A History of Mechanization in the Cotton South: The Institutional Hypothesis
The Cotton South has always lagged behind the rest of American agriculture in the use and development of large-scale machinery. This paper formalizes an idea often found in the historical literature in loosely specified form which argues that the institutional structure of the southern plantation economy caused this technological inertia. In particular, the Institutional Hypothesis argues that the annual labor contracts used to secure plantation labor discouraged partial mechanization and inventive activity by redirecting the impact of higher labor costs away from the development and adoption of labor saving machinery and toward the adoption of small unmechanizable tenancies. This hypothesis is modeled, and supporting evidence is presented. Its larger implications are also discussed.
- DOI
- 10.2307/1885680
- Volume
- 100 (4)
- Pages
- 1191
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- BibTeX
- Sources
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