William Graham Sumner Quotes
For A to sit down and think, What shall I do? is commonplace; but to think what B ought to do is interesting, romantic, moral, self-flattering, and public-spirited all at once. It satisfies a great number of human weaknesses at once. To go on and plan what a whole class of people ought to do is to feel one's self a power on earth, to win a public position, to clothe one's self in dignity. Hence we have an unlimited supply of reformers, philanthropists, humanitarians, and would-be managers-in-general of society.
Sumner, William Graham. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. Harper & Brothers, 1883, p. 15.
The Treasury Secretary had discovered a massive fraud between some whiskey distillers and some government officials whereby the government was defrauded of millions of dollars of tax revenue. One of the Federal officials Bristow wanted to indict was O. E. Babcock, the President’s personal secretary and advisor. Bristow marshaled the facts and sent a report to Grant who wrote the quoted material in the margin of the report and sent it back to Bristow. Despite Grant’s lack of personal involvement and his immediate willingness to prosecute his close friend and colleague, the stain of scandal spread to Grant and to this day is a part of any discussion of his presidency.
Normally, Molinaro was opposed to State, Federal and Local Government involved with Citizens. Staten Island was a Blue Collar community that prided itself in its rugged individualism. But when there was a problem, Molinaro asked for help and defined government responsibility in terms that would usually be used by left wing democrats. There is nothing like an emergency to motivate politicians to abandon their ideology.
There was much unrest caused by many evictions of poor tenant by landlords who were not recognizing any of their “duties”. This problem and the degree of government regulatory and legislative involvement have been on the political agenda for eons and continue to this day. The duties tend to change with times and places; the rights that the property owners assert seem to be constant and uniform.
“Public charities” were government services that were like those provided by private charities: relief, food, housing etc. ie “welfare”
Later, Eisenhower changed his mind and ran for the Republican Presidential Nomination. Truman, who had always been a strong Eisenhower enthusiast, felt that Eisenhower had lied to him and was distrustful of the General ever after.
William Graham Sumner was a classical liberal American social scientist. He taught social sciences at Yale, where he held the nation's first professorship in sociology. He was one of the most influential teachers at Yale or any other major school. Sumner wrote widely within the social sciences, with numerous books and essays on American history, economic history, political theory, sociology, and anthropology. He supported laissez-faire economics, free markets, and the gold standard. He adopted the term "ethnocentrism" to identify the roots of imperialism, which he strongly opposed, and as a spokesman against it he was in favor of the "forgotten man" of the middle class, a term he coined. He had a long-term influence on conservatism in the United States.
