The purpose of this article was to present the estimates of the urban and rural workforces derived from census data. These censusbased estimates present a fairly consistent pattern of change over time, and appear useful even in their present state. These estimates should be tested further against other time series so that we will eventually have a sound urban and rural workforce series with which to better analyze the process of structural change. The limited use to which these estimates were put in the present article yielded some interesting results, as well as some suggestions for further research.

In terms of the United States workforce, changes in the industrial distribution reflect predominantly the relative shift in population from rural to urban areas, and little change in the workforce structure of either area. Indeed, at the sectoral level, there appears to have been more change occurring in rural than in urban areas. On the other hand, within the service sector there was more erratic change occurring in the rural areas than in the cities, but the differences may be easily reconciled. The urban sector experienced a more rapid increase and greater variability in the participation rate than did the rural sector. The pattern of variability was compared with the known evidence on unemployment, and variation in the former appears explicable in terms of variation in the latter.

Jeffrey Williamson's provocative discussion opens up a range of questions that surely will be of concern to students of industrial growth in the antebellum United States. Three distinct empirical prongs are advanced by his probing critique of my study of the nature and implications of the production function characterizing the manufacture of powerloom cotton cloth.

To be an expert was to assume a position of special significance in public life during and following the Progressive Era in America. To be trained in scientific principles of medicine, sociology, public administration, or economics was to be prepared to develop the opportunities and promises of American life and to reform those institutions and ideas that hindered progress. Some attention has been drawn to the limited use by government of professional academic economists starting in the early years of the twentieth century. But the work of American economists as advisers has generally been neglected, especially in relation to the study of American foreign relations. Focussing upon the work of Edwin W. Kemmerer in the five Andean countries of South America between 1923 and 1931, this article is an attempt to indicate the possibilities for fruitful research into various dimensions of foreign economic advising.

In a recent issue of this Journal North and Thomas outlined a model of the rise and fall of the manorial system, with special reference to England. Unfortunately, their model contains a number of inaccuracies which weaken quite seriously its applicability. The propositions of the model are based upon a confusion of terms and an oversight of authorities, both of which have led to a questionable factual and theoretical interpretation. In the following paragraphs an attempt will be made to elaborate upon these criticisms, and to suggest an alternative approach.

The purpose of my studies is to estimate the total and per capita wealth of the thirteen colonies in the early 1770's and something of its composition and distribution. The estimates for New England presented here add another building block to the accumulating evidence that a rather high level of living was reached in the American colonies at the close of over 150 years of economic development. They also show that wealth was unequally distributed among the population in this transitionally commercial era, well before the onset of industrialism. They yield quantitative evidence as well on size of wealth in relation to such characteristics of wealth holders as their age and sex, occupations, urban or rural residence and testacy, that is whether or not they left a will at death.

The September, 1971 issue of the Journal contained A. G. Ford's article, “British Investment in Argentina and Long Swings, 1880–1914.” For total U.K. overseas issues, Professor Ford used as his source, Matthew Simon, “The Pattern of New British Portfolio Foreign Investment 1865–1914,” which appeared in J. H. Adler, editor, Capital Movements and Economic Development.

The purpose of this paper is to present some of the findings and contentions of our forthcoming study of shipping, distribution, and overseas trade in colonial America from the middle of the seventeenth century to the American Revolution, with emphasis upon the later years. In order to provide an explanation of the contribution of overseas trade to colonial growth, we begin the study by proposing a simple theoretical framework for viewing economic development in the colonies. Then, to provide some perspective for the study, we examine the long-term trends in output, population, and overseas trade (subject to fairly severe data limitations, which allow us to make only tentative statements about these long-term trends, and which largely limit us to the eighteenth century). Next we examine the costs of shipping and distributing commodities in overseas trade and show that these costs declined over the long run. The increased productivity in shipping is explicitly measured, and the sources of these advances analyzed. Finally, a balance-of-payments study is presented for 1768 through 1772, the only years in the colonial period for which we have statistics of all legal overseas trade.

As economic historians delve more deeply into the economy of the Continental Colonies, they become increasingly aware of its sophistication. Good Englishmen in every way, the colonists' economic development closely paralleled that of a Mother Country which, of course, by the 1770's, was on the eve of an industrial revolution. The British themselves constantly complained of colonial competition in most every sphere of activity. Yet any claims for a highly developed colonial economy by historians, or complaints about competition by British merchants, have, until recently, sounded more like puffery or self-pity. Facts have been few. Even so major an element in the process of economic growth as the accumulation and productive mobilization of colonial domestic savings remains to be examined. It is now possible to say something about at least this topic for a significant colonial enterprise, the shipping industry.