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Social Darwinism: Its Influence and Legacy
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For the period of 1875–1915, to what extent should Social Darwinism be characterized as a conservative doctrine, one used to justify government nonintervention in the economy and society, as well as racial and class hierarchy?
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Use the documents below as well as your knowledge of the time period.
Primary source: Phillips Thompson, "The Political Economist and the Tramp," poem, 1878.
Background information: In this poem, Phillips Thompson pokes fun at certain notions of Social Darwinism.
Walking along a country road,
While yet the morning air was damp,
As unreflecting, on I strode,
I marked approach the frequent tramp.
The haggard, ragged careworn man
Accosted me with plaintive tone,
"I must have food-" he straight began;
"Vile miscreant," I cried, "begone!
Tis contrary to every rule
That I my fellows should assist;
I'm of the scientific school,
Political economist.
Dost thou know, deluded one,
What Adam Smith has clearly proved,
That 'tis self-interest alone
by which the wheels of life are moved?
This competition is the law
By which we either live or die;
I've no demand thy labor for,
Why, then, should I thy wants supply?
And Herbert Spencer's active brain
Shows how the social struggle ends;
The weak die out the strong remain;
'Tis this that nature's plan intends.
Now really 'tis absurd of you
To think I'd interfere at all;
Just grasp the scientific view,
The weakest must go to the wall."
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Phillips Thompson, "The Political Economist and the Tramp," Labor Standard (14 December 1878).
Courtesy of History Matters, a project of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning (City University of New York, Graduate Center) and the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University).
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Primary source: William Graham Sumner, "The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over," essay, 1894.
Background information: William Graham Sumner was an American social scientist influenced by Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin. Sumner applied Darwin's evolutionary theory to human society.
. . .
This fact and its significance has hardly been noticed at all; but the stage of the industrial organization existing at any time, and the rate of advance in its development, are the absolutely controlling social facts. Nine-tenths of the socialistic and semi-socialistic, and sentimental or ethical, suggestions by which we are overwhelmed come from failure to understand the phenomena of the industrial organization and its expansion. It controls us all because we are all in it. It creates the conditions of our existence, sets the limits of our social activity, regulates the bonds of our social relations, determines our conceptions of good and evil, suggests our life-philosophy, molds our inherited political institutions, and reforms the oldest and toughest customs, like marriage and property.
I repeat that the turmoil of heterogeneous and antagonistic social whims and speculations in which we live is due to the failure to understand what the industrial organization is and its all-pervading control over human life, while the traditions of our school of philosophy lead us always to approach the industrial organization, not from the side of objective study, but from that of philosophical doctrine. Hence it is that we find that the method of measuring what we see happening by what are called ethical standards, and of proposing to attack the phenomena by methods thence deduced, is so popular.
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William Graham Sumner, "The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over," in War and Other Essays (1911; reprint, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 197.
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Primary source: Central Conference of American Rabbis, The Pittsburgh Platform, 1885.
Background information: In 1885, American Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh to outline the basic principles of American Reform Judaism.
Reform rabbis from around the United States met from November 16 through November 19, 1885. . . . The rabbis adopted the following seminal text:
[ . . . ]
3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject al[l] such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.
[ . . . ]
8. In full accordance with the spirit of the Mosaic legislation, which strives to regulate the relations between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to participate in the great task of modern times, to solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society.
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Central Conference of American Rabbis, The Pittsburgh Platform, 1885; reprinted in The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, Paul R. Mendes-Flor and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 371–72 (page citations refer to the reprint).
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Primary source: Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth," journal article, 1889.
Background information: Andrew Carnegie made millions in the steel industry during the nineteeth century. While he was willing to share his wealth with those less fortunate than himself, he did set certain restrictions, as outlined in his 1889 article "Wealth."
Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. The really valuable men of the race never do, except in cases of accident or sudden change. Everyone has, of course, cases of individuals brought to his own knowledge where temporary assistance can do genuine good, and these he will not overlook.
But the amount which can be wisely given by the individual for individuals is necessarily limited by his lack of knowledge of the circumstances connected with each. He is the only true reformer who is as careful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in almsgiving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue.
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Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth," North American Review 148 (June 1889): 653–64; transcribed by Katie Morgan and reverse-proofread by T. Lloyd Benson, at http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/carnegie.htm.
Courtesy of Professor Lloyd Benson and
the Nineteenth Century Documents Project.
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Primary source: "Fruits of Evolution," magazine article, 1893.
Background information: In this 1893 magazine, an unknown writer comments on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution as it applied to the labor movement.
In writing of evolution there is no purpose to investigate or criticize Darwinism relating to "man's place in nature." We take man's place in nature as it stands to-day regardless of his creation. His remote ancestors may have been apes or tadpoles, or, he may have been created as the Bible proclaims. In any case there has been going forward in processes of evolution a steady unfolding of mental powers, whatever may be said of man's early physical endowment. It is quite possible that in the processes of evolution, man has lost in physical strength and gained in mental vigor. . . . The evolution of intellectual power is consequent upon education, which is the great unfolding force. Hence, it follows, that those who command the largest educational advantages control those of inferior opportunities. To equalize these opportunities is the great purpose of the American free school system, to secure all mind evolution, the unfolding of its powers, so that the humblest citizen may become a thinker and be prepared to maintain his independence in all conflicts that may arise between contending classes....
Labor organizations are also the fruits of evolution, and it is just here that comes into view the theory of survival. In evolution as it relates to animals and plants, the strongest survive, the weak go to the wall--disappear--sometimes styled "the survival of the fittest" but always the strongest. It must be granted that when large mind forces are in alliance with wealth, immense strength is developed, and as against ignorance and poverty, the latter must succumb, except incidentally and spasmodically, as in the early days of the French Revolution.
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"Fruits of Evolution," Locomotive Firemen's Magazine, January 1893, 6–9.
Courtesy of History Matters, a project of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning (City University of New York, Graduate Center) and the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University).
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Primary source: Cartoon based on Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden," (1899).
Background information: This cartoon, referring to Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name, was published as the Spanish-American War ended and the insurrection in the Philippines against the Americans began.
"Detroit Journal. The White Man's Burden," Literary Digest 18 (18 February 1899).
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Primary source: "Board of Manufacturers, Coleman Manufacturing Company, Concord, North Carolina," photograph, 1900.
Background information: The Exhibition of American Negroes at the 1900 Paris World's Fair tried to show that blacks in America had become part of the American middle class.
"Board of Manufacturers, Coleman Manufacturing Company, Concord, North Carolina." Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-35747]
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
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Primary source: "Board of Indian Commissioner Report," 1905.
Background information: In this 1905 “Board of Indian Commissioner Report,” the federal government outlines its Indian policy.
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Our task is to hasten the slow work of race evolution. Inevitably, but often grimly and harshly by the outworking of natural forces, the national life of the stronger and more civilized race stock dominates in time the life of the less civilized, when races like the Anglo-Saxon and the Indian are brought into close contact. . . . We want to make the conditions for our less-favored brethren of the red race so favorable that the social forces which have developed themselves slowly and at great expense of time and life in our American race and our American system of government shall be made to help in the uplifting of the Indians and to shorten that interval of time which of necessity must elapse between savagery and Christian civilization.
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U.S. Department of Interior, "Board of Indian Commissioners’ Reports," in Annual Reports (30 June 1905), H. Doc. 20:59th Cong., 1st Sess., 17–18. Reprint, The Way We Lived: Essays and Documents in American Social History, 4th ed., ed. Frederick M. Binder and David M. Reimers, vol. 2, 1865–Present (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 61.
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Primary source: Margaret Sanger, "The Mammals and Their Children," magazine article, 1911.
Background information: Margaret Sanger became a nationally famous social reformer. Here she teaches children about mammals.
The first question one of the boys asked was, "What is a mammal?" and it was explained to the children that a mammal is an animal with a hairy covering, who breathes with lungs, and has warm or quick circulating blood.. . .
They were told of the freedom of the animals in choosing their mates -- that beauty and strength seemed the greatest qualifications. The story of the bees was briefly told. How the queen bee leaves her home amidst the hundreds of male bees who are all anxious to be the father of the future hive. How she rambles about for a little while, then up she flies -- up, up, straight into the clouds with hundreds of male bees following. Gradually the weakest bees drop off and return, but the stronger ones still follow until there are often only two male bees left in the race. The weaker of the two returns and the strongest bee of the whole hive wins the queen bee, and fertilizes the eggs within her body. After this act of reproduction he dies, and Mrs. Bee returns to her hive and lays thousands of bee eggs. The strongest gave his life that the future bees should be given his great strength.
The children were sad about this. They wanted the strongest to live, and it was now the place to teach them of their own bodies, what cleanliness and strength means to the future race of man. . .
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"The Mammals and Their Children," in The Sunday New York Call, (10 December 1911), 15; reprinted as chapter 6 of What Every Mother Should Know: Or How Six Little Children Were Taught the Truth, 3rd ed. (New York: Truth, 1921).
Courtesy of the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, History Department, New York University.
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