Exam #2 Part II

Question 1

Many of the new industrial technologies had specific locational requirements we get:

Answer 1

1. Power sites:
   -Falling water (before the widespread use of coal-fired steam technology and electricity) was important
   -Towns along the Fall Line (especially in New England and the eastern margins of the Appalachians)
   Examples: Allentown, Harrisburg, Lowell
2. Mining towns:
   - coal and ore towns to supply the industrial economy
   - particularly Appalachian coalfield towns like Norton, Virginia
3. Transportation centers:
   - Strategic locations accessible by rail and canal
4. Heavy manufacturing towns:
   - Dependence on large volumes of raw materials
   - Steel making and heavy engineering
   - Pittsburgh takes on a new role – from being a important river port and wholesaling center to being the steeltown

Question 2

What contributed to the makings of a continental urban system?

Answer 2

1. Steam powered riverboats
2. Canals
3. Growth of the rail network

Question 3

Why was the growth of the rail network important?

Answer 3

1. The railroad “allowed a loose-knit collection of regional economies to develop into a national economy within which American enterprise could fully exploit the commercial advantages and economies of scale of a huge market and an apparently unlimited resource base.”
2. The railroad also realigned the spatial organization of the urban system
   - -You could ship directly east
   - -Inland cities such as Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago become critical juncture points

Question 4

What were some effects of the continental urban system?

Answer 4

1. Smaller port towns on the Mississippi (or nearby) could quickly lose their prominence
   some places experience slow rates of growth
   An increasing reliance on regional trade and service functions
2. Creation of the Manufacturing Belt
   New York-Buffalo-Detroit-Chicago-Milwaukee
   Philadelphia-Pittsburgh-Cincinnati-Louisville
3. Urban elites competed in a rivalry over the status of their cities

Question 5

Where did most early industrial growth (and consequently urban growth) occur during the early phases of industrialization occur?

Answer 5

The largest existing towns and cities.

Question 6

By 1875 the urban system had 15 cities that had more than 100,000 people. Why?

Answer 6

1. Initial advantage:
   - The owners of craft/wholesaling/transportation activities reinvested in factories and machinery
   - Skills in entrepreneurship, investment and lending histories, etc.
   - Largest pools of labor
   - Largest and most affluent markets
2. External economies: benefits that translate into cost savings that accrue to producers from associating with similar producers in places that offer the services they need, such as specialist suppliers (location based clustering, agglomeration economies, urbanization economies)
   - Skilled labor
   - Good specialized business services
   - Quality of the infrastructure (roads, harbors, utilities)
3. Locational economies: where external economies are limited to companies involved in a particular industry
   - Pittsburgh’s attractiveness to the iron and steel industry
   - Akron’s attractiveness to manufacturers of rubber products
   - Dayton’s attractiveness to manufacturers of fabricated metal and machinery

Question 7

How did rank sizes change and grow prior to industrialization, during the industrial era, and then after?

Answer 7

Prior to industrialization we saw that it was possible to have a number of urban gateways of similar size

During the industrial era we find that the rank size distribution is more likely to converge on a straight line

• Result of the hierarchical organization of capital flows
• Result of the agglomerative effect of the concentration of financial, manufacturing, and business activities in a few major national and regional centers

By 1870 the spatial pattern of urban places becomes more predictable in the United States

Question 8

Why did Continental Urbanism succeed and what were some of its effects?

Answer 8

1. Increasing integration of North America due to the standardization of rail gauge and increased continental lines
2. The constant supply of immigrants (provided low cost labor)
3. Introduction of assembly line factory system
4. The surpluses of mechanized agriculture
5. The entrepreneurial activity of family owned corporations (i.e. Carnegie Iron and Steel)

Question 9

How does the urban system develop (what are the 5 phases)?

Answer 9

A “Stage Model”

Phase 1: Exploration
Phase 2: Harvesting of Natural Resources
Phase 3: Farm-based Staple Production
Phase 4: Establishment of Interior Depot Centers
Phase 5: Economic maturity, central place infill.

Question 10

Describe phase 1 of the stage model

Answer 10

• Search for economic information by a prospective colonizing power
• Reconnaissance missions
• What’s out there? Fish, fur, gold, etc.

Question 11

Describe phase 2 of the stage model

Answer 11

• Periodic harvesting
• Little permanent settlement
• Exploitation of natural resources

Question 12

Describe phase 3 of the stage model

Answer 12

• Increased permanency of settlement
• Exchange between colonial agricultural commodities and mother country manufactured goods
• Seaports/Gateway cities act as “points of attachment”

Question 13

Describe phase 4 of the stage model

Answer 13

-Penetration of the interior (usually along routes that facilitate movement of staple products)
-Development of long distance routes and the emergence of towns serving as depots of staple collection at strategic locations
-Towns are established at strategic locations to function as “depots of staple collection” (spearheads of the frontier)
Urban industrial growth in the mother country – supplies both home and colonial markets

Question 14

Describe phase 5 of the stage model

Answer 14

• Economic maturity in the colonies
• Depots begin to take on service functions and develop as regional centers
• Development of a domestic market large enough and affluent enough to sustain the growth of a domestic manufacturing industry
• Development of a colonial urban network

Question 15

Vance’s staple trade interpretation is useful for long-run urban development in colonial American, but it is not entirely satisfactory in explaining the initial colonization of English towns. What came first in most English colonial settlements in the new world?

Answer 15

1. In most English colonial settlements in the new world, the town came first (Boston, Philly, New York, Charles Town, Newport)
2. the staple crop was not necessarily the the most important reason or purpose for the town’s existence

Question 16

For English colonial settlements, if the staple trade didn’t solely determine urban locations – what did? Why build a town first?

Answer 16

1. Obvious answers
   - Englishmen regarded towns as nodes of commerce, administration, and defense
2. A more perceptive answer:
   - The role of the colonial town was rooted in pessimism of Elizabethan and Stuart world views
   - Elizabethan culture must be preserved and the New World was filled with “licentious natives” and “beguiling wilderness.”
   - Wayward colonists (rural wanderers) might pose a threat to the colonial enterprise and the fabric of English culture (i.e. rumors that lost Roanoke colonists were living like “White Indians’, examples of barbarism, the English experience in Ireland)
   - The town was a preventative measure, it was deemed the most basic and necessary of frontier institutions

Question 17

We also cannot ignore the influence of mercantilism on the development of the urban system. How do you define mercantilism?

Answer 17

Basis principles of Mercantilism:

1. a nation’s strength depends on its wealth as measured in gold and silver
2. only a fixed amount of wealth exists in the world, and nations have to compete for their share of that wealth
3. a favorable balance of trade is an important step in gaining wealth
4. countries should seek to limit imports and maximize exports
5. A country should have its own source for raw materials and precious metals to avoid dependence on others
6. colonies exist only as a way for the mother country to make profit
7. a county’s colonies should not trade with other countries

Question 18

What did mercantlism have a hand in?

Answer 18

1. british/french rivalry
2. african slave trade
3. american war for independence
4. mid-eighteenth century wars
5. spanish colonial system

Question 19

What did the influence of colonial companies (monopolist authority) do to towns and their location?

Answer 19

1. Limited the number of towns
2. Administrative centrality (not a free-trade system like the Dutch or French)
3. One chief port, centrally located that takes into account:
   - Pre-settlement boundaries
   - Measurement of coastal boundaries and the location of expected port sites
   - Avoidance/Prohibition of ports on opposing shorelines (except in certain circumstances)
   - Identification of harbor and navigational features conducive to port location

Question 20

Why did Boston, Charles Town, Philadelphia succeed beyond expectations and Jameston, St. Mary’s and Burlington flounder?

Answer 20

Vance’s model would have us look at the economic base of a staple export commodity

But we might also consider immigration issues
1630s Puritans to Boston
1680s English Quakers to Pennsylvania
1680s Barbadian planters, French Huguenots, English nonconformists
These periods and places are characterized by family migration (middling socioeconomic status)
Population spikes often corresponded to mother country economic depression and religious persecution

• Ironically, the best colonial lands attracted few family migrants
• In the south, the individual, not the group or even the family became the primary unit of settlement
• These middle lands were reserved for Anglicans and Catholics and the marginal lands to the north were left for the Puritans, Quakers, Separatists, etc.
• Persecution of Anglican families in England wasn’t sufficient to push them to leave
• Those towns in the marginal lands had to find sustenance in stable crops/carrying trade
• Consequently, towns flourished in the colonies where they were least expected to by the Crown.

Question 21

Give a brief profile of urban expansion in the New Nation (1776-1860)

Answer 21

• 1 in 20 were town or cities dwellers in the infant nation
• By the American Revolution (1775-1783) the colonial population was approx. 2.5 million
• Even by 1830, only 9% of the population lived in places of 5,000 or more
• Coastal cities were the largest but they were all competing for new hinterlands west of the Appalachians
• By 1840 the American urban system had become independent
• By 1860 there were 100 cities with an urban population of 6 million, making the percent of urban people 19.8%

Question 22

Between 1776-1860, it is intriguing to note that although a very small proportion of the population of the colonies lived in cities, the Constitution was predominately written by whom?

Answer 22

City dwellers and supported city growth

While only 5% of all Americans lived in cities:
20 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia were city dwellers
And 20 more had extensive urban contacts (i.e. they were lawyers or merchants)
When it came to supporting the Constitution at state ratifying conventions – city interests lined up on the side of adoption while areas dominated by small farms chose delegates who opposed it

Question 23

What followed American Independence?

Answer 23

• It was both practical and necessary for economic links to be forged between towns/cities
• A greater proportion of investment was financed by American capital – less money leaked back to the European system
• A proliferation of government functions (county courthouses to town halls to state capitals to a new seat for the federal government [Washington, D.C. ])
• Westward expansion also stimulated Eastern cities to attempt to consolidate their control (creation of corridors of trade)
• Westward/Southward expansion required frontier towns

Question 24

“At the time of the first census in 1790, the top-twenty cities in the United States all had ____________. These cities served as ___________________.

“Forty years later, in 1830, the locus of growth had shifted ___________________, including Albany, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Louisville. These cities joined several coastal cities as the leading centers of their time.

Answer 24

1. coastal locations, primarily in the northeast
2. ports and entrepot cities that nurtured important trade functions such as wholesaling and finance.”
3. inland to a series of river cities

Question 25

What did the Canal do for New York? Why is Schenectady’s rank clock surprising?

Answer 25

Nearly every major city in New York can be found along the trade route established by the Erie Canal: it links Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and Albany with New York City.

Schenectady had prospered as a principal port of the lower Mohawk River but the completion of the Erie Canal meant that boats could go all the way.

Question 26

What are some important facts about the Erie Canal?

Answer 26

Of the American canals preceding it only three were more than two miles long and the longest of these, the Middlesex, was hardly 28 miles in length

Question: How long is the Erie Canal
Answer: 363 miles

Construction began in 1817 and was completed in 1825

Built largely through unsettled territory
Its justification lay not in current traffic but in the expected development [an act of faith, “if you build it they will come”]

Question 27

Why was the Erie Canal important and what was its’ effect?

Answer 27

IT WAS A BOLD BID FOR WESTERN TRADE

Inevitably, the Erie Canal sparked a national canal craze

The Canal’s success vitally affected the rivalry of the major eastern seaboard cities

• It reduced shipping costs for a ton of goods from $100 to $10
• It dramatically shifted the rural to urban ratio in New York State

Question 28

What did the Ohio Canal system do to turnpikes?

Answer 28

The canal challenged the supremacy of the turnpikes

• Up to the 1820’s, New York’s competitors to the south relied on turnpikes to control western trade.
• The shortest route to the west led across Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia and the two principal east-west roads favored Philadelphia and Baltimore.
• The Pittsburgh Pike and the National Road made Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Wheeling important commercial centers at a time when Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit were mere frontier settlements.
• In this respect, New York City was at a disadvantage during the turn-pike era.

Question 29

What were some disadvantages of turnpikes and what was the effect?

Answer 29

The turnpikes’ were severely limited though.

• Issue of free-ridership
• Some manufactured goods were shipped westward, but bulky agricultural produce of the west continued to use the Mississippi route to New Orleans.
• The increased use of the steamboat for up-river carriage on the Mississippi and Ohio rivers threatened to deprive the turnpikes of even their westward trade.
• Basically New Orleans was a rival to East Coast dominance (and remember New Orleans was not an American city until 1803)

This situation was transformed by the construction of the Erie Canal.
-The Canal created a direct two-way trade

Question 30

New York’s site and situation placed her major rivals-Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore –in an extremely difficult position. What was that position? What question did that raise?

Answer 30

-A failure to achieve a line to the west, therefore, meant stagnation, even decline; this was the view of the advocates of internal improvement in all the rival cities.

HOW DO YOU
COMPETE IF YOU ARE BOSTON, BALTIMORE OR PHILLY? The question was do you IMITATE OR INNOVATE?

In other words: Should New York’s rivals use the tried and tested method of canals in a geographical situation that was unsuited to that method or should they choose an untried method? Or should they postpone and risk obsolescence?

Question 31

How did Pennsylvania answer the imitate or innovate question?

Answer 31

• Chose to build a canal to Pittsburgh
• The height/grade of the mountains forced them into the construction of a ‘mongrel line’ (a road and rail mix) with three transshipment points
• A series of depots and agents, located at Philadelphia, Columbia, Hollidaysburg, Johnstown, and Pittsburgh

Question 32

What were some problems Pennsylvania ran in to?

Answer 32

• Transshipments caused delays, damaged and lost goods
• Delays and high tolls convinced shippers and millers in western Pennsylvania that it was cheaper to send flour down the Mississippi to New Orleans, then by ship to Philadelphia
• The turnpikes remained central for more valuable goods
• Good for west bound traffic but the Ohio and Mississippi rivers remained central for bulk commodities
• “… .the chain that was to bind Philadelphia with the west was . . . severed, disjointed, fragmentary. It was an amphibious connection of land and water, consisting of two railways separated by a canal, and of two canals separated by a railway, happily elucidating the defects peculiar to both methods of transit, with the advantages of neither.”

But it is not simply about through-traffic:

• The mainline received large quantities of coal and raw iron from the Union Canal, from the canals along the north and west branches of the Susquehanna, from the valley of the Juniata, and from the huge bituminous coal fields west of Hollidaysburg.
• To the Pittsburgh iron interests, the mainline was a lifesaver.
• Money spent on the mainline however delayed construction of a full railway across Pennsylvania

Overall Pennsylvania made a poor choice:

• Couldn’t compete with the Erie
• Loss of merchants to New York
• Delayed the construction of rail lines
• -The Pennsylvania Railroad was completed in 1852 (too late to divert a good portion of the trade that had centered on New York for a quarter of a century)
• -Also the Erie Railroad (New York Central), and the Hudson River Railroad were all in operation

Question 33

How did Baltimore answer the imitate or innovate question?

Answer 33

• Experiencing “gradual deterioration” - this was their term for a slowing down of the rate of growth
• Private construction of a trans-Appalachian line, the Baltimoreans decided to risk their own capital in a private venture.
• Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company

Question 34

How did Boston answer the imitate or innovate question?

Answer 34

• Was in a very difficult position
• While the city could hope to participate in the trade of the west – it couldn’t possibly hope to replace New York
• If it built a canal it would have to cross the Berkshires and even then it would simply be linking itself to the Hudson
• So it delayed.