… is from page 176 of Stanley Lebergott’s wonderful 1984 volume, The Americans: An Economic Record:
The willingness to adopt these novelties involved, in a critical way, the fact that Americans welcomed novelty – of innovations or of immigrants. Immigrants, however, brought in turn new ideas and challenged existing ways. Whether they did so on the basis of European wisdom, or mere ignorance, their arrival enhanced the competition of ideas, making the competition of markets persistently more effective.
