Horatio Alger myth

The "Horatio Alger myth" is a criticism of the rags to riches message in books by Horatio Alger, Jr. (13 January 1832 - 18 July 1899). Alger wrote over 100 books for young working class males, beginning with Ragged Dick, which was published in 1867. His books have been described as rags to riches stories. “By leading exemplary lives, struggling valiantly against poverty and adversity,” Alger’s protagonists gain both wealth and honor, ultimately realizing the American Dream.

The characters in his formulaic stories sometimes improved their social position through auspicious accidents instead of hard work and denial.

Success of Alger's characters

The rags to riches theme which has been associated with Alger’s stories is somewhat inaccurate, as his heroes rarely become extremely wealthy. His characters usually hold “low-level jobs in companies, often attaining personal stability but not wealth or prominent position.” Some of Alger’s novels assert that material wealth is insignificant unless it is paired with middle-class respectability and a solid reputation. For Alger’s characters, wealth was the product of a meritocracy, and the direct consequence of “honesty, thrift , self-reliance, industry, a cheerful whistle and an open manly face.” However, in some of Alger’s works there is also an implied belief in hereditary determinism, explicitly contrasting achievement based on merit.

Criticism and analysis

Scholars have conflicting views over the validity of Horatio Alger's moral in his stories.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Alger’s works were virtually out of print and many commentators seemed to have regarded Alger as a propagandist, saying “the author who celebrated capitalist markets and insisted that in the United States, any poor boy with patience and an unwavering commitment to hard work can become a dazzling success.” While those moving between income brackets and improving their socio-economic status may not be experiencing dazzling success, there is some evidence that the United States is in fact a land of opportunity, highlighted by, “the potential greatness of the common man, rugged individualism, [and] economic triumph.”

Hunter Thompson

In his book, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, journalist Hunter Thompson made repeated references to Horatio Alger during his search for the American Dream. He called the Circus Circus, which he considered the main nerve of the American Dream "pure Horatio Alger." The final line of the book is Thompson saying that he thinks of himself as a "monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger. A Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident." Obviously, these could be seen as veiled criticisms of Horatio Alger, as often times his search for the American Dream was violent or disturbing and he searches for it through repeated abuse of dozens of dangerous drugs.

Michael Moore

Academy Award winning American filmmaker, author, and liberal political commentator Michael Moore is vocal in his opposition to the Horatio Alger myth. In 2003, Moore remarked, “So, here's my question: after fleecing the American public and destroying the American dream for most working people, how is it that, instead of being drawn and quartered and hung at dawn at the city gates, the rich got a big wet kiss from Congress in the form of a record tax break, and no one says a word? How can that be? I think it's because we're still addicted to the Horatio Alger fantasy drug. Despite all the damage and all the evidence to the contrary, the average American still wants to hang on to this belief that maybe, just maybe, he or she (mostly he) just might make it big after all.”

Max B. Sawicky

Max B. Sawicky, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute who has worked in the Office of State and Local Finance of the U.S. Treasury Department and the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, also refutes the Horatio Alger myth. In a column on the five leading concerns for populist economics, Sawicky wrote, “trade policy alone is woefully inadequate to significantly lightening the burdens of the working class…[Populism’s] point of departure is the domination of monied elites who jury rig commerce and call it free enterprise, who marginalize dissent and call it democracy. It rejects the Horatio Alger myth, with its false promise that if you study, work hard, and play by the rules, economic security will be yours.”

Harlon L. Dalton

Harlon L. Dalton, Professor of Law at Yale University, not only objects to the Horatio Alger myth, but also maintains that it is socially destructive. Dalton explains that the Horatio Alger myth conveys three basic messages, “(1) each of us is judged solely on her or his own merits; (2) we each have a fair opportunity to develop those merits; and (3) Each of them is, to be charitable, problematic. The first message is a variant on the rugged individualism ethos…In this form, the Horatio Alger myth suggests that success in life has nothing to do with pedigree, race, class background, gender, national origin, sexual orientation—in short, with anything beyond our individual control. Those variables may exist, but they play no appreciable role in how our actions are appraised."

Dalton also believes that the deep appeal of the Horatio Alger myth is that it allows and even pulls people in the direction they want to go. Psychologically, the Horatio Alger myth opens many doors. When the odds are stacked against you, one often has to convince himself that “there is a reason to get up in the morning.”

Dalton also asserts that the myth serves to maintain the racial pecking order. It does so by mentally bypassing the role of race in American society, by fostering beliefs that themselves serve to trivialize, if not erase, the social meaning of race. The Alger myth encourages people to blink at the many barriers to racial equality (historical, structural, and institutional) that litter the social landscape” and believe that all it takes to be successful in America is initiative, persistence, hard work, and pluck.

According to Dalton, there is a fundamental tension between the realization of the American Dream based on the Alger myth and the harsh realities of a racial caste system. Obviously, the main point of such a system is to promote and maintain inequality. Conversely, the main point of the Alger myth “is to proclaim that everyone can rise above her station in life. Despite this tension, it is possible for the myth to coexist with social reality. Not surprisingly, then, there are lots of Black folk who subscribe to the Alger myth and at the same time understand it to be deeply false. They live with the dissonance between myth and reality because both are helpful and healthful in dealing with ‘the adverse events of life.’ Many Whites, however, have a strong interest in resolving the dissonance in favor of the myth. Far from needing to be on guard against racial ‘threat[s] or challenge[s],’ they would just as soon put the ugliness of racism out of mind. For them, the Horatio Alger myth provides them the opportunity to do just that.”

The myth suggests we are judged solely on our individual merits, in turn implying that the caste has little practical meaning, apart from race-based advantages of disadvantages. Generally Whites are more successful than African Americans, as they are facilitated by their preferred social position, while African Americans believe that they can “simply lift themselves up by their own bootstraps”. It is in America's national interest, Dalton believes, to give the Horatio Alger myth a rest, because it is a mythology that assures us we can have it all, when in reality, “we live today in an era of diminished possibilities.”

Education

Education is another area where Horatio Alger's ideas have been criticized.

Education can be a means of maintaining class boundaries. Employers use education to determine who to hire, as education is used to select persons who have been socialized into the dominant status culture. Differential achievement in school occurs because of different expectations of administrators, teachers, and parents for students of different socio-economic backgrounds. Instead of mobility, childhood education merely reproduces the current social system. The wage gap between those with college degrees and others is growing. College tuition has increased dramatically and many can no longer afford college, and financial aid options have not kept up with increases in tuition.

The real median income on has increased steadily since 1947, from $22,000 to just over $50,000 in 2003. Since 1979, incredibly divergent income patterns have developed between the rich and the poor. There has been an almost negligible growth for the median and 20th percentile, with explosive growth at the top 95th percentile. The increase in income inequality since the 1970s can be described as the middle class squeeze, with the greatest changes in the bottom third and the top third. In the bottom third, income is generally as it was almost 30 years ago. The top 1% of the population have seen their incomes more than double. Among the poorest people, income grew during 1995 and 2004 due to the increase in annual hours worked, but the increase was very small. The opposite is true for the elite. According to Gregory Mantsios, director of Working Education at CUNY, “the wealthiest 20 percent of the American population holds 85 percent of the total household wealth in the country,” a statistic that does not offer much hope for the remaining percentage of the population.

The poor are becoming relatively poorer and owing more money. In 1985, the average working-class citizen owed $500, compared to $8,000 today; adjusting for inflation, this is an increase of a factor of eight. For the top 5%, wealth (income and assets) has increased from about $500,000 to about $1,000,000. In 2005, the average family had a net worth of $80,000. The poverty level is also much too low for the Horatio Alger myth to be applied in modern society: “a total of 14 percent of the American population – that is, one of every seven – live below the government’s official poverty line (calculated in 1996 at $7,992 for an individual and $16,209 for a family of four)”.

Income disparities are tied to ethnicity as well. Ninety-one percent of whites have assets, while just 64% of African Americans have assets. Whites on average had parents with (a) mean net worth of $505,800 ($198,700 median net worth). African Americans mean net worth is $95,000 ($47,000 median net worth). The aforementioned facts are questioned, as an alternate source suggests the mean net worth for Whites is $90,000 and for African Americans is $17,000. As a final point, Mantsios provides statistics revealing the likelihood of being poor based on sex and ethnicity: “one in eleven for white men and women, one in four for white female head of households, one in three for Hispanic men and women, one in two for Hispanic female head of households, one of three for black men and women, and one in two for black female head of households.”

See also

• Wealth inequality in the United States
• Gini coefficient
• Income disparity
• Economic mobility
• Social mobility