Introduction: The American Dream
and the Middle Class
The American dream. It has the “feel” of an idea that can be traced back to the very
beginnings of the nation, like “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” “We,
the people, in order to form a more perfect union . . . ,” and “Give me liberty or
give me death.” And the “feel” of the idea actually can be traced back to then and
earlier (Samuel 2012, 3). But the actual first expression of the idea, the use of the
term “American dream,” is less than a century old (Novak 2015). In his The Epic of
America published in 1932 (the initial publication date was 1931, but the quota-
tion that follows was from the 1932 edition in my University library), James Trus-
low Adams, a popular historian of the time probably quite similar to David
McCullough in our own time, contrived the phrase “the American dream.”
The context in which Adams used it, and it was used in a similar manner in sev-
eral places in the book, was to describe the animating force that led people to cross
the ocean and settle in a rugged land and later push out from the boundaries to
explore and settle the West. As Adams wrote in his chapter on colonization:
The American dream was beginning to take form in the hearts of men. The
economic motive was unquestionably powerful, often dominant, in the minds
of those who took part in the great migration, but mixed with this was also
frequently present the hope for a better and a freer life, a life in which a man
might think as he would and develop as he willed. The migration was not
like so many earlier ones in history, led by warrior lords with followers depen-
dent on them, but was one in which the common man as well as the leader
was hoping for greater freedom and happiness for himself and his children.
(Adams 1932, 31)
Over the ensuing decades the meaning of the American dream has morphed into
a number of different things. Inevitably to some it has come to mean “hitting the
jackpot” or winning the lottery, and thereby becoming filthy rich. Think of it as
achieving the wealth necessary to enter the 1 percent. But the truest meaning of
the term and the one most consistent with Adams’s original vision remains that of
by dint of hard work and self-discipline becoming a member-in-standing of the great
American middle class. And Americans of all classes consider themselves to be
middle class. There are Americans who by any objective standard should be con-
sidered poor who would insist they are middle class. Similarly there are Americans
who by any objective standard should be considered wealthy who would also insist
they are middle class. What binds them together is the force of being able to think