Chapter Content
Okay, so, like, let's talk about how technology really, like, took off, right? I mean, after 1870, the world just, kind of, became this whole new global thing, you know? But it was way more than just like, trains and telegrams, even though those were a big deal. To really get it, let's look at Herbert Hoover.
So, Hoover, right? Born in Iowa, father was a blacksmith, but both his parents died super young, so he was, like, an orphan by ten. Then he starts moving west, you know? First to Oregon, then California. He always said he wanted to be the *first* student at Stanford. Showed up early and, haha, they let him sleep on campus. Studied mining engineering, graduated right after that big financial panic thing.
His first job? Digging in a mine in California. Made, like, nothing, but then he got this intern gig, made way more. Kept going west. Australia, China… That's where he started making serious money, even if, later, he didn't always talk about *how* he made it, you know?
Then he lived in London for years, doing consulting, investing all over the place. Came back to the States, became Secretary of Commerce, and, boom, President. I mean, blacksmith's son to *President*? That's a serious climb, even in America. And that America, that exceptionalism, that's key to the whole twentieth-century story.
But here's the thing. Hoover didn't get rich off of globalization itself. It was more about being good with mining technology, being a manager, you know, an organizer. The real kicker from 1870 wasn't just the world getting smaller, it was that technology was getting way, way better, faster. Like, *way* faster. The US, Germany, and Britain...they were already growing faster than everyone else, but this just supercharged everything.
Before then, before 1870, inventions were usually, like, one-off things. A better way to weave cloth, move goods... You get the idea. The inventors had to do *everything*. Research, development, be a boss, a cheerleader...the whole shebang.
Think about the steam engine, right? It needed cheap fuel, something useful to do, and the know-how to work with metal. Coal mines had the fuel, cotton needed spinning, and metallurgy was getting there. Bam! Industrial Revolution.
But...it almost didn't happen, you know? Printing, windmills, muskets... they changed things, but nothing like *this*. Ancient civilizations rose and fell. Printing was cool, but books were still a niche thing. Windmills helped, but women just found other work to do. Muskets made empires, but it was just one big jump, not continuous growth.
What changed after 1870 was that we, like, invented *invention*. Not just machines, but research labs and corporations. What came out of those labs could be used everywhere. And, crucially, people figured out you could make *tons* of money by not just improving old stuff, but making totally *new* stuff.
It wasn't just about inventions, it was about the systematic *invention* of how to invent. And how to organize, you know? This is how we got the big, integrated, command-and-control corporations we have today. Every year between 1870 and 1914, these new technologies came out of the labs, either sold to companies that were already there, or, more often, they drove the growth of these *massive* corporations.
Someone pointed out that a rich guy in 1870 basically had the same stuff as a rich guy in 1770, just more of it. More houses, more servants... But *after* 1870, the rich started getting all these new toys. Telephones, cars, radios, you name it. Just look at indoor plumbing, right? Almost nobody had it in 1870. Most people had it by 1970. Same with phones, electricity...it was a revolution in what people could *own* and *use*.
Some people call this a "second industrial revolution." One guy, Robert Gordon, said it was all one big wave, like from toilets to microwaves, and after that, the easy stuff was gone and technology had to slow down. But, uh, I think that misses the point, you know? The important thing isn't any one technology, it's the understanding that there's a *ton* of new stuff waiting to be discovered.
Take steel, for example. The building material of the 20th century. It was, like, re-invented in the late 1800s. Before, making good steel was a magical skill, only the best blacksmiths could do it.
Then, these guys, Bessemer and Mushet, came up with this process to burn off impurities and add back the right amount of carbon. The price of steel *plummeted*. It went from super expensive to affordable. Other improvements followed. Steel production went from tiny amounts to *millions* of tons. And it just kept growing.
And it wasn't just steel. Everything was changing. Electricity, telephones, clean water... horses disappeared from cities. People had entertainment that was unthinkable before. The high-tech stuff went from railroads and steel mills to dynamos and cars, then to assembly lines and airplanes, then to TVs and rockets, and finally to microprocessors and the internet. It was just wave after wave of crazy-fast technological change, and that had huge economic and social effects, you know?
Even the Eiffel Tower was a symbol of this, not just some revolutionary thing. It was about celebrating commerce, technology, progress.
Life was still tough, don't get me wrong. America was still poor in a lot of ways, super unequal too. But it was also a really attractive place compared to the rest of the world. The jobs might have been dangerous and the corporations didn't always care about the workers, but they were still good jobs by international standards. Worth moving halfway across the world for.
Everybody talks about Thomas Edison, but let's look at Nikola Tesla for a minute. He moved to America from Croatia, right? Grew up wanting to be an electrical engineer.
He ended up in New York, with a recommendation letter to Edison. Edison hired him, but then, supposedly, didn't pay him what he promised. Tesla quit and was digging ditches for a while.
Tesla was kind of a weird dude, you know? But he and his backers ended up beating Edison in the battle over whether electricity would be alternating current or direct current.
So, what's the difference? Basically, DC is electrons flowing directly from one place to another. It's easy to understand, but it doesn't go very far. AC, on the other hand, is like shaking a wire near a magnet. It creates this, like, wave of energy that can travel much farther with less loss.
Edison's DC system needed a power plant in every neighborhood. Tesla's AC system only needed a few big ones, and the power could be transmitted long distances. It was cheaper, more efficient...but it also seemed like magic. How could shaking a wire create power? People didn't get it.
Tesla was one of the few people who understood that AC was the future.
He was right. Our entire electrical grid is based on Tesla's ideas. The world lit up at night is Tesla's world. Even though his ideas seemed crazy to most people, they worked.
He also did a lot of other stuff. Radio, for example. He was way ahead of his time. He made a *huge* difference, pushing electricity forward and changing the direction of the economy. And he could do it because he could work in those research labs, his ideas could be used by corporations. He worked for Westinghouse, and General Electric copied him.
He invented a bunch of stuff, founded his own company, got fired from it, but eventually found a backer in George Westinghouse. He set up his own lab, got patents, illuminated the Chicago World's Fair with AC power.
There was a "war of the currents" between Westinghouse and Edison. Edison thought Tesla's ideas were "utterly impractical."
But AC allowed power to be transmitted efficiently over long distances. Edison's DC system was safer, but it lost a lot of power. Tesla's system got more energy where it was needed. And then Tesla invented the induction motor, which could actually *use* alternating current.
Both Westinghouse and Edison almost went bankrupt trying to build out their electrical grids. Westinghouse and Tesla won.
Tesla's ideas spread, even after he moved to Colorado to experiment with wireless power. That turned into radio, which he wasn't super interested in. He wanted to distribute electricity for free, you know? Like an open-source power movement, way before open-source software was a thing.
But the big financiers decided the "heroic age of electricity" was over. They wanted to focus on profits, not crazy experiments. They pushed Westinghouse out and kept Tesla's license.
Tesla was like a bridge between the old and the new, you know? A genius, but also a, like, charity case in a poor world.
Most people were still farmers in 1914. Most couldn't read, hadn't seen a steam engine. Life expectancy was still low. Even in the US, a third of the workforce was in agriculture. The US was a beacon of hope, but Britain and Belgium were industrializing even faster. And even in Germany, a world superpower, most of the army's vehicles were still pulled by horses.
The US was super unequal, too. Consider a college professor complaining that his $2,000 salary was too low. That was four times the average worker's income. But he didn't want 20 times the average salary.
The prof needed a servant because there were no modern appliances. He couldn't afford to live near campus or keep a horse, so he rode a bicycle. It shows how stratified the economy was.
Compare that to a working-class family. They often had boarders just to make ends meet. No running water, no appliances, so the housewife had to work like crazy.
Even in a relatively prosperous steel town, only a few working-class families had indoor bathrooms. Many lived in one- or two-room houses. And even in the better houses, they could only afford to heat one room in winter. Meal preparation took hours.
Infant mortality was high. Accidents were common and deadly. There was a real chance you'd die or be disabled on the job. No wonder people worried about insurance. And no wonder there were so many labor disputes.
The steel workers only worked six days a week, and that was considered a concession by the company. The mill stayed open 24/7 on weekdays. Later, they shifted to eight-hour shifts.
But those jobs were still good jobs for the time, especially compared to what people could earn elsewhere. People moved to America for them.
There were a lot of reasons for America's wealth.
It took over from Britain as the center of economic growth. There was immigration, resources, and an open society that celebrated inventors.
The size of the country and population helped with mass production and modern management. The immigrants brought labor and talent. Natural resources gave America an advantage. The open society allowed ideas to move freely.
It was a system of opportunities where people like Hoover and Tesla could be successful. But "system" might be too strong a word, you know? There wasn't some master plan. It was more like a bunch of choices that created more opportunities. The invention of inventing leads to more inventions.
Education and peace also helped, though not for everyone.
Kids went to school, even in rural areas. Education increased.
The US made literacy a priority. And that helped the economy. Other countries did too, but the US still had an edge.
America was exceptional, but only by degrees. But those degrees added up to something significant. It became the technological and industrial leader for much of the 20th century.
People looked to America to see the future. In the past they had looked to Holland, then to Britain. But now, America was the place to watch. It lacked the burden of the past and could look forward boldly.
The period of prosperity lasted longer in the US than in other countries. China collapsed into revolution. Europe went to war. But the US kept growing until the Great Depression.
Another migrant, Leon Trotsky, saw America this way.
His parents migrated to Ukraine. He became a communist. He spent ten weeks in New York City. He didn't *want* to be there, but he made the best of it.
He was amazed by the conveniences: electric lights, gas cooking, bath, telephone. His kids loved it.
They were impressed by the prosperity and technology.
When the Russian Revolution came, Trotsky went back. He became a leader. But he never returned to the United States.
Before he was killed, he wrote about leaving New York. He felt like he was leaving the future behind. "I was leaving for Europe, with the feeling of a man who has had only a peek into the furnace where the future is being forged.”
He thought utopia was being built in the US, not in Russia.
That furnace was fueled by wave after wave of technological change. The industrial research lab and the modern corporation created them. They spread outward from America. This progress created a lot, but it also destroyed a lot. It's a market economy.
Capitalism is never stationary, one economist said. It's driven by new goods, new methods, new markets. It's a process of "creative destruction." Great wealth is created, poverty is imposed, and uncertainty is created by the threat. Someone has to manage this process.
After 2006, economic growth slowed down in the US. Many thought it was temporary, but it lasted for years. It was a shocking falloff. The fires in exceptional America's furnace were cooling.