The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution in America
PRECONDITIONS OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN AMERICA In the Beginning Before industrialization began in the 1820s, there was a set of political institutions and cultural values, mostly inherited from England, that encouraged profit-seeking individuals to start new companies. They included fairly secure property rights, increasing legal limits on monopolies, an independent judiciary that enforced contracts, emphasis on individual rights rather than social obligations, patents, tolerance of markets, and less government regulation of markets than in the past. Much of this was stated or implied in the Constitution; an activist Supreme Court under John Marshall extended these trends. The Constitution also helped to create a national market and reduce transaction costs by mandating a national currency and limiting states’ ability to make economic policy that favored their own residents. What America did not inherit from England was important. U...