How did industrialization change the United States?

The United States rose rapidly during industrialization and became the most economically developed country in the world. On the one hand, we must see that the U.S. economic development path is worthy of learning from developing countries. On the other hand, we must also see the particularity of the rapid development of U.S. industrialization. Unique weather, location, people and people. From the perspective of weather, although the New World of the United States had the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch and Swedes before the British arrived, but after They were all driven away by the British in the 1660s. The British won the subsequent Seven Years' War between England and France. Since then, the British have established many colonies on this continent. In 200 years, the United States had only two major wars, one was the War of Independence and the other was the Civil War. The rest of the time, America is relatively peaceful. A stable environment is necessary for economic development. As part of the British global trade, the United States must provide raw materials to Great Britain and also serve as a market for Great Britain's industrial products. However, the British rule in the United States is relatively liberal, and they hope that the local people will manage themselves to save the management costs of the British Empire. This kind of governance gives Americans greater room for development. The United States is a country without childhood, which means that the United States has no feudal culture, no history of centralized rule, no ideology of agricultural society, no customs and habits accumulated in the history of agricultural society and other cultural constraints, and no interest groups and bureaucracies have been formed. group. When the United States emerged, it was a blank sheet of paper. It was on this blank sheet that a modern country with a developed economy was drawn. Judging from the timing, the United States is the lucky one in history. From a geographical perspective, the United States is very rich in natural resources. The abundance of land gives agriculture a lot of room for development. The primitive accumulation of industrialization in the world was provided by agriculture. Without certain agricultural development, industrialization is impossible. Because agriculture can solve the basic problems of human survival. If a country's land is barren, or the ratio of people to land is large, then solving agricultural problems will be the country's main task, and there will be no time to consider industrial development. The backwardness of agriculture cannot provide raw materials for industry, and the low agricultural income cannot create a sales market for industrial products. Due to its abundant land resources and small man-to-land ratio, the United States first solved people's basic survival problems. The relatively high price of labor factors has led to strong demand for machines to replace humans, which has led to agricultural mechanization. Agricultural mechanization obviously promotes the development of industry and directly forms the driving force for industrialization. There were iron ores on American soil, so it was possible to use the most advanced technology at the time for smelting, thus promoting the development of railroads. There are also gold and silver mines in the United States. Although they are not as rich as South America and Africa, they can still provide hard currency to increase the scale of economic transactions. Let’s take a look at David S. Landers’ discussion. He said: The United States "has vast and fertile virgin land; the climate is suitable for growing cotton, the key raw material required for industrial development; the most important mineral deposits required for the iron smelting industry are abundant; there is a large amount of wood and coal to provide fuel, and the east coast is rich water resources; rich in oil, which has provided valuable raw materials for lighting, lubricating oil, and most importantly, internal combustion engine fuel since the mid-19th century; and a large number of copper mines, which by the end of the 19th century, continuously satisfied the needs of the power industry and automobiles. The rapid growth of industry and transmission industry. At the same time, there are convenient transportation conditions: the ideal coastline is dotted with first-class ports, large rivers, and vast plains [1]" These summary are the advantages of America's geographical location. . From a human and human perspective, the United States is the pastoral land where British Protestants sought their dreams, and they brought with them Protestant culture. Protestant culture gave birth to entrepreneurship, or cultivated the entrepreneurial spirit of local people. The United States is a country of immigrants. At the beginning of the 20th century, less than half of Americans were of native-born white descent. At that time, most Americans were non-white, immigrants, or had a parent who was an immigrant. In New York, 80% of residents are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants; in Chicago, this proportion reaches 87%. In 1900, New York probably had a larger Italian population than any other city in mainland Italy except Rome. Between 1820 and 1920, 4.25 million Irish immigrants came to the United States. This number exceeded the total population of Ireland in 1920. From 1850 to 1914, more than 40 million people in total left Europe and came to the United States[2]. Immigration makes this country free of traditional historical baggage and free of the historical constraints of the old system. Immigrants are mostly young people, so they are more motivated. There are no constraints from the old system, no historical baggage, and no obstruction from vested interest groups, making it easier for them to negotiate together to solve problems, which is conducive to the emergence of a democratic system. The democratic system has created a good institutional environment for economic development. All in all, American society offers a fascinating glimpse into what was going on in a society that was largely European but lacking in feudal traditions. The United States was created by Europeans, but it does not have a European past. It was forged in the crucible of European thought rather than in the furnace of European social experience; its development was determined by the fact that, as Tocqueville said, Americans "are created equal, not become The result is that freedom in the United States is based on a different foundation than freedom in other parts of the world.[3]

Unlike Europe, the United States did not win democracy in a revolutionary struggle against feudal aristocratic forces; there are almost no feudal remnants in the American colonies. America was a society of small farmers and small businessmen, and once it got rid of the British crown, it was able to develop in relative freedom. The British and American Industrialization Model The first country in the world to start and complete industrialization was the United Kingdom. The industrialization of Britain took about 100 years, starting in the 1870s and completing in the 1870s. Then came the major countries on the European continent and the United States, which generally started from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, which also took more than a century. The motivation for American industrialization came mainly from internal pressure and can be seen as an extension of the British industrialization model. Because the United States has a flexible economic system and strong government guidance policies, it has played a large role in the rapid development of industry. Moreover, the United States carried out industrial innovation and established a more advanced production model based on the British. As we all know, the United States is a late-comer capitalist country, and it is also the country with the fastest industrialization process in the capitalist world. Since independence in 1776, relying on domestic abundant natural resources and utilizing foreign advanced technology, especially technological revolution and institutional innovation, the country has transformed from an agricultural country to an industrial country in just 200 years. It has become the country with the strongest economic and technological strength in the world and has entered the era of knowledge economy. Americans created a new factory system. When the United States industrialized, it lacked manpower, but had vast land and abundant water resources. As a result, they merged some of the original scattered production processes, implemented a new division of labor, and then concentrated all the processes for manufacturing a certain product in one factory and placed them under unified management. This kind of factory system requires huge funds, so organizing a limited company has become the main channel to solve the problem of funds. After a company obtains a business license according to the law, it can raise capital from many smaller investors. The shareholders only have "limited liability". Liability", they are liable for the company's debts only in proportion to their shareholding. This joint-stock company became the basis of American industrialization. The universal system is another important technological innovation in the United States. The general-purpose system makes large-scale production possible, creating a "scale production system." Before that, products were made piece by piece by craftsmen, but the emergence of the universal system allowed products to be mass-produced and put on the market in large quantities, which effectively promoted economic development. Britain is the world's first industrialized country. Its industrial revolution was spontaneously generated and carried out. This model is generally called endogenous industrialization. This is a special model in the world's industrialization process and has gone through a relatively long process. . British industrialization developed on the premise of an already quite developed market economy. First, the land enclosure movement revolutionized British land ownership, changed agricultural management methods and production organization forms, and took the lead in realizing commercialized production in agriculture. The advanced development of agriculture enabled the population to continue to grow and provided industry with A vast domestic market and abundant and cheap labor. The primitive accumulation of capital and the formation of the labor market, coupled with the opening up of the vast world market, created conditions for the development of industrialization. The invention of the steam engine officially kicked off the Industrial Revolution. Technological innovation has continuously improved labor productivity. With the textile industry as the leading sector, the mining and metallurgical industries developed in parallel, driving the emergence and development of other sectors. Industrialization gradually spread to various industrial production sectors and the transportation industry. Driven by profits, the British economic structure changed. Agriculture no longer dominated, and industry, trade and transportation began to dominate the economy. For the British, their socio-economic, political, cultural and other changes are almost integrated with the modernization process, and industrialization is naturally achieved. There are many similarities in the development of Britain and the United States. In addition to their endogenous industrialization model, they have similarities in language, culture, political traditions, and religious beliefs. They both occupy a very broad market. There is a Political institutions and corresponding social organizations suitable for the development of industrialization can obtain the raw materials needed for industrialization. Therefore, people usually refer to the industrialization models of the United Kingdom and the United States as the Anglo-American model. The characteristics of this model are: (1) They all develop spontaneously on the basis of private ownership and rely on individual strength. When the United Kingdom and the United States achieved industrialization, they were both in the era of capitalist free competition and the market economy was relatively developed. At that time, the accumulation and concentration of capital and the continued growth of the population created conditions for the development of industrialization. In addition, the reform of land ownership and the British trade A strong position in the field lays the foundation for self-expansion of personal power and triggers personal investment. That is, something started and completed naturally by an individual. (2) The direct goal of industrialization development is the pursuit of profits, and there is minimal government intervention in resource allocation. The nature of capitalists is to pursue profits, so industrialization is determined by the characteristics of private initiatives. The government's intervention is minimal, and it also adopts trade protectionist measures to restrict imports and encourage exports to promote the smooth progress of the country's industrialization.