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.