Frontiers of change: early industrialism in America.

Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America.

By Thomas C. Cochran. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. 179 pp. Cloth, $17.50; paper, $7.95.)

It is not often that one is asked to review a book published four years before. This in itself is a great tribute to Thomas Cochran's fine volume, in which he advances a sweeping, provocative interpretation of the origins and character of early industrial development in the American Northeast. His principal theme is that culture is the fundamental basis for growth, and that previous work has exaggerated the importance of markets. He argues that since one must perceive opportunities before acting on them, the impact of markets depends on the prevalence among the population of an appropriate view of the world. From this perspective, it was no coincidence that Britian and the United States were the first to industrialize. What distinguished American culture in terms of …