Analysing the Effects of Excise Taxes Using Microsoft Excel

This paper examines the effects of an excise tax imposed on a monopolist's product. Then simple but quite general polynomial demand and cost curves are introduced and discussed, as is the Microsoft Excel workbook that embeds the functions. Finally, exercises based on selected special cases illustrating the use of the workbook are sketched.

An economic study of the hog enterprise

Wide variations in feed consumption and other costs of hog production were found in each of the three studies reported in this bulletin. These variations in costs are found to be mainly the result of practices used in the management and feeding of the breeding herd and the fattening pigs. The average consumption of corn per hundred pounds of gain was between 434 and 457 pounds for the three groups of farms. To this was added from 38 to 56 pounds of oats, 5 to 12 pounds of tankage, 4 to 9 gallons of skimmilk besides small amounts of other concentrates. Cost of production varied with prices of feeds and other materials. In the Humboldt County study a reduction of 10 cents per bushel in corn prices, 5 cents per bushel on oats and 5 cents per hour on labor together mean a decline in the cost of hogs of just about a dollar per hundred pounds. In the Humboldt County study it was found that the costs on the breeding herd, including the feed eaten by the pigs during the suckling period, amounted to about one-third of the total costs in the production of hogs. About 25 bushels of corn, 7 bushels of oats, 147 pounds of tankage and 31 gallons of skimmilk were fed per animal in the breeding herd per year

Forestry Curriculum- 1967 Version

Among the several major changes being effected in Forestry at Iowa State in 1967 is a significant revision of the undergraduate Forestry Curriculum. This article discusses the basis for and the process of curriculum planning. Changes being introduced are described in terms of adjustments in the pattern and shifts in emphasis which they reflect. For a more explicit description of the revised curriculum, the reader is referred to the current edition of the General Catalog of Iowa State University

“a Lonely Wandering Refugee”: Displaced Whites In The Trans-Mississippi West During The American Civil War, 1861-1868

Historians have written a great deal about the American Civil War and, until recently, much of that scholarly activity has focused on military battles and the effectiveness of the Union and Confederate armies on the war’s outcome. During the past few decades, social historians have tried to dig beneath that narrative to situate the war in the eyes of American citizens and how that war affected their lives. With this, there has been a focus on the Northern and Southern homefronts, African Americans, and soldiers’ motivations to fight – all rooted in the wartime experience. In this discussion, however, there is very little attention paid to the plight of Southern whites displaced by the war. In “’A Lonely Wandering Refugee’: Displaced Whites in the Trans-Mississippi West During the American Civil War, 1861-1868,” I argue that displaced whites, both during and after the war, were largely pushed off by the armies, the U.S. and Confederate governments, and the Freedmen’s Bureau to local aid organizations in Missouri and Arkansas. Through an analysis of both Union and Confederate army records, Freedmen’s Bureau records, personal correspondence of local citizens, local and national newspapers, and regional aid organizations, I have detailed the treatment of uprooted people in the region. From the start of the war in 1861, battlefield clashes, guerrilla warfare, hunger, Union, war policies, Confederate conscription, and conflicts over loyalties sent many whites on the run and, almost immediately, they encountered one of the armies in search of help. As it encountered these people in the region, the Union army provided enough rations to support displaced whites until the army transported them to Union-controlled areas where they received aid, most often, from private benevolent aid organizations. While soldiers held a variety of opinions of these people and their situation, the army was vastly unprepared for the number of people who came into their lines seeking support. While there was no clear policy on how to handle the large number of displaced whites, it was not they did not try. Colony farms and other programs were attempted to put displaced people back on their feet but because the army’s lack of consistency, nothing came from these attempts. The Confederate army, on the other hand, did nothing to support those displaced whites who came into their lines. If anything, Confederate soldiers left the ranks because of peopled uprooted by the war because so many of those men, women, and children sent on the run were their own friends and families back home. Aid organizations in the West, like the Western Sanitary Commission in St. Louis, often filled the void of caring for these displaced whites. While these organizations originated out of the need to care for wounded soldiers, they expanded their mission to include help for displaced whites who came from across Missouri and Arkansas. By the war’s midpoint, they provided temporary shelter, food, and the necessities of life for people on a short and long-term basis. To reduce the numbers of displaced whites dependent upon their care, organizations also provided transportation to these people, often sending them north to be with friends and family. As one would expect, care for these people over the final two years of the war was expensive and, as a result, they held sanitary fairs to raise money for their endeavors. The most prominent such fair was the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair held in St. Louis in 1864 that raised a great deal of money for their efforts. The Western Sanitary Commission and like-minded organizations provided care for displaced whites both during the war and into Reconstruction, as the Bureau relied on their continued support of displaced people. With the dawn of Reconstruction, the Freedmen’s Bureau fanned out across the South to help both freedpeople and displaced whites. The Bureau stepped in to help when local governments could or would not do so. During the early months of Reconstruction, the Bureau placed a number of displaced people on abandoned and confiscated lands throughout the region. This, however, was quickly complicated by debates in Washington between the Radical Congress and President Andrew Johnson. The issue at hand in these debates concerned the fate of former Confederates and their property. While the agency also offered rations, provided transportation, offered schooling, and medical care, it was their placement of displaced people on abandoned lands that proved to be the most successful. Once the president removed this option, the Bureau moved to make displaced, and now destitute, whites to be self-sufficient as quickly as possible. For the Bureau, displaced whites were a hindrance on its primary focus – assisting freedmen. While the Bureau did what it could when it came to aiding displaced people scattered throughout the region at the close of the war, it came undone because of what happened in Washington. This, by 1868, rendered the Bureau ineffective in Arkansas and throughout much of the South

Prospects for agricultural recovery, III. Estimating advantages of the corn-hog plan to the individual farm

This is one of a series of bulletins dealing with agricultural recovery and considers specifically the corn-hog plan of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. The need for such a plan was discussed in Circular 148 of the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station, in which it was said that, Until our foreign trade is reestablished, that is, until imports are increased, exports must be reduced. Therefore, temporarily at least, some plan to facilitate the orderly retreat of our cotton, wheat, hog and tobacco producers is not only desirable but in all probability essential.” The present plan and its advantages are being discussed currently by the Extension Service and in literature distributed by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. It is believed that the present plan is the most practical one yet devised for handling the emergency aspects of the corn-hog production problem

An economic study of the cattle feeding enterprise in Iowa

This bulletin is a part of a larger and broader study which attempts to explain the economic forces and conditions which have caused the development of the present types of farming in Iowa, and their location under the particular conditions where they are found. A study of this sort is not intended to be, and should not be, purely analytical. It should trace the development of the present forms of farm organization, and should proceed to point out lessons to be drawn from their development for the guidance of the practical farmer. Such a study cannot stop at an examination of the present system alone. Our present economic institutions are rooted deeply in the past. Our present economic environment would not be what it is had it not passed thru the specific course of development that has gone before. For this reason a brief historical sketch of the development of the beef cattle industry is presented

Horses, tractors and farm equipment

Data were obtained from, 28 farms in Iowa County on the expenses on horses, tractors and equipment. In studying the labor requirements of crop production, data were secured from about 100 additional farms in five other Iowa counties. It was found that the larger farms had an advantage in the number of acres of crops handled per horse. On farms with horses only, the acreage per horse increased from 12.5 where there were under 80 crop acres to 25 where there were 120 to 150 crop acres. On the larger farms a tractor, for use in the busy seasons, permitted keeping a smaller number of horses and working each horse more hours per year. The expense of keeping a horse a year varied widely, but on most of the farms it amounted to between $60 and$110 per horse, with about $90 as the typical figure. Of this about three-fourths represented the cost of feed