Prosperless

Its homogeneous folk, its life rooted in the soil, its rough village equality, its prosperless but independent people, its artless literacy, its sturdy moralism— all contrasted, on one side, with the pullulating cities of a newer America, a more European America, where poverty and ignorance, class strife and ethnic strain, put unprecedented stresses on the Republic, on its culture as on its politics.

Source: wiktionary

Though the Americas would have eventually been colonized for no other reason than we simply ran out of space, it would have been a much slower process if people thought it was just a lump prosperless land.

Source: wiktionary