The son of an English immigrant laborer who imbued him with a strong Protestant work ethic,1 William Graham Sumner (1840 – 1910) became a widely published and well-respected professor of social and political theory at Yale. Drawing both from the biblical concept of personal responsibility2 and the social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer, Sumner was a leading opponent of government plans to force conscientious citizens to compensate others for their own folly or indolence. He praised competence and discipline, and turned a critical eye upon practices which could be used to undermine these values, whether in the form of taxes, protective tariffs, business regulations, union and guild power, civil service cronyism, or “jobbery” (bureaucratic expansion). While he cared for innocent victims of circumstance and held private charity in high regard, he was impatient with efforts to demand unjust beneficence from others. In a famous address delivered in New Haven in 1883, Sumner pled the cause of the fellow who has to pay for it all, “the forgotten man.”3

 
Some of Sumner’s language is harsh, particularly to contemporary ears, but it reflects a measure of proper indignation. And while Scripture repeatedly pleads the cause of the innocent poor, it also, particularly in Proverbs, scorns those who lack a work ethic and honors those who are quiet, productive stewards of their lives. Surely, this latter group deserves protection from those whose zeal for spending their neighbors’ money indiscriminately and wastefully is boundless.

I call him the Forgotten Man . . . He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him. . . .

The paupers and the physically incapacitated are an inevitable charge on society. About them no more need be said. But the weak who constantly arouse the pity of humanitarians and philanthropists are the shiftless, the imprudent, the negligent, the impractical, and the inefficient, or they are the idle, the intemperate, the extravagant, and the vicious. Now the troubles of these persons are constantly forced upon public attention, as if they and their interests deserved especial consideration, and a great portion of all organized and unorganized effort for the common welfare consists in attempts to relieve these classes of people . . .

Now who is the Forgotten Man? He is the simple, honest laborer, ready to earn his living by productive work. We pass him by because he is independent, self-supporting, and asks no favors. He does not appeal to the emotions or excite the sentiments. . .

He works, he votes, generally he prays—but he always pays—yes, above all, he pays. He does not want an office; his name never gets into the newspaper except when he gets married or dies. He keeps production going on. . . He is a commonplace man. He gives no trouble. He excites no admiration. He is not in any way a hero (like a popular orator); or a problem (like tramps and outcasts); nor notorious (like criminals); nor an object of sentiment (like the poor and weak); nor a burden (like paupers and loafers); nor an object out of which social capital may be made (like the beneficiaries of church and state charities); nor an object for charitable aid and protection (like animals treated with cruelty); nor the object of a job (like the ignorant and illiterate); nor one over whom sentimental economists and statesmen can parade their fine sentiments (like inefficient workmen and shiftless artisans). Therefore, he is forgotten . . .

[He] is weighted down with the cost and burden of the schemes for making everybody happy, with the cost of public beneficence, with the support of all the loafers, with the loss of all the economic quackery, with the cost of all the jobs. Let us remember him a little while. Let us take some of the burdens off him.
 
Footnotes:
 
1  Jonathan Marshall, “William Graham Sumner: Critic of Progressive Liberalism,” Ludwig von Mises Institute Website, http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/3_3/3_3_2.pdf (accessed September 5, 2008). See also Richard Hofstadter, “William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinist,” The New England Quarterly (September 1941), JSTOR Website, http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-4866(194109)14:3%3C457:WGSSD%3E2.0.CO;2-9 (accessed September 5, 2008).
2  Cf. 2 Thessalonians 3:10, where Paul said, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”
3  William Graham Sumner, “The Forgotten Man,” Swarthmore College Website, http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1//AIH19th/Sumner.Forgotten.html (accessed September 5, 2008). The talk was a compilation of two essays originally written for Harper’s Weekly. It was subsequently published in a collection edited by Albert Galloway Keller

from the Kairos Journal

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