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The Revulsion Against Internal Improvements*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Carter Goodrich
Carter Goodrich
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

The purpose of this article is to examine a significant change that took place in American public policy during the nineteenth century. For many decades American governments, especially those of states and localities, had engaged in extensive programs for the promotion of economic development by the construction or support of works of internal improvement. It may now be pertinent, at a time when so many of the less industrialized countries are engaged in programs of economic development, to ask why and when and by what processes governments in the United States came to withdraw from direct participation in the promotion of canals and railways.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , November 1950 , pp. 145 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1950

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References

1 Adams, Henry Carter, Public Debts (New York, 1887), p. 339Google Scholar.

2 The texts of the constitutions were examined in Poore, B. P., The Federal and State Constitutions, (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1877), Vols. I and IIGoogle Scholar. The provisions quoted above are from Missouri, II, (1820), art. vii, 1112; Michigan, I, (1850), art. xiv, sec. 9, 1008; and Ohio, II, (1851), art. viii, sec. 6, 1473.

See also Horace Secrist, “An Economic Analysis of the Constitutional Restrictions upon Public Indebtedness in the United States,” Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, Economics and Political Science Series, Vol. VIII, (1914–1917)Google Scholar, No. 1, particularly the admirable tables in Appendixes I-III.

Adams, Public Debts, pp. 382–83, presented a similar table, which, however, is less comprehensive, omits the favoring provisions, and—a point capital to the present inquiry—does not trace the restrictions back to the date at which they were first adopted.

3 Lincoln, Charles Z., The Constitutional History of New York. (Rochester: Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Co., 1900) II, 58, 84Google Scholar.

4 See also Krenkel, J. H., “Internal Improvements in Illinois, 1818–1848,” unpublished dissertation for the doctoral degree, University of Illinois, 1937Google Scholar; Gates, Paul H., The Illinois Central and Its Colonization Work. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Pease, Theodore C., in Volume II, The Frontier State, of the series, “the Centennial History of Illinois” (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1918)Google Scholar, gives to his eleventh chapter the title, “The Wreck of the Internal Improvement System, 1837–1842.”

5 Hartz, Louis, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania, 1776–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), pp. 103–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The principal account of the movement for internal improvements in Tennessee ends with 1845.—Stanley Folmsbee, J., Sectionalism and Internal Improvements in Tennessee, 1796–1845 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1939)Google Scholar.

6 Heath, Milton S., “Public Co-operation in Railroad Construction in the Southern United States to 1861,” unpublished dissertation for the doctoral degree, Harvard University, 1937, p. 53Google Scholar; Kirkland, E. C., Men, Cities and Transportation: A Study in New England History, 1820–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), II, 37Google Scholar.

7 American Railroad Journal, XXX (January 3, 1857)Google Scholar, 1. Subsequent footnotes will refer to this journal as ARJ.

8 Hill, Forest G., “The Role of Army Engineers in the Planning and Encouragement of Internal Improvements,” unpublished dissertation for the doctoral degree, Columbia University, 1950Google Scholar.

9 Thus Wisconsin in 1848, Poore, Constitutions, II, art. x, sec. 10, 2038: “… but whenever grants of land or other property shall have been made to the State, especially dedicated by the grant to particular works of internal improvement, the State may carry on such particular works, and shall devote thereto the avails of such grants, and may pledge or appropriate the revenues derived from such works in aid of their completion.” The Michigan prohibition, already quoted, contains a similar exception. For the history of the railroad grants see Haney, Lewis H., A Congressional History of Railways in the United States, 1850–1887 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1910)Google Scholar, Books I and II.

10 ARI, XXX (1857), 85Google Scholar. The compliment is from Governor Wicklifle of Louisiana.

11 ARI, XXXIII (1860), 1036Google Scholar.

12 Riegel, Robert E., “Trans-Mississippi Railroads During the Fifties,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, X (1923), 153–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Million, John W., State Aid to Railways in Missouri (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1896)Google Scholar; Russel, Robert R., Improvement of Communication with the Pacific Coast as an Issue in American Politics, 1783–1864 (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1948), esp. chap. viiiGoogle Scholar.

13 Pierce, Harry H., “Public Aid to Railroads in New York,” unpublished dissertation for the doctoral degree, Cornell University, 1949, pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

14 Kirkland, Men, Cities and Transportation, Vol. I, chap, xii. Kirkland notes that it was the friends of the Hoosac Tunnel route that prevented the constitutional convention of 1853 from adopting a provision forbidding state loans to corporations. Note also the aid to the Boston, Hartford, and Erie. Ibid., Vol. II, chap. xvii.

15 Pierce, “Public Aid to Railroads,” p. 170. No full statement of the volume of government expenditure on internal improvements in the United States can be given until other areas and periods have been examined with the same patience demonstrated in this study of New York and in M. S. Heath's study of aid to railroads in the ante-bellum South.

16 Kirkland, Men, Cities and Transportation, Vol. I, chaps, vii and xiv. The quotation is from p. 491. The prohibition against state aid was evidently inspired by the example of other states since none had, in fact, been given in Maine. Later, however, Maine also “discovered other means of state assistance.” Ibid., p. 469.

17 Cottman, G. S., “Internal Improvements in Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History, III (1907), 164–72Google Scholar.

18 Hollander, J. H., “The Cincinnati Southern Railway: A Study in Municipal Activity,” Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, XII (1894), 1–96Google Scholar.

19 Haney, A Congressional History of Railways, p. 21. The quotation is from James A. Garfield.

20 Heath, “Public Co-operation in Railroad Construction,” p. 251.

21 Merk, Frederick, Economic History of Wisconsin During the Civil War Decade (Madison: State Historical Society, 1916), pp. 240, 242Google Scholar, passim; Pierce, “Public Aid to Railroads.” The latter refers to a conviction on the part of the towns that they did not get their money's worth.

22 Debates and Proceedings of the Maryland Reform Convention to Revise the State Constitution (Annapolis: William M'Neir, 1851), I, 132Google Scholar.

23 ARJ, VIII (1839), 61Google Scholar; Lincoln, Constitutional History, pp. 79, 80.

24 Board of Public Works of Virginia, Report, 1860–61 and 1861–62, p. 7.

25 Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of the State of Indiana (Indianapolis, 1850), p. 677Google Scholar.

26 Debates and Proceedings of the Maryland Reform Convention, I, 421. See the statement of Lincoln, Constitutional History, II, 46, that the New York convention of 1846 would, in all probability, not have been called if it had not been for “the financial problems so intimately connected with the canals.”

27 Krenkel, Internal Improvements, pp. 216–22; Folmsbee, Sectionalism, p. 266. The quotation is from the October 1845 message of Governor James G. Jones; the italics are his.

28 Lincoln, Constitutional History, pp. 181, 215.

29 Krenkel, Internal Improvements, p. 175; Merk, Economic History of Wisconsin, p. 281; ARI. XXXII (1859). 344Google Scholar.

30 Kirkland, Men, Cities and Transportation, II, 50. See also Goodrich, “National Planning,” Political Science Quarterly, pp. 30, 41.

31 Goodrich, “National Planning,” Political Science Quarterly, pp. 23, 41–43, passim. See also Hartz, Economic Policy, esp. pp. lx, 79–81, 175, and Part IV.

32 ARJ, IX (1839). 289–93Google Scholar.

33 ARJ, XVIII (1845), 122Google Scholar; x (1840), 10; XVII (1844), 193; XVIII (1845), 154; XVII (1844), 345.

34 ARJ: X (1840), 1, 5Google Scholar; XI (1840), 358; XIV (1842), 330; XVIII (1845), 489. During the same period the Journal printed an article by a contributor signing himself “Fulton,” proposing a system by which the state should subscribe to one third of the stock of all railroad corporations under provisions surprisingly close to the system of aid to improvements that Virginia had adopted in 1816.

35 ARJ, XXV (1852), 488Google Scholar; XXIV (1851), 289–91.

36 ARJ, XXVII (1854), 161–64Google Scholar; XXVI (1853). 546; XXVII (1854), 342; XXVI (1853), 450; XXX (1857), 257–58; Captain Douglas Galton, “Report to the Lords of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations on the Railways of the United States,” Railways Department, Board of Trade, London, 1857; ARI, XXVI (1853), 546Google Scholar.

37 Hollander, “Cincinnati Southern Railway,” p. 22.

38 Turner, C. W., “The Virginia Railroads, 1824–1860,” unpublished dissertation for the doctoral degree, University of Minnesota, 1946Google Scholar; Goodrich, “The Virginia System,” Political Science Quarterly, p. 372.

39 Phillips, Ulrich B., A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), chap. viiGoogle Scholar.

40 “Every owner of real estate—every merchant, manufacturer, mechanic and carman, and even many day laborers will promote their own permanent interest by taking one or more shares … even if he never receives a penny in the way of dividends.” ARJ, XVII (1844), 151Google Scholar. Italics and grammar are those of the Journal. The appeal is for the New York and Erie. For other illustrations, see Goodrich, “Public Spirit and Internal Improvement.”

41 ARJ, V (1836), 3Google Scholar.

42 ARJ, XXIII (1850), 553Google Scholar. Cf. XXIV (1851), 290.

43 Goodrich, ‘The Virginia System,” p. 387; Lincoln, Constitutional History, II, 635.

44 ARJ, XXXIII (1860), 100Google Scholar; XXVIII (1855), 673, 514, 609–10, 353; XXV (1852), 26; XXVIII (1855), 673, 281.

45 ARJ, XXVII (1854), 449Google Scholar; XXVI (1853), 346. See the statement of the mayor of Milwaukee that “the different railways having Milwaukee as a terminus, are mostly in that state of progress that they need no further aid from the city.” ARJ, XXX (1857), 379Google Scholar.