In 1760 most Americans were farmers. But important towns had grown up whose people earned their living by trade and manufacturing. Philadelphia, with its 28,000 inhabitants, was the largest. An English visitor marveled at the speed with which it had grown. “It is not an hundred years since the first tree was cut where the […]

The growth of the U. S.A. (1853). In і 800 the western boundary of the United States was the Mississippi River. Beyond its wide and muddy waters there were great areas of land through which few white people had traveled. The land stretched west for more than 600 miles to the foothills of the Rocky […]

For hundreds of years land, water, trees and wild animals were so plentiful in America that people thought they would never run out. It became a habit with Americans to use natural resources carelessly and wastcfully. As settlers spread across America, all of them – farmers, miners, ranchers, lumberjacks-robbed the land and destroyed its resources. […]

In economic and business affairs the United States has long been strongly internationalist. American foreign policy has often tried to provide business­men with fresh opportunities. In the early years of the twentieth century, for example, the in­dustrial nations of Europe were dividing the trade of China between them. To ensure that Americans also profited from […]

The late 1940s and the 1950s were anxious years for Americans. Despite their prosperity, they were worried by fears of war. Tiie nation they feared was the Soviet Union. Both President Truman and President Eisenhower believed that the Soviet Union’s communist way of running a country was cruel and wrong. They made up their minds […]