An interpretation of the Southern capture of the American cotton textile market is presented, emphasizing capital accumulation and a process of "maturation" of the labor force. The market was divided along lines of product quality, and the precise rate of convergence was governed by the pace of demand. Simulations of the system uncover the surprising fact that the Great Textile Depression, which began in the 1920s, is not attributable to trends in demand, imports, or a chronic tendency to overproduce, but to the increase in real wages that occurred in the South as well as in the North. Possible interpretations of this development are discussed.

T HE New Deal years offer a laboratory for testing the hypothesis that political behavior a democracy can be understood as a rational effort to maximize the prospects of electoral success. This hypothesis is central to the theories of politics developed and elaborated since the publication of Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy 1957, but systematic empirical verification has been meager.' One of the reasons for this paucity is that the United States political parties are rarely in power unambiguously, and actual policies result from the interaction of many competing objectives. But the 1930's the Democratic party had control of both houses of Congress, and during much of the period Congress was willing to follow Presidential lead on economic policy. At the same time federal spending rose to unprecedented levels, and considerable discretionary allocative authority was concentrated the executive branch. Most of the spending was carried out by new agencies under new programs which were clearly identified with the New Deal administration. At a time of grave economic distress, this Presidentially-dominated environment provided a stark simplification of the interaction between political and economic forces. This article focuses on the allocation of government expenditures among the states and argues that interstate inequalities per capita federal spending can be explained large part as the resultant of a process of maximizing expected electoral votes. Two recent articles (1969, 1970) by Leonard J. Arrington have raised this issue. Upon examination of a newlydiscovered set of figures for the years 19331939, Arrington was struck by the fact that the per capita distribution of loans and expenditures was not at all equal across the country, and furthermore that these inequalities seem perverse that they favor states with high income. In particular, the West seems to have received far more than its per capita share of benefits, while the South -far behind income received little.

The United States became the world's preeminent manufacturing nation at the turn of the twentieth century. This study considers the bases for this success by examining the factor content of trade in manufactured goods. Surprisingly, the most distinctive characteristic of U.S. manufacturing exports was intensity in nonreproducible natural resources; furthermore, this relative intensity was increasing between 1880 and 1920. The study then asks whether resource abundance reflected geological endowment or greater exploitation of geological potential. It was mainly the latter.

The 1918–47 employee records of the Ford Motor Company provide a rare opportunity to study a firm willing to hire black workers when similar firms would not. The evidence suggests that Ford did profit from discrimination elsewhere, but not by paying blacks less than whites. An apparent “wage‐equity constraint” prevailed, resulting in virtually no racial variation in wages inside Ford. An implication was that blacks quit Ford jobs less often than whites, holding working conditions constant. Arbitrage profit came from exploiting this nonwage margin, as Ford placed blacks in hot, dangerous foundry jobs where quit rates were generally high.

Why have white, less-educated voters left the Democratic Party? We highlight the role of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In event-study analysis, we demonstrate that counties whose 1990 employment depended on industries vulnerable to NAFTA suffered large and persistent employment losses after its implementation. Voters in these counties (and protectionist voters regardless of geography) turned away from the party of President Clinton, who promoted the agreement. This shift is larger for whites (especially men and those without a college degree) and social conservatives, suggesting that racial identity and social-issue positions mediate reactions to economic policies. (JEL D72, F15, F16, J15)