One seemingly certain characteristic of the social structure of Europe between the sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries was the persistence in power, wealth, and eminence of limited numbers of individuals or families. These made up the aristocracies, the nobilities of feudal origin, the ennobled officeholders of the new monarchies, and the patrician oligarchs of the towns. Political structures provided these families with privileged status and favored their preservation of wealth and influence, while a relatively slow rhythm of economic change and growth in general population tended to secure them against displacement by newcomers. In Italy, distant from the new centers of Atlantic trade, where tensions between absolutism and traditional liberties were fought out mainly within the ruling groups themselves, this stratification of society seemed almost a “new feudalism” in the seventeenth century as the powerful families of the petty courts consolidated their power.

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and into the early part of the twentieth, American agriculture was expanding and improving under the influence of growing demand, the westward movement, mechanization of farm operations, and scientific farming developments. Under these influences, yields and labor productivity in field crops generally increased. Until recently, however, little has been known about the course of productivity change in specific agricultural activities during the nineteenth century. Dairy production was an important component of the American farm economy, accounting for about 16 percent of U.S. farm output at the beginning of the twentieth century and approximately 14 percent of gross income from farm production in 1910. Changes in dairy yields during the period 1850–1910 have been analyzed previously. The purpose of this article is to estimate labor input time, to measure the change in average labor productivity in U.S. dairy farming, and to examine the economic implications of this change, thus extending the analysis to another component of the dairy production function. The necessary data were estimated with techniques that utilized available fragmentary data in conjunction with information in literary material.

There is widespread agreement among historians of the colonial period, as there was among contemporary observers, that a significant deficit existed in the American colonies' balance of trade with Great Britain. That a large deficit did exist in the late colonial period is shown by estimates of commodity trade given in Table 1 for the period 1768 through 1772 (for which period statistics of all legal overseas trade exist in the “American Inspector-General's Ledgers”). It is clear from Table 1 that the overall deficit in the commodity trade with the British Isles was due mainly to the deficits incurred by New England and the middle colonies. Similarly, it appears that on the average for this five-year period, the southern colonies, as well, incurred a deficit—although a small one—in their commodity trade with Great Britain.

To those senior citizens and somewhat younger members of our guild who attended the 1949 annual meeting of the Association at Rutgers University, the death of Professor Ashton last September may revive memories of his lively participation in the program of that meeting. Others may have met him during his spring semester as visiting professor at Johns Hopkins in 1952, with side trips to some eastern campuses followed by a summer school stint at Columbia. Meanwhile the publisher's royalty statements indicate that tens of thousands of students in this continent and elsewhere yearly continue to buy his classic little volume The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (1948).

The economic development of the American colonies is one of the least explored areas in American economic history. Since the several regions in the colonies followed somewhat different paths of development, the colonial puzzle can be gradually pieced together through research which concentrates on particular regions. The subject of this study is an important aspect of the development of the tobacco colonies during approximately the thirty years preceding 1770. George Rogers Taylor and Jacob M. Price have suggested that the second and third quarters of the eighteenth century brought “rapid economic growth” to the tobacco colonies and a “marked resumption of growth” in tobacco exports. The findings of this study will suggest some reservations concerning the leading role of tobacco during this time. The series on American tobacco exports to Great Britain suggests that there was virtual stagnation in the first quarter of the eighteenth century followed by perhaps a doubling of exports in the second quarter and then near stagnation in the third quarter until the year 1771. The reason for the leap in tobacco exports in 1771 to a high plateau of approximately 100 million pounds annually during 1771–1775 is unknown. What is important for analysis of the growth and development of the tobacco colonies, however, is that the exceptionally high exports in the last five years of the colonial period tend to mask what was apparently a slow and erratic growth in world demand for American tobacco exports in the immediately preceding decades. The assumption that tobacco was a booming sector in the economy of the upper South at this time is open to question.

It is commonly thought that income distribution among people became more concentrated after the Civil War and that this direction continued until the turn of the century. We can look methodically at the income tax distributions from the Civil War period and compare them directly with the distributions arising from the income tax after 1912. We also have some data from the abortive income tax of 1894. After examining the various blocks of evidence, the conclusion will be made that inequality among upper-income groups did not increase during this period. It is necessary to emphasize that the present investigation is one of income and not of wealth. It might have been possible for the nonhuman wealth distribution among people to remain constant or to increase in inequality while the personal income distribution was decreasing in inequality.

The cost of fencing the farm was a topic of constant discussion and complaint in American agricultural circles in the second half of the nineteenth century This prosaic topic appeared continually during the period 1850 to 1880 in agricultural journals, state agricultural bulletins, and annual reports of the Federal Commissioner of Agriculture.

The Old Poor Law has recently found a forceful defender in Mark Blaug, who in two articles has challenged the critics of England's first public welfare system and displayed the clay feet of that towering structure of words, the evidence for the 1834 Report. This is a notable achievement, but Mr. Blaug's case should not be accepted in toto: indeed, that it has survived so long without criticism is surprising. G. R. Elton felicitously referred to one of his critics as a “self-appointed hound of heaven,” but scholars who propound provocative theses are likely to provoke responses. Mr. Blaug's interpretation of the Old Poor Law is, to at least one “selfappointed hound,” eminently provocative.

It is one of the ironies of economic historiography that the country which gave birth to the Historical School of Economics should have come to play such a relatively minor role in the field of modern economic history. The irony lies in the fact that the Historical School, although it emphasized historical studies at the expense of theory, did see economic history as an integral part of economics. Its founders recognized that the main purpose of economic history is to elucidate the problem of economic development, to search for “development laws,” and in attempting to accomplish that mission, they made use of economic theory. From around the 1870's, however, interest in these ties to mainstream economics began to recede; emphasis on institutional and legal studies, collection of sources, and sheer antiquarianism grew ever more important. Since then, German economic historians, increasingly producing economic history without economics, have been playing Hamlet without the Prince. The present character of the field in Germany is reflected in the fact that German economic historians are de facto and de jure social historians as well. Indeed, many university chairs, the principal West German journal (Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte—hereafter cited as VSWG), and the German counterpart to our Economic History Association (Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte) do grant formal priority to social history.