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A WORLD OF CLASHING DARWINISMS: THE BATTLE OF LIBERAL & CONSERVATIVE IDEAS IN AMERICA. DAVID M. WROBEL. AN IDEA & AN AGE. THE LOOK OF INDUSTRIAL AMERICA. Herbert Spencer (English Social Theorist) Survival of the Fittest in Society. A Table of Late-19 th Century Ideas.
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A WORLD OF CLASHING DARWINISMS: THE BATTLE OF LIBERAL & CONSERVATIVE IDEAS IN AMERICA DAVID M. WROBEL
Herbert Spencer (English Social Theorist)Survival of the Fittest in Society.
A Table of Late-19th Century Ideas Sphere Conservatism Key Figure Liberalism Key Figure Social Social Darwinism W. G. Sumner Reform Darwinism L. F. Ward Sacred Popular Calvinism Russell Conwell Social GospelW. Rauschenbusch Legal Const. Conservatism S. J. Field Legal Pragmatism Louis Brandeis The Danger of Dualism: Andrew Carnegie
Sumner on Society A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness. Civil liberty is the status of the man who is guaranteed by law and civil institutions the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare.
Ward on Society Every implement or utensil, every mechanical device...is a triumph of mind over the physical forces of nature in ceaseless and aimless competition. All human institutions--religion, government, law, marriage, custom--together with innumerable other modes of regulating social, industrial and commercial life are, broadly viewed, only so many ways of meeting and checkmating the principle of competition as it manifests itself in society.
Ward on Sumner When a well-clothed philosopher on a bitter winter’s night sits in a warm room well lighted for his purpose and writes on paper with pen and ink in the arbitrary characters of a highly developed language the statement that civilisation is the result of natural laws, and that man’s duty is to let nature alone so that untrammeled it may work out a higher civilisation, he simply ignores every circumstance of his existence and deliberately closes his eyes to every fact within the range of his faculties. If man had acted upon his theory there would have been no civilisation, and our philosopher would have remained a troglodyte.
“Acres of Diamonds” (1890) I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich.... The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community. Let me say here clearly .. . ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men. ... ... I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathised with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins ... is to do wrong.... let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings.… (Quoted in Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1980)
Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) We must not blink at the fact that idealists alone have never carried through any great social change. … The possessing classes rule by force and longstanding power. They control nearly all property. The law is on their side, for they have made it. … For a definite historical victory a given truth must depend on the class which makes that truth its own and fights for it. We shall never have a perfect social life, yet we must seek it with faith. … At best there is always an approximation to a perfect social order. The kingdom of God is always but coming. But every approximation to it is worthwhile.
Stephen J. FieldAssoc. Justice, US Supreme Court, 1893-1897 If the provisions of the constitution can be set aside by an act of congress, where is the course of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will become a war of the poor against the rich,-a war constantly growing in intensity and bitterness. Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co. (1895)
Louis Brandeis Assoc. Justice, US Supreme Court, 1916-1939 Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman. We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.
THE IDEOLOGY OF CONTENT W. G. Sumner: What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1879) “Sociology” (1881) “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over” (1883) “Earth Hunger” (1896) Andrew Carnegie: “Wealth” (1889, North American Review): “The Gospel of Wealth” Triumphant Democracy (1889): Horatio Alger (“rags to riches”) Russell Conwell: “Acres of Diamonds” (1890): (sermon delivered 6,000 times to 13M people) Stephen J Field, Pollock v. Farmers Loan & Trust Co. (1895)
THE IDEOLOGY OF DISCONTENT Lester Frank Ward:Dynamic Sociology (2 vols., 1883) “Mind as a Social Factor” (1884) Applied Sociology (1906) Henry George: Progress and Poverty (1879) Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward: 2000-1887 (1888) William Dean Howells: A Traveller from Altruria (1894) Henry Demarest Lloyd:Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894) ThorsteinVeblen:The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Jane Addams: “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (1892) Frederick Jackson Turner: “The Significance of History” (1893) Walter Rauschenbusch: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)
