Assignment 7

During the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the economic power of the United States emerged from a state of relative unimportance to become the most powerful industrial nation on earth.  When the first census of the United States was completed in 1790, ninety percent of American adult males listed their occupation as “farmer”.  Only a century later, those who farmed were outnumbered by those who worked in the nation’s giant, rapidly growing industrial complex. 

Starting with the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville, numerous pundits and scholars (including historian Frederick Jackson Turner) have (over the years) attempted to explain the nation’s prosperity and success as the result of American exceptionalism. In the eyes of these authors, analysts, scholars, politicians, and leaders, the United States was able to emerge from its status as a primarily agricultural backwater to become an industrial giant in less than a century because of the superior values, attitudes, and beliefs of its people.  

Over the years, a plethora of what have been described as uniquely American attributes have been advanced to explain the rapid climb of the USA to the status of a world super power. Among the positive traits cited are the nation’s puritan values and roots, the moral purity of the population, the free-enterprise system, individuality, a competitive spirit, the frontier experience, individual initiative, informality, and a republican system of government. In short, many Americans believe that the United States became a great industrial power because its people possessed the cultural attributes needed to recognize the opportunities presented by the nation’s magnificent resource base, as well as the initiative, ambition, and drive needed to successfully exploit it. It is not as common, however, to hear politicians and pundits refer to the advantageousness of the nation’s site and situation, or the benefits of the positive covariance of its natural resources and its natural transportation arteries. Moreover, the fact that many 19th Century immigrants to the USA came from the industrial nations of Europe is often overlooked  In fact, the American Industrial Revolution was enhanced by the knowledge and skills of immigrants from the United Kingdom and Western Europe who worked in American factories. Additionally, it is important to remember that many of the laborers used to build the massive American rail system upon which the Industrial Revolution depended were poorly-paid immigrants from a variety of non-industrialized places such as China. 

Although it is true that the USA is an immense storehouse of  natural resources, other far less prosperous nations also have massive deposits of natural resources. In fact, the United States and other modern industrial countries (e.g., China and Japan) often import raw, unprocessed resources from nations in places such as the Middle East, Central America, and South America. 

Whereas the Industrial Revolution did not begin in the United States, no other people on earth embraced it with as much vigor, enthusiasm, and success as did the Americans.