The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900 (review)

The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900. By Richard Franklin Bensel (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000) 549 pp. $64.95 cloth $24.95 paper

Bensel has undertaken an ambiguous analysis of the political economy of the United States during the late nineteenth century. In 525 pages, he argues that, at the time, the nation maintained a nationalized polity and that sectionally aligned economic interests formed its pivotal political fulcrum. Bensel surveys economic growth during these years, emphasizing the uneven development between sections of the country. Industrialization and capital concentrated in the northeast; an agrarian-based impoverishment characterized the South; and developing resource exploitation predominated in the West. Economic regionalism overlapped with "the three great" pedestals of political economy in the Gilded Age: the construction of an unregulated national market, the maintenance of the gold standard, and the construction of a protective tariff.

The Republican party developed a political base that overlapped the areas of greatest industrial development and formulated a policy that "systematically redistributed wealth from the South to the North" (20). Based, in part, on a content analysis of 1,100 state party platforms, Bensel claims that "between 1877 and 1900, American politics was unrelentingly focused on national issues" (187). Labor largely submerged its interests with the Republican party's developmental objectives and pursued its immediate class-oriented goals "through strike activity on the shop floor" (285).

Bensel claims that the Supreme Court was primarily responsible for shaping the development of a national market, and he reviews case histories to document his contention. Presidents largely managed monetary policy, although Congress had much to do with it as well. Congress made the tariff its special policy preserve. Bensel selects forty-five roll call votes from the House to demonstrate levels of partisanship on these issues (high on the tariff and moderate on monetary legislation), and to measure the correspondence between economic development and legislators' responses. He sees in these data corroboration that the Republican party nurtured a coalition that was oriented around northeastern industrialism, preservation of the gold standard, tariff protection (especially for iron and steel), and subsidies for union veterans.

Bensel's review of economic policy in Gilded Age America has few rivals in terms of its scope, its focus on interrelationships, and its interdisciplinary method. The author exhibits a knack for constructing interesting indicators, such as his index of economic development. He maps this and other measures at the county level, in an effective display technique, and collates his developmental index with congressional districts.

Whether all of his evidence adds up to a convincing reinterpretation of politics in the Gilded Age is debatable. Decisions about conceptualization, sources (Rhodes and Oberholtzer get a second lease on life in the book), and analytical techniques raise numerous questions.¹ To some degree, his research design is calculated to substantiate his contention that Gilded Age politics was driven by nationally aligned economic interests rather than to evaluate competing hypotheses. His disregard for the influence of federalism on governance and partisan culture snubs numerous scholars. Bensel does not inspect voter behavior at the micro (local) level, although he generalizes about it. His handling of voting in the House of Representatives and its linkage to the wider political universe represents a stylized approach to legislative behavior. The book is also repetitive and overwritten.