Myths...

A book review of Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, by Morris Dickstein briefly touches upon a myth surrounding modern capitalism and the belief that everyman can make it to be a millionaire...

Since the nation’s founding, people believed or pretended to believe that America was fundamentally a classless society, or one in which class borders were porous enough to accommodate the Horatio Alger myth of the poor boy who makes good. “There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us,” Abraham Lincoln noted a year before he was elected president. “Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday labors on his own account today, and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow.” It didn’t matter that only a precious few ever rose above their circumstances; social mobility was the bedrock of the American dream. As long as there was one Abraham Lincoln, one Andrew Carnegie, one Jack Dempsey, one poor boy who lifted himself up by his bootstraps, then every white male, at any rate, could make it.