Carnegies, the Harrimans, the Fricks, and the Henry Fords of
their day.

Before the Civil War had ended, however, the transformation of
the United States from a nation of farmers and small-scale
manufacturers to a highly organized industrial state had begun.
Probably the most important single influence was the War itself.
Those four years of bitter conflict illustrate, perhaps more
graphically than any similar event in history, the power which
military operations may exercise in stimulating all the
productive forces of a people. In thickly settled nations, with
few dormant resources and with practically no areas of unoccupied
land, a long war usually produces industrial disorganization and
financial exhaustion. The Napoleonic wars had this effect in
Europe; in particular they caused a period of social and
industrial distress in England. The few years immediately
following Waterloo marked a period when starving mobs rioted in
the streets of London, setting fire to the houses of the
aristocracy and stoning the Prince Regent whenever he dared to
show his head in public, when cotton spindles ceased to turn,
when collieries closed down, when jails and workhouses were
overflowing with a wretched proletariat, and when gaunt and
homeless women and children crowded the country highways. No such
disorders followed the Civil War in this country, at least in the
North and West. Spiritually the struggle accomplished much in
awakening the nation to a consciousness of its great
opportunities. The fact that we could spend more than a million
dollars a day--expenditures that hardly seem startling in amount
now, but which were almost unprecedented then--and that soon
after hostilities ceased we rapidly paid off our large debt,