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Reflections on George Rogers Taylor's The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860: A Twenty-five Year Retrospect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Harry N. Scheiber  and
Stephen Salsbury
Harry N. Scheiber
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University of California, San Diego
Stephen Salsbury
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University of Delaware
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Abstract

“All books are dead in twenty-five years,” Mr. Justice Holmes wrote to Sir Frederick Pollock. An example of Holmes’ mastery of the art of over-statement, the dictum has its notable exceptions, as even a relatively young discipline such as economic and business history reveals. Professors Scheiber and Salsbury make the case for the permanent impact of one such exception. At the Editor's discretion, communications like the following may be published in the future about other milestones.

Type
Review Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , Spring 1977 , pp. 79 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1977

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References

1 Taylor, , “Stage Theories of Economic History,” in Taylor, and Ellsworth, L. F., eds., Approaches to American Economic History (Charlottesville, Va., 1971), 24.Google Scholar

2 New York, 1951. This was one of the volumes in the distinguished series, The Economic History of the United States, edited by Henry David and others. Taylor's volume, originally published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, was subsequently published in paperback by Harper & Row.

3 We do not provide full citations of secondary works cited in this study, with a few exceptions. Bibliographic information is readily obtained from George Rogers Taylor, American Economic History before 1860 (Goldentree Bibliographies in American History, ed. Link, Arthur S.) (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

4 These works are analyzed in Lively, Robert A., “The American System: A Review Article,” Business History Review, XXIX (March, 1955)Google Scholar; and reappraised, along with subsequently published studies, in Scheiber, Harry N., “Government and the Economy: Studies in the ‘Commonwealth” Policy in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, III (1971), 135–151Google Scholar.

5 For some revisions of Taylor's data, see Fishlow, Albert, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-bellum Economy (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar; and Scheiber, Harry, Ohio Canal Era: A Case Study of Government and the Economy, 1820-1861 (Athens, Ohio 1969), chs. 9-10.Google Scholar

6 Kirkland, Edward Chase, Industry Comes of Age: Business, Labor, and Public Policy, 1860-1897 (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Gutman, Herbert, “Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-1919,” American Historical Review, LXXVIII (June, 1973), 531–588CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Taylor received the doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1929. Among his published studies of price history were: “Prices in the Mississippi Valley Preceding the War of 1812,” Journal of Economic and Business History, III (1930), 148–163Google Scholar; “Wholesale Commodity Prices at Charleston, S. C,” two parts (covering 1732-1861), ibid., IV (February, August, 1932). The more recent study is “American Economic Growth before 1840: An Exploratory Essay,” Journal of Economic History, XXIV (December, 1964), 427–444Google Scholar, Professor Taylor's presidential address before the Economic History Association annual meeting.

8 Taylor, , “The Beginnings of Mass Transportation in Urban America, Part I,” The Smithsonian Journal of History, (Summer, 1966)Google Scholar; Part II, ibid., (Autumn, 1966); Taylor, , “The National Economy Before and After the Civil War,” in Gilchrist, David T. and Lewis, David, eds., Economic Change in the Civil War Era (Greenville, Delaware, 1965)Google Scholar; Taylor, Statement (with Ethel Hoover) at Hearings before the Joint Economic Committee: Employment, Growth and Price Levels, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., April 9, 1959 (Washington, 1959)Google Scholar; Taylor, , “American Urban Growth Preceding the Railway Age,” Journal of Economic History, XXVII (September, 1967)Google Scholar. Taylor has also continued to bring the master-journeyman's skills to the workbench in more closely focused monographic work. Thus he contributed in 1960 an authoritative summary of the primary sources for reconstruction of railroad mileage and investment statistics in the nineteenth century: “Railroad Investment before the Civil War: Comment,” Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, National Bureau of Economic Research, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. XXIV (Princeton, 1960), 524-544.

9 Fishlow, , “Ante-bellum Regional Trade Reconsidered,” American Economic Review, LIV (1964), 352–364Google Scholar.

10 Lindstrom's, article on “Southern Dependence” is in Agricultural History, XLIV (January, 1970)Google Scholar; Mr. Comp's University of Delaware doctoral dissertation is near completion. Lindstrom's dissertation on “Demand, Markets, and Eastern Economic Development: Philadelphia, 1815-1840” (also University of Delaware)Google Scholar won the Columbia University Prize in Economic History in Honor of Allan Nevins.

11 Cited in note 3.

12 Taylor served as series general editor from 1948 to 1968. He also was editor of four individual volumes in the series: The Turner Thesis (three editions, New York, 1949, 1956, 1972); Jackson versus Biddle: The Struggle over the Second Bank of the United States (two editions, 1949, 1972); Hamilton and the National Debt (1950); and The Great Tariff Debate, 1820-1830 (1953).

13 See Porter, Glenn, ed., Regional Economic History: The Mid-Atlantic Area Since 1700 (Greenville, Del., 1976)Google Scholar.