ABSTRACT
FROM the "cutting edge" of the frontier, which already reached far into the Ohio River Valley, to the outskirts of its seaboard cities the United States was in 1815 chiefly an agricultural country. Commerce, largely sea- and river-borne, was organized and directed by the merchant capitalists residing in a few cities along the Atlantic coast. This American economy of the early nineteenth century might best be described as extractive-commercial in character. It is true that the beginnings of industrial growth were already discernible. But in this land of continental expanses only revolutionary developments in the techniques of transportation and communication would make possible that almost explosive rush of industrial expansion which characterized the later decades of the century.
