No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Effect of the 1859 Crop Year Upon Relative Productivity in the Antebellum Cotton South
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2009
Abstract
Data from the manuscript census of Social Statistics and the Parker-Gallman sample are used to investigate (1) the role of yield fluctuations (the crop year) in both the growth of cotton and corn output from 1849 to 1859 and (2) the observed relative agricultural total factor productivity relationships in the antebellum South in 1859. The major conclusions are: (1) More than 20 percent of the growth in cotton output from 1849 to 1859 can be attributed to differences in the relative crop years; (2) The 1859 cotton crop year for the New South was much better than that in 1849, but the cotton crop year in the Old South was relatively poor; (3) Adjusting for the relative crop year eliminates much of the observed productivity advantage for slave agriculture; (4) The issue of whether the crop-year-adjusted or crop-year-unadjusted results are more representative of antebellum southern agriculture remains unresolved.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Economic History Association 1983
References
Gregory M. Duncan, Stanley Engerman, Robert Gallman, Mark Schmitz, and two anonymous referees provided useful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Katherine Daigle and Thomas Roney assisted in the collection and preparation of the data. The author's research has been assisted by NSF Grant No. SES-8006419 and a grant from the Office of Grant and Research Development, Washington State University. The headnote is from “The Probability Approach in Econometrics,” Econometrica (July 1944) (Supplement).Google Scholar
1 There is a degree of semantic confusion surrounding census years and crop years. The 1850 census was to have collected data on the 1849 crop year and the 1860 census was to collect data for the 1859 crop year, since the census date was June 30—before the current crop year was complete.Google Scholar
2 Wright, Gavin, “Prosperity, Progress and American Slavery,” in David, , et al. Reckoning With Slavery (New York, 1976) pp. 312–16, 333–34.Google Scholar
3 Wright, Gavin, “The Efficiency of Slavery: Another Interpretation,” American Economic Review, 69 (03 1979), 219–22.Google Scholar
4 Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South,” American Economic Review 67 (06 1977), p. 281.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., p. 282.
6 Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: Reply” (Mimeo, 1979), p. 16.Google Scholar
7 Fogel and Engerman, “Explaining Relative Efficiency” (1977), pp. 281–82, fn. 12.Google Scholar
8 Wright, “Efficiency of Slavery (1979), pp. 221–22 including fn. 6.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., p. 222.
10 Fogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., “Explaining the Relative Efficiency of Slave Agriculture in the Antebellum South: Reply,” American Economic Review, 70 (09 1980), p. 686.Google ScholarSchaefer, Donald and Schmitz, Mark, “Efficiency in Antebellum Southern Agriculture: A Covariance Approach,” Southern Economic Journal, 49 (07 1982), 88–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 Fogel and Engerman, “Explaining Relative Efficiency,” (1977), p. 281. Wright, “Efficiency of Slavery,” (1979), p. 221, fn. 5 contains a rebuttal to this point.Google Scholar
12 Wright, “Efficiency of Slavery” (1979), p. 221.Google Scholar
13 Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross, Vol. 2 (Boston, 1974), pp. 137–38.Google Scholar
14 This Schedule, with the relevant questions on seasons and crops, was included in the 1850 and 1860 census enumerations. Many of the manuscripts have been microfilmed and are available through the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The 1860 Schedules for Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi are transcribed in Menn, Joseph Karl, “The Large Slaveholders of the Deep South,” Vol. 1 (unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas, 1964), pp. 77–105. The original manuscripts are generally to be found in the State Archives of the various states.Google Scholar
15 Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853), p. xxiv.Google Scholar
16 This process entails defining the counties as they existed in 1850 and 1860. Useful maps were found in the 1850 Census Indexes published by Accelerated Indexing Systems, Bountiful, Utah for each of the States. These indexes also contain listings of Parent and Progeny Counties for those counties existing in 1850 as well as the dates of county reorganization.Google Scholar
17 Jones, Alice Hanson, Wealth of a Nation to Be (New York, 1980);Google ScholarKearl, J.R., Pope, Clayne L., and Wimmer, Larry T., “Household Wealth in a Settlement Economy: Utah, 1850–1870,” this JOURNAL, 40 (09 1980), 477–96;Google ScholarWachter, Kenneth W. and Trussell, James, “Estimating Historical Heights,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 77 (06 1982), 279–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 A useful reference on this topic is Kendall, Maurice and Stuart, Alan, The Advanced Theory of Statistics, Vol. 2 (New York, 1978, 4th edition), pp. 551–60.Google Scholar
19 Further explanation and examples of historical simulation are to be found in Schaefer, Donald and Weiss, Thomas, “The Use of Simulation Techniques in Historical Analysis: Railroads Versus Canals,” this JOURNAL, 31 (12 1971), 854–84;Google ScholarAtack, Jeremy, “Fact in Fiction? The Relative Costs of Steam and Water Power: A Simulation Approach,” Explorations in Economic History, (Oct. 1979), 409–37; andGoogle ScholarSchmitz, Mark and Schaefer, Donald, “Paradox Lost: Westward Expansion and Slave Prices Before the Civil War,” this JOURNAL, 51 (06 1981), 402–07.Google Scholar
20 Fogel and Engerman, “Explaining Relative Efficiency” (1979), p. 58, fn. 28;Google ScholarLutrell, Clifton B. and Gilbert, R. Alton, “Crop Yields: Random Cyclical, or Bunchy?,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 58 (08 1976), p. 525 (Table 2).CrossRefGoogle ScholarWright, “Efficiency of Slavery,” p. 221 refers toGoogle ScholarDay, Richard, “Probability Distributions of Field Crop Yields,” Journal of Farm Economics, 47 (08 1965), 713–41, as evidence that the distribution of cotton crop yields is not normal but is skewed to the right. As Day notes (pp. 719–20), however, his results for a single experiment station cannot be generalized.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 Data “heaping” occurs when there is a tendency to round toward certain values. In this case ½, ⅓, and ¼ appear to be overrepresented. For another example of heaping, see Wachter and Trussell, “Estimating Historical Heights,” p. 281.Google Scholar
22 Menn, “Large Slaveholders,” p. 76, fn. 9.Google Scholar
23 Ibid.
24 Wright, “Prosperity, Progress and American Slavery,” pp. 327–28.Google ScholarThe empirical basis for this conjecture is found in Foust, James D. and Swan, Dale E., “Productivity and Profitability of Antebellum Slave Labor: A Micro-Approach,” Agricultural History, 44 (01 1970), 44–45, where they find that bales of cotton per slave rose from 1.47 to 1.48 from 1849 to 1859 in the Old South, while for the New South the analogous figures are 1.68 to 2.73.Google Scholar
25 The Wright estimate is from his simplest supply function which includes only lagged price and a time trend as explanatory variables. Other functions (with public land sales as an explanatory variable) produce higher levels of residuals. F-E also include the use of fertilizers and increases in the labor to land ratios in the 9 percent.Google Scholar
26 The number of observations are 4299, 1539, and 2760 respectively. The correlations presented here may be compared to the results of 25 reported by Wright, “Efficiency of Slavery,” p. 221, fn. 6.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., p. 219, fn. 1.