic unit within the national economy. Primary concern is with the level and trend of interest rates and with sources and uses of mortgage funds.
Federal Government Receipts and Expenditures, 1861–1875
Authors: Trescott Paul B.
Published: August 2016

This study presents three sets of data dealing with Federal Government revenues, expenditures, and financing for the period 1861–1875. These extend and augment the author's previous estimates covering the years through 1860. The first set presents expenditures classified by major function, annual, by fiscal year ending June 30. The second set consists of annual estimates of Federal revenue and expenditures on a money-flow basis comparable to the national income accounts. The two sets differ slightly in totals because of differing degrees of netting.
Agricultural Production and Output per Worker in Hungary, 1870–1913
Authors: Eddie Scott M.
Published: August 2016

The countries of non-Russian “Communist Eastern Europe” present the economic historian with a fascinating field for study. This opportunity has, judging from English-language journals at least, largely gone unexploited. Moreover, although Eastern Europe remained a predominantly agrarian region up to the most recent times, the existing literature concentrates heavily on finance, trade, and industry. It is in the hope of contributing to the discussion of Eastern European economic history, most particularly some of its agricultural aspects, that this article has been written.
Evidences of Long Swings in the Growth of Swedish Population and Related Economic Variables, 1860–1965
Authors: Wilkinson Maurice
Published: August 2016

This paper presents evidence of long swings in the growth of Swedish population and investigates the question of the possible sources or causes of these demographic movements. I do not have a completely identified model of long swings to offer for empirical testing at this time. It is first necessary to determine the extent to which the long swings are diffused in Sweden and to provide a reliable reference chronology. With this information, the task of seeking the cause and effect relationships can proceed. Nevertheless, an analysis is attempted of the cause and effect relationship underlying Swedish emigration and the interaction of the major economic and demographic variables. In the light of these results, suggestions for further research are offered.
The Irish Land Question After 1870
Authors: Solow Barbara Lewis
Published: August 2016

The explanations put forth during the nineteenth century to account for Ireland's economic condition may be grouped under three heads. The first was associated with the conceptual framework of the English classical economists and stressed overpopulation and excessive subdivision. A second approach, which might be called the underdeveloped-country explanation, emphasized the need for social overhead capital—drainage, flood control, communications, and education. The third approach argued that defects in the land tenure system were at the root of Ireland's failure to develop a prosperous economy.
Movements in the Quality of British Cotton Textile Exports, 1815–1913
Authors: Sandberg Lars G.
Published: August 2016

The purpose of this article is to investigate trends in the quality of British cotton textile exports during the period 1815-1913. “Quality” is defined as real value per yard of cloth and pound of yarn exported. Thus, a reduction in export quality does not mean that a specific type of cloth has deteriorated. Rather, it means that there has been a shift from more expensive to less expensive types of cloth. It may also mean that the same type of cloth is being ex-ported in a different state—white instead of printed or gray instead of bleached.
Transportation and Economic Stagnation in Eighteenth-Century Castile
Authors: Ringrose David R.
Published: August 2016

Since at least the seventeenth century the economic development of Spain has been limited because the rates of growth achieved in the peripheral areas of Catalonia, Valencia, and Vizcaya were greater than that of the interior under the old Crown of Castile. The stagnation of the Castilian interior not only created a dull market for manufactured goods, but conserved a persistently strong traditionalist faction which long hampered Spanish political development. The resulting tension between the interior and the more modern peripheral sectors of society dominates Spanish history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Internal Functioning of Capitalist Organizations
Authors: Hagen Everett E.
Published: August 2016

It is a commentary of some sort on the blurring and shifting of disciplinary lines that I should have been asked to talk on the psychology of capitalism, and should have accepted. Though during the past fifteen years I have had a good deal of exposure to the body of theory of social and personality psychology, I have no formal training in psychology. And I am not a professor of business management. My field of specialization is economic development and social change in the low income countries—which, I think, does make me an economic historian. If I have any individual specialization, it is on the emphasis that I insist must be given to the technical study of personality formation if we are to gain a full understanding of either economic development or social change. This interest in turn is related to the psychology of capitalism. One of the simpler things that this personal history symbolizes is that old disciplinary Lines are giving way, as scholars shift their analysis to new explanatory variables. The old lines of demarcation between sociology, anthropology, and political science are becoming obsolete, all of these disciplines are nibbling away at the domain of history, and personality theory is intruding into the domain of all four.
The Noble as Landlord in the Region of Toulouse at the End of the Old Regime
Authors: Forster Robert
Published: August 2016

Unlike the English country squire and the Prussian Junker, the French gentilhomme campagnard has been stereotyped by literature and history as idle, dull, and poor. Without rejecting Molière's picture of the court fop or La Bruyère's caricature of the proud but impoverished hobereau, attention must be turned toward the more typical provincial nobleman of the Old Regime. Here is a social type that was neither congenitally frivolous nor hopelessly rustic. Historical research, especially in local and private archives, is uncovering the existence of an active, shrewd, and prosperous landholding nobility who were not, as Arthur Young too often suggests, a thoroughly urbanized class of absentee proprietors leasing their domains at fixed money rents to bourgeois tenants. On the contrary, personal estate management not only was the best way of assuring a gentilhomme campagnard a good income but it was also recognized as his profession, and, in contrast to retail trade and purely. commercial speculation, a perfectly respectable noble enterprise.
Saint-Simon as a Realist
Authors: Stark W.
Published: August 2016

In Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, three great movements have taken their origin. The first is characterized by the names Enfantin and Bazard, the second by those of Comte and Taine, the third by Lesseps and Péreire. Enfantin and Bazard were men of imagination, Comte and Taine men of science, Lesseps and Péreire men of action. No other father has engendered such different children. Enfantin and Bazard made Saint-Simon the bearer of a new gospel of salvation; in his name they founded a church and strove to win for it all nations. Comte and Taine made Saint-Simon the founder of a new philosophy; from his ideas they developed a system of knowledge and gained for it the nineteenth century. Lesseps and Péreire made Saint-Simon the pioneer of a new world; from his inspiration they created waterways and railways, banks and factories.
Relations of History and Theory
Authors: Clark J. M.
Published: August 2016

Most economic theorists nowadays appreciate that particular theories are peculiarly relevant to particular historical situations, and gain their chief importance from this relevance. In place of one absolute set of propositions, economists are becoming accustomed to the idea that their theoretical arsenal needs to include, for example, weapons suited to conditions of approximately full employment, and different weapons suited to conditions of depression. The dependence of theory on conditions properly goes further than this. We need to ask whether our fundamental concepts are appropriate to the historical conditions of the time to which they are to be applied.
Learning By Doing and Tariff Protection: A Reconsideration of the Case of the Ante-Bellum United States Cotton Textile Industry
Authors: David Paul A.
Published: August 2016

Can learning by doing be held to have played a significant part in raising productive efficiency during the early growth of manufacturing industries in the United States? If there is indeed an adequate basis for regarding technical progress during the pre-Civil War period as an endogenous process depending crucially upon the accumulation of practical experience, what sorts of ‘learning functions” best describe the forms in which that process manifested itself? And, in evaluating the impact of national commercial policies—be they historical or contemporary—what implications flow from the existence and the characteristics of learning effects in young industries, and possibly also in not-so-young industries?
Rates of Return for Land-Grant Railroads: The Central Pacific System
Authors: Mercer Lloyd J.
Published: August 2016

Land was the resource that nineteenth-century America possessed in greatest abundance. A large part of the land was initially in the public domain and was transferred to private ownership in the course of the century. Land policy, therefore, had the potential for creating significant and long lasting effects on the American economy—on the rate of settlement of the West, the distribution of income, the rate of economic growth. A substantial body of literature, much of it severely critical, has developed concerning the economic effects of nineteenth-century American land policy. Unfortunately, the criticisms often rest primarily on tales of corruption and thievery, rather than on economic analysis. Certainly many of the stories are true, but they represent an insufficient basis for evaluating the economic effects of land policy. A detailed economic analysis of individual policies is required.
Conspectus for a History of Economic and Business Literature
Authors: Cole Arthur H.
Published: August 2016

Economic and business literature has hitherto served restricted purposes, although by no means unimportant ones. Chiefly it has been called upon to explain specific events or trends, from the issuance of assignats to the decline oflaissez faire, or it has been surveyed to reveal the emergence and evolution of certain concepts significant for economic theory or economic analysis. Business literature has been especially neglected, unless one includes within that term writings on behalf of the East India Company on economic policies or unless one remembers the books and pamphlets utilized by historians of the East India and other such enterprises in the compounding of their volumes. By and large it is accurate to assert that parts of the literature have been used, but the whole has been overlooked.
Communications and Trade: The Atlantic in the Seventeenth Century
Authors: Bailyn Bernard
Published: August 2016

In The first half of the seventeenth century the northern mercan-Itile nations of Europe followed Spain and Portugal in flinging their Ncommercial frontiers westward to the New World. By the end of the century they had surpassed the Iberian nations in western trade and made of the Atlantic basin a single great trading area. Their economic enterprises created not only a crisscrossing web of transoceanic traffic but also a cultural community diat came to form die western periphery of European civilization. The members of this community were widely separated, scattered across three thousand miles of ocean and up and down the coasts of two continents. But the structure of commerce furnished a communication system mat brought these far-flung settlements together. The same structure proved to be a framework upon which certain important elements in colonial society took form. My purpose is to sketch certain characteristics of the Atlantic colonies in die seventeenth century which relate to these social consequences of commercial growth.
Economic Factors in the Decline of the Byzantine Empire
Authors: Charanis Peter
Published: August 2016

It is now five hundred years since the Byzantine empire was brought to an end by the Ottoman Turks, Scholars today quite justly reject Gibbon's assumption that the Byzantine empire was, throughput its entire existence, in a state of decline. They have come to rank it, instead, as one of the great empires in history. And this for good reasons. It endured for over a thousand years. Down to about the middle of the eleventh century it was the center of civilization in Christendom. It preserved the thought and literature of antiquity; it developed new forms of art; it held back the barbarians. It produced great statesmen, soldiers, and diplomats as well as reformers and renowned scholars. Its missionaries, aided by its diplomats and sometimes by its armies, spread the gospel among the pagan tribes, especially the Slavs, which dwelt along its frontiers and beyond. As a Czech historian has put it, Byzantium “molded the undisciplined tribes of Serbs, Bulgars, Russians, Croats even, and made nations out of them; it gave to them its religion and institutions, taught their princes how to govern, transmitted to them the very principles of civilization—writing and literature.” Byzantium was a great power and a great civilizing force.
The High Cost and the Gamble of the Witte System: A Chapter in the Industrialization of Russia
Authors: Von Laue Theodore H.
Published: August 2016

Students of the Five Year Plans are familiar with the overreach. Sing ambitions, the inflated claims, die disputed accomplishments, die misleading statistics, and the appalling human costs of “socialist industrialization” in Soviet Russia. They have generally ascribed these phenomena to Bolshevik dieory and practice. It comes as a surprise then to find die criticism of die early Five Year Plans foreshadowed, in almost identical terms, in die attacks made upon die earlier policy of rapid industrialization in Russia which is linked with the name of Sergei Witte, the Czarist Minister of Finance, 1891–1903. He, too, paraded seemingly impressive results and dubious figures, and he, too, was forced to exact dire sacrifices from popular welfare: Despite the profound dissimilarities between the Soviet system and die Witte era (they must go unstated here) there exists, it would seem, an underlying continuity, pointing to more fundamental necessities and profounder tragedies that backward countries widi strong nationalist and imperialist tendencies must face in die precipitous development of their resources. One special difference, however, should be noted in diis context. The distaste for die bitter fruits of forced industrialization, muted in Stalinist Russia, could frankly, although not entirely freely, be expressed in die eighteen nineties, when Witte's policies attained their full effect. The subsequent discussion of Witte's policies and their consequence is drawn from that public protest.
Inflation and Controls, Pennsylvania, 1774–1779
Authors: Bezanson Anne
Published: August 2016

In attempting to fit a phase of the American Revolutionary era into this program on economic unrest, I am not concerned with the factors leading up to the conflict. Historians have traced these in the evolution of the colonies, in changes in Great Britain and, for that matter, in much of Europe, over the long years of peace as well as in the era of controversy. They are complex factors in which thought, whether social, political, or economic, may be far removed from the action that it influences. My concern is with the economic setting in Pennsylvania at the end of the decade of protest and with the rapid changes in price relationships in the early war years which made for unrest within a period of unrest.
The England of Marx and Mill as Reflected in Fiction
Authors: Aydelotte William O.
Published: August 2016

The economic distress and the new concern with social problems in England in the 1840's, which underlay the reformulations of political economy in that decade, had also an extensive and significant reflection in imaginative literature. While the novel with a thesis, even a social thesis, was nothing new, it was only in the forties that English literature began to deal on a major scale with the social problems raised by the industrial revolution. One can sense in the novels of this decade an increased urgency and pressure, a more daring and direct attack. This emphasis is so marked that one critic has attempted a correlation between literature and socialism, and has sought to find in the novels of Dickens the same type of social observation and emotional reaction that prompted the analyses of Karl Marx. While such a thesis goes too far and is almost certainly invalid, one can nevertheless find in these novels a historical meaning of a different sort, more complex, but also more interesting and suggestive to the historian.
Capitalism in Medieval Islam
Authors: Labib Subhi Y.
Published: August 2016

He who looks for the term “capitalism” in the Islamic sources of the Middle Ages will look in vain. On the other hand, the term “capital” has been known since the beginning of Islamic culture. Even in the Holy Book of Islam, in the Sūrat al-Baḳara, the idea of capital appears in connection with trade, business, and the illicit practice of loaning for profit—usury. “O you who believe, keep your duty to Allah and relinquish what remains [due] from usury, if you are believers. But if you do [it] not, then be apprised of war from Allah and His messenger; and if you repent, then you shall have your capital. Wrong not, and you shall not be wronged.” In the same Sūrah God forbids usury but not Bai', trading, or buying. At another place God's commands clear the way for investments. “O you who believe, devour not your property among yourselves by illegal methods, although you may engage in trading by mutual consent. And kill not your people. Surely Allah is merciful to you.”The Islamic merchant tried to follow this system of ethics.
Endogenous Formation and Development of Capitalism in Japan
Authors: Takenaka Yasukazu
Published: August 2016

Japanese historians have characterized the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) as an “early modern feudal system” (kinsei hòken seido). While there is disagreement on the nature of feudalism in general, and the form of feudalism in the Tokugawa period in particular, I believe that Tokugawa society does include the essential elements of a feudal system so as to justify this label. What is particularly conspicuous is that Japan, like Europe, experienced feudalism before the birth of the modern age. In the case of Japan, as Professor E. O. Reischauer has pointed out, feudalism permitted the development of a goal-oriented ethic, rather than a status-oriented ethic, a strong sense of duty and obligation, and excluded the non warrior class from political power. Professor R. N. Bellah has differentiated the social values of Japan's feudalism from those of European feudalism by stressing the element of “loyalty” in the former and identifying this value as a key to the modernization of Japan. Whatever the special characteristics of feudalism in Japan may be, all analysts agree that the term “feudalism” is appropriate as a description of Tokugawa society.
Banking and Industry in Spain, 1829–1874
Authors: Tortella Gabriel
Published: August 2016

The object of this dissertation is to analyze the role of the banking system in the process of industrialization in Spain from 1829 to 1874. The reasons for taking these two dates as starting and closing points in my investigation will be evident as the exposition proceeds.
The Draper Loom in New England Textiles: A Comment
Authors: Sandberg Lars G.
Published: August 2016

The September 1966 issue of this Journal contains a study by Professor Irwin Feller on the rate of adoption of the Draper Automatic Loom in the New England cotton textile industry. I have no quarrel with his central conclusions concerning the economic rationality of the New England cotton manufacturers. I do, however, have some comments on his analysis of the relative costs of producing cloth on plain (power) as opposed to automatic looms.
United States Transport Advance and Externalities: A Comment
Authors: Weiss Thomas
Published: August 2016

Approximately two years ago Stanley Lebergott took issue with the finding “that the rise of the railroads was relatively unimportant” to the American economy of the nineteenth century (p. 438). Lebergott dis-missed the low estimates of social savings as “startling but uninteresting,” and offered an alternative estimate of railroad importance. He asked the important question “by how much the railroad reduced real costs of transport from those that would have prevailed under a regime of wagoners and boatmen” (p. 441). He approached the answer by way of two other questions. Given cost and technological data, “what was the maximum volume of goods that could be distributed per year by a mile of canal and by a mile of railroad where both could reasonably be built? And how great was that volume per dollar of investment?” (p. 422). Using nineteenth-century data in his inimitably artistic manner, Lebergott fashioned an answer suggesting that the consequences of railroad construction were “surely the stuff of significant economic change” (p. 466).
The Expansion of the Labor Market in Capitalist Russia: 1861–1917
Authors: Rimlinger Gaston V.
Published: August 2016

Anyone interested in the historical anlysis of the emergence of a wage labor force in the early stages of industrialization will find much of interest in Rashin's study of the Russian case. The value of this study, an expansion and elaboration of a work published in 1940, lies in both over-all and sector estimates of the growth and composition of the work force, and in detailed data on specific aspects of the movement from the land to the factory.