The Search for a New Capitalist Order

This paper will discuss the transformation of American capitalism in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.  In place of the longstanding emphasis on the rise of big business in this period, my own focus is on the integration of a North American market, which was primarily achieved through the flow of investments from the capital-rich cities of the Atlantic coast to the capital-starved but resource-rich Great West.  This unprecedented financial wave funded railroads, mines, agriculture and industrial production across the continent.  It facilitated the incorporation of an immense territory -- abundant in wheat, coal, lumber, livestock, iron ore and copper -- into the American economy.  In a sharp transition from the export-oriented focus on cotton in earlier decades, the incorporation of these territories energized the development of a national industrial economy that defined the contours of modern capitalism in the United States.

My focus will be twofold.  First, I will explore the driving vision and business strategies of the bankers, brokers, and financiers who became the architects of the new economic order.  These commercial pioneers extended their horizons beyond their home turf and created a wide-ranging network of exchange and capital flows.  Second, I will discuss some of the urban political contests involved in the re-orientation of urban centers like New York, Philadelphia,and Boston, from anchors of regional economies into financial hubs with a continental scope. 

I will emphasize that the emerging national system never became a fully coherent unit.  Market integration often accelerated political and social fragmentation, intensifying regional unevenness and metropolitan divides.  The new order thus represented a pivotal shift in American capitalism, a shift that produced new and lasting asymmetries of power.