The thousands of new factories have been largely responsible for making us the wealthiest nation that the world has ever seen. All sections of our population have benefited. By 1860 the per capita income of the average American had risen to $ 500; by 1930 it was more than six times as much. The people who owned these factories sometimes made great profits and became very wealthy. During the latter part of the nineteenth century some Americans became millionaires; soon they became common in our larger cities. The workers in the factories also benefited in time. In the early factories it was not unusual for a worker to receive only two dollars per week, consisting of six days of employment from dawn to dark. John D.- Rockefeller, who became one of the wealthiest of Americans, once worked as a bookkeeper at $ 12. 50 per month. Today the income of American laborers for much shorter hours is by far the greatest in the entire world. It is not always easy to compare incomes received in one period of our history with incomes received by some other generation because the value of the dollar varies. Today a dollar will not buy nearly as much as at other times in the past. But, despite these variations, the American worker has much more wealth than he possessed before the rise of industry.
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