Our Virginia chapter uncovered a state policy system in which the state level legislatures were populated with, and dominated by, local elites. Policy outputs tilted strongly toward satisfying parochial goals and policy reflected an inward, decentralized perspective fragmented, if not frustrated any state-level perspective. The cornerstone of this bottom-up policy process was the county level elites. Lacking cities and towns of meaningful size, the county became, very early on, by the 1620’s, the dominant policy-making level. The weakness and remoteness of the proprietary corporation that “owned and managed” colony was focused in its early years especially almost exclusively of channeling profits, in the form of tobacco export, to England for sale around the globe. The local economic base, housed on the tobacco plantation controlled by its plantation overlord, in no time at all became, for good and bad reasons, the political overlords of the county level. By the 1640’s these local plantation elites dominated both houses of the state legislature, frustrating, checking, and influencing the royal governor who had displaced the bankrupt Jamestown Company. For all intents and purposes, that system persisted to–and through–the American Revolution, and then became incorporated into the Early Republic American state policy system.
That is not the system or the policy process that we will find in Penn’s Pennsylvania.
There are several simple, non-complicated ideas why that is the case. Geography, for one. The climate and topography of Pennsylvania did not foster tobacco plantation. They were attempted in the southern coastal counties on the border of Maryland, but they didn’t take root (sorry). There were manor-plantations, Penn created a series of them, for himself, his family, and his most central allies and friends. There would be more to follow. They did use slaves, from the start, but also tenant farming. They replicated English manors and fiefdoms more faithfully than the Virginia export plantation. Producing wheat and domestically consumed commodities, they sustained the formation of cities, and only then sent the remainder to export. So manor-plantations, and slavery, did exist in Penn’s Pennsylvania, but so did Philadelphia, and other mid-size cities would follow.
Pennsylvania urbanized–and that is another simple explanation for its difference from Virginia. Rural counties had a counter-check in the form of a large commercial municipal corporation, a city. That a large commercial city developed in the Pennsylvania wilderness is perhaps a tribute to the will and sole proprietorship of William Penn–yet another simple and uncomplicated explanation for Pennsylvania’s distinctiveness. His Quaker political culture seemed naturally resident to any aggressive use of government, shifting power to the private sector and to the individual–even the near-absolute power of Penn’s sole proprietorship, was near shattered by the time he left Pennsylvania in 1684, after only a year and ten months in operation.
Still, Penn’s urban-biased plan and vision, plus the bimodal population/property owners he recruited, ensured that Philadelphia would not wither on the vine. if Virginia had developed from a tobacco rush, Pennsylvania with few manor-born aristocratic leaders would be settled by middle, artisan, and even working class–unified by their religion and its need to conduct a Holy Experiment in the New World, if it were to survive, never mind flourish. The demographic base of Quakerism, then, predisposed Pennsylvania to a more balanced urban-rural development than the manor-born Berkeley royalist refugees–although both, of course were refugees.
All of these factors played a role in shaping Pennsylvania’s political-economic development–and others as well.
There is a complicated story, laid on top of the above fundamental dynamics, that one also needs to understand the development of political institutions and structures which in the aggregate formed the overall Pennsylvania policy system. Penn arrived in Pennsylvania with a governance vision, his Frame of Government, and armed with the near-dictatorial powers of a royal charter and a sole proprietor corporation he was well-equipped to install that vision. Yet short of two years, he was on his way back to Great Britain, exhausted, steps ahead of a Quaker rather discontented mob. By that time, certainly over the next four years, he lost effective control over Pennsylvania’s governance and policy process.
His vision, distorted by wilderness city-building realities he did not appreciate, and a political culture which was little more disposed to his personal governance than it was to the King’s back in the good old days. Penn, as a near-incompetent manger, no doubt speeded up the process, perhaps made the outcome close to inevitable, but in any case, with Penn out of country, Pennsylvania’s (and Philadelphia and its hinterland township)–not to mention the state-level policy system–would be formed by forces which arose in reaction to his administration. It was they who were to “incorporate” the political structures that would populate the state and local policy systems. It is to them we must turn for additional understanding.
Penn–and the forces of reaction–both shared a common tradition of governance, that of England. That common tradition was incorporated into Penn’s Frame of Government, and in the minds of those who resisted, and effectively overthrew him. It is there we must first turn. The primary, not the only or exclusive explanation, for Pennsylvania’s political development is that both sides brought with them to America a familiarity and expectation of governance very similar to that they lived in England–that was their frame of reference. To make matters more simple, it also was the frame of reference of English civil/municipal law that was subordinate to charter and proprietorship. It was the “law’s” expectation that English municipal institutions and processes would be carried over into the New World.
the English Municipal Tradition
the idea of the municipal corporation crossed the Atlantic and set the parameters for city life in urban centers flanking the Hudson, the Delaware, and the James. The English municipality was the preface to urban history in the New World–the starting point from which the saga of the American city [and local government] began [99] Jon C. Teaford, the Municipal Revolution in America: Origins of Modern Urban Government, 1650-1825 (University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 3
Teaford carefully but unequivocally asserts that throughout Europe, the urban center, the city whether it be large or small, second tier or incorporated town, held an unique role in each country “as a center for trade and commerce. Amid the agricultural world of medieval Europe, cities existed as alien bodies requiring extraordinary powers and special protection” if they were to exist at all against the onslaughts of an near-exclusive agricultural economic base rule by a divine right king and his feudal aristocracy.
In contemporary 2020 American politics we are well-aware of the so-called “sanctuary city”. For most of us, however, we are not aware the city itself was formed, chartered, and protected to provide a sanctuary to those engaged in manufacturing, commerce, and finance. Long before capitalism, or even mercantilism, existed, kings, nobles and counties learned they did not live by bread (and wine) alone.
One couldn’t have salt, or beer, or perfume and dyes for color–nor could one war upon each other–with commerce, manufacturing and finance. It was perhaps the Silk Road, that sand and grass highway, that spawned the trading city, and from the Mediterranean created the ports, piers, wharves and ships that serviced the capital cities and villages alike. It was what these cities did, the functions they served, that created the need to protect them so they could function, grow, and prosper. Out of necessity, the powers that be granted charters of protection to those that performed these functions. That charter is the municipal corporation.
Kings and Queens “incorporated” an urban center, and endowed it with a municipal charter that permitted some level of autonomy, special and independent governance, and certain prerequisites for their occupants. In that sense at least “corporation” was a good thing back then; it contained features and protections very similar to today’s constitution. But before we go too far on this municipal corporation “thing”, it is wise to take a moment so not to pass over why urban centers/municipalities needed a corporation that certified their rights and obligations: they were a sanctuary for trade, commerce, finance, and manufacturing.
Said and done, these core functions–economic activities all–were why cities were protected and encouraged to grow. You didn’t move to a city back then for the lifestyle; they well hellholes of disease, crime, congestion, and filth–and were noisy. When the Black Death bounced around, people headed for the countryside. Rather cities were granted certain powers and privileges because special, needed special protections in return for which they to perform key economic functions.
Those key functions included industry/sector self-regulation. The guild system had evolved over several centuries but it was very much still around in the Stuart economic world.Late medieval self-regulation usually meant to protect and manage the quality of a city industry’s output. This involved workforce-career path that transformed a raw recruit into an apprentice, to journeyman to master. Prescribed wages and benefit plan (sleep upstairs, three squares a day and off for Christmas sort of thing) were built-in to each stage of the career path. It was a built-in mentoring system with strong overtones of indentured servant. In larger cities, a an industry training institute could be established.
At its best, it did offer the not unrealistic possibility of ownership if not of the master’s business but also to spin off on his own. Startups were not entrepreneurial in today’s sense. The city’s industry/sector focus did restrict/limit entry of newcomers, protected existing business from intrusions from other sectors seeking to merge/drive out existing firms (arguably at a cost to disruptive innovation), and protected business from some supply chain/materials costs. This necessarily reduced the product/service scope of a business. No candles were sold at a cheese-maker. There is a strong dose of protectionism inherent in this system and potentially some tension with the consumer. In a sense this was a sort of city/state with one city’s businesses protected and nurtured from competition by the city down the road a bit. This protectionism no doubt extended into the city’s hinterland–and interestingly, industry/sector privileges often were extended to hinterland businesses.
To foster quality and a reasonable product the city hired a number of industry inspectors, instituted a weights and measurement /inspection bureaucracy that also closed down illegible startups that snuck up in the backstreets. The business-run city government bought into, to some degree, the adage that an educated customer is a best consumer by keeping tract of unfair price competition on the low end, and price extortions (called then “immoderate gain”) on the high demand end.
Buy goods and services from your own city businesses was a natural, and the also natural desire to export was facilitated by industry “exchanges” that set both quality and price to goods shipped to other places (eliminating “forestalling”). Intra Industry complaints and conflicts were also adjudicated. In essence, Teaford suggests that business-dominated British local government also “bore responsibility for protecting the poor from the rich, the small operator from the large, and the native producer from the foreign” [99] Jon C. Teaford, p.7. When a business sold an item, a pint of beer for example, the price was usually set by the city–bread also was set-price.
Business-run cities usually assumed responsibility for both business-relevant infrastructure of business, and urban quality of life infrastructure required for quality of urban life: safety, public health, fire, and therefore water. The first port facilities, wharves, piers, dredging, and storage (including barrel-making) were usually installed by the business and exempted from taxes, and supplemented with city services. Cities in those days didn’t tax; they got most of their revenues from fees and duties (excise taxes) for services/products, and their investments in infrastructure.
The grist mill was a public/private affair and ferries also. Industry/sectors paid for their own self-regulation–absorbed in their price, I assume. They were able to draft labor for roads and clean up campaigns, and paving major roads and streets of averaged-sized cities was common. The critical function of creating a “marketplace” for sale of goods was left to the city, and in larger cities that meant specialized marketplaces as well as the “central marketplace, i.e. downtown. Fairs and religious sites/pilgrims, what we call tourists, also were a city function. Because city aggregations were not uncommon in several industry/sectors (clothing and apparel) government loans to business did happen, but were not commonplace. City council members did travel to other cities to acquire a better sense of the competition, and make deals for their businesses.
Since American businesses were essentially startups, and because of immigration market demand was strong, early colonial business ventures were autonomous and entrepreneurial than their British counterpart. British established firms did not finance or expand with branches in America’s new cities (logistics and finance sector excepted). The series of English Navigation Laws required American merchants use British ships, and required American exports to be sent to London for sale by British merchants.
If you want my opinion, this is arguably the single most important driver that fueled the American Revolution. In any case, a number of colonial historians, looking at individual early colonial American cities, have found ample evidence that much of the conventional English city business model was transferred/copied [99] See Jon C. Teaford’s, Chapter 2, pp. 16-34; included in that chapter is a number of Pennsylvania examples relevant to time period of this module.
At every step in the transport, sale, and purchase … the colonial municipality intervened, the vital role of promoter and regulator. For before the 1730’s and 1740’s the American borough, like its British ancestor, was primarily a commercial community governed by commercial participants for the service of trade and industry. Merchants and artisans had carried this European concept of urban government to the new continent and during the first century of English colonization it molded the nature of the American municipality [99 … [For example,) when William Penn granted the Philadelphia charter … in order to achieve ‘the more immediate and entire Government of the said Town, and the better Regulation of Trade within’. By 1750 fourteen such [municipal] chartered corporations lined the Atlantic seaboard from Albany in the north to Norfolk in the south, each created as an instrument for stimulating commercial development by regulating and promoting trade [99] Jon C. Teaford, pp. 16-7.
Whether the contemporary reader likes any of this stuff, or not, this is what usually accompanied a business/commerce approach to medieval urban governance. When you flesh out just what is involved in the conventional English business run city, it involves a lot of economic development. This is not detail which the reader should be spared. From an economic development perspective a lot of ED that one way or another we deal with today was lodged inside this government/guild/business nexus. When during the seventeenth century these British traditions and urban institutions were shipped to North American cities, unspoken and largely unnoticed, they were retained and copied in early colonial American cities/towns. What was missing, however, and it was a key omission was the guild. Functional alternatives did rise up, especially in artisan-prone sectors as we shall see in forthcoming modules.
But the reader ought remind me that Penn’s Free Society of Traders was arguably an attempt to install a guild-like structure to Pennsylvania economic development. The almost instant opposition it engendered, and the failure to take root among Quaker-run businesses hint also that Quaker political culture/entrepreneurial personalities were not fertile ground. one suspects the guild’s inability to take root in almost any form did play a major role in differentiating the early colonial American business/commercial/artisan firm from its British counterpart. To me the absence of more direct forms of British business investment is the “dog that didn’t bark”–suggesting at minimum that British companies did not perceived much entrepreneurial opportunity in America, choosing rather to exploit or extract than invest.
In so doing, the reader is also alerted that there will be two exceptions to English/commercial-urban nexus in America: the New England Town, and New York City (Dutch New Netherlands). Sam Bass Warner coined the term “Privatism” for his characterization of post 1750 Philadelphia–and we shall discuss that in a latter module. Privatism became a cornerstone concept in the description of American pre-1900 urban governance.
For this module content myself with alerting the reader that Privatism, in my opinion, represents a continuation of the English urban governance heritage, as it evolved in English North America. That he found it much in Philadelphia, and not in Boston is to me support that our discussion in this and the next chapter is firmly grounded in its cultural distinction between the two urban centers. . Sam Bass Warner, it is clear from his works, clearly preferred Boston, for what we shall see are obvious reasons: Boston culture and economic development includes huge doses of what we shall later label as ‘community development”. But that is a story for another day–indeed the next chapter.
Absent the guild a vital cog in the European/English urban governance model was overtime fundamentally disrupted. In the European/English model certification by the guild was key to being defined as a “freeholder” who was eligible to vote and become an officeholder. By the turn of the century (1700, or so) American cities finally grew to the point they could no longer sustain a franchise so limited to outright business owners. For philosophical and sheer power reasons a substitute had to be found: a certain level of property ownership.
Land was the most common form of property in colonial America, and accordingly, the franchise of urban America passed into the hands of the property-holders, rather than business owners, a fundamental transformation that broadened the American urban franchise. Having said this, however, in the hinterland property was considerably cheaper to purchase than in the urbanized city. The franchise in the hinterland, therefore was often considerably larger and more equitable than that of the urban center. In fact in the latter, the reverse was true. From this, what today is called mal-apportionment between urban and hinterland developed and increased through to the American Revolution.
In wrapping this section up, I will offer one insight and one conclusion or take away. The takeaway is, as simply put as I can make it, that commercial economics and economic development are central functions and purposes of an English municipal corporation. Urban governance and business development were literally hand-in-the-glove closely connected, essentially unable to distinguish between. That it transferred to English North America is wny economic development is an excellent prism or filter by which to understand the early American urban policy system.
English kings from the Normans through the Stuarts granted charters of incorporation drafted to serve the needs and peculiarities of communities of butchers. tailors, merchants and drapers. Commerce was the organizing principle of the municipality’s government, and its offices, suffrage requirements, ordinances, and pageantry all reflected the economic practicalities underlying its existence. The municipal corporation was a community of trade and industry, an organization molded by the distinctive needs of commercial life amid a world of subsistence agriculture [99] Jon C. Teaford, p. 4
As to the observation I will add one other feature of the English urban/business model that also did not travel well to North America. In an British municipal corporation business leaders could elect both their guild leadership and governance officials. In fact they were often literally one and the same. That happened because to vote in a municipal election one must be a “freeman”. To be a freeman on had to be engaged in a trade, a guild. Occupation provided access to an urban citizen to the right to participate in its policy system and process.
In an urban medieval and Stuart policy system the “municipal corporation was a commercial community in which the commercial class was the governing class. … Elizabethan York (England’s second largest city at the time) disregarded geographic wards [as voting districts] and apportioned its thirty-eight common councillors among twenty-six occupational groups. Similarly in the [much smaller] borough of Morpeth [a market town in the remote north Northumberland], each of the seven vocational companies [guilds] held permanent claim to one seat on the board of aldermen. [99] Jon C. Teaford, p. 5. The electoral franchise in a municipal corporation created a very closed commercial dominated policy system.
Absent the guild, an immense vacuum opened up in the definition of the municipal corporation’s electoral franchise. Teaford observes, and amply supports, that “The men who drafted America’s [urban] ordinances and by-laws were well-qualified to deal with questions of urban commerce, for the colonial alderman and councillors were drawn from an extensive variety of commercial interests. American cities were primarily hubs of mercantile endeavor and [for example] in New York City between 1675 and 1725 64% of council members for whom occupation data is available earned their living as merchants. Another 31% made their living as artisans and innkeepers” [99] Jon C. Teaford, p. 25. He also cites that for a later period an almost identical occupational breakdown was found in Philadelphia–with lawyers garnering the bulk of the remainder after merchants, artisans and innkeepers.
These fine folk were elected, not appointed, and so the natural question is why were businessmen/artisans overwhelmingly elected to municipal offices? The answer appears to be that in the absence of a guild, ownership of land (an expensive form of property in an urban center) were required prerequisites for franchise eligibility. If the guild had functioned as the aggregator (broker) of municipal industry/sector political preferences, absent that institution left the American policy system with a “property substitute” that left the field for political officeholding to the ambitions and interests of individuals with property.
The same type of folk were elected to municipal officeholders in both systems, but how, and why they got there differed hugely. Instead of representing an institution based on an industry/sector, American business-related public officials ultimately represented themselves or whatever else they chose to serve. The character of the American urban policy system, then, at least potentially, had departed from the traditional English system of urban governance–and the municipal corporation took on new meaning, and biases. Shades of Sam Bass Warner, it had been privatized.
Ron W. Coan 