The country was undeveloped, and its inhabitants were poor.
They were to enrich themselves by the development of the country, and the two different aspects of their task were scarcely distinguished.
They felt themselves authorized by social necessity to pursue their own interests energetically and unscrupulously, and they were not either hampered or helped in so doing by the interference of the local or the national authorities.

While the only people the pioneer was obliged to consult were his neighbors, all his surroundings tended to make his neighbors like himself--to bind them together by common interests, feelings, and ideas.

These surroundings called for practical, able, flexible, alert, energetic, and resolute men, and men of a different type had no opportunity of coming to the surface.

The successful pioneer Democrat was not a pleasant type in many respects, but he was saved from many of the worst aspects of his limited experience and ideas by a certain innocence, generosity, and kindliness of spirit.

With all his willful aggressiveness he was a companionable person who meant much better towards his fellows than he himself knew.
We need to guard scrupulously against the under-valuation of the advance which the pioneers made towards a genuine social democracy.