The tremendous revolution in human affairs was hidden under social discords and economic pressures. People began to think it was time to slacken the flow of immigrants until we had absorbed what we had. Good land was scarce; foreigners in factions began to join unions; second-generation children grew up to be great tennis players and took scholarships; the pure costless joy of having immigrants do the dirty work was gone. The practical people believed something had to be done. But the practical people forgot the great practical side--which is also the mystical side--of our immigration. For the first time since the bright days of primitive Christianity, a great thing was made possible to all men: they could become what they wished to become. As Peter said to the Romans, and Paul to the Athenians, that through faith and desire and grace they could become Christians, equal, in the eyes of God, to all other Christians, so the apostles of Freedom spoke to the second son of an English Lord, to the ten sons of a Russian serf, to old and young, ignorant and wise, befriended or alone, and said that their will, their ambition, their work, and their faith could make of them true Americans. The instant practical consequences of this new element in human history are incalculable. They are like the practical consequences of early Christianity, which can be measured in terms of Empires and explorations and Crusades. The transformation of millions of Europeans into Americans was like the conversion of millions of pagans to Christianity; it was accompanied by an outburst of confidence and energy. The same phenomena occurred in the Renaissance and Reformation, a period of conversion accompanied by a great surge of trade, invention, exploration, wealth, and vast human satisfaction. This idea of becoming American, as personal as religion, as mystical as conversion, as practical as a contract, was in fact a foundation stone of the growth and prosperity of the United States. It was a practical result of the exact kind of equality which the Declaration invoked; it allowed men to regain their birthright of equality, snatched from them by tyrants. It persuaded them that they could enjoy life--and allowed them to produce and to consume. In that way it was as favorable to prosperity as our land and our climate. And it had other consequences. For, as it stemmed from equality, it went deep under the roots of the European system--and loosened them so that a tremor could shake the system entirely. _Change and Status_