During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries British overseas territories under control of the Colonial Office were required to place all business affairs which could not be handled within their own boundaries or those of an adjacent British area in the hands of an office in London known as the Crown Agents for the Colonies.

The topic of “Capitalism and the Historians” is a subject far exceeding the limitations normally imposed by historical discipline. In fact, in a still wider context, this subject has much to do with the great ideological division of the modern world into the two vast camps of capitalist and communist countries, a most somber spectacle facing us today. The aim here is not to trace the steps by which we have reached the tragic facts of contemporary affairs, but rather to show how our beliefs concerning these matters (such as the view taken of capitalism) are influenced largely by our impression of the past.

The year 1886 was destined to be a crucial one in the history of the American labor movement. The eight-hour crusade, the numerous strikes, the Haymarket bomb, the entrance of workingmen into the political arena at the state and national levels, and the mushroom growth of labor organizations all contributed to the agitation and excitement of the year. Yet the importance of these events was overshadowed by a development that was to have such far-reaching implications that it would determine the future of the labor movement for the succeeding half century. That development was the declaration of war by the trade unions against the reform unionism of the Knights of Labour.

Austria was among the countries that began to develop modern industry at the turn of the eighteenth century and in particular during the Continental Blockade. Cotton spinning was mechanized and construction of textile machinery began. Similarly, when in the late 1820's horse-drawn railroads were constructed on the European Continent, Austria was among the pioneers. This onset of modern economic growth followed a long tradition of handicraft and manu-factories in several regions of the Habsburg domain. Notwithstanding these early beginnings, in 1900 about 58 percent of the economically active population was still engaged in agriculture, as against 22 percent in industry. According to estimates based on Colin Clark's figures Austrian national product per head of the “working population” was in 1913 about 47 percent of the corresponding British product, almost 60 percent of the German, and above 70 percent of the French. Population growth throughout most of the nineteenth century was rather steady, at an average annual rate of below 1 percent. When at the turn of the century the rate increased, Austria became one of the major sources of European emigration.

Recent problems in the performance of the American steel industry have prompted a number of calls for an “industrial policy” for this sector. Before any such programs of public intervention can be considered, however, it would behoove public policymakers to examine why the industry fell into its present state of decline. This paper, an abstract of a longer study, analyzes the relations of business and government in American steel from 1945 to 1960, and concludes that public policies had as much to do with subsequent industry decline as did other factors previously delineated by scholars.

Throughout the first hundred years of Canadian Confederation, an underlying problem in the struggle to “unite and integrate the separate regions” in a viable national economy has been the continuing interaction between disparate rates of regional economic growth and unequal levels of regional public services. This paper is an attempt to set out in a general way the extent and significance of differences in regional expenditures by government in Canada and to inquire into their possible relationships with variations in rates of growth and levels of regional per capita incomes. It also indicates a spatial distribution of public expenditures at all three levels of government and notes some implications for national and regional development policy currently in the forefront of public debate in Canada.

In a well-crafted recent article in this JOURNAL, Robert Fleck argues that voting on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the last and among the most contentious pieces of major New Deal legislation, was heavily influenced by regional political differences and by the “southern political system.” This contention is broadly supportive of a view held by several traditional historians, who have argued that political differences between the North and South were a major factor in voting. According to this view, the considerable support for minimum wages among southern workers, African American leaders, and the general public did not translate into congressional votes for the FLSA due to southern political institutions that effectively disfranchised many of the voters who were predisposed to support the FLSA. In a previous article I argued that, although southern representatives were more likely to vote against the FLSA, this was primarily because of economic differences between the two regions, not political factors. I argued that the opposition to the FLSA was spearheaded by low-wage employers, who were disproportionately concentrated in the South. This note examines the reasons for these conflicting results. It is argued that Fleck's approach to prediction, which evaluates the marginal impact of his independent variables individually, but does not jointly consider the variables that defined the southern political system, is misleading, and a more appropriate approach using his own regression results supports my contention that political differences between North and South were inconsequential to the overall roll-call vote on the FLSA. It is shown that, holding economic factors constant, had the South been politically like the North, the estimated roll-call vote on the FLSA would have been very similar to the actual votes in 1937 and 1938.

In 1686 the leadership of Massachusetts became involved in the first operational bank scheme in America. In 1688 this note-issuing bank was mysteriously aborted at an advanced stage. I suggest a new, simple explanation for the bank's demise. The bank's notes were supposed to be backed mostly by private land in Massachusetts, but a new royal governor invalidated all the land titles. This episode demonstrates the importance of clearly defined and enforced property rights for the development of financial institutions.

“After showing him an Indian deed for land, he said that their hand was no more worth than a scratch with a bear's paw, undervaluing all my titles, though everyway legal under our former charter government.”1

Joseph Lynde

Alfred Marshall argued that the malaise of public companies in Edwardian Britain was due to the separation of ownership from control and a lack of professional management. In this paper, we examine the ownership and control of the c.1,700 largest British companies in 1911. We find that most public companies had a separation of ownership and control, but that this had little effect on their performance. We also find that manager characteristics that proxy for amateurism are uncorrelated with performance. Ultimately, our evidence suggests that, if Marshall was correct in identifying a corporate malaise in Britain, its source lay elsewhere.

On August 26, 1857, just two days after the New York branchthe Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company suspended payment, of, the New York Herald predicted that the financial difficulties then beginning were certain to acquire the proportions of a great crisis. It boasted, moreover, that it had foreseen and warned of this impending calamity for the preceding twelve months, but its warnings had been spurned. The Herald's vaunted prescience perhaps stemmed chiefly from the long-standing prejudice of its publisher, James Gordon Bennett, against the operations of speculators in Wall Street. As early as 1854, when the speculative boom in railroad stocks was halted by a sharp decline of prices, the Herald had predicted the imminent approach of a crisis, one that would mark the end of the current “Fitful Spasmodic System” of American business. During the winter of 1854–1855 business stagnated, unemployment increased greatly, and there was considerable distress and popular unrest, especially in New York City. Here was an advance view, as it were, of the pattern of depression which was to develop in 1857.

The textbook explanation for Britain's high unemployment in the 1920s is that the return to gold at $4.86 left the currency overvalued. Recent estimates suggest that an 11 percent devaluation would have eliminated roughly half the unemployment in 1925. This article questions the validity of that conclusion. It measures the power of exchange rate devaluations to decrease unemployment in the context of sectorally distinct labor markets. The results suggest that though a devaluation would have been helpful, eliminating half of 1925's unemployment would have required one much greater than 11 percent and would have caused significant price pressures.