The American Dream, 1931 Edition
Marc Andreessen mentioned in a recent podcast that “The American Dream” was first mentioned in a book from 1931 called Epic of America. I decided to dive into it to see what it had to say.
It’s an interesting book, a sort of history of the world and the US up to that point and it had quite a bit to say about what the American Dream was. I’ve shared some of the parts where it defines the American Dream and also some parts where it talks about how America no longer has a frontier to conquer (in 1931!):
Bolded parts are mine:
But there has been also the American dream that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.
It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it, It is not a dream of motorcars and high wages merely but a dream of social order in which each man and woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are innately capable, regardless of the circumstances of birth or position.
I once had an intelligent young Frenchman as a guest in New York, and after a few days, I asked him what struck him most among his new impressions. Without hesitation, he replied, “The way that everyone of every sort looks you right in the eye, without a thought of inequality.
and
No, the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtless counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. And that dream has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves.
and:
the American dream itself opens all sorts of questions as to values. It is easy to say a better and richer life for all men, but what is better and what is richer? In this respect, as in many others, the great business leaders are likely to lead us astray rather than to guide us. For example, as promulgated by them, there is danger in the present popular theory of the high-wage scale. The danger lies in the fact that the theory is advanced not for the purpose of creating a better type of man by increasing his leisure and the opportunity for making a wise use of it, but for the sole and avowed purpose of increasing his powers as a “consumer.”
The Lost Frontier
The more interesting part to me was the author’s argument that America in 1931 no longer had a “frontier” to conquer and this was leading to all sorts of stagnation:
If the influence of the frontier has been what most historians now consider it to have been, then, from the time of its passing, we can look for a slow but gradual change in American life. When “going West” ceased to be a great adventure shared by thousands all the time, a sort of mass movement led by dreams, and became a mere solitary venturing for a better job or a better piece of land somewhere else, evidently a great incentive would be removed. For a century and more, our successive “Wests” had dominated the thoughts of the poor, the restless, the discontented, the ambitious, as they had those of business expansionists and statesmen
and more
For a century and a half we had been occupied in conquering and exploiting a continent, and by 1890 the task was complete. It had been an adventure of youth. Now it was over. There were plenty of empty spaces left to be filled, chinks in the structure, but the country was ours, peopled, bound together, politically organized from coast to coast. Henceforth the work would be one of consolidation rather than expansion. The problems would be those of ruling a vast population with divergent interests, not of organizing new States; the economic and social problems of the new world era of machinery and the conflicts between capital and labor; the problems of world markets and world contacts; the supreme problem of whether a Jeffersonian democracy could survive in a Hamiltonian economy.
…
Our intensified problems would henceforth permit no escape. America began to near the day when she could no longer be vaguely optimistic and youthfully buoyant. She would have in time to become maturely self-critical and thoughtful
Those might take care of a little surplus population or become playgrounds when we came to enjoy Nature instead of exploiting her. But they were no longer a solution of our problems, no longer dreams to relieve the sick bed of injustice or discontent. The colt had been roped and thrown. Thereafter he would have to get used to the harness of a complex civilization. It would take a long time, but a generation in the lifetime of a nation is short, and the most important change in direction in our history had occurred, almost unnoticed at the moment.
A Lot More Interesting Stuff Than I Expected
From my thread on the book: the American dream was coined in 1931 by James Adams in Epic of America and it’s more thoughtful than our current derivative. A few more passages:
Many of the goods consumed doubtless make man healthier, happier, and better even on the basis of a high scale of human values. But if we think of him as a human being primarily, and incidentally as a consumer, then we have to consider what values are best for him as a human
if the American dream is to be a reality, our communal spiritual and intellectual life must be distinctly higher than elsewhere, where classes and groups have their separate interests, habits, markets, arts, and lives
We cannot become a great democracy by giving ourselves up as individuals to selfishness, physical comfort, and cheap amusements.
The very foundation of the American dream of a better and richer life for all is that all, in varying degrees, shall be capable of wanting to share in it. It can never be wrought into a reality by cheap people or by “keeping up with the Joneses.”
If we are to make the dream come true we must all work together, no longer to build bigger, but to build better. There is a time for quantity and a time for quality…quantity may become a menace and the law of diminishing returns begins to operate but not so with quality
Until countless men and women have decided in their own hearts, through experience and perhaps disillusion, what is a genuinely satisfying life, a “good life” in the old Greek sense, we need look to neither political nor business leaders
Under our political system it is useless, save by the rarest of happy accidents, to expect a politician to rise higher than the source of his power. So long also as we are ourselves content with a mere extension of the material basis of existence, with the multiplying of our material possessions, it is absurd to think that the men who can utilize that public attitude for the gaining of infinite wealth and power for themselves will abandon both to become spiritual leaders of a democracy that despises spiritual things
That dream was not the product of a solitary thinker. It evolved from the hearts and burdened souls of many millions, who have come to us from all nations
The prospect is discouraging to-day, but not hopeless. As we compare America in 1931 with the America of 1912 it seems as though we had slipped a long way backwards. But that period is short, after all, and the whole world has been going through the fires of Hell
They are beginning to realize that, because a man is born with a particular knack for gathering in vast aggregates of money and power for himself, he may not on that account be the wisest leader to follow nor the best fitted to propound a sane philosophy of life We have a long and arduous road to travel if we are to realize our American dream in the life of our nation, but if we fail, there is nothing left but the old eternal round The alternative is the failure of self-government, the failure of the common man to rise to full stature, the failure of all that the American dream has held of hope and promise for mankind.