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The Transportation Revolution, 1815-60
Part of a series of detailed reference manuals on American economic history, this volume traces the development and rapid growth of transportation across the USA in the mid-1800s.
520 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 28, 2025
A great run down of the topic at hand but it is exactly what it purports to be. Exhaustive, repetitive, detailed and not very exciting. I really liked the commerce, banking, and labor chapters but didn’t feel it really connected back to transportation until the very very end of the book.
March 17, 2008
George Rogers Taylor. The Transportation Revolution, 1815,1860. [The Economic History of the United States, Volume IV.] New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1964.
George Rogers Taylor’s book, as its title suggests, is an account of the changing nature of transportation in the ante-bellum United States. Taylor’s thesis is that improvements in transportation during this period played an absolutely key role in transforming a decentralized, agrarian-oriented country into a more tightly knit and business-oriented one.
In the first half of his book, Taylor lucidly and methodically describes the construction, technical improvements, and financing of roads and bridges, of canals, railroads, and steamships, and of changes in oceanic merchant shipping. It would be nearly impossible to adequately summarize here the nuanced details of each of these headings. A few telling statistics will have to suffice: in 1816, 104 miles of canals existed in the United States; by 1840, 3,326 miles wound through the land. Railroad mileage soared from 3,328 in 1840 to 8,879 by 1850, and reached 30,626 by 1860. Railroads especially, Taylor notes, brought about tremendous indirect benefits. The multiplier effect of a relatively small investment in a railroad, by either private investors, or through subsidies by state and local governments, and, after 1850, by subsidies from the federal government, may have had the result of both greatly increasing the productivity, and nearly completely transforming the economy, of a whole area. By the year 1860, “the railroad as a major instrument of transportation had come of age. Already it had built great cities, hastened the settlement of the West, made farming practicable on the prairies, and greatly stimulated the flow of internal commerce.” (102) Railroads triumphed over competing modes of transportation because of their greater dependability and flexibility.
In the latter half of the book, Taylor looks more closely at the effects of abovementioned developments on commerce and industry. Accompanying the improvements in technology came drastic improvements in communication, as well as the rapid settlement of the West by a populous which almost quadrupled in size. All of these interacting factors made possible the territorial specialization upon which the striking growth of American domestic commerce depended. Domestically, a new sort of triangular trade developed among the industrializing East, and the agricultural West and South. The volume of manufactured products increased approximately twelvefold during the period covered in this book. A “household-handicraft-mill” complex dominated American communities in 1815. In this system, goods were manufactured, usually by hand, by locals and for local use. The end of the War of 1812 and the corresponding removal the Embargo and Nonintercourse Acts affected this arrangement drastically; a market-orientation began to take hold of the economy. A factory system developed which fundamentally altered the way of living for the majority of Americans. This contributed to increasing urbanization, to the emergence of the wage earner as a sort of class, and to the gradual increase of said class’s participation in extra-constitutional political forums, such as trade unions. Finally, Taylor provides a brief survey of the roles that financial institutions and the government played in the developing market economy. The federal and state governments consistently pursued policies that stimulated industry, the former through regulatory tariffs, and the latter through premiums and bounties.
Taylor relies heavily on statistics, gathered mostly from secondary sources, which he outlines in a forty-page bibliography at the end of the book. At least one other reviewer (aside from the present one) feels that it might have been possible for Taylor, “without using up too much space, to have given somewhat more tangible descriptions to the various phenomena discussed.” In this sense, the book reads like a very lengthy encyclopaedic entry on technology, industry, and finances. Dry prose aside, one can scarcely deny the remarkable achievement of Taylor’s meticulous account of the factors involved in and related to the changing nature of transportation from 1815-1860.
George Rogers Taylor’s book, as its title suggests, is an account of the changing nature of transportation in the ante-bellum United States. Taylor’s thesis is that improvements in transportation during this period played an absolutely key role in transforming a decentralized, agrarian-oriented country into a more tightly knit and business-oriented one.
In the first half of his book, Taylor lucidly and methodically describes the construction, technical improvements, and financing of roads and bridges, of canals, railroads, and steamships, and of changes in oceanic merchant shipping. It would be nearly impossible to adequately summarize here the nuanced details of each of these headings. A few telling statistics will have to suffice: in 1816, 104 miles of canals existed in the United States; by 1840, 3,326 miles wound through the land. Railroad mileage soared from 3,328 in 1840 to 8,879 by 1850, and reached 30,626 by 1860. Railroads especially, Taylor notes, brought about tremendous indirect benefits. The multiplier effect of a relatively small investment in a railroad, by either private investors, or through subsidies by state and local governments, and, after 1850, by subsidies from the federal government, may have had the result of both greatly increasing the productivity, and nearly completely transforming the economy, of a whole area. By the year 1860, “the railroad as a major instrument of transportation had come of age. Already it had built great cities, hastened the settlement of the West, made farming practicable on the prairies, and greatly stimulated the flow of internal commerce.” (102) Railroads triumphed over competing modes of transportation because of their greater dependability and flexibility.
In the latter half of the book, Taylor looks more closely at the effects of abovementioned developments on commerce and industry. Accompanying the improvements in technology came drastic improvements in communication, as well as the rapid settlement of the West by a populous which almost quadrupled in size. All of these interacting factors made possible the territorial specialization upon which the striking growth of American domestic commerce depended. Domestically, a new sort of triangular trade developed among the industrializing East, and the agricultural West and South. The volume of manufactured products increased approximately twelvefold during the period covered in this book. A “household-handicraft-mill” complex dominated American communities in 1815. In this system, goods were manufactured, usually by hand, by locals and for local use. The end of the War of 1812 and the corresponding removal the Embargo and Nonintercourse Acts affected this arrangement drastically; a market-orientation began to take hold of the economy. A factory system developed which fundamentally altered the way of living for the majority of Americans. This contributed to increasing urbanization, to the emergence of the wage earner as a sort of class, and to the gradual increase of said class’s participation in extra-constitutional political forums, such as trade unions. Finally, Taylor provides a brief survey of the roles that financial institutions and the government played in the developing market economy. The federal and state governments consistently pursued policies that stimulated industry, the former through regulatory tariffs, and the latter through premiums and bounties.
Taylor relies heavily on statistics, gathered mostly from secondary sources, which he outlines in a forty-page bibliography at the end of the book. At least one other reviewer (aside from the present one) feels that it might have been possible for Taylor, “without using up too much space, to have given somewhat more tangible descriptions to the various phenomena discussed.” In this sense, the book reads like a very lengthy encyclopaedic entry on technology, industry, and finances. Dry prose aside, one can scarcely deny the remarkable achievement of Taylor’s meticulous account of the factors involved in and related to the changing nature of transportation from 1815-1860.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 28, 2013
A classic overview of American economic development between the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. I'm not sure anything else needs to be said, except that it's as readable as a study of economic development can be.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews