# Habakkuk thesis

> English word · Proper noun

## Definitions
1. The theory that land abundance and labor scarcity in the 19th-century United States led to high wages, which resulted in labor-saving technological innovations and the development of the American system of manufacturing based on the extensive use of machinery and interchangeable parts.

## Etymology
Proposed by John Habakkuk (1915–2002), British economic historian, in his work American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labour-Saving Inventions (1962).

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/habakkuk-thesis