American Entrepreneurs and the Horatio Alger Myth

1978 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 439-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Sarachek
Keyword(s):  
General Population ◽  
Working Class ◽  
American Business ◽  
Business Elite ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Horatio Alger ◽  
General Business

Since 1925 a number of scholars have conducted studies of the general business elite in America. Their studies have concluded that the American business elite has been predominantly native born, urban, better educated than the general population, and has originated disproportionately from higher economic classes. These conclusions are not surprising. It might have been surprising if the business elite were found to have emerged predominantly from the poor and less educated, and the immigrant, farm or working-class populations. Such origins would infer a rapid displacement of elite members, the possibility of rapid and massive disaggregation of family fortunes, and the loss of family aggrandizement as a motivating consideration in the minds of aspiring businessmen. This, however, was apparently not the case.

Abdullah Quilliam

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Siddique Seddon
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Political Influences ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
Class Struggles ◽  
Legal Advisor ◽  
Shed Light

This chapter explores the religious and political influences that shaped Abdullah Quilliam’s Muslim missionary activities, philanthropic work and scholarly writings in an attempt to shed light on his particular political convictions as manifest through his unique religiopolitical endeavors. It focuses especially on Quilliam’s Methodist upbringing in Liverpool and his support of the working classes. It argues that Quilliam’s religious and political activism, although primarily inspired by his conversion to Islam, was also shaped and influenced by the then newly emerging proletariat, revolutionary socialism. Quilliam’s continued commitment to the burgeoning working-class trades union movement, both as a leading member representative and legal advisor, coupled with his reputation as the "poor man’s lawyer" because of his frequent fee-free representations for the impoverished, demonstrates his empathetic proximity to working-class struggles.

Mary Barton

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Deep Sympathy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Class Community

‘It's the masters as has wrought this woe; it's the masters as should pay for it.’ Set in Manchester in the 1840s - a period of industrial unrest and extreme deprivation - Mary Barton depicts the effects of economic and physical hardship upon the city's working-class community. Paralleling the novel's treatment of the relationship between masters and men, the suffering of the poor, and the workmen's angry response, is the story of Mary herself: a factory-worker's daughter who attracts the attentions of the mill-owner's son, she becomes caught up in the violence of class conflict when a brutal murder forces her to confront her true feelings and allegiances. Mary Barton was praised by contemporary critics for its vivid realism, its convincing characters and its deep sympathy with the poor, and it still has the power to engage and move readers today. This edition reproduces the last edition of the novel supervised by Elizabeth Gaskell and includes her husband's two lectures on the Lancashire dialect.

Richard Whately and political economy in school books, 1833-80

1966 ◽  
Vol 15 (58) ◽  
pp. 131-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.M. Goldstrom
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Hours ◽  
Richard Whately ◽  
School Books

Throughout the nineteenth century, books, pamphlets and periodicals offered widely-ranging advice to the working class. One theme, appearing about 1820, was political economy: ‘Next to religion’, a royal commission reported, ‘the knowledge most important to a labouring man is that of the causes which regulate the amount of his wages, the hours of his work, the regularity of his employment, and the prices of what he consumes’. And Richard Whately, former Drummond Professor of political economy at Oxford, now archbishop of Dublin, urged similarly the need to teach political economy to the poor : ‘The lower orders’, he said, ‘would not … be, as now, liable to the misleading of every designing demagogue … If they were well grounded in the outlines of the science, it would go further towards rendering them provident, than any other scheme that could be devised.’

Social Mobility and the American Business Elite

2018 ◽  
pp. 114-144
Author(s):  
Seymour Martin Lipset ◽  
Reinhard Bendix
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
American Business ◽  
Business Elite

The Tax Revolt

2021 ◽  
pp. 97-101
Author(s):  
Samuel Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Small Businesses ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Fortune 500 ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Short Answer ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Benefits

This chapter looks at state shrinking and tax cutting, describing how political change in capitalism would come to be dominated by a conservative middle class rather than a leftist working class. Why was there going to be a middle-class tax rebellion? The short answer is that most of the taxes under capitalism are paid by two groups: small businesses and rich individuals. Fortune 500 corporations and large banks pay very few taxes; this group can be called monopoly capital because they are entitled, fully legally, to a wide variety of exemptions that they make full use of. Meanwhile, the poor pay very few taxes because they simply do not have the money. Ultimately, small businesses, wealthy individuals, and the middle class are paying a disproportionately large amount of the expenses of the government while receiving a disproportionately small amount of government benefits. This makes those taxpayers resentful of government bureaucrats, welfare programs, and government waste.

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