Rediscovering Government

1800s 1900s Early American government owned most of the land in the country and established regulations to sell it cheaply. Nineteenth-century government spending ushered in an era of commercial trade that enabled the nation to flourish. Beginning in the 1820s, Jefferson’s party financed and built canals through state governments in New York, Massachusetts, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and elsewhere, After the Civil War, government subsidies accounting for 50% of costs spurred rapid railroad development. In the 1830s, local governments began developing free mandatory primary schools. By 1850, the nation sent as many children to school as did the former leader in education, Prussia. Government supplied guaranteed military contracts to support the inchoate firearms industry, where the American system of mass production through the creation of interchangeable parts was created. This system laid the building blocks for Henry Ford’s mass production of automobiles half a century later. The courts created laws that enabled American businesses to compete more effectively and protected them from creditors if they went bankrupt. American corporations were quickly more competitive than British corporations. The federal government subsidized new technical and agricultural colleges - which later became universities like MIT and UC Berkeley - by giving them land they could sell to finance themselves. Towards the beginning of the 20th century, local governments began building sanitary water systems for their cities. Such systems enabled cities to grow and house an industrial revolution, without decimating the population through disease. Some called it the Age of Sanitation. Throughout the 1800s and 1900s, federal and state governments managed and implemented vaccination policies for Americans, starting most notably with smallpox in the mid-1800s. State and local governments built high schools, and high school graduation rates soared. This fed the need for better educated workers in retailing, accounting, and even manufacturing. Government-funded infrastructure was critical to American economic growth in the 20th century. During the 1920s and 1930s, government at all levels built a road and bridge network. The construction of major dams, like the Hoover Dam, during the Great Depression supplied needed water across the southwest, a system without which economic development would have been slow. After World War II, government supported what we considered today to be a critical piece of American infrastructure: the national highway system. Many opposed the idea; so to get conservative support, the government claimed it was necessary for national security. After World War II, the federal government supplied subsidies for American GIs to go to college and buy homes. The Cold War, and especially the launch of Sputnik, further prompted the government to subsidize college for many American students. American government has always played an integral role in national and international innovation. The Internet originated as Pentagon defense technology during the Cold War; and major medical breakthroughs have come as a result of the work of the National Institutes of Health. Guaranteeing human rights also promotes growth. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the federal government protected child and female labor. In the 1930s, a minimum wage was created. In the 1950s, the Supreme Court required equal public education for all, regardless of color. In the 1960s, a century after the Civil War, equal protection under the law was extended to African Americans. The result was a major increase in the human capital and economic contribution of this minority group. Not long thereafter, feminism fostered awareness of bias against women workers; and changes in the laws enabled more women to work and take family leaves. This led to major economic contribution.