Answer:
B. Increased focus on workers' rights led to improved working conditions for laborers.
Explanation:
Between the early 1780s, at the end of the War of Independence, and 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, the United States went from being a country with a small population, distributed over a large territory, to be the nation with the world's largest per capita income and the leading industrial country, beating Britain since the late 19th century. Between 1896 and 1900, the United States generated 30% of world industrial production, while in that period Britain accounted for 20%, and Germany, 17%.
The economy and industry grew steadily in the nineteenth century, although more quickly after the end of the civil war (which was fought between 1861 and 1865). The annual average of the product growth rate per capita was 1.3% until the war, and 1.8 at the later stage.
The industrialization process was favored by the availability of natural resources and by the existence of an immense internal market, with an extraordinary increase in population, which went from less than 4,000,000 inhabitants in 1790 to 90,000,000 in 1910, thanks to mass immigration and high vegetative growth rates. Also, these factors were combined with a constant process of technological and <u>organizational innovation</u>, which gave the United States sources advantages over its European competitors.
The period from 1860 to 1914 was the stage of affirmation of the United States as an industrial nation; During this period, the structural transformations that had begun in the previous decades were deepened. The industry increased its participation in the national product, at the expense of agriculture, and the urbanization process accelerated. While between 1860 and 1910 the rural population multiplied by 7.
The domestic market expanded considerably thanks to population growth and became a mass-market as a result of the extension of the railway network and the spread of the use of the telegraph.
At this stage, there were notable changes in the structure of the industry, and the leadership passed from the sectors producing consumer goods to the producers of capital goods. Like Germany, in the last decades of the 19th century, the United States was one of the centers of the second Industrial Revolution.
