This paper re–examines the naval reserve oil leases issued by Interior Secretary Fall in 1922 that led to the Teapot Dome controversy. The analysis shows that the leases were the only efficient oil rights arrangement on federal lands through 1930. They were superior to either the naval oil storage policy practiced prior to 1922 or to the general leasing practices found on other federal land. Nevertheless, they were attacked by conservation groups and small oil firms and cancelled in 1922. To explain the opposition to the leases, this paper examines interagency and interest group rivalries for control of federal land. During the period preceding Teapot Dome, the federal government began withholding title to vast tracts of land, and issues of agency jurisdiction and interest group access had not been resolved. The paper concludes that Teapot Dome had little to do with oil conservation and more to do with settling jurisdictional disputes over federal land. The Teapot Dome controversy led to the establishment of the Federal Oil Conservation Board.

The California Marine Research Committee was established by the state legislature in 1947 in response to the catastrophic failure of the Pacific Coast sardine fishery. Scientists, state and federal resource-managment officials, and industry leaders put aside long–standing differences of viewpoint to launch a uniquely comprehensive, multidisciplinary research effort. This paper, based on newly opened archival materials, analyzes the founding and early work of the agency. How a stalemate occurred that delayed a consensus on policy recommendations and had the practical effect of continuing virtually unregulated sardine fishing is explained. The article illustrates the institutional development of post–war “Big Science” as a major actor in the policy process and analyzes the mobilization of public agencies to cope with complex environmental issues in resource–extractive industries.

Recent problems in the performance of the American steel industry have prompted a number of calls for an “industrial policy” for this sector. Before any such programs of public intervention can be considered, however, it would behoove public policymakers to examine why the industry fell into its present state of decline. This paper, an abstract of a longer study, analyzes the relations of business and government in American steel from 1945 to 1960, and concludes that public policies had as much to do with subsequent industry decline as did other factors previously delineated by scholars.

The classical political economists, especially James Mill, had a major role in shaping British land tax policy in India. Only in Bombay Presidency did the men who administered the land tax share Mill's view of rent as the legitimate and appropriate source of revenue for government expenditure. These men created a land tax of considerable complexity in their desire to collect only a part of the rent from each field and thereby to foster economic development in the region. Even with their cadastral survey completed, however, they were compelled to use circumstantial evidence to determine whether any particular level of taxation was less than or greater than the rent. Agriculture in the Deccan and the Karnatak did improve after the implementation of the survey and settlement system, but available evidence suggests that rising prices for agricultural goods may have been as or more important than careful adherence to the finer points of Ricardian rent theory.

This paper attempts to answer three questions. How much did agricultural research contribute to agricultural growth in British India? Was its limited impact due to too little investment or inefficient allocation of research resources? Could more research have led to a “Green Revolution” in foodgrain production? Available data indicate that the impact of research was small and that more should have been invested in research. The evidence suggests, however, that larger investments in foodgrain research would not have resulted in a Green Revolution in British India.