economic factory is capable of producing. Those who are already rich and
comfortable, and who are keenly alive to the difficulty of distributing
these benefits over a larger social area, may come to tolerate the idea
that poverty and want are an essential part of the social order. But as
yet this traditional European opinion has found few echoes in America,
even among the comfortable and the rich. The general belief still is
that Americans are not destined to renounce, but to enjoy.

Let it be immediately added, however, that this economic independence
and prosperity has always been absolutely associated in the American
mind with free political institutions. The "American Farmer" traced the
good fortune of the European immigrant in America, not merely to the
abundance of economic opportunity, but to the fact that a ruling class
of abbots and lords had no prior claim to a large share of the products
of the soil. He did not attach the name of democracy to the improved
political and social institutions of America, and when the political
differences between Great Britain and her American colonies culminated
in the Revolutionary War, the converted "American Farmer" was filled
with anguish at this violent assertion of the "New Americanism."
Nevertheless he was fully alive to the benefits which the immigrant
enjoyed from a larger dose of political and social freedom; and so, of
course, have been all the more intelligent of the European converts to
Americanism. A certain number of them, particularly during the early
years, came over less for the purpose of making money than for that of
escaping from European political and religious persecution. America has
always been conventionally conceived, not merely as a land of abundant
and accessible economic opportunities, but also as a refuge for the
oppressed; and the immigrant ships are crowded both during times of
European famine and during times of political revolution and
persecution.