The buggy prof will be out of town starting Monday, September 27th, and won't be back until October 1st. Some time over the coming weekend, he'll write out the article promised a long time ago on the absence of socialist influences in American life . . . and for that matter, the reasons for a much narrower ideological spectrum in American politics compared to other industrial countries, even Britain.

Wage Gaps and The Impact of Immigration

Among other things, there's been some good work recently by a handful of economists on relative wages in America and Europe in the 19th and early 20th century . . . not an easy set of data to come up with, compared with relative per capita incomes. The latter can be quickly gauged from GDP stats and population, with a fair amount of accuracy for those periods. Wages are another matter.

What the recent work shows is that, in the 1850s, though US per capita income was lower than in Britain, the pioneer industrial country, American wages were almost double that of those in Britain: 98% higher to be exact. By 1870, with the US now industrializing rapidly, the overall US wage level was even higher than that compared to all of Europe. These figures underscores how much scarcer labor was in the US compared to Britain and the rest of Europe, but also how much narrower the distribution of income was in the US compared to Europe and its feudal traditions and massively lopsided property distribution.

From 1870 on, the US lead shrank somewhat. The main reason? Over the next 45 years, tens of millions of poor people emigrated from Europe to the New World, mainly the US, but also Canada, Australia, and eventually Argentina. As the labor supply in the US swelled, it grew less fast in industrializing Europe than it otherwise would have; and by 1914 --- on the eve of WWI --- the gap between US and British wages had narrowed. Even so, the average US wage was still 54% higher than its counterpart in Britain, still the richest country in Europe. Compared to the rest of Europe, the average American worker was about 70% richer.

But note. Even as the labor supply in the US swelled in numbers thanks to immigration, the gap between US and European wages on the eve of WWI in 1914 was still huge . . . a good 54% higher than its counterpart in Britain, still the richest country in Europe.

Property Ownership

Property ownership as you'll see was also far greater in the US. One startling stat: Swedish immigration to the US numbered about 1 million people by 1920 vs. 5.2 million Swedes still in Europe. And yet those 1 million Swedes owned the equivalent of 2/3 of all the arable land in Sweden itself, with land ownership heavily concentrated in that country . . . as it was in Britain and the rest of Europe save in France.

Voting Rights and Mass Democracy

Anyway, property ownership and wage levels and a higher standard of living for Americans aren't the only reasons for the absence of a strong socialist tradition in American life, Marxist or otherwise. Those reasons, along with more data on strictly economic matters, will be set out here next week-end. In the 1850s, for instance --- the period of Jacksonian democracy that extended the vote to almost all white males who were citizens and older than 21 --- 61% of American men were voting for the presidency. In Britain, the most advanced democratic country in Europe at the time, the equivalent figure was 3.5% and in Canada 7.7%. The British working class wouldn't itself be eligible to vote in parliamentary elections until two electoral reforms in 1867 and then again in the mid-1880s. What's more, even after the 1867 reform gave about 50% of the British working class the vote, a minimum level of property ownership prevailed in Britain until the second Reform Act of the 1880s.

Back online after a few weeks of mental repose, his draggy, over-the-hill brain crackling with high-pep energy once more, the buggy prof is ready to resume the series, now a couple of months old, on the nature of the US economy and its prospects in a globalizing world full of technological flux --- always viewed comparatively, you'll remember. The stress in this series of article, about 10 in all so far, has been on the institutional and socio-cultural context of the advanced industrial economies, especially under the heading of systems of national innovation . . . a Schumpeterian concept, you might further remember.

As you might also recall, the series also stressed ho . . . oops, did I just say mental repose a second or two ago? Can't be. Not true; at any rate, not what I've been up to recently.

Just the contrary. Above all, to explain brieflly, there's been

. . . An Hispanic Diversion

No, the diversion hasn't been with a pretty senorita . . . except in lurid fantasy-form, always a bugaboo hang-up of the prof's mind. What's been happening has been less exciting, even if no less obsessive: some time around the Labor Day, early in September, prof bug --- his mind, fingers, and will-power more or less in sync again after three weeks away from the pc --- was all ready to begin banging away on the keyboard with bursting fervor once more, bugging lots of people with his daily fuzzbuzz of rangy commentaries . . . only to have his mental powers suddenly slide elsewhere on a visit to Barnes & Noble bookstore. Drifting languidly, with easy unconcern, around the place, he had just wandered into the huge reference section. So far, so good. No change in mental energy. Even the repetitive imagery of a wickedly naughty post-serenade stage with a sulty senorita, her body spilling out of her red gown everywhere, had subsided to a slight tug at the back of his thoughts, nothing more.

The prof drifted on. His absent-minded glance went on loafing across the reference shelves, one after another. Hmm, no don't need another thesaurus; no, don't want to learn how to create a comic book; no, who wants to buy a . . .

All at once, prof bug's mind did a flip-flop. His eyebrows shot up; his jaw dropped sharply. Pop-eyed, slack-jawed, the buggy prof found himself staring wonderingly at hundreds of books and audio cd's on the Spanish language.

Say what?

Say this: unlike French or German, languages that he had been formally educated in --- and for matter matter also later taught in --- his command of Spanish was woefully feeble, entirely self-taught and not used much, if at all, in his intellectual work . . . much to his regret.

The problem was time, always that . . . too many other competing claimants on the buggy prof mind: too many professional tasks, too much donkey-work, too many demands of this or this sort in his private life. When could he study Spanish? In the future. Some time then; fingers crossed.

Well, for prof bug, the future had arrived. In July, after 39 years at UC Santa Barbara, he decided it was time to move on, take a retirement, and open up a post, preferrably to some brisk and bouncy young scholar. The upshot? Lots of time galore on bug-ridden hands. And now, on that sunny Labor Day inside Barnes & Nobel early this September --- the prof's bug-eyed gaze glued to the Spanish language works staring back at him --- the itch for some bursting, high-energy study was suddenly irresistible, full of manic urgency. If not now, when? The answer's evident. Prof bug was helplessly hooked.

Two hours later, the B&N's shelves left in a mess, he walked out of the store with a book on reviewing Spanish grammar and two cd-sets on Spanish conversation, all at the intermediate level.

 

A Harum-Scarum Interlude

That was surprising enough, this sudden macap pressure of prof bug to throw himself whole hog into Spanish. Even more surprising, three weeks of almost non-stop study tumbled on the heels of that initial purchase. What a scream! Rippling high-coiled work on a manic high, a kind of self-induced euphoria.

The audio-cd's turned out to be a particular delight. So did some follow-up pc programs, purchased later.