This study presents three sets of data dealing with Federal Government revenues, expenditures, and financing for the period 1861–1875. These extend and augment the author's previous estimates covering the years through 1860. The first set presents expenditures classified by major function, annual, by fiscal year ending June 30. The second set consists of annual estimates of Federal revenue and expenditures on a money-flow basis comparable to the national income accounts. The two sets differ slightly in totals because of differing degrees of netting.

Anyone interested in the historical anlysis of the emergence of a wage labor force in the early stages of industrialization will find much of interest in Rashin's study of the Russian case. The value of this study, an expansion and elaboration of a work published in 1940, lies in both over-all and sector estimates of the growth and composition of the work force, and in detailed data on specific aspects of the movement from the land to the factory.

By the 1820's, New England was in ferment. Unitarianism had shattered the old religious orthodoxy and, while the Dedham case provided a material dowry for the new religion, the sermons of William Ellery Channing furnished a theology and creed. In politics the dogmas of regional Federalism were weakened and soon Daniel Webster was to celebrate the virtues of an embracing nationalism which Pickering and his fellow conspirators of an earlier period would have found incomprehensible. Along the Merrimack were arising the cotton-mill towns, symbols of a new industrialism. An old order was giving way to a new. Once begun, change accelerated and touched one by one the institutions and ideas of the region. Of the economic factors that gave momentum to this transformation, the railroad was the most important. For it was the railroad that after 1830 tied New England into the nation. No longer was it to be a fringe of Hanseatic ports communicating with the rest of the world and with America by sea; it was to become a section in a developing nation. When Emerson wrote of Massachusetts, “From 1790 to 1820, there was not a book, a speech, a conversation, or a thought in the State,” he should have added that there was not a railroad. For the railroad, even though it may not have opened wider prospects, at least revealed different ones.

The extension of social insurance during the twentieth century did not translate into homogeneous pension provision. Using a new database, this article analyzes the evolution of pensions in the long run for a sample of welfare states. The convergence in old age benefits as a share of earnings is only found for all earnings levels between 1970 and 1990. The results also underline the role as determinants of pension policy of both domestic and external factors. In line with previous literature, income per capita and the share of old people are key drivers of pensions. However, the effect of globalization is negative, especially for low and medium earnings levels.

How long did it take for early rapid capitalist transformations to benefit the majority of the population? This essay examines three presumed success cases, concluding that rapid capitalist development took at least five decades to benefit the majority. A neglected political force for success was the effectiveness of local public and quasi-public institutions in creating wide networks of transportation and other public investments responsive to changing market requirements. Economists today should pay close attention to distributional benefits and local government effectiveness before urging western brands of capitalism on countries where failures to benefit the majority threaten severe political instability.