IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/uctcwp/qt61b022cr.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Economy, Community and Law: The Turnpike Movement in New York, 1797-1845

Author

Listed:
  • Klein, Daniel
  • Majewski, John

Abstract

Turnpike companies were the exemplary type of early American business corporation: they were the most prevalent, they were the most community laden, and they were unprofitable. The turnpike experience enhances our understanding of the evolution of the law of private and public corporations. We explain that the state turned to the private sector for highway management because of intense commercial and regional rivalries and the failure of public alternatives. Private management and toll-taking were startling innovations to some members of the community, however, and they protested the introduction of turnpikes. The bete noires of "private corporation" and "aristocracy" were often used to denounce turnpikes. The legislature both expressed and responded to these suspicions by writing laws favorable to local users and damaging to the financial viability of the companies. Partly in consequence of the unfavorable laws turnpikes were unprofitable. Merchants, farmers, and landowners struggled to finance turnpikes, not in hopes of company dividends, but in hopes of improved transportation, stimulated commerce, and higher land values. Many turnpike projects were stillborn while those that were constructed hobbled along in a precarious financial state.

Suggested Citation

  • Klein, Daniel & Majewski, John, 1991. "Economy, Community and Law: The Turnpike Movement in New York, 1797-1845," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt61b022cr, University of California Transportation Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt61b022cr
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/61b022cr.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hilt, Eric & Valentine, Jacqueline, 2012. "Democratic Dividends: Stockholding, Wealth, and Politics in New York, 1791–1826," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 332-363, May.
    2. Klein, Daniel B. & Yin, Chi, 1994. "The Private Provision of Frontier Infrastructure: Toll Roads in California, 1850-1902," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt3bc2s8vk, University of California Transportation Center.
    3. Klein, Daniel & Majewski, John, 2003. "America’s Toll Roads Heritage: The Achievements of Private Initiative in the 19th Century," Ratio Working Papers 30, The Ratio Institute.
    4. Dan Bogart, 2012. "Profiting from Public Works: Financial Returns to Infrastructure and Investment Strategies during Britain's Industrial Revolution," Working Papers 121304, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    5. Hilt, Eric, 2008. "When did Ownership Separate from Control? Corporate Governance in the Early Nineteenth Century," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 645-685, September.
    6. Dan Bogart & John Majewski, 2008. "Two Roads to the Transportation Revolution: Early Corporations in the United Kingdom and the United States," NBER Chapters, in: Understanding Long-Run Economic Growth: Geography, Institutions, and the Knowledge Economy, pages 177-204, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social and Behavioral Sciences;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:uctcwp:qt61b022cr. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/itucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.