William Emmanuel Rappard’s article in the Revue d’économie politique, prepared as a report to the Congress of French-speaking Economists, explains American prosperity through the conditions sustaining exceptional labour productivity. It condenses an argument also developed in his forthcoming book, A quoi tient la supériorité économique des Etats-Unis ? The controversy surrounding that provocative title supplies his opening distinction: economic superiority means greater material abundance, not superior culture or a more desirable civilization. This separation of productive performance from ultimate human values governs the entire inquiry.
The article proceeds from establishing prosperity to explaining it. In the first section, Rappard distrusts the apparent precision of national-income aggregates but finds the convergence of independent indicators compelling. Estimates place average American income at two to three times that of the most privileged European countries; industrial comparisons show greater output with fewer workers and shorter hours, although differences between sectors prevent a single reliable productivity ratio. High wages, widespread ownership of telephones and cars, and the country’s transformation from European debtor into creditor reinforce the argument. Immigration supplies suggestive evidence rather than proof, since migrants disproportionately came from poorer social groups. High wages combined with competitive exports provide stronger evidence that American labour produces more.
The second section makes a methodological turn. Statistical description can establish a disparity without identifying its causes. Saying that prosperity depends on productivity is almost tautological:
Déterminer le vrai secret de la prospérité d'une nation, ce n'est donc pas se borner à constater la productivité de son économie. C'est expliquer cette productivité en découvrant les circonstances qui lui sont favorables.
English translation: Determining the true secret of a nation’s prosperity therefore does not mean merely establishing the productivity of its economy. It means explaining that productivity by discovering the circumstances favourable to it.
Explanation consequently requires historical reasoning, convergent testimony and plausible causal interpretation, not mathematical demonstration. Rappard first identifies favourable background conditions: immigration, European civic inheritances, constitutional leadership, abundant resources and protection from international conflict. These remain enabling conditions, not sufficient explanations. His comparison with Latin America emphasizes inherited institutions and dispositions alongside geography. This historical sketch also exposes the account’s limitations: its celebration of settlement minimizes Indigenous resistance and dispossession, while its language about ancestry and racial mixing carries hierarchical assumptions.
The substantive explanation has four parts: mass production, applied science, the passion for productivity and competitive spirit. Mass production benefits from the geographical extent of a unified monetary and customs area, but also from what Rappard calls its social depth: purchasing power reaches far down the social hierarchy. Ford’s combination of standardization, mechanization, lower prices and higher wages converts workers into customers and expands the market that makes large-scale production economical.
Une société prospère et égalitaire favorisait la production en série. Et cette production en série, en standardisant ses modèles, en abaissant les prix et en haussant les salaires, rendait à son tour la société toujours plus prospère et plus égalitaire.
English translation: A prosperous and egalitarian society favoured mass production. And this mass production, by standardizing its models, lowering prices and raising wages, in turn made society ever more prosperous and more egalitarian.
The causal relation is reciprocal, not a simple progression from natural wealth to industrial success. European integration could reproduce part of the advantage of market size, though Rappard notes that transport costs and American external tariffs qualify the benefits of domestic free trade.
Applied science supplies a second reinforcing mechanism. Scarce, expensive labour encourages labour-saving machinery; large firms can finance the laboratories and specialist teams required by modern research. Rappard distinguishes original discovery from rapid industrial application, locating the specifically American advantage chiefly in the latter. Concentration thus increases productive capacity even as it complicates the competitive explanation developed later.
The third factor is psychological and social. Drawing heavily on Graham Hutton and British and French productivity missions, Rappard contrasts American enthusiasm for expanding output with European attachment to established practices and security. He treats workers’ suspicion of rationalization as grounded in unemployment and wage-cutting experience, while attributing American cooperation to expectations of expanding employment and rising earnings. Employers likewise differ: American managerial ambition allegedly seeks enlarged markets, whereas European cartels protect existing positions. These broad contrasts depend on testimony and national-character generalizations whose scientific measurability Rappard explicitly doubts.
Competition is the culminating explanation, but also the argument’s principal difficulty. Antitrust legislation matters not merely through enforcement: despite evasions and inconsistencies, it helps sustain a business climate in which innovation is rewarded and inertia threatened. Yet Rappard acknowledges constrained price competition in steel and petroleum and confronts Galbraith’s account of oligopoly. Large firms may foster research, while organized buyers and suppliers check concentrated producers. Rappard interprets this countervailing power as another form of competitive struggle rather than a decisive refutation of his thesis.
Nous ne croyons donc pas dépasser les bornes de la prudence en admettant comme un fait au moins très probable que, parmi les causes assurément diverses qui expliquent cette productivité génératrice de cette prospérité, la première place revient à l'esprit de concurrence.
English translation: We therefore do not believe we exceed the bounds of prudence in accepting as at least a very probable fact that, among the undoubtedly diverse causes explaining this productivity that generates this prosperity, first place belongs to the spirit of competition.
The conclusion privileges competitive dynamism over conformity to a textbook market structure. Its relevance to postwar European productivity debates lies in joining institutions, technology, purchasing power and expectations into an account of cumulative growth. Nevertheless, Rappard ends by preserving the distinction with which he began: Europe’s traditions may restrain material expansion while sustaining cultural distinction and the attractions of its way of life. Greater output is an achievement to explain, not an exhaustive measure of civilization.
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