private enterprisen.

1789 J. Morse Amer. Geogr. 181 It exhibits the greatest effect of private enterprize within the United States.

1793 W. Bingham Descr. Land Maine & Mass. 5 It was..determined to alienate them by sales to individuals, from a conviction that the energy of private enterprize would soon lead to a rapid settlement and population.

1796 Jrnl. Senate Pennsylvania 11 The application that has been made of public money, and the encouragement that has been given to private enterprize, for improving the navigation of rivers, and the communication of roads.

1808 Communications to Board of Agric. VI. i. 12 Notwithstanding this lucrative spur to private enterprize, the country will not speedily be brought to that perfection of cultivation.

1818 Times 12 Jan. 3/5 To give to private enterprise and capital that stimulus and direction which may in a few years supersede the necessity of continuing to trade in a corporate capacity.

1848 H. H. Wilson Hist. Brit. India 1805–35 III. vi. 310 That portion of the trade..which the Company relinquished to private enterprise.

1859 J. S. Mill On Liberty v. 191 When private enterprise, in a shape fitted for undertaking great works of industry, does not exist in the country.

1888 E. Bellamy Looking Backward xxii. 331 Credit..was the only means you had for concentrating and directing it [sc. capital] upon industrial enterprises. It was in this way a most potent means for exaggerating the chief peril of the private enterprise system of industry by enabling particular industries to absorb disproportionate amounts of..disposable capital.

1905 H. G. Wells Kipps i. ii. 32 The same national bias towards private enterprise and leaving bad alone..now indentured him firmly into the hands of Mr. Shalford of the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar.

1930 Economist 5 July 14/2 53,983 houses were built by private enterprise.

1958 New Statesman 1 Nov. 577/2 The man who at last can get a mortgage may not care if public money is being doled out to him through private-enterprise building societies.

1975 N.Y. Times 17 Oct. 4/2 Despite three decades of Communist rule, pockets of private enterprise in Poland have not only survived but are also showing signs of a modest renaissance.

2003 Times Lit. Suppl. 7 Nov. 25/3 Where publicly funded science would take decades to map the human genome, private enterprise could do it in a few years.