Americans have the need to expand and set their goals high. Oversea expansion wasn’t a new idea that just popped up, but revived again. There have been many oversea probes and interventions by the 1890s and from that, ideology of expansion was widespread. The Monroe Doctrine even glanced southward into and beyond the Caribbean. Captain A. T. Mahan (well-known propagandist for expansion) was influential to American leaders as well as Theodore Roosevelt. He said …showed first 75 words of 255 total…

…showed last 75 words of 255 total…abroad and amounted to about a billion dollars. Oil was a huge export in the 1880s and the 1890s. Thanks to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, which accounted for 90% of American exports of kerosene, controlled 70% of the world market. This made oil the second leading overseas product nest to cotton. If it weren’t for foreign trade and exports, the United States would have a surplus of goods and that would lead to a depression.