The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
The forgotten man is neither the pauper nor the millionaire. He is the ordinary citizen who goes about his business, pays his taxes, and watches as politicians and special interests conspire to spend his money on schemes that benefit anyone but him. This is the provocateur who coined that phrase, and these essays reveal why his voice still cuts through a century later with startling clarity. William Graham Sumner was the most feared intellectual in late nineteenth-century America. A Yale professor who believed that government intervention in the economy was not merely inefficient but morally corrupting, he attacked protectionism as a scheme by the few to steal from the many, defended sound money as the foundation of honest commerce, and argued that the State's power to tax was a power to destroy. These essays, written between 1883 and 1914, constitute a relentless brief for classical liberal individualism against every form of economic paternalism. Sumner's ideas have been dismissed, attacked, and periodically revived. But if you want to understand the intellectual foundations of limited government and free trade in American thought, you must reckon with this fierce, uncompromising voice.
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“All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow-men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others.””
— William Graham Sumner
“There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue.””
— William Graham Sumner
“Such is the Forgotten Man. He works, he votes, generally he prays”
— William Graham Sumner
“The advantage of some is won by an equivalent loss of others.””
— William Graham Sumner
“What man ever blamed himself for his misfortune?””
— William Graham Sumner
“As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X… What I want to do is to look up C… I call him the Forgotten Man… He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.””
— William Graham Sumner
“The Forgotten Man is delving away in patient industry, supporting his family, paying his taxes, casting his vote, supporting the church and the school, reading his newspaper, and cheering for the politician of his admiration, but he is the only one for whom there is no provision in the great scramble and the big divide.””
— William Graham Sumner
“Vice is its own curse. If we let nature alone, she cures vice by the most frightful penalties.””
— William Graham Sumner
“The pensions in England used to be given to aristocrats who had political power, in order to corrupt them. Here””
— William Graham Sumner
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Sumner, William Graham. The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-forgotten-man-and-other-essays-476dcd1b-d3fa-4632-9a30-0b4e542e3628.Sumner, W. G. (n.d.). The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-forgotten-man-and-other-essays-476dcd1b-d3fa-4632-9a30-0b4e542e3628Sumner, William Graham. The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-forgotten-man-and-other-essays-476dcd1b-d3fa-4632-9a30-0b4e542e3628.
