ABSTRACT
A significant part of migration, whether international or internal, was a cyclical transfusion from agriculture to the burgeoning urban areas, facilitated by the rise in agricultural productivity. In the words of Schumpeter, ‘the story of the way in which civilized humanity got and fought cheap bread is the story of American railroads and American machinery.’ 1 The role of agriculture in the economic involvement between America and Europe must not be underestimated. Output per man-hour in the production of wheat and oats in the United States went up fourfold between the early 1840s and the early 1900s. 2 Even as late as the 1880s farming in the United States accounted for over half the labour force, and foodstuffs and crude materials comprised as much as 80 per cent of total exports, the major market being the United Kingdom. There was a high industrial input (drawing heavily on the metal industries) into agriculture and new settlement. Leontief has estimated that a dollar's worth of agricultural output requires far more iron and steel output and machinery production than does an equivalent dollar volume of output generated by textiles or miscellaneous manufacturing or even by the iron and steel industry itself. 3 A significant proportion of agricultural investment was devoted to land-clearing which entailed substantial demands for breaking ploughs, axes, scythes and hoes. 1
