Abstract
The previous chapters have attempted to show that the free working of the market mechanism in a capitalist system does not overcome persistent regional disparities, and that this regional imbalance is a multi-dimensional process reflecting imbalance in capitalist development rather than a purely spatial or local problem. Some of the clearest evidence on this comes from investigating the regional growth of the United States. On the other hand, U.S. regional growth was exceptional in ways which are overlooked by leading economists in the United States. As a result, the United States should not provide a model for either the federal proposals now made for the European Community nor to less-developed countries which might be encouraged to attempt to follow its lead under pressure from international institutions or the U.S. government itself. A federal structure may have helped to establish American regions, but could break countries elsewhere under different historical and regional conditions.
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Notes
G.H. Borts and J.L. Stein, Economic Growth in a Free Market (Columbia University Press, 1964 ).
Richard Austin Smith, Corporations in Crisis ( New York: Doubleday, 1963 ).
See J.G. Maddox et al., The Advancing South: Manpower Problems and Prospects (20th Century Fund, 1967) p.72, who not only point to the high capital costs in the machinery sector, but also point out that government defence and armaments expenditure stimulated both growth and profits in the sector during precisely the period Borts and Stein examine.
Cf. G.S. Callender, ‘The Early Transportation and Banking Enter-prises of the States in relation to the Growth of Corporations’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xvii (1902) pp. 125-6. Callender points out that the slave-system agriculture of the South was based almost exclusively on the production of cotton, sugar, tobacco and rice, and that slave owners found it cheaper to import both manufactures and temperate-zone food products from other regions, despite the fact that, before the rise of cotton farming they had previously produced wheat and cotton for export.
For the ‘ever rising level of the tariff’ to 1828 see Stuart Bruchey, The Roots of American Economic Growth 1607–1861 (London: Hutchinson, 1965) ch.5. For List’s infant-industry case see Friedrich List, National System of Political Economy. A good survey of List’s particular contribution can be found in Margaret E. Hirst, Life of Friedrich List and Selections from his Writings (New York: Kelley, 1970).
Cf. L.E. Davis and J. Legler, ‘The Government in the U.S. Economy, 1810–1902’, Journal of Economic History (Dec 1966) p. 815.
W.W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge University Press, 1971 ).
Vera Lutz, Italy: A Study in Economic Development (Oxford University Press, 1962).
Gabriel Kolko, ‘Max Weber on America: Theory and Evidence’, History and Theory, 1, no.2 (1962) cited in Bruchey, Roots of American Economic Growth. Bruchey’s excellent countervailance of the micro-myopic and pseudo-scientific econometric studies in U.S. economic history is well worth detailed attention.
Lance E. Davis and John Legler, ‘The Government in the American Economy 1815–1902’, Journal of Economic History (Dec 1966) p. 516.
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© 1976 Stuart Holland
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Holland, S. (1976). Federalism and the Regional Problem. In: The Regional Problem. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15637-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15637-5_6
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