It consists rather in the expectation that the familiar benefits will continue to accumulate automatically.

In his mind the ideal Promise is identified with the processes and conditions which hitherto have very much simplified its fulfillment, and he fails sufficiently to realize that the conditions and processes are one thing and the ideal Promise quite another.

Moreover, these underlying social and economic conditions are themselves changing, in such wise that hereafter the ideal Promise, instead of being automatically fulfilled, may well be automatically stifled.

For two generations and more the American people were, from the economic point of view, most happily situated.

They were able, in a sense, to slide down hill into the valley of fulfillment.