Price : American Port Towns	129

the life of the towns. What functions did the towns perform in
their regional economies? Correlatively, what distinctive functions
did the separate sections of the town's populations perform?

To many, these may not seem like real questions at all. There is
a well-established tradition in international scholarship (in America
associated with the name of C. H. Cooley17) that would explain
the location and size of towns entirely in terms of the geography
of production and markets and the technology of transportation.
As goods move from the loci of production to markets and con-
sumers, geography and transport technology require that they be
transshipped at certain points. Around these points, towns devel-
oped; as the physical volume of production and exchange increased,
so did the size of the towns affected. All diis is correct, of course, to
the point of being a truism. Yet to say this is not to explain every-
thing. One must distinguish between necessary and sufficient causes.
Access to feasible trade routes with appropriate volumes of activity
is a necessary condition for the development of towns of various
sizes. However, the mere existence of production and exchange
and suitable geographic location are not conditions sufficient to
guarantee that a town of any foreseeable size will develop in any
given place. If New York and Philadelphia fit everyone's precon-
ceptions, one must also consider the unexploited possibilities at
the mouths of the Connecticut and Cape Fear (North Carolina)
rivers and again the urban backwardness of the populous Chesa-
peake. Then too, certain towns historically have developed vol-
umes of activity which transcend geography. The greatest mart
towns (e.g., Amsterdam and London) seem to attract volumes of
activity which exceed mere geographic convenience. On a much
smaller scale, the activity of Boston, Newport, and even New
York in the eighteenth century also seems to have exceeded what
might have been geographically predictable. In short, while giving
due weight to geography and to the physical volume ot trade, we
must also consider the quality of economic activity in explaining

17. Charles H. Cooley, Ttte Theory of Transportation (Publications of the American
Economic Association, IV, no. 3 [Baltimore, 1894]), pp. 90-100. Cooley drew heavily
on Roschcr.