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Antebellum Urbanization in the American Northeast*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Jeffrey G. Williamson
Jeffrey G. Williamson
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

No one seriously questions the familiar association either between levels of urban development and degrees of industrial maturity or between rates of change in these two indices. It has even become commonplace in macroeconomic growth theory to simplify the complexities of structural change into some variation of the urban-rural two-sector model although, in the real world, shifts from commercial to industrial urban employment, let alone more complex intersectoral shifts, are of prime importance. Indeed, many of these growth models place great emphasis not upon changes in sector productivity but upon resource shifts between low- and high-productivity employment, while in empirical studies urban and rural population data very often appear as explicit substitutes for sectoral employment. But given the paucity of macroeconomic data for the antebellum period, especially prior to 1839, one is left puzzled by our relative inattention to the wealth of population census data by residence. American economic history textbooks are stuffed with quantitative information on the number of cities, their spectacular growth, and the percentage of population urbanized, but these may not be the most effective uses of this great data pool. The plethora of urban histories and the abundant attention to urban rivalry may be useful complements, but they are not very effective substitutes for quantitative analysis of overall American urbanization and experience with city size distribution. The very attention which the topic is currently receiving by economists, geographers, and historians suggests that much remains undone in the study of early American urbanization.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1965 , pp. 592 - 608
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1965

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References

1 See, for example, Lewis, W. A., “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor,” Manchester School, XXII, No. 2 (May 1954), 139–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ranis, G. and Fei, J. C. H., “A Theory of Economic Development,” American Economic Review, LI, No. 4 (Sept. 1961), 533–65Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Lebergott, S., “Labor Force and Employment, 1800–1960,”Conference on Research in Income and Wealth,Sept. 4–5, 1963 (mimeo)Google Scholar; and Kuznets, S., “Long-Term Changes in the National Income of the United States of America since 1870,” in Income and Wealth of the United States (Cambridge [Engl]: Bowes and Bowes, 1952), Appendix, pp. 221–41Google Scholar.

3 “The History of Cities in the Economically Advanced Areas,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, III (Jan. 1955), 81–136Google Scholar.

4 Weber, A. F., The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1899)Google Scholar, published as Volume XI of Studies in History, Economics and Public Law for Columbia University.

5 A Statistical View of the Population of Massachusetts from 1765 to 1840 (Boston, 1846)Google Scholar.

6 “Population Growth in Southern New England,” Publications of the American Statistical Association, XV, n. s. No. 120 (Dec. 1917), 813–39Google Scholar.

7 Smolensky, E. and Ratajczak, D., “The Conception of Cities,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2d ser., II No. 2 (Winter 1965), 90–131Google Scholar. The contributions by geographers have been extremely significant, but we do not review them here. As a sample see the excellent article by Pred, A., “Industrialization, Initial Advantage, and American Metropolitan Growth,” Geographical Review, LV (1965), 158–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the articles appearing in Economic Development and Cultural Change during the 1950's and 1960's.

8 For one of the latest restatements of this theme, see B. G. Reubens' review of Coleman's, P. J., The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790–1860 (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1963)Google Scholar in the Journal ofEconomicHistory, XXIV (June 1964), 263Google Scholar.

9 Jeffrey G. Williamson, Nineteenth Century Urbanization in the American Northeast (in progress).

10 Unless otherwise noted, the data which underlie this paper have all been secured from Bureau of Census worksheets or the familiar Census publications themselves.

11 The Δ measure clearly does not give an index of the rural-urban flows necessary to achieve such structural shifts by residence and, presumably, by employment. Simon Kuznets recently and most explicitly has shown how such migration must be estimated in lieu of direct observations on rural-urban migration. See Kuznets, , “Economic Growth and the Contribution of Agriculture; Notes on Measurements,” International Journal of Agrarian Affairs, III, No. 2 (Apr. 1961), 56–75Google Scholar; and J. G. Williamson, “The Rural-Urban Exodus and Urbanization Rates: New England, 1820–1860,” (mimeo, May 1965).

12 We might note here that Lebergott's data from sectoral distribution of the labor force implies a somewhat different historical pattern. The incremental nonagricultural labor-force share is negative during the first decade of the nineteenth century. It then becomes increasingly positive, remaining at a high peak level in the 1830's, 1840's, and 1850's before undergoing sharp secular decline.

The figures for the incremental nonagricultural labor-force share are:

Lebergott, S., Manpower in Economic Growth (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964), Table A-l, p. 510Google Scholar.

13 Our definition of eastern Pennsylvania encompasses those counties bordering on New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland which had significant early settlement. These counties include all of those in the southeast quadrant with the outermost northern and western limit delineated by the following counties: Franklin, Perry, Snyder, Union, Northumberland, Schuykill, Lehigh, and Northampton. The perimeter separating eastern and western New York does not differ greatly from Ellis' (Landlords and Farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk Region, 1790–1850 [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1946]) demarcation for the Hudson-Mohawk region. Southeastern New York here includes Long Island and the immediate present-day New York City area; beyond that it contains all counties bordering on the Hudson River plus the following contiguous northern counties: Ostego, Schoharie, Montgomery, Schenectady, Fulton, Saratoga, Warren, and Washington.

14 Easterlin, R. A., “Interregional Differences in Per Capita Income, Population, and Total Income, 1840–1950,” Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 73–140Google Scholar.

15 For a summary and comparative empirical study across nations and time see Williamson, J. G., “Regional Inequality and the Process of National Development: A Description of the Patterns,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. XIII, No. 4, Part II, Supplement (July 1965)Google Scholar.

16 Similar data were computed for the United States aggregate but excluding the West North Central, Mountain, and Pacific regions. As predicted above, the periods from 1790 to 1820 and 1860 to 1890 are typically ones during which there is regional convergence in urbanization levels. The period of rapid American urbanization, 1820 to 1860, is one of regional divergence.

17 Nor is this unique to northeastern experience with urbanization. We have been reworking Census employment data for the years 1820, 1840, 1850–1890 and by state. Using these data, the same results occur for nonagricultural employment shares and for manufacturing employment shares. Furthermore all of Lebergott's wage data by state suggest (1) that labor markets were well intergrated during this period of rapid structural change and (2) that rapid growth did not have a disequilibrating effect and produce divergence. Thus, not only did the economic structure of the Northeast homogenize during the antebellum period, but factor prices converged. See Williamson, Nineteenth Century Urbanization in the American Northeast.

18 Lampard, pp. 119–20.

19 Ibid., p. 119.

20 Ibid., p. 119. It is also true that the “fifteen great cities” of 1860 were less industrially oriented than were cities of smaller size.

21 Ibid., p. 120.

22 These are as yet only rough approximations, but we have computed indices of manufacturing orientation (the share of manufacturing employment in total urban employment) of northeastern cities by size class (1860) for those greater than 10,000.

With the significant exception of New England cities between 10,000 and 24,999 in size, the relative importance of manufacturing increases with city size up to the 50,000–99,999 range, while the “great cities,” of course, are definitely commercially oriented.

23 Joseph A. Swanson of the University of Wisconsin has been playing an important role in this portion of the study.