Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Economic Growth and Structural Change in the Long Nineteenth Century
- 2 The Economy of Canada in the Nineteenth Century
- 3 Inequality in the Nineteenth Century
- 4 The Population of the United States, 1790–1920
- 5 The Labor Force in the Nineteenth Century
- 6 The Farm, The Farmer, and The Market
- 7 Northern Agriculture and the Westward Movement
- 8 Slavery and its Consequences for the South in the Nineteenth Century
- 9 Technology and Industrialization, 1790–1914
- 10 Entrepreneurship, Business Organization, and Economic Concentration
- 11 Business Law and American Economic History
- 12 Experimental Federalism: the Economics of American Government, 1789–1914
- 13 Internal Transportation in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
- 14 Banking and Finance, 1789–1914
- 15 U.S. Foreign Trade and the Balance of Payments, 1800–1913
- 16 International Capital Movements, Domestic Capital Markets, and American Economic Growth, 1820–1914
- 17 The Social Implications of U.S. Economic Development
- Bibliographic Essays
- Index
- References
4 - The Population of the United States, 1790–1920
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Economic Growth and Structural Change in the Long Nineteenth Century
- 2 The Economy of Canada in the Nineteenth Century
- 3 Inequality in the Nineteenth Century
- 4 The Population of the United States, 1790–1920
- 5 The Labor Force in the Nineteenth Century
- 6 The Farm, The Farmer, and The Market
- 7 Northern Agriculture and the Westward Movement
- 8 Slavery and its Consequences for the South in the Nineteenth Century
- 9 Technology and Industrialization, 1790–1914
- 10 Entrepreneurship, Business Organization, and Economic Concentration
- 11 Business Law and American Economic History
- 12 Experimental Federalism: the Economics of American Government, 1789–1914
- 13 Internal Transportation in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
- 14 Banking and Finance, 1789–1914
- 15 U.S. Foreign Trade and the Balance of Payments, 1800–1913
- 16 International Capital Movements, Domestic Capital Markets, and American Economic Growth, 1820–1914
- 17 The Social Implications of U.S. Economic Development
- Bibliographic Essays
- Index
- References
Summary
In the late eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin commented on the remarkably high fertility and large family size in what was British North America, which he attributed to the ease of acquiring good farm land. His comments were reiterated by Thomas Robert Malthus in his famous Essay on the Principle of Population:
But the English North American colonies, now the powerful people of the United States of America, made by far the most rapid progress. To the plenty of good land which they possessed in common with the Spanish and Portuguese settlements, they added a greater degree of liberty and equality…. The political institutions that prevailed were favorable to the alienation and division of property. … There were no tithes in any of the States and scarcely any taxes. And on account of the extreme cheapness of good land a capital could not be more advantageously employed than in agriculture, which at the same time that it supplies the greatest quantity of healthy work affords the most valuable produce of society.
The consequence of these favorable circumstances united was a rapidity of increase probably without parallel in history. Throughout all of the northern colonies, the population was found to double in twenty-five years.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Economic History of the United States , pp. 143 - 206Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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