ABSTRACT
THE population of the United States increased less than four times between 1815 and 1860. During the same period the value of manufactured products grew about eightfold and their volume approximately twelvefold. Certain factors were fundamental: a rapidly growing population, rich natural resources, a stable and favorably disposed government, and the absence of social impediments to economic change and of restrictions on the free movement of goods over a wide area. To these conditions were added during the decades preceding the Civil War the great improvements in transportation which have already been discussed. By cheapening and facilitating the movement of goods this revolution in transportation made possible a great specialization, a rapidly developing division of labor between different sections of the nation, between town and country, and between manufacturing and agriculture. Accompanying this increased specialization came changes in the technique, organization, and scale of manufacturing which greatly enlarged output and paved the way for the tremendous industrial development which took place in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century.
