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The Diffusion of the Reaper: One More Time!

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Alan L. Olmstead
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Extract

In the June 1977 issue of this Journal, Lewis R. Jones criticized my analysis of the diffusion of mechanical reaping and mowing machinery. Jones attempts to revive the threshold argument popularized by Paul David. In doing so Jones either confuses or ignores the main points I raised while concentrating on a peripheral issue of little significance.

I raised three major issues. First, and of least importance, I revised the values of some of the parameters David used to estimate the threshold acreage. Jones correctly notes that I erred by reporting that the revised threshold was more than twice as large as that previously estimated; the correct calculation is about 93 percent, as Jones notes. If I were to write the paper again, I would correct this mistake. Nonetheless, my major conclusions on this issue are unaltered. Revising two of the parameters used to calculate the threshold acreage so that they better conform with the actual historical situation generates a threshold about twice as large as that previously estimated. I felt this discrepancy was sufficient to cast reasonable doubt on previous estimates, and I noted that similar revisions could be made of most of the parameters and variables used for such estimations (p. 333). Anyone who doubts this assertion should see Robert Ankli's excellent work on the subject.

Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 475 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1979

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References

The author is Director of the Agricultural History Center and Professor of Economics at the University of California, Davis.

1 Jones, Lewis R., “‘The Mechanization of Reaping and Mowing in American Agriculture, 1833–1870’: Comment,” this Journal, 37 (June 1977), 451–55Google Scholar; Olmstead, Alan L., “The Mechanization of Reaping and Mowing in American Agriculture, 1833–1870,” this Journal, 35 (June 1975), 327–52.Google Scholar

2 David, Paul A., “The Mechanization of Reaping in the Ante-Bellum Midwest,” in Rosovsky, Henry, ed., Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron (New York, 1966), pp. 3–39.Google Scholar

3 Ankli, Robert E., “The Coming of the Reaper,” in Uselding, Paul, ed., Business and Economic History: Papers Presented at the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Business History Conference, Second Series (1976), 1–24.Google Scholar

4 Ibid.; Temin, Peter, Causal Factors in American Economic Growth in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1975), pp. 33–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Pomfret, Richard, “The Mechanization of Reaping in Nineteenth-Century Ontario: A Case Study of the Pace and Causes of the Diffusion of Embodied Technical Change,” this Journal, 36 (June 1976), 399–415.Google Scholar

6 Rogin, Leo, The Introduction of Farm Machinery in Relation to the Productivity of Labor in the Agriculture of the United States During the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley, 1931), p. 78.Google Scholar

7 Hutchinson, William T., Cyrus Hall McCormick, Seed-Time, 1809–1856, Vol. I (New York, 1930), p. 369.Google Scholar