Research in Economic History

This volume of "Research in Economic History" includes eight papers. Five were submitted through regular channels and three papers which were solicited at the conference Toward a Global History of Prices and Wages. Following is Nonnenmachers study of the early years of the telegraph industry in the United States. The third paper is Herranz-Loncans estimates of the growth of the Spanish infrastructure between 1844 and 1935. Then there are two papers based on microeconomic data. The first is the investigation by James, Palumbo and Thomas of late nineteenth century saving among working class families in the United States. The second is Murrays study of the operation of pioneering sickness insurance schemes in several European countries between 1895 and 1908. Finally, the three papers from the conference. In the first of these papers, Pamuk studies trends in urban construction workers wages in the Eastern Mediterranean over almost a millennium. The following paper by Bassino and Ma examines wages of Japanese unskilled workers between 1741 and 1913. In the final paper, Ward and Devereux present estimates of the relative income of the United Kingdom in comparison with that of the United States for 1831, 1839, 1849, 1859 and 1869.