[The Promise Of American Life by Herbert David Croly]@TWC D-Link book
The Promise Of American Life

CHAPTER V
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This activity and its effects have been the most important fact in American life during the forty years which have supervened; and it has assumed very different characteristics from those which it had assumed previous to the War.

We must now consider the circumstances, the consequences, and the meaning of this economic revolution.
Although nobody in 1870 suspected it, the United States was entering upon a new phase of its economic career; and the new economy was bringing with it radical social changes.

Even before the outbreak of the Civil War the rich and fertile states of the Middle West had become well populated.

They had passed from an almost exclusively agricultural economy to one which was much more largely urban and industrial.

The farms had become well-equipped; large cities were being built up; factories of various kinds were being established; and most important of all, the whole industrial organization of the country was being adjusted to transportation by means of the railroad.


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