This book grew out of my desire to understand how markets arise and how they work. Market processes of exchange are central to modern economics, and the development of efficient markets is widely regarded as an important factor in the speed of American economic growth. Yet the way in which markets develop, and the institutions through which they accomplish the task of matching supply and demand are rarely addressed by economists. In the pages that follow, I describe the development of American labor market institutions during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, focusing in particular on the ways in which they facilitated the matching of job seekers and employers across space. During this period, the industrialization of the American economy was associated with both substantial growth in aggregate employment and marked shifts in the location of economic activity. These developments would not have been possible in the absence of market institutions capable of mobilizing labor both internationally and internally.

My primary goal has been to contribute to our understanding of the process of American economic growth by illuminating the way in which labor markets responded to the shifting locations of labor supply and demand during American industrialization. But I believe that the results of this study have broader significance. For economists, this study offers an illustration of the interplay of economic and historical forces in explaining the development of institutions.