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White Population, Labor Force and Extensive Growth of the New England Economy in the Seventeenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Terry L. Anderson  and
Robert Paul Thomas
Terry L. Anderson
Affiliation:
Montana State University
Robert Paul Thomas
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

Economic historians have always recognized the importance of changes in population to any investigation of economic growth or well-being. The payments to labor in every economy, even the highly industrialized modern economies, always constitute the bulk of national income when figured via the factor payments method. Hence what happens to the size and rate of compensation of the labor force is crucial to any economic history. With this in mind we present below new decade population and labor force estimates as a first step toward understanding the overall growth of seventeenth-century New England.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , September 1973 , pp. 634 - 667
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1973

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References

We feel an obligation for efforts expended by Richard Dyksterhuis, Kenneth Stetson, William Orme and the editors of this Journal. We especially want to thank Paul David for his very helpful comments and criticism.

1 For the most recent books dealing with the demographic issue, see Greven, Philip J., Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Demos, John, A Little Commonwealth:Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Lockridge, Kenneth A., A New England Town—The First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1970)Google Scholar. Also see Vinovskis, Maris A., “The 1789 Life Table of Edward Wigglesworth,” Journal Of Economic History, XXXI (Sept. 1971), 570–590Google Scholar; Smith, Daniel Scott, “The Demographic History of Colonial New England,” Journal Of Economic History, XXXII (March 1972), 165–183Google Scholar and Vinovskis, Maris A., “Mortality Rates and Trends in Massachusetts before 1860,” Journal Of Economic History, XXXII (March 1972), 184–213Google Scholar.

2 Rossiter, W. S., A Century of Population Growth from the First Census of the United States to the Twelfth 1790–1900 (Washington: G.P.O., 1909)Google Scholar.

3 Dexter, Franklin B., “Estimates of Population in the American Colonies,” American Antiquarian Society (Oct. 1887), 22–50Google Scholar.

4 Sutherland, Stella H., “Estimated Population of American Colonies: 1610–1780,” Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1960), p. 756Google Scholar.

5 Greene, Evarts B. and Harrington, Virginia D., American Population Before'the Federal Census of 1790 (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1966), pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

6 Historical Statistics, p. 743 and Greene & Harrington, American Population, p. xxxiii.

7 For a discussion of the Malthusian growth rate, see T. R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798, as reprinted in the Royal Economics Society Reprint of 1926, pp. 20–21. Also see “The Growth of Population in America, 1700–1860,” by J. Potter published in Population in History, edited by D. V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley.

8 For the original development of this model, see Lotka, Alfred J., Elements of Physical Biology (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Co., 1925)Google Scholar. The application of this model by die author to colonial population is found in “The Size of American Families in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, XXII (1927), 154Google Scholar.

9 Coale, Ansley J., “Convergence of a Human Population to Stable Form,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, LXIII (June 1968), 395–96Google Scholar.

10 Bailyn, Bernard, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1955), p. 16Google Scholar.

11 Greene & Harrington, American Population, p. 8.

12 A review of the colonial population literature reveals the lack of direct quantitative estimates of immigration. Qualitatively, however, there is little indication of substantial immigration to New England following the Puritan movement. Also, while there is some record of families returning to England or moving to other parts of the New World to seek their fortunes, out migration appears negligible. This is not surprising when one considers the tight family structure that social historians have adequately described. Hostility toward strangers was enough to turn most newcomers away, especially when compared to the friendly prospects in the Chesapeake region. For a discussion of the lack of migration to New England after the Great Migration, see Cassedy, James H., Demography in Early America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 40, 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Cassedy, Demography in Early America, pp. 40, 233.

14 Higgs, Robert and Stettler, H. Louis, III, “Colonial New England Demography: A Sampling Approach,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, XXVIII (April 1970), 282–294CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 For a discussion of the influence of Indian warfare, see Mathews, Lois Kimball, The Expansion of New England (New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1962), pp. 443–75Google Scholar.

16 The following linear regression with average size of completed family as the dependent variable and time as the independent variable shows the slope coefficient to be insignificant at any level.

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18 The Concept of a Stable Population, published in the United Nations Population Studies, No. 39, 1968, p. 39.

19 In order to employ this model, we are forced to assume that the vectors m(a) and p(a) do not exhibit significant temporal variation. By assuming that these relationships are stable, we eliminate sources of possible fluctuations in the growth rate. The stable population growth rate is the actual growth rate only if our assumptions are realistic.

20 Henripin, Jacques, Le Population Canadienne Au Debut Du XVIII Siecle Nuptialite-Mortalite Infantile (Presses Universitaires De France, 1954), pp. 39, 50Google Scholar.

21 Joseph B. Felt, “Statistics of Towns in Massachusetts,” Collections of the American Statistical Association, Vol. I, part II, pp. 136–38.

22 Greven, Four Generations, pp. 193, 196.

23 Methods for Population Projection by Sex and Age, published in the United Nations Population Studies, No. 25, 1956.

24 Felt, “Statistics,” p. 137.

25 Douglass, William, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and the Present State of the British Settlements in North America (London: R. & J. Dodsley, 1760), Vol. I, p.531Google Scholar.

26 Richard S. Dunn, “The Barbados Census of 1680: Profile of the Richest Colony in English America,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, XXVI, 7.

27 Bridenbaugh, Carl, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 471–73Google Scholar; Banks, Charles Edward, The Planters of the Commonwealth, 1820–1640 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), p. 12Google Scholar.

28 Rutman, Darrett B., Winthrop's Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630–1649 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963), p. 179Google Scholar.

29 For complete estimates of the growth of Massachusetts' population between 1630 and 1650, see Rutman, Winthrop's Boston, p. 179.

30 Bailyn, New England Merchants, p. 73.

31 It should be noted that labor force here includes all workers producing for the market. Hence the figure includes farm children who were productive yet unpaid. This inclusion may indeed account for the IV2 percent difference between our seventeenth-century figure and nineteenth-century estimates. See David, Paul, “The Growth of Real Product in the United States Before 1840: New Evidence arid Controlled Conjectures,” Journal Of Economic History, XXVII (June 1967), 163–167Google Scholar.

32 Morgan, Edward S., The Puritan Family (New York: Harper & Row, 1944), p. 67Google Scholar.

33 Jones, Alice Hanson, “Wealth Estimates for the American Middle Colonies, 1774,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, XVIII, part 2, July 1970, p. 112Google Scholar.

34 Whitaker, Joseph, An Amanack for the Year of Our Lord 1893 (London: Office 12, Warwick Lane, 1895), pp. 357–58Google Scholar.

35 Greven, Four Generations, p. 196.

36 For a rigorous derivation of this relationship, see Lotka, “The Size of American Families in the Eighteenth Century.”