Horatio Alger as an author had a very effective general formula for writing his stories that made them very popular. They would invariably start with a young boy who seemed to have been dealt a bad hand in life, they would be poor and quite frequently an orphan. Then through hard work and initiative as well as more than a fair measure of luck they would improve their station and move up the social ladder well on their way to 'becoming somebody'. These were known as 'rags to respectability' stories and became increasingly popular during the 'Gilded Age of America' towards the end of the 19th Century.
Alger's stories became more than that though, during the first half of the 20th Century as the economy began to falter, social responsibilities grew and wider gaps developed between the classes they took on a glossy representation of what the 'American Dream' and 'the Land of Opportunity' could still be. They showed the people who were waiting in bread and dole queues that with consistent hard work and just that right occasion they too could take advantage of the social mobility available in the structure of American society.
So in the present day Horatio Alger is no longer really a name but a phrase synonymous, and associated with any story or situation involving an individual improving his social and fiscal standing. The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans presents yearly awards based on this idea.
This accolade is awarded to people they deem to have shown
'individual initiative and a commitment to excellence; as exemplified by remarkable achievements accomplished through honesty, hard work, self-reliance and perseverance over adversity.'
The idea behind doing this is to keep the ideas of Horatio Alger alive and educate continuous generations about the opportunities afforded them by the free market system in America. The association was founded in 1947, during a time of real despondency amongst the American public, in an effort to prevent the disillusionment about the 'American Dream' transferring to the youth of the time. The qualities they promote are very admirable and beneficial to society in general especially since the candidates they award the prize to have to have a strong commitment to assisting those less fortunate than themselves.
There are many people who in this day and age don't recognise Horatio Alger stories as a representation of something still attainable in a overpopulated country with an increasingly restricted economic market. These people tend to agree with the theory of social Darwinism that if one person succeeds (the fittest) then other people are unable to (the weakest) that runs in direct contradiction to the main message of Alger's stories that with enough hard work and perseverance anybody can become a success.
One of the people disagreeing that i found is Harlon L. Dalton who is Professor of Law at Yale Law School and an ordained minister in the Episcopal church. In an essay entitled simply 'Horatio Alger' he argues that Horatio Alger's influence is not only a myth but that the myth is actually socially destructive. To demonstrate this he gives many examples of the other influences, whether favourable or detrimental, that effect an individuals possibility of achieving success. He specialises in issues of race and therefore spends a lot of time interpreting Alger's message in relation to friction between White's and Black's but the section that best sums up his theory on Alger is the last paragraph.
'for it broadcasts a fourth message no less false than the first three—that we live in a land of unlimited potential. Although that belief may have served us well in the past, we live today in an era of diminished possibilities. We need to, make a series of hard choices, followed by yet more hard choices regarding how to live with the promise of less. Confronting that reality is made that much harder by a mythology that assures us we can have it all.'
The whole essay can be found at http://www.oppapers.com/subjects/dalton-the-horatio-alger-myth-page1.html
The third website i found is of academic research that was conducted incorporating the Horatio Alger Myth.
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/4/3/4/6/p143463_index.html
It attempts to quantify the belief in the 'myth' and how this effects public opinion specifically associated with public spending and in turn its effect on the American democratic system. Drawing from the work of various contemporary democratic theorists
'this experimental piece attempts to sift through the racist and authoritarian mechanisms at work in the American political mind to arrive at a different explanation for why Americans feel the way they do regarding social welfare policies.'
Though the results of this are undoubtedly very interesting and useful they are focused in relation to political science so i won't bore anybody with discussing them. I think it just shows the significance of Alger in todays world, whether you agree with his portrayed message or not, that his influence is still used in modern research as a guiding factor of public opinion. Having such a massive cultural impact in a world that is very far removed from the one that he wrote about, in terms of age and diversity, displays a very shrewd interpretation of the values important to the American national identity.
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