Beyond a doubt this feeling is spreading. Beyond a doubt it will lead to some peaceful effort to regulate and control the great corporations in their methods. And if that fails, what then? Probably an effort to make the concentration of large wealth in a few hands more difficult if not impossible. And if that fails, what then? Who knows? But I think it is not likely to be anything of the nature of communism. The ruling passion of America is not equality, but personal freedom for every man to exercise his will-power under a system of self-reliance and fair play. V COMMON ORDER AND SOCIAL COÖPERATION V COMMON ORDER AND SOCIAL COÖPERATION It is a little strange, and yet it seems to be true, that for a long time America was better understood by the French than by the English. This may be partly due to the fact that the French are more idealistic and more excitable than the English; in both of which qualities the Americans resemble them. It may also be due in part to the fact that the American Revolution was in a certain sense a family quarrel. A prolonged conflict of wills between the older and the younger members of the same household develops prejudices which do not easily subside. The very closeness of the family relation intensifies the misunderstanding. The seniors find it extremely difficult to comprehend the motives of the juniors, or to believe that they are really grown up. They seem like naughty and self-confident children. A person outside of the family is much more likely to see matters in their true light. At all events, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Dr. Samuel Johnson was calling the Americans "a race of convicts, who ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging," and declaring that he was willing to love all mankind _except the Americans_, whom he described as "Rascals--Robbers--Pirates," a Frenchman, named Crèvecoeur, who had lived some twenty years in New York, gave a different portrait of the same subject. "What then is the American," he asks, "this new man? He is either a European or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a Frenchwoman, and whose present four sons have now wives of four different nations.... Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the East. They will finish the great circle."