Why America Still Leads In So Many Economic and Technological Areas "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" This is the most quotes excerpt from the Statue of Liberty and it explains why this country should and always will be a leader in nearly every business related facet and why our people will continue to be as driven as we are now.
The movement from Europe to Ellis Island was the largest human migration in history.
Between the years 1892 and 1924, 12 million Europeans would arrive at the port with the hopes of becoming an American and living the dream in which they were told about.
The reason why the Statue of Liberty says this is because that is exactly who came here - the poor, the tired and, obviously, by the numbers they were huddled masses.
In a sense, we all come from nomads.
The people who came here left everything they had for a shot at a dream and for a shot at making their children's life better.
The ride to America was no pleasure as the trip would take from 3 weeks to a little over a month.
Some did not speak English, but they learned.
Others only had a meager skill to offer, but they made it work.
Some thought that in America you make money by simply making money.
The reason this was a common misconception was that it was the middle of the Industrial Revolution.
As an economy, we were rapidly moving away from an economy based on agriculture to an industrial related economy.
Once the immigrants found out that this was not true, they still went to work - and work they did.
Most immigrants would settle in the major U.
S.
cities and began working in factories.
Compared to some of the work they did while in Europe, this proved to be high-paying and high-paced.
More importantly than where the immigrants worked or how they contributed to the industrialization of this country, they would instill this work ethic in their children and this would go on for centuries to come and is still prevalent today.
Even though there were boats from Italy, England and other European countries with distinct cultures, they all shared one common trait - a refusal to be ordinary and an ability to look adversity in the eyes and not cower.
How does this relate to business? Well, it does in many ways.
Even though it's been generations, Americans still have that "can do" attitude.
This is the attitude that invented the train, the car, the airplane, computers and the internet.
I currently cannot name another country who has accomplished inventions of the sort which made mankind's world easier and more pleasurable.
In a sense, these inventions can all be traced back to the entrepreneurial spirit of the immigrants who crossed Ellis Island.