Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T22:58:47.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rural Response to Increased Demand: Crop Choice in the Midwest, 1860–1880

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Mary Eschelbach Gregson
Mary Eschelbach Gregson
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, 61820.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Demand for farm products grew, and the cost of marketing them shrank, between 1860 and 1880. The resulting commercialization of Midwestern agriculture has been widely discussed, but the production strategies that farmers pursued have not been adequately described or modeled. I find that an endowment-contingent model of crop choice provides a consistent explanation for farm production strategies at the micro-level on Missouri farms. The results call for a re-examination of the conventional wisdom that commercialization fostered specialization at the regional level.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fifty-Second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 332 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1993

References

REFERENCES

Atack, Jeremy, and Bateman, Fred, To Their Own Soil: Agriculture in the Antebellum North (Ames, IA, 1987).Google Scholar
Bateman, Fred, and Foust, James D., “A Sample of Rural Households Selected from the 1860 Manuscript Censuses,” Agricultural History, 48 (01 1974), pp. 75–93.Google Scholar
Brinkmann, Theodor, Theodor Brinkmann's Economics of the Farm Business, trans. Benedict, M. R. (Berkeley, CA, 1935).Google Scholar
Coelho, Philip R. P., and Shepherd, James F., “Regional Differences in Real Wages: The United States, 1851–1880,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (07 1976), pp. 203–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danhof, Clarence, Change in Agriculture: The Northern United States 1820–1870 (Cambridge, MA, 1969).Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert, and Engerman, Stanley, “The Relative Efficiency of Slavery: A Comparison of Northern and Southern Agriculture in 1860,” Explorations in Economic History, 8 (Spring 1971), pp. 353–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregson, Mary Eschelbach, Census Sample of Six Missouri Townships. These data are available through the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, MI.Google Scholar
Gregson, Mary Eschelbach, “Strategies for Commercialization: Missouri Agriculture 1860–1880” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregson, Mary Eschelbach, “Specialization in Late Nineteenth Century Midwestern Agriculture: Missouri as a Test Case,” Agricultural History, 67 (Winter 1993), pp. 16–35.Google Scholar
Harley, C. Knick, “Transportation, the World Wheat Trade, and the Kuznets Cycle, 1850–1913,” Explorations in Economic History, 17 (07 1980), pp. 218–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hutchinson, William K., “Regional Exports to Foreign Countries: United States, 1870–1914,” in Uselding, Paul, ed., Research in Economic History (Greenwich, CT, 1982), vol. 7, pp. 133–238.Google Scholar
Lebergott, Stanley, “Labor Force and Employment, 1800–1960,” in Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, Output, Employment and Productivity in the United States After 1800, Studies in Income and Wealth 30 (Princeton, NJ, 1966), pp. 177–204.Google Scholar
Merchants Exchange of St. Louis, Annual Statement of the Trade and Commerce of St. Louis (St. Louis, various years).Google Scholar
O'Rourke, Kevin, and Williamson, Jeffrey, “Were Heckscher and Ohlin Right? Putting the Factor-Price Equalization Theorem Back Into History,” NBER Working Paper Series on Historical Factors in Long Run Growth, No. 37 (1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, William, “Agriculture,” in Davis, Lance et al. , American Economic Growth (New York, 1972), pp. 369–417.Google Scholar
Salt River Township Tax Rolls, 1857 and 1879 volumes, Ralls County Courthouse, New London, MO.Google Scholar
Strauss, F., and Bean, L. H., “Gross Farm Income and Indices of Farm Production and Prices in the United States 1869–1937,” USDA Technical Bulletin 703 (Washington, DC, 1940).Google Scholar
Sweet, A. T., and Watkins, W. I., Soil Survey of Rails County Missouri (Washington, DC, 1914).Google Scholar
Tryon, Rolla M., Household Manufacturers in the United States, 1640–1860 (Chicago, 1917).Google Scholar
U.S. Census Office, Compendium of the Tenth Census (Washington, DC, 1883).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Prices of Farm Products Received by Producers: The North Central States,” Statistical Bulletin 15 (Washington, DC, 1927).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture (Washington, DC, 1883).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Agriculture, Statistical Bulletin (various issues).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Population: 1960, Vol. 1, Characteristics of the Population (Washington, DC, 1961).Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, DC, 1975).Google Scholar
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, First Annual Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States, Part 2 (Washington, DC, 1877).Google Scholar
Von Thünen, J. H., Von Thünen's Isolated State, ed. and trans. Wartenburg, Carla M. (Oxford, 1966).Google Scholar
Walton, Gary, and Rockoff, Hugh, History of the American Economy (6th edn., San Diego, CA, 1990).Google Scholar
Winters, Donald, “The Economics of Midwestern Agriculture, 1865–1900,” in Ferleger, Lou, ed., Agriculture and National Development (Ames, IA, 1990), pp. 75–95.Google Scholar