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… is from the final sentence of Stanford University economist Gavin Wright [2]‘s September 1990 American Economic Review article “The Origins of American Industrial Success, 1879-1940” (reprinted as Chapter 13 in Robert Whaples and Dianne C. Betts, eds., Historical Perspectives on the American Economy: Selected Readings [3] [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], pp. 455-479; the following quotation is on page 476 of the Whaples-Betts reader):
[H]istorical resource abundance was itself largely an outgrowth of American industrial success.
Note carefully the direction of causality. Julian Simon, I fancy, nods approvingly.