ABSTRACT
Part of the explanation may lie in the past. Americans have been what one historian called a ‘people of plenty’. The ideals of liberty and equality, he pointed out, instead of clashing with one another, became ‘almost synonymous…meaning “freedom to grasp opportunity”’. To make that possible, it was necessary to remove ‘certain negative impediments to success, and then our positive access to a larger measure of abundance permits fulfilment of the success promise’ (Potter, 1954, pp. 92-3). To have excess land was good, not bad. To restrain a person from adding to the economic capacity of the country was hardly an issue. The ‘excess’ population of Europe became the relatively scarce labour supply of the United States.
