Students of Russia's first phase of industrialization concentrate on the real aspects of growth—the growth of population, production, and the change in industrial structure. In this they follow the traditional approach to economic history, which usually emphasizes the real variables of the growth process at the expense of the money variables. I do not propose to question the assumption that the study of the production aspect of an economy is a sine qua non of the analysis of industrialization. Yet the exclusion of factors that affect aggregate demand may lead to a failure to observe some important dimensions of growth. In any case, the relevance of money in Russia's first “Industrial Revolution,” which was underway in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was considerable. Therefore, in what follows, I concentrate on the monetary developments and policies of this period. After a short survey of the quantitative information on the trends of the real variables, monetary developments and their impact on economic activity are studied. I then treat Russia's foreign trade and balance of payments and their links to monetary phenomena, and finally, make an attempt at a critical evaluation of the trade, monetary and fiscal policies of the Russian government in this period.

During the second half of the nineteenth century important technological changes in shipping and shipbuilding resulted in the practical disappearance of an important shipbuilding industry in North America and the concentration of most of the world's shipbuilding in Britain. This shift of shipbuilding activity was quite clearly the result of the adoption of metal in place of wood as the structural material in shipbuilding. The adoption of metal was a slow process and the old and new techniques coexisted for decades. By the mid-1850's, British shipbuilders had developed the building of iron ships to a routine process and further improved their techniques in the following decades, but wooden shipbuilding in North America remained an important industry until the mid-1880's.

Anumber of economic historians, including Charles Beard, C. Vann Woodward, and others have argued that southern economic development during the nineteenth century may have been significantly hindered by the South's political and economic relations with the North. Certainly the best known of such arguments is that of Charles Beard. Beard thought that the “normal” workings of the pre-Civil War political economy would have resulted in the relative eclipse of the southern economy even in the absence of the Civil War. Wartime devastation plus such northern policies as the tariff, the Homestead Law, the National Banking Act, and emancipation of the slaves, merely hastened and worsened the South's economic decline.

This paper is concerned with the rapid growth of the trucking industry during the period 1900 to 1920. Our purpose is to examine the frequently asserted proposition that motor trucking was able to grow rapidly in competition with a well-established railroad industry because of the hidden subsidy provided by public expenditures on highways. Though this is a popularly held notion there has been little empirical evidence presented to support or refute it.

During the eighteenth century various methods existed for obtaining shipping tonnages; Most official records of shipping throughout this period record a vessel's “registered tonnage” which was the figure which appeared in the vessel's certificate of registration. This registered tonnage was less than a vessel's “measured tonnage.” The latter was the basis for building, buying, and selling vessels and was computed by means of a given formula. Registered tonnage was then estimated at roughly two thirds of measured tonnage and the figure rounded down to the nearest large whole number. This practice was encouraged by ships' captains and ship owners who wanted to minimize lighthouse and port duties that were based on tonnages. Thus only when the registration of measured tonnages became compulsory did shipping tonnages in the records become reasonably accurate.

In a recent article in this journal we presented an analysis of productivity change of steamboats on western rivers, 1815–60. Although the steamboat dominated river commerce during this period, other transportation technologies had been and were available. Prior to the steamboat era, keelboats and flatboats were the primary means by which the agricultural surpluses of the trans-Appalachian regions reached outside markets (especially through New Orleans). Although flatboating persisted, keelboating was quickly eclipsed with the introduction of the steamboat. This contrast is explained in part by the differential impact of the steamboat on upstream and downstream rates. Successful keelboat operations depended primarily on upstream revenues, and it was on the upstream rates that the steamboat had its most dramatic effects. One study indicates that by the early 1820's, keelboat revenues on the Mississippi had fallen below or very near to average variable costs, and keelboating was maintained only on shallower waters off the main trunk routes. Alternatively, flatboating not only survived but even expanded in the face of the stiff competition generated by the newer technology. For instance, in 1816, the year before the first successful steamboat navigation of the western rivers, 1287 flatboats arrived in New Orleans. By the commercial year 1846–47, the number of arrivals had increased to a peak of 2792. This persistence of flatboating occurred despite the fact that flatboats underwent no changes in their physical characteristics. Neither were there any apparent technical advances in their handling or navigation.