The need of association comes generally from the conscience of one’s own feebleness or indolence....  When such people join they add together their incapacities; hence the failure of many societies formed with great eclat.  On the contrary, when men accustomed to help themselves without depending on their neighbors form an association, it is because they really find themselves facing a common difficulty ... such persons add their capacities; they form a powerful union of capables, the only one that has force.  Hence the general success of American associations.

The radical difference in the motives for association here and in the old world was noted long ago by De Tocqueville, who says: 

European societies are naturally led to introduce into their midst military customs and formulas....  The members of such associations respond to a word of command like soldiers in a campaign; they profess the dogma of passive obedience, or rather, by uniting, they sacrifice entirely, at a single stroke, their judgment and free will....  In American associations, on the other hand, individual independence finds its part; as in society every man moves at the same time toward the same goal, but all are not forced to go by the same road.  No one sacrifices his will or his reason, but applies them both toward the success of the common enterprise.

Commenting on this, De Rousiers goes on: 

This is not to say that the discipline necessary to the pursuit of the common end is less exact than with us.  As far as I can judge, the members of an American association, on the contrary, take their obligations more seriously than we, and precisely because they have undertaken them very freely, without being forced into them by environment or fashion, and also because the heads of the association have not sought to make it serve their own interests.  In fine, their discipline is strong, but it is applied only to one precise object; it may thus subsist intact and without tyranny, despite the most serious divergences of view among the members regarding objects foreign to its aim.  These happy conditions—­this large and concrete mind, joined to the effective activity of the Americans, have given rise to a multitude of groups that are rendering the greatest service.

De Rousiers enlarges on this point at great length and gives many illustrations.  He returns to it even when he appears to have gone on to other subjects.  In an account of a visit to a militia encampment in Massachusetts, where he was inclined at the outset to scoff at the lack of formal military training, but finally became enthusiastic over the individual efficiency and interest of the militiamen, he ends by saying: