7
Manifest Destiny,
Progressivism, War, and the
Roaring Twenties
A
s the united States experienced the rapid growth of business
and the accumulation of wealth, it recognized that it had come a
long way in a relatively short period of time. Prior to the Civil War
there were few great fortunes. Most industries were small, although
there was growth throughout the antebellum period. Indeed, a few
men made enough money so that a new word had to be devised to de-
scribe them. “Millionaire” was the word, and it applied to such men as
John Jacob Astor, for example, who built his fortune from fur trading.
But the great business boom resulting from the Civil War revolution-
ized the size, methods, and marketing of industrial enterprises. The rise
of big business in the United States produced giant companies in the
making of steel and the refining of oil and sugar. Even farming became
mechanized with the invention of the McCormick reaper. Such inven-
tions as the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 , the electric
lightbulb by Thomas Edison in 1879 , the linotype machine by Ottmar
Mergentheber in 1886, and many others created entirely new companies.
As mentioned earlier, railroads, which had first appeared in the 1820 s,
now stretched across the continent. By 1900 there were several hundred
thousand miles of railroad track connecting urban centers with remote
towns and villages. And, as the economic historian Alfred D. Chandler