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Productivity Growth without Technical Change in European Agriculture before 1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Gregory Clark
Gregory Clark
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305.
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Abstract

Output per farm worker in the northern United States and Britain in the early nineteenth century was many times that inEastern Europe or in medieval England and wages were correspondingly higher. Technical progress explains little of the high American and British productivity in the early nineteenth century, nor, in the American case, does abundant land per worker. Instead, most of the difference derived from more intense labor in America and Britain.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 419 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

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References

Paul David and Peter Lindert made extensive, and very useful, comments on earlier versions of this article. Martha Shiells and Robert Evanson, the discussants of the paper at the Economic History Association meetings, also made valuable criticisms. I am grateful for helpful suggestions on earlier drafts from Ester Boserup, Lance Davis, Akhil Gupta, Stanley Engerman, Robert Gailman, Joan Hannon, Larry Neal, Bill Parker, Paul Rhode, Peter Solar, Bill Sundstrom, Ben Ward, and Gavin Wright.Google Scholar

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5 The wheat yield per acre in the northeastern United States in the 1840s was about 16 bushelsper acre, and the oats yield about 28 bushels per acre. See Parker, William N. and Klein, Judith L. V., “Productivity in Grain Production in the United States 1840–60 and 1900–10,” in National Bureau of Economic Research, Output, Employment and Productivity in the United States After 1800, Studies in Income and Wealth, 30 (New York, 1966), pp. 548–52.Google Scholar

6 See Clark, Gregory, “The Agricultural Revolution in Britain, 1661–1841: Changes in People versus Changes in Technique” (unpublished manuscript, Stanford University, 1987).Google Scholar

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13 The annual wages of ploughmen on a number of manors can be calculated from Rogers, James E. Thorold, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (Oxford, 1866), vol. 1, pp. 245, 288–89, vol. 2, pp. 329–34.Google Scholar

14 Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture, p. 33.Google Scholar

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16 Ibid., pp. 14, 20, 32–33, 36, 97, 133–37.

17 The total burden on the land in Poland in the 1820s consisted of three elements; about $0.24 of rent per acre, $0.06 of taxes, and the tithe of one-tenth or less of gross output (Jacob, Tracts, First Report, pp. 32–36, 99). Output per acre of tillage land in one large lordship in Poland was about $2.68 of grain, plus an unspecified value of fodder in the straw and fallow grazing. Assuming conservatively that the fodder was worth a quarter of the grain, the value of output per acre was $3.35 (Jacob, Tracts, First Report, pp. 97–99). Thus the total burden on the land was only about $0.64.Google Scholar

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19 If Polish rents were reduced to American levels, the residual per acre left to pay wages would increase by about 27 percent. Combining this with 22 percent more acres of land tilled per worker gives the maximum possible increase in wages with greater land availability as 54 percent.Google Scholar

20 Papadakis, J., Soils of the World (Amsterdam, 1969), classifies most of the soils in the northeastern United States as naturally acid and infertile podsols. British soils are also principally infertile podsols.Google Scholar

21 I am grateful to Ester Boserup for this important observation.Google Scholar

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41 This figure is for manors whose labor accounts are recorded in Rogers, James E. Thorold, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (Oxford, 1866), vol. 1, pp. 245, 288–89; vol. 2, pp. 273–310, 329–34.Google Scholar Similar data for Ramsey Abbey and Crowland Abbey show threshing rates of 2.37 bushels, and 2.74 bushels per day, prior to 1349. See Page, Frances M., The Estates of Crowland Abbey (Cambridge, 1934);Google Scholar and Raftis, J. Ambrose, The Estates of Ramsey Abbey (Toronto, 1957).Google Scholar

42 I use the reaping rate for Podolia as a proxy for that in Poland.Google Scholar

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45 Elsewhere I calculate that while productivity rose by over 50 percent in British agriculture between 1661 and 1841, the amount of increase that was attributable to technical progress was only about 15 percent, the rest coming from more labor inputs per worker and more intense work. See Clark, “The Agricultural Revolution in Britain.”Google Scholar

46 See Clark, Gregory, “Why Isn't the Whole World Developed? Lessons from the Cotton Mills,” this JOURNAL, 45 (Mar. 1987), pp. 141–74.Google Scholar