Nazi Germany was not the only enemy the British faced in the fall of 1940. While the Battle of Britain raged in the skies over southern England, an equally important struggle took place at the diplomatic and financial level. This time Britain's foe was far more nebulous: American distrust of things European and the memory of World War I. Although Britain eventually withstood the blitz on her own, British leaders knew full well by the summer of 1940 that continued resistance to Hitler depended upon aid from the United States.

This study questions the concept of entrepreneurial failure, traditionally invoked to account for the demise of the Gloucestershire wool trade in the Industrial Revolution. Gloucester clothiers used steam power selectively because of the high cost of coal but on a more regular basis and at greater capacity than scholars have commonly admitted. Excess capacity due to overcapitalization accounted for the failure of mills with large engines; underutilization of steam accounted for the failure of mills with small engines. Both types of failure sprang from rational and entrepreneurial choices, and not from an unwillingness to innovate.

This paper attempts to document and account for cost savings on North American small-grain prairie farms in the early twentieth century. Costs of production are analyzed using the ex post price and yield data abundantly available. Cost conjectures are developed and compared with scattered farm data that itemize inputs and reveal some aspects of farming technique. Total costs per acre, despite year to year fluctuations, appear to have fallen gradually over the entire period consistent with a comprehensive and continuous learning process, rather than only suddenly in the late 1920s when there was a marked increase in the sales of gasoline-powered farm machinery.