Colonial and Revolutionary Muster Rolls: Some New Evidence on Nutrition and Migration in Early America

That investment in human capital has made an important contribution to the increase of labor productivity and per capita income during the last several centuries is widely acknowledged. While much of the research on this issue has focused on education, many scholars have also directed attention to the significance of improvements in nutrition. Until recently, efforts to study this subject have been hampered by a lack of evidence, but it now appears possible to construct indexes of nutrition from height-by-age data. This paper employs a relatively underutilized type of historical document to investigate the level of nutrition in early America. The same material also provides a rich source of information about patterns of migration during this period. This paper finds that native-born Americans approached modern heights by the time of the Revolution. On average, colonial Americans appear to have been 2 to 4 inches taller than Europeans, with southerners considerably taller than northerners and the rural population of greater stature than the urban. These differences may indicate that other factors besides nutrition were important in accounting for the dramatic changes in U.S. mortality rates during the nineteenth century.

The Market for Manufacturing Workers During Early Industrialization: The American Northeast, 1820 to 1860

This paper studies how well labor markets operated, and industrial workers fared, during early American industrialization. The principal bodies of evidence examined are four cross-sections of manufacturing firm data from 1820 to 1860, and newly-constructed price indexes for classes of products in different locales. The central findings are that real wages rose substantially over time for all segments of the manufacturing labor force. Workers responded flexibly to changing circumstances, and benefited almost immediately from the rapid expansion of the 1820s. Impressive growth in compensation was maintained until the late 1840s or early 1850s, when progress was slowed by heavy immigration and the mechanization of a number of previously labor intensive industries. Of course, these gains were not continuous, but the evidence bears against the view that the difficult years were due to poorly-functioning markets, rapid changes in technology, or other aspects of industrialization. On the contrary, the chief deviations from the upward trend in real wages seem to be attributable to supply-side shocks originating in the agricultural sector or in unusually large immigration flows, rather than to the path of industrial development.