sixties. Thus by the time of the Civil War, agriculture as well as industry had been transformed by the inventions of the machine.

The Economic Development of the United States Since the Civil War. The decade of the Civil War was a period of transition when these many inventions were speedily assimilated into the economic life of the country. "With the Civil War there began a new industrial era." Whereas 9 out of 10 people lived on the farm at the beginning of the century, and 8 out of 10 lived on the farm at the middle of the century, under the new era less than 3 out of 10 live on the farm. This remarkable shift of population has been possible in part from the wider adoption of inventions made prior to 1860 and in part from continuous new inventions of mechanics and science.

(a) Manufactures. Since the Civil War the United States has become the leading nation of the world in total volume of manufactures. Three factors in this growth may be noted here: the increasing use of mechanical equipment, the development of new industries, the abundance of natural resources.

The American manufacturer has equipped his laborers with more machinery, more non-human energy, and more capital equipment generally than has the manufacturer of other countries. It is estimated that the supply of this productive capital has increased per wage earner fully fourfold since 1860, and in the same period the supply of nonhuman energy has increased nearly fivefold per wage earner. More mechanical equipment and more horsepower per worker have greatly increased the output per worker. These causes have increased the annual production of pig iron per worker from 267 to 709 tons. They have increased the production of gasoline per worker from 23,000 gallons to 71,000 gallons, and of automobiles from one and one-half to four cars per worker. From 1860 to 1910 the mineral production per mining employee more than doubled, and since 1910 production has increased an additional 25 per cent in efficiency. A generation ago the bituminous coal miner produced two and one-half tons per day, whereas today, by the use of superior machinery, he produces more than four tons per day. This multiplied efficiency of the worker means that production has increased much faster than population. In the 22-year period ending in 1920 the physical quantity of manufacture per capita of the total population rose 39 per cent. The superior use of mechanical equipment in production has thus been a salient feature of the phenomenal development of manufacturing in the United States.

The second factor in manufacturing growth, namely, the development of new industries, has a wide variety of illustrations. The building of railroads and the making of the new machinery early created a demand for steel to displace iron. The discovery by Sir Henry Bessemer in England in 1856 of the Bessemer process of making steel by blowing air through molten pig iron made possible large scale produc

1 T. N. Carver, Principles of Rural Economics, p. 85.

2 American Economic Review, Supplement, March, 1923, p. 131.

tion of steel at a moderate price. One steel rail for the railroads would outwear twenty old style iron rails. Later discoveries of the open. hearth process, of electric furnaces, of electric handling equipment, of coke for fuel, of chemical analysis of steels, and of new alloys, caused a continuous expansion of the steel industry. All other main lines of production are dependent upon steel as a basic industry, and the United States has come to lead the nations of the world in this basic branch of manufactures. Chemical science has occasioned the expansion of chemical manufactures to the point of employing about a half million wage earners. Electrical and mechanical science has made the manufacture of electrical apparatus and supplies an industry of major importance. The applied science and inventions underlying the petroleum, rubber, and automobile industries have created three lines of manufactures in which American production leads the world. The growth of the meat packing industry since 1870, owing to refrigeration, machine methods of manufacture, and utilization of by-products, has made it first in value of product among American industries. Without enumerating other new industries, we may note one manufacturing principle which runs through all of them and which characterizes American manufacturing in impressive fashion. This principle is the use of automatic machinery. The automatic machine, involving standardization, repetitive processes, and quantity production, is the master stroke of American manufacturing genius.

A third leading factor in American manufactures has been the country's abundance of natural resources. The raw materials of manufacturing are derived mainly from agricultural industries and from mineral deposits. The agriculture of the United States is noted for the wide. variety of its products and for a volume of output which in major lines is not only adequate for home industries but offers a surplus for export. The main minerals used in manufacturing, namely, coal, iron, and copper, are found in the United States in greater abundance than in any other industrial country. Every phase of manufacturing progress has been stimulated and supported by the richness of American natural resources. This very richness has been a strong temptation to wasteful exploitation, but in recent decades, the idea of conservation of natural resources has taken a firm hold on the American mind. Proper conservation of resources would insure a permanent wealth of raw materials and would thus be of paramount importance to the future prosperity of American economic life.

(b) Power. Only a half century ago, the total horsepower used to drive manufacturing machinery was two million. Today it is more than thirty million. Of this vast amount of harnessed power, about twothirds is steam power, about one-fifth electric power, and the remainder power derived from water or from the internal combustion engine. The invention of the dynamo to convert mechanical energy into electric, the central power station to distribute the energy for power and light, and the electric motor for the driving of machinery, represents a tendency

toward the gradual displacement of the age of steam by the age of electricity. The invention of the internal combustion engine led to the automobile, the aeroplane, the submarine, and the oil-driven ocean liner. The utilization of hydroelectric power has already established itself, but the potential resources of this form of energy are as yet barely touched. The modern tendency is toward the creation of power zones, with central stations near water power or near coal mines, and with the energy conducted by wires over a radius of hundreds of miles. Scientists are of the opinion that, whereas the past has been an age of coal and steam, the future will be more and more an age of electricity and petroleum.

(c) Transportation. Transportation has been of more importance to the United States than to most other countries because of the vast distances which must be united within the nation's borders. As early as 1869, a transcontinental line was completed by the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific roads. Railroad expansion in the United States was aided by enormous grants of State and Federal public lands. The railroads have received approximately 155,000,000 acres of such land, an area four times the size of the New England states. Under this stimulus, the railroad mileage of the United States increased from 30,000 miles in 1860 to 253,000 miles in 1920. All other countries of the world combined had only 440,000 miles in the latter year. "Proportionately to population," says Ripley, "the United States is about six times as well equipped with railroads as Europe."

Railroad transportation has been supplemented by a growing network of electric and water lines, and motor highways. The congestion of population in cities has necessitated the cheap transportation provided by electric railways and interurban lines. Water routes have been expanded by canal construction, of which the most noted is the Panama Canal, by improved rivers and harbors, by traffic on the Great Lakes, and by coastwise navigation. Motor trucks and busses, and all forms of the automobile have multiplied transportation facilities immensely. The necessities of the World War caused the construction. of a merchant marine second in tonnage only to that of England. Postwar experience indicates that this full tonnage cannot be operated profitably on a permanent basis by the United States. Nevertheless since the war the United States has carried about 40 per cent of her foreign commerce in American ships as compared with barely 10 per cent before the war.

(d) Communication. After 1866 transoceanic cables were laid to insure quick intercontinental communication. Marconi's perfection of wireless telegraphy in 1896, and the triumph of laboratory research in the radio telephone have immensely expanded the possibilities of quick exchange of intelligence. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, and by 1923 the United States had 15,000,000 telephones in use. The aeroplane has come into use as a means for quick 8 Railroads, Rates and Regulation, p. 35.

transportation of the mails. One indication of the importance of these means of communication is the fact that all of them are classed as public utilities. They are not merely a source of convenience or comfort, but are essential to the very existence of large scale business and the complex economic system of today. A strike of telephone or telegraph operators would be as disastrous for the country as a strike of the railroad workers themselves.

(e) Agriculture. To feed the population in 1860, it was necessary that 80 per cent of the people live and work on the farms of the United States. To feed the population in 1925, it is necessary that only 30 per cent of the people live and work on the farms. The great increase in the efficiency of farm labor was accomplished by the increased use of farm machinery and by the application of scientific methods to farming. The value of farm machinery per acre increased about sevenfold between 1850 and 1890. Modern machinery includes such devices as tractors, automobiles, trucks, engines, telephones, and improved tools of all kinds. Other improvements in scientific methods were due largely to research in biology and chemistry. Biological research made effective the application of the laws of heredity to plant and animal breeding and created greatly improved stocks of plants and animals. Chemical research, drawing upon Liebig's researches in Germany in the chemistry of animal and vegetable life and upon the studies of many other scientists in Europe and America, pointed the way to the improvement of soils by the use of artificial fertilizers, by drainage, and by irrigation. Much of this research was the result of special university laboratories and of government experiment stations. The tendency has been in recent years toward more intensive farming, toward better care of each acre of land, toward increasing the product per acre of land rather than toward making each laborer scatter his effort over more and more acres.

While farm efficiency has been increasing in this manner, the development of the western frontier has also been accomplished. The settlement of the Far West was a most important feature of our industrial growth. The Homestead Act of 1862 opened the public lands to free settlement. Between 1860 and 1890, there were 2,511,000 new farms taken up, an acreage equal to one-fourth of the total land area of the country. The frontier, with its free land and free opportunity, made for economic equality, self-reliance, and democracy. In analyzing this period, Becker declares, "The United States has always had, until very recently, more land than it could use and fewer people than it needed, and this is not only the fundamental economic difference between the United States and European countries, but it is a condition which has had more influence than any other in determining the course of American history." With the passing of the frontier in the last decade of the nineteenth century, a new relationship between industry and agriculture became evident. The growing population, finding no outlet on the frontier, was congested in the cities. Labor troubles became more in4 Carl Becker, The United States an Experiment in Democracy, pp. 156, 312.

tense, and the sharp inequalities of income and opportunity developed the class alignments of labor and capital. The United States is not yet as completely industrialized as many countries of Europe, but, with the passing of the American frontier, the significant fact is the speed with which it is becoming so.5

(f) Labor. The passing of slavery meant the coming of a new labor problem. The negro today makes up 10 per cent of the total population, but in some southern states he makes up a majority of the population. Southern agriculture is organized around the labor performed by the negro population. Within the last two decades there has been a marked drift of negro labor from farms to factories and mines, where unskilled work is required. This drift has especially been marked by an exodus of negro labor into northern cities, to meet an unskilled labor shortage created by restriction of immigration. Formerly a southern problem, the negro is becoming more and more a northern problem, and the appearance of race riots and racial antagonisms in northern industrial communities is a sign of this shifting locus of the negro economic issue.

Labor history has been influenced at every turn of events by immigration. Since 1820, approximately 36,000,000 immigrants have come to the United States. The foreign-born white population is now about 14 per cent of the total population. Immigrant labor aided the opening up of the resources of the country by supplying us with an unskilled labor element. But accompanying this benefit was one handicap which immigration imposed upon American labor. The huge inflow of labor supply tended to depress wages and to make difficult the struggle of labor organization to raise its standards of living. Alien labor was cheap labor, and menaced the existence of American standards. Gradually the public mind came to believe in defense from the immigrant horde by passing laws to select the best and to reject the worst. Within the last decade, this idea has been carried much farther than ever before, and the selection has become so exacting that it has resulted in rigid restriction. The Restriction Law of 1924 limits immigration from any one country to 2 per cent of the foreign born of that nationality living in this country according to the census of 1890. This provision not only limits the total amount of immigration, but also serves to insure that the bulk of the immigrants admitted come from the countries of northern and western Europe. The chief economic effect of such restriction is to maintain a scarcity of common labor and therefore to keep wage scales higher than they otherwise would be.

The movement of organized labor has come into greatest prominence since the passing of the frontier. The American Federation of Labor represents labor's greatest power matched against the power of organized capital. The recurrence of strikes is a menace to the safety and welfare of the public, and the problem of maintaining industrial peace

5 See Frederick J. Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History.