Part 1 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 chances of success. It implies that the working class is just ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... vote and participate in government. 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 t ....