The United States is known as a nation of innovators, from the first colonists who endeavored to find religious freedom and economic opportunity in the New World to business tycoons like Andrew Carnegie to the cutting-edge inventors in Silicon Valley today. From its first days as a nation to the Industrial Revolution and beyond, America has focused on creating new businesses, technologies, labor systems, and trade patterns. In turn, this focus has fostered breakthroughs and widespread change in American society. This essential volume places American labor and innovation in context, examining how policy and cultural shifts are influenced by work and exchange.