Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History

by Goldin, Claudia Dale; Rockoff, Hugh

• ISBN13: 9780226301129
• ISBN10: 0226301125
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-04-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Offering new research on strategic factors in the development of the nineteenth century American economy--labor, capital, and political structure--the contributors to this volume employ a methodology innovated by Robert W. Fogel, one of the leading pioneers of the "new economic history." Fogel's work is distinguished by the application of economic theory and large-scale quantitative evidence to long-standing historical questions. These sixteen essays reveal, by example, the continuing vitality of Fogel's approach. The authors use an astonishing variety of data, including genealogies, the U.S. federal population census manuscripts, manumission and probate records, firm accounts, farmers' account books, and slave narratives, to address collectively market integration and its impact on the lives of Americans. The evolution of markets in agricultural and manufacturing labor is considered first; that concerning capital and credit follows. The demography of free and slave populations is the subject of the third section, and the final group of papers examines the extra-market institutions of governments and unions.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Two Appreciations

Labor Markets in Manufacturing and Agriculture

The Market for Manufacturing Workers during Early Industrialization: The American Northeast, 1820 to 1860

Wages, Prices, and Labor Markets before the Civil War

Structural Change in the Farm Labor Force: Contract Labor in Massachusetts Agriculture, 1750-1865

Farm Tenancy in the Antebellum North

Markets in Capital and Credit

Regional Interest Rates in Antebellum America

Money versus Credit Rationing: Evidence for the National Banking Era, 1880-1914

Precedence and Wealth: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century

The Wealth of Women, 1774

The Demography of Free and Slave Populations

Adult Mortality in America before 1900: A View from Family Histories

Toward an Anthropometric History of African-Americans: The Case of the Free Blacks in Antebellum Maryland

The Slave Family: A View from the Slave Narratives

The Fertility Transition in the United States: Tests of Alternative Hypotheses

Trading Quantity for Quality: Explaining the Decline in American Fertility in the Nineteenth Century

Political Economy

The Profitability of Early Canadian Railroads: Evidence from the Grand Trunk and Great Western Railway Companies

The Rise and Fall of Urban Political Patronage Machines

Dividing Labor: Urban Politics and Big-City Construction in Late-Nineteenth-Century America

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