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American Economic History Before the Civil War Final
N/A
28
Economics
Undergraduate 3
05/10/2013

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Cards

Term
Why was transportation more expensive in the north?
Definition

Northern goods, like wheat and corn, were heavy relative to their value

 

Transportation by land was 30 times more expensive than transportation by water

 

There were long distances; New York to Chicago was about 6 weeks

Term
Four Internal Transportation Improvements
Definition
Turnpikes, Canals, Steamboats, Railroads
Term
Turnpikes
Definition
Toll Roads
Not too important or successful
Tolls allowed for better roads, but people still used free roads
Fell off the map by 1820
Term
Steamboats
Definition
Allowed easy transportation upstream (Mississippi)
Upstream real transportation costs fell 90%
Term
Canals
Definition
Erie Canal: Successful. Linked Lake Erie (Buffalo) to Hudson (NYC)
Other canals were built following this success but were not too successful
Term
Backward Linkage
Definition
Growth in an industry leads to growth in the industries that supply it.
Ex. Growth in clothing leads to growth in cotton
Term
Forward Linkage
Definition
Growth in an industry leads to growth in an industry that it supplies.
Ex. Cotton industry expands, making cotton cheaper and more widely available, which allows the clothing industry to expand
Term
Rostow
Definition
Walt W. Rostow
The Stages of Economic Growth
Rostow exaggerated the importance of the railroad, and claimed that railroads had "sharply increasing returns on capital"
Term
Fogel
Definition
Robert Fogel
Determined that there was not much backwards linkage related to railroads
Iron peaked at 6%
Canals were still very cost effective and frequently used
Concluded that the railroad was not a primary source of demand for any of its input industries
Calculated that the social savings of the rise of the railroad was around 4% of national income; positive but not revolutionary
Term
Social Savings
Definition
Numerical evaluation of the historical implications of a new technology on economic growth.
Term
NE vs NW Agricultural
Definition
NW focused on land-intensive products like wheat, and NE focused on labor-intensive products like dairying and orchard crops
Term
Bills of Credit
Definition
Worked as a form of credit between nations so that trade could occur without having to exchange money
Term
Wheat
Definition
Grown mostly in the west, land intensive, easy to store, low value to weight
Term
Corn and Hogs
Definition
More labor intensive than wheat. Western farms switched to corn and hog production as populations filled in and land prices rose.
Term
Harvest Labor Constraint
Definition
Wheat had only about a three day window in which it could be harvested. This meant that the amount of wheat that a farm could grow was limited by the amount of labor there was to harvest the wheat.
Term
Reaper
Definition
Complicated machinery that came out in the 1830's
Increased labor productivity in regards to harvesting
Eased the harvest labor constraint
Boom of sales in the 1850's
Term
Paul David & Reapers
Definition
Tried to relate the early failure of reaper sales to small farm sizes in the north
His theory does not explain the sudden boom
An alternate theory is that reapers needed to be higher quality (more durable) before finding commercial success
Term
Fogel and Engerman
Definition
Released a report that claimed that the south was more efficient than the north because the south used 6% less labor and made 3% more money
Term
Wright vs F&E
Definition
Argued that the difference in price relative to labor input was not due to productivity, but instead due to the fact that the north did not have access to cotton, which was the most profitable commodity
Argued that slaves led to cotton
Term
Risk Aversion Motives
Definition
The idea that small farms in the south grew a larger proportion of corn than large farms because they didn't have as much access to the world market and because it was safer to be self-sufficient
Wright used this idea to argue against the claim that cotton was an economy of scale
Term
Phillips
Definition
Stated that slavery would have died out due to internal economic contradictions (lower tobacco and indigo prices)
Term
Ramsdall
Definition
Stated that tendencies to overproduce cotton and scarcity of good land would have led to strangulation of slavery
Term
Sydnor
Definition
Concluded that slavery was not profitable and would not compete with industrialization
Arguments were flawed, as he did not properly calculate slaves as their owner's capital
Term
Conrad and Meyer
Definition
used the capital asset price return model to show that slaves were profitable
Term
Yasuba
Definition
Tried to calculate whether another generation of slavery would have lasted without the Civil War
Calculated opportunity costs of the mother birthing and raising the child, and rearing costs when the child was too young to work
Term
Gang System
Definition
Organization of slaves in a brutal way such that each slave was specialized so they were used in the most efficient manner
Term
Rosenburg and Technological Convergence
Definition
Technological Convergence was the idea that the technologies used in different production processes became similar or identical. For example, locomotive builders coming out of the tesxtile industry
Term
American System of Manufacturing
Definition
a technique of production based on standardization, interchangeable parts, and division of labor
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