Greek colonization had a long and varied history; it had begun indeed had already accomplished its first great period of expansion before the first Greek historians wrote; it continued in different forms intermittently throughout the classical period, had a second great era under Alexander the Great and the early Hellenistic monarchies, and again persisted with modifications after Rome became mistress of the eastern Mediterranean. The result we all know: the Greek polis, that closely integrated self-governing community of citizens, became the dominant political unit and political ideal of the Mediterranean world, and left its indelible imprint, for good or ill, on the Western World.

The first president of our Association, Edwin F. Gay, remarked to me as he was pondering the subject of his presidential address that presidents of learned societies should present in their messages to their scholarly colleagues the results of their current research. This seems to me to be a capital idea, but, as I look back upon the speeches of my predecessors, I discover how few have followed the counsel of our wise and esteemed forebear. Even Gay himself, in his command performance, failed to adhere to his own precept. Most of our presidential addresses have been devoted to making suggestions for research (mostly to be undertaken by others), to delineating the broad “tasks” of economic history, to defending the kind of work in which the speaker has been engaged, and to advocating some particular methodology in our discipline. In the course of time, our presidents have exposed a variety of positions, have espoused a multitude of causes, and from time to time have excited controversy. They have created a tradition that presidential addresses should be homilies and exhortations.

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.

The International Bankers Committee on Mexico has been generally ignored by American diplomatic historians, and those who have mentioned it have missed the basic significance of its organization and operation. The writer of the leading text dealing with the Latin American policy of the United States devotes less than a paragraph to the Committee and says, “The United States did not even demand arbitration. It left the bondholders to their own representations to the Mexican Government.” This statement can be compared to a description of an iceberg which deals only with that part showing above the surface of the water. The heart of this presentation will be the analysis of that part of the Committee's activities which lay beneath the surface—a study in the interaction of government, business, and revolution. The basic thesis involved is that the Committee was an unofficial instrument of the United States government, as it attempted to influence certain aspects of the Mexican Revolution.

The 1930s American Dust Bowl created archetypal “Dust Bowl migrants,” refugees from environmental collapse. I examine this archetype, comparing migration from more-eroded and less-eroded counties to distinguish Dust Bowl migrants from other migrants. Dust Bowl migrants were “negatively selected,” in years of education, compared to other migrants who were “positively selected.” Dust Bowl migrants had lower incomes than natives in their destinations, which is reflected in popular impressions. I estimate strikingly modest impacts of the Dust Bowl on average wage incomes in 1939, however, which contrasts with the Dust Bowl’s large and enduring impacts on agricultural land.

We examine the politics of the “Salary Grab” of 1873, legislation that increased congressional salaries retroactively by 50 percent. A group of New England and Midwestern elites opposed the Salary Grab, along with congressional franking and patronage-based civil service appointments, as part of a reform effort to reshape “who should govern Congress.” Our analyses of congressional voting confirm the existence of this nonparty elite coalition. Although these elites lost many legislative battles in the short run, their efforts kept reform on the legislative agenda throughout the late nineteenth century and ultimately set the stage for the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century.

Opposition to Japanese immigration led to Alien Land Laws that barred Japanese immigrants from buying or leasing farmland. Although there is general agreement that the 1913 California Alien Land Law had little impact, historians and social scientists have differed over the effectiveness of the 1920 initiative, which closed loopholes in the earlier law. Census data show a decline in Japanese American agriculture over the short and long run, which cannot be fully explained by the agricultural downturn of the 1920s. This evidence indicates that the 1920 California Alien Land Law had negative consequences for Japanese immigrant farmers.

We test for integration of financial markets in China during 1920-1933 using a new dataset of domestic exchange rates. Our data concerns tael-denominated telegraphic transfers between Shanghai and nine other cities. We find that Chinese financial markets, as measured by the efficiency of silver-point arbitrage, were highly integrated among major commercial hubs in north and central China, but there was a lower level of integration for more remote cities in the south. Our paper presents the first comprehensive assessment of the efficiency of the Chinese silver standard and contributes to a revaluation of market performance during pre-communist China.

Seventeenth-century planters developed a new system of husbandry, a long fallow, hoe-based agriculture that raised tobacco for export and Indian corn for subsistence. Plentiful land and shortages of labor characterized the system, which had few economies of scale. It provided rapid increases in wealth during the farm building stages, but its land and labor constraints set limits on growth. Eighteenth-century adaptations created economies of scale that permitted planters to grow grains for export without reducing tobacco crops. Planters who did not adopt these changes did not share in the resulting prosperity, and many left.

The expansion of short-staple cotton production into the southern backcountry during the nineteenth century opened opportunities for backcountry planters and yeomen alike. But contrary to the claims made by agricultural reformers, South Carolina upcountry farmers did not neglect the production of foodstuffs. The Upcountry as a whole was self-sufficient in foodstuffs though a significant minority of farms failed to achieve self-sufficiency. Thus a limited local market in foodstuffs developed, but it did little to stimulate the development of towns in the region.

In the 1986 volume of this JOURNAL we discussed the frequency of retirement and downward occupational mobility (on-the-job retirement) of older men in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.1 As we noted, study of retirement in the years before World War II is hampered by the lack of data on the labor force status of individuals. Indeed, until the concept of “gainful employment” was replaced by that of the “labor force” in 1940, the official census figures on occupations contained a large proportion of older men and women who by today's standard would be regarded as retired2.

Between 1852 and 1883 the nature and organization of work in the American shoe industry changed due to the introduction of machinery and the factory system. For generations before 1852 shoes had been made by hand in small workshops organized through a putting out system. Each artisan possessed the skill and tools to make an entire shoe by hand, and work was intertwined with family life. With the introduction of machinery, making a shoe was divided into many distinct tasks, each performed by a different worker, and work was moved into a factory where it came under closer supervision.

From its beginning the Quebec dairy industry was characterized by many small factories producing butter and cheese of such a low quality that the British called all bad cheese coming from Canada “Joseph.” The Société d'industrie laitière, created in 1882 to promote the industry, asked the government to impose compulsory inspection, licensing, and grading. Between 1905 and 1921 the government finally but reluctantly responded.

A unique aspect of agricultural production as a biological process is that it is basically conditioned by natural environments. Agricultural technology is so developed as to be efficient in the given environmental conditions in addition to being consistent with relative factor and product prices. In consequence, there is a tendency for agricultural technology to become location-specific, and its direct transfer is limited within a small area of similar environmental conditions.

Bank failures in Chicago during 1930–1932 are examined to determine whether failures were attributable to poor management practices or to worsening economic conditions. Non-Loop state-chartered banks were divided into those which did not fail and those which failed in 1930, 1931, and 1932. Portfolio variables which contemporary writers held were indicative of poor management practices are used in a multiple discriminant analysis. Using semiannual bank call reports from December 1927 through December 1929, support was found for the poor management hypothesis only for banks destined to fail in 1931

During the air conditioner industry's first four decades, most installations were “commercial comfort” air conditioning systems, purchased by retailers to increase demand for their products. Air conditioning spread unevenly through the commercial sector and across the country. Using data from a variety of sources, I offer a quantitative account of this diffusion, viewed through an interpretive framework that emphasizes differences across geographic markets and industries in the costs and benefits to retailers of installing air conditioning. Correlates of early adoption of commercial air conditioning include electricity rates and consumer income and education levels.

We examine shifts in British income inequality and their causes from 1911–1949. Using newly rediscovered Inland Revenue income distribution estimates, we show that Britain had an unusually high concentration of personal incomes in 1911 compared to other industrial nations. We also find that Britain’s substantial inequality reduction over the next four decades was largely driven by a collapse in top capital incomes. This parallels findings for France, the United States, and other western countries, that reduced inequality was mainly caused by declining top unearned incomes, owing to economic shocks, policy responses, and non-market mechanisms associated with the retreat from globalization.

From the earliest period the communities of the Latin tribes of central Italy and of the remaining Italiots made use of a few slaves as herdsmen, field hands, and probably as domestic servants to meet the simple demands of their small-farm life. No doubt these slaves were employed also in the household weaving of wearing apparel, in the fabrication of those offensive and defensive weapons needed in the wars with their neighbors, and in the production of the tools required for the still simple operations characteristic of Italian farming of that time. Enslavement appears in the Laws of the Twelve Tables, which can safely be dated about 450 B.C. There is no mention of slaves in the two early treaties between Rome and Carthage, as given by Polybius. Livy tells us very briefly of the imposition of a five per cent tax upon manumissions, which was passed in 357 B.C. if we may trust the statement and accept his dating of it. The picture of early Roman slavery as gained from these few primary data, and from literary sources even less trustworthy, is that of a simple agricultural use of a slave population whose numbers were relatively small. This would hold true down to about 352 B.C.

The Russian Industrial Society, the first national organization of commercial and industrial interests in the empire, attempted to win governmental support for a comprehensive program of economic development. It enjoyed some successes in the fields of tariff protection, factory legislation, and the conquest of Central Asia. The tsarist bureaucracy, however, proved unwilling or unable to implement rational reforms in such key areas as subsoil mineral rights, monopolies, and corporate law. Moreover, policy disagreements among the society's regional branches, especially those in Moscow, Warsaw, and Lodz, weakened the organization from the 1880s onward.