History of the United States II / Unit 3 USH2 0307 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Steel's Fifty Years
The idea
In eighteen sixty American mills produced about thirteen thousand tons of steel a year. By eighteen seventy-nine output passed one million tons. By nineteen hundred it reached ten million tons, and by nineteen ten twenty-four million, while the price of steel fell by eighty percent. Four numbers across fifty years record the change, and the two new processes made it possible.
In practice
A line rising from thirteen thousand tons to twenty-four million, and beneath it a price line falling by four-fifths.
Where people slip
Read the two lines together. Output rose nearly two thousand times while the price fell by eighty percent, and cheap steel is what let cities build upward and railroads reach every region. Unit four shows the skyscraper that cheap steel made possible. These are the anchor's national totals, not the output of any one company.
Your place on the trail
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Builds on
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