Francis Amasa Walker Quotes
There has been a great reduction in the cost of producing crops in some favored regions where steam-ploughs and steam-reaping, steam-threshing, and steam-sacking machines can be employed; but there has been no reduction in the cost of producing crops upon the ordinary American farm at all corresponding to the reduction in the price of the produce.
This quotation is historically important because it documents the radical change in agriculture that technology brought on. In this period it was steam power. There were steam powered tractors in addition to what he enumerated. The production cost and hence the prices of agricultural products became much lower increasing the standard of living for all consumers. However, the small farmer, without capitol and the scale of a large enough farm, was put in a position in that he could not compete with the major products of agriculture without huge investment in capital equipment and large enough farms. While many went out of business, many others shifted to specialized crops and raising animals where the automation was not as necessary. This process has been on going in American agriculture since the invention of mechanized farm implements, and the small farmer has gradually become more rare. But the process has been ongoing throughout American history.
Francis Amasa Walker, 1840–1897, Economist & Statistician, President of the American Statistical Association, President of the National Academy of Sciences, President of the American Economic Association, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Army General, “Restriction of Immigration”, The Atlantic Monthly, June 1896
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Executed by the English for his part in the Easter Uprising. This was a creative idea to being technology to bear on small farms. America was exploring cooperatives and other devices of trying to allow people who were not rich and had little or not capital, to utilize the emerging technology that would be so important.
Earlier, Jefferson was opposed to manufacturing in America as factories were a social blight in Europe which he wanted to keep out of the United States. He felt that we could import whatever we needed from Europe and not have the evils of industrialization. However, with the War of 1812, the Barbary Pirates and his mellowing when no longer President, and his willingness to change his positions as he learned more, caused him to what we would label today as “flip flop”. He then wrote this and {615635}.
The same is true of almost all the inventers, scientists, and creators ot technology. They are more influential in the long run for more people than the Generals and Politicians.
The left has always been ambivalent about automation. Many object to it on the grounds that it puts men out of work. However, others such as Lafage, argued that automation was the only economic way to reform the working hours and conditions of labor. The problem at the time was that as long as labor was so cheap, there was no motivation for the manufacturer to invest in better machinery. He and many others argued that minimum wages and their increases increase productivity because it would force manufacturers to invest in more productive equipment to reduce their labor costs.
Francis Amasa Walker was an American economist, statistician, journalist, educator, academic administrator, and military officer in the Union Army.
