St. John de Crevecoeur before the Revolution, and is informed by
an intense consciousness of the difference between conditions in the Old
and in the New World. "What, then, is an American, this new man?" asks
the Pennsylvanian farmer. "He is either a European or the descendant of
a European; hence the strange mixture of blood, which you will find in
no other country....

"He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great
_Alma Mater_. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race
of men, whose labors and prosperity will one day cause great changes in
the world. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the
progress of his labor; this labor is founded on the basis of
_self-interest_; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children,
who before in vain demanded a morsel of bread, now fat and frolicsome,
gladly help their father to clear those fields, whence exuberant crops
are to arise to feed them all; without any part being claimed either by
a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord.... The American is a
new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new
ideas and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile
dependence, penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very
different nature rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American."

Although the foregoing is one of the first, it is also one of the most
explicit descriptions of the fundamental American; and it deserves to be
analyzed with some care. According to this French convert the American
is a man, or the descendant of a man, who has emigrated from Europe
chiefly because he expects to be better able in the New World to enjoy
the fruits of his own labor. The conception implies, consequently, an
Old World, in which the ordinary man cannot become independent and
prosperous, and, on the other hand, a New World in which economic
opportunities are much more abundant and accessible. America has been
peopled by Europeans primarily because they expected in that country to
make more money more easily. To the European immigrant--that is, to the
aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of
American life--the Promise of America has consisted largely in the
opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity.
Whatever else the better future, of which Europeans anticipate the
enjoyment in America, may contain, these converts will consi