The conventional explanation of the rise of the industrial metropolis in the nineteenth century focuses on large-scale urban-industrial growth processes, including specialization, technological change, interregional transportation and communication improvements, and agglomeration economies, but this explanation is improperly specified. An alternative explanation is proposed based on the pivotal role of metropolises as controllers and coordinators of exchange. Manufacturing concentrated increasingly in metropolises because they dominated regional markets. Metropolises specialized in some national market industries, but their industrial growth based on these industries simply kept pace with national growth. New empirical evidence supporting the alternative explanation is presented for metropolises (n=28) for the 1860–1920 period, with a focus on the 1860–1880 period; manufactures were given two-digit SIC codes. The findings imply that explanations of the urban-industrial growth process need to focus on the early stages of the process.