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Prices and Wages in Antebellum America: The West Virginia Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Donald R. Adams Jr
Donald R. Adams Jr
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506.
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Abstract

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Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 206 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

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References

1 Examples include Bezanson, Anne, Gray, Robert, and Hussey, Miriam, Wholesale Prices in Philadelphia 1784–1861 (Philadelphia, 1937)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cole, Arthur H., Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States 1700–1861 (Cambridge, MA, 1935)Google Scholar; Smith, Walter B. and Cole, Arthur H., Fluctuations in American Business 1790–1860 (Cambridge, MA, 1935)Google Scholar; Wright, C. D., “Historical Review of Wages and Prices, 1752–1860,” Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Sixteenth Annual Report, part 4, Public Document No. 15 (1885)Google Scholar; and Warren, George F. and Pearson, Frank A., Prices (New York, 1933).Google Scholar

2 Berry, Thomas S., Western Prices Before 1861 (Cambridge, MA, 1943)Google Scholar; Margo, Robert A. and Villaflor, Georgia C., “The Growth of Wages in Antebellum America: New Evidence,” this Journal, 47 (12, 1987), pp. 873–95Google Scholar; Adams, T. M., Vermont Agricultural Experimental Station, Bulletin 597, University of Vermont and State Agricultural College (02, 1944)Google Scholar; and Rothenberg, Winifred B., “The Market and Massachusetts Farmers, 1750–1855,” this Journal, 41 (06 1981), pp. 283–314.Google Scholar

3 All manuscript sources are cited in an appendix available from the author. The sources are available by the Accession numbers given at the West Virginia Collection, Colson Hall, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV.

4 Haites, Erik F., Mak, James, and Walton, Gary W., Western River Transportation (Baltimore, 1975), p. 7.Google Scholar

5 Adams, Donald R. Jr., “Prices and Wages in Maryland 1750–1850,” this Journal, 46 (09 1986), p. 639Google Scholar; Gallman, Robert E., “The Agricultural Sector and the Pace of Economic Growth: U.S. Experience in the Nineteenth Century,” in Klingaman, David C. and Vedder, Richard K., eds., Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History (Athens, Ohio, 1975), p. 47.Google Scholar

6 Board rates averaged $1.29 in 1790–1799; $1.74 in 1800–1809; $1.96 in 1810–1819; $1.38 in 1820–1829; $1.33 in 1830–1839; $1.17 in 1840–1849; and $1.97 in 1850–1859.

7 Hatton, Timothy J. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “Unemployment, Employment Contracts, and Compensating Wage Differentials: Michigan in the 1890s,” this Journal, 51 (09 1991), pp. 605–32.Google Scholar

8 Margo, and Villaflor, , “The Growth of Wages”; and Williamson, Jeffrey and Lindert, Peter, American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

9 For example, see Ball, Duane E. and Walton, Gary M., “Agricultural Productivity Change in Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania,” this Journal, 36 (03, 1976), pp. 109–111Google Scholar; Adams, , “Prices and Wages in Maryland 1750–1850,” this Journal, 46 (09 1986), p. 639Google Scholar; Gallman, , “The Agricultural Sector,” p. 47.Google Scholar