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.”

Program committees, like the parents of adolescents, must at last stand aside, overcome by a sense of powerless responsibility, as their creation begins to speak, act and sin for itself.

The program for the Twenty-ninth Meeting of the Economic History Association, held August 28–30, 1969, at Rrandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, was generated under the title: The Organizational Forms of Economic Life and Their Evolution. The first two sessions bore the subtitle: Precapitalist Forms, and the second two sessions, the subtitle: Capitalism Revisited.

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.

The Committee on Research in Economic History was established in 1940, more than a generation ago. Most of those who were active in its creation and administration have died or retired from active academic life; and surely a fresh direction of internal evolution has altered, at least in important ways, the objectives of the discipline. Accordingly, it appears appropriate to set down here an account of what were the hopes and intentions of those especially active in its initiation and early planning, and to record its more obvious achievements. Members of ensuing generations will have time in their later lives to pass judgment on the intellectual value of this particular effort at academic improvement and intellectual growth. Indeed, I propose to close my survey with the transmogrification of the Committee into the Council—an event of the mid-1950's, at a point in time already far enough removed to offer a considerable perspective.

My object in this article is to use the historical evidence of one man's life to raise questions concerning the way we have come to understand our technological history. Inventors and mechanicians have long occupied a prominent place in American history. However, the bases for selecting and certifying these national heroes have resulted in a curious record of achievement and considerable distortion in our understanding of the development of American manufacturing technology. The principal historical perspective that enshrined the names of Evans, Whitney, Perkins, etc. has been first, the emphasis on originality of invention or “dramatic newness,” and, secondly, the attempt by historians to confine mechanical genius or creativity within national boundaries—Slater and DuPont, of course, being the exceptions to this generalization. Thus we speak quite naturally of American inventors, British inventors, and so on.

Liberal Italy, 1860–1922, has never stimulated the same interest as the Risorgimento era, which spawned the unitary state, or the Fascist experiment, which destroyed it. Admittedly a number of works have dealt with the liberal period, but these have been all too few and very general in scope. Little, for example, has been written in English about Italian economic growth during these years and even less is known about the commercial policy of the unitary Kingdom. Contemporary critics of the tariff clamored that duties were exorbitant, were politically motivated, favored the North at the expense of the South, and increased industrial profits while they burdened agriculture. But there has not been a full scholarly analysis of commercial policy which would permit an appraisal of these criticisms.

The first president of our Association, Edwin F. Gay, remarked to me as he was pondering the subject of his presidential address that presidents of learned societies should present in their messages to their scholarly colleagues the results of their current research. This seems to me to be a capital idea, but, as I look back upon the speeches of my predecessors, I discover how few have followed the counsel of our wise and esteemed forebear. Even Gay himself, in his command performance, failed to adhere to his own precept. Most of our presidential addresses have been devoted to making suggestions for research (mostly to be undertaken by others), to delineating the broad “tasks” of economic history, to defending the kind of work in which the speaker has been engaged, and to advocating some particular methodology in our discipline. In the course of time, our presidents have exposed a variety of positions, have espoused a multitude of causes, and from time to time have excited controversy. They have created a tradition that presidential addresses should be homilies and exhortations.

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

How much of the increased consumption of machine-made cotton yarn and cloth in nineteenth- and twentieth-century China represented a net increase in the total consumption of cotton goods? What part of the increment merely denoted a shift of the source of supply from rural handicraft to factory production—in Shanghai and Tientsin and, in the form of imports, in overseas mills? These questions, of course, are only part of the more inclusive problem of the effects of expanding foreign trade and the beginnings of domestic industrialization upon the agricultural sector in modern China. The most important household handicraft in rural China was, however, the spinning and weaving of cotton. An examination of its fate, while it will not dispose entirely of the larger problem, is a critical step toward that end.

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

Every generation has interpreted the monetary experience of the colonies in the light of its own problems. The Jacksonian period produced the interpretations of Gouge just as the silver controversy of the 1890's produced the work of Bullock and Davis. The reaction to the financial fundamentalism of the 1890's came largely from the work of R. A. Lester and the unpublished but celebrated work of L. Brock in the late thirties and early forties, heavily influenced by the experience of the depression. From the latter two, a new orthodoxy has emerged among American historians, under the authority of E. James Ferguson, whose important recent study, The Power of the Purse, defends the paper money currencies of the colonies by a well-reasoned appeal to the modern fiscal practice of financing war by inflation.

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.

ONE of the more perplexing problems facing the United States in the twentieth century has been that of selecting fairly which citizens shall serve in the armed forces. Today controversy surrounds the application of the Selective Service System to them raising of troops for the Vietnam War. Thus far, however, the hostilities in Vietnam have not posed one difficulty for the Selective Service System that existed during World War II, namely, the necessity of granting substantial numbers of industrial and occupational deferments, except insofar as educational deferments are a form of industrial ones. Such deferments have grown more important during the world wars of the twentieth century as nations engaged in full-scale hostilities have been forced to rely heavily on them in order to maintain the industrial and economic strength of the nation.

Economic historians have not provided a satisfactory discussion of the banking collapse of 1933. There are two reasons for their disinterest. First, while state systems contributed 80 percent of the commercial bank failures during the crisis year, banking statistics from state authorities are erratic, difficult to consolidate, and in some cases simply not available. Second, there already exists a set of generalizations based upon contemporary accounts which provides plausible answers to most of the obvious questions. The purpose of the following article is to explore the usefulness of these generalizations by applying them to 1932–1933 failure patterns in Iowa, and to suggest further research activities which need to be undertaken in order to construct a more powerful analysis.

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.

Considered analytically population growth may either have positive or negative influences on economic growth. Population expansion may, by facilitating a widening of markets, allow for economies of scale to be realized and permit the introduction of new industries, or by relieving labor scarcities, facilitate economic expansion. Possible negative implications for economic growth may result however, as Malthus argued, through the mechanism of diminishing returns or by changing the age structure of the population so as to increase the proportion of dependents relative to economically active producers and thus reduce the volume of goods and services available to each individual. The point is that economic analysis prima facia is agnostic with respect to the net effect of population change on economic change. One or all of the above relationships may be operative in any individual country experience and without careful empirical observations, it is impossible to identify accurately whether the negative or positive effects are dominant. Clearly what is needed before general statements about the relationship between population and economic change can be supported is a series of country studies whose purpose will be not only to determine the frequency with which the optimistic or pessimistic influences predominate, but in addition to identify the intervening economic and social institutions which account for the predominance of one or the other effect.

One of the most controversial economic issues confronting the American public during the nineteenth century was that of protection. The plea for a protective tariff had been raised as soon as the First Congress met in 1789. The issue was sharply debated off and on throughout the nineteenth century but never finally resolved. There is now a large literature relating the outcome of this issue to the economic and political interests of various involved groups.

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.

Almost two decades ago, Professor Frederic C. Lane, assisted by Dr. Jelle C. Riemersma, prepared a book of readings in economic history, published in 1953, by Richard D. Irwin, Inc., under the title Enterprise and Secular Change. At that time I suggested the inclusion after translation of Arthur Spiethoff's article, “Die Allgemeine Volkswirtschaftslehre als geschichtliche Theorie: Die Wirtschaftsstile,” published in the Festgabe für Sombart in Schmollers Jahrbuch, LVI, No. 6 (1932), 51 fr. When Professor Spiethoff was informed of this suggestion, he refused to give the needed permission since his ideas on the subject had matured. Instead he sent an original article consisting of several sections, some of which I translated. Spiethoff's pertinent ideas were then published in translation in America in two separate papers. One, entitled “The ‘Historical’ Character of Economic Theories,” is to be found in the Journal of Economic History, XII (1952), 131 ff; the other, “Pure Theory and Gestalt Theory: Ideal Types and Real Types,” appeared in the Lane-Riemersma reader just cited. The rest of Spiethoff's original article remained untranslated. One section of it is now being submitted.

This paper endeavors to explain the economic and social forces underlying the economic transformation of three Southeast Asian countries from agrarian societies to commercial ones. In particular, a model is used to explore this historic behavior over the period 1870 to 1938 for Burma, the Philippines, and Thailand. It is also suggested that the varying economic consequences of the model were dependent on the respective pre-colonial history and the type of colonial or governmental rule.