As emphasized in the previous chapter, a nation's economic growth and competitive strength rest on more than natural resources, labor and managerial skills, available capital, or even the size of internal markets. The wealth of nations during the past hundred years has been based more on organization and technology – on how technologies of production have been created or improved. It rested on the ability of industrial enterprises to adopt and to develop these technologies and to devise administrative structures to coordinate the flow of materials from the raw materials through the processes of production and distribution to the final consumer. The United States story is a place to begin a study of the impact of “big business” in the form of the large industrial enterprise on the economic performance and growth of nations. During the century from the 1880s to the 1980s the United States was the world leader in terms of per capita income, output per worker, and, most important of all, technical change. In the United States large industrial firms developed – that is, brought to market – the products and processes of more new technologies in a broader variety of industries than in any other nation. As the world's leader, the history of its large industrial enterprises provides an essential introduction to those of other nations. And according to Angus Maddison, “We can get some idea of the changing pace of technical change only by close inspection of performance in the lead country.” This chapter divides into three historical periods that follow the chronology of economic growth worldwide outlined in Chapter 1.