Somewhere around the end of 1700, the majority of Americans expected to be left alone by the new

national government in order to chase after their individual goals, and they also held the belief that the
governments purpose is the creation of conditions beneficial to the free individual. Prior to the civil war
of 1800s, the ideal of the free individual, which was the free farmer and frontier settler, was expressed by
Thomas Jefferson in his saying, Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he
had a chosen people. Farmers were praised by Jefferson because they were free individuals who relied
only on themselves for their daily needs. Because of that self dependency, Jefferson believed that
farmers were the most sincere of all citizens. Believing it would help in the development of a nation
comprised of self-reliant farmer citizens, Jefferson favored a small and weak form of government;
however, from the end of the civil war to the Great Depression of 1930s, the business person became the
ideal expression of the free individual as opposed to the farmer and the frontier settler. The consensual
view was government should not stick its nose in business, and were it to do so, it would jeopardize the
development of free individuals whose self-reliance, competitive spirt and hard work were shaping the
US into a land of greater material success. For these reasons, the government stayed inactive and small in
comparison to the size of the nation and the power held by business corporations. Despite the existence
of business regulations during this period, they had little impact on business practices.