Book Description

Excerpt from Industrial History of the United States The industrial development of the United States has followed lines similar to those of European nations, - advancing slowly up to the end of the eighteenth century and after that gathering greater speed and momentum. Here, as in Europe, the growth has been accompanied by the use of machinery, by specialization, division of labor, concentration, growing complexity of organization, and, finally, by an increasing degree of public control. This text follows a topical rather than a chronological method of treatment. Nevertheless, allowing for an inevitable overlapping of events, it seems possible to distinguish four major periods of development, roughly divided as follows: (1) the colonial period of simple domestic economy and of dependence upon foreign trade, extending from the beginnings of permanent settlements to 1763; (2) the period of transition from colonial to national economic life, 1763 to about 1825; (3) the period of national consolidation and isolation, 1825 to 1860; and (4) a period of readjustment, marked by combination and organization growing out of severe competition, by public regulation of industry, and by all the new problems resulting from the closing of the frontier. The text emphasizes three principal ideas, foremost among which is the effect upon a people of centuries of a constantly moving frontier. It is difficult to estimate the influence of the fact that since the beginnings of American history every day has been "moving day" for large numbers of the people. They went into the West, crude, untamed, unshackled by tradition, out of touch with the old home culture, and often out of the reach of regularly established law. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.