This article brings together some estimates of labor inputs in capital formation in American agriculture, compares the various forms of capital as uses of farm labor, and relates the labor input to the size of the labor force in agriculture in the period 1850–1910. Two major items of farm-formed capital—land clearing and farm construction—have been discussed in earlier articles. The present article adds to these estimates the material on the lesser forms of farm capital—fencing, drainage, and irrigation—and discusses the significance of the totals arrived at.

The expansion of short-staple cotton production into the southern backcountry during the nineteenth century opened opportunities for backcountry planters and yeomen alike. But contrary to the claims made by agricultural reformers, South Carolina upcountry farmers did not neglect the production of foodstuffs. The Upcountry as a whole was self-sufficient in foodstuffs though a significant minority of farms failed to achieve self-sufficiency. Thus a limited local market in foodstuffs developed, but it did little to stimulate the development of towns in the region.

The International Bankers Committee on Mexico has been generally ignored by American diplomatic historians, and those who have mentioned it have missed the basic significance of its organization and operation. The writer of the leading text dealing with the Latin American policy of the United States devotes less than a paragraph to the Committee and says, “The United States did not even demand arbitration. It left the bondholders to their own representations to the Mexican Government.” This statement can be compared to a description of an iceberg which deals only with that part showing above the surface of the water. The heart of this presentation will be the analysis of that part of the Committee's activities which lay beneath the surface—a study in the interaction of government, business, and revolution. The basic thesis involved is that the Committee was an unofficial instrument of the United States government, as it attempted to influence certain aspects of the Mexican Revolution.

During the air conditioner industry's first four decades, most installations were “commercial comfort” air conditioning systems, purchased by retailers to increase demand for their products. Air conditioning spread unevenly through the commercial sector and across the country. Using data from a variety of sources, I offer a quantitative account of this diffusion, viewed through an interpretive framework that emphasizes differences across geographic markets and industries in the costs and benefits to retailers of installing air conditioning. Correlates of early adoption of commercial air conditioning include electricity rates and consumer income and education levels.

How do changes to taxation policy affect the organizational choices of firms? Using historical firm data constructed from Japanese corporate genealogies, we examine the short-run impact of introducing a personal income tax (PIT) in 1887 on tax-motivated incorporation. Between 1880 and 1892, we find that the introduction of PIT increased the share of incorporated firms by more than 3 percentage points, indicating firms chose their organizational structure to avoid new taxation. Furthermore, our results suggest that a corporate income tax may have acted as a backstop to maintain revenue collected through PIT.

We examine shifts in British income inequality and their causes from 1911–1949. Using newly rediscovered Inland Revenue income distribution estimates, we show that Britain had an unusually high concentration of personal incomes in 1911 compared to other industrial nations. We also find that Britain’s substantial inequality reduction over the next four decades was largely driven by a collapse in top capital incomes. This parallels findings for France, the United States, and other western countries, that reduced inequality was mainly caused by declining top unearned incomes, owing to economic shocks, policy responses, and non-market mechanisms associated with the retreat from globalization.

Opposition to Japanese immigration led to Alien Land Laws that barred Japanese immigrants from buying or leasing farmland. Although there is general agreement that the 1913 California Alien Land Law had little impact, historians and social scientists have differed over the effectiveness of the 1920 initiative, which closed loopholes in the earlier law. Census data show a decline in Japanese American agriculture over the short and long run, which cannot be fully explained by the agricultural downturn of the 1920s. This evidence indicates that the 1920 California Alien Land Law had negative consequences for Japanese immigrant farmers.

The Russian Industrial Society, the first national organization of commercial and industrial interests in the empire, attempted to win governmental support for a comprehensive program of economic development. It enjoyed some successes in the fields of tariff protection, factory legislation, and the conquest of Central Asia. The tsarist bureaucracy, however, proved unwilling or unable to implement rational reforms in such key areas as subsoil mineral rights, monopolies, and corporate law. Moreover, policy disagreements among the society's regional branches, especially those in Moscow, Warsaw, and Lodz, weakened the organization from the 1880s onward.

It is well known that the average productivity of capital in American manufacturing increased at a comparatively high rate during the 1919–1929 decade. During the same period the accelerated application of scientific information stimulated important changes in manufacturing plant and equipment. This Note investigates the relationship between these two processes. The inquiry is of historical interest for two reasons: First, the study should help to support statistical observations of the increased efficiency of production facilities during the 1920's, thereby connecting observed productivity change as measured by economists with substantive technological improvements as described by economic historians. And second, it may be possible to characterize the 1920's as a period of unique technological growth in the history of American manufacturing.

In recent years economic imperialism in reference to Africa is being re-evaluated, and it is now sufficiently clear from the emerging literature on the subject that very few serious scholars would rigidly apply the classical interpretation or interpret the partition of Africa only in economic terms. One of the most significant recent contributions on the subject which has stimulated much useful discussion and is provoking further research is A. G. Hopkins' article “Economic Imperialism in West Africa: Lagos, 1880–1892.” He cites the case of Lagos in order to explore some neglected economic aspects of the partition of West Africa and deals with the economic aspects of the scramble for Africa. To Hopkins the critics of economic imperialism have tended to underrate all other economic motives.

Wherever there are banks there are arguments about the macro-economic effects of banking policy. One of the best theoretical formulations of the effect of German banking on German development appears in Alexander Gerschenkron's “Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective” and “Reflections on the Concept of Prerequisites of Modern Industrialization.” This problem is given an empirical treatment in “German Banks and German Growth, 1883–1913: An Empirical View,” by Hugh Neuburger and Houston H. Stokes. Our intention in this paper is to test further our previous findings and to contrast our findings for Germany with those for post-World War II Japan. While the two situations are not entirely comparable they are similar enough to make such a comparison worthwhile.

The Surplus Property Act of 1944 established several social objectives for the disposal of war surplus. In particular, small business was to be benefited; concentration was to be reduced. Such objectives are better considered as part of the war mobilization rather than the peacetime reconversion. While suggesting that concentration was not reduced, the evidence also suggests that concentration is not an inevitable consequence of war. Social objectives can be incorporated into war mobilization, but their realization involves a substantially higher cost.

From the earliest period the communities of the Latin tribes of central Italy and of the remaining Italiots made use of a few slaves as herdsmen, field hands, and probably as domestic servants to meet the simple demands of their small-farm life. No doubt these slaves were employed also in the household weaving of wearing apparel, in the fabrication of those offensive and defensive weapons needed in the wars with their neighbors, and in the production of the tools required for the still simple operations characteristic of Italian farming of that time. Enslavement appears in the Laws of the Twelve Tables, which can safely be dated about 450 B.C. There is no mention of slaves in the two early treaties between Rome and Carthage, as given by Polybius. Livy tells us very briefly of the imposition of a five per cent tax upon manumissions, which was passed in 357 B.C. if we may trust the statement and accept his dating of it. The picture of early Roman slavery as gained from these few primary data, and from literary sources even less trustworthy, is that of a simple agricultural use of a slave population whose numbers were relatively small. This would hold true down to about 352 B.C.

When Clapham began to teach economic history at Leeds in 1902 Schmoller had just finished his Foundations of Political Economy, and the first edition of Sombart's Modern Capitalism had just appeared. In the early editions of J. A. Hobson's Evolution of Modern Capitalism many aspects of the Marxian interpretation of history were effectively expressed and afforded a clear measure of the stimulus that economic history was to receive from this general approach. But these influences were not the dominant factor in Clapham's thought at the beginning of his career or at any later period. His interests in history came from Lord Acton and from Alfred Marshall. Marshall was anxious to draw him into the field of economic history, “he was eager to get historical work done.” Clapham says in the Inaugural Lecture, “… he pointed out to me tracts of economic history which needed someone's work. Then he pointed at me and said—‘Thou art the man.’ I hesitated then, for Acton's power was on me, as I hope it still is. But Marshall has prevailed.”

Operating theories are more or less concealed in the structure of all historical writing. They are readily discerned when the theories are comprehensive and at variance with generally accepted ideas, as in the case of Thomism or Marxism. They are hard to detect when like Spencerianism they conform closely to the mores of American life. Writers may honestly deny in this latter case that they have any special theory; they are simply recording the “facts” from a “common-sense” viewpoint. But since theory must be either implicit or explicit, it is better for scholarly purposes that it should be explicit. Carefully formulated theory restricts unconscious bias, gives meaning to otherwise formless data, and is more likely to reveal unexpected relationships.

Central banking institutions during the past quarter-century have been almost free of the constraints that inhibited their actions during the nineteenth century. The special conditions under which earlier central banking institutions were formed and operated frequently have been lost to view; and while contemporary observers have come to regard the first two Banks of the United States sympathetically, the functional evolution of these institutions within the framework of specie standards has been largely neglected. The period between the end of the Second Bank and the organization of the Federal Reserve System is subsequently treated as the Dark Ages of monetary policy, better forgotten than deplored.

The federal policy of granting land in aid of railroad construction in the mid-nineteenth century has been the focus of many heated discussions. Both praised and attacked by contemporaries, it has remained a lively issue in the pages of history books and in journal articles. Several “land-grant legends” have developed, referring to different problems in the evaluation of these measures. At issue have been the question of the justification for land grants, the value of the benefits provided the railroads, and the determination of whether the government aid did provide net benefits to society as a whole. While the “land-grant legend” has been frequently buried, it has invariably been resurrected in one guise or another. In large measure this state of affairs has been due to the failure to specify fully the problems under discussion, and to approach systematically their resolution.

This article summarizes recent research on the agrarian depression in seventeenth-century Spain, relying primarily upon data from the provinces of Segovia and Toledo. Both regions suffered sustained losses of population and stagnation of production and failed to develop a permanent interior market structure. Due to its reliance upon sheepherding, the Segovian rural economy recovered slightly by the end of the century, but in Toledo, an economy almost entirely dependent upon grain production, demographic and economic indices were negative throughout the entire period.