The Transportation Revolution

AN EXAMINATION OF THE GROWTH AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTION IN THE FIRST-HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

This research examines the transportation revolution in the United States during the 1801-1850 period. Emphasis is placed on the contribution of the transportation revolution to economic growth; however, the social and political significance of the transportation revolution are also addressed.

The industrial revolution, together with the economics of nineteenth century transportation, led to major social, political, and economic changes in the United States (Lowry, 1990). Generally, the economics of nineteenth century transportation meant that it was cheaper to move goods than it was to move people. Thus, people would tend to congregate in cities, which are located in places possessing some natural advantage a port site, an energy supply, a vital natural resource, and so forth. In the case of the United States in the first-half of the nineteenth century, however, the economics of transportation also meant that it became feasible for people to migrate to the west and northwest (in the late-twentieth centuries, these areas are referred to as the Midwest or as the east north central and west north central states).

Location decisions and patterns by firms, households, and individuals are capable of having significant impacts on regional economic growth. Studies have demonstrated that a variety of factors, including infr

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south were (1) import substitution the availability of American produced cotton textile goods as competitors for imported competitors, (2) the growth of per capita income in the United States, which increased the capability of Americans to buy cotton textile goods, (3) an increasing American population, with a consequent increase in the overall demand for cotton textile goods, (4) a shift in the distribution of the American population to urban and western areas (wherein access to home spinning was far more restricted than in the rural areas of the north and south, from which people migrated to urban and western areas), and (5) an increase transportation efficiency, which had the effect of lowering the retail cost of cotton textile products, which, in turn, stimulated demand for these products (Lee & Passel, 1979). The foreign demand was primarily for raw cotton from the American south (Lee & Passel, 1979). This increase in the demand for raw southern cotton (estimated at 5.0 percent per year from 1830 to 1860) permitted the southern cotton industry to move into the more productive lands of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas (Lee & Passel, 1979). This industry shift was facilitated by the development of the r

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