Racial discord, political violence, and agrarian unrest are integral to the history of the American South from the close of the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. The economy of the region had undergone traumatic changes during the war, not the least of which were the destruction of large amounts of physical capital and the transition of the black agricultural labor force from slavery to freedom. The disruption of production during the war was followed by attempts to reorganize agriculture through a variety of institutional arrangements, including wage labor, cash renting, and widespread use of the sharecropping form of land tenure. Many of the legal and cultural manifestations of the racial prejudice which has long outlived chattel slavery made their appearance during these years. Both contemporary observers and modern historians have recognized possible connections between the economic conditions and the political or institutional developments of the period, yet certain basic characteristics of the post-bellum southern economy have never been adequately determined. Consequently, the influence of economic forces in southern society and political life has remained obscure.

In a recent issue of this Journal, Ian Drummond took issue with my article discussing the relation of labor scarcity to British observations of American industrial efficiency in the 1850's. I tried to show that (1) the contemporary observations were not specific enough to show whether or not Americans were using the same technology as the British; (2) even if the observations showed that the Americans used the same technology as the British, it would not follow that the higher ratio of land to labor in the United States had induced a higher ratio of capital to labor; and (3) if the observations proved that the Americans used a more efficient technology than the British, the connection between this fact and the high land-labor ratio was not clear. Under (2), I tried to demonstrate that the land-labor ratio and the capital-labor ratio were separate, and that it was improper to make inferences about the latter from data about the former. In fact, if we assume that land was not used in manufacturing, the data imply that while the land-labor ratio in America was higher than in Britain, the capital-labor ratio was lower.

We have had a little over forty years of experience of countries we conventionally dub “satellites.” In looking at this slice of recent history two questions come to mind. Can one fit the type of relationships he finds within the Sino-Soviet bloc into the perspectives which economic history has developed in the debate on colonialism and imperialism? Has Nature made a leap and produced a new historical type, or do we have merely a new subtle change in form?

Whatever may have been the merits of the gold standard in die nineteenth century, it has not proved a satisfactory system of exchange since 1913. The decentralization of the world financial system, the greater liquidity of the public's holdings, and the appearance of capital movements unrelated to movements of trade have rendered abortive attempts to return permanently to the gold standard. In any event, the unwillingness of governments, increasingly dependent on the favor of the lower income groups, to allow or compel the contraction of domestic credit in response to changes in international demand prevented the operation of a system that depends on such adjustments. But the gold standard of die nineteendi century cast a long shadow behind it.

This analysis of the condition of the working classes in Glasgow in the first half of the nineteenth century is provided in two stages. An average real wage index for 1810–1840 exhibits a marked decline as a result of the high proportion of textile workers in the labor force. Quality indicators, such as housing conditions and mortality rates, deteriorated, and working-class diets at best did not improve. The evidence examined for Glasgow suggests no improvement in the standard of living of the city's working-class population.

To discuss the influence of one type of economic activity such as transportation on economic growth is a hazardous undertaking. There is the obvious temptation, which has led many astray, to magnify the importance of that which is particularized. Such a characterization as “Transportation a Measure of Civilization” or the assertion that the railway “is a revolution among nations … [a] moral revolution … affecting the diffusion of knowledge, the interchange of social relations, the perpetuation of peace, the extension of commerce; and a revolution in all the relations of property,” is hardly impartial or balanced with respect to the whole picture of economic activity. A prime objective of this paper is to avoid the dominant parochial note in appraisals of transportation's contributions to economic growth and to present instead thoroughly critical analysis.

My two predecessors assure me that our association is too young to possess any precedents or traditions. In the matter of themes for presidential addresses the only foreshadow of a tradition seems to be the cult of variety and free choice. My own choice of subject is therefore influenced by the fact that during the past year I have been writing a biography of our first president and America's first native-born thoroughly trained economic historian, Edwin F. Gay. As I followed the career of one member of our guild in the making, comparisons with others would persist in cropping up, and the question took shape: “What are economic historians made of?”

The problem of the distribution of the agrarian product in feudalism is not at all new. It has been raised frequently by European historians and at the beginning of the 1930's led to a scientific controversy in Poland. The following article sets itself two tasks: first, to acquaint the American reader with contributions to the subject that may not be known in this country; second, to suggest an economic theory applicable to the problem. Not being an economist by profession, I will not attempt a theoretical analysis at length, but I hope, by a discussion of various approaches to the problem, to bring us closer to a solution.

The technology of charcoal iron manufacture in late nineteenth-century Canada is examined in this paper. Use of a super-heated and hard-driven furnace blast contributed to a resurgence of production after 1890. A lag in the diffusion of these techniques is explained by the small size of the Canadian market. Contrasts are noted with charcoal iron smelting in several regions of the United States.

This paper compares the proportion of liquid assets in the portfolios of the major banks in London, Paris, and New York during the heyday of the gold standard. Various hypotheses concerning the determinants of this proportioh are advanced and then tested using data on individual banks over a number of years. The major conclusions concern the effectiveness of the Bank of England in comparison with the systems prevailing in the other centers and the existence of national differences in the aggressiveness displayed by bank managers.

The September, 1971 issue of the Journal contained A. G. Ford's article, “British Investment in Argentina and Long Swings, 1880–1914.” For total U.K. overseas issues, Professor Ford used as his source, Matthew Simon, “The Pattern of New British Portfolio Foreign Investment 1865–1914,” which appeared in J. H. Adler, editor, Capital Movements and Economic Development.