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The importance of canals and railroads has hardly grown "deeper and deeper," but at least they had their day. As for plank roads, most people have never heard of them.The historical obscurity of plank roads reflects the general scholarly neglect of nineteenth-century roads. Excellent work has been done on canals, and studies of railroads have engendered some of the most vibrant debates in American economic history. Yet no substantial study of road transport has been done in decades. In 1964, Robert Fogel complained about the "neglected problem" of road transportation in the nineteenth-century. Fifteen years later, Fogel lamented that "the issue of antebellum wagon transportation should not be left in such a highly conjectural and unsatisfactory state." Although Winifred Rothenberg's work on Massachusetts's farmers has produced some suggestive insights on the cost of road transport, Fogel's call has gone more or less unheeded.

The turnpike companies of early America (roughly 1795-1840) were very unprofitable but conferred vast benefits to communities served. Purchases were necessary to complete the road and unprofitability was foreseen. Thus the turnpikes would appear to have been public goods. Yet hundreds of turnpikes were provided through voluntary association. The free rider problem was overcome by an almost vigilant impulse to participate and to see that your neighbor did likewise.

The article focuses on Adam Smith's condemnation of slavery, particularly in his work "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." Smith's condemnation of the slave trade is analyzed, highlighting the moral and ethical aspects of his perspective. It explores how Smith's animistic language emphasizes the cruelty and injustice of slavery, demonstrating his moral stance against the institution.

This article is part of a symposium (in Society) on a target article by Amitai Etzioni. Using that article as a point of departure, I take the opportunity to elaborate a reading of Adam Smith's moral philosophy that sees it as quite non-foundationalist. Whereas foundationalism's metaphor is a block or pillar, as non-foundationalism's metaphor I suggest a spiral. I claim that non-foundationalism and Smithian liberalism dovetail., Author(s): Daniel B. Klein[sup.1] Author Affiliations: Daniel B. Klein is professor of economics and JIN Chair at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University and Research fellow at the Ratio Institute. [...]

There is increasing public discussion about whether the cultural institutions of the United States are ideologically skewed, relative to the general population. The major realms of political culture include the news media, K-12 schooling, academia, governmental institutions, cause-directed organizations, grant-making private foundations, the entertainment industries, and the arts. There is increasing belief that these institutions are dominated by people who vote Democratic. Where evidence is available, it generally backs up the claim that the D to R ratios in such settings are very lopsided. However, the evidence is much less abundant than one might guess. Much of the evidence that does exist is generated by openly conservative organizations, and the research is rarely reported in a scholarly manner. This paper contributes to the task of ascertaining the basic facts about ideological lopsidedness in academia by reporting the results of a systematic study of voter registration of large parts of the faculty at University of California-Berkeley and Stanford University. (Contains 6 figures, 1 table, and 17 notes.)

During the past 35 years, Seymour Martin Lipset and his collaborators have generated a series of studies and reports on the political alignment in academia. They have all found the social sciences and humanities to be preponderantly Democratic. In the past decade there has been little scholarly inquiry into the political orientation of faculty. There has been a growing complaint about "liberal bias" in cultural institutions generally. However, any compilation of personal testimony will be dismissed as the exaggerations of people with an axe to grind. To resolve the matter, the evidence must advance from personal testimony to actual measurement. Thus, voter registration data is certainly sufficient to establish extreme lopsidedness between Democrats and Republicans, but it is too incomplete to arrive with much confidence at estimates of the actual proportions. In Spring 2003 the authors surveyed U.S. members in six nationwide social science and humanities associations: (1) American Anthropological Association; (2) American Economics Association; (3) American Historical Association; (4) American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy; (5) American Political Science Association; and (6) American Sociological Association. The survey posed an unambiguous question about voting behavior: To which political party have the candidates you've voted for in the past ten years mostly belonged? The question asked for the party most voted for. Nineteen respondents spontaneously checked two parties (and 14 checked three or more parties). Of the 19 who checked two, only seven checked Democratic and Republican. This strongly suggests that individuals who vote for the major parties align themselves with one or the other. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure, and 22 notes.)