Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 7 of the original edition of the late Wesleyan University economic historian Stanley Lebergott’s 1964 volume, Manpower in Economic Growth (footnote deleted; link added):

In a new country, with so varied a mixture of migrants that the technological or guild tradition of no single European nation could be adopted, vastly different production methods and factor combinations could be and were attempted. The result was revolutionary change – revolutionary not in the hackneyed tradition of invoking elderly theories where they do not apply, but in the sense of adopting new solutions suited to new conditions. We may summarize in the words of a Danish observer in 1820: “History is unable to produce a more evident proof … that in order to develop the energies of a nation quickly and from all sides, the removing of every obstacle and the full enjoyment of independence and property, are alone requisite.”