William Graham Sumner

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William Graham Sumner

• What the Social Classes Owe to Each Other

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Biography

• 1840- Born in Paterson, New Jersey
• 1866- Studied theology and philosophy at Oxford
• 1869- He left Yale to be rector of churches in
  NYC and Morristown, NJ
• 1872- Became the first professor of political and
  social science at Yale
• 1907- Produced a work that gave him worldwide
  renown, Folkways
• 1910- Sumner died in Englewood, NJ

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Main Points

• The State has one obligation and that is to
  ensure the safety of the people
• also whether there is anything but a fallacy
  and a superstition in the notion that the State
  owes anything to anybody except peace, order, and
  the guarantee of rights

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Main Point 2

• It is Gods and Natures intent that everyone
  will have hardships, and who are we to change
  this.
• But God and Nature have ordained the chances
  and conditions of life on earth once and for all.
  The case cannot be reopened. We cannot get a
  revision of the laws of human life. We are
  absolutely shut up to the need and duty, if we
  would learn how to live happily, of investigation
  the laws of Nature, and deducing the rules of
  right living in the world as it is
• Certain ills belong to the hardships of human
  life. They are natural. They are part of the
  struggle with Nature for existence

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Main Point 3

• The gains of some imply the loss of others
• We shall find that all the schemes for
  producing equality and obliterating the
  organization of society produce a new
  differentiation based on the worst possible
  distinctionthe right to claim and the duty to
  give one mans effort for another mans
  satisfaction! We shall find that every effort to
  realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of
  liberty.

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Main Point 4

• Our first duty is to take care of himself and
  mind your own business
• Every man and woman in society has one big
  duty. That is, to take care of his or her own
  self.
• ..there is a danger that a man may
  leave his own business unattended to and second,
  there is a danger if an impertinent interference
  with anothers affairs

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Main Point 5

• Our society does well under a contract, because
  contracts are rational.
• Contract, however, is rational- even
  rationalistic. It is also realistic, cold, and
  matter-of-fact. A contract relation is based on a
  sufficient reason, not on custom or prescription.
  It is not permanent. It endures only so long as
  the reason for it endures.

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Main Point 6

• The Forgotten Man is the person who suffers
  quietly, works hard, and takes care of himself.
• He passes by and is never noticed, because
  he has behaved himself, fulfilled his contracts,
  and asked for nothing
• He will be found to be worth, industrious,
  independent, and self-supporting. He is not
  technically, poor or weak he minds his own
  business, and makes no complaints. Consequently
  the philanthropists never think of him, and
  trample on him.

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Main Point 7

• The pursuit of happiness should not be confused
  with the possession of happiness
• Rights do not pertain to results, but only to
  chances. They pertain to the conditions of the
  struggle for existence.It cannot be said that
  each one has a right to have some property,
  because if one man had such a right some other
  man or men would be under a corresponding
  obligation to provide him with some property.