Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Self-Reliance (1841)
Main Points
I.
Independence of thought AND ACTION
REGARDLESS OF SOCIETY’S REACTION.
II.
Existence of an inner divine force to give
direction.
III.
Divine force supplies revelation of truth and
beauty.
Quotes from Emerson’s Self-Reliance:
•…To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in
your private hears, is true for all men,--that is genius. p. 70
•A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which
flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the
firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his
thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our
own rejected thought: they come back to us with a certain alienated
majesty. p. 70
•Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. p. 71.
•Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every
one of its members. p. 71.
•Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. p. 71.
•I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls
me. p. 71.
•What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. p.
71.
•Do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall
reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man-bluff is
this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your
argument. p. 71.
•For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. p. 71.
•A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little
statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great
soul has simply nothing to do.
•To be great is to be misunderstood. p. 72.
•The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks….
See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the
average tendency. p. 72.
•The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is
profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God
spaketh, he should communicate not one thing, but all things; should
fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time,
souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new
create the whole. p. 73
• …in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles
disappear. p. 73
•Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He
dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage.
p. 73.
•…man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the
present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless
of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee
the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives
with nature in the present, above time…. p. 73.
•Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the
instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a
past to a new state…. p. 73.
•He who has more soul than I, masters me, though he should
not raise his finger. p. 73.
•I like the silent church before the service begins, better than
any preaching. p. 74.
•…you isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is,
must be elevation. p. 74.
•It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all
the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in
their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in
their speculative views. p. 74.
•Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of
view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of
God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a
private end, is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in
nature and consciousness. p. 74.
•The soul is no traveler: the wise man stays at home…. p. 75.
•Insist on yourself; never imitate. p. 75.
•Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the
other. p. 75.
•The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. p.
75.
•Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is
composed does not.
•And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments
which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. p. 75.
•Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace
but the triumph of principles. p. 75.
Henry David Thoreau,
Civil Disobedience
(1848)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
IT IS MAN’S DUTY TO WASH HIS HAND OF WRONG.
It is not man’s duty, as a matter of course, to
devote himself to the eradication of any…wrong; he
may still properly have other concern to engage
him; but it is his duty at least, to wash his hands of
it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it
practically his support. If I devote myself to other
pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at
least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon
another man’s shoulders. I must get off him fist,
that he may pursue his contemplations too. (p. 51.)
DEMOCRACY SOMETIMES PREVENTS PEOPLE
FROM DOING THE RIGHT THING. In a democracy,
there are unjust laws, but people “think that they
ought to wait until they have persuaded the
majority to alter them.” (p. 52.)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
ANY MAN MORE RIGHT THAN HIS NEIGHBORS CONSTITUTES A
MAJORITY BECAUSE HE HAS GOD ON HIS SIDE, AND HE
SHOULD ACT IMMEDIATELY TO WASH HIS HAND OF WRONG. If a
government is maintaining unjust laws, people should at once
effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property,
from the government. They should “not wait till they constitute a
majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through
them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side,
without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right
than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.” (p. 52)
ONE HONEST MAN CAN CHANGE THE STATE. For it matters not
how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done
is done forever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is
our mission. (p. 52)
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true
place for a just man is also a prison…. Cast your whole vote, not
a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.” (p. 52)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1848)
“A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even
a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”
(p. 52)
IT IS GOOD TO BE A MARTYR RATHER THAN A SINNER. Suppose blood
should flow when standing up to the government or the majority in
refusal to consent to unjust laws. “Is there not a sort of blood shed
when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real
manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting
death.” (p. 52)
THE STATE SHOULD HAVE TRUE RESPECT FOR THE INDIVIDUAL. The
progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited
monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the
individual…. There will never be a really free and enlightened State until
the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent
power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and
treats him accordingly. I please myself with imaging a State at least
which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with
respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with
its own repose if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it,
nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-
Ramon Alvarez et. al., The Mexican View of the War (1850)
Main Points:
1. Since their Independence the U.S. was greedy and ambitious for new lands, and
they took advantage of a vulnerable Mexico.
“true origin of the war…insatiable ambition of the United States, favored by our
weakness, caused it.”
“From the days of their independence they adopted the project of extending their
dominions, and since then, that line of policy has not deviated in the slightest
degree…”
2. The U.S. has acquired land from many countries like Great Britain, France, Spain
and Mexico. They have also taken land from the Natives by moving them
westward using all means possible.
“absolute owners of almost all this continent”
“It has employed every means to accomplish this-purchase as well as usurpation,
skill as well as force, and nothing has restrained it when treating of territorial
acquisition.”
3. Even after acquiring the land that the U.S. wanted all along, the U.S. felt to add
insult by placing fault on Mexico.
“violence and insult were united: thus at the very time they usurped part of our
territory, they offered to us the hand of treachery, to have soon the audacity to
say that our obstinacy and arrogance were the real causes of the war….”
George Bancroft (1800-1891)
The Progress of Mankind (1854)
George Bancroft
The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Point 1: Americans and their political system have discovered
how to bring to bear the Devine mind, and thus we are
destined for greatness.
…the condition of our race is one of growth or of decay. It is the glory
of man that he is conscious of this law of his existence. (We great
Americans choose growth.)
The progress of man consists in this, that he himself arrives at the
perception of truth. The Divine mind, which is its source, left it to be
discovered, appropriated and developed by finite creatures.
In this great work our country holds the noblest rank…. Our land
extends far into the wilderness, and beyond the wilderness; and while
on this side of the great mountains it gives the Western nations of
Europe a theatre for the renewal of their youth, on the transmontane
side, the hoary civilisation of the farthest antiquity leans forward
from Asia to receive the glad tidings of the messenger of freedom.
The islands of the Pacific entreat our protection, and at our suit the
Empire of Japan breaks down its wall of exclusion….
George Bancroft
The Progress of Mankind (1854)
Point 2: In order to progress, each individual must
contribute to the whole, and the whole of society is more
intelligent than the wisest individual.
In order to advance human progress, it is every
individual’s responsibility “to contribute some share to
the general intelligence. The many are wiser than the
few; the multitude than the philosopher; the race than
the individual; and each successive generation than its
predecessor….”
Point 3: “The human mind tends not only toward unity,
but UNIVERSALITY.”
The world is just beginning to take to heart this principle
of the unity of the race, and to discover how fully and
how beneficently it is fraught with international,
political, and social revolutions.
The Progress of Mankind (1854)
George Bancroft
Main Points
1. “The many are wiser than the few; the multitude than the philosopher; the race than the
individual; and each successive generation that its predecessor…”
Here Bancroft is saying that the majority or the whole is better than the minority or the few.
This is an odd statement since the Bill of Rights was written in order to protect the important view of the
minority. If this statement was true, the Bill of Rights would never have been written. Emerson also
contradicts Bancroft’s opinion in Self-Reliance because he speaks of Jesus Christ, Socrates, and so forth
about how even though they were the individual in the group, they are revered to this day.
2. “How wonderful is it, then, that a being whose first condition was so weak, so humble, and so
naked, and of whom no monument older than forty centuries can be found, should have
accumulated such fruitful stores of intelligence, and have attained such perfection of culture!”
Bancroft believes that we, as a man, are no longer weak-minded and salvages. Instead man is
the utmost intelligent creature, and has obtained a ‘perfection of culture’. This statement is quite ignorant
considering he is only speaking about white males, and white males are the one who condemn AfricanAmericans to slavery and an uneducated life, and also condemn white women as only being child-bearers
and housewives.
3. “Yet progress of liberty, while it has made her less conspicuous, has redeemed her into the
possession of the full dignity of her nature, has made her not man’s slave, but his companion, his
counsellor, and fellow-martyr; and, for an occasional ascendancy in political affairs, has
substituted the uniform enjoyment of domestic equality.”
Bancroft believes that in his society to date, that women have become liberated. Women walk
side by side with their husbands. Women at this time had no voice at all, except for the occasional
husband who may listen to what his wife says. Not until many years later did women have any say so in
their government and who ran it.
My Bondage and My Freedom
Fredrick Douglass (1855)
Main Points
•
Slaves do not have family because they are considered chattel
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•
“A person of some consequence here in the north, sometimes designated father, is literally
abolished in slave law and slave practice.”
“They keep no family records with marriages, births, and deaths.”
“It is a successful method of obliterating from the mind and heart of the slave, all just ideas of
the sacredness of the family, as an institution.”
Fathers are nonexistent in slavery
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–
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–
“Its laws do not recognize their existence in the social arrangements of the plantation.”
“He may be a freeman; and yet his child may be a chattel.”
“Indeed, he may be, and often is, master and father to the same child.”
“by the laws of slavery, children, in all cases, are reduced to the condition of their mothers.”
“Men do not love those who remind them of their sins unless thy have a mind re repent – and
the mulatto child’s face is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the
child.”
• Ignorance is a high virtue in the slave system
– “Ignorance is a high virtue in a human chattel; and as the master studies
to keep the slave ignorant, the slave is cunning enough to make the
master think he succeeds…”
• Necessary rules of slavery, thought by masters, to manage their
human chattel
– Teaching slaves to read “was unlawful, that it was also unsafe, and
could only lead to mischief.”
– “he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it.”
“If you teach that nigger how to read the bible, there will be no keeping
him,” “it would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave…. If you learn
him now to read, he’ll want to know how to write; and this accomplished,
he’ll be running away with himself.”
The effects of the master’s words on
Douglass:
“His iron sentences –cold and harsh- sunk deep into my heart and
stirred up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened
within me a slumber train of vital thought”
“the white man’s power, to perpetuate the enslavement of the black
man.”
“Very well,” thought I; “knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I
instinctively assented to the proposition; and from that moment I
understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom…”
Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Position in society:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mulatto
Enslaved women
Mother
Fugitive slave
Abolitionist
Writer
(Linda Brent)
Major Issues:
• Slavery and the treatment
of slaves
• Civil War began in 1861
About the book
• Only book length slave narrative written by
a woman
• Went against traditional 19th century
values
• One of the first open discussions about
sexual harassment and abuse endured by
slave women
Main Points
• Slavery was an evil that contaminated
many Southern families, making them
and their society in many ways
dysfunctional.
• Slaves were their master’s property
• The mistress was jealous and had rage
towards the helpless victim
• Being beautiful was a curse
• Southern women often married men
knowing they had fathered slave children
Alexander Stephens
Vice-president of the Confederacy
Alexander Stephens
Slavery and the Confederacy (1861)
1. With the Independence of the Confederate States of America, the
South will no longer suffer from the oppressive tariffs of the United
States’ federal government. (p. 62.)
2. The foundations of the Confederacy rest “upon the great truth that
the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination
to the superior race is his natural and moral condition.” (pp. 62-63.)
3. “The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for
that condition which he occupies in our system [(i.e. slavery)].” (p.
63.)
4. The truth of the Negro’s inferiority “has been slow in the process of
its development, like all other truths in the various departments of
science.” (p. 63.)
5. Whites teach Blacks how to work, as well as how to feed and clothe
themselves. (p. 63.)
6. “Our object is Peace, not only with the North, but with the world…
The ideal of coercing us, or subjugating us, is utterly preposterous.”
(p. 65.)
Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer
Reverend Benjamin Morgan Palmer
Slavery a Divine Trust: Duty of the South to Preserve and
Perpetuate it
1. The South’s providential trust “is to conserve and to perpetuate
the institution of slavery as now existing….”
2. The South needs slavery to support its material interests.
3. White slave owners act as guardians of their black slaves.
Blacks are like helpless children who the slave owner protects.
4. “Freedom would be their doom.”
5. Slaves “form parts of our households, even as our children….”
6. The world should FEAR abolition. The world is more dependent
on slavery for its wealth than ever, and if slavery ends, the world
economy will totter.
7. The South defends the cause of God and religion, since the
“Abolition spirit is undeniably atheistic….”
Rabbi Morris J. Raphall
POINT 1:
The Bible does not condemn slavery.
However, it does condemn coveting
another’s property, including
another’s slaves.
POINT 2:
Abolitionists, such as Reverend
Henry Ward Beecher, are inventing
new sins when they claim that
slavery is evil. By doing this they are
insulting and exasperating
“thousands of God-fearing, lawabiding citizens” and have pushed
the country toward civil war.
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
POINT 1: “…The whole nation is
guilty [regarding slavery]….”
POINT 2: “Our civilization has
not begotten humanity and
respect for others’ rights, nor a
spirit of protection to the
weak….”
Main Points from Palmer
• It is the South’s duty to protect them so
freedom would not be good for the slaves.
• Slavery is a matter of self-preservation for
the South.
• “The Abolition spirit is undeniably
atheistic.”
Main Points from Raphall
• He condemns the North for denouncing the
South for slavery on religious grounds, he says
the bible allows for slavery.
• Used examples from the bible to back his
sermon. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s
house, or his field, or his male slave, or his
female slave, or his ox, or his ass, or aught that
belongeth to thy neighbor” (Ibid.xx 17;v.21).
Main Points from Beecher
• The sins of the South are also the sins of the North. “In
one age they break out in one way, and in another age in
another way; but they are the same central sins, after
all.”
• Shows the North racism with Indians and Mexicans. “I
should neglect to mentions the sins of this nations
against the Indians, who as much as the slave is dumb,
but who, unlike the slave, has almost none to think of
him, and to speak of his wrongs.”
• Because the South is greedy and loves money this evil
happened.
THE STRENUOUS LIFE
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
(1858-1919)
Main Points
• Those who desire ease don’t deserve a
nation.
– “A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace
which springs merely from lack either of
desire or of power to strive after great things,
is as little worthy of a nation as of an
individual.
Main Points
• Leisure time is to be enjoyed but spent
wisely.
– During wisely used leisure time works such as
science, letters, art, historical research are
produced.
Main Points
• We must be concerned about what takes
place not only within our borders but
outside.
– “We cannot avoid the responsibilities that
confront us in Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, and
the Philippines. All we can decide is whether
we shall meet them in a way that will redound
to the national credit, or whether we shall
make of our dealings with these new
problems a dark and shameful page in our
history.”
Main Points
• We must be concerned about what takes
place not only within our borders but
outside.
– “We must build the isthmian canal, and we
must grasp the points of vantage which will
enable us to have our say in deciding the
destiny of the oceans of the East and West.”
Main Points
• Army needs complete reorganization
through legislation.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
• American’s constantly are dealing with
outside entities both in political and
economical standings.
Frederick
Jackson
Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History
(1873)
AMERICAN HISTORY IN A LARGE DEGREE HAS BEEN A HISTORY OF THE
COLONIZATION OF THE WEST. Up to our own day American history has been in
a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence
of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American
settlement westward, explain American development. p. 76.
THE FRONTIER HAS SHAPED THE AMERICAN CHARACTER: American social
development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This
perennial, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward-with its few
opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society,
furnish the forces dominating American character. The true point of view in the
history of this nation is not the Atlantic coast, it is the Great West. p. 76.
The frontier is the line of most rapid and effective Americanization. p. 77.
The frontier individualism has from the beginning promoted democracy. p. 83.
THE FRONTIER WAS THE CRUCIBLE OF AMERICANIZATION. In the crucible of
the frontier the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a
mixed race, English in neither nationality nor characteristics. p. 82.
Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in
American History (1873)
THE AMERICAN FRONTIER HAS HELPED US UNITE AS A
COUNTRY.
The effect of the Indian fronteir as a consolidating agent in our
history is important.
The Indian was a common danger, demanding united action. p.
80
THE AMERICAN FRONTIER HAS CULTIVATED AMERICAN
NATIONALISM.
Nothing works for nationalism like intercourse within the
nation. Mobility of population is death to localism, and the
western frontier worked irresistibly in unsettling population. p.
83.
THE AMERICAN INTELLECT OWES ITS STRIKING
CHARACTERISTICS TO THE FRONTIER.
The result is that to the frontier the American intellect owes its
striking characteristics. That coarseness and strength combined
with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of
mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material
things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that
restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for
good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which
comes with freedom--these are traits of the frontier, or traits called
out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the
days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New
World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the
people of the United States have taken their tone from the
incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even
been forced upon them. p. 85.
THE FRONTIER IS GONE.
And now, four centuries from the discovery of
America, at the end of a hundred years of life under
the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its
going has closed the first period of American history.
p. 85.
He would be a rash prophet who should assert that
the expansive character of American life has now
entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant
fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a
people, the American energy will continually demand
a wider field for its exercise. But never again will
such gifts of free land offer themselves. p. 85.
Bradwell v. The State of Illinois
(1873), U.S. Supreme Court
Main Point #1:
Citizenship does not give one
the right, under the
fourteenth amendment, to
practice law in the courts of
a state.
“We agree with [counsel] that there are
privileges and immunities belonging to
citizens of the United States, in that
relation and character, and that it is
these and these alone which a State is
forbidden to abridge. But the right to
admission to practice in the courts of a
State is not one of them. This right in no
sense depends on citizenship of the
United States.” pp. 67-68.
Justice Bradley
Myra Bradwell
Main Point #2: Men and women are very different. Women are naturally timid and
delicate and there are many occupations for which they are unfit. Man is woman’s
protector and defender.
…The civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in
the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should be,
woman's protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which
belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.
p. 69.
Main Point #3: Women belong to the domestic sphere, and should not adopt a career
distinct and independent from that of her husband.
The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance,
as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which
properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to
say identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family
institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent
career from that of her husband. p. 69.
Main Point #4: God has given women the role of wives and mothers. This is a natural
law to which we must adapt, and not be persuaded by exception cases.
The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign
offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of civil
society must be adapted to the general constitution of things, and cannot be based
upon exceptional cases. p. 69.
Historical Significance
•
About a hundred years later, the Court began employing the Fourteenth
Amendment as a way of overturning gender-discriminatory state laws.
In doing so, however, it would typically use the "equal protection"
clause, rather than the clause cited in Bradwell, "privileges and
immunities."
•
In 1882, however, the Illinois legislature passed a law guaranteeing all
persons, regardless of sex, the right to select a profession as they
wished. Although Bradwell never reapplied for admission to the bar, the
Illinois Supreme Court informed her that her original application had
been accepted. As a result, she became the first woman member of the
Illinois State Bar Association; she was also the first woman member of
the Illinois Press Association. On March 28, 1892, she was admitted to
practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
•
In addition to her efforts to win admission to the bar, Bradwell played a
role in the broader women's rights movement. She was active in the
Illinois Woman Suffrage Association and helped form the American
Woman Suffrage Association. She was also influential in the passage of
laws by the Illinois legislature that gave married women the right to
keep wages they earned and protected the rights of widows.
•
Bradwell died February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois.
Margaret Sanger
Main Points of Margaret Sanger
1. Woman’s inferior position in the early 20th century.
a. The “weaker and gentler half”
b. Man property and the bearer of children
2. If women take control of their reproduction, it will change the
world for the better.
a. “War, famine, poverty and oppression of workers will
continue while man makes life cheap."
b. Cheaper workers and child labor factories would not exist
3. Man vs. Woman’s responsibility concerning reproduction.
4. Women should be educated about the reproductive system
and birth control.
William Graham
Sumner
• American sociologist and
political economist
• Firm believer in laissez-faire,
individual liberty, and Social
Darwinism
Social Darwinism
• social existence is a competitive struggle among
individuals possessing different natural
capacities and traits
– those with better traits succeed, becoming wealthy
and powerful
– those lacking in inner discipline or intelligence sink
into poverty
• Government must not interfere to improve
conditions because this would only result in the
preservation of bad traits while penalizing those
who possess good traits
Sumner & Social Darwinism
• Competition for property and social status
resulted in a beneficial elimination of the ill
adapted
• Conditions that needed reform were the proof
that society was functioning as it should
• Opposed all reform proposals because they
would impose excessive economic burdens on
the middle class, the "forgotten man"
• Feared the development of a welfare state
What the Social Classes Owe to
Each Other
• Sumner’s questions (p. 71)
– Is it the duty & burden of one class to struggle
to solve the problems of another class?
– Does one class have the right to put demands
on another class?
– Does the State owe anything more to the
people other than peace, order, & the
protection of rights?
Main Points
1. He who does not contribute to society
is a burden on society.
It is not one person’s fault that another
person is poor. Therefore, it is not one
person’s responsibility to help someone
out of poverty.
Main Points
2. Each person’s main responsibility is
to take care of himself; mind his
own business.
We won’t have to worry about taking care
of the rest of society. By taking care of
our own responsibilities, society, as a
result, will also be taken care of.
Main Points
3. The government does not make
money. The only way to give
money to one person is to tax
another person.
In essence, for the government to
finance many reforms, it will have to
rob Peter to pay Paul.
“…equality necessitates a sacrifice of
liberty.” (p. 71)
Main Points
4. The government’s only
responsibility is to provide the
right of opportunity for success,
not the guarantee of success.
“They pertain to the conditions of the
struggle for existence, not to any of
the results of it; to the pursuit of
happiness, not the possession of
happiness.” (p. 75)
Thorstein Veblen
Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)
Main Points
• The leisure class is protected from economic
necessities.
• The leisure class does not have to “change their
habit of life” and “theoretical views” because
they are not a natural part of the community.
• The office of the leisure class is to hinder
social evolution and to conserve what is
obsolete.
• The abjectly poor are working so hard that they
do not have the energy to be innovative.
Main Points
• The conservatism of the wealthy is so obvious, it has
become recognized as a mark of respectability
• Conservatism is a part of the wealthy class and is
proper, while innovation is part of the lower class and is
vulgar.
• The leisure class hinders cultural development:
– By the inaction of the class itself.
– Through its narrow example of obvious waste an
conservatism.
– Through the system of the unequal distribution of
wealth.
Historical Significance
• Veblen did not achieve popular acclaim in his
time but has since exerted influence.
• The decade following his death, his ideas
peaked, as the Great Depression and the rise of
fascism in Europe seemed to legitimize his
predictions regarding capitalism.
• Many of the prominent figures supporting
Roosevelt’s New Deal counted themselves as
followers of Veblen.
• The concept of conspicuous consumption has
been carried forward to this day, and is often
used to criticize advertising and to explain why
poorer classes have been unable to advance
economically.
Ida B. Wells
A Red Record
Background
• Ida B. Wells was born the daughter of
slave parents on July 16, 1862 in Holy
Springs, Mississippi
• Her parents and siblings died of yellow
fever when she was only 14.
• She attended school at the Missouri
Freedman’s school and Rust University
• Wells began teaching school at 14
• In 1891, she was barred from teaching for
criticizing the educational opportunities for
African-Americans.
• She then invested her savings into the
Memphis Free Press.
• In 1892, she outspokenly criticized the
lynching of three prominent AfricanAmerican businessmen. As a result, her
newspaper office was destroyed.
• In 1895, she wrote for the Conservator
and published The Red Record, which
was a book length expose of lynching.
• After a life of organizing and writing, she
died in Chicago on March 25, 1931.
Main Points
• Ida Wells documented extralegal lynchings to expose
their illegality and barbarity.
• The real condition of the child was not as brutal as
claimed
– “the father and his friends, at once shamefully
exaggerated the facts and declared that the babe had
been ruthlessly assaulted and then killed.
– “the white people of the community made it a point to
exaggerate every detail of the awful affair, and to
inflame the public mind so that nothing less than
immediate and violent death would satisfy the
populace.”
– “Person’s who saw the after its death, have stated,
under the most solemn pledge to truth, that there was
no evidence of such an assault as was published at
the time, only a slight abrasion and discoloration was
noticeable and that mostly about the neck.
• The authorities made an example out of
Smith.
– “They determined to make an example of him
and proceeded to carry out their purpose with
unspeakably greater ferocity than that which
characterized the half crazy object of their
revenge…”
• People from various parts of Texas and
Arkansas came to see the lynching.
Thousands gathered in Paris, Texas, for the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith.
Spectacle lynching. The Burning and Lynching of
Jesse Washington, Waco Texas 1916.
Although accurate figures on the lynching of blacks are
lacking, one study estimates that in Texas between 1870
and 1900, extralegal justice was responsible for the
murder of about 500 blacks—only Georgia and Mississippi
exceeded Texas’s numbers in this grisly record. Between
1900 and 1910, Texas mobs murdered more than 100
black people. In 1916 at Waco, approximately 10,000
whites turned out in holiday-like atmosphere to watch a
mob mutilate and burn a black man named Jesse
Washington. (Source: Calvert, De Leon and Cantrell, The
History of Texas, pp. 189, 261-262.)
“How does it feel to be a
problem?”
W.E.B. Du Bois,
1868-1963
W.E.B. Du Bois, Strivings of the Negro People
(1897)
Main Points:
1. Being a problem [i.e. being an black person in
19th c. America] is a strange experience.
[T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a
veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American
world,--a world which yields him no selfconsciousness, but only lets him see himself
through the revelation of the other world. It is a
peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this
sense of always looking at one’s self through the
eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape
of a world that looks on in amused contempt and
pity. (p. 88)
2. The African American feels his duality of being both African
and American.
One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring
ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps
it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro
is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain selfconscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better
and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older
selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for
America has too much to teach the world and Africa; he does
not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white
Americanism, for he believes — foolishly, perhaps, but
fervently — that Negro blood has yet a message for the world.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a
Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon
by his fellows, without losing the opportunity of selfdevelopment. (p. 88)
3. Prejudice and discrimination keep the freedman oppressed.
The freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
Whatever of lesser good may have come in these years of
change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the
Negro people…. (p. 88)
4. Americans, including white Americans, should appreciate
the Negro race.
Work, culture, and liberty,--all these we need, not singly, but
together; for to-day these ideals among the Negro people are
gradually coalescing, and finding a higher meaning in the
unifying ideal of race,--the ideal of fostering the traits and
talents of the Negro, not in opposition to, but in conformity
with, the greater ideals of the American republic, in order
that some day, on American soil, two world races may give
each to each those characteristics which both so sadly lack.
(p. 88)
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Niagara Movement, (1905)
1. We should meet, despite the existence of other
organizations for Negroes.
2. We must complain about common wrongs
toward blacks.
We must complain. Yes, plain, blunt complaint,
ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of
dishonesty and wrong—this is the ancient,
unerring way to liberty, and we must follow it. (p.
100)
3. In not a single instance has the justice of our
demands been denied, but then come the excuses.
Joseph Lochner
U.S. Supreme Court,
Lochner v. New York (1905)
Mr. Justice Peckham delivers
the Court Opinion:
1. The New York statute limiting the number of hours a baker can work
in a week interferes with the right of contract between the employer
and the employees.
2. No State can deprive any person of life, liberty or property without
due process of law. The right to purchase or to sell labor is part of
the liberty protected by this amendment.
3. There is a limit to the valid exercise of the police power of the
state.
4. There is no reasonable ground for interfering with the liberty of
person or the right of free contract, by determining the hours of
labor, in the occupation of a baker.
5. There must be more than the mere fact of the possible existence of
some small amount of unhealthiness to warrant legislative
interference with liberty.
Mr. Justice Harlan…dissenting.
The decision violates states rights.
“Let the State alone I the management of its
purely domestic affairs, so long as it does
not appear beyond all question that it has
violated the Federal Constitution. This view
necessarily results from the principle that
the health and safety of the people of a
State are primarily for the State to guard and
protect.”
Mr. Justice Holmes dissenting
The majority has a right to embody their
opinions in law.
The constitution is not intended to embody a
particular economic theory, wither of
paternalism and the organic relation of the
citizen to the State or of laissez faire. The
Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s Social Statistics.