bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Seventeenth International Congress of Actuaries: a Review of the Papers Submitted under Subject 4
Authors: Innes E.
Published: August 2016

The papers submitted under Subject 4 of the 1964 Congress in London and Edinburgh were those concerned with the practical application of modern statistical techniques in all branches of insurance.

Fourteen papers from eight countries were presented for discussion in London, and the purpose of this note is to outline and comment briefly on the content of these papers—the discussions on related topics which took place in Edinburgh are not included in this review.

Statistical methods in general being of fairly recent origin it is not at once obvious whether a particular technique qualifies as modern or not, but I would think it fair to take it that, normally, the calculation of premiums, involving the intelligent classification of risks and the analysis of experience, comes within the field of classical statistical methods.
Why the Normal Distribution.
Authors: Daw R. H.
Published: August 2016

It has been said that everybody believes in the Law of Errors (i.e. the Normal distribution), the experimenters because they think it is a mathematical theorem and the mathematicians because they think it is an experimental fact. Text-books on statistics often seem to produce the Normal distribution as the conjurer produces a rabbit from a hat and the actuarial student, who should be something of both mathematician and experimenter, is frequently somewhat mystified as to why such an apparently complicated distribution function as

(see Fig. 1) is suddenly introduced and given such prominence.
The Yield on a Loan subject to Capital Gains Tax.
Authors: Joseph A. W.
Published: August 2016

H. O. Worger gave a simple rule (J.S.S., 5, 15 andJ.S.S., 7, 116) for using tables of Bond Values for finding the equivalent gross redemption yield on a redeemable security where the dividend is subject to income tax but the capital gain is tax-free. He showed that it was unnecessary to go through the process of first finding the net yield by entering the tables at a dividend rate from which tax had been deducted. All that was needed was to reduce the unexpired term in proportion to the rate of tax payable, and enter the table for the full nominal rate of dividend. The purpose of this note is to show that a somewhat similar rule is available if both dividend and capital gain on redemption are subject to the same rate of tax.

LetPbe the purchase price of a loan of 1 redeemable at par innyears time and bearing annual dividends at the rateg, and lettbe the rate of tax.
Business Incorporations: Their Nature and Significance
Authors: Evans George Heberton
Published: August 2016

The study of business incorporations was undertaken with several purposes in mind. Incorporations—while they may reflect other things in a more or less significant manner—can give a very good picture of one stage of enterpreneurial activity. The large entrepreneur is, of course, better represented in the data on corporations than is the small businessman; and the entrepreneur of recent years is better represented than the entrepreneur of an earlier date, since at that time the corporation was less widely used. Nevertheless, one who studies data on newly chartered companies can see the development of the economy from an unused standpoint. Moreover, since entrepreneurs' ideas about business projects ought to be reflected in the number and character of business incorporations, a study of charters should add to our knowledge of the operation of business cycles. It should also lead to a better understanding of the corporation itself, since new light would be thrown on the history of state competition for the business of creating the corporations of this country. State rivalry for the chartering business has been a powerful factor in moulding the corporation to the changing needs of our economy. This adaptation might—or might not—have been brought about as efficiently by some other device, but that is a problem in itself.
Industrial Slavery in Roman Italy
Authors: Westermann William Linn
Published: August 2016

From the earliest period the communities of the Latin tribes of central Italy and of the remaining Italiots made use of a few slaves as herdsmen, field hands, and probably as domestic servants to meet the simple demands of their small-farm life. No doubt these slaves were employed also in the household weaving of wearing apparel, in the fabrication of those offensive and defensive weapons needed in the wars with their neighbors, and in the production of the tools required for the still simple operations characteristic of Italian farming of that time. Enslavement appears in the Laws of the Twelve Tables, which can safely be dated about 450 B.C. There is no mention of slaves in the two early treaties between Rome and Carthage, as given by Polybius. Livy tells us very briefly of the imposition of a five per cent tax upon manumissions, which was passed in 357 B.C. if we may trust the statement and accept his dating of it. The picture of early Roman slavery as gained from these few primary data, and from literary sources even less trustworthy, is that of a simple agricultural use of a slave population whose numbers were relatively small. This would hold true down to about 352 B.C.
Economic Stagnation in the Early Roman Empire
Authors: Hammond Mason
Published: August 2016

That the later Roman empire was a period of stagnation, not to say X of decline and total collapse, in the economic as in other spheres has long been recognized. But it has been the contribution of such modern scholars as Frank, Rostovtzeff, and Heichelheim to show that the symptoms and causes of this stagnation are not to be sought solely in the anarchy of the third century A.D. They may be detected earlier, behind the facade of peace and prosperity in the second century, and have roots which reach back into the very beginnings of the Roman domination over the Mediterranean world. In order to avoid too great extension in time, as well as in space, the present discussion will be limited to the symptoms and causes of economic stagnation that may be detected throughout the Mediterranean world during the early Roman empire, the two hundred and fifty odd years that elapsed from the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C., which left Augustus master of the Mediterranean world, to the assassination of Severus Alexander in 235 A.D., which ushered in a half century of anarchy and eventually the totalitarian state of Diocletian and Constantine.
Arthur Young and the Society of Arts
Authors: A. Y.
Published: August 2016

For many years Arthur Young (1741–1820), greatest of all English agricultural publicists, was closely associated with the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, established in London in March 1754. Each year the Society of Arts, as it soon came to be called, offered premiums for desirable inventions and improvements in such diverse fields as agriculture, manufactures, chemistry, colonies and trade, and the polite arts. In his numerous books Young frequently commented on the activities of the Society, while the eight volumes of Young manuscript letters in the British Museum contain scattered references to his relations with the Society. A large portion of this article is based, however, upon the manuscript records of the Society of Arts, which I was permitted to examine and use through the courtesy of Mr. Charles Durant Cassidy, librarian and examinations officer, and Dr. Frank R. Lewis, assistant secretary. These records consist of minutes, letters, unpublished transactions, and especially records of the various committees which examined all applications for premiums and made the awards. Among the records are eight unpublished manuscript letters written by Young, two of which are reproduced as an appendix to this article.
Jackson, Biddle, and the Bank of the United States
Authors: Hammond Bray
Published: August 2016

More than forty years have passed since Catteral's monograph on the second Bank of the United States was published, and, though that account has never been superseded, it antedates all recent literature on central banking and therefore presents inadequately the public purposes of the bank. Furthermore, it includes nothing about the bank's Pennsylvania successor, which failed, and thus omits the denouement of Biddle's conflict with Jackson. The inevitable effect of the failure, in the rough justice of history, was to make Jackson seem right and Biddle wrong; and this impression, especially in the absence of attention to the purpose and functions of the bank, seems in recent years to have been strengthened. I think it needs correction.
Incorporation in New England: A Statistical Study, 1800–1875
Authors: Kessler William C.
Published: August 2016

Defense of a historical survey of the business corporation in this country seems hardly necessary. Students of its place in the present economy, even students of the well-recorded “trust” movement of the 1890's and later decades, need this background, if only to test the hypothesis, not infrequently encountered, that the business corporation of pre-Civil War days was largely confined to the fields of banking, insurance, and public utilities.
France and the American Market in Naval Timber and Masts, 1776–1786
Authors: Bamford Paul Walden
Published: August 2016

The poor quality of western European forests as sources of masts and the depletion of oak forests in Britain and France during the eighteenth century forced the two principal maritime powers to import naval timber and to seek far afield for naval masts. Both Britain and France gradually were forced to increase their imports of timber from neighboring states and the Baltic market. The acquisition of masts for naval vessels involved even greater dependence on markets overseas. Masting trees were sparsely scattered in western Europe; the British Isles produced none. France took some masts from forests in the Pyrenees, Auvergne, Alsace, and Dauphiné, but they were limited in quantity, lacking in flexibility, and were often condemned for their propensity to early brittleness and rot. Masts imported from French colonies in North America proved unsatisfactory in both cost and quality. Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century Britain enjoyed an advantage over France in the acquisition of colonial North American mast supplies, since die forests of New England produced excellent masts of extraordinary size. Britain's imports from New England, under a Royal Navy monopoly, satisfied a sizable part of her needs and reduced the British navy's importation of Baltic mast supplies by perhaps one third in the early 1770's. The American Revolution, however, abruptly ended Britain's monopoly of American masts. The rebellious colonists halted British imports and opened the splendid pine forests of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine to French naval exploitation.
The Inside Contract System
Authors: Buttrick John
Published: August 2016

The system of inside contracting has received little attention from economic historians despite its importance in the development of American industry. Although several authors have mentioned the system, none has described its operation in detail. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to remedy this omission and analyze the reasons for the elimination of the system, with particular reference to one manufacturing plant (Winchester Repeating Arms Company).
Prices and Progress
Authors: Hamilton Earl J.
Published: August 2016

It May have been the ingrained pessimism of Bentham and McCulloch that provoked Carlyle to dub economics the dismal science. It surely must have been economists' concern over price theory, which they regarded and still regard as the central core of economics, that made the name stick. Studies of the role of prices in history are no less tedious and technical than price theory, and in hands no more skillful than mine they can be even more dreary. But this is not the worst of my worries. The evidence that I shall sketch supports the pessimistic hypothesis that during certain germinal periods price and wage behavior of the type that is now taking a distressing percentage of real income from all of us who live on our salaries has proved beneficial to society in the long run and that the type of price and wage behavior which would benefit most of us in the short run has had serious disadvantages. Yet I have the inner satisfaction of appearing to be objective in my thinking and fearless in airing my conclusions in a gathering of some of the worst aggrieved.
Medieval Italy
Authors: Reynolds Robert L.
Published: August 2016

The sort of document which explicitly formulates policy is, in any field of history, rather hard to come by. That is especially true when we search for formulations of business policy and especially for medieval formulations of medieval business policy.
The Development of Nazi Monetary Policy
Authors: Wolfe Martin
Published: August 2016

The Nazis dealt rather cautiously with the German monetary system during die first two years of dieir regime. Hitler was particularly sensitive to questions of “confidence,” and was glad to saddle Schacht with the responsibility of keeping die monetary system from blowing up in die face of die new government. But by the end of 1934, diere were signs that the Nazis were beginning to take Germany out of die stream of what Goering contemptuously called “the so-called free play of economic forces.”
French and Canadian Exchange Rate Policy
Authors: Eastman Harry C.
Published: August 2016

Whatever may have been the merits of the gold standard in die nineteenth century, it has not proved a satisfactory system of exchange since 1913. The decentralization of the world financial system, the greater liquidity of the public's holdings, and the appearance of capital movements unrelated to movements of trade have rendered abortive attempts to return permanently to the gold standard. In any event, the unwillingness of governments, increasingly dependent on the favor of the lower income groups, to allow or compel the contraction of domestic credit in response to changes in international demand prevented the operation of a system that depends on such adjustments. But the gold standard of die nineteendi century cast a long shadow behind it.
A New Framework for Social History
Authors: Hexter J. H.
Published: August 2016

Iam Going to talk about historical comparison along a time axis in connection with the problem of a new framework for social history. Lest I be thought to aim at heights of egomania never before scaled, let me hastily add, however, that the full title of my remarks would not be “Comparison along the Time Axis: A New Framework for Social History! Come and get It!” It might rather be “Comparison along the Time Axis: A New Framework for Social History? Can Anything be Done with It?”
External Equilibrium and Internal Convertibility: Financial Policy in Meiji Japan
Authors: Patrick Hugh T.
Published: August 2016

Taking as a frame of reference the relationship between equilibrium in the balance of payments and domestic economic growth, the objective of this paper is to examine the role of central banking in financial policy in Japan in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Certain of the financial problems which Japan then faced are those which perplex many underdeveloped countries today. They may be considered in terms of three highly interrelated problem areas: government expenditures and revenues; the monetary system; and the balance of payments.
The History of Guaranteed Wages and Employment
Authors: Seastone Don A.
Published: August 2016

Since the first American guaranteed wage and employment plans were formulated more than sixty years ago, the concept of guarantees has been championed by diverse economic institutions. This paper will analyze these successive attempts at establishing guarantees in the chronological order in which they have occurred—first, by business enterprise, secondly by various levels of government, and finally, by labor unions.
Economic Modernization in Imperial Russia: Purposes and Achievements
Authors: Ellison Herbert J.
Published: August 2016

Historically, the forms of modern economic life were first extended to new areas from the small zone of Western Europe where they developed by two major means: the direct action of individuals and economic organizations from that zone, and the measures of innovating rulers intent upon modernizing the economic life of their countries. In Russia the outside action came first, beginning with the Chancellor expedition in the sixteenth century and expanding gradually over the subsequent century and a half. Only from the early eighteenth century did the monarch's initiative become the primary factor in economic innovation, but the combination of Muscovite autocratic power and the formidable will of Peter the Great made it from the beginning an irresistible force for change. By the late eighteenth century a new force was evident—the entrepreneurial initiative of Russian tradesmen and manufacturers. The prime movers of Russian economic modernization during the following century were now assembled.
The American Colonial Vineyard: An Economic Interpretation
Authors: Mishkin David
Published: August 2016

This dissertation is essentially three distinct writings: the first a statement of hypotheses and findings; the second a bibliography, wherein the content of each source is annotated by an original numeric code system; and the third, an index to the bibliography—the index being entirely computer-produced according to a modified Keyword-in-Context (KWIC) data processing technique.
International Migration and Economic Growth: The Swedish Experience
Authors: Tomaske John A.
Published: August 2016

The interest of economists in the nature and causes of economic growth has focused attention on demographic phenomena. For the economic historian, this has meant a reexamination of the historically unprecedented international population movements of the nineteenth century and their relationship to the process of economic growth.
The Depression of the Nineties
Authors: Hoffmann Charles
Published: August 2016

The depression of the nineties, including the Panic of 1893, has been a subject of great interest for economic historians, as well as for analysts of the business cycle. Coming at the climax of the bitter struggle over the gold standard, this crisis has usually been explained in polemical or oversimplified terms. Despite its significance, there is no published work dealing exclusively with the depression other than W. J. Lauck's The Causes of the Panic of 1893, which treats only the early phases of the crisis. Most explanations of the depression continue to reflect strongly those advanced as plausible during die period itself, with a few qualifications added as the result of the availability of some quantitative data and furdier reflection. Recent construction of additional quantitative series makes possible a more systematic analysis of the economic factors which interacted to precipitate a depression of major proportions.
Discussion
Authors: Hill Forest G.
Published: August 2016

Professor Fowke ably demonstrates the merit of a comparative approach to American and Canadian economic history. His penetrating analysis reveals how relevant the understanding of economic development in Canada is to the study of that in the United States. Of the two, the Canadian national period has been shorter, the essential lines of economic growth simpler, and the role of government clearer and more pronounced. Canadian experience thereby provides a fruitful comparative basis for analyzing the longer, more complex development of the American economy and the more varied, often puzzling, part taken by government.
A Comparative Analysis of Economic Development in the American West and South
Authors: Dowd Douglas F.
Published: August 2016

In 1930, the West—for present purposes, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado—had a level of per capita income payments that stood at 79 per cent of the national figure. In that same year, the figure for the South—Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas—was 51 per cent.
Economic Growth in Italy: An Analysis of the Uneven Development of North and South
Authors: Clough Shepard B. , Livi Carlo
Published: August 2016

If problems of historical study are to be chosen on the basis of their importance in affecting the course of human affairs through time, no phase of life in Western culture during the century and a half after 1800 is more worthy of study than that of economic development. During these one hundred and fifty years there was an increment of total production within western Europe of an estimated 1,500 per cent and an increase of output per capita of some 500 per cent. At no time in history had an equal advance been made at such a rapid pace.
The Poor Law Report Reexamined
Authors: Blaug Mark
Published: August 2016

In an earlier article, I pleaded for a reappraisal of the Old Poor Law. Despite what all the books say, the evidence that we have does not suggest that the English Poor Law as it operated before its amendment in 1834 reduced the efficiency of agricultural workers, promoted population growth, lowered wages, depressed rents, destroyed yeomanry, and compounded the burden on ratepayers. Beyond this purely negative argument, I tried to show that the Old Poor Law was essentially a device for dealing with the problems of structural unemployment and substandard wages in the lagging rural sector of a rapidly growing but still underdeveloped economy. It constituted, so to speak, “a welfare state in miniature,” combining elements of wage-escalation, family allowances, unemployment compensation, and public works, all of which were administered and financed on a local level. Far from having an inhibitory effect, it probably contributed to economic expansion. At any rate, from the economic point of view, things were much the same after 1834 as before. The Poor Laws Amendment Act of 1834 marked a revolution in British social administration, but it left the structure of relief policy substantially unchanged.
Monetary History and Positive Economics
Authors: Clower Robert W.
Published: August 2016

If successful prediction were the sole criterion of the merit of a science, economics should long since have ceased to exist as a serious intellectual pursuit. Accurate prognosis is not its forte. The real strength of the discipline lies in another direction—namely, in its apparently limitless capacity to rationalize events after they happen. This helps explain the indifference of most economic theorists to “the lessons of history”; men to whom all things are possible have little to learn from experiments conducted in the laboratory of time. It also helps explain the indifference of most economic historians to abstract theory; what have they to learn from a subject that “yields no predictions, summarizes no empirical generalizations, provides no useful framework of analysis”?
Market Expansion: The Case of Genoa
Authors: Lopez Robert Sabatino
Published: August 2016

The honorable program chairman has appended to my paper a title I had not entirely foreseen, and this drove me to modify my line to some extent. I had toyed with the idea of taking a long look at a short period in the fifteenth century, when the Genoese did all they could to adjust to shrinking opportunities and to find new markets in the place of those they were losing. This will still take about one half of my time, if only because it dovetails with the paper of Harry Miskimin. But if Genoa has to be considered as a test case for market expansion, we cannot restrict ourselves to the years when the going was not so good.
Growth and Trade: Some Hypotheses About Long-Term Trends
Authors: Cooper Richard N.
Published: August 2016

The relationship between long-term trends in foreign trade and long-term trends in income has long been a source of fascinating speculation for scholars. As early as 1821, Robert Torrens observed that “as the several nations of the world advance in wealth and population, the commercial intercourse between them must gradually become less important and beneficial.” He believed that trade was founded on the exchange of manufactures for foodstuffs and materials; as land became scarcer as a result of population growth, the basis for trade would disappear.
State Policy and the Public Domain: The Ohio Canal Lands
Authors: Scheiber Harry N.
Published: August 2016

One of the principal sectional issues in nineteenth-century American politics related to Federal subsidies for major transportation facilities in the territories and newer western states. Not unreasonably, western political and business leaders contended that tax revenues in newly settled areas were insufficient to support the cost of large-scale public transport projects. Road and canal facilities were essential to regional economic development, declared a Cincinnati editor in 1824; yet “the Western states … are too poor, too exhausted, to engage in those public works.” The states recently admitted to the Union, he asserted, required “the fostering aid of the nation.” But appeals for such aid ran into a bedeviling series of political and financial obstacles. First, military expenditures during the War of 1812 and the legacy of war debt drained the Federal Treasury of surplus funds. Then, Jeffersonian “strict constructionists,” notably Presidents Madison and Monroe, questioned on constitutional grounds the propriety of an active Federal role in transport development. Underlying the tortured constitutional debates was a basic sectional conflict, which posed the eastern and southern states (some of which had been supplicants themselves for Federal aid a few years earlier) against the claims of the West. Of all the major western demands for Federal patronage, the National Road was virtually the only project approved before 1824.
Fluctuations in House-Building in Britain and the United States in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Habakkuk H. J.
Published: August 2016

The notion that an “Atlantic Economy” developed in the nineteenth century does not depend simply on the large movements of capital and labor from Britain to the United States. For there were movements of comparable magnitude to other areas. If the economic relations of Britain and North America are to be regarded as distinctive, it is principally because of the reciprocal movement of investment and growth in the two areas. The argument is that the periods of most rapid growth and intensive use of resources in the two economies were inversely related to each other, and that this alternation was established because there existed a common stock of resources, so that when one area drew rapidly on this stock it was at the expense of the other. At one time, investment in buildings and equipment in the United States was particularly rapid, and there was a heavy movement of migrants to America; in Britain the stream of migrants from the countryside was diverted from the industrial districts, and building and home investment were relatively depressed, but the vigorous demand for exports facilitated the flow of funds abroad. In the next period, the position was reversed; development slackened in the United States, and there was a revival of domestic investment in Britain. This, as Phelps-Brown has said, “is the pattern of the Atlantic Economy, dividing a common fund of incremental energies between its regions in varying proportions from time to time. Whether a house is built in Oldham depends on and is decided by whether a house goes up in Oklahoma.”
Speculation in the Revolutionary Debt: The Ownership of Public Securities in Maryland,1790
Authors: Ferguson E. James
Published: August 2016

Historians have taken it for granted that the Revolutionary, debt was fairly well concentrated before it was funded in 1790, but they have not been able to support this view with concrete evidence. Most of the people living at the time thought the same thing but were likewise unable to prove it. The truth could not be known until Hamilton's funding operation assembled the securities that made up the debt. Under the act of 1790 a new federal loan was instituted. Various kinds of securities representing unpaid claims against the government were taken as subscriptions and the possessors given new federal stock. As nearly all the old securities came in, the government had full information about the transfer and ownership of the Revolutionary debt. The details, however, were not made public. Later, a succession of fires in the treasury destroyed nearly all the central records. Documents now existing, though voluminous, are scattered, incomplete, and hard to interpret. Historians have not made much use of them. For this reason, the ownership of the debt, which was a question in 1790, is a question still.
The Resource Requirements of an Industrial Economy
Authors: Usher Abbott Payson
Published: August 2016

The political events of the interval between the war and the im pending political changes have given new urgency to the critical analysis of the industrial ambitions of undeveloped regions. The older industrial regions face readjustments of substantial magnitude. Every feature of the world economy is distressingly unstable. Cultural and institutional factors will be of importance in determining the rapidity of change and the degree of efficiency achieved in the management of resources, but the direction of change and the magnitudes, of the changes will be conditioned by the basic resources of the various regions. Resource analysis can furnish a concrete background for the various policy problems of the older and newer centers of industrialization.
Public Policy and the Growth of the Power Industry
Authors: Lewis Ben W.
Published: August 2016

Every significant index attests to the extraordinary growth of the electric-power industry throughout the first four and a half decades of the present century. Physical output multiplied forty times between 1900 and 1939, a record exceeded during this period only by the automobile and cigarette industries. Labor efficiency and efficiency in the use of fuel increased well above the average for industry generally, and yet employment rose ninefold. Fixed assets were approximately ten times greater at the end of the period than they were at the beginning. Electric rates—the cost of the product to the consumer—have declined throughout. Here is a record of very great progress, even for an industry that was in its infancy in 1900—increased investment, efficiency, employment, and output, and reduced prices. It raises some interesting questions for public policy, questions related both to the future of the electric-power industry and to possibilities in other fields where lessons drawn from this experience may be pertinent.
Land Clearing Under Nineteenth-Century Techniques: Some Preliminary Calculations
Authors: Primack Martin L.
Published: August 2016

Before 1850, American farms were cut from the forest, and the work of forming a farm took time. The clearing of a few acres for first crops was followed by the endless labors of improvement—fencing, building, ditching, and the ambitions of a farmer for land could load him down for life with acres to clear and keep up. Five acres of forest clearing in a year in addition to current crops was about the limit for a farm family. Improved land could be a cash crop like any other, its yield no more risky than wheat or cotton, and only a little more remote. But even farmers who specialized in clearing land for sale might count on two hundred acres or so of forest clearing as the labor of a lifetime. The work of clearing forest was extremely hard, but it could be done in off-season, and deprived a settler not of cash income but only of hours of idleness. Nearly all the tasks could be done by the little labor force under a farmer's control—by sons, or on southern plantations by slaves; and the work converted otherwise half-idle labor into an important form of farm capital.
Agricultural Education in Different Stages of National Development
Authors: Benjamin Harold R. W.
Published: August 2016

It is the thesis of this paper that any educational system or institution, whatever its specific purpose, must be studied as a part of its people's total pattern of life. Agricultural education in any country can be understood and improved only in terms of the country's stage of development, not only in agriculture but also in all the other main enterprises of the people.
British Economists and Australian Gold
Authors: Goodwin Craufurd D.
Published: August 2016

Two events combined at the middle of the nineteenth century to draw the attention of British economists to Australia. The first was the grant of increased local autonomy through the Australian Colonies Government Act of 1850 and subsequent legislation. The prospect of colonists, rather than the British Parliament, determining colonial affairs shifted the focus of economists' interest from London overseas and caused them to ponder seriously what Britain stood to gain or lose from this transfer of authority. British musings over the virtues of self-government and the value of the colonies were given a sudden impulse by a second event, the discovery of large quantities of gold in New South Wales and Victoria in 1851.
Canadian-American Reciprocity: A Reply
Authors: Officer Lawrence H. , Smith Lawrence B.
Published: August 2016

In his comment “Canadian-American Reciprocity,” R. E. Ankli raises a number of conceptual, methodological, statistical, and interpretive issues about our article, “The Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty of 1855 to 1866.” Although some points are well raised, the majority appear to stem from a misunderstanding of our work. Nevertheless, it should be stated at the outset that despite his criticisms, Ankli does not quarrel with our conclusions that (1) Reciprocity cannot conclusively be said to have benefited Canada; (2) Reciprocity alone did not appreciably increase Canadian trade; and (3) Reciprocity was not necessarily beneficial from a welfare standpoint. In fact, Ankli seems concerned that others may have hinted at these conclusions previously. While we feel our conclusions do differ essentially from the traditionally-stated views, our purpose was not to quibble over who first said what, but rather to introduce more meaningful and comprehensive data and to analyze the question in the context of modern trade theory.
The Draper Loom in New England Textiles, 1894–1914: A Study of Diffusion of an Innovation
Authors: Feller Irwin
Published: August 2016

The power loom, which had almost completely replaced the hand loom in America by 1860, remained the center of continuous technical development until about 1880. The main effects of the improvements were to increase the speed at which the looms could be operated and to decrease the amount of attention a weaver had to devote to a single loom. Estimates of plain looms tended by one weaver range from four to twelve; six is the most frequently cited figure, based upon the census report for 1880. The number of looms a weaver could tend was limited because of the frequent need—at least once every eight minutes, or about one hundred times a day—for him to stop the loom to place a new bobbin of yarn in the shuttle. With the number of looms per weaver set at about six and allowing for certain improvements in carding and spinning, weaving costs formed at least half of the total labor cost of manufacturing textile fabric.
Financing Industrialization in Italy, 1894–1914: The Partial Transformation of a Late-Comer
Authors: Cohen Jon S.
Published: August 2016

Italy's rapid industrial growth, which began in the mid-1890's, was preceded and accompanied by important developments in her financial institutions, including in particular the establishment of several industrial credit banks on the German model. The role of such banks in French and German industrial growth before 1914 has been the subject of considerable study. It is the purpose of this article to examine the effects of these banks on the rate and direction of Italian development between 1894 and 1914, and to consider the relation between their near-monopoly of industrial credit and the emergence of concentration of ownership and control in the new and rapidly growing sectors of the industrial structure.
Right To Work: A Backward Glance
Authors: Spengler Joseph J.
Published: August 2016

The subject of unemployment in general came into its own in the age of mercantilism. Mercantilist authors saw in unemployed who might be set to work a source of additional economic power. The subject of accessibility to employment, though always of concern to social philosophers, commanded greater attention as the medieval economy gave place to the modern.
Has There Been a Twentieth-Century Consumer Durables Revolution?
Authors: Vatter Harold G.
Published: August 2016

Examination of approximately a score of U.S. economic history texts indicates that the hypothesis of a change in the structure of consumer preferences in favor of durable goods in the twentieth century, and thereby in the product structure of consumption, has strongly influenced economic historians. By implication, the alleged structural change is unique to the twentieth century. This impression relies upon the treatment of durables expenditures by almost all of that minority of textbook writers who address themselves to the general topic of consumption.
Mercantilist Policies and the Pattern of World Trade, 1500–1750
Authors: Blitz Rudolph C.
Published: August 2016

Much of the controversy over Mercantilist policies has focused on the relevance of political exigencies as against economic principles. Some economists have also attempted to evaluate Mercantilist policies in terms of the difference between various short-run and long-run adjustments. By contrast, the concern here has been with some purely economic but rather basic characteristics of the Mercantilist age. I have attempted to explain Mercantilist policies by the actual pattern of the specie flow, the characteristics of some of the commodity trade, the nature and limitation of foreign investment, and in terms of the existing monetary systems.
Bank of England Reserve Policy
Authors: Hughes J. R. T.
Published: August 2016

In his most enlightening paper on Federal Reserve policy in 1920–1921 Elmus Wicker's statement on the Bank of England's policies is not strictly in accord with the facts.

The English system of no legal reserve requirements imparted a greater degree of flexibility to the monetary authorities and allowed a greater economy in the use of the gold reserve. The entire gold reserve was available in emergencies to safeguard the pound.
Government as an Obstacle to Industrialization: The Case of Nineteenth-Century China
Authors: Perkins Dwight H.
Published: August 2016

Few generalizations find wider acceptance among specialists onChina than that which holds that the Chinese Imperial Government was hostile to commerce and industry and that this hostility was a major element in the country's failure to achieve modern economic growth. There is, of course, an important element of truth in this generalization, but analysis of the issues involved has generally suffered from a failure to make clear just what it was that the Chinese government in the nineteenth century should have done to promote development.
Investment in Medieval Agriculture
Authors: Postan M. M.
Published: August 2016

The current controversies about production and yields of medieval agriculture may give an outsider the impression that on this subject historians are more at variance than they actually are. Some historians may still cling to the Victorian belief that things economic were perpetually on the rise; historians thus minded are inclined to take it for granted that both the aggregate product of agriculture and agricultural output per head improved all through the Middle Ages. Other students, for example, Beveridge or Bennett, derived from the imperfectly selected data of the Bishop of Winchester's manors the impression that output per acre, and probably also per unit of seed, stayed put all through the Middle Ages. More recently other historians, including myself, have argued that output per acre tended to slump in the earlier, that is, pre-Black Death period, and may have picked up somewhat in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The concert of historians may therefore strike the ear as being even more cacophonous on this theme than on most other medieval themes.
Federal Policy, Banking Market Structure, and Capital Mobilization in the United States, 1863–1913
Authors: Sylla Richard
Published: August 2016

The success with which capital funds are mobilized and transferred to industrial and related activities is widely regarded as a critical determinant of both the timing and the pace of industrialization in the modern era. Gerschenkron, for example, has suggested that institutional developments which increased this type of capital mobility played an important role in the varying degrees of industrial progress of nineteenth-century European countries. A functionally similar development, resulting from government intervention at the time of the Civil War, occurred in American banking and provided a powerful capital-supply stimulus for the United States's postbellum industrialization. This study deals with the origins of this banking development, presents an analysis of its potential effects on patterns of capital movement, and tests the hypotheses arrived at in the theoretical analysis using banking data derived primarily from theReportsof the Comptroller of the Currency.
Structural Change Early in Development: Mexico's Changing Industrial and Occupational Structure from 1895 to 1950
Authors: Keesing Donald B.
Published: August 2016

This Article summarizes the main findings of a detailed. study of the changing occupational and industrial structure of Mexico's non-agricultural labor force from 1895 to 1930 and from 1930 to 1950, based on a comparison of population censuses, especially those of 1895, 1930, and 1950. Structural changes in Mexico's labor force have never been adequately studied, and the results of the present research shed considerable new light on Mexico's development. The findings also suggest important paradoxes and discontinuities in the early stages of industrialization that merit systematic recognition in models and measurements of structural change over the course of development.
Introductory Note
Authors: Lane Frederic C.
Published: August 2016

AS Hugh Aitken explained in our September issue, the editorship of this, the spring number of THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY, which in memory of Edwin F. Gay is entitled also THE TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY, falls now on someone involved in preparing the program for our annual meeting. Except in our business meeting and in the session devoted to discussing doctoral dissertations, we met last fall with the International Economic History Association. Accordingly we are presenting here, in addition to the summaries of dissertations, a few of the papers which were prepared for the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association and which were discussed at its meeting at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana, September 10–14, 1968. This issue of THE JOURNAL may be considered a kind of supplement to the volume containing the proceedings of the Congress, a volume which is in the process of publication by the University of Indiana Press. In order to minimize delays in the publication of those proceedings, the Executive Committee of the International Economic History Association approved restricting its content to the rapports and brief summaries of the communications. Other outlets are being found for the full texts of the many valuable communications presented for discussion at Bloomington.
Income and Family Size in Three Eighteenth-Century Lancashire Parishes: A Reconstitution Study
Authors: Loschky David J. , Krier Donald F.
Published: August 2016

Since the time of Malthus and possibly earlier the prevailing theory of the birth rate has connected births to the’ mother's age at marriage, which in turn is related to current economic and social conditions. In this manner changes in the economy are tied to changes in the birth rate and thus, even more indirectly, to changes in the rate of growth of the population.
The Agrarian Image of the Large Corporation, 1879–1920: A Study in Social Accommodation
Authors: Galambos Louis
Published: August 2016

For many years a relatively small number dominated the private sector of the American of the American economy. Most of the nation's goods and a substantial part of its services are produced and distributed by very large corporations. Of late, most Americans seem unconcerned about this fact. They regard big business with equanimity, even approval, and as Richard Hofstadter points out, antitrust has become “one of the faded passions of American reform.”
The Compound Steam Engine and Productivity Changes in the German Merchant Marine Fleet, 1871–1887
Authors: Knauerhase Ramon
Published: August 2016

The compound steam engine was one of the majorthe substitution of steam for sail in ocean transportation. This factors inarticle is an inquiry into the productivity effects of the adoption and diffusion of this innovation in the German merchant marine fleet between 1871 and 1887. A number of relevant questions may be raised: What was the change in total industry productivity? How much of the total productivity change resulted from the diffusion of the compound engine? How much resulted from improvement of the engine itself during this period and how much from improvements in sailing ship technology? Answers to these questions may provide fresh insight into the controversial issues of the ascendancy of the sailing ship in ocean transportation and the contribution of changes in sailing ship productivity to the decline of ocean freight rates after 1870.
British Imperial Policy and the Economic Interpretation of the American Revolution
Authors: Thomas Robert Paul
Published: August 2016

Roger Ransom takes exception on three counts to my published study of the burden of the Navigation Acts, questioning (1) the counterfactual proposition I employed, (2) my estimate of the relative burden, and (3) the likelihood of differing regional impacts of the Acts. I shall briefly take up each of these in turn.
Long-run Tendencies in Foreign Trade: With a Statistical Study of French Trade Structure 1871–1939
Authors: Weiller Jean Sylvain
Published: August 2016

Economists who have studied the evolution of trade transactions between the two world wars have often stressed the existence of an obvious paradox: despite the disturbances brought about by the war period, the territorial changes, the monetary difficulties and the crises, international trade as a whole and particularly from a structural point of view, had a tendency, after a few years of complete disruption, to return to a pre-war pattern of evolution. Trade flows were returning to a distribution very similar to the one prevailing in 1913, and changes were occurring in the same direction as those of the 1896–1913 period. Certain countries endured great difficulties in the readaptation process, especially the United Kingdom, whose “structural crises” have often been cited. But the very changes that were sources of anxiety for English rulers were less a result of the transformation or the acceleration of pre-war tendencies than of their continuity.