Anywhere in the world, those words bring to mind just one place the United States of America. Opportunity defines our heritage. Waves of immigrant farmers, shopkeepers, laborers and entrepreneurs came to America for the promise of a better life. Some amassed enormous fortunes the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Du Ponts, the Fords, the Vanderbilts. Many millions more, descendants of those who arrived in the New World with little more than the clothes on their backs, improved their lot in life through talent and hard work.
Opportunity permeates our folklore.
There s no better example than the 120 novels Horatio Alger churned out in the years after the Civil War, all featuring ordinary boys going from rags to riches. His tales of luck and pluck so touched the national psyche that the writer s name became shorthand for achieving success. Even today, opportunity is rarely far from our experience. Most Americans are familiar with the dozens of real-life Horatio Alger stories Sam Walton, Ross Perot, Bill Cosby, Mary Kay Ash, to mention just a few of the famous. They catapulted themselves from the lower or middle ranks to the top .