Includes index.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"In the late nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. As the combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rarely found in world history, this book explains how development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization. While most of the current literature falls into two discrete categories - studies of electoral politics emphasizing the local basis of party competition and purely economic analyses of industrialization - this book synthesizes politics and economics by stressing the Republican party's role as a developmental agent in national politics, the primacy of the three great developmental policies (the gold standard, the protective tariff, and the national market) in state and local politics, and the impact of uneven regional development on the construction of national political coalitions in Congress and presidential elections."--Jacket.

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