in communication also changed the nation, bringing people around the country in closer contact with one another. Links to the rest of the world also increased when a permanent transatlantic telegraph cable was completed in 1866. The United States was becoming the world’s greatest industrial power. The mills and factories that came with industrialization, however, required greater capital, or money for investment, than one person or few partners could raise. To raise capital for expansion, many businesses became corporations, in which many investors owned shares. In exchange for their investment, each stockholder received a dividend, a part of the corporation’s profits. Also, companies could combine in various ways, through holding companies, mergers, and interlocking directorates. The new forms of business speeded the growth of American industry. Among the fastest growing industries were transportation (railroads, urban transportation, and, later, automobiles), building materials (steel), energy (coal, oil, electricity), and communications (telegraph and telephone).The federal government generally held a laissez-faire attitude toward business for much of this period. Expanding industries and growing foreign trade seemed to justify such an attitude. A number of government policies were designed to aid the growth of business. These included loans and land grants to large railroad companies, high tariffs that discouraged competition from foreign manufacturers, tight limits on the amount of money in circulation, and few limits on immigration.The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, but after the Civil War industrialization drew an even greater flood of immigrants. From 1865 to 1900, some 13.5 million people arrived from abroad. Economic grow attracted new waves of immigrants to the United States. Some sought farms in the West, but most of them found employment in the blooming urban industries of the...
