Fred Bateman

Improvement in American Dairy Farming, 1850–1910: A Quantitative Analysis

Agricultural improvement, as analysts of economic growth often stress, plays an important role in a developing economy. Recent quantitative research has expanded our knowledge of developments in American agriculture during the period when the economy was becoming industrialized. The purpose of this article is to compute new estimates of average milk yields (output per milk animal) in American dairy agriculture and to analyze the sources of changes in these yields between 1850 and 1910.

Profitability in southern manufacturing: Estimates for 1860

Southern economic development in the years before 1861 is usually characterized by, and faulted for, the small size of the manufacturing sector.’ According to the evidence in the published census reports, the southern manufacturing sector was relatively small, with the value of manufacturing output per capita in each slave state being significantly below the national average in both 1850 and 1860.2 This low level of manufacturing output has been cited as a reason for the backwardness of the southern economy. Implicit in the urgent pleas of contemporaries, as well as in the analyses of some more recent writers, has been the idea that more manufacturing was necessary for a higher level of economic development.3 In the basic version, this implied that if the South had had more manufacturing, it would have been more highly developed, and possibly as advanced as the rest of the nation. A more sophisticated interpretation is that where income statistics show that southern economic performance compared favorably to the nation, the apparent dearth of manufacturing means the South may have been capable of performing even better.4

Comparative Regional Development in Antebellum Manufacturing

A reconsideration of regional economic development during the antebellum period is underway. Emphasis thus far has tended to center on economic aggregates, on one region (the South) or on a single sector (agriculture). While the results of this work have altered our understanding of the antebellum Souths relative economic position—or at least have sharpened the debate on the issues—comprehension of the role and position of the periods industrial sector remains faulty, largely because it has been derived from indirect evidence.

Market Structure before the Age of Big Business: Concentration and Profit in Early Southern Manufacturing

This study finds that the average degree of concentration in southern industrial markets was high in the period 1850–1860. Although the potential for monopolistic control existed, the authors argue, it does not appear to have been exploited systematically to gain rates of return exceeding those in less concentrated industries.

Labor Inputs and Productivity in American Dairy Agriculture, 1850–1910

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.

Large-Scale Manufacturing in the South and West, 1850–1860

An examination of the manuscript censuses of manufacturing in 1850 and 1860 indicates the forthcoming revision of many traditional interpretations of American industrial development. This study suggests that large-scale manufacturing in the South and West was quite similar in the decade before the Civil War and that antebellum manufacturing was sufficiently concentrated to imply that the model of perfect competition is as inappropriate a description of mid-nineteenth century industrial structure as it is of twentieth century industry.