The economic theory of laissez-faire, based upon belief in beneficent natural laws which brought about harmony of personal profit and social benefit, was readily fused with the doctrine of natural rights.
Dewey discusses the fusion of laissez-faire economics with the doctrine of natural rights.
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What is significant is that access to means of amusement has been rendered easy and cheap beyond anything known in the past.
The easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual, to sweep away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they proceeded from his own voluntary choice, and guaranteed his own private ends.
The idea remains barren and empty save as it is incarnated in human relationships.
Freedom presented itself as an end in itself, though it signified in fact liberation from oppression and tradition.