US dollars triumphal purchase topical erythromycin visit Eventually, the economy improved in New York—in no small measure because so many people did scatter to other parts. Indeed, until quite recently, what most distinguished Americans from other peoples was the high percentage of us who were willing to move from anywhere to anywhere to seek a better financial toehold. The original Pilgrims and Utah’s Mormon settlers migrated for religious reasons, but they were exceptions; most American migrations have been driven by economics. Already by the mid-nineteenth century, the descendants of Puritans had abandoned New England’s played-out farms in such numbers that the forests were closing back in, prompting Herman Melville to compare the landscape to “countries depopulated by plague and war.”