The demand for land in the United States was shaped by inherited attitudes and modern asset creation. Immigrants inherited the view that landowners had an enhanced chance of survival in a “starving time.” But the United States farmer also found that by clearing his unimproved acres he could create assets from otherwise idle time between seasonal peaks in the use of family labor. Public land sales in the South from 1820 to 1860 correlate well with variables that reflect expected money return and supply price. Substantial residuals for 1835–1837 chiefly trace to specific policy actions in Washington.

Although cotton smuggling through the North's blockade of the South during the American Civil War has often been viewed as a highly profitable activity, only a small percentage of blockade-running ships made more than one run. New figures for capture rates reconcile these observations by showing that the risks of blockade running were substantial. Estimates are also provided for the amount of cotton smuggled through the blockade and of its disposition between the North and Europe.

The paper focuses on U.S. foreign investment. Part I notes its trivial impact on returns to U.S. capital and considers its greater importance for five industry groups. Part II reviews the economic advantages accruing to U.S. citizens from interventions in Panama and Cuba. Part III, the bulk of the paper, asks what impact U.S. foreign investment had on Latin American factor returns. It finds no evidence in the anti-imperialist literature for the assertions that such investment cut labor incomes or landowners’ capital gains in these nations. It suggests that a struggle between two groups of capitalists, native and foreign, was more central to the economic aspects of “imperialist” conflict.

When tested against U.S. evidence back to the nineteenth century a straight-forward model of wealth accumulation contradicts the belief that “the rich are getting richer.” If the wealth owned by the top 1 percent of American families in 1922 had earned only a modest 8 percent yearly until 1953 then they (or their heirs) would have owned 98 percent of personal wealth—instead of an actual share of 28 percent. The erosion of top wealth groups also appears for 1953–1969, and for 1892 and the years following. The reasons for such erosion, inherent in the structure of U.S. families and of U.S. institutions, are discussed.

The pioneers' trek across the land has long been taken as a central element in American social history. But that redistribution of resources has been no less vital in fueling the advance of productivity, in supporting the varying pattern of final outputs. Because migration both caused, and was a consequence of, these massive changes there has long been an interest in measuring the scope and detail of population redistribution.

Is a railroad like a toy wind-up set, the locomotive moving endlessly, stupefyingly around a single circle of track? Or, as I believe, is it more like a fancy set, with various sidings, and connecting routes? Professor Weiss assumes that the carrying capacity of a railroad is bounded by its ability to store all its freight cars on the main line. And the view he (somewhat incorrectly) attributes to me—that “for every starting point there are 10 miles of clear road ahead”—is nothing more than the belief that a real railroad is not a simple circle. For railroad sidings do exist for inventorying cars. And connecting railroads that move cars out of a particular system do exist. Economists who contrast the productive capacity of Ford and GM rarely worry about whether a week's production can be stored within the factory. Entrepreneurs envisaged slack variables before they were baptised as such. (If sidings did not exist, or were a significant portion of the cost of one transport system but not another, matters might be quite different.)

What role the railroad played and how changes in transportstimulated American economic advance, while puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. And such questions never lacked for conjecture. But recent studies have given a rigorous and brilliant cast to that inquiry, if not a totally novel one. An older tradition was shaped by the historian's desire to see economic change “as it was,” by his recognition that every happening was indispensable to the actual course of history. The newer focus, on history “as it was not,” reflects a belief that in economic affairs, as in those of the heart, desire will find its object—or a sufficiently close substitute. It i s difficult for the economist to view any historic innovation as revolutionary or to equate technological novelty with economic importance. It is an easy step to use comparative statics; to measure history “as it was not”; and thereby to define economic importance.