On ‘U.S.A.’ by John Dos Passos

Many left their home in the quest to find the American Dream. Everything was possible in the new free country. Once in the USA, some were buying the dream for ‘5 bucks a day’ working as a machine with fifteen minutes lunch break and three minutes toilet brake. Some, as Henry Ford, were selling the dream ‘sucking every ounce of worker’s life off into production’ for ‘5 bucks a day’. Some, as Frank Lloyd Wright, were materialising the dream of those who achieved it. Some, as Thorstein Veblen, didn’t care to get ‘5 bucks a day’ or materialize their dream, they were far more interested in analysing the relationships of those who sold the dream, who achieved it and those who is still in, perhaps never ending, process of achieving (‘The Theory of the Leisure Class’, ‘The Theory of Business enterprise’).

This is a snapshot of beginning of the 20^th century USA society pictured by Dos Passos. Everyone is moved by the same goal, though everyone chose own way to realise it.

In the end everything comes to a single nod of personal values and development abilities in Faustian sense. I can’t judge Ford for exploiting the men: they came to work for him by their own good will, they were paid handsomely. I can’t say he made a tragic sacrifice of all this men’s life, making them work as a machine producing machines, for the sake of the bright tomorrow. Not at all. On the contrary it was the men who chose not to open Pandora box of development and to avoid probable tragic consequences. Here we see the personal choice of intellectually (and in some cases morally) easy life. All, Ford, Wright, Veblen, the workers at the Ford factories, started essentially from the same level with the same ‘dream’. That makes the USA case unique. It was the clean start for absolutely everyone: no old little worlds, no family with the prejudice customs. The new world was already established, the only decision one had to make is how to achieve the American Dream.