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Index Entry
Industrialization: Successive Halving Time of National Industrialization:
“Three centuries ago industrialization gradually came to Europe, a continent that thought of itself as having a farming economy. It began with windmills and waterwheels, coupled with trains of gears. The inadvertent ‘swords into plowshares’ industrial trending increased enormously man’s ability to control his local environment and to increase the human life-span. Europe took 200 years to industrialize. The United States, greatly aided by the knowledge already acquired in Europe, industrialized in only 100 years. Russia, after its great revolution of 1917, undertook industrialization with its series of five-year plans. When the great depression occurred in America and Europe, the Russians were able to contract with the great corporations in America to come to Russia and provide the know-how with which to build prototype factories. So Russia started industrialization at the highest level of American development, just as America had started at Europe’s highest level. Russia industrialized in 50 years. Hence we have Europe, 200; the United States, 100; and Russia, 50. This successive halving of time to institute national industrialization made it possible for me to say in 1947 that China would indus-”
