Opinion | Nicholas Kristof on Horatio Alger’s ‘Ragged Dick’

Horatio Alger wrote 100-odd books, and his rags-to-riches tales bought an astounding 20 million copies. He’s not learn a lot nowadays, however I ponder if Horatio Alger tales didn’t go away an imprint on the American soul. An unhelpful one.

Alger’s first blockbuster novel, revealed in 1867 as a serial, was “Ragged Dick.” Its hero is a 14-year-old shoeshine boy who sleeps on the streets of New York Metropolis. Whereas Dick is illiterate and likes to gamble, he has coronary heart, a willingness to work arduous and a powerful sense of honesty.

Likelihood encounters with rich individuals lead Dick to know that he can “flip over a brand new leaf, and attempt to develop up ’spectable.” So he stops playing, buys a comb, begins attending Sunday college, opens a checking account and will get a good friend to show him to learn and write.

Then a toddler falls off a ship, and Ragged Dick leaps into the water to save lots of the kid. The kid’s rich father rewards Dick by providing him a job as a clerk. On the finish of the ebook, the boy drops the title Ragged Dick and turns into Richard Hunter, Esq., “a younger gentleman on the way in which to fame and fortune.”

It’s a enjoyable learn, however it displays a thread within the American psyche that desires to imagine that Ragged Dick-style pluck and luck provide the answer to social issues.

Hearken to Nick Kristof learn an excerpt from “Ragged Dick.”

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Rather more than different international locations, the USA is a believer that individuals can get forward if they simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Actually, that phrase initially was used within the nineteenth century as a humorous phrase meant to suggest an unimaginable process. In spite of everything, how may individuals probably raise themselves up by their very own bootstraps? Then the sarcasm of the phrase was misplaced across the time of Alger, and it quickly turned sage counsel for getting forward.

Alger was extra sophisticated than his books. He labored as a minister however was pushed out after a scandal through which he was accused of sexually abusing boys. He moved from Massachusetts to New York and have become a novelist, whereas on the aspect selling philanthropy and displaying private generosity towards charities that offered alternatives to kids.

Why is the USA certainly one of only a few rich international locations to lack obligatory paid household go away, common well being care, little one allowances and nationwide pre-Okay and little one care? Why will we tolerate a failed foster care system? I believe it has one thing to do with an Alger-style obsession with private duty. So we generally attribute inequality by way of the prism of unhealthy versus good selections and see the options not as systemic fixes however as homilies about bootstraps.

It’s honest to level out that many People battling habit or homelessness have proven private irresponsibility and we should always encourage grit and diligence — if we additionally acknowledge our nationwide failure of collective duty.

It’s enjoyable to learn “Ragged Dick,” and it will be good if extra individuals had his drive. Nevertheless it’s a tragedy when troubled youths don’t have a manner ahead except they’re virtuous heroes who dive into the water and save the life of a kid who seems to be wealthy. That’s troublesome to scale.