Logistics, market size and giant industrial units in the early 20th century: a global view

"Around 1900, the businesses of developed Europe – transporting freight by a different mix of ships, trains and horses – encountered logistic barriers to trade lower than the tyranny of distance imposed on the sparsely populated United States. Highly urbanized, economically integrated and compact northwest Europe was a market space larger than, and - factoring in other determinants besides its (low) tariffs - not less open to inter-country trade than the contemporary American market was to interstate trade. Accordingly, European mines, factories and firms – in small, as well as large, countries – could generally match the scale of those in the United States in the early twentieth century, where factor endowments, demand conditions or scale economies required that."