Alger, Horatio, Jr

24 ALCOHOL Rorabaugh, W. J. The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition. capitalist marketplace. As an author of popular fi ction, New Yo rk: Oxford University Press, 1979. Alger's own livelihood was uncertain, and he had to cater to mass-marketing structures and an emerging commodity RELATED ENTRIES culture in order to succeed. While his stories often celebrate Advice Literature; Artisan; Fraternal Organizations; the small producer values of a bygone past, the sentimental Immigration.; Industrialization; Leisure; Male Friendship; Men's relation between the wealthy patron and the plucky boy in Clubs; Middle-Class Manhood; Republicanism; Self-Control; Alger's stories, which have a decidedly homoerotic tone, can Sports; Suffragism; Temperance; Urbanization; Wo rk; Working be read as a support of capitalist class and market struc Class Manhood tures. By providing guidance and counsel and opening a -Wa lter F. Bell path toward economic opportunity, the businessmen in Alger's stories almost always uplift and assimilate the "gen tle boys" (who are also potential future members of "the ALGER, HORATIO, JR. dangerous classes") into the ranks of the petit bourgeoisie. As their reward, the protagonists achieve a modest degree of 1832-1899 social mobility offered by an emerging corporate, capitalist Author order, but never gain great wealth, fo r which they do not The author of over one hundred novels, Horatio Alger, Jr., has express a desire. Excluding women from the plots, Alger's come to be associated with a rags-to-riches narrative that stories affirm capitalism as a male enterprise and the mar combines moral uplift with social mobility. In the majority of ketplace as a male domain. The masculine bond between his novels, a young, destitute street boy is discovered by an patron and street boy follows capitalist structures of older, wealthy man who enlists the boy's services, offers assis exchange, while protecting both from the marketplace's tance and guidance, and enables him to ascend the social lad exploitative aspects. der. Alger's novels address the consequences of urbanization Alger's tales reflect the close relationship between eco and economic transformation fo r changing notions of man nomic change and shifting articulations of masculinity in hood in Gilded Age America. Gilded Age America. To rn between a celebration of pre-mar Alger's emphasis on paternalistic relations as a means of ket small-producer values (and paternalistic nurture) and an uplift may have a biographical background: In 1866, Alger had acceptance of capitalist market structures, Alger's narratives to leave his post as minister of a Unitarian church in Brewster, exhibit an ambivalent relation to capitalism and its mecha Massachusetts, over charges of having sexually abused young nisms of exchange. boys. Upon arriving in New Yo rk, Alger befriended several of the street urchins that served as inspiration fo r his novels. BIBLIOGRAPHY Later in his life, Alger appears to have assumed the role of Moon, Michael. "'The Gentle Boy fr om the Dangerous Classes': wealthy patron of street boys, entertaining and helping hun Pederasty, Domesticity, and Capitalism in Horatio Alger." dreds of these boys. Representations 19 (Summer 1987): 87-1 10. Alger's stories present a concept of republican manhood Nackenoff, Carol. The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and that predates the emergence of market capitalism. As such, American Political Discourse. New Yo rk: Oxford University Press, they emphasize homosocial, paternalistic nurture, rather 1994. than celebrating the ideals of self-made manhood and entre Scharnhorst,Gary , with Jack Bales. The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. preneurial masculinity encouraged by the laissez-faire capi Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. talist marketplace of the late nineteenth century. Lacking in Zuckerman, Michael. "The N ursery Tales of Horatio Alger." fo rmal education, Alger's protagonists have a strong moral American Quarterly 24, no. 2 (May 1972): 191-209. sense and work ethic, and they tend to disrespect any social hierarchy not based on merit. Frequently defying an arro FURTHER READING gant superior, Alger's protagonists willingly and eagerly Banta, Martha. Failure and Success in America: A Literary Debate. respond to the offer of guidance and assistance from nur Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978. turing wealthy men, usually business owners. Hilkey, Judy A. Character Is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood On the other hand, Alger, his stories, and the model of man in Gilded Age America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina hood he represents are implicated in the late-nineteenth-century Press, 1997. AMERICAN DREAM 25 Weiss, Richard. The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to contributed to a rationalized lifestyle that made capitalist Norman Vincent Peale. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969. development possible. Although women could enact these values within the private sphere, men involved in the public SELECTED WRITINGS arenas of politics and the market gained material success Alger, Horatio, Jr. Fame and Fortune. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, through their demonstration of these qualities. 1868. ---. Ragged Dick, Or, Street Life in New Yo rk with the Boot The Colonial Period Blacks. Boston: Loring, 1868. The explicit fo rmulation of the American Dream began in the ---. Ben, the Luggage Boy, or, Among the Wharves. Philadelphia: eighteenth century. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (writ Porter & Coates, 1870. ten between 1771 and 1789), which has established him as the ---. Rufus and Rose, or, The Fortunes of Rough and Ready. colonial era's archetypal self-made man, led Weber to identify Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1870. him as the personificationof the capitalist work ethic. Through ---. Rough and Ready, or, Life among the New Yo rk Newsboys. his own example, Franklin promoted an organized and virtu Philadelphia: J. C. Winston, 1897. ous lifestyle as the best means to secure wealth in an expanding commercial economy. J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur offered RELATED ENTRIES an agrarian counterpart: Touting the promise of American Advice Literature; American Dream; Boyhood; Capitalism; Gilded agrarian life, he suggested in Letters from an American Fa rmer Age; Homosexuality; Individualism; Male Friendship; Middle (1782) that the availability of land in America promised the Class Manhood; Republicanism; Self-Made Man; Urbanization; individual who worked hard the opportunity to become a "new Victorian Era man." Configured as a product of character and self-determi -Thomas Winter nation, the American Dream of wealth and success thus became a defining aspiration fo r white American men. AMERICAN DREAM The Nineteenth Century If Franklin and Crevecoeur embodied fo rmulas by which The phrase "American Dream" refers to a set of promises and economic success could be achieved, the market revolution, ambitions closely identifiedwith national identity, particularly urbanization, and industrialization, provided many economic opportunity and prosperity, wealth and land own Americans in the nineteenth century with the conditions ership, and equal access to the "good life." This concept has necessary fo r its fulfillment and prompted the emergence of also been closely associated with American ideals of masculin a middle class that associated manliness with character and ity, and the notion of America as a land of opportunity has the achievement of success. The United States' rapidly nurtured an enduring cultural ideal in which success-not expanding cities offered business and industry as paths to the only as an American, but also as a man-has been measured in American Dream, and Horatio Alger's stories of impover predominantly economic terms. Furthermore, it has rein ished urban male characters rising to positions of affluence fo rced a race- and class-based ideal of manhood, for white encouraged a belief in economic mobility, the myth of the men, through their domination of the nation's power struc self-made man, and the notion that hard work would assure tures, have been most able to define, pursue, and fulfill the business success. Meanwhile, western expansion reinforced terms of the American Dream. the association between manhood, agrarianism, and the The interdependent relationship between masculinity, American Dream by bolstering American men's aspirations American identity, and material success can be traced back to to land ownership. By 1893, the historian Frederick Jackson what the German sociologist Max Weber identified as the Tu rner could affirmthat the interrelation between land avail Puritan origins of American capitalism. Although the doc ability, economic opportunity, and manhood was the defin trines of the firstPuritan colonies-and the vision of America ing feature of American history and the basis of American as a religious utopia-were short-lived, the practical tenets of national identity. In Turner's view, the availability of land in the Puritan lifestyle left an indelible stamp on conceptions the We st provided men with a chance to succeed, while the of the American Dream. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit practical experience of western life reinforced qualities of of Capitalism (1905), Weber argued that, removed from individualism, self-reliance, and perseverance, all considered their religious context, Puritan values of diligence and thrift essential to both success and manliness. .

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