Apart from the English language, several features of English economic and social life were evident in nineteenth-century USA. The bourgeois mentality of settlers led them to buy and sell everything, including land and water, treating them as commodities. This contrasted with the natives who believed in gifting rather than owning resources.

Industrial development flourished as factories multiplied and industrial towns grew. The USA transformed from an undeveloped economy in 1860 to the leading industrial power by 1890. Large-scale agriculture expanded with profit-oriented crops like rice and cotton being introduced for export to Europe. The emergence of millionaire industrialists like Andrew Carnegie reflected capitalist enterprise, and by the late nineteenth century, the USA had become an imperial power, establishing colonies in Hawaii and the Philippines.