The U. S. grain marketing and processing sector has been under the significant structural changes throughout the 1980's. One of the general conditions which commenced and has been directing these changes is that the expanding investment stimulated by the grain export boom in the 1970's went into the excess capital. Another is the expansion of the grain processing industries in contrast with the shrinking export and its increasing importance within the whole sector. These changes has been implemented through the 4th merger and acquisition wave of the U. S. capitalism as well as stimulated by it. The M & A movement in the grain sector has been led by the large diversified agri-food businesses. This movement included the gain of the oligopolistic market share within each industry by acquisition of the exsisting mid-size or even large firms on the one hand, and the withdrawal from certain industries where they could hardly expect any advantage of the growth, the high profitability, or the oligopolistic marketshare on the other hand. The results are the formation and the strengthened status of the vertically integrated and diversified grain firms which became less in number. And they have got the core position among the larger market share both in each marketing stage and in each processing industry. Fundamentals of the distributing grain marketing system are finally wiped out by this process, and the transition toward a new system is being urged. That is, the intermediate wholesale commerce as an independent stage is shrinking totally or partially and its function is now replaced by other forms of vertical coordination between entities within each firm or each group of firms. The changes throughout the 1980's can be recognized as the transition process toward the vertically organized grain marketing system based on higher concentration in each marketing stage.

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During the 1970s and 80s, the United States experienced the upsurge of low-priced apparel imports from Asian NIEs. This inflow caused a sharp decline of the share of apparel products made in U. S. Although in a serious condition on the national basis, Los Angeles apparel industry and New York apparel industry, which have been two major production centers, have lead to remarkably different situations: the former to a huge growth, and the latter to a stagnation. This contrast reflects the full-fledged progress of globalization, which U. S. apparel industry itself has developed. The expansion of apparel production in Asian NIEs after the early 1970s was mainly engendered by U. S. apparel retailers. This accelerated the growth of textile and fiber industries there, which supplied their products to the apparel sector, as well as the shift of apparel production from U. S. to Asian NIEs. At the exact moment, however, many Los Angeles-based apparel manufacturers have gotten their competitive strength by shifting labor-intensive parts of production process to maquiladoras in northern Mexican borderland neighboring southern California. This strategy also helped to asssure the survival of both textile and fiber industries, which had close ties with the local apparel industry. On the other hand, almost at the same time, New York apparel industry was forced to retreat from price-competitive sectors, and to make only expensive, high-fashion products, owing to its labor shortage and increasing labor costs. A part of runaway shops were said to have moved from New York to northern Mexican borderland. The development of two types of globalization, one by U. S. retailers on Asian NIEs and the other by Los Angeles-based apparel manufacturers on Mexican maquiladoras, can never be fully understood within the framework of the national economy. Although I cannot decide whether the paradigm of 'new international division' will be changed by the specific production strategy, which was adopted by some Los Angeles-based apparel manufactures, this specific division will surely provide some important clues especially for solving the problems of sweatshops in U. S., one of the most advanced countries.

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The first oil crisis of 1973-74 revealed that the post-war American-dominated oil order had begun to break down. This implied that the U. S. deteriorated the capacity for implementation of the foreign policy. This paper addresses the question of how the U. S. foreign policy was formed in the first oil crisis of 1973-74 and especially focuses on the logic of the official petrodollar recycling. In early 1974, the U. S. called a conference of the major oil-consuming capitalist countries, the Washington Energy Conference. This effort was to coordinate consumer buying behavior so as to dampen the effects of a practice of "leapfrogging" by oil-consuming countries attempting to outdo one another in an effort to assure adequate supplies of oil at ever increasing prices. In other words, the purpose of the conference was to balance monopoly (a unitary seller) with monopsony (a unitary buyer) through the international cooperation since the U. S. had lost the power of influencing the world oil market. But the international coorperation under the U. S. leadership was seriously being questioned when the International Monetary Fund sought to establish an "oil facility" to recycle petrodollars. In contrast to the international cooperation by which the U. S. undertook to regulate the oil consumption in order to lower the price, the IMF facility was to assist the member countries in meeting any "oil-induced deficits": the IMF had no intention of imposing any conditionalities on debtor member countries. Therefore, the political solidarity among consumer countries that the U. S. required would be disrupted by the IMF "oil facility." Coping with the contradiction, the U. S. employed linkage in oil, finance, and security issues to get consumer countries united under the international cooperation and proposed an official recycling mechanism. Moreover, the recycling mechanism that the U. S. proposed required the financial backup by petrodollars which directly came from oil producers. In other words, the U. S. would not bear the cost of the international cooperation but the participating countries would. The thesis of this study is that as the relative power of the U. S. declines, the U. S. intends to influence the economic relationships by political measures. In case of recycling petrodollars, the U. S. employed linkage to unite consumer countries to control the world oil market and to extract the economical resources from oil producers to avoid their own burden. This was how the U. S. attempted to regain the power in the oil issue.

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This paper examines connection between surroundings of poors and politics to them and what kind of situation that national relief could be restricted in Tokyo (Wards) in Early Meiji period. It is certain that there were two sorts of relief, one was for disabled and foundlings, the other was for working poors. I focus on the former since the latter isn't pure welfare politics. After the collapse of relief supported by towns, relief depended on Tokyo Prefecture considerably because rich inhabitants who had supported towns grew needy. Moreover merchants and landowners connected with national government wouldn't help poors positively. Tenants were not special people for them because rented houses were in great demand in Tokyo. If poors couldn't pay house rent, there did not cause big problems for landowners since many of them earned their living by commerce besides house rent. That was why they took negative attitude toward poors. Tenants who were odd job men tended to move to places where house rent were cheaper. Thereby they didn't need strong connection with landowners. Relationship in the neighborhood in Wards were weaker than in Districts. Compared with Districts, there were much more people who were helped by public relief in Wards. I analyzed rates of national relief for disabled and orphans as a percentage of the population there, but the rate was lower than national average because of relieving disabled in prefectural Nursing Home (Yoiku-in) and Lunatic Asylum (Tenkyo-in). The rate of only orphans was higher than the average because Tokyo Prefecture didn't help many of them. In conclusion, Tokyo Prefecture couldn't help relieving poors positively owing to weak relationship in the neighborhood and depressd charity. National relief which was restricted to a few of disabled could be done as far as prefectural relief was effective.

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