1. Not situated in the literature appropriately. Need to relate to other literature on the Maritimes. (First task; if not satisfactory, should forget about paper for Acadiensis.
  2. Alter presentation of the data for historians. Regressions not appropriate. Difficulty with maps also, but could work with that.
  3. Using economist’s reasoning; need to be more explicit in outlining the line of argument for historians ie regarding the average farmer, the variations from the average etc.

More minor alterations

  1. Quebec ideally would be included, but technical difficulties prevent.
  2. Discuss changes in soil quality etc. more fully.
  3. Misunderstanding in reader 4 regarding suitability for particular crops versus land adaptable for a wide range of crops, as appropriate in the 1870s.
  4. Issue of animals versus crops. Theme is adjustment of land use rather than incomes
  5. Alternate activities to support farmers, adaptability; confusion of economists and historians understanding of economic activity.

Procedure.

  1. Write a new introduction better situating the paper in the literature. Send it to you to determine if this is a significant contribution, or something we all know, before I put more work into the paper.
  2. Drop regression analysis for presentation of data, since three readers found the method provided little enlightment to them and the only reader who really claims to understand the method criticised the use of it quite severely.
  3. The paper clearly requires a much less compact presentation in which the economic reasoning which underlies the argument is made far more explicit and is justified for historians.
  4. We must discuss alternative methods of presenting the data which supports the argument. There are problems in combining the 106 districts into 26 – it is arbitrary and can be misleading. But Tables with 106 rows take up too much space and also bewilder the readers. Maps can be used, but Acadiensis is restricted to black and white and averages for census districts would have to be presented. This can be very misleading for the land quality. Scatter diagrams can also be used. An advantage of these is that all 106 districts can be shown by a dot. the Outliers can be identified by a number which might particularly appeal to historians.
  5. Maps would improve the paper and might be a very good way of presenting the data. I don’t have direct access to a GIS system, which is what I need to produce maps of soil quality of a reasonable scale for this paper. However, I may be able to borrow access to a system which will let me print out maps. There are no copywrite problems with these maps. How legible they will be in black and white is a concern. Cloropleth maps in which shading or hatching is used are often nearly illegible when they return from the printer.
  6. An alternative method of presentation is scatter diagrams plotting class one and two lands and population. Each of the 106 districts would have a dot, and ‘outliers’, that is districts which showed an atypical relationship between good land availability and a variable such as population or improved acres could be identified. This method could show the ‘norm’ and show districts which warrant further study.