to Platt, Croly was good friends with judge Learned Hand, whose family vacationed in Cornish at their estate "Low Court", and Louis Shipman, a Harvard classmate and playwright who accompanied Croly on his first visit to the colony. Shipman and his wife Ellen had a home in the neighboring town of Plainfield. It is near there that Croly and the Shipmans are buried, in the Gilkey Cemetery just north of the village. The Promise of American Life In The Promise of American Life, Herbert Croly set out his argument for a progressive-liberal government in twentieth-century America. He saw democracy as the defining American trait and described democracy not as a government devoted to equal rights but as one with the aim of “bestowing a share of the responsibility and the benefits, derived from political economic association, upon the whole community.” He returned to Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton as representatives of the two main schools of American political thought. Croly famously admitted, “I shall not disguise the fact that on the whole my own preferences are on the side of Hamilton rather than of Jefferson.” Despite his preference for Hamilton, Croly believed there were some good aspects about Jefferson’s philosophy on government. He wrote, "Jefferson was filled with a sincere, indiscriminate, and unlimited faith in the American people." However, Croly viewed Jeffersonian democracy as "tantamount to extreme individualism", suitable only for pre-Civil War America when the ideal Americans were pioneers pursuing individual wealth. Croly's largest contribution to American political thought was to synthesize the two thinkers into one theory on government: Jefferson’s strong democracy achieved through Hamilton’s strong national government. Economy Croly argued that when America shifted from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, Jefferson’s vision was no longer realistic for America. Instead, Croly turned to Alexander Hamilton’s theory of big national government. Government, according to Croly, could no longer be content with protecting negative rights; it needed to actively promote the welfare of its citizens. Croly proposed a three-pronged program: the nationalization of large corporations, the strengthening of labor unions, and a strong central government. Croly firmly believed that labor unions were “the most effective machinery which has yet been forged for the economic and social amelioration of the laboring class.” He wanted unions to have the right to negotiate contracts to ensure companies would only hire union workers. Unlike other progressives, Croly did not want the government