Frontier opportunity rhetoric masked elite capture of land and wealth

Evidence

The Western frontier was the nineteenth-century land of opportunity. In open competition with nature, venturesome white settlers found their own levels, unfettered by birth or creed. The frontier was a way out— out of poverty, out of dismal factories, out of the crowded Eastern cities. The frontier was the Great Escape. … Few escaped. Railroad companies, mine owners, and, before long, an elite of successful farmers and ranchers soon captured both land and op­ portunity. The rest were left with the adventure of making ends meet. But throughout the nineteenth century, the image of the frontier sustained the vision of economic opportunity and unfettered personal freedom in an emerging industrial system offering little of either. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 175

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The frontier myth of opportunity obscured capitalist capture of land and wealth — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 174; Periphery exploitation worsened while core elites gained relative advantage — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1971; Public humanitarian language masked private economic motives in imperial expansion — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 751 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Public humanitarian language masked private economic motives in imperial expansion #corroborates (0.90) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 751
• Periphery exploitation worsened while core elites gained relative advantage #corroborates (0.85) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1971
• World-changing rhetoric legitimizes tech wealth while deeming naked wealth-seeking undeserving #corroborates (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 187
• Entrenched property-ownership ideals defeated the effort to treat land as a social resource #corroborates (0.80) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 1077
• Western wealth was built by actively creating underdevelopment elsewhere #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 293
• Humanist defenses of native rights legitimized imperial acquisition #corroborates (0.80)