<P> In the 19th century, many well - educated Germans fled the failed 1848 revolution . They welcomed the political freedoms in the New World, and the lack of a hierarchical or aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for individual aspirations . One of them explained: </P> <P> The German emigrant comes into a country free from the despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belief and conscience . Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases . No passport is demanded, no police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements...Fidelity and merit are the only sources of honor here . The rich stand on the same footing as the poor; the scholar is not a mug above the most humble mechanics; no German ought to be ashamed to pursue any occupation...(In America) wealth and possession of real estate confer not the least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has . Nor are there nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral power of the people, nor are there swarms of public functionaries to devour in idleness credit for . Above all, there are no princes and corrupt courts representing the so - called divine' right of birth .' In such a country the talents, energy and perseverance of a person...have far greater opportunity to display than in monarchies . </P> <P> The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a hundred thousand men looking for their fortune overnight--and a few did find it . Thus was born the California Dream of instant success . Historian H.W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation: </P> <P> The old American Dream...was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard"... of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year . The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck . (This) golden dream...became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill ." </P>

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