Brief, dense, topical chapters of American economic history (#26
Immigration, #27 Technology and Innovation, #28 Urban Growth) -
with the common theme, says Wesleyan historian Lebergott, of
centrality of choice. What mostly comes across, however, is a warm
glow about America's economic achievements. The native Indian
population, according to Lebergott, needed enormous land per capita
to make a go of it, and even then managed only a meager income. The
Europeans, by contrast, made the private farm a going concern.
Thereafter, save for a few setbacks, it was upward and onward.
Independence was desired for political rather than economic
reasons, though the Revolutionary War did have important
consequences for economic development and redistribution. Debt was
a big problem for the new nation, but the Louisiana Purchase
facilitated borrowing; and once Yankee ingenuity caught hold,
economic growth followed. The separate chapters, stocked with
statistical tables and other spot-facts, will be comprehensible
only to readers who know the material - the very readers who don't
need this kind of summary-treatment. Thus, the twelve pages devoted
to "Technology and Innovation" take up the idea of planned
obsolescence; post-Civil War advances - by unskilled amateurs and
newly-professionalized engineers; cost-cutting innovations; the
declining cost of capital, and increase in capital investment;
deterrents to using the new technology; the specific case of
electricity; and - in the last 2O pages - four separate electrical
"revolutions." On capital investment: "Wage rates and land prices
actually rose, as shown in table 27.4. How is it possible, then, to
say that costs fell? The answer turns on the declining cost of the
third major input: capital. Its two major components were foregone
interest (on the money locked up in machine or building) and
depreciation (representing the using up of the machine over its
useful life), both shown in Table 27.5." And so on - as if someone
who needed to have "depreciation" defined could make productive use
of tables or put all this together. Altogether: a celebration of
the American economic experience, combined with much factual
minutiae - indigestible, but probably destined to be an assigned
text. (Kirkus Reviews)
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