In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, California agriculture underwent a fundamental transformation as the state's farmers shifted from the production of wheat to a rich variety of tree, vine, and row crops. This transformation required a wholesale shift in the production...

This paper presents Robert Gallman's classic, but heretofore unpublished annual series for US national product over the 1834-59 and 1869-1909 periods. The 'Volume 30' series, reported as decadal averages, underlie much of what we know about American income growth and capital formation before...

By 1900 scientific breakthroughs revealed that bovine tuberculosis was a serious and growing threat to animal and human health. Early private and state initiatives in the U.S. to address the problem were often counterproductive because they increased the incentives for the interstate trade of...

This paper examines the impact and diffusion of the gasoline tractor in American agriculture. A key feature of the transition from horses to tractors was a long intermediate stage when both modes of power were used on the same farm. This is largely explained in the technical limitations of early...

Between 1928 and 1960 U.S. cotton production witnessed a revolution with average yields increasing roughly threefold. In addition, the average staple length of the U.S. crop increased significantly, reversing a long-run downward trend in cotton quality. Underlying these accomplishments were...

The standard treatment of U.S. agriculture asserts that, before the 1930s, productivity growth was almost exclusively the result of mechanization rather than biological innovations. This paper shows that, to the contrary, U.S. wheat production witnessed a biological revolution during the 19th...

Most major American industrial business cycles from around 1880 to the First World War were caused by fluctuations in the size of the cotton harvest due to economically exogenous factors such as weather. Wheat and corn harvests did not affect industrial production; nor did the cotton harvest...