This volume recounts the development of capitalism and the age of machines through the voices of business leaders, working people, inventors, and a cast of presidents, generals, and patriots. This edition includes information on Indian-white relations, colonial agriculture, the genesis of slavery, and the role of port towns in the economic and social development of the colonies. Other topics include: the impact of early industrialization on working men and women in the nation's major citites; the factory system and the working women of Lowell; government regulation of the economy; causes of the Great Depression; the number of working women during the Truman-Eisenhower years; and the roots and aims of the powerful conservative movement of the 1980s.