ABSTRACT
The way an economy grows and develops reflects the operation of a large collection of endogenous and exogenous forces. The unusually wide and deep expansion of the American economy between 1870 and 1900 was impelled in part by the growth and development of agriculture, which was a complex process shaped by geography, technology, and the availability of capital. This chapter examines the role of one source of loanable funds—banks chartered under the National Banking Acts—in providing American farmers with loans to expand and capitalize between 1870 and 1900. Agriculture was the largest single productive sector, despite its relative decline through the period. In the 1880s, it employed 60" of the workforce. Federal regulation of credit markets and banking was embodied in a series of laws passed between 1863 and 1872 establishing the National Banking System. The standard work on the New York money market in the 19th century is Myers' The New York Money Market.
