As Fritz Redlich has had occasion to point out, business history is neither of American nor of recent vintage–that interest in company histories which began on the Continent early in the nineteenth century had by 1900 prompted at least one prominent German scholar to suggest how a study of business might be developed into an academic discipline. What was new in the United States was the term “business history,” and what is more relevant for my comments in this paper were the circumstances that led to its emergence as a special field and the effect that this separation has had on the relationship between business history and economic history.

From the earliest time, the United States and her predecessor colonies stood close to or at the very forefront of the world in the educational attainment of the mass of the populace. The first available literacy statistics of 1840 testify to that past impressive accomplishment: overall, more than 90 per cent of white adults achieved this degree of minimum competence, and even in the laggard South the record was not significantly poorer. At that date only Scotland and Germany are comparable, with England and France much farther behind. What therefore seems to be the case is that popular education successfully preceded an extensive system of publicly supported and controlled schools.

What role the railroad played and how changes in transportstimulated American economic advance, while puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. And such questions never lacked for conjecture. But recent studies have given a rigorous and brilliant cast to that inquiry, if not a totally novel one. An older tradition was shaped by the historian's desire to see economic change “as it was,” by his recognition that every happening was indispensable to the actual course of history. The newer focus, on history “as it was not,” reflects a belief that in economic affairs, as in those of the heart, desire will find its object—or a sufficiently close substitute. It i s difficult for the economist to view any historic innovation as revolutionary or to equate technological novelty with economic importance. It is an easy step to use comparative statics; to measure history “as it was not”; and thereby to define economic importance.

The belief that the state should, can, and must contrive to make its subjects wealthier, and that in part this can be done through its taxing powers, certainly is one of the most powerful concepts in modern times. Intuitively it seems that this belief must arise from important and strongly rooted developments starting far back in the history of Western thought and institutions. Economic historians concerned with the history of economic growth ought to be able to demonstrate which developments produced this belief, and when. But work on this highly interesting problem of origins has yet to be begun. The dimensions of the problem, at least, can be presented by sketching in the main developments for one country, France, over the whole period from a time when the concept of a beneficent national fisc obviously was still unborn to that point when it was alive and thriving. Viewed as an essay on the history of economic thought, this paper is a suggestion that some of the concepts concerning French mercantilism found in modern writings need to be improved. The questions to be raised are: At what point did influential persons in France begin to argue that by changing its tax policies the state could promote what we call economic growth? And when can we say that an important part of royal fiscal policy was aimed at promoting the wealth of the king's subjects?

At the close of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 Prussia was an industrial backwater. By the mid 1860's Prussia had achieved a considerable degree of industrialization. In a sense, her economy had “taken off.” The turning point dates from around 1840 and was closely related to railroad building. Before 1840 industrial investment grew haltingly. The combination of inadequate markets and the lack of supporting enterprise made industrial investment—particularly in those lines in which Europe's industrial leader, England, was already specialized—too risky and/or its anticipated yields too low for most potential investors, who preferred to invest in real estate, commerce, and in foreign government bonds. As leading Prussian entrepreneurs argued, the country's industrial development required public investment in river improvements, roads, canals, railroads, banks, and other facilities which would generate external economies and make private investment, for example in metalworking enterprise, more profitable. Theoretically, such public investment could have been financed by curtailing other governmental expenditures, by taxing unproductive consumption, and/or by borrowing. The technical proficiency required by such investments was either domestically available or could be readily borrowed from abroad. Even Prussian political economy, through its interpretation of the Classicists, reflected these conditions and called for state assistance. The will, the means, and a rationale for a program of public investment were at hand: one could truly speak of an abundance of “advantages of backwardness” in Prussia after 1815.

Throughout the first hundred years of Canadian Confederation, an underlying problem in the struggle to “unite and integrate the separate regions” in a viable national economy has been the continuing interaction between disparate rates of regional economic growth and unequal levels of regional public services. This paper is an attempt to set out in a general way the extent and significance of differences in regional expenditures by government in Canada and to inquire into their possible relationships with variations in rates of growth and levels of regional per capita incomes. It also indicates a spatial distribution of public expenditures at all three levels of government and notes some implications for national and regional development policy currently in the forefront of public debate in Canada.

Casual perusal could easily lead one to conclude that “the government” represents one of the most thoroughly researched areas in American economic history; however, there is something quite unsettling about a more careful scrutiny of its historiography. While the list of historians who have made their reputations by studying the importance of government through its impact on land policy, transportation, business, etc., etc., etc., is almost too long to enumerate, those authors who have attempted to measure the dollar value of these contributions have come to the conclusion that they must have been quite small. This paper provides no final resolution to this apparent paradox, but it does suggest at least one possible solution. It examines the spatial distribution of governmental activity and indicates that while, in total, that activity was almost always small, there were significant differences between the level of activity in different regions, and these differences may have contributed to differentials in regional growth patterns.

Over a century ago the American economist Henry C. Carey wrote that the masters of slaves “feel that they consult their own interests in feeding, clothing, and lodging them well, because wealth increases faster than population, and their labor becomes daily more valuable.” The change in the wealth/labor ratio which Carey noted is a fundamental aspect of economic growth. Carey saw its consequences in terms of the better care bestowed upon the slave by his master, but with appropriate modifications the same consequences apply to the free worker in a maturing industrial society.

My thesis is a study of finance and industrialization in Italy between 1894 and 1914. Alexander Gerschenkron has argued that the years between 1896 and 1908 in Italy were the years of her “big spurt,” basing his analysis largely on an index of industrial production which he prepared for the period 1881-1913. In many cases the value of output was estimated by the value of inputs; in these instances, value added by industry was understated. In a number of instances the data problems were such that the estimates were very crude approximations of actual production. Nevertheless, when these indexes are combined with other available data on Italian industrial development, the years 1894-1914 stand out as the period during which the nation created her industrial base; only the expansion of the post-World War II years exceeded the growth rates achieved during this period.

The thesis is an economic study of Louisiana's banking and financial system from the chartering of the first bank in 1804 to the Civil War. Primary attention is focused on the chartered banks, and on the years after the mid 1820's. This emphasis results in part from the limitations of available evidence but also from a belief that the chartered bank was the most important financial institution and that the major development of the Louisiana economy occurred after 1820. The study moves from an examination of the internal structure of the banking system itself to its setting in the state and worldwide financial system, its relations to government policy, and finally to the role of the financial system in the fluctuations and developmental patterns in the larger economy.

It is well known that foreign capital was very important in Russian industry before the revolution. Various investigators have attempted to quantify this foreign investment by industry and nationality; according to the most generally reproduced estimate, almost one third of the total capital of all industrial corporations operating in Russia was held by foreigners in 1914. These statistical studies, which sum up much of our present knowledge of foreign enterprise in Russia, are set forth in the introductory chapters.

The point of departure of this dissertation is the observation that, over the entire period for which statistics are available, regional differences in income per capita in Canada have remained unchanged. Five commonly recognized regions of the country are considered: the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairie Provinces, and British Columbia. Official statistical series show that the relative levels of income per capita in the five regions have been about the same in recent years as in the late 1920's, when the series begins. In a world of continuous change there may be no single expected trend of regional income differentials, but convergence does seem to be a common pattern among the industrially advanced nations of the world.2 The Canadian experience is sufficiently interesting to call for further examination. The dissertation summarized here begins this examination in two ways: estimates of regional per capita income are made for some years prior to the beginning of the official series and a preliminary examination of some important factors influencing regional income differences is begun.

The eccentric Innis was too complex a personality and too prolific and varied in his writings to be treated with justice in a short space. He ranks with James Mavor and Stephen Leacock as a great character in Canadian intellectual history. In the present sketch only the main lines of his contribution to economics can be drawn.

This dissertation attempts to identify the main determinants of the diffusion of technological change in the mid-nineteenth-century Pennsylvania pig iron industry, and to explain the efficiency and profitability of establishments in this industry.

It is widely accepted that improvements in transportation were an important feature of Western development. However, in contrast to the research undertaken on transportation after 1775, very little study has been undertaken on the development of transportation before the Revolution. The main theme of this study is productivity change in ocean shipping on colonial routes, 1675-1775. The primary objectives are twofold: to estimate the change of productivity and to determine the sources of that change.