In the following essay I am going to contrast the views of two figures who laid the foundations of American sociology in their era – the Social Darwinism ideals of William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) on one hand, and the progressive principles of Jane Addams (1860-1935) on the other.
This essay will examine their biographies and focus on their stanzas on those at the bottom of society. . I am going to expound on their and their opinions of social reform and on their views in general in more detail.
In the following essay I am going to contrast the views of two figures who laid the foundations of American sociology in their era – the Social Darwinism ideals of William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) on one hand, and the progressive principles of Jane Addams (1860-1935) on the other. This essay will examine their biographies and focus on their stanzas on those at the bottom of society. . I am going to expound on their and their opinions of social reform and on their views in general in more detail.
William Graham Sumner was born in 1840 and grew up in Connecticut as a mechanic’s son. His father Thomas Sumner was a self-educated, working-class immigrant from England who constantly sought to better himself educationally, economically and morally. Sumner’s character was greatly influenced by his father’s personality and work ethic, as well as by his preaching of industrial virtues such as abstinence, honesty and hard work. Through the study of theology and his position as rector of churches in New York City and Morristown, New Jersey Sumner became indoctrinated in the Faiths of Protestant Christianity.[1] Bruce Curtis points out that “his [Sumner’s] training - especially in his father’s work ethic, in religion, and in political economy - formed in his mind a series of absolute truths and images about the ideal nature of man and society.”[2]
Equally, Jane Addams’ father John Addams was a determinative influence in her life. Similar to Sumner’s father, he became to her an important role model embodying the strong-willed, self-made man and the activism of the West, as J.O.C. Phillips suggests.[3] He was a public figure as well as a close friend of Abraham Lincoln. Thus, he became a powerful example of public-spirited achievement for Jane Addams. Through the example of her father, Addams was drawn to the “active achieving world of men”, another important influence on her activism and participation in a masculine world.[4] Scholars such as Conway suggest that Addams had been a resolute woman, her personality characterized by an extreme drive to power and discipline.[5] This mirrors the general mood and sense of mission among well-educated middle-class women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Addams spent her childhood in small-town Cederville, Illinois and felt an early urge to become a cultured person by going to the East. Several trips to Europe suggest this urge to cultivate her intellect.
Sumner’s career was launched at Yale University. There he became the first professor of political and social science and was awarded an honorary doctoral degree in law. Sumner’s college education and graduation from Yale led to membership in social and intellectual elites as Curtis notes.[6] Like Addams, Sumner took a trip to Europe to study. Oxford was appealing to him, since he was drawn to elegance and rank as well as “to a man’s duty to be socially useful”, as Curtis remarks.[7] In contrast to the charismatic personality of Jane Addams, however Sumner came across as cool and reserved to those in his environment. He has been known for having a taste for the aristocratic lifestyle. Curtis notes that “Sumner grew up poor in a society that urged and rewarded upward mobility in many obvious and subtle ways. With a drive and ethic similar to his father’s, and in a society that offered opportunities for success, (...) Sumner was a logical candidate for success.”[8]
Even though there was an enormous adulation for Addams when she chose to become a pioneer for social work in the Midwest, she must have been a complex personality. She seemed to be caught in the middle between the maternal spiritual world of women and the intellectual achieving world of men, as Phillips mentions.[9] Her father and the rather traditional education she had received at Rockford, which was devoted to the separation of male and female spheres, influenced her struggle. Due to a nervous breakdown she failed to complete a medical degree and started a frantic search for a career that ended when she and her Rockford friend Ellen Starr established the first settlement house in the 19th Ward of Chicago in 1889. The inspiration was derived from Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in East London.
The ideas of both, Sumner and Addams were set in an age of social and intellectual revolution. Both thinkers dealt with the challenges of urbanization, industrialization and an emerging immigrant society. The era of the Gilded Age in the United States stretched from 1860 to the turn of the 20th century and is notable for enormous economical growth in the post-Civil War period. However, this period saw great poverty among the unskilled workers that flocked to the growing urban areas like Chicago and the Great Lakes region. There was growing social and political unrest and severe labor disturbances. In this climate of capitalist expansion, social Darwinism became a widespread outlook for American middle-class men. One of the leading spokesman for Social Darwinism was William Graham Sumner. As a strong naturalist, Sumner converted from Episcopalianism (the Episcopalian Church is the American wing of the Anglican Church) to the philosophy of Darwinism in 1870, deriving his ideas from Herbert Spencer.[10] In his point of view, religion could not give absolute answers anymore, whereas natural sciences could. Social Darwinist he was, he pointed to a struggle for existence in human society similar to the struggle for existence in nature at large. The struggle for existence was a competition between men and nature, according to Sumner, and government must not interfere. Sumner was very committed to the doctrine of laissez faire and he criticized the inefficacy of reform. He thought efforts such as public assistance to the poor or laws regulating conditions of work to uplift the people at the bottom of the social order were unreasonable.[11] A competitive struggle among individuals that possess different natural capacities and traits was an essential part of social existence. Those individuals who reach wealth and power are those with better traits, and they succeed. Those who lack intelligence or discipline are doomed to fail and descend into poverty. Sumner says, “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 supply his needs.”[12] According to Bruce Curtis, Sumner has been little noticed except for his writings on social Darwinist and on the histories of sociology.[13] Furthermore, he suggests that Sumner’s moral absolutism, and his harsh dogmatic tone and style as a social Darwinist were more sensational than other concepts such as “antagonistic cooperation” discussed by him.[14] In contrast to Albion Woodbury Small at Chicago, for instance, he did not accomplish to create a department or strong school of sociology at Yale.
Early in her intellectual career, Jane Addams was said to have been drawn to Spencer and Darwinism. However, after the Great Depression she abandoned these philosophies. Conway remarks that instead of following the social Darwinist outlook she “strove to articulate the problems of her society and to suggest an ethical response to them in terms of a life of public services” as a social worker.[15] Nevertheless, Conway suggests that Jane Addams followed some kind of “Intellectual Darwinism”. This might mirror her efforts for achieving betterment of society through educating the masses at Hull House. Conways says this intellectual Darwinism suggested that “man was predestined to rise, but by means of a driving intellectual effort amongst the chosen (…) All the problems of urban industrial America could be solved (…) by the combined efforts of individual intellects and wills.”[16] By several accounts, Addams has been criticized for trying to Americanize the immigrants at Hull House through the classics and philosophies of the Anglo-American world instead of embracing their cultures.
In his essay “On the Concentration of Wealth: Its Economic Justification”, Sumner emphasizes his defense of the wealthy. Sumner argues that the wealth is in possession of a few naturally selected members of society. He says, “The millionaires are a product of natural selection, acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirement of certain work to be done (...) It is because they are thus selected that wealth (...) aggregates under their hands”.[17] The high concentration of wealth among the rich agents of society benefits society at large, Sumner argues. As a defender of capitalism he advocated for the “captains of industry” since capitalism would enable men to escape barbarism.[18] Those capitalists could build the stable economic base necessary for a highly civilized society.
With a view to the underprivileged, Sumner remarks in his essay “Reply to a Socialist” that “it is frightful to know of the poverty which some people endure”. However he then adds, “it is also frightful to know of disease, of physical defects (...), and of other ills by which human life is encompassed.”[19] In terms of fighting poverty or “changing the system”, Sumner takes an anti-reformist position. He notes that “we might as well talk of abolishing storms, excessive heat and cold, tornadoes, pestilences, diseases, and other ills. Poverty belongs to the struggle for existence, and we are all born into that struggle.”[20] In hs social Darwinist view, the intervening of social reformers in the misfortunes of the underprivileged members of society would be as senseless as intervening with the physical world.
Sumner’s anti-reformist agenda seems to culminate in his concept of the “Forgotten Man”. Opposing the development of a welfare state, Sumner condemned reform since it would force economic hardship on the American middle-class - the “Forgotten Man”. He states that “Whatever capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from somebody else.”[21] His focus is on the self-supporting, independent laborer. In his essay on the Forgotten Man he says “He must get his living out of the capital of the country. The larger the capital is the better living he can get.”[22] Thus, he contested that the underprivileged should not be helped at all by public programs or governmental schemes that improve the working class’ condition since this would put economic pressure on the middle class.[23] He states his position against any reform proposals, and by embracing inequality in the distribution of wealth, explains why opposites of poverty and wealth signify a just society. To Sumner’s mind the American middle class, the Forgotten Man, “is the man who is never thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist”.[24]
In response to the crisis of the 19th century in the States, a serious financial panic and depression and a major national railroad strike in 1894, also known as the Pullman Strike, the laissez fare doctrine was attacked by reformers of the progressive era. Men and women participating in the work of the social settlement advocated for the state to take greater responsibility to ameliorate conditions for the poor. They promoted for measures of social and economic betterment such as factory and labor legislations, improved housing and public health reform. The social settlement of Hull House, founded in Chicago by Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Starr in 1889 was the most notable social settlement.
[...]
[1] Bruce Curtis, William Graham Sumner, (Boston, Mass: Twayne, 1981) 148.
[2] Bruce Curtis, William Graham Sumner, (Boston, Mass: Twayne, 1981) 149.
[3] J.O.C. Phillips, “The Education of Jane Addams”, History of Education Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 1 (1974): 49-67, 50f. JSTOR. 04. Aug. 2013.
[4] Phillips 51.
[5] Jill Conway, “Jane Addams: An American Heroine”, Daedalus, vol. 93, no. 2, The Woman in America (1964), 761-780, 762. JSTOR. 04. Aug. 2013.
[6] Curtis 18.
[7] Curtis 20.
[8] Curtis 21.
[9] Phillips 53.
[10] Bruce Curtis, “William Graham Sumner “On the Concentration of Wealth”, The Journal of American History, vol. 55, no. 4 (1969):823-832, 823. JSTOR. 04 Aug. 2013.
[11] William Graham Sumner, “The Challenge of Facts”, The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, ed. Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916), 15-52, 17; William Graham Sumner, “The Concentration of Wealth: Its Economic Justification”, On Liberty, Society, and Politics. The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, ed. Robert C. Bannister (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992), 149-155, 153.
[12] Sumner, The Challenge of Facts 17.
[13] Curtis 146.
[14] Curtis 147.
[15] Conway 775.
[16] Conway 768.
[17] Sumner, The Concentration of Wealth 155.
[18] Sumner, The Concentration of Wealth 151.
[19] William Graham Sumner, “Reply to a Socialist”, The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, ed. Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916), 53-62, 56.
[20] Sumner, Reply to a Socialist 57.
[21] William Graham Sumner, “The Forgotten Man”, On Liberty, Society, and Politics. The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, ed. Robert C. Bannister (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992), 201-226, 208.
[22] Sumner, Forgotten Man 209.
[23] Sumner, Forgotten Man 210.
[24] Sumner, Forgotten Man 202.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Linda Harnisch (Autor:in), 2013, The Social Darwinism Ideals of William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) and the Progressive Principles of Jane Addams (1860-1935), München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/292578
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