Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-03T02:41:14.227Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Values as an Obstacle to Economic Growth: The American Colonies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Sigmund Diamond
Sigmund Diamond
Affiliation:
Columbia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The story is told that Dean Donham of the Harvard Business School once asked Professor Schumpeter, after a lecture on the entrepreneur—Schumpeter's plumed knight of economic development–what was the most important single factor in accounting for the success of the businessman. Quick as a shot came the answer: “Good health.” For purposes of this inquiry into certain aspects of American social structure and American values which seem to have been of decisive importance in contributing to American economic growth, certain variables–like the health of the businessman and the endowment of the country with respect to natural resources –will not be considered.

Type
Obstacles to Economic Growth: Papers presented at the Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , December 1967 , pp. 561 - 575
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1967

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations, Thorold, James E., ed. (2d. ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880), pp. 144–45.Google Scholar

2 Merivale, Herman, Lectures on Colonization and Colonies (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), pp. 612–13.Google Scholar

3 London Daily News, June 4, 1853, quoted in Choules, John Overton, The Cruise of the Steam Yacht North Star (Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1854), pp. 58–61Google Scholar.

4 Old South Leaflets No. 172, p. 2.

5 Kingsbury, Susan Myra, ed., Records of the Virginia Company (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1906–1935), III, 21.Google Scholar

6 Munro, William B., Documents Relating to the Seigniorial Tenure in Canada, 1548–1854. Publications of the Champlain Society, III (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1908), pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

7 Quoted in Perry Miller, “Religion and Society in the Early Literature: The Religious Impulse in the Founding of Virginia,” William and Man Quarterly, 3d. ser., vol. VI (1949), p. 37Google Scholar.

8 Tyler, Lyon Gardiner, ed., Narratives of Early Virginia (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1907), p. 285.Google Scholar

9 Smith, John, The Generate Historie of Virginia, in Tyler, Narratives, p. 356.Google Scholar

10 The quotations from the will are to be found in Bailyn, Bernard, ed., The Apologia of Robert Keayne (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1965), pp. 51, 83, 73–74Google Scholar.

11 Bradford6s “Of Plimoth Plantation” (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1928), p. 42.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 163.

13 The figures are computed from Catalogne's report, in Munro, Documents, pp. 94–150.

14 Burt, A. L., “The Frontier in the History of New France,” Annual Report of the Canadian Historical Association for 1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1940), p. 96;Google ScholarRenaud, Paul-Emile, Les Origines économiques du Canada (Mamers: Enault, 1928), p. 370Google Scholar.

15 Quoted in Clark, S. D., The Social Development of Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1932), p. 72.Google Scholar

16 The argument advanced here has been developed at greater length in Sigmund Diamond, “From Organization to Society: Virginia in the Seventeenth Century,” The American Journal of Sociology, LXIII (03 1958), 457–75;Google Scholar, Diamond, “An Experiment in ‘Feudalism’: French Canada in the Seventeenth Century,” The Willia and Mary Quarterly, 3d. ser., vol. XVIII (01. 1961), pp. 3–34;Google Scholar, Diamond, “Le Canada Frangaise au xvii siéle: Une sociétè préfabriquée,” Annales, XVI (03–04 1961), 317–54Google Scholar.

17 Randall-Diehl, Anna, ed., Carleton's Popular Readings (New York: G. W. Carleton Co., 1879), pp. 183–84.Google Scholar

18 Quoted in Pasley, Fred D., Al Capone: The Biography of a Self-Made Ma (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Publishing Co., 1930), pp. 226–27.Google Scholar

19 See especially Hurst, James Willard, Law and the Conditions of Freedom in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956) andGoogle ScholarLaw and Economic Growth: The Legal History of the Lumber Industry in Wisconsin, 1836–1915 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

20 The quotations may be found in Twiss, Benjamin, Lawyers and the Constitution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), pp. 54, 137Google Scholar.

21 Bridge, James H., The Inside Story of the Carnegie Steel Company (New York: The Aldine Book Company, 1903), p. 81.Google Scholar

22 Quoted in The New Republic, XXI (12. 24, 1919), p. 120.Google Scholar

23 Lynd, Robert S. and Lynd, Helen M., Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflict (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1937), p. 189.Google Scholar