ABSTRACT
In their book, Thinking for a Living, Ray Marshall and Marc Tucker demonstrate just how explosive the growth of American industry was between 1870 and 1920. They write:
It must have seemed to others that America came out of nowhere to capture the flag as the world’s leading economy. In the 1870s, Germany and Britain were the undisputed economic and technological leaders of the world. Then, suddenly, we appeared in the vanguard. In 1926, we produced about 45 per cent of the world’s industrial output, including 80 per cent of global automobile production and 50 per cent of its steel, electricity, and crude oil. We were the world’s leading exporter. We had already become, thirteen years earlier [1913] the world’s largest and wealthiest market for manufactured goods. 2
