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Uncle Sam: How He Grew

In his first address to Congress in 1790, President George Washington urged legislators to encourage domestic manufacturing for the sake of industrial independence. Over the next 50 years, manufacturing moved steadily from the home and local craft shops to commercial plants and continued growing as the Industrial Revolution boomed. As demonstrated by a table in this 1943 pamphlet, by 1939 the number of Americans employed in manufacturing grew exponentially. This number would increase even more over the next few years after the United States entered World War II.

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Cover of the 1943 pamphlet, Uncle Sam: How He Grew.

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A table containing manufacturing data in the 1943 pamphlet, Uncle Sam: How He Grew.

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