Schumpeter's Children

A decade into the new century, the wheel is still turning, propelled by several underlying forces that shape the potential for entrepreneurship: access to capital through financial innovation, the patent system, intellectual property law, research and development, and antitrust policy. Never in American history have entrepreneurs enjoyed greater prestige than during the period that culminated in the second industrial revolution ofthe late 19th century, when railroads, steel, electricity, chemicals, and other businesses grewinto vast national enterprises, and iconoclastic figures such as Thomas Edison and Henry Ford amassed great fortunes by bringing remarkable new products to the American public.