History of a Free People
Publisher: Prentice Hall College Div
Published: June 1978
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 834
ISBN-13: 9780021153206
Subjects: History
First sentence: PROLOGUE: The American Experiment
What you have inherited from your fathers, earn again for yourselves, or it will not be yours. —JOHANN WOLFGANG von GOETHE
In terms of size and natural resources, the United States is one of the great nations of the world. It covers 3,000,000 squares miles from sea to sea, plus Alaska and Hawaii. Immense productive capacity has given its people a very high standard of living.
But the true greatness of a nation may have relatively little to do with its size or its ability to produce goods. We can talk of the greatness of the city-state of Athens in the fifth century before Christ, even though its area was smaller than Rhode Island and its population one-thirtieth that of modern New York City. The glory of Athens lay in the fact that it produced people whose ideas and actions have affected the world ever since. The lasting greatness of the United States must rest on something more than material things. What ideals has this country preached and tried to practice? What in American life, in addition to mere abundance, has made this country a desirable place to live?
Outstanding characteristics of "Americanism" have varied from period to period and section to section, but the following can be traced from colonial times to the present:
(1)  Economic opportunity. There has generally been a fair chance for individuals to improve themselves by their own efforts. For over two centuries there was abundant cheap land, and even now the United States contains untapped wealth. Americans have prized willingness to work as a primary virtue and have been skilled in turning natural resources into food, clothing, houses, luxuries, and gadgets. Furthermore, they have found means to see that wealth is widely shared without going as far as outright socialism. When Americans have used the power of government to promote prosperity, it has seldom been in the form of sharing wealth through state-owned enterprise. Instead, they have used government to regulate private enterprise, and often to aid it. They have used taxation and social legislation to equalize wealth.
(2)  Wide participation in politics. From colonial times to the present, there has been widening opportunity for Americans to have a share in government. The United States was the first large nation to attempt "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." In the twentieth century, while many countries
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