The moving into a new country was bound to have important consequences. Even the moving of a family into a new house usually marks a change. The mere move itself is apt to bring about a feeling of excitement and exhilaration if the move is for the better, or depression and sorrow if it is for the worse. For a while after the move, also, there is much to be done of a purely physical sort. One has to rearrange one’s furniture, get “shaken down,” as we say; perhaps do all sorts of things to house and garden; get used to a new neighborhood; find new shops; learn new ways of doing old things; in a word, the whole routine of daily life is altered for the time being, and our habits and the enjoyment of our tastes are apt to be broken in upon until we get over the pressing work of settling into the new place. In moving into America there was much more involved, mentally and physically, than in such a move as we have just described. Not only was the break with the old home and the old associations more complete, but everything, literally, from the ground up had to be done in the new. The savages had to be fought; the land had to be cleared; the houses had to be constructed; a new life, socially and institutionally, had to be built up. I have pointed out elsewhere the effect of this on the minds of the settlers. It is also, of course, a fact of great significance for American cultural life that, speaking comparatively, almost without exception all the immigrants who have ever come here have been men of the lower middle and laboring classes. There was nothing in America to attract any of the wealthy or professional ones. With the exception of a few religious refugees, virtually all who have come here have been “practical” men, who have come to better their economic positions. They did not include[Pg 250] in their numbers aristocrats, scholars, poets, dramatists, artists, any of the classes who were carrying on and developing the European cultural tradition. But in some respects the arts were more diffused in their practice and enjoyment among the lower classes in the Europe from which our earlier settlers came than they are to-day. Many brought books and many a love and taste for music and the various handicrafts, such as weaving, woodcarving of houses and furniture, and other things, no less truly arts because they were folk-arts.