SOURCE: Woodward, C. Vann. “The Pursuit of Happiness.” In The Old World's New World, pp. 40-62. New York: The New York Public Library/Oxford University Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Woodward explores early- to mid-twentieth century European perceptions of America as a materialistic society, devoid of the happiness that American zeal and industry seemed to promise.

From the early years of the Republic, Americans have lived with an international reputation for excessive love of money and the obsessive pursuit of gain. They became accustomed to it. It came from all sides, friend and foe, and appeared to amount to an international consensus. It was expressed in varying degrees of opprobrium and was mixed at times with traces of envy or admiration. It continued in currency, decade after decade from the eighteenth century to the present. The word “materialism” apparently did not come into usage in this sense until...