Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction: technology, history and growth; Part I. Concepts and Preconceptions: 1. Labor scarcity and the problem of technological practice and progress in nineteenth-century America; Part II. Generation: 2. Learning by doing and tariff protection: a reconsideration of the case of the ante-bellum United States cotton textile industry; Addendum: estimated rates of labor equality change; 3. The 'Horndal effect' in Lowell, 1834–56: a short-run learning curve for integrated cotton textile mills; Part III. Diffusion: 4. The mechanization of reaping in the ante-bellum Midwest; Addendum: threshold farm size; 5. The landscape and the machine: technical interrelatedness, land tenure and the mechanization of the corn harvest in Victorian Britain; Appendix A: technical notes; Appendix B: source of the parameters and variables; Part IV. Ramifications: 6. Transport innovations and economic growth: Professor Fogel on and off the rails; References; Index.