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Transportation as a Factor in Economic Growth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Kent T. Healey
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Extract

To discuss the influence of one type of economic activity such as transportation on economic growth is a hazardous undertaking. There is the obvious temptation, which has led many astray, to magnify the importance of that which is particularized. Such a characterization as “Transportation a Measure of Civilization” or the assertion that the railway “is a revolution among nations … [a] moral revolution … affecting the diffusion of knowledge, the interchange of social relations, the perpetuation of peace, the extension of commerce; and a revolution in all the relations of property,” is hardly impartial or balanced with respect to the whole picture of economic activity. A prime objective of this paper is to avoid the dominant parochial note in appraisals of transportation's contributions to economic growth and to present instead thoroughly critical analysis.

Type
Energy
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 7 , Supplement S1 , 1947 , pp. 72 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1947

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References

1 Chatburn, G. R., Highways and Highway Transportation (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1923).Google Scholar

2 Jervis, J. B., Railway Property (Philadelphia, 1869), p. 11Google Scholar, quoting Westminster Review, December 1845, Article 7.Google Scholar

3 Newcomen's first complete engine appeared in 1712 and was widely used for mine pumping by the middle of the century; Watt and his associates made their great contributions from 1765 to 1782, first in the direction of pumping engines and then toward rotary motion for industrial application. But Evans and Trevithick did not take steps leading toward the locomotive until about 1800, and Evans saw little future in application to transportation and turned to industrial possibilities. It was close to fifty years after Watt produced a steam engine capable of producing rotary motion that a practical locomotive was finally made available by Stephenson, .— Usher, A. P., A History of Mechanical Invention (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1929), pp. 308–18.Google Scholar

4 The dynamo's early development extended from the discovery of fundamental principles by Faraday in 1831 to Pacinotti's and Gramme's production of workable units in 1865 and 1870. A practical electric motor was accidently discovered in connection with the latter's work in 1873. Edison's electric lamp came in 1879. Arc lights and electroplating had provided the earliest uses of dynamo-generated power. The first working public-utility system was established in 1881;—Ibid., pp. 364–68. Electricity was applied to street railways from 1881 to 1888 in Germany, Holland, England, and the United States.

5 The internal-combustion engine passed through an even longer period of experimental exploration, culminating in the first practical unit built by Lenoir in 1860. The power of this unit did not exceed three horsepower and was not useful for transportation. Otto's invention of the four-cycle system came in 1876. Benz and Daimler, in 1879 and 1883 respectively, produced modified versions of the Otto engine for use in transportation, but wide application of his invention came first in the field of blower units and producer-gas prime movers.—Ibid., pp. 370–71.

6 Davis, J. S., Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), II, 27, 331–45.Google Scholar

7 Berle, A. A. and Means, G. C., The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933), pp. 10–13.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., pp. 127–288. Few references can be found to cases of railroad companies making the changes in law which led to the “modern corporation.”

9 Filipetti, G., Industrial Management in Transition (Chicago: Richard D. Irwin, 1946), pp. 1–6; F. W. Taylor, F. Gibreth, H. L. Gantt, and M. L. Cooke were confined to industrial or construction work. H. Emerson is the only one who worked in the transportation field, and he confined his efforts to the shops of a railroad.Google Scholar

10 Leland Jenks suggests that with the railroads in particular, “As horizons of opportunity narrowed, however, selection from within tended to bring competent administrators of a more routine sort to top executive positions.”—”Railroads as an Economic Force,” The Journal of Economic History, IV (1944), 17. He adds: “Large organizations as such, however, apart from their degree of maturity, set up certain hazards to innovations.”Google Scholar

11 Abstract of the Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930 (United States Government Printing Office, 1933), p. viii.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., pp. 10–11, by calculation.

13 MacGill, C. W., History of Transportation in the United States before 1860 (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1917), pp. 73–77.Google Scholar

14 The array of average fares per mile by states quoted in ibid., p. 576, from Daggett's Railroad Guide for 1848 indicate that on 56 per cent of the mileage the averages were 3 cents and below, ranging from a 2.15- to 3-cents top. The southern states on the other hand had averages ranging from 3.95 to 5.57 cents.

15 United States Interstate Commerce Commission, Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways in the United States (United States Government Printing Office, 1942), p. 155.Google Scholar

16 MacGill, United States Transportation before 1860, p. 58.

17 United States Interstate Commerce Commission, Thirtieth Annual Report on the Statistics of Railways in the United States, 1916 (United States Government Printing Office, 1919), p. 15, by addition.Google Scholar

18 United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Electrical Industries: 1917, Electric Railways (United States Government Printing Office, 1920), p. 118, by addition.Google Scholar

19 National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, Automobile Facts and Figures, 1943 (New York: The Chamber of Commerce, 1943), p. 44, by calculation.Google Scholar

20 Healy, K. T., Economics of Transportation in America (New York: Ronald Press, 1940), pp. 27, 37–38, by calculation.Google Scholar

21 Haswell, C. H., Engineers' and Mechanics' Pocket-Book (New York, 1872), p. 386; also Jervis, The Future of the Erie Canal, p. 7.Google Scholar

22 MacGill, United States Transportation before 1860, p. 574.