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American Urban Growth Preceding the Railway Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

George Rogers Taylor
George Rogers Taylor
Affiliation:
Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation
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Extract

The rate of urban growth in the United States reached its highestlevel in the twenty years before 1861. Nevertheless in the five preceding decades, 1790 to 1840, those coming just before the railroad age, the cities of the nation grew at a remarkably rapid rate. It is true that during one 10-year period of relatively slow growth, 1810–1820, the city population increased at a pace slightly below that for the total population. But in the other four decades, 1790–1800, 1800–1810, 1820–1830, and 1830–1840, the rate of increase in the number of people living in cities was almost double that for the whole population and exceeded the urban growth rate attained in any post-Civil War decade. This study makes available detailed statistics on urban population changes from 1775 to 1840, directs attention to the differing contributions to urbanization made by four city groups, and notes some of the influences affecting urban population expansion in the years before the railroad became a dominant influence.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , September 1967 , pp. 309 - 339
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1967

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References

1 Sixteenth Census of the U.S.: 1940, Population, I, 18; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States:1961 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), pp. 5, 23Google Scholar.

2 The term “city” refers, unless otherwise noted, to a place of 2,500 or more as defined in the United States Census of 1940, Population, Vol. I, Number of Inhabitants, p. 10. For a more extensive discussion see Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, “The Development of the Urban-Rural Classification in the United States: 1874 to 1949,” Series P. 23, No. 1.Google Scholar

The suburban population is included in the tables prepared for this study only i n the totals for Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. For a treatment of this problem see the author's Comment in Gilchrist, David T., ed., Growth of the Seaport Cities, 1790-1825 (Charlottesville, Va: The University Press of Virginia, 1967), pp. 39–46Google Scholar , and his “Beginnings of Mass Transportation in Urban America,” Part I, The Smithsonian Journal of History, I (Summer 1966), 36–38Google Scholar . For all other cities the population as reported in the United States Census of 1940 and in the worksheets prepared for that census have been accepted. This procedure leaves something to be desired until a careful study can be made for each city. In at least three instances the drastic population losses shown by the census (New Haven 1790-1800, New London 1800 t o 1810, and Schenectady 1810 to 1820) reflect in considerable degree merely a contraction of legal boundaries. See Timothy Dwight, AStatistical Account of the City of New-Haven (New Haven: Walter and Steele, 1811), p. 59Google Scholar ; Caulkins, Frances Man-waring, History of New London, Connecticut (New London: the author, 1852), pp. 665–66Google Scholar ; Census of the state of New York, for 1855 (Albany: Van Benthuy-sen, 1857) xxviii.Google Scholar

3 It may be that the three river cities in Maine which achieved city status late in the period (Gardiner, 1830 and Augusta and Bangor, 1840) should have been classified as Eastern Interior Cities. Their statistical influence on the over-all picture i s slight. Fall River, Massachusetts, though technically a seaport, was never important as such. It achieved city status in 1830 as a manufacturing city and is classified, despite its location, as an Eastern Interior City.

4 Rossiter, W. S., A Century of Population Growth (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909), p. 15Google Scholar ; Bridenbaugh, Carl, Cities in Revolt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), pp. 216–17Google Scholar.

5 , Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt, pp. 216–17.Google Scholar

6 Ibid.

7 Computed from Table 2 and Sutherland, S. H., Population Distribution in Colonial America, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), p. xiiGoogle Scholar.

8 Andrews, James P., “The City of Hartford” in Trumbull, J. Hammond, ed., The Memorial History of Hartford County, Conn., 1633-1884 (Boston: E. L. Osgood, 1886), I, 378–89Google Scholar ; Dwight, AStatistical Account of the City of New-Haven, p. 59Google Scholar ; Caulkins, Frances Manwaring, History of Norwich, Connecticut (Hartford, Ct.: the author, 1866), pp. 26–27Google Scholar.

9 As suggested above the statistics showing a decline may be untrustworthy. In any case a period of generally slow growth ensued.

10 See Martin, Margaret E., Merchants and Trade of The Connecticut River Valley 1750-1820, Smith College Studies in History, Vol. XXIV (Northampton, Mass.: Smith College, 1939), passim;Google ScholarPease, John C. and Niles, John M., Gazetteer of… Connecticut and Rhode-Island (Hartford: W. S. Marsh, 1819), pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

11 Coleman, Peter J., The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790-1860 (Providence, R.I.: Brown University Press, 1963), passim.Google Scholar

12 In current prices. For a discussion of per capita domestic exports in real terms see the paper by Bjork, G. C. in , Gilchrist, ed., Growth of the Seaport Cities, pp. 54–61Google Scholar.

13 The period of rapid growth came to a close with the imposition of the Embargo Act of December 22, 1807.

14 See the author's Comment in , Gilchrist, ed., Growth of the Seaport Cities, p. 39Google Scholar.

15 Livingood, James W., The Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry, 1780-1860 (Harrisburg, Pa.: The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1947), pp. 24–26.Google Scholar

16 Pitkin, Timothy, Statistical View (Hartford: 1816), p. 392.Google Scholar

17 Albion, R. C., The Rise of New York Port 11815-18601 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939), ch. ii.Google Scholar

18 On fishing see McFarland, Raymond, A History of the New England Fisheries (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1911), ch. viiiGoogle Scholar.

19 , Caulkins, History of New London, Connecticut, pp. 65–66.Google Scholar

20 See, for example, Tsuru, Shigeto, “The Economic Significance of Cities,” in Handlin, Oscar and Burchard, John, eds., The Historian and the City (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press and Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 44–55Google Scholar . The relation of city size to external economies and diseconomies presents many interesting complexities. Facilities for the exchange of information and for the local transportation of goods and people may be of the greatest importance. In statistical studies determination of the city's boundaries may be crucial. For example, should not the populations of Boston and Cambridge and similarly of New York and Brooklyn be combined at an early date regardless of their legal boundaries?

21 For an excellent study of the growth of the Western Cities see: Wade, Richard C., The Urban Frontier: The Rise of Western Cities, 1780-1830 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

22 In years of shortage in Europe the value of flour shipments became very important. In 1811 th e value of wheat and flour exports appreciably exceeded that of cotton, and in 1817 their value was not far under that for cotton exports.

23 This appears to have been true also in western Europe. From 1807 the British blockade of Continental ports became increasingly effective. Cities like Amsterdam, Bordeaux, and Marseilles experienced an absolute decline in population. Crouzet, François, “Wars, Blockade, and Economic Change in Europe, 1792-1815,” The Journal of Economic History, XXIV (12 1964), 571Google Scholar.

24 Rubin, Israel Ira, “New York State and The Long Embargo” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1961), p. 151.Google Scholar

25 Census of the State of New York for 1855, p. xxiv. The returns of the state census are said to be incomplete. Dubester, H. J., State Censuses: Bibliography of Censuses of Population taken after the year 1790 by States and Territories of the United States (Washington, D.C.: 1948), p. 46Google Scholar . Estimates based on the names listed in the New York City Directory clearly indicate a reduced population from 1813 to 1816. Guernsey, R. S., New York City… during the War of 1812-15… (New York: Charles L. Woodward, 1889), Vol. I, p. 420Google Scholar.

28 Niles Register, xxxiv (06 7, 1828), 238.Google Scholar

27 , Caulkins, History of New London, p. 666.Google Scholar

28 The onl y northern outport outside of New England was Hudson. Why this seaport 116 mile s north of New York continued to flourish during this decade is not apparent.

29 Troy, on the route for troops and supplies moving to the Canadian border, was one of the few cities directly aided by the war.

30 Fredericksburg was not yet a city; that is, it did not have a population of at least 2,500 until 1830.

31 Niles Register, xxxiv (06 7, 1828), 238.Google Scholar

32 By 1840 Newark was becoming a suburb of New York City.

33 One significant development may be singled out for attention. The number of barrels of flour inspected at Philadelphia and Baltimore showed no appreciable upward trend during the 1820's. But inspections at New York, which were only about half those at the other two cities in 1820, rose rapidly especially after 1824 so as to be much greater than those of either Philadelphia or Baltimore by 1830. Niles Register, xxiv (06 7, 1828), 238Google Scholar ; Register of Pennsylvania, vi (02 26, 1831), 137Google Scholar.

34 See: Zevin, Robert Brooke, “The Growth of Manufacturing in Early Nineteenth Century New England,” The Journal of Economic History, XXV (12 1965), 680–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 References to the growing literature on this approach may be found in Lane, Theodore, “The Urban Base Multiplier: An Evaluation of the State of the Art,” Land Economics, XLII (08 1966), 339–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Thompson, Wilbur R., A Preface to Urban Economics (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), pp. 27–32Google Scholar.