wilderness ever opened a gate of escape to the poor, the
discontented, and the oppressed. If social conditions tended to
crystallize in the east, beyond the Alleghenies there was freedom.
Grappling with new problems, under these conditions, the society
that spread into this region developed inventiveness and
resourcefulness; the restraints of custom were broken, and new
activities, new lines of growth, new institutions were produced. Mr.
Bryce has well declared that "the West is the most American part of
America.... What Europe is to Asia, what England is to the rest of
Europe, what America is to England, that the Western States and
Territories are to the Atlantic States." [Footnote: Bryce, American
Commonwealth (ed. of 1895), II., 830.] The American spirit--the
traits that have come to be recognized as the most characteristic--
was developed in the new commonwealths that sprang into life beyond
the seaboard. In these new western lands Americans achieved a
boldness of conception of the country's destiny and democracy. The
ideal of the west was its emphasis upon the worth and possibilities
of the common man, its belief in the right of every man to rise to
the full measure of his own nature, under conditions of social
mobility. Western democracy was no theorist's dream. It came, stark
and strong and full of life, from the American forest. [Footnote: P.
J. Turner, "Contributions of the West to American Democracy," in
Atlantic Monthly, XCL, 83, and "The Middle West," in International
Monthly, IV., 794.]

The time had now come when this section was to make itself felt as a
dominant force in American life. Already it had shown its influence
upon the older sections. By its competition, by its attractions for
settlers, it reacted on the east and gave added impulse to the
democratic movement in New England and New York. The struggle of