Mr. Lacy is Executive Director of the Junction City-Geary County [Kansas] Economic Development Commission.
What has happened to the man who braved uncertainty, went out on his own, and, through native wit, devotion and duty, and singleness of purpose, somehow created business and industrial activity where none existed before?
Where is the heroic figure of American folklore who was akin, perhaps, to Davy Crockett and other truly indigenous epic types—stalwart independents who hewed forests, climbed over the tops of mountains, built new communities, rose from nothing to something, and did all the things American heroes must have done to build a great nation?
He was the enterprising man. Like him or not, he is still fascinating to Americans. The reasons are not hard to find. For one thing, the great fortunes in America were built through entrepreneurial activity. America’s social structure is a product of the milling efforts of thousands who came to these shores seeking their fortunes and hoping Lady Luck would beam on them. Those upon whom she smiled became great figures of power and in many cases established family dynasties persisting through many generations.
But there is considerably more than this behind the allure of the entrepreneur. His values and activities have become a part of the character of America and intimately related to our ideas of personal freedom, success, and, above all, individualism. He represented the rags to riches theme in its purest sense, for he rose on his own by building a solid structure beneath him, not by social climbing. He got there by what he knew, not who he knew. His resources were all inside, not outside.
The story of this man is a drama in which the protagonist challenged the established order and forged ahead toward the glowing light called “success” using only native wit, ability, and hard work—with perhaps a bit of luck and Calvinistic fate thrown in for good measure. He was successful because he stuck to the simple and obvious American virtues. He built a better mousetrap or provided a better service and he did these things in the best way he knew.
Today there is a connotation of manipulation, greed and avarice, and grasping acquisitiveness associated with doing business for a profit. We are taught that while it is true the entrepreneurial hero built railroads, canals, communities, industries, and great systems of trade, there is also the implication that in the process he befouled nature, sullied valleys, denuded forests, muddied and contaminated the rivers and streams, scarred Mother Earth, and generally ravished the natural order of things. We are told Nature and God’s creatures, including ordinary folk, all suffered at the hands of those who sought to impose their wi1l on the natural order.
No one speaks on behalf of the enterprising man. No one says he was more constructive than destructive. No one tells us it is more important to seek opportunity than to languish in security. No one reminds us that each performance of the enterprising man . . . each new business . .. is a renewal of the democratic notion that all men are born equal and that the value of the individual to society does not depend upon family or social class. No longer are we told that America is the only place on earth where a man, through his own efforts, can go out and achieve the status of success.
The deeper traditions of our society, its history, myths and many of its heroic figures are falling into oblivion, buried beneath a plethora of politics that seeks to control, rule, regulate and restrict. The symbolism expressed in the American image of the enterprising man is a profound reflection on our national history and character. We are a people who for nearly twelve generations went through the recurrent process of imposing man’s will and men-conceived structures on a wilderness of primeval forests, rugged mountains, mighty rivers, unending plains, and waterless deserts. Though this resurgent effort at the moving edge of the frontier has long since ended, the spirit and the imagery must live on if free enterprise is to survive. It is the spirit of freedom that is truly the spirit of ’76.
