by James Truslow Adams
Writing in the midst of the Depression, historian
James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "the American Dream" and suggested
that it is America's unique contribution to the world.
If, as I have said, the things already listed were
all we had had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique
gift to mankind. 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 motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order
in which each man and each 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, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
I once had an intelligent young Frenchman as 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." Some time ago a foreigner who
used to do some work for me, and who had picked up a very fair education,
used occasionally to sit and chat with me in my study after had finished his
work. One day he said that such a relationship was the great difference between
America and his homeland. There, he said, "I would do my work and might get
a pleasant word, but I could never sit and talk like this. There is a difference
there between social grades which cannot be got over. I would not talk to
you there as man to man, but as my employer."
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...
The point is that if we are to have a rich and full
life in which all are to share and play their parts, 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. If the dream is not to prove
possible of fulfillment, we might as well become stark realists, become once
more class‑conscious, and struggle as individuals or classes against one
another. If it is to come true, those on top, financially, intellectually,
or otherwise have got to devote themselves to the "Great Society," and those
who are below in the scale have got to strive to rise, not merely economically,
but culturally. 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." There is nothing whatever in a fortune merely in itself
or in a man merely in himself. It all depends on what is made of each. Lincoln
was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he got out
of it ‑ that is, because he rose above the poverty, ignorance, lack of ambition,
shiftlessness of character, contentment with mean things and low aims which
kept so many thousands in the huts where they were born.
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. There is a time when quantity may become
a menace and the law of diminishing returns begins to operate, but not so
with quality. By working together I do not mean another organization, of
which the land is as full as was Kansas of grasshoppers. I mean a genuine
individual search and striving for the abiding values of life. In a country
as big as America it is as impossible to prophesy as it is to generalize,
without being tripped up, but it seems to me that there is room for hope
as well as mistrust. The epic loses all its glory without the dream. The
statistics of size, population, and wealth would mean nothing to me unless
I could still believe in the dream...
The prospect is discouraging to‑day, but not hopeless.
As we compare America to‑day 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. There are not a
few signs of promise now in the sky, signs that the peoples themselves are
beginning once again to crave something more than is vouchsafed to them in
the toils and toys of the mass‑ production age. 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.
From: James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (New York: Blue Ribbon Books,
1931), pp. 404‑405, 411‑412, 416.