bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Internal Improvements Reconsidered
Authors: Goodrich Carter
Published: August 2016

In a notable article published in 1955, Robert A. Lively analyzed the body of new writing on “the role of government in the antebellum economy.” In it he coined the term, “The American System,” to describe the characteristic pattern of “public support for business development” or government “partnership with enterprise.” The greater part of the literature covered dealt with the government promotion of canals and railroads, and he credited the writers with achieving “the rescue of the internal improvements movement from the political historian.” Another bench mark is provided by the appearance in 1969 of the fourth edition of Edward C. Kirkland's History of American Economic Life. The revision devotes attention to the new trends that have appeared in the writing of economic history since the first edition in 1932, and Kirkland declares that the one that interested him the most was “the increasing attention to the interrelationships between government and economic activity.” His chapter on “Internal Improvements and Domestic Commerce” makes full use of the research on the role of governments in the promotion of canals and railroads but ends with the judgment that recent writers have tended to overstate the supposed social gains and to disregard the traditional but still valid concern with the financial losses. Meanwhile, Albert Fishlow, in his admirable book, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy, had challenged the writers on the American System on a number of issues, including the commonly accepted theory that railroads were built ahead of demand. His critique is summarized in the following statement: “the recent useful destruction of the myth of ideological laissez faire must not give rise to the equally erroneous impression of all-embracing, and essential, public promotion.”
Evidence on Income Inequality in the United States, 1866–1965
Authors: Soltow Lee C.
Published: August 2016

It is commonly thought that income distribution among people became more concentrated after the Civil War and that this direction continued until the turn of the century. We can look methodically at the income tax distributions from the Civil War period and compare them directly with the distributions arising from the income tax after 1912. We also have some data from the abortive income tax of 1894. After examining the various blocks of evidence, the conclusion will be made that inequality among upper-income groups did not increase during this period. It is necessary to emphasize that the present investigation is one of income and not of wealth. It might have been possible for the nonhuman wealth distribution among people to remain constant or to increase in inequality while the personal income distribution was decreasing in inequality.
Entrepreneurship in the Establishment of the American Clock Industry
Authors: Murphy John Joseph
Published: August 2016

Although the aggregate growth rate of the American economy was relatively slow between the Revolution and 1840, certain sectors did expand at a rapid rate, and from these sectors originated some of the factors responsible for the later dynamic growth of the whole system. One such sector involved the making of clocks. Never large by any measure, the clock industry was, nevertheless, a leader in the introduction of the system of interchangeable parts production and in the mass marketing of a “luxury” consumer good. The purpose of this article is to outline and to analyze the transformation of this activity from a craft to an industry and, in particular, to indicate the factors which influenced Eli Terry, the main entrepreneur of the transformation.
The Specification Problem in Economic History
Authors: Fogel Robert William
Published: August 2016

The rise of the new economic history has provoked a vigorousdebate on methodology. At issue is the validity of the effort of econometric historians or cliometricians, as practitioners of the new work are sometimes called, to apply the mathematical models of economics to the study of history. Some older historians have attacked the use of such models on the ground that they violate the empirical character of the discipline. In this view, the models employed by the cliometricians represent an unwarranted intrusion of speculation into an area of research previously limited to the careful collection and presentation of facts. The most severe criticism has been directed at the propensity of the new economic historians to deal with questions of the counterfactual-conditional type, that is, with questions which ask how the development of the economy would have been altered by the absence of one or more of its observed features. It has been asserted that the models which underlie the answers to such questions are “figments” and that they cannot be verified. Consequently counterfactual models are held to be a direct threat to the integrity of economic history as an empirically confirmed description of the economic development of nations.
Labor Scarcity and the Problem of American Industrial Efficiency in the 1850's: A Comment
Authors: Drummond Ian M.
Published: August 2016

In a recent issue of this Journal Peter Temin has offered a challenging analysis of American labor scarcity and the choice of technology. He deserves our gratitude for attempting to increase the analytical rigor in discussions of this matter, but his analysis is puzzling and, I think, profoundly misleading. This note is meant as a comment upon certain of its oddities.
Public Finance and the Industrialization of Prussia, 1815–1866: A Correction
Authors: Tilly Richard
Published: August 2016

My article on Prussian public finance in the December 1966 issue of this Journal contained some errors of calculation which partially affect the arguments I advanced there and which provide an excellent object lesson in the hasty use of quantitative evidence. After unaccountably converting current prices into constant ones by multiplication instead of division, I rushed the results off to the editors without checking them.
Improvement in American Dairy Farming, 1850–1910: A Quantitative Analysis
Authors: Bateman Fred
Published: August 2016

Agricultural improvement, as analysts of economic growth often stress, plays an important role in a developing economy. Recent quantitative research has expanded our knowledge of developments in American agriculture during the period when the economy was becoming industrialized. The purpose of this article is to compute new estimates of average milk yields (output per milk animal) in American dairy agriculture and to analyze the sources of changes in these yields between 1850 and 1910.
Real Values in British Foreign Trade, 1798–1853
Authors: Imlah Albert H.
Published: August 2016

In 1696 the British began to keep records of their imports and exports in terms of money values. For this purpose, tables of prices were prepared first for England, and subsequently for Ireland and for Scotland, with the rates based, it is said, on market conditions at the time. Some adjustments in the initial valuations were made in the early years, but thereafter, for over a century and a half, the same prices were used in calculating “official” values. For imports and re-exports they supplied the sole basis for computing money values throughout this period. For exports of domestic produce and manufactured goods, however, a concurrent series of declared values was begun when a convoy tax was imposed ad valorem in 1798; but this series, though continued after the war, has been overshadowed by the “official” valuations which attained something of the respectability of a time-hallowed tradition. Year after year through peace and war, dearth and plenty, high prices and low, the clerks meticulously multiplied their quantities by these unchanging rates. In other words, British “official” trade values became progressively more useless as measures of current market values until the system was reformed in 1854. As a result, historians and economists are faced with frustration or distortion in any question dependent on a fairly accurate knowledge of the course, or the terms, or the balance of British trade in the period.
Charity Endowments as Sources of Local Credit in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century England
Authors: James Francis Godwin
Published: August 2016

The significant place of credit in everyday business is not a new phenomenon. If the last few centuries have witnessed a rapid development in the character and extent of credit facilities, it is still far from certain that the relative importance of credit is today greater than it was in the medieval period, or during the intervening centuries. In any case it is undeniable that the business affairs of men, from paupers to princes, have frequently required credit in one form or another. The king with his wars and splendid court, the noble with his extravagant ways, and the merchant with his speculative ventures have been the colorful debtors of history and fiction alike. The Jew, the Lombard, the Medici or Fugger, the goldsmith, and finally the modern professional banker have appeared as the masters of credit. But credit transactions have not been limited to these groups alone. As R. H. Tawney has pointed out, such a society as that of Elizabethan England was composed largely of small property holders, chiefly farmers and artisans. These yeomen, artisans, and small businessmen were often in need of loans to expand or retrieve their estates. Where did they find the credit they required?
Baltimore's Aid to Railroads: A Study in the Municipal Planning of Internal Improvements
Authors: Goodrich Carter , Segal Harvey H.
Published: August 2016

Local governments played a notable and somewhat neglected part in the American movement for internal improvements. Their activities in aid of canals and railroads varied greatly in scale and method and in the scope of planning involved. They ran the gamut from the far-flung projects of great commercial cities striving for the dominance of the trade of vast areas to the donations of obscure rural townships trying only to make sure that the promised railroad should pass through their village rather than the adjacent crossroads. Among the greater cities, none played a more notable role than Baltimore in the promotion of internal improvements. Its total of railroad subscriptions, loans, and bond endorsements was about twenty million dollars—a figure of municipal contribution only exceeded by Cincinnati's investment in a city-owned railroad. Baltimore was in the field of internal improvements well before Cincinnati and remained in it long after such early rivals as Philadelphia had withdrawn. Baltimore's first investment in the Baltimore and Ohio was audaorized in 1827, and its last loan to the Western Maryland was made in 1886. It continued to vote stock and to appoint public directors to the board of railroad corporations until it sold its interest in the Baltimore and Ohio in 1890 and in the Western Maryland in 1902.
The Land-Bank System in the American Colonies
Authors: Thayer Theodore
Published: August 2016

One need not be very conversant with modern money, credit, and banking to find in them a kinship with the land banks of the Colonial era. In a manner suggestive of our Federal Reserve System, the Colonial land banks exerted a wide influence over the economic life of the times. Indeed, the functions of the land-bank system embraced every phase of the Colonial economy. Its history to a large degree comprises the history of currency, money values, inflation, credit, public finance, and economic development in eighteenth-century America.
Colonial Tonnage Measurement: Five Philadelphia Merchant Ships as a Sample
Authors: McCusker John J.
Published: August 2016

Economic historians have been aware for some time of the questionable nature of some of the tonnage figures given for the ships of the English colonies in the Western Hemisphere in the eighteenth century. Several authors who have written on colonial shipbuilding or colonial trade have noted the authoritative declaration of Thomas Irving which was laid before the House of Commons in 1792 and have tried to take his evidence into account in their own investigations. Irving, who from 1767 to 1774 had held the dual position of Inspector General of Imports and Exports and Register of Shipping in North America, stated that while he was in office North American vessels had been consistently registered at two-thirds of their real tonnage. He urged that this deduction be repaired and real tonnage re-established before any attempt be made to compare statistics from that time with those of a later period. Other scholars have either chosen not to notice Irving's claim or have discounted it as of moot significance. Such ambivalence is understandable, for Irving's assertion is narrowly based, confused, and misleading. Still, the sweeping scope of his charge and the even broader testimony of some of his contemporaries who have both agreed with him and expanded upon him have combined to leave the precise nature of all colonial tonnage figures in serious doubt. Given the renewed interest in tonnage measure and the growing trend toward the use of compiled tonnage statistics as a rough and ready measure of trade, it becomes important to resolve this doubt.
The Discipline and I
Authors: Gerschenkron Alexander
Published: August 2016

Having had no previous experience in giving presidential addresses, I spent most of the last year on a study of such addresses, delivered before our own and other scholarly associations. The conclusion of my research was that most of those addresses could be readily classified under one of two headings. The subject matter was either “The Discipline and I” or “The Discipline, Its Past, Present, and Future.“ Faced with this alternative, I found the choice between being either frankly egotistic or grandly universalistic rather hard. Although naturally leaning toward the former, I could not quite suppress my interest in the latter. Finally, I resolved my doubts by recalling the well-known proposition that since chocolate is good and oysters are good, chocolate and oysters together must be excellent indeed. What this means is that I should like to make a number of remarks—some anticritical, but some also self-critical—about my approach to the industrial development of Europe in the nineteenth century; but in doing so I shall select those aspects of the matter which have more general significance and try to connect them with some methodological observations.
The Compound Marine Steam Engine: A Study in the Relationship Between Technological Change and Economic Development
Authors: Knauerhase Ramon
Published: August 2016

One of the most important problems in the study of economic development is the role of technological change in the growth process. My dissertation is an analysis of some of the major variables which influenced the timing of the invention, adoption, and diffusion of the compound marine steam engine. The problem was divided into three parts: (1) all those variables pertaining directly to the invention of the engine, and the very first effects on the cost structure of the steamship industry; (2) the role of the compound marine steam engine in the growth of the German merchant fleet, 1872–1887, with special emphasis on the diffusion of the invention and its productivity effects; and (3) the effect of the compound steam engine on the sailing ship component of the German merchant fleet.
Monetary Policy and Politics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Sweden
Authors: Eagly Robert V.
Published: August 2016

NEXT to John Law's Banque Royale, the most important mercantilist monetary experiment attempted in western Europe during the pre-Adam Smith era took place in Sweden. The Bank of Sweden (Riksens Ständers Bank), which had been established as a national bank in 1688, was used by the Swedish government in the mid-eighteenth century as an engine for economic development. Sweden's experiment in paper money mercantilism gave rise to an active debate which may be called the “Swedish bullionist controversy” because of its similarity to the monetary debate in England at the outset of the nineteenth century. This controversy took place in a highly charged political environment. Political power in Sweden from 1739 to 1772 was centered in the Swedish Riksdag, a representative body composed of the Four Estates: burghers, nobles, clergy, and peasants. Within this organization, the mercantile class predominated by virtue of its control of the influential House of Burghers when the Riksdag was in session and its control of the Secret Committee, which directed government policy when the Riksdag was not in session. The two political parties—the Hats and the Caps—vied with one another for control of the government from 1739 to 1772, a span including most of the epoch known in Swedish history as the “Age of Freedom,” 1719–1772. Participants in the bullionist controversy typically fell into one or the other political camp, and the political element is strong in most of the economic literature of the period. The two political parties locked horns on the issue of the “correct” monetary policy. At stake in the struggle was not only the correctness of economic theories and policies but, ultimately, also the viability of the Swedish parliamentary form of government. It is the purpose of this article to review the policies of the Riksbank in the mid-eighteenth century and to examine the economic theories of the two contending political parties.
“Beggar My Neighbor”: America and the British Interim Finance Crisis, 1940–1941
Authors: Kimball Warren F.
Published: August 2016

Nazi Germany was not the only enemy the British faced in the fall of 1940. While the Battle of Britain raged in the skies over southern England, an equally important struggle took place at the diplomatic and financial level. This time Britain's foe was far more nebulous: American distrust of things European and the memory of World War I. Although Britain eventually withstood the blitz on her own, British leaders knew full well by the summer of 1940 that continued resistance to Hitler depended upon aid from the United States.
Agricultural Transformation Under Colonialism: The Case of Taiwan
Authors: Ho Samuel Pao-San
Published: August 2016

Much interest andthe economic progress made in Taiwan since the end of World attention have been recently focused onWar II. A major factor in Taiwan's postwar economic development is that the island already possessed a progressive and productive agricultural sector when it was returned to Chinese rule in 1945. The transformation of Taiwan's agriculture was the major accomplishment of the Japanese Colonial Administration. When Japan acquired Taiwan in 1895, its agriculture was stagnant and its peasants were engaged almost exclusively in subsistence farming. To enable Taiwan to make a contribution to Japan's efforts at industrialization, the Colonial Government was given the task of rationalizing and modernizing Taiwan's agriculture. Taiwan was to be integrated with the Japanese economy to provide a food surplus to help maintain the Japanese laborers diverted from agricultural to industrial activities. Foreign exchange that Japan would otherwise have spent on food imports would be used to finance more strategic imports. More explicitly, the Japanese had two objectives: to increase Taiwan's agricultural output and to divert the increase away from agriculture in Taiwan without committing an equivalent transfer of production value to agriculture in Taiwan.
New Evidence on Colonial Commerce
Authors: Walton Gaby M.
Published: August 2016

The section on colonial commerce in most textbooks oh American Economic History has changed little in the last three or four (or more) decades. Of course, slight variations exist, but they are usually for style, with the core of the subject seldom varying. In fact, a traditional view of American colonial commerce has been solidly formed, and it is widely read and taught in our universities and colleges.
British Policy and Colonial Growth: Some Implications of the Burden from the Navigation Acts
Authors: Ransom Roger L.
Published: August 2016

Very few issues in American economic history have stirred as many contrasting views as the debate regarding the effects of the British Navigation Acts on the Thirteen American Colonies. The most recent entry in the long argument is Robert Thomas' analysis of the problem. Thomas constructs quantitative estimates of the impact of the Acts which are designed “… to measure, relative to some hypothetical alternative, the extent of the burdens and benefits stemming from imperial regulation of the foreign commerce of the 13 colonies.” He presents these estimates to test the hypothesis that: “… membership in the British Empire, after 1763, did not impose a significant hardship upon the American Colonies.” Thomas has employed new data in constructing his estimates, and he has carefully brought economic theory explicitly into the discussion. His framework requires the construction of a “counterfactual” hypothesis against which to evaluate the impact of policy. As he views it: “The only reasonable alternative in this case is to calculate the burdens or benefits of British regulation relative to how the colonists would have fared outside the British Empire, but still within a mercantilist world.” Given such a model, the value of the burden and benefit is estimated in terms of market prices and the pattern of trade which would have emerged had the colonies been free in 1763.
Railroads, American Growth, and the New Economic History: A Critique
Authors: McClelland Peter D.
Published: August 2016

Robert Fogel and Albert Fishlow have attempted in recent studies to measure the net contribution of the railroad to American economic growth in two specific years: 1890 and 1859. Both their methods and conclusions have confused, if not dismayed, more conventional historians. This article has two objectives: The first is to provide a simplified guide to the analytical framework underlying their calculations and the second is to suggest to both old and new economic historians that the measurements employed by Fogel and Fishlow bear no direct relationship to what they claim to measure—the benefits to the nineteenth-century economy from the existence of the railroad.
Entrepreneurship, Industrial Organization, and Economic Growth: A German Example
Authors: Parker William N.
Published: August 2016

The following bit of research has two purposes, one general and one specific. Its general purpose is to suggest how the three elements in its title arc linked together, and in doing this to connect more closely the work of historians, which has focused on entrepreneurship, with that of economists, which has centered around economic growth as measured in statistical aggregates. The specific purpose is to show how the organization of the German coal-mining industry in fact constituted one such connection between the economic activity of individuals and the industrial development of a nation.
The Political Economy of Public Finance and the Industrialization of Prussia, 1815–1866
Authors: Tilly Richard
Published: August 2016

At the close of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 Prussia was an industrial backwater. By the mid 1860's Prussia had achieved a considerable degree of industrialization. In a sense, her economy had “taken off.” The turning point dates from around 1840 and was closely related to railroad building. Before 1840 industrial investment grew haltingly. The combination of inadequate markets and the lack of supporting enterprise made industrial investment—particularly in those lines in which Europe's industrial leader, England, was already specialized—too risky and/or its anticipated yields too low for most potential investors, who preferred to invest in real estate, commerce, and in foreign government bonds. As leading Prussian entrepreneurs argued, the country's industrial development required public investment in river improvements, roads, canals, railroads, banks, and other facilities which would generate external economies and make private investment, for example in metalworking enterprise, more profitable. Theoretically, such public investment could have been financed by curtailing other governmental expenditures, by taxing unproductive consumption, and/or by borrowing. The technical proficiency required by such investments was either domestically available or could be readily borrowed from abroad. Even Prussian political economy, through its interpretation of the Classicists, reflected these conditions and called for state assistance. The will, the means, and a rationale for a program of public investment were at hand: one could truly speak of an abundance of “advantages of backwardness” in Prussia after 1815.
Finance and Industrialization in Italy, 1894–1914
Authors: Cohen Jon. S.
Published: August 2016

My thesis is a study of finance and industrialization in Italy between 1894 and 1914. Alexander Gerschenkron has argued that the years between 1896 and 1908 in Italy were the years of her “big spurt,” basing his analysis largely on an index of industrial production which he prepared for the period 1881-1913. In many cases the value of output was estimated by the value of inputs; in these instances, value added by industry was understated. In a number of instances the data problems were such that the estimates were very crude approximations of actual production. Nevertheless, when these indexes are combined with other available data on Italian industrial development, the years 1894-1914 stand out as the period during which the nation created her industrial base; only the expansion of the post-World War II years exceeded the growth rates achieved during this period.
The Knights of Labor and the Trade Unions, 1878–1886
Authors: Grob Gerald N.
Published: August 2016

The year 1886 was destined to be a crucial one in the history of the American labor movement. The eight-hour crusade, the numerous strikes, the Haymarket bomb, the entrance of workingmen into the political arena at the state and national levels, and the mushroom growth of labor organizations all contributed to the agitation and excitement of the year. Yet the importance of these events was overshadowed by a development that was to have such far-reaching implications that it would determine the future of the labor movement for the succeeding half century. That development was the declaration of war by the trade unions against the reform unionism of the Knights of Labour.
Japanese Capital Formation: The Role of the Public Sector
Authors: Rosovsky Henry
Published: August 2016

Assessing the role of government in economic development in situations where public and private sectors coexist is extremely difficult. The nature of modern government is so complex and its activities are so broad, that a clear statement of “influence” or “impact” on a national economy becomes almost impossible. Interpretations of Japanese economic history illustrate these problems vividly. Few scholars have dealt with the issue explicitly, and those that have seem unable to reach clear conclusions.
The Causes of Slavery or Serfdom: A Hypothesis
Authors: Domar Evsey D.
Published: August 2016

The purpose of this paper is to present, or more correctly, to revive, a hypothesis regarding the causes of agricultural serfdom or slavery (used here interchangeably). The hypothesis was suggested by Kliuchevsky's description of the Russian experience in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but it aims at a wider applicability.
Economic Forms in Pre-Colonial Ghana
Authors: Hymer Stephen H.
Published: August 2016

This paper uses a simple physiocratic model to examine forms of economic organization prevailing in Ghana before it was incorporated into the British Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. It is divided into three parts. The first analyzes the village subsistence economy and suggests that the egalitarian nature of the land-tenure system prevented the emergence of a land-owning class and the appropriation of an economic surplus. This led to an economic structure characterized by a low level of material production and a low degree of specialization and exchange. The second part analyzes forms of economic organization associated with long distance trade: that is, the very old northern trade with other parts of Africa, and the southern coastal trade with Europe which began in the fifteenth century. It argues that foreign trade not only expanded the consumption possibilities of the society, as predicted by the theory of international trade, but also introduced a new class structure and greater income inequality, since it allowed a small group to appropriate a surplus for its own use. The third part discusses the relevance of Pre-Colonial forms to twentieth century economic development.
Bodo Was Never Brazilian: Economic Integration and Rural Development among a Contemporary Peasantry
Authors: Riegelhaupt Joyce F. , Forman Shepard
Published: August 2016

It is indeed a pleasure to be invited to address economists and economic historians regarding the dynamics of peasant economic integration into a national economic system. The particular subject of these meetings, “The Organizational Forms of Economic Life and their Evolution,” is an appropriate one for us since, as anthropologists, we are generally interested in the “Evolution of the Organizational Forms of Life.” Today we will examine the organizational form of peasant economic life in Brazil in an effort to develop a fuller understanding of the socio-economic transactions which take place within this traditional—better, transitional—agrarian society.
Karl Polanyi's Concept of Non-Market Trade
Authors: Rotstein Abraham
Published: August 2016

Karl Polanyi's studies in economic history were concerned with an unusually wide range of economies and societies. Aristotle's Greece, the ancient Near East and Hammurabi's Babylonia, pre-colonial West Africa, and the laissez-faire economy of the nineteenth century were among the areas which he explored. The main focus of his work might well be summed up by the title of the present conference, “The Organizational Forms of Economic Life and Their Evolution,” and equally well by the subtitle, “Non-Capitalistic Organization.” To talk of organizational forms (in the plural) and of non-capitalistic organization is to focus attention on different kinds of economic institutions and on ways of distinguishing among them. To raise this question in an evolutionary context is to suggest a departure from a notion of unilineal development that would tend to see earlier economies as miniature replicas or potential versions of our own market economy.
The Past Quarter-Century as Economic History and the Tasks of International Economic Organization
Authors: Rostow W. W.
Published: August 2016

I Was assigned for this occasion a rather substantial—one might almost say grandiose—subject. I would not deny responsibility, because I accepted it. But in view of its scope I should first explain how I have tried to render it manageable, with respect to both theoretical structure and mode of exposition.
Economic Theory, Statistical Inference, and Economic History
Authors: Meyer John R. , Conrad Alfred H.
Published: August 2016

This paper is an attempt to examine critically the function of theory in historical research and particularly in economic history. the function of We shall take as our starting point the assertion that the historian is not interested simply in collecting facts or true statements about some segment of previous experience. He wants to find causes and to explain what happened. The purpose of this paper is to introduce some of the problems attached to the concepts of historical causality and explanation in a stochastic universe and to suggest how the analytic tools of scientific inference can be applied in economic historiography.
The Role of Comparison in the Development of Economic Theory
Authors: Thrupp Sylvia L.
Published: August 2016

Our conference today on comparative economic history is in some clanger of rushing into the wide-open spaces of ambiguity, for the term is new, and to agree too quickly on its meaning and implications may not even be desirable. In order to avoid engaging in a mere game of definitions, this paper will deal first with three general types of comparison in relation to their bearing on problems of evidence. It will then review some of the chief uses to which these types of comparison have been put in building up our body of knowledge about Western economic history. The survey will close with particular reference to our own preindustrial stages of economic growth, when western Europe was, in our uncomplimentary phrase, an underdeveloped or backward area.
Agricultural Fluctuations and the English Economy in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Gould J. D.
Published: August 2016

A notable difference of opinion exists among economic historians as to the effect of harvest fluctuations on general economic conditions. The question has arisen, specifically, in the interpretation of European experience in the eighteenth century. T. S. Ashton has suggested that good harvests, both by cheapening food and thus setting free purchasing power for others forms of expenditure, and by providing ampler supplies of agricultural products used as industrial raw materials, had a stimulating effect on the economy. J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay have taken the opposite view. According to them, bad harvests may have had the more beneficial effect, for the incomes of landowners and farmers were higher in lean years, and their prosperity or distress was of greater consequence than the dearth or cheapness of provisions.
The Structure of Wages in the American Iron and Steel Industry, 1860–1890
Authors: Novack David E. , Perlman Richard
Published: August 2016

The literature of American economic history is replete with discussions of the crucial role of the ferrous industries in nineteenth-century economic development. Analysis of the internal wage structure in the industry, however, has been somewhat neglected in the historical treatment.
The American Career of David Parish
Authors: Walters Philip G. , Walters Raymond
Published: August 2016

David Parish is remembered today by readers of historical fiction as a colorful character in Hervey Allen's picaresque novel, Anthony Adverse, and students of American history know him as an underwriter of one of the loans that enabled the United States to wage the War of 1812. His career was far more important than his present-day reputation would suggest; for he was an international financial adventurer of the type that flourished during the Napoleonic era, when the spirit of nationalism had only begun to shackle men's thoughts and actions.
Industrial Slavery in China During the Former Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 25)
Authors: Wilbur C. Martin
Published: August 2016

Industry and commerce developed rapidly in China during the last three centuries before Christ, as they did also in the Mediterranean world. Contemporary Hellenistic and Roman businessmen made extensive use of slave labor, and slavery gradually developed an industrial character. Nothing comparable occurred in China. Private and government slavery had a marked growth under the Han empire, but the use of slaves for industrial purposes—even commercial farming— did not become an important characteristic of the Chinese institution. This fact raises questions concerning the “style” of ancient Chinese slavery, and concerning the economic organization of which it was a part.
The Newspaper in Economic Development
Authors: Innis Harold A.
Published: August 2016

The bibliography of this subject is the subject, and the enormous filescourse of over three centuries are formidability itself. To reduce the element of formidability it is necessary to turn to studies of the newspaper in terms of countries, regions, owners, editors and journalists. But again the bibliography reflects the character of the press. Newspapermen have contributed notably, but unfortunately the training in newspaper work is not ideal for an economic interpretation of the subject. The increasing participation of university graduates in journalism provides a basis for more objective studies, but even here the training.exercises a subtle influence and weakens the possibility of a sustained and effective interpretation. Throughout the history of the newspaper industry, studies reflect the dominant influence of the moment, or perhaps it is safer to say, represent the dominant influence of the tradition of the industry; hence they show a perceptible lag between the newspaper as it is and the newspaper as it was. In the main they are obsessed with the role of the press in relation to political opinion, the importance of freedom of the press, the fourth estate and so on; they are suffused with innumerable cliches1 constantly bubbling up from the effervescence of writing.
Profit and Entrepreneurial Functions
Authors: Knight Frank H
Published: August 2016

In so far as the term “profit” has any fairly concrete and generally understood meaning, it designates the income accruing to the owner of a business or productive “enterprise,” through the operations of that business or enterprise. The owner may be an individual or a group, organized in some way as a legal entity; most typically, it is a “corporation,” particularly under American conditions. In either case, this owner, who normally hires productive services from others for a fixed compensation, uses them to make a product and sells the product for what he can get, is what is meant by an entrepreneur. He (or it) is the responsible controller or manager of the business in relation to market conditions, regardless of whomever he may consult or whatever functions he may delegate to others or on whatever terms. In business usage, profit is the entrepreneur's net income, what remains out of the gross proceeds of the business after paying the hired labor and capital at the agreed rates, determined by market competition (and after deducting costs of materials and “products” bought from others). It is thus a “residual” income, what is left after other distributive shares are removed, and may be positive or negative. But profit, so defined—when there is a positive profit, and not a loss—evidently consists to a greater or less extent of the remuneration for services furnished to the business by the entrepreneur himself—labor or capital services, or both. For analytical purposes, the economic theorist must define profit more narrowly, as what is or would be left (“residual”) after deducting wages and/or interest at the “going rates” for the entrepreneur's own services.
Industrial Life and Labor in France 1815–1848
Authors: Dunham Arthur L.
Published: August 2016

A new study of labor in France in the earlier nineteenth century seems justified for two reasons. First, a change in the point of view is desirable. Labor in that period has been treated as a movement related to political factors and to socialistic and other doctrines. I feel that it should be studied now in the light of the changes wrought in the lives of the French people by the advent of large-scale industry with its factories, machinery, and concentration of capital. It is important to realize that much of the unemployment from which French laborers suffered in this period was due to those recurrent crises in industry and trade which we now study as parts of the business cycle. We have been taught wrongly to believe that while England suffered from these crises early in the nineteenth century France was virtually exempt until 1857. Secondly, the study of French labor needs revision in the light of new evidence and of a reappraisal of some of the familiar evidence.
The More Enduring Economic Consequences of America's Wars
Authors: Wright Chester W.
Published: August 2016

Only in recent years have the economic problems involved in the conduct of war begun to receive much attention from scholars. As a result of sad experience we now also have substantial groups engaged in studying the problems of postwar readjustment, but I know of no attempt to present a summary generalization of the more enduring reactions of American wars upon the economic life of the country. By the more enduring reactions I mean those which are felt after the postwar period of readjustment and which may be due either directly to the war or to the depression caused by the war.
The Textile Industries in Silesia and the Rhineland: A Comparative Study in Industrialization
Authors: Kisch Herbert
Published: August 2016

The gradual yet cumulative advance of West European capitalism was in large part epitomized by the developments of its textile trades. They were the first to carry the seeds of economic change into the stagnant preserves of guild conservatism, and subsequently they again proved to be the pioneers of the new factory system. In Germany the sequence of economic change was not quite as uniform. Each German textile district emerged as a specific case of economic growth with contours of industrial evolution that manifested unique deviations from the broad pattern of development. The heterogeneity of the German lands, particularly marked before the advent of the railways, was both cause and effect of this diversity.
The Principles of Freedom and Government Intervention in American Economic Expansion
Authors: Dorfman Joseph
Published: August 2016

The laissez-faire theory in its various European forms is not as simple or clearcut as it is sometimes presented. Nor is it merely the converse of another theory equally complex but which is often taken simply as one of organization and complete state intervention. From the Physiocrats on, the exponents of the theory of laissez-faire, or freedom of industry, set themselves the task not only of freeing the economy and the individual, but also of directing and nurturing activity designed to improve the economy. This aim took the form of the advocacy of a wide variety of social and state actions; for example, the promotion of a stable currency, science and invention, education of the labor force, humanitarian reforms, especially in penology, and cultural, ideological, and even aesthetic advances. In short, the issue of individualism often became the broader issue of civilization.
Industrialization and Stabilization Dilemmas in Latin America
Authors: Felix David
Published: August 2016

Industrial growth and chronic, in many cases severe, inflation are two salient features of the past-war economic history of the larger Latin American countries. There is general recognition that the two phenomena are related, at least in the sense that industry has been one of the major recipients of state subsidies and inflationary credit. But beyond this, analysis divides into the usual demand inflation and cost-push categories.
Some Evidence on English and American Wage Rates, 1790–1830
Authors: Adams Donald R.
Published: August 2016

It is a widely held belief that significant wage rate differentials existed between Britain and the United States during the period 1790–1830. Indeed, the existence of such differentials is a pivotal factor in at least one theory of the nature and rate of growth of American and British technology and in the explanation of relative factor combinations in the two countries during the nineteenth century.
A Quantitative Approach to Medieval Population Change
Authors: Russell J. C.
Published: August 2016

Geographers and city planners, endeavoring to explain or foretell changes in urban population, sometimes use an approach called basic-nonbasic. A basic factor is one which brings in money from outside of the city and which usually sells its products beyond the city limits. The nonbasic factor furnishes services and supplies to the city. Thus a factory would normally be a basic factor, while grocery stores, barber shops, and similar institutions, together with most professional groups, would be nonbasic. A factory employing a thousand workmen would add to the city not merely the workmen's families but about an equal group of nonbasic families, perhaps a total of six or seven thousand persons. This concept is a very useful one in modern society and is worth testing for its possibilities for medieval settlements.
The Manipulation of Economic Unrest
Authors: Brinton Crane
Published: August 2016

I Take it that what lies in the back of the minds of most of us when a subject like this comes up is the problem of the relation between economic unrest and political and social change, and more especially, the kind of change we call a revolution. We all know those for whom the solution of this problem is very simple: they say “look for the economic motive” as innocently as if they said “cherchez la femme.” Even at a more mature level of thinking the problem is still often put in such a way that something economic always lies at the bottom, or pulls the trigger, or provides the main impulse, or—and this is the precious word—“determines” everything.
The Centenary of Marx and Mill
Authors: Bladen V. W.
Published: August 2016

In looking back over a hundred years to John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy and to the Communist Manifesto, joint product of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, it is difficult not to be influenced by the stereotypes of “bourgeois” and “Marxian” economists that have developed in the process of doctrinal controversy. (It is sometimes as difficult to recognize the “orthodox” economist from the description of the “Marxian” as it is to recognize the “classical” economist from the description of the “Keynesian.”) But the difficulty does not lie simply in the probability that adherents of each school will caricature the leaders of the other, emphasizing contrasts; there is an equal probability that the modern adherents of each school will caricature their founders, emphasizing points that have come to be important. The “historical” Marx and Mill have to be sought with the special care that arises from an awareness of these difficulties.
Unrest in France in 1848
Authors: Dunham Arthur L.
Published: August 2016

On December 11, 1847, the Journal des chemins de fer, founded and edited in Paris since 1842 by an Englishman, declared that the French rentes had fallen as much as if the government was about to be overthrown. The King, who was ill in body at the time, yet perfectly comfortable in mind, recovered, but on February 24, 1848, he and his government fell in a revolution that was as sudden and dramatic as it was triumphant. Among its leaders were Socialists, like Louis Blanc, who controlled a considerable body of workingmen, some of whom belonged to the building trades and the domestic industries of the capital, while others had been brought to Paris some years before to work on the fortifications. They were moved first to the barricades; then, after being victorious there, to the national workshops organized by Louis Blanc, now a member of the provisional government, who had proclaimed on behalf of the workingmen the “right to work,” as the most important organ of the workingmen, L'Atelier, had proclaimed the limitation of hours, the right to organize, and a minimum wage. These demands seem reasonable to us now, but they were thought dangerous then, not only by a majority of the provisional government, but also by the majority of the new legislature and of the French people.