Until the close of the Civil War, shipowning was one of the principal forms of capital investment along our northern seaboard. Gradually, investors found other outlets for their surplus wealth in government funds, in bank and insurance stocks; in railroads, and in factories. Although its relative importance had declined, shipowning reached its peak on the eve of the Civil War. After that, it declined sharply.

The immediate future of economic history is here. As I look over the program of our sessions, it seems plain that all of us are bound to be thinking about the nature of that future. Our president will speak on this subject with an authority that the rest of us cannot command. But it is up to each of us, however humble, to make such a contribution as the means at our disposal permit. Creative discussion always helps men to edge a little closer toward the truth. Let us hope there will be much of it during the next two days. Professor Innis has asked me to open the formal part of this session by some brief remarks on the relation of economic history to American civilization. I thank him for his confidence, but wish that he had placed the task in more competent hands. The subject I have selected is a vast and complicated one, and all I can hope to offer are a few rough and general suggestions. What I have to say is intended to provoke discussion.

For many years Arthur Young (1741–1820), greatest of all English agricultural publicists, was closely associated with the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, established in London in March 1754. Each year the Society of Arts, as it soon came to be called, offered premiums for desirable inventions and improvements in such diverse fields as agriculture, manufactures, chemistry, colonies and trade, and the polite arts. In his numerous books Young frequently commented on the activities of the Society, while the eight volumes of Young manuscript letters in the British Museum contain scattered references to his relations with the Society. A large portion of this article is based, however, upon the manuscript records of the Society of Arts, which I was permitted to examine and use through the courtesy of Mr. Charles Durant Cassidy, librarian and examinations officer, and Dr. Frank R. Lewis, assistant secretary. These records consist of minutes, letters, unpublished transactions, and especially records of the various committees which examined all applications for premiums and made the awards. Among the records are eight unpublished manuscript letters written by Young, two of which are reproduced as an appendix to this article.

Industrial expansion depends upon the state of the industrial arts. If we are to explain the rise of “modern industry” we must know precisely what the technological developments were in particular industries during those periods that are recognized as having been extremely important in the development of modern industrial techniques. This study, therefore, deals with the growth, structure, and technology of the French glass industry during a critical period (1640–1740).

It is a great honor, deeply appreciated, to be chosen first president of the Economic History Association. I cannot pretend to act as spokesman for this newly organized scientific group. I assume that I owe my present honor and responsibility partly to the number of years I have imperfectly taught economic history—and, I hope, stimulated some interest in it—and partly to your recognition of the principle of historical continuity. For I was a student under Schmoller at Berlin; he in turn was a pupil of Roscher (whose last lectures at Leipsic I heard); and Roscher, almost a century ago, was one of the first historical economists and the original formulator of a program for the new “school” of economics. I wish to recall to your attention these beginnings of our discipline in order to emphasize how the subsequent shift in its development has made us economic historians instead of historical economists.

France is often described as the country that planned its network of railroads with the greatest care, wisely arranging for private construction and operation under control of the Government. She deserves criticism, it has been said, only because it took ten years to make these excellent arrangements. Yet most of the writers who have painted this rather attractive picture have not looked beyond the well-known books of Audiganne and Kaufmann, studies based chiefly upon collections of French statutes and legislative debates as well as the best known contemporary newspapers and literary reviews. Little attention has been paid to the Corps des ponts et chaussées, whose activities were far more important than the speeches of its director in the Chambers. Little concern has been given to the vital problem of obtaining the very large amounts of capital that were needed, or to the influence of the serious depression that began in 1837.

Between 1815 and 1850, the economic policy of England was marked by several far-reaching reforms advocated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and their disciples. Revision of monetary and banking policy, abandonment of the archaic Navigation Acts, and eventual repeal of the Corn Laws, all bear the unmistakable impress of the influence of the classical economists.

This paper deals with the relation between statistical analysis as applied in economic inquiry and history as written or interpreted by economic historians. Although both these branches of economic study derive from the same body of raw materials of inquiry—the recordable past and present of economic society—each has developed in comparative isolation from the other. Statistical economists have failed to utilize adequately the contributions that economic historians have made to our knowledge of the past; and historians have rarely employed either the analytical tools or the basic theoretical hypotheses of statistical research. It is the thesis of this essay that such failure to effect a close interrelation between historical approach and statistical analysis needs to be corrected in the light of the final goal of economic study.

In this paper I intend to confine myself to one aspect of the manysided changes which came over English political economy between the publication of John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848) and of Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics (1890). During this period great theoretical advances were made by W. S. Jevons and Alfred Marshall, advances which were paralleled in Lausanne and Vienna, and pushed further on the American continent by Professors J. B. Clark and Irving Fisher. I shall not attempt to summarize these contributions to pure theory, nor to estimate how wide was the gulf between the theory of Mill and the theory of Marshall (but in parenthesis I cannot refrain from suggesting that the real change in the theory of value was relatively small, while the change in the theory of distribution which derived from it was revolutionary). It is more appropriate at this first annual meeting of the Economic History Association to discuss the change in the status of economic theory in the corpus of economics as a result, mainly, of the influence of the historical school. Emphasis will be placed on the terms of peace rather than on the war of the methods, for it is my purpose to emphasize the possibilities of cooperation rather than to revive old antagonisms. I want to discuss the influence of some economic historians on economics. I shall make frequent reference to William Ashley, first professor of political economy in the University of Toronto and first professor of economic history in Harvard University and, I think, on the American continent. If I give him undue prominence this can surely be forgiven a Toronto man on this occasion.

Much has been written concerning the fraudulent and coercive practices that frequently attended the importation of contract laborers into the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In an effort to eliminate these abuses, a great deal of publicity was given to these unsavory practices. In contrast, there is a dearth of documentary evidence on cases in which a contract arrangement was mutually advantageous to both the contract laborer and the employer. Yet there must have been many such instances.

Archeologists assure us that organized social life has existed on this earth for about two hundred and fifty thousand years. How millions of people have sought to satisfy their wants over this tremendous span of time is the acknowledged province of economic history. Yet, for lack of records, the gild of economic historians must, for the most part, confine their attention to the last one per cent of this time span; indeed the great bulk of research in economic history is devoted the last one-tenth of one per cent of the archeologists' two hundred and fifty thousand years of social history. Even then the economic historian is utterly overwhelmed with facts. He who essays to write the economic history of the United States, for example, must depict as best can the economic activities of people for more than a hundred and fifty years, farmers, merchants, manufacturers, wage-earners, rentiers; men, women and children in all walks of life, in all variety of occupations. The task is utterly staggering. An army of economic historians would be required to write a complete economic history of the United States; a regiment at least to write a faithful factual account of a single industry.

Peter A. Schenck, Surveyor of Customs and Inspector of Revenue for the Port of New York, must have felt slightly exhilarated when he left his office on the evening of December 30, 1807. He had that day wielded for the first time the two-edged sword placed in his hands by Congress for the destruction of British maritime arrogance. Nay more, he had struck at least seven times, by seizing that number of shipments of British goods which had arrived in two vessels ten days before. In a few days Nathan Sanford, the District Attorney, would file seven separate libels in the Federal District Court on behalf of the United States vs. twenty-two bales of woolen cloth, two cases of hats, eight boxes linen cloth, sixteen boxes of linens, one case of woolen hosiery, two cases of plated ware, and two boxes of woolen hosiery. The goods would doubtless be condemned, for Sanford was a clever lawyer and the district judge was not, like the fellow up in Massachusetts, unfriendly to Jeffersonian policies. Later the United States marshal, Peter Curtenius, would have them sold by auction outside the Tontine Coffee House; the court and marshal's costs—totaling about $120 in each case—would be paid, and the balance, where there was any, would be shared equally between the customs staff and the Treasury. If this process could be repeated often enough, John Bull might soon be willing to come to terms.

Since this country attained approximately its present continental boundaries nearly a century ago, vast shifts have occurred in the geographical pattern of its population. Immigration from abroad contributed many millions to the overall increase of more than 100,000,000 during the period 1850–1940; domestic migration carried settlement westward; and natural increase of the populations of different areas at differing ratios contributed a substantial but unmeasured element to geographical redistribution.

The power of the church in the medieval town was ever-present and all-pervasive. It operated through the ritual of the sacraments, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, the charitable foundations of the orders, through the pictorial teaching on church walls and windows, open-air sermons, public inflictions of penance, the celebration of saints' festivals, and in many other ways. There can be no reasonable doubt that the social teachings of the church, along with its other doctrines, were by one means or another impressed upon every townsman, in so far as he was capable of understanding them.

Italian sources have so far furnished the principal materials for the study of medieval business history in the Mediterranean area. Florence, Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, it seems fair to say, were the cradles of important commercial institutions. For their merchant guilds, sea loan contracts, and various forms of business organization, other Mediterranean towns were largely in debt to the Italian cities. In Catalonia, a region that experienced a remarkable expansion of overseas trade during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the borrowing and adaptation of Italian institutions were continuous. But in Barcelona, the presumptive birthplace of the Llibre del consolat de mar, the early development of deposit banking and marine insurance law was a product of Catalan initiative. It is highly possible that the rich historical archives of Barcelona will also yield important data for the study of early life-insurance and annuity practices.

Thomas Jefferson believed that political democracy could be maintained in the United States only if it were made to rest on the firm foundation of economic democracy. “The small landowners are the most precious part of the State,” he said, contrasting this ideal economy with a congested population in urban centers which would, he feared, threaten democracy because it would be subject to control by agitators and demagogues. He urged the adoption of a policy of cheap land that would attract laborers from abroad and from the eastern cities to the newly developing areas of the West and the South. Thus he proposed to create a nation of farm owners who would be the very warp and woof of democracy.

You cannot get them to talk of politics when they are well employed.— William Mathews, 1833.

I have observed during the whole time I have been in Lanarkshire that any rise in the rate of discount at the Bank of England has been immediately, or at least shortly, followed by an increase both of crime and of civil suits, and if it continues long, of mortality and typhus fever. So much so, that, as I am an official member of the prison board and of most of the Charities, I have always made it a rule to say … “Gentlemen, the Bank of England have raised their discounts, you had better immediately take measures for enlarging the prison accommodations and for extending the infirmaries and Poor houses.”—A. Alison, Sheriff of Lanarkshire, 1848.

Prior to the Civil War in the United States much of the economic development of the country was financed by means of European credit, extended for both short and long terms. The flow of capital was chiefly from England and considerable Continental capital moved through England to the United States. A few firms in England were the chief instruments in this process of financing American trade and marketing American securities. These Anglo-American merchant bankers are the subject of this paper.

The study of business incorporations was undertaken with several purposes in mind. Incorporations—while they may reflect other things in a more or less significant manner—can give a very good picture of one stage of enterpreneurial activity. The large entrepreneur is, of course, better represented in the data on corporations than is the small businessman; and the entrepreneur of recent years is better represented than the entrepreneur of an earlier date, since at that time the corporation was less widely used. Nevertheless, one who studies data on newly chartered companies can see the development of the economy from an unused standpoint. Moreover, since entrepreneurs' ideas about business projects ought to be reflected in the number and character of business incorporations, a study of charters should add to our knowledge of the operation of business cycles. It should also lead to a better understanding of the corporation itself, since new light would be thrown on the history of state competition for the business of creating the corporations of this country. State rivalry for the chartering business has been a powerful factor in moulding the corporation to the changing needs of our economy. This adaptation might—or might not—have been brought about as efficiently by some other device, but that is a problem in itself.