Beginning of Essay
"Work hard, save your money, and you can become wealthy - or, at least, "independent!" This is the motto of old-fashioned, "free enterprise." It expresses the idea that everybody in a capitalist society can participate and compete on the same terms with similar ch ....

Middle of Essay
.... The "Free Labor" thinking of the Republican Party before the Civil War was basically a form of the capitalist work ethic. It meant that if 1) you were free yourself; 2) your country was "free"; and, 3) there was no slave labor to take your livelihood, you could "make something of yourself," and become a capitalist or, at least, an independent producer, professional or artist. Americans in the North at that time were influenced by this capitalist "work-ethic" to under-estimate the energy of the South. They thought (as the capitalist "work-ethic" would lead them to believe) that the poverty and economic decline of the South were probably due to lazine ....