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The Height and Weight of West Point Cadets: Dietary Change in Antebellum America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

John Komlos
John Komlos
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History and of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.
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Abstract

A decline in nutritional status is inferred from data on the height and weight of West Point cadets in the antebellum period. The decline was geographically widespread and affected farmers and blue-collar workers the most; middle-class cadets did not experience a decline in nutritional status until the Civil War. Nutritional status declined because meat output did not keep pace with population growth. Urbanization and the expansion of the industrial labor force increased the demand for food. However, the agricultural labor force grew at a slower pace, and productivity growth in food production was insufficient to redress the imbalance.

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Articles
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The Journal of Economic History , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 897 - 927
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

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References

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37 Lebergott, The Americans, p. 66. Of course, this assertion is not strictly correct because some members of the agricultural labor force did not produce nutrients.Google Scholar

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39 Kidder, Frank, The Architect's and Builder's Pocketbook (New York, 1900), p. 721. White adults also weighed less than they do today. The average weight of men in Boston at the time of the Civil War was 141.5 pounds, 25 pounds below the standard of the 1950s. (In contrast, however, adult male slaves weighed about 157 pounds, much closer to modern standards.)Google ScholarMargo, Robert A. and Steckel, Richard H., “The Height of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health,” Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982), pp. 516–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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41 In the category of farmers 174.4 vs. 173.5cm and among urban residents 172.1 vs. 171.2 cm. Margo and Steckel, “Height of Native-Born Whites,” p. 169.Google Scholar

42 However, the neglected items could not have been important because the estimates are reasonably close to the ones made for the 1880s and thereafter. The lower-bound estimates actually appear to be a couple of hundred calories too high.Google Scholar

43 I am indebted to James Tanner of the Institute of Child Health, University of London, for this Suggestion.Google Scholar

44 The divergence of consumption and production per adult male equivalent after 1870 provides a clue to why the stature of West Point cadets diverged from that of regular recruits after the Civil War. While the stature of cadets increased, that of regular soldiers did not. The export and import of nutrients may help to explain this pattern insofar as the origin and destination of the flow of nutrients through international trade affected the various elements of the population differently. While food exports were composed of such products as corn, ham, and bacon, eaten generally by the population, nutrient imports were made up of such products as sugar and exotic fruit, whose consumption in the population was not as widespread. It is understandable that the trend in the cadets' stature diverged from that of the regular soldiers because cadets were drawn from better situated families than those of the average recruits.Google Scholar

45 For instance, in the 1870s and 1880s pork production stagnated even though corn output doubled. Although, beef production did double, the divergence between corn and pork production shows the dangers of drawing inference from one to the other. Parker, William N., “Agriculture,” et al., eds., American Economic Growth, pp. 369–417.Google Scholar

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52 Rent and services are the only important components of the typical budget which are missing from this index. Regardless of how these missing prices behaved, my argument holds up as long as the cross-price elasticity between food and industrial products is stronger than between food and rent; 80 percent of a typical budget, is, however incorporated into these indexes. Williamson, Jeffrey G. and Lindert, Peter H., American Inequality: A Macro-economic History (New York, 1980), p. 25.Google Scholar

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58 Another reason was that immigrants were primarily grain consumers; hence they were more likely to increase the demand for grain than for meat products. Bezanson, et al., Wholesale Prices, p. 24.Google Scholar

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60 Abel, Wilhelm, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur (1935; 2d edn., Hamburg, 1966).Google Scholar

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84 Strauss and Beane, “Gross Farm Income,” p. 37; according to “Consumption of Food, 1909–1949,” p. 177, humans consumed only 8 percent of the corn crop.Google Scholar

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87 Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake, p. 101;Google ScholarBogue, Allan, From Prairie to Corn Belt (Chicago, 1963), pp. 105, 112. Hogs were often fattened on acorns in the woods until five or six weeks before slaughter and were then turned into the cornfields;Google ScholarBerry, Thomas, Western Prices Before 1861 (Cambridge, Mass, 1943), p. 230.Google Scholar

88 McFall, The World's Meat, p. 141. According to one twentieth-century experiment it took 18 bushels of corn to produce a 225-pound hog;Google ScholarSmith, William, Pork Production (New York, 1937), p. 435.Google Scholar

89 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, pp. 130, 234; Hilliard, p. 15; “… corn could stand the transportation costs for a moderate distance by canal, river or railway, but could not yet be economically brought from many farms to the local depots.” The perishability of corn also predicated against long distance trade in it. Berry, Western Prices, p. 203.Google Scholar

90 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, pp. 94, 101.Google Scholar

91 Ibid., pp. 109.Google Scholar

92 The 1862 figure is most likely an outlier.Google Scholar

93 McFall, The World's Meat, p. 143.Google Scholar

94 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, p. 94.Google Scholar

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97 Berry, Western Prices, p. 231.Google Scholar

98 Personal correspondence with Winifred Rothenberg whose research of Massachusetts farm account books has yielded livestock weights. In addition to the data cited she found some eighteenth-century hog weights which indicate a large increase in weight between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Google Scholar

99 Walsh, The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, pp. 20, 34.Google Scholar

100 Smith, Pork Production, p. 143. It took about a pound of corn per 100 live weight to keep a hog at constant weight, pp. 148, 173.Google Scholar

101 Ibid., pp. 150, 172, 435.Google Scholar

102 Ibid., pp. 171, 175.Google Scholar

103 Holmes, Meat Situation, p. 16. The average caloric content of a pound of meat was said to be 1,040.Google Scholar

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