Let me try to clarify just what question it is I am trying to answer. I am not going to discuss the high overall rate of economic growth in the United States after 1800, that is, the rate of increase of per capita income. In fact, the rate of growth was not particularly high by comparison with later experience, although many scholars believe that it accelerated during the 1830s. If we extend our time horizon well back into the colonial period, we find that the rate of growth of per capita income between 1710 and 1840 did not exceed one-half of 1 percent per year. Nor are we considering the overall rate of technological innovativeness which characterized the American economy, although that rate was doubtless very high. In spite of continued obeisance to the idea of Yankee ingenuity, it cannot be overstressed that America in the first half of the nineteenth century was still primarily a borrower of European technology. Although the rate of technical change was indeed high, most of the new technologies were not American inventions. Americans were rapid adopters of foreign technologies when it suited their economic needs, and they were also skillful in modifying someone else's technology to make it more suitable to their needs. They made abundant albeit selective use of European innovations in power generation, transportation, and metallurgy. It is worth noting, moreover, that high rates of technological improvement were not always a part of the American experience. Such improvements seem to have played an insignificant role in the American economy in the eighteenth century.