Abstract
New York City happened to be somewhat larger than other North American central places on the eve of catastrophic agglomeration primarily because, starting in 1815, New York was the principal port of entry for foreign goods coming into the United States. After the fact, it seems to have been inevitable that New York would rise to its position as the largest U.S. city once the pace of urbanization had accelerated, given its deep, easily accessible, and generally ice-free harbor and its central position between population centers in New England and the Chesapeake Bay area. In the context of the inevitability paradigm, if there was a “critical juncture” along the New York’s path to dominance it would have been the construction of the Erie Canal, presumably because it directed Midwestern agricultural exports through New York’s port. This chapter presents the case for the view that, from the perspective of the early 1830s, New York’s rise was not inevitable and that alternative U.S. urban hierarchies with some other city, most likely Philadelphia or Baltimore, at its pinnacle were, in fact, plausible.
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Notes
- 1.
The decrease in trade was reflected both in decreases in the volume of legally imported commodities and, more tellingly, in large increases in the prices of imported goods relative to domestically produced products in both belligerent and neutral countries around the Atlantic world. Kevin O’Rourke found, for example, that “the increase in the relative price of importables was particularly pronounced during the blockade years [1807–1814], with increases of more than 100%, or even 200%, being common.” O’Rourke points out the decreases in reported (i.e., legal) trade volumes does not necessarily reflect a decline in trading activity because the volume of goods smuggled cannot be observed directly. If that volume had been large, however, it would have offset any effect of trade restrictions on the relative prices of imports (O’Rourke, 2006).
- 2.
The source is an anti-auction polemic and may not be reliable.
- 3.
- 4.
If there is no tax on goods that do not change hands, then, if the highest outsider bid is lower than the reservation price, the seller keeps the goods and incurs no cost. If there is a tax in such cases, the seller keeps the goods but incurs an out-of-pocket cost equal to a percentage of the reservation price. The change in the tax regime increases the cost to the seller of holding out for a high price and creates an incentive to set a lower reservation price (Engelbrecht-Wiggans & Nonnenmacher, 1999).
- 5.
Unless otherwise noted, the material in this section is drawn from (Albion, Square-Riggers on Schedule: The New York Sailing Packets to England, France, and the Cotton Ports, 1938).
- 6.
Between 1810 and 1840, producers gradually shifted from shipping bags of ginned cotton to standard sized, compressed bales weighing an average of 450 pounds (Bennett, 1962). Sterling rates on New York and New Orleans to Liverpool shipments are from (Taylor, 1951, pp. 147–148). Calculations assume a $4.85/₤1 exchange rate. New Orleans to New York rates from (Albion, 1938, p. 111).
- 7.
Assume that regions’ share of aggregate import demand was roughly proportionate to their share of total free population. In 1860, the free population of New Orleans’s hinterland, by a broad definition (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, and half of Tennessee), was about 2.5 million or about 9% of the U.S. total. At the same time, 6.3% of total U.S. imports entered through the Port of New Orleans. So it might be reasonable to surmise that perhaps 30% of the imports purchased by Southerners would have entered through some other port, most likely New York. This rough estimate, however, may be on the high side. Economic historian Douglas C. North points out that quasi-subsistence farmers constituted a particularly large proportion of the southern population. If so, the region’s demand for imports would have been less than proportional to its share of the nation’s non-slave population (Albion, 1939, p. 401; Census, 1976; North, 1966).
- 8.
Hinterlands were defined as follows:
Philadelphia: All of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey counties on the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers and the entire State of Delaware. At this time, the counties bordering on the Susquehanna River and its tributaries would have been in easier communication with Baltimore than with Philadelphia.
New York: The entire States of New York and Vermont, the New Jersey Counties that were not included in Philadelphia’s hinterland, all of Connecticut other than Tolland and Windham Counties, and Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire Counties, MA.
Boston: The entire states of New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island, Massachusetts except for Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire Counties, and Tolland and Windham, Counties, CT.
- 9.
Cayuga, Chautauqua, Erie Genesee, Jefferson, Livingston, Monroe, Niagara, Onondaga, Ontario, Orleans, Oswego, Seneca, and Wayne counties.
- 10.
The “Ohio Valley” was defined as the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky and the Pennsylvania and Virginia counties along the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers.
- 11.
This conclusion contradicts the assertion by Albert Fishlow, who, in a discussion of the Pennsylvania Main Line, asserts that “Choice of a railroad technology would not have been a successful strategy. Costs at that date were still prohibitive” (Fishlow, 2000). It does not appear that cost differential was the main consideration pushing the Pennsylvanians toward the multimodal solution, and it seems unlikely that laying rail lines around the State could have been more expensive all-in than digging channels and constructing locks and aqueducts and laying rails over much of the distance. What stymied the all-rail alternative was a combination of technological risk-aversion and panic over the Erie Canal’s success (Rubin, 1961).
- 12.
Unless otherwise noted, material in this and the subsequent few paragraphs is drawn from (Rubin, 1961).
- 13.
Unless otherwise indicated, material in this and the following paragraph is drawn from (Stover, 1995).
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Gurwitz, A. (2019). A Port in Time. In: Atlantic Metropolis. Palgrave Studies in American Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13352-8_5
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