delanceyplace.com 11/01/05 - economy before WWI

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In today's excerpt -  the unprecedented economic boom culminating on the eve of World War I:

"Fear as well as faith impelled the [pre-World War I] peace movement, fear of the unchained energy of the machine age.  The great surge in mechanical energy, the amazing new techniques and tools and new inventions following one upon another, the fantastic capabilities of electricity created an uneasy sense that man had gathered into his hands more power than he could control; power that could escape, run wild and destroy him, unless put under limits.  In 1820, the world disposed of 778 metric tons of mechanical energy (expressed in the coal equivalents of mineral fuel and water power), compared to 15,000,000 metric tons in 1898. Countries were swelling in size and strength.  The death rate declined markedly owing to developments in sanitation and medicine, with the result that since 1870 the population of Europe had increased by 100,000,000, as much as its whole population in 1650.  In the same period, Great Britain had acquired 4,700,000 square miles of territory, France 3,600,000, Germany 1,000,000 and Belgium 900,000, or seventy-seven times her own size.  In the United States during the same period the population had more than doubled and the per capita output of manufactures multiplied four times."