Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T04:20:14.217Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Changing Pattern of American Economic Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Donald L. Kemmerer
Affiliation:
University of Illinois

Extract

The name of our discipline, economic history, suggests the use of history in reaching economic conclusions, and the use of economic principles in classifying the findings of history. Actually, both practices deserve to be employed more than they are. This is an effort to employ a simple economic principle to reinterpret our nation's economic development. The principle is that the cheaper a factor of production is, the more generously it will be used, and contrariwise, the more costly a factor of production is, the more sparingly it will be used.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1956

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This is a corollary of the law of variable proportions.

2 Bogart, Ernest L., Economic History of the American People (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1935). p. 258.Google Scholar

3 Clark, Victor, History of Manufactures in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1929). I. 155157.Google Scholar

4 Carman, Harry J. (ed.), American Husbandry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), pp. 5354.Google Scholar A half crown was two and a half shillings, or 60 cents.

5 Callender, Guy S., Selections from the Economic History of the United States, 1765–1860 (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1909), pp. 742747.Google Scholar

6 Carlson, Theodore, The Illinois Military Tract, Illinois Studies in Social Sciences, XXXII, No. 2, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1951), 51 n, 53, 87.Google Scholar

7 Bell, John F., History of Economic Thought (New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1953), p. 164.Google Scholar

8 Louis Hacker, “Alexander Hamilton and the American Tradition.” To be published by McGraw-Hill Book Co. in 1957.

9 Clark, Manufactures in the U. S., I, 41, 42, 152.

10 Blandi, Joseph G., Maryland Business Corporations 1783–1852, Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science Series, LII, No. 3 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1934). 4556.Google Scholar

11 Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States 1789–1945 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1949), pp. 3334.Google Scholar

12 Ware, Norman, The Industrial Worker (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1924), pp. 2670, esp. 27.Google Scholar

13 Historical Statistics, pp. 33–35.

14 Hansen, Alvin, “Factors Affecting Trend of Real Wages,” American Economic Review, XV (March 1925), esp. 34. Real wages fell between 1840 and 1865, however.Google Scholar

15 Herald Tribune (New York, N. Y.), Nov. 7, 1954.Google Scholar

16 Allen, Frederick Lewis, The Big Change (New York: Harper & Bros., 1952), p. 55.Google Scholar

17 Victor Clark, Manufactures in the U.S., I, 359.

18 National Industrial Conference Board, The Economic Almanac 1956 (New York, 1956), pp. 420425.Google Scholar

19 Twentieth Century Fund, America's Needs and Resources (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1955), p. 1116.Google ScholarPubMed Although work animals are really capital too, they are a notably primitive form of it.

20 Bureau of Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1939 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1940), p. 772.Google Scholar

21 Lewis, Cleona, America's Stake in International Investments (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1938), pp. 4546, 163–164.Google Scholar

22 Historical Statistics, p. 9.

23 Bell, Economic Thought, pp. 505–512.

24 Sidney Sherwood, writing in 1897 and quoted in Ibid., p. 518. See also pp. 513–519.

25 Richardson, James D., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1902 (Bureau of National Art and Literature, 1903), VIII, 557.Google Scholar

26 Miller, William (ed.), Men in Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. 285.Google Scholar

27 Department of Commerce, Survey of Current Business, July, 1956, pp. S-10, 11. The figure was 57 per cent in 1915. See National Industrial Conference Board, Economic Almanac 1956, p. 424.

28 Economic Almanac 1956, p. 376.

29 Ibid., pp. 358–361; Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 1955, p. 219; Historical Statistics, 1789–1945. P. 139.

30 America's Needs and Resources, p. 904.

31 Historical Statistics, p. 11; Bureau of Census, Continuation to 1952. of Historical Statistics of the U.S. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1954), p. 1Google Scholar

32 America's Needs and Resources, p. 1116.

33 Ibid., p. 913.

34 Economic Almanac 1956, pp. 408–409.

35 Ibid., pp. 442–443.

36 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Reserve Charts on Bank Credit, Money Rates and Business, Historical Supplement 1955 (Washington, D.C.: September 1955), pp. 4447.Google Scholar Also Federal Reserve Bulletin (August 1956), 863. Right now interest rates are higher than they have been in many years too.

37 Bell, Economic Thought, p. 617.

38 Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1955, p. 710. These holdings had doubled between 1905 and 1920.