Since writing “Cotton Competition,“ I have many times wished that I had never included the paragraph joining pages 632 and 633, since figures that were intended as no more than back-of-the-envelope confirmation of the econometric results have been cited as the central conclusions of the study. To make matters worse, the demand-shift formula was incorrectly applied, most seriously in the exaggerated decline in demand for American cotton between 1860 and 1870. For these reasons I am grateful to John Hanson for making these corrections and for giving me an opportunity to disown this particular halfdozen numbers.

This paper analyzes 1850 cost data for a sample of 36 steamboats operating on five routes. The results indicate no economies or diseconomies of scale. Substantial differences in the cost per ton-mile are found between routes. These differences are largely explained by differences in capacity utilization.

From 1841 throught 1845 and again in 1847 and 1848 ofiicials of the United States patent Office estimated the output of the principal agricultural crops of each state and territory. These estimates have been generally disregarded by economic historians, presumably because their acuracy has been considered questionable. But I have bee unable to find any published, comprehensive evaluation of them. In this note I will briefly examine the methods used to make the crop estimates and apply a few checks againsts the results, with the object of evaluating them, in a preliminary way, as historical data.

The period between 1860 and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 saw the pound sterling moving into even the most isolated corners of the world, seeking, amoeba-like, to reproduce itself with a minimum of effort. Among other areas to feel its impact and to reap its benefits was the American West, particularly the mineral frontier. Records of the Board of Trade indicate that during these forty-one years at least 518 British joint-stock companies were incorporated, with a total nominal capitalization of not less than £77,705,751, to engage in mining and milling activities in the intermountain West, exclusive of the Pacific Coast.

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.

The aim of this discussion is to elucidate the evolution of the management concepts, organizational patterns, and policies of the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey). In point of fact, these topics are discussed primarily with reference to the origin and development of the Standard Oil combination under its various legal titles prior to 1911. The policies and practices, both sound and unsound, of the men who administered the Jersey Company in its early years were largely those of the men who created the combination.

Financially, the Federal Government was more poorly prepared for war in the early months of 1861 than it had been since its establishment. The financial policies of the government in the period preceding the war weakened its credit; and this, along with the urgency of the conflict, was to make short-term borrowing and the printing of paper money attractive but costly wartime expedients. Although the failure to finance the war on a sound basis cannot be ascribed merely to prewar financial conditions and policies, the stage was set by them. The regression to earlier methods of war finance began even before the war.

This study constructs indexes of productivity change to show that the yield of prairie farm land fell, in some cases as much as 25 percent, while the productivity of non-land inputs rose 300 percent or more from 1900 to 1930. It was this latter productivity growth, rather than the supply of prairie wheat land emphasized by the “staples approach” to Canadian economic history, that made the western prairie profitable to farm, and that contributed most to expanding the supply of prairie wheat. Much of the post-World War I expansion of settlement was on the drier and relatively low yielding parts of the Canadian prairie.

Differences in the school and work experience of young girls and boys are explained by factors related to the demand for household production including the presence of young children, boarders and lodgers, and home ownership. Gender based differences in job characteristics and hourly earnings associated with occupational segregation contributed to the observed pattern of higher schooling investment by girls and earlier work experience by boys.

This paper provides evidence regarding the extent of antebellum trade in major agricultural products between the West and the Northeast, the types of products involved, and the magnitude of surpluses or deficits. We found that West-Northeast trade was more important than West-South trade.

Trade protection commonly is viewed as a support—external and perhaps occasional—granted to an industry by government policymakers. Focusing on the steel industry, this study argues that protection is better viewed as a commodity, an input into the production of steel. The development of the market for the protection commodity during the past century is related to the history of regional, national, and international markets for steel.