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Product Quality and Vertical Integration in the Early Cotton Textile Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Peter Temin
Peter Temin
Affiliation:
Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.
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Abstract

This article explores differences between the cotton industries in England and America in the early nineteenth century. I show that the two countries produced almost entirely different products: the Enlish made fine fabrics; the Americans, coarse. The cause of this disjunction is found in the American tariff policy, whichwas influenced by the Massachusetts cotton manufacturers. Since coarse spinning promoted vertical integration, the American product structure favored integration. This argument reveals that the variables analyzed were jointly determined, since the Massachusetts firms with the political clout to affect the tariff were vertically integrated.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 891 - 907
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1988

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References

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