The popularity of these books led to the idea that poor people simply needed to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” if they wanted to live a comfortable life. One of its most famous proponents was the author Horatio Alger, whose novels showed how poor boys could move from “rags to respectability” through “pluck and luck.” Alger’s novels had always been geared toward younger readers who were once receptive to his success stories, but by the end of the century, young readers were lusting after stories of adventure, danger, travel, and heroism, rendering Alger’s work tame and lackluster. Some believe Alger’s compassion for the thousands of “street urchins” in New York City in the late 1860s prompted him to create his stories filled with “proper advice” for succeeding. In the 100+ stories he wrote, every protagonist is a white male. Contrary to the Horatio Alger myth, social mobility rates in the United States are lower than in most of Europe. not just in the sense that it is fictional, but more fundamentally because the lesson alger conveys is a false one. Horatio Alger provided the basis for many cinematic heroes. Alger wrote over 100 books for young working class males, beginning with Ragged Dick, which was published in 1867. We expect “hard work” as Alger sees it to be enterprises like digging ditches or coal mining. Amazingly, a staple of Horatio Alger stories was wealthy benefactors who gave the heroes gifts and helped them on their way, thus contradicting the basis of the idea of a self-made man achieving success through hard work. Alger’s heroes primarily experienced “episodes” of a shortage of money, but with education, wealthy family members or acquaintances, and knowledge of etiquette, they always had the means to succeed at their fingertips. The Myth Of Horatio Alger That Justifies Our Own Oppression. Horatio Alger's novels illustrated the nation's most popular myth in the late nineteenth century, that anyone could improve their social position through determination and hard work. In fact, Alger’s childhood was quite comfortable. Horatio Alger could be called the father of the American Dream. Published in 1868, Alger’s novel Ragged Dick was his first major work and the one that started the “rags to riches” craze. Young Ragged Dick, age 14, is a homeless shoeshine boy living hand-to-mouth on the rough streets of ante-Central-Park New York City. But in a post- bank bailout world, the American Dream is a much harder sell than it used to be. The "Horatio Alger myth" is the "classic" American success story and character arc, the trajectory from "rags to riches".It comes from the novels of Horatio Alger, Jr., which were widely popular after the Civil War in the United States.. Alger wrote over 120 books for young working-class males, a well-known early example of which is Ragged Dick, which was published in 1867. Horatio Alger definition is - of, relating to, or resembling the fiction of Horatio Alger in which success is achieved through self-reliance and hard work. Founders Library at NIU has acquired a comprehensive collection of more than 2,000 books and periodicals by and about Horatio Alger, and the library now is the official repository for the archives and other papers of the Horatio Alger Society. The truth is that his reason for coming to the Big Apple in the first place was that he fled his post as a pastor in Brewster, Mass., the same day his church accused him of molesting two young boys. Horatio Alger Myth ALEX PITOFSKY ritical discussions of Theodore Dreiser's The Financier (1912) are often saturated with references to Horatio Alger. We were told that electing Hillary Clinton would have been a daring, unprecedented step. By the late 1930s and 1940s, it’s estimated only a handful of Alger’s 120 works were still in print, with some minor works lost forever without the ability to reproduce them. His novels about poor boys who achieve success through hard work and determination are the classic examples of the rags-to-riches ideal. Mark Twain Lampoons the Horatio Alger Myth The ideology of success—the notion that anyone could make it with enough hard work—was widely promoted in Gilded Age America. The Horatio Alger Association provides nearly $4.4 million in Specialized Scholarships to promising students through the generosity of our Members . Of those, more than 30% will be poor through early adulthood. His father, Reverend Horatio Alger, was a Unitarian minister and his mother, Olive (Fenno) Alger, was from a prominent local business family. In this case the results are based on 400,000 male subject (aged 16-19) taken from one area, and generalizes the results to the overall population. 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