America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to “the common good,”
but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal
interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the
people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better
jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented,
with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole
country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.