The West was opened. Another followed, 1893-1897, when the great era of railroad building had come to an end, removing a major spur to business expansion. The economic stability to have been provided by large transportation corporations proved to be a fiction. The price was growing, though. By 1893, large corporations were coming to dominate manufacturing, too.
Optimism is a hardy weed, though.
I. Few people were aware of farm distress, and that demand for houses and consumer goods peaked in 1928. Stock prices doubled in a year. Then the bubble burst. Amid bank runs, business failures and a rise of unemployment to 33 percent while stock prices fell 70 percent, 1919-1933, disillusionment set in. Businessmen, the heroes of the prosperous '20s, were the cultural villains of the depressed '30s.