After the end of the Civil War, the United States faced many challenges. There are a variety of factors that helped the country in the difficult years following the war. The rapid growth of the United States has helped welcome a large influx of immigration and built an extremely powerful industrial infrastructure, as well as tempered the hostility still present throughout the country. Trains, and eventually automobiles, opened the West to the rest of the country. People were now able to escape their lives in the East and eagerly began to populate the far corners of the country. America was on track to have a huge impact on the world's industrial market. Raw materials, new workplace techniques, a massive increase in the workforce, and numerous technological inventions have played a vital role in the economic and industrial boom of the United States. Large quantities of coal, iron ore, silver, and gold were discovered in various regions of the West. Lead, quartz, zinc, copper and other precious metals were also found during the discovery of new areas. Construction site workers and their families gathered around the mines and quarries. These people created cities known as “boomtowns,” which required transportation in the form of trains for their supplies. The same process also occurred with numerous other raw materials found in the country (Brinkley, 449). Agricultural, livestock and sheep markets brought many people large profits and, as with stones and metals, relied on the railway to bring the products. goods to consumers. With the help of the railroads there was an abundance of agricultural products in the United States, “American commercial farmers, constantly opening up new land, produced much more… half as much paper… in the United States” economic growth. America used its huge reserves of raw materials to make inroads into the world industrial market. Railroads brought American settlers and adventurers across the United States to discover more raw materials and to spread the country's population from the crowded East. New technologies and innovations have allowed the manipulation of resources to produce the greatest possible profit. The concentration of power and monopolies required, and received, enormous numbers of cheap labor. It was precisely the wealth created by monopolies that attracted millions of immigrants to this country to find work. A cycle of factors in which each played a role, some more crucial than others, but equally dependent on each other. This cycle fueled the American industrial boom and pushed it into the global industrial market.