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Farm Capital Formation as a Use of Farm Labor in the United States, 1850–1910

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Martin L. Primack
Martin L. Primack
Affiliation:
San Jose State College
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Extract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1966 , pp. 348 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1966

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References

1 Primack, Martin L., “Land Clearing Under Nineteenth-Century Techniques: Some Preliminary Calculations,” Journal of Economic History, XXII (Dec. 1962), 484–97Google Scholar; Primack, , “Farm Construction as a Use of Farm Labor, 1850–1910,” Journal of Economic History, XXV (Mar. 1965), 114–25Google Scholar.

2 Primack, “Land Clearing,” p. 497, Appendix Table 2.

3 The method of deriving the labor input requirements is discussed extensively in Primack, “Land Clearing,” especially pp. 495–96.

4 Ibid., p. 492.

5 An extensive list of source material is contained in Primack, “Land Clearing,” pp. 495–96.

6 It was assumed that more off-farm labor was used for farm building construction as the period advanced. The daily off-season, without-board, farm wage rate was used to convert the current dollar value of homesteads to man-year input; Primack, “Farm Construction,” p. 119.

7 See the method of calculation, ibid.

8 Table of rods of new fencing constructed each decade by region; Primack, , “Farm Formed Capital in American Agriculture, 1850 to 1910” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 1962), p. 67Google Scholar.

9 The Country Gentleman, LX (1895), 612Google Scholar.

10 The two sources that present statistics on the use of different kinds of fences (covering a wide enough area of the country) are: “Statistics of Fences in the United States,” Report of the Commission of Agriculture (Washington, D. C., 1871), p. 507Google Scholar; and Humphrey, H. H., “Cost of Fencing Farms in the North Central States,” USDA, Bulletin No. 321 (Washington, D. C., 1916), p. 5Google Scholar. A comparison of the two clearly shows the shift to wire fences. The shift to straight fences is indicated among other places in Danhof, Clarence H., “The Fencing Problem in the Eighteen-Fifties,” Agricultural History, XVIII (Oct. 1944), 22Google Scholar.

11 U. S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States … 1920, VIIGoogle Scholar, “Irrigation and Drainage” (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1922)Google Scholar. In the textual discussions of each state, tables are included showing the date of organization and the acres included of drainage districts. An examination of this shows that only a small percentage of acres were in drainaged districts organized prior to 1880.

This is substantially corroborated by comments and data from Palmer, Ben, Swamp Land Drainage with Special Reference to Minnesota (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1915), pp. 20–30Google Scholar; Illinois Department of Agriculture, Transactions (Springfield, Ill., 1876), p. 230Google Scholar; Indiana State Board of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1878 (Indianapolis, 1879), p. 370Google Scholar; ibid., 1885, p. 380; ibid., 1890, p. 321; Illinois Department of Agriculture, Circular 104 (Springfield, Ill., 1888), p. 39; Circular 162 (Aug. 1, 1893), pp. 44–46; and Circular 210 (Aug. 1, 1905), pp. 44–46.

12 Palmer, “Swamp Land Drainage,” pp. 1, 17.

13 Among other sources, Brough, Charles Hillman, Irrigation in Utah (Baltimore, 1898), pp. 7, 9.Google Scholar

14 Hoffman, Roy E., Irrigation Development and Public Water Policy (New York: Ronald Press, 1953), p. 16Google Scholar.

15 Teele, Ray P., Irrigation in the United States (New York: Appleton, 1915), pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

16 Whelpton, P. K., “Occupational Groups in the United States, 1880–1920,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, XXI (Sept. 1926), 335–43.Google Scholar

Edwards, Alba M., “Comparative Occupation Statistics for the United States, 1870–1940,” Sixteenth Census of the United States … 1940 (Washington, D. C., 1943).Google Scholar

Fabricant, Solomon, “The Changing Industrial Distribution of Gainful Workers: Comments on the Decennial Statistic, 1820–1940,” Studies in Income and Wealth, XI (New York: NBER, 1949), pp. 3–45Google Scholar.

Daniel Carson, “Changes in the Industrial Composition of Man Power since the Civil War,” ibid., pp. 46–150.

17 The range of variation between Edwards' estimates of the total labor, force in agriculture and Carson's, Whelpton's, and Fabricant's estimates was 7 per cent in 1870, 3 per cent in 1880, 3 per cent in 1890, and 2 per cent in 1900; Carson, p. 131; Fabricant, p. 42.

18 As late as 1877 a dugout in Kansas cost over 18 man-days of labor plus $4.05 out-of-pocket money. Included in the money expenditure were two loads of firewood; Ise, John (ed.), Sod-House Days; Letters from a Kansas Homesteader, 1877–1878 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), pp. 30–43Google Scholar.