ABSTRACT
It would be precarious to wish to show in detail the effect that a standard of living as different as that of the American worker has upon social perception. This much is certain: the American worker lives in comfortable circumstances. On the whole, he is not familiar with oppressively impoverished housing conditions. He is not forced out of his home into the tavern, because his home is not like the 'room' of the worker in the large cities of continental Europe. The 'economic prosperity' in the United States was not in spite of capitalism but because of it. A glance at the summary figures in the statistics is sufficient to dispel any doubt about the reality of this prosperity; indeed, the sparrows and every business advisor sing it from the rooftops. An input of patriotism established the cast of his business-oriented mentality and made him into the sober, calculating businessman without ideals whom we know today.
