“Show us a non-resident who has made money speculating in western land,” wrote a frontier newspaper editor in 1850, “and we will show you a rare bird, more rare by far than a successful gold hunter.” Despite this warning and dozens like it, thousands of investors ventured surplus or borrowed funds on frontier land throughout the nineteenth century. Many, in fact, jumped from one frontier to the next on the heels of government surveyors and land officers. Either these businessmen were gluttons for punishment, or speculating in government land was far more rewarding than some contemporaries were willing to admit.

From about 750 to 1100, China experienced a series of economic changes roughly comparable to the subsequent patterns of European growth from the Crusades to the eve of the French Revolution. The spread in the use of money, development of new credit and fiscal institutions, increase in interregional and international trade, and colonization of hitherto marginal land which took place in the Occident during the half millennium preceding the Reformation was paralleled by an earlier era of progress in East Asia during the two-hundred-fifty years from the rebellion of An Lu-shan (755) to the treaty of Shan-yüan 1004). And the achievements of late sixteenthand early seventeenth-century England, which John Nef terms an “early industrial revolution,” were in many respects even exceeded by the impressive expansion of mining and manufacturing in eleventh-century China.

Economic development and “modernization” have certain universal consequences for the structure and organization of the labor force. The history of each advanced country shows a shift of population out of agriculture and the replacement of family enterprise and particularistic employment relationships by large enterprise and wage labor. But the pace and completeness of these inevitable changes have varied widely among different countries.

In his recent article in this Journal, A. H. John has attempted to show how low grain prices in the first half of the eighteenth century stimulated economic growth. His argument runs that after the Restoration,

…there followed almost a century of comparative plenty, bringing an increasing flow of food and raw materials. The most pronounced fall in prices occurred in grains … Because [the bread grains] entered very largely into the diet of most groups in society, a fall in their prices lowered the cost of living and so raised per capita real incomes …. Income tended to move into the hands of people, who, through habit and/or necessity, were more likely to spend than hoard …. Many of the growth points stemmed from a buoyant home market.

The publication of a new volume of the Cambridge Economic History is itself an historical event. Like a great freight train, bursting out from its dark tunnel, it rattles across our landscape, loaded high with gold and spices, coal and lumber—a few peasants, merchants, silk-hatted bankers, officials, and businessmen clinging to the roofs of the cars. Livestock are terrified and students astonished; but as happy economic historians we line the tracks and wave our greeting, and then, as the noise and smoke fade away, we return to our firesides to tell each other stories of what we have seen.

In his classic paper on the significance of railroads to American economic development, Leland Jenks distinguished three principal avenues of influence: (1) The railroad was what Jenks called an “innovating idea” with important psychological impact “manifested in a wave-like profusion of new enterprise of many sorts.” (2) The railroad and railway construction and maintenance were a stimulus to the industrial and financial sectors of the economy. The railroad not only stimulated the iron and steel, timber, and other industries directly but “encouraged innovations in financial enterprise.” (3) Finally, the railroad contributed directly to the generation of national income through the rendering of transportation services. Although on this last point Jenks despaired that, “There appears to be no satisfactory technique for giving a precise measure to the extent of this contribution.”