Our democratic institutions became in a sense the guarantee that prosperity would continue to be abundant and accessible.

In case the majority of good Americans were not prosperous, there would be grave reasons for suspecting that our institutions were not doing their duty.
The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free institutions.

The amelioration promised to aliens and to future Americans was to possess its moral and social aspects.

The implication was, and still is, that by virtue of the more comfortable and less trammeled lives which Americans were enabled to lead, they would constitute a better society and would become in general a worthier set of men.

The confidence which American institutions placed in the American citizen was considered equivalent to a greater faith in the excellence of human nature.