Download Questions 100. William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism (ca

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Voices of Freedom
the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself—
^and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty
^Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat e^
othit then we will have no more wars We shall all be aifflce—
brothers of one father and one mother, with one sky abryro us and
one country around us, and one government for all. TJiren the Great
Spint Chienvho rules above will smile upon this lawful, and send ram
to wash out tlM)loody spots made by brothers^fands from the face
of the earth Fortfcis time the Indian race a^vaitmg and praying. I
hope that no more groans of wounded rafe and women will ever go
to the ear of the Greafl&pirit Chief ahdve, and that all people may be
America's Gilded Age, 1870-1890
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individual human beings and entire social classes According to Social Dar­
winists, evolution was as natural a process m human society as m nature,
and government must not interfere Especially misguided, m this view,
were efforts to uplift those at the bottom of the social order, such as laws
regulating conditions of work or public assistance to the poor
The era's most influential Social Darwinist was Yale professor William
Graham Sumner For Sumner, freedom required frank acceptance of inequal­
ity The growing influence of Social Darwinism helped to popularize a "neg­
ative" definition of freedom as limited government and an unrestrained free
market It also helped to persuade courts, m the name of "liberty of con­
tract," to overturn state laws regulating the behavior of corporations
one people
M A N I S B O R N under the necessity of sustaining the existence he
Questions
1 How does Gffief Joseph define what it m^qns to be a "free man"7
2 Whjrfmre Joseph's mam complaints about the o^atment of his people7
100. William Graham Sumner on Social
Darwinism (ca, 1880)
Source: Albert G. Keller, ed., The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays by
William Graham Sumner (New Haven, Conn., 1914), pp. 17-27. Keller
concludes that the essay from which this excerpt is taken was written during
the 1880s.
During the Gilded Age, large numbers of businessmen and middle-class
Americans adopted the social outlook known as Social Darwinism Adher­
ents of this viewpoint borrowed language from Charles Darwin's great
work On the Origin of Species (1859), which expounded the theory of evolu­
tion among plant and animal species, to explain the success and failure of
has received by an onerous struggle against nature, both to win what
is essential to his life and to ward off what is prejudicial to it He is
born under a burden and a necessity. Nature holds what is essential
to him, but she offers nothing gratuitously. He may win for his use
what she holds, if he can. Only the most meager and inadequate sup­
ply for human needs can be obtained directly from nature. There are
trees which may be used for fuel and for dwellings, but labor is re­
quired to fit them for this use There are ores m the ground, but labor
is necessary to get out the metals and make tools or weapons For any
real satisfaction, labor is necessary to fit the products of nature for
human use. In this struggle every individual is under the pressure of
the necessities for food, clothing, shelter, fuel, and every individual
brings with him more or less energy for the conflict necessary to sup­
ply his needs. The relation, therefore, between each man's needs and
each man's energy, or "individualism," is the first fact of human life
It is not without reason, however, that we speak of a "man" as the
individual m question, for women (mothers) and children have spe­
cial disabilities for the struggle with nature, and these disabilities
grow greater and last longer as civilization advances The perpetua­
tion of the race m health and vigor, and its success as a whole m its
Voices of Freedom
America's Gilded Age, 1870-1890
struggle to expand and develop human Me on earth, therefore, re­
quire that the head of the family shall, by his energy, be able to sup­
ply not only his own needs, but those of the organisms which are
dependent upon him The history of the human race shows a great
variety of experiments m the relation of the sexes and m the organi­
zation of the family These experiments have been controlled by eco­
nomic circumstances, but, as man has gained more and more control
over economic circumstances, monogamy and the family education
of children have been more and more sharply developed If there is
one thing m regard to which the student of history and sociology can
affirm with confidence that social institutions have made "progress"
ox grown "better," it is in this arrangement of marriage and the fam­
ily All experience proves that monogamy, pure and strict, is the sex
relation which conduces most to the vigor and intelligence of the
race, and that the family education of children is the institution by
which the race as a whole advances most rapidly, from generation to
generation, m the struggle with nature
The condition for the complete and regular action of the force of
competition is liberty Liberty means the security given to each man
that, if he employs his energies to sustain the struggle on behalf of
himself and those he cares for, he shall dispose of the product exclu­
sively as he chooses. It is impossible to know whence any definition
or criterion of justice can. be derived, if it is not deduced from this
view of things; or if it is not the definition of justice that each shall
enjoy the fruit of his own labor and self-denial, and of injustice that
the idle and the industrious, the self-indulgent and the self-denying,
shall share equally m the product
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The constant tendency of population to outstrip the means of
subsistence is the force which has distributed population over the
world, and produced all advance m civilization To this day the two
means of escape for an overpopulated country are emigration and an
advance m the arts. The former wins more land for the same people;
the latter makes the same land support more persons. If, however, ei­
ther of these means opens a chance for an increase of population, it
is evident that the advantage so won may be speedily exhausted if
the increase takes place. The social difficulty has only undergone a
temporary amelioration, and when the conditions of pressure and
competition are renewed, misery and poverty reappear The victims
of them are those who have inherited disease and depraved ap­
petites, or have been brought up in vice and ignorance, or have them­
selves yielded to vice, extravagance, idleness, and imprudence In the
last analysis, therefore, we come back to vice, m its original and
hereditary forms, as the correlative of misery and poverty
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Private property, also, which we have seen to be a feature of society
organized m accordance with the natural conditions of the struggle
for existence produces inequalities between men. The struggle for ex­
istence is aimed against nature It is from her niggardly hand that we
have to wrest the satisfactions for our needs, but our fellow-men are
our competitors for the meager supply. Competition, therefore, is a
law of nature Nature is entirely neutral; she submits to him who most
energetically and resolutely assails her She grants her rewards to the
fittest, therefore,without regard to other considerations of any kind If,
then, there be liberty, men get from her just m proportion to their
works, and their having and enjoying are just m proportion to their be­
ing and their doing Such is the system of nature If we do not like it,
and if we try to amend it, there is only one way in which we can do it.
We can take from the better and give to the worse. We can deflect the
penalties of those who have done ill and throw them on those who
have done better. We can take the rewards from those who have done
better and give them to those who have done worse We shall thus
lessen the inequalities We shall favor the survival of the unfittest, and
we shall accomplish this by destroying liberty. Let it be understood
that we cannot go outside of this alternative liberty, inequality, sur­
vival of the fittest, not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest The
former carries society forward and favors all its best members, the lat­
ter carries society downwards and favors all its worst members.
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Voices of Freedom
What we mean by liberty is civil liberty, or liberty under law; and
this means the guarantees of law that a man shall not be interfered
with while using his own powers for his own welfare. It is, therefore,
a civil and political status, and that nation has the freest institutions
m which the guarantees of peace for the laborer and security for the
capitalist are the highest.Liberty, therefore, does not by any means do
away with the struggle for existence We might as well try to do away
with the need of eating, for that would, in effect, be the same thing
What civil liberty does is to turn the competition of man with man
from violence and brute force into an industrial competition under
which men vie with one another for the acquisition of material goods
by industry, energy, skill, frugality, prudence, temperance, and other
industrial virtues. Under this changed order of things the inequalities
are not done away with Nature still grants her rewards of having and
enjoying, according to our being and doing, but it is now the man of
the highest training and not the man of the heaviest fist who gains
the highest reward. It is impossible that the man with capital and the
man without capital should be equal To affirm that they are equal
would be to say that a man who has no tool can get as much food out
of the ground as the man who has a spade or a plough; or that the man
who has no weapon can defend himself as well against hostile beasts
or hostile men as the man who has a weapon If that were so, none of
us would work any more We work and deny ourselves to get capital,
just because, other things being equal, the man who has it is superior,
for attaining all the ends of life, to the man who has it not
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Questions
i. How does Sumner differentiate between the "natural" roles of men and
women m society7
2 How does he explain the existence of poverty and social inequality7
America's Gilded Age, 1870-1890
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101. George E. McNeill on the Labor
Movement in the Gilded Age (1887)
Source: George E. McNeill, ed., The Labor Movement: The Problem of
Today (Boston, 1887), pp. 454-62.
Not all Americans accepted the Social Darwinist definition of liberty as
frank acceptance of social inequality m an unregulated market During the
Gilded Age, the labor movement offered a very different understanding of
freedom The Knights of Labor put forward a wide array of programs, from
the eight-hour workday to public employment m hard times, currency re­
form, anarchism, socialism, and the creation of a vaguely defined "coopera­
tive commonwealth" All these ideas arose from the conviction that the
social conditions of the 1880s needed drastic change Reaching back across
the divide of the Civil War, George E McNeill, a shoemaker and factory
worker who became one of the movement's most eloquent writers, warned
that a new "irrepressible conflict" had arisen, between "the "wage-system of
labor and the republican system of government" The remedy was for
the government to guarantee a basic set of economic rights for all Americans
T H E P R O B L E M O F to-day, as of yesterday and to-morrow, is, how to
establish equity between men The laborer who is forced to sell his
day's labor to-day, or starve tomorrow, is not m equitable relations with
the employer, who can wait to buy labor until starvation fixes the rates
of wages and hours of time The labor movement is the natural effort of
readjustment,—an ever-continued attempt of organized laborers, so
that they may withhold their labor until the diminished interest or
profit or capital of the employer shall compel him to agree to such
terms as shall be for the time measurably equitable. These are the force­
ful methods of all time, and may continue to develop manhood and
womanhood by peaceful revolution, as laborers advance their line, or
may cause a social earthquake, and become destructive by the orga­
nized repression of labor's right Before the solution of the labor prob­
lem can be reached, the nature of the complaint must he understood.
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Voices of Freedom
America's Gilded Age, 1870-1890
41
or the sunless mines of Pennsylvania, one chord of sympathy unites
These extremes of wealth and poverty are threatening the exis­
tence of the government In the light of these facts, we declare that
there is an inevitable and irresistible conflict between the wagesystem of labor and the republican system of government,—the
wage-laborer attempting to save the government, and the capitalist
class ignorantly attempting to subvert it.
The strike of the trainmen on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was
the serving of a notice upon the people of this nation that wages
could not be further reduced,—a protest against robbery, a rebellion
against starvation. The trainmen were under despotic control. To
leave their employ was to become tramps, outlaws; to submit was to
starve in serfdom. They knew that the power of the railroad oligarchy
exceeded and superseded that of the national and State governments.
The railroad president is a railroad king, whose whim is law He col­
lects tithes by reducing wages as remorselessly as the Shah of Persia
or the Sultan of Turkey, and, like them,is not amenable to any human
power He can discharge (banish) any employee without cause He
can prevent laborers from following their usual vocations. He can
withhold their lawful wages He can delay trial on a suit at law, and
postpone judgment indefinitely He can control legislative bodies,
dictate legislation, subsidize the press, and corrupt the moral sense of
the community. He can fix the price of freights, and thus command
the food and fuel-supplies of the nation. In his right hand he holds the
government; in his left hand, the people And this is called law and
order,—from which there is no appeal. It is war,—-war against the di­
vine nghts of humanity, war against the pnnciples of our govern­
ment. There is no mutuality of interests, no co-operative union of
labor and capital It is the iron heel of a soulless monopoly, crushing
the manhood out of sovereign citizens
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The crisis that we are rapidly approaching is not local. No Mason and
Dixon's line, no color-tests divide North, South, East and West; wher­
ever laborers congregate, whether m the factories of New England,
them all.
No demagogue's cant of race or creed will hold them from their
purpose to be free In that coming time, woman will teach her chil­
dren the lesson of her hate and wrong Already a generation has
arisen, schooled m the great moral agitation for public good.
Justice demands that those who earn shall receive, that no one has
a right to add cost without adding value
Recognizing that the steps toward the attaining of the end must be
slow, we demand, first, legislative interference between capital and
labor; restraining capital m its usurpations, and enlarging the
boundaries of labor's opportunity
The Constitution of the United States demands that each of the
sovereign States shall have a republican form of government A
greater power than that of the State has arisen—"a State withm a
State,"—-a power that is quietly yet quickly sapping the foundations
of the majority-rule The law of self-protection is greater than consti­
tutions, and legislative bodies are bound to interfere to protect the
sovereign citizen against the insidious inroads of the usurping
power.
Monarchal governments rest upon the ability of the ruler to main­
tain order by physical force. Republican institutions are sustained by
the ability of the people to rule The government has the right, and is
bound m self-defence to protect the ability of the people to rule It
has the right to interfere against any organized or unorganized power
that imperils or impairs this ability Upon no other argument can the
free-school system be maintained, institutions of learning, of sci­
ence, and art be endowed by the State or exempt from taxation It is
the policy of the government to protect, not only her domain from
monarchal interference, as set forth in the Monroe doctrine, but to
protect her citizens from the influence of cheap labor and over-work.
For cheap labor means a cheap people, and dear labor a dear people
The foundation of the Republic is equality.
Voices of Freedom
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America's Gilded Age, 1870-1890
Questions
i How does McNeill define freedom for working men and women7
2. Why does he consider the "wage-system" of labor incompatible with
republican government7
Jienry George, Progress and Povertv0879)
Source: HenfoQeorge, Progress and Poverty $87$(New Yoyf 1884), pp.
489-96.
Dissatisfaction with social additions m the Gildtfrhgt extended well be­
yond aggrieved workers Alarme^by fear of cla^K warfare and the growing
power of concentrated wealth, sociaStfnnkare offered numerous plans for
change Among the most influential w^Eenry George, whose Progress and
Poverty became one of the era's greatjj^t-seirars Its extraordinary success
testified to what George called "armide-spread coWiousr.ess.
that there is
something radically wrong injrle present social organization"
George's book began vnxi a famous statement of "th^Koblem" sug­
gested by its title—thexpansion of poverty alongside mateNal progress
His solution was th^rsmgle tax," which would replace other taxb^with a
levy on mcrease^m. the value of real estate The single tax would be sNjugh
that it would^frevent speculation 1x1 both urban and rural land, and land
would tbanbecome available to aspiring businessmen and urban working
memSKking to become farmers Whether or not they beheved^R George's
sa^uonScilhons of readers responded to his clear explanation of eco­
nomic relatwSrfiipS and his stimng account of howtj*?rhin]ust and un­
equal distributionH^vealth" long thought to bg^nSned to the Old World
had made its appearanc?*ii4he New
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c&ahzation goes on, are not incidents of progress, but tendencies
wmch must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure JRemseh\s, but, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is rjmoved,
growfcreater and greater, until they sweep us back into baiJarism by
the ro^d every previous civilization has trod But it alscjChows that
these e\Vs are not imposed by natural laws, that theu^pring solely
from socal mal-ad]ustments which ignore natural la^vs, and that m
removing t^eir cause we shall be giving an enorjpous impetus to
progress
The povert}\which m the midst of abundarfe, pinches and embrutes men, ancLall the manifold evils whicW flow from it, spring
from a denial of justice In permitting the monopolization of the nat­
ural opportunities \hich nature freely pffas to all, we have ignored
the fundamental Iaw^of justice'—for so fx as we can see, when we
view things upon a large scale, justice sJems to be the supreme law
of the universe. But by peeping awa/this injustice and asserting
the rights of all men to nalSiral opportunities, we shall conform our­
selves to the law—we shall remove#ie great cause of unnatural ine­
quality m the distribution oiWeifth and power, we shall abolish
poverty, tame the ruthless passjfas of greed, dry up the springs of
vice and misery; light m darkyplVes the lamp of knowledge; give
new vigor to invention and ^reshVmpuise to discovery, substitute
political strength for politi^d weakness, and make tyranny and an­
archy impossible
The reform I have pr/posed accords \%th all that is politically, so­
cially, or morally desipble. It has the qualities of a true reform, for it
will make all other, Worms easier What isVbut the carrying out m
letter and spirit n' the truth enunciated\i the Declaration of
Independence-^}) e "self-evident" truth that isVhe heart and soul of
the Declaration—"That all men are created equal; vkat they are endowed
by their Crefor with certain inalienable rights; that cS^iong them are life,
liberty, an0'the pursuit of happiness1"
T H E E V I L S A R I S I X C ^rorn
the unjustS£.d unequal distribution
of wealth, whicl^re becoming more and moiW^goarent as modern
Thes<#nghts are denied when the pipial right to laM—on which
and b/ which men alone can live—is denied Equalitwjf political