Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Introduction: The Business of America
- Prologue: A Hothouse for Economic Growth
- 1 The Marvel of Men and Machines
- 2 The Lure of Lovely and Lucrative Land
- 3 The Defeat of Distance and Desolation
- 4 The Potential of Plentiful Power
- 5 The Fabrication of Familiar Forms
- 6 Bargaining with Behemoths
- 7 The Collision of City and Country
- 8 The Mastery of Mass Markets
- Epilogue: The Boundaries of Big Business
- Sources and Suggested Readings
- Index
3 - The Defeat of Distance and Desolation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Foreword
- Introduction: The Business of America
- Prologue: A Hothouse for Economic Growth
- 1 The Marvel of Men and Machines
- 2 The Lure of Lovely and Lucrative Land
- 3 The Defeat of Distance and Desolation
- 4 The Potential of Plentiful Power
- 5 The Fabrication of Familiar Forms
- 6 Bargaining with Behemoths
- 7 The Collision of City and Country
- 8 The Mastery of Mass Markets
- Epilogue: The Boundaries of Big Business
- Sources and Suggested Readings
- Index
Summary
Between 1850 and 1880 rates were reduced on the average to about one half their former figures…. We no longer produce for the home market, but for the world's market. It is by the world's supply and demand that prices are made. The development of transportation has been the main instrument of this change.
– Professor Arthur T. Hadley, 1885The greatest asset owned by the american people proved also to be their greatest obstacle. Before them lay a vast continent, most of it still unexplored as the nineteenth century opened. In an age when land was the principal source of wealth, there seemed no end to the promise offered by this enormous expanse of territory. But how to get at it? The celebrated expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (1804–6) gave Americans their first important clue as to just how vast and varied the western landscape was. For more than a century, however, they could reach land even close to them only by foot or horse, and sometimes by water. But if they traveled by river, they could not return the same way because boats could move only downstream. Going by horse or wagon required roads, which scarcely existed westward and became impassable in winter or wet weather.
Transportation and communication held the key to settling and exploiting the American continent. New technologies in both areas enabled settlers and businessmen alike to conquer time and space in unique ways, and in the process turn wilderness into civilization.
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- The Genesis of Industrial America, 1870–1920 , pp. 57 - 82Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007