The Environment in a Historical Perspective

Abstract

Modern business history in the United States starts roughly in the 1820s and 1830s. First the construction of a network of canals, and then of a nationwide railroad system, triggered a process of economic unification of the country. A stream of basic inventions — the steam engine, the cotton gin, the Bessemer steel process, the vulcanization of rubber — provided a technological base for a rapid industrial takeoff. Technological invention proceeded alongside social invention and the development of one of the most successful and influential organizations in history — the business firm.

‘The problems of the U.S. economy have an unnerving tendency to be something different today from what you thought they were yesterday.’

Carol J. Loomis

‘Trend is not destiny.’

René Dubois