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The Roots of American Industrialization. By David. R. Meyer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Pp. xi, 333. Illustrations, maps. Cloth, $45.00)
Geographer David R. Meyer published several seminal articles in the 1980s on the origins and the growth of the manufacturing belt in the Northeast quarter of the United States. Some of his conclusions are briefly summarized in the last chapter of the present book, where he shows how the Midwest seized a window of opportunity while the South was unable to jump onto the bandwagon. Now, focusing on the roots of eastern industrialization, he convincingly demonstrates the limits of the "transition to capitalism" interpretation.
The East industrialized, Meyer contends, not because its agriculture was declining due to poor soils or competition from western products, but, on the contrary, because its farmers were prosperous and could constitute a market for the articles made in workshops and factories. This main argument is based on statistics of population: In 1820, when industrialization had already started, 89 percent of the people inhabiting the East lived in rural places (82 percent in southern New England, the most industrialized part of this region); twenty years later, the proportion...