The real difference between American and British

"For the American system of manufactures was, above all, a totally unsentimental approach to the productive process in industry, one in which purely commercial considerations prevailed. The British long consoled themselves with the belief that standardization and mass-production techniques inevitably resulted in an inferior product. Unhappily, from their point of view, they persisted in this belief long after it ceased to contain even an element of truth."

- Why in America? by Nathan Rosenberg, originally published in Yankee Enterprise, the Rise of the American System of Manufactures in 1981