The American Dream is the idea (often associated with the Protestant work ethic) held by many in the United States of America that through hard work, courage and determination one can achieve prosperity. These were values held by many early European settlers, and have been passed on to subsequent generations. What the American Dream has become is a question under constant discussion, and some believe that it has led to an overemphasis on comparative material wealth as the only measure of success and happiness.
The origin of the American Dream stems from the departure in government and
economics from the models of the Old World. This allowed unprecedented freedom,
especially the possibility of dramatic upward social mobility. Additionally,
from the American Revolutionary War well into the later half of the nineteenth
century, many of America's physical resources were unclaimed and held out the
promise of land ownership and lucky investment in land or industry. The
development of the Industrial Revolution combined with the great natural
resources of the enormous and as yet unsettled continent created the possibility
of achieving wealth.
Many early American prospectors headed west of the Rocky Mountains to buy acres
of cheap land in hopes of finding deposits of gold. The American Dream was a
driving factor not only in the gold rushes of the mid to late 1800s, but also in
the waves of immigration throughout that century and the following. Impoverished
western Europeans escaping the Irish potato famines in Ireland, the Highland
clearances in Scotland and the aftermath of Napoleon in the rest of Europe came
to America to escape a poor quality of life at home. They wanted to embrace the
promise of financial security and constitutional freedom they had heard existed
so widely in the United States. A sizable number of Chinese and Japanese
immigrants also arrived in the U.S. in the mid 19th century seeking the American
Dream. Many of them instead worked as laborers on the First Transcontinental
Railroad.
During the mid-to-late ninteenth century prolific dime novel writer Horatio
Alger, Jr. became famous for his novels that idealized the American Dream. His
novels about down-and-out bootblacks who were able to achieve wealth and success
helped entrench the dream within popular culture. Nearing the twentieth century,
major industrialist personalities became the new model of the American Dream,
many beginning life in the humblest of conditions but later controlling enormous
corporations and fortunes. Perhaps most notable here were the great American
capitalists Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. This acquisition of great
wealth demonstrated to many that if you had talent, intelligence, and a
willingness to work extremely hard, you were likely to be a success in life as a
result.
Throughout the 19th century, immigrants fled the monarchies of Western Europe
and their post-feudal economies, which actively oppressed the peasant class.
These economic systems required high levels of taxation, which stymied
development. The American economy, however, was built up by people who were
consciously free of these constraints.