In subsequent years, new inventions like the combustion engine and developments like the large-scale application of steel heralded the arrival of a second Industrial Revolution, and prosperity in North America became unstoppable. The United States’ share of worldwide industrial output grew to 30 percent, almost as much as that of its former motherland, England, which had considered itself the undisputed leader of the world’s economy up to that point. The Americans, who had been dependent on Europe for many of their resources before the Civil War, now began to export products back to the Old
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