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The Height and Weight of West Point Cadets: Dietary Change in Antebellum America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

John Komlos
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History and of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.

Abstract

A decline in nutritional status is inferred from data on the height and weight of West Point cadets in the antebellum period. The decline was geographically widespread and affected farmers and blue-collar workers the most; middle-class cadets did not experience a decline in nutritional status until the Civil War. Nutritional status declined because meat output did not keep pace with population growth. Urbanization and the expansion of the industrial labor force increased the demand for food. However, the agricultural labor force grew at a slower pace, and productivity growth in food production was insufficient to redress the imbalance.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

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References

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14 The 1.4 cm decline refers to all age groups. This number is not reported in the tables presented in the essay, but the evidence is available from the author on request. The data on the recruits are from Fogel, “Nutrition and the Decline in Mortality,” Table A.1.Google Scholar

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32 The decline was somewhat more pronounced if the caloric intake is converted to adult male equivalent. Evidence is available upon request.Google Scholar

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37 Lebergott, The Americans, p. 66. Of course, this assertion is not strictly correct because some members of the agricultural labor force did not produce nutrients.Google Scholar

38 Gallman, “The Agricultural Sector and the Pace of Economic Growth,” p. 47.Google Scholar

39 Kidder, Frank, The Architect's and Builder's Pocketbook (New York, 1900), p. 721. White adults also weighed less than they do today. The average weight of men in Boston at the time of the Civil War was 141.5 pounds, 25 pounds below the standard of the 1950s. (In contrast, however, adult male slaves weighed about 157 pounds, much closer to modern standards.)Google ScholarMargo, Robert A. and Steckel, Richard H., “The Height of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health,” Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982), pp. 516–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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41 In the category of farmers 174.4 vs. 173.5cm and among urban residents 172.1 vs. 171.2 cm. Margo and Steckel, “Height of Native-Born Whites,” p. 169.Google Scholar

42 However, the neglected items could not have been important because the estimates are reasonably close to the ones made for the 1880s and thereafter. The lower-bound estimates actually appear to be a couple of hundred calories too high.Google Scholar

43 I am indebted to James Tanner of the Institute of Child Health, University of London, for this Suggestion.Google Scholar

44 The divergence of consumption and production per adult male equivalent after 1870 provides a clue to why the stature of West Point cadets diverged from that of regular recruits after the Civil War. While the stature of cadets increased, that of regular soldiers did not. The export and import of nutrients may help to explain this pattern insofar as the origin and destination of the flow of nutrients through international trade affected the various elements of the population differently. While food exports were composed of such products as corn, ham, and bacon, eaten generally by the population, nutrient imports were made up of such products as sugar and exotic fruit, whose consumption in the population was not as widespread. It is understandable that the trend in the cadets' stature diverged from that of the regular soldiers because cadets were drawn from better situated families than those of the average recruits.Google Scholar

45 For instance, in the 1870s and 1880s pork production stagnated even though corn output doubled. Although, beef production did double, the divergence between corn and pork production shows the dangers of drawing inference from one to the other. Parker, William N., “Agriculture,” et al., eds., American Economic Growth, pp. 369417.Google Scholar

46 That growth in the livestock population did not keep pace with expansion of the human population was noticed by George Holmes who pointed out that the number of cattle per capita of the population was 0.88 in 1840, but did not reach that level again until 1900. He did not think this to be a statistical artifact. He observed that 1840 “was a time when meat was a much larger fraction of national dietary than in 1900” and added that “a steady, persistent, and strong decline in per capita number of swine in the United States is observed from the first census year in which swine were enumerated to the latest one.” He concluded that “the displacement of meat in the dietary by products of the vegetable kingdom advances slowly but surely.” Holmes, George K., “Meat Situation in the United States,” U.S. Department of Agriculture Report No. 109 (July 1916), part 1, pp. 22, 34;Google ScholarWarren, George and Pearson, Frank estimated food and feed crops production per capita stagnating between 1839 and 1849, rising to 1859, dipping somewhat during the Civil War, and rising thereafter; see Prices (New York, 1933), p. 44. However, their estimate is misleading because it does not contain meat production.Google Scholar See also von Richtofen, Walter Baron, Cattle Raising on the Plains of North America (1st edn. 1885; 2nd edn., Norman, 1964), p. 10.Google ScholarHilliard, Sam, Hogmeat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840–1860 (Carbondale, 1972), p. 66; Hilliard thought that there was a decline in meat consumption accompanied by “ … a marked improvement in the quality of the diet in the nation after about 1840…” Another source suggested that the national average meat consumption between 1830 and 1880 was 175 pounds, of which 150 pounds was pork.Google Scholar Hilliard, Hogmeas and Hoecake, pp. 41, 130; and Cummings, Richard, The American and His Food: A History of Food Habits in the United States (rev. edn.; Chicago, 1941), p. 258 as cited inGoogle ScholarLemon, James T., “Household Consumption in Eighteenth Century America and Its Relationship to Production and Trade: The Situation among Farmers in Southeastern Pennsylvania,” Agricultural History, 41 (01. 1967) pp. 5970;Google ScholarLive Stock and Meat Statistics (New York, 1957) pp. 283, 284.Google Scholar

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52 Rent and services are the only important components of the typical budget which are missing from this index. Regardless of how these missing prices behaved, my argument holds up as long as the cross-price elasticity between food and industrial products is stronger than between food and rent; 80 percent of a typical budget, is, however incorporated into these indexes. Williamson, Jeffrey G. and Lindert, Peter H., American Inequality: A Macro-economic History (New York, 1980), p. 25.Google Scholar

53 Schultz, Henry, Theory and Measurement of Demand (Chicago, 1983);Google Scholar and Wold, M., Demand Analysis (New York, 1953), p. 265Google Scholar as cited in Mansfield, Edwin, Microeconomics, Theory and Applications (2nd edn. New York, 1975), p. 109.Google Scholar

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59 In the 1880s, for instance, 25 cents could obtain 870 calories if used to purchase beef (sirloin), but 4,000 calories if used to purchase wheat bread. Massachusetts, Bureau of Statistics and Labor, Seventh Annual Report, Public Document No. 15 (Mar. 1886) p. 254.Google Scholar

60 Abel, Wilhelm, Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur (1935; 2d edn., Hamburg, 1966).Google Scholar

61 This pattern is supported by data which show that the cost of living of the poor relative to the cost of living of the rich increased somewhat in the 1840s and 1850s. There was considerable annual variation in this index, but between 1844 and 1855 the ratio of the two indexes rose by 13 percent.Google Scholar

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66 Holmes, Meat Situation, p. 118. Blood and offal, almost certainly consumed on farms, were turned into fertilizer by some meat packers. The fat of meat often went to the soapmaker. The loss in nutrients for human consumption must have been enormous because blood and offal made up 18 percent of the weight of a swine.Google ScholarWalsh, Margaret, The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry (Lexington, 1982), p. 83. Massachusetts. Bureau of Statistics andGoogle ScholarLabor, , Seventh Annual Report Document, No. 15 (Boston, 1886), p. 260.Google Scholar

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71 A similar pattern is evident in industrializing Montreal. Ward and Ward, “Infant Birth Weight.”Google Scholar

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84 Strauss and Beane, “Gross Farm Income,” p. 37; according to “Consumption of Food, 1909–1949,” p. 177, humans consumed only 8 percent of the corn crop.Google Scholar

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88 McFall, The World's Meat, p. 141. According to one twentieth-century experiment it took 18 bushels of corn to produce a 225-pound hog;Google ScholarSmith, William, Pork Production (New York, 1937), p. 435.Google Scholar

89 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, pp. 130, 234; Hilliard, p. 15; “… corn could stand the transportation costs for a moderate distance by canal, river or railway, but could not yet be economically brought from many farms to the local depots.” The perishability of corn also predicated against long distance trade in it. Berry, Western Prices, p. 203.Google Scholar

90 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, pp. 94, 101.Google Scholar

91 Ibid., pp. 109.Google Scholar

92 The 1862 figure is most likely an outlier.Google Scholar

93 McFall, The World's Meat, p. 143.Google Scholar

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98 Personal correspondence with Winifred Rothenberg whose research of Massachusetts farm account books has yielded livestock weights. In addition to the data cited she found some eighteenth-century hog weights which indicate a large increase in weight between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Google Scholar

99 Walsh, The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry, pp. 20, 34.Google Scholar

100 Smith, Pork Production, p. 143. It took about a pound of corn per 100 live weight to keep a hog at constant weight, pp. 148, 173.Google Scholar

101 Ibid., pp. 150, 172, 435.Google Scholar

102 Ibid., pp. 171, 175.Google Scholar

103 Holmes, Meat Situation, p. 16. The average caloric content of a pound of meat was said to be 1,040.Google Scholar

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