Europeans have been coming to America and commenting about the nature of American technology for over a century. Despite the evident economic changes in the course of this century, the comments on the differences between American and European technology—or, more properly for the nineteenth century, on the differences between American and British technology—have stayed remarkably constant. The factors noted by a few British visitors of the 1850's, perhaps the first technically qualified foreign group to take a careful look at American manufacturing, still form the backbone of discussion today. Chief among the factors noted is the high cost of American labor, but this explanation of American peculiarities by no means stands alone.

“The peasant” is consistently cited as an obstacle to economic development in Africa. He is unwilling, it is said, to alter traditional practices and behavior, and is thus unable to take advantage of economic opportunities. As Stephen Enke puts it, “The resource in shortest supply, in most backward but developing countries, is officials who can argue ordinary people into forsaking tradition and risking new ways.” And E. S. Mason has stressed the complexity of “the process by which a group of tribally organized and self-sufficient peasants, sowing and reaping in accordance with age old traditions and possessing limited and easily satisfied wants, become a collection of risk-taking individuals, responsive to price and income incentives, and interested in conserving their land and improving its productivity.” In numerous instances, however, African farmers have rapidly accepted new crops and new techniques and have shown a high propensity to innovate, to accept risk, and to invest well in advance of returns. The sharp increases in the production of export crops show this to be true. Between 1919 and 1959, exports of Ghana (Gold Coast) rose 838 per cent, those of Nigeria 955 per cent, and those of (former) French West Africa 1,031 per cent. In all three cases, radical shifts in crop pattern and new practices in cultivation, planting, and harvesting were involved.

The power loom, which had almost completely replaced the hand loom in America by 1860, remained the center of continuous technical development until about 1880. The main effects of the improvements were to increase the speed at which the looms could be operated and to decrease the amount of attention a weaver had to devote to a single loom. Estimates of plain looms tended by one weaver range from four to twelve; six is the most frequently cited figure, based upon the census report for 1880. The number of looms a weaver could tend was limited because of the frequent need—at least once every eight minutes, or about one hundred times a day—for him to stop the loom to place a new bobbin of yarn in the shuttle. With the number of looms per weaver set at about six and allowing for certain improvements in carding and spinning, weaving costs formed at least half of the total labor cost of manufacturing textile fabric.

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.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries British overseas territories under control of the Colonial Office were required to place all business affairs which could not be handled within their own boundaries or those of an adjacent British area in the hands of an office in London known as the Crown Agents for the Colonies.