What Social Classes Owe to Each OtherWritten in 1883, this political and economic treatise is even more pertinent today than at the time of its first publication. Sumner champions the rights of the individual over the state and organized pressure groups. He defines the important role that the "Forgotten Man" must play in our social and economic development. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abuse accumulation All-of-us aristocracies assume burden capi capital capitalists chances cial civil claim contract develop discussion doctrine earn earth economic effort employed employers employés equal existence fact fallacy favor feudal force Forgotten free democracy friends of humanity gain give guarantees happiness Hence ical industry inherited institutions interests jobbery labor and self-denial land laws legislative liberty limit living matter means mediæval ment mind modern moral Nature never notion ochlocracies once one's organization parties paternal philanthropists philosophers plutocracy plutocratic political poor quackery question race racy raise wages reason reform relations rich rights and duties schemes sense social classes social doctors social philosophers society sovereign spect strike struggle suffer supply and demand sympathy teetotaler theories thing thread thread-mill tion trades-unions true United universal suffrage vices waste watering stocks wealth workmen
Popular passages
Page 131 - Nature's remedies against vice are terrible. She removes the victims without pity. A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things.
Page 148 - It is plain that the Forgotten Man and the Forgotten Woman are the real productive strength of the country. The Forgotten Man works and votes — generally he prays — but his chief business in life is to pay. His name never gets into the newspapers except when he marries or dies. He is an obscure man. He may grumble sometimes to his wife, but he does not frequent the grocery, and he does not talk politics at the tavern. So he is forgotten. Yet who is there whom the statesman, economist, and social...
Page 135 - If there were such things as natural rights, the question would arise, Against whom are they good? Who has the corresponding obligation to satisfy these rights? There can be no rights against nature, except to get out of her whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle for existence stated over again. The common assertion is that the rights are good against society; that is, that society is bound to obtain and secure them for the persons interested. Society, however, is only the persons...
Page 124 - They therefore ignore entirely the source from which they must draw all the energy which they employ in their remedies, and they ignore all the effects on other members of society than the ones they have in view. They are always under the dominion of the superstition of government, and, forgetting that a government produces nothing at all, they leave out of sight the first fact to be remembered in all social discussion — that the State cannot get a cent for any man without taking it from some other...
Page 14 - God. and Nature have ordained the chances and conditions of life on earth once for all. The case cannot be reopened. We cannot get a revision of the laws of human life.
Page 34 - The notion of civil liberty which we have .- inherited is that of a status created for the individual T>y laws and institutions, the effect of which is that each man is guaranteed the use of all his own powers exclusively for his own welfare.
Page 22 - When I have read certain of these discussions I have thought that it must be quite disreputable to be respectable, quite dishonest to own property, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn one's own living, and that the only really admirable person was the good-for-nothing.
Page 132 - There is no pressure on A and B. They are having their own way, and they like it. There is rarely any pressure on D. He does not like it, and evades it. The pressure all comes on C. The question then arises, Who is C ? He is the man who wants alcoholic liquors for any honest purpose whatsoever, who would use his liberty without abusing it, who would occasion no public question, and trouble nobody at all. He is the Forgotten Man again, and as soon as he is drawn from his obscurity we see that he is...
Page 21 - Under the names of the poor and the weak, the negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent are fastened upon the industrious and prudent as a responsibility and a duty.
Page 24 - Poverty is the best policy. If you get wealth, you will have to support other people; if you do not get wealth, it will be the duty of other people to support you.
References to this book
Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification Gerhard Emmanuel Lenski No preview available - 1984 |
Protecting the Vulnerable: A Re-Analysis of Our Social Responsibilities Robert E. Goodin No preview available - 1985 |