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February 10, 2005
20050203 Econ 113 Lecture: Industrializing America Before the Civil War
Megasthenes: the coming of cotton to the Mediterranean...
Format of the first midterm exam...
David Ricardo: Why didn't the U.S. become one big unindustralized Canada?
Answer: the tariff
Could the tariff have been good for the country?
Answer--yes, if the infant industry argument holds.
What is the infant industry argument? There has to be some benefit--external to the firm and to the worker--from production. Future productivity has to be positively influenced by past production in order to make it beneficial in the long run to upset the Ricardian pattern of comparative advantage.
The infant industry argument is plausible, but not certain, for the case of U.S. textile manufacture.
Even so, it's not good for the cotton-exporting tariff-paying south.
The history of the cotton textile business: Samuel Slater, Francis Cabot Lowell, Lowell Massachusetts, et cetera...
Peter Temin's article: the American system
The Crystal Palace exhibition
What is special about American industry
Eli Whitney
Interchangeable parts
The "American System"
Resource-using technological style.
Consequences for post-Civil War industrialization...
Posted by DeLong at February 10, 2005 12:31 PM
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Comments
Is the advent of interchangeable parts in early America a result of scarce labor?
Posted by: ross at February 10, 2005 12:37 PM
I thought that the early Colts, were finally hand fitted as tolerances were not so good, and skilled craftsmen assembled the final weapon, by picking out parts from a bin until they had a gun which fitted well together.
Posted by: eric bloodaxe at February 10, 2005 03:52 PM
Did Brunel (the Elder) use interchangeable parts in his factory for making rigging blocks for the Royal Navy? Or production lines? [I recall that the factory was famous for something-or-other, in addition to the scale and complexity of the production.]
Posted by: dearieme at February 11, 2005 02:59 AM
Yes, Marc Isambard Brunel introduced mechanised methods of making pulley blocks. His business collapsed when it became practical to use the former methods after the Napoleonic Wars, once labour shortages dropped back. He had the precise experience of non-profiteering contractors that Tommy Sopwith did after 1918 - the government cancelled all contracts with inadequate compensation, forcing him bankrupt.
Similar issues ALMOST made steam engines uneconomic again, but by the time of the Rainhill Trials there had been just enough enduring shock to move things past a tipping point. I have some discussion of this in a guest article at http://www.johnquiggin.com (I don't know where it is right now - JQ has been doing some rejigging).
Posted by: P.M.Lawrence at February 13, 2005 12:47 AM