was based
on the abundance of unoccupied land, even in the first debates on the
public domain.

This early recognition of the influence of abundance of land in shaping
the economic conditions of American democracy is peculiarly significant
to-day in view of the practical exhaustion of the supply of cheap arable
public lands open to the poor man, and the coincident development of
labor unions to keep up wages.

Certain it is that the strength of democratic movements has chiefly lain
in the regions of the pioneer. "Our governments tend too much to
democracy," wrote Izard, of South Carolina, to Jefferson, in 1785. "A
handicraftsman thinks an apprenticeship necessary to make him acquainted
with his business. But our backcountrymen are of the opinion that a
politician may be born just as well as a poet."

The Revolutionary ideas, of course, gave a great impetus to democracy,
and in substantially every colony there was a double revolution, one for
independence and the other for the overthrow of aristocratic control.
But in the long run the effective force behind American democracy was
the presence of the practically free land into which men might escape
from oppression or inequalities which burdened them in the older
settlements. This possibility compelled the coastwise States to
liberalize the franchise; and it prevented the formation of a dominant
class, whether based on property or on custom. Among the pioneers one
man was as good as his neighbor. He had the same chance; conditions were
simple and free. Economic equality fostered political equality. An
optimistic and buoyant belief in the worth of the plain people, a
devout faith in man prevailed in the West. Democracy became almost the
religion of the pioneer. He held with passionate devotion the idea that
he was building under freedom a new society, based on self government,
and for the welfare of the average man.

And yet even as he proclaimed the gospel of democracy the pioneer showed
a vague apprehension lest the time be short--lest equality should not
endure--lest he might fall behind in the ascending movement of Western
society. This led him on in feverish haste to acquire advantages as
though he only half believed his dream. "Before him lies a boundless
continent," wrote De Tocqueville, in the days when pioneer democracy was
triumphant under Jackson, "and he urges forward as if time pressed and
he was afraid of finding no room for his exertions."

Even while