Chapter 2: The Land of Opportunity


Overview

This was the land of promise, they said. There was no such thing as the Impossible anymore.
” O.E.Rolvaag, Giants in the Earth

Unlimited space [is] not just an attribute of the American continent , it is a key to the American psyche.
” Richard Pells, Not Like Us

If countries , like books, could have subtitles , then the subtitle of the United States was written long ago: The Land of Opportunity. So it was known in the beginning and so it is still known today. And whether or not the characterization is accurate, whether it is more myth than reality, it is a sentiment so deeply buried in the American psyche, and in the psyche of people from all around the world, it has long since ceased to matter whether or not it is actually true. The faithful believe ” and when has truth ever bested belief in a fair fight?

Land without Limits

But how did this happen? How did opportunity and possibility become synonymous with America? Imagine for a moment an early European settler climbing up to a spot of high ground a mile or so inland from the Atlantic coast , on the eastern shore of Maryland, let s say around 1650, and gazing out to the far horizon. In every direction, he sees nothing but forests, an ocean of green stretching to the far horizon, with perhaps a stream off to the north and maybe a lake to the southwest.

What he sees, in a word, and what all those who came after him were to see for the next two centuries is abundance . As their terminology suggests ” the New World, the second Eden, the land of milk and honey ” all the early observers of America were transfixed by the plenty that surrounded them. Further down it was delightfully pleasant, a typical early traveler on the Mississippi writes ,

Here,magnificently grand eternal forests in appearance as interminable as the universe . . . constitute the scenery for thousands of miles contiguous to this matchless stream. As to the river itself, I shall not attempt a description of it. What has already been said proves its magnitude to be immensely great; even some of its branches, as the Ohio and the Missouri, are said to be classed among the largest rivers in the world. (Hutner 1999, 44)

And almost as important is what our early settler does not see: people, dwellings, or any other sign of human habitation. Not only is this New World vast and abundant, it is also apparently empty.

For the early European settlers, this was reality turned upside down. Imagine the impact of the great forests of New England or the mid-Atlantic on people whose idea of a forest was a carefully tended copse of shade trees on a barren hillside. Or the impact of seemingly endless land on people whose idea of a landholding was a walled-in hectare handed down and subdivided every generation. For centuries, Carl Degler writes,

the problem in Europe had been that of securing enough land for the people, but in the New World the elements in the equation were reversed . . . . The possibility of exaggeration should not hide the undeniable fact that in early America, and through most of the nineteenth century, too, land was available to an extent that could appear only fabulous to land-starved Europeans. (Storti 2001, 2)

How could such people help but conclude that America was a land without limits?

When this sentiment, immensely powerful and liberating in its own right, then met up with a second, equally powerful truth about life in the New World, the combination resulted in a new way of thinking that is now so commonplace among Americans it s hard to remember it was once a revelation. That second truth, the other great enabler of the American dream, was the fact that the settlers of the New World were suddenly free from the shackles of the class system then prevalent in much of Europe, a system that fixed a person s place in the social, economic, and political order ” and thereby determined his or her destiny ” more or less from birth.

The Elizabethan English called it the Great Chain of Being, an immutable ladder of rank and station that began with God himself, followed by the king, and then extended on down through numerous rungs to the lowest peasant farmer and scullery maid. Everyone knew his or her place in the great chain, and the world worked because all citizens accepted their station and behaved accordingly . God hath so disposed of mankinde, an early Puritan preacher told his flock , as in all times some must be rich some poore, some highe and eminent in power and dignitie, some meane and in subjeccion (Countryman 1996, 14). People could no more change their station than they could suddenly sprout a third eye, and one s duty in life was to keep the chain strong by fulfilling the responsibilities that came with his or her position. It was a world in which people did not shape their destiny but were shaped by it.

But in the New World, all bets were suddenly off. There was no king, for one thing, nor were there many representatives of the other higher ranks (the well-off, by and large, did not emigrate), and as the social order began unraveling at the top, it likewise came apart down through the ranks. Indeed, many of those who first settled the New World came expressly to escape the Great Chain of Being, the limits of the repressive class system, and start over. And there, in the great abundance of the New World, were the means to do so.

Having at one and the same time the freedom to create their own destiny and the material means to do so was a truly exhilarating combination to the early immigrants who came to the New World ” this is what they meant when they called America the Land of Opportunity ” and this deep and abiding belief in possibility became imprinted in the national DNA. This was the land of promise, observes a character in O. E. Rolvaag s immigrant saga Giants in the Earth:

the unknown, the untried, the unheard of, was in the air; people caught it, were intoxicated by it, threw themselves away, and laughed at the cost. Of course it was possible ” everything was possible out here. There was no such thing as the Impossible any more. (McElroy 1999, 77)

In their book The Seven Cultures of Capitalism, Charles Hampden-Turner and Alfons Trompenaars report on a survey wherein respondents were asked whether they agreed with statement A or B in the following pairs:

  1. It is not always wise to plan too far ahead because many things turn out to be a matter of good or bad fortune .

  2. When I make plans, I am almost certain I can make them work.

 
 
  1. Many times I feel that I have little influence over the things that happen to me.

  2. It is impossible for me to believe that chance or luck plays an important role in my life.

 
 
  1. Most people don t realize the extent to which their lives are controlled by accidental happenings.

  2. There really is no such thing as luck.

Out of the twelve countries surveyed, [*] more Americans (68 percent) agreed with statement B than any other nationality (1993, 65).

[*] Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States.




Americans at Work. A Guide to the Can-Do People
Americans at Work: A Cultural Guide to the Can-Do People
ISBN: 1931930058
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 51
Authors: Craig Storti

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