The long-standing view in US economic history is that the shift in manufacturing in the nineteenth century from the artisan shop to the mechanized factory led to “labor deskilling.” Craft workers were displaced by mix of semi-skilled operatives, unskilled workers, and a small force of...

We describe our digitization of a uniquely detailed study of 19 th century production methods assembled by the United States Department of Labor (1899). The staff spent five years collecting and assembling data on the production of hundreds of highly specific products (as well as some services)...

This paper evaluates the increasingly-common claim that enslaved African-Americans produced over 50 percent of US national product in the pre-Civil War period. The accounting exercise shows the fraction was closer to (and indeed likely slightly below) the share of the population, that is, about...

Between 1928 and 1960 U.S. cotton production witnessed a revolution with average yields roughly tripling while the quality of the crop increased significantly. This paper analyzes the key institutional and scientific developments that facilitated the revolution in biological technologies,...

Starting in the 1930s, commercial hybrid corn seeds rapidly replaced the once predominant open-pollinated varieties planted by farmers. By the mid-1950s almost all corn grown in the United States was of hybrid varieties. Observers have argued that the drought tolerant qualities of these hybrids...

During the nineteenth century, the US manufacturing sector shifted away from the “hand labor” mode of production, characteristic of artisan shops, to the “machine labor” of the factory. This was the focus of an extremely detailed but extraordinarily complex study by the Commissioner of...

We argue that falling farm product prices, incomes, and spending may explain 10-30 percent of the 1930 U.S. output decline. Crop prices collapsed, reducing farmers' incomes. And across U.S. states and Ohio counties, auto sales fell most in crop-growing areas. The large spending response may be...

To engage with the large literature on the economic effects of slavery, we use antebellum census data to test for statistical differences at the 1860 free-slave border. We find evidence of lower population density, less intensive land use, and lower farm values on the slave side. Half of the...