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American Development Policy: The Case of Internal Improvements*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Carter Goodrich
Carter Goodrich
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

The subject I should like to discuss grows directly out of the theme of the meetings as a whole. They have been concerned with the American West as an Underdeveloped Region, and the title was intended to suggest the analogy between the United States of an earlier period and the so-called underdeveloped nations of the present day. To many it would suggest a contrast in policy. These other nations are now in many cases striving to achieve economic development by national planning and deliberate measures of governmental policy. On the other hand the United States achieved its massive economic development without over-all economic planning, without five-year plans or explicit national targets of input and output, and—it is sometimes believed—without the adoption of policies deliberately intended to promote development.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1956 , pp. 449 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1956

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References

1 Heath, Milton S., Constructive Liberalism: The Role of the State in Economic Development in Georgia to 1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), ch. 9.Google ScholarGolembe, Carter H., “State Banks and the Economic Development of the West, 1830–1844,” unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1952.Google Scholar

2 Professor Lively is right in pointing out that too little has been done with the comparison with private investment. Lively, Robert A., “The American System: A Review Article,” Business History Review, XXIX (March 1955), 81–96.Google Scholar He cites Heath's figures on the ante-bellum South as a notable exception. See Heath, Milton S., “Public Railroad Construction and the Development of Private Enterprise in the South before 1861,” Journal of economic history, X (Supplement, 1950), 40–53.Google Scholar

An approach to the comparison with total national investment has been made in Segal, Harvey H., “Canal Cycles, 1834–1861: Public Construction Experience in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio” (unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1956),Google Scholar which relates the canal expenditures to several estimates of capital formation and construction.

Heath, Constructive Liberalism, ch. 15, relates improvement expenditures to the state budget of Georgia; and Goodrich and Segal, “Baltimore's Aid to Railroads,” relate them to the city budget.

3 Guy Callender, Stevens, “The Early Transportation and Banking Enterprises of the States in Relation to the Growth of Corporations,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, XVII (November, 1902), 111–162.Google Scholar Reprinted in Lambie, Joseph T. and Clemence, Richard V. (eds.), Economic Change in America (Harrisburg: The Stackpole Co., 1954), pp. 552–559.Google Scholar The quotation is from p. 524.

4 Cranmer, H. Jerome, “The New Jersey Canals: A Study of the Role of Government in Economic Development,” unpublished dissertation, Columbia University, 1955.Google Scholar

5 This last alternative is noted in Fetter, Frank W., “History of Public Debt in Latin America,” American Economic Review, XXXVII (May, 1947), 147–148.Google Scholar

6 Thorner, Daniel, Investment in Empire: British Railway and Steam Shipping Enterprise in India, 1825–1940 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), ch. 7.Google ScholarDuncan, Julian Smith, Public and Private Operation of Railways in Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932).Google Scholar

7 Kirkland, Edward C., Men, Cities and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948).Google Scholar

8 In Colorado only during the territorial period.

9 States of which this was substantially true include Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Local aid was also given in states that had not had state programs. On the other hand, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Ohio, and Pennsylvania adopted constitutional prohibitions against local aid at the same time as against state aid.

10 American Railroad Journal, XXVII (1854), 449Google Scholar; XXVIII (1855), 281.

11 Pierce, Harry H., Railroads of New York.: A Study of Government Aid, 1826–187; (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Heath, Constructive Liberalism, ch. 11.

13 Hill, Forest G., “Government Engineering Aid to Railroads before the Civil War,” Journal of Economic History, XI (Summer, 1951), 235–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 An alternative explanation, that of evading a constitutional prohibition against government stock ownership, has been suggested for the Iowa statute. See Beard, Earl S., “Local Aid to Railroads in Iowa,” Iowa Journal of History, L (1952), 1–34.Google Scholar

15 Primm, James Neal, Economic Policy in the Development of a Western State: Missouri, 1820–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Jackson, Mississippi Daily Pilot, May 15, 1871.Google Scholar Mobile Register, October 24, 1871.

17 Nashville Union and American, February 11, 1870.

18 The effect of local rivalries in impeding the formation of a fully connected national railroad system, by perpetuating differences in gauge and delaying physical connections between lines, is discussed in Taylor, George Rogers and Neu, Irene D., The American Railway Network, 1861–1890 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The text refers to the “long continued parochialism of the cities” (p. 51) and quotes a comment on “village peevishness” (p. 53).