Every schoolchild learns that the industrial revolution began in England. Forests have been felled to demonstrate why England, and only England, had the culture and institutions to be the birthplace of modern industrial capitalism in the late 1700s. Yet the creation of large-scale factories nearly began not in England, but in Great Britain’s American colonies, 250 years ago. The American version failed miserably, because culture and institutions were not enough to kindle an economic revolution.