The author is Associate Professor of History and Economics at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.

¹ Clark, Gregory, “Productivity Growth without Technical Change in European Agriculture before 1850,” this JOURNAL, 47 (06 1987), pp. 419–32.Google Scholar

² Ibid., p. 421.

³ Ibid., p. 431.

⁴ The share of labor was about 0.75. Gallman, Robert E., “Changes in Total U.S. Agricultural Factor Productivity in the Nineteenth Century,” in Kelsey, Darwin P., ed., Farming in the New Nation: Interpreting American Agriculture, 1790–1840 (Washington, D.C., 1972), pp. 191–210.Google Scholar

⁵ Clark, , “Productivity Growth,” p. 419.Google Scholar

⁶ This includes corn. Without corn the share is only about 18 percent. For yields per acre see Parker, William N. and Klein, Judith L. V., “Productivity Growth in Grain Production in the United States, 1850–60 and 1900–10,” in National Bureau of Economic Research, Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800, Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 30 (New York, 1966), p. 542;Google ScholarU.S. Census Office, Seventh Census, 1850, Statistical View of The United States. … Being a Compendium of the Seventh Census, etc. DeBow, J. D. B., ed. (Washington, D.C., 1854), p. 178.Google Scholar

⁷ In 1859 in the Northeast 20 percent of the improved land was used for pasture; 43 percent was used for hay and potatoes. Atack, Jeremy and Bateman, Fred, To their Own Soil: Agriculture in the Antebellum North (Ames, 1987), p. 183.Google Scholar

⁸ U.S. Census Office, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, 1853), pp. 88ff.Google Scholar

⁹ DeBow, , ed., Statistical View of The United States, p. 178.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Corn could be harvested even after the frost, as late as November. Gates, Paul W., The Farmer's Age: Agriculture: 1815–1860 (New York, 1960), vol. 3, p. 170;Google ScholarParker, William N., “A Note on Regional Culture in the Corn Harvest,” in Kelsey, Farming in the New Nation, pp.181–90.Google Scholar

¹¹ Gates, , The Farmer's Age, p. 170.Google Scholar

¹² Following Clark's method, grain production is divided by the total labor force engaged in agriculture, which, of course, also includes those who were not producing grain.

¹³ Clark, , “Productivity Growth,” p. 422.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Atack, and Bateman, , To their Own Soil, p.176.Google Scholar

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¹⁷ In New England farmers close to the ocean profited enormously from collecting kelp and seaweed from the beach. Fish and fish heads, a byproduct of the export industry, were used as manure. About 10,000 whitefish might be put on an acre of land. Russell, Howard S., A Long, Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England (Hanover, 1976), pp. 311, 325.Google Scholar

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²⁰ Gates, , The Farmer's Age, p. 281.Google Scholar

²¹ The plow “was heavy, badly constructed of wood with at most only the plowshare of iron—and sometimes not even that—it was hard to manage, and it cut a shallow furrow at the cost of much human and animal labor. Most households did not own a plow nor the six or eight animals often needed to pull it through the heavy soil.” Blum, , The End of the Old Order, p. 132. These factors limited the number of times a field could be plowed before sowing.Google Scholar

²² Clark, , “Productivity Growth,” p. 429.Google Scholar

²³ Danhof, Clarence H., “The Tools and Implements of Agriculture,” in Kelsey, Darwin P., Farming in the New Nation, pp. 81–90.Google Scholar

²⁴ Probably because it had a better reach and a greater force could be exerted with it. Russell, , A Long, Deep Furrow, p. 397.Google Scholar

²⁵ Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 70.Google Scholar

²⁶ In some places it was used until the end of the century. Sandgruber, Roman, österreichische Agrarstatistik 1750–1918 (Vienna, 1978), p. 115.Google Scholar

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²⁹ “… by the early forties machine threshing had practically superseded the other methods in the leading wheat growing regions of the East …” Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 165;Google ScholarGalgoczi, Károly, Magyarország-, A Szerbvajdaság s Temesi Bánság Mezögazdasági Statisticája (Pest, 1855), p. 231.Google Scholar

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³¹ Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 179. “Unless it is otherwise specified, all estimates of threshing with flail, … include winnowing.”Google Scholar

³² Ibid., p. 179.

³³ Ibid., p. 180.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 180.

³⁵ In 1859 only 3 percent of northern wheat yields exceeded 16.6 bushels per acre. Atack, and Bateman, , To their Own Soil, pp. 166, 170.Google Scholar

³⁶ Rogin, ,The Introduction of Farm Machinery, pp. 176–77, 179.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ibid., p. 179.

³⁸ Blum, , The End of the Old Order, p. 136.Google Scholar

³⁹ Blum, , Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p.188.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Benkö, Korizmics, and Morocz, , Mezei Gazdaság Könyve, vol. 2, p. 329.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Blum, , Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p. 187.Google Scholar

⁴² Note that the threshing rate in America was also often 1/10; Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 178.Google Scholar

⁴³ Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 125; Blum, Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p. 191.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 131.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ The quality of the blade would have been another important factor determining the rate of performance, because the number of times reaping had to be interrupted in order to sharpen the scythe would have depended on it. Before one can say anything on comparative reaping performance one has to ascertain the quality of the scythes used in reaping.

⁴⁶ Benkö, Korizmics, and Morocz, , Mezei Gazdaság Könyve, vol. 4, p. 419.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Blum, , Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p. 190; Rogin, The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 16.Google Scholar

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⁴⁹ Blum, , Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p.190.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Clark, , “Productivity Growth”, p. 422.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Unless the rate at which grain was harvested is greatly overestimated. Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ibid., p 131.

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⁵⁹ According to Blum, “The implements that the peasants used to work the fields contributed significantly to the inefficiency of their operations. Everywhere they employed tools whose design had changed little if at all over the course of the centuries and that were often ill-suited for the task for which they were used.” Moreover, “the inadequacy or the complete absence of transportation facilities made it difficult or impossible to reach markets, and so cooled possible interest in producing a surplus by the use of more efficient methods”. The End of the Old Order, pp. 118, 131. While the marginal tax rate in the United States was zero, in Eastern Europe it was generally 20 percent.Google Scholar