William Graham Sumner
American sociologist (1840 to 1910); author of What Social Classes Owe to Each Other.
William Graham Sumner did not write this page.
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Our reading
In practice the State usually offers less wisdom and moral sense than the average citizen
Their wordsHence "the State," instead of offering resources of wisdom, right reason, and pure moral sense beyond what the average of us possess, generally offers much less of all those things.
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Their wordsWe shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.
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Their wordsUnder the names of the poor and the weak, the negligent, shiftless, inefficient, silly, and imprudent are fastened upon the industrious and prudent as a responsibility and a duty.
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Their wordsIt follows, however, that one man, in a free state, cannot claim help from, and cannot be charged to give help to, another.
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Their wordsThe trouble is that a democratic government is in greater danger than any other of becoming paternal, for it is sure of itself, and ready to undertake anything, and its power is excessive and pitiless against dissentients.
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Their wordsIt is not at all the function of the State to make men happy. They must make themselves happy in their own way, and at their own risk.
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Their wordsIn no sense whatever does a man who accumulates a fortune by legitimate industry exploit his employés, or make his capital "out of" anybody else. The wealth which he wins would not be but for him.
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Their wordsIf any one thinks that there are or ought to be somewhere in society guarantees that no man shall suffer hardship, let him understand that there can be no such guarantees, unless other men give them—that is, unless we go back to slavery, and make one man's effort conduce to another man's welfare.
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Their wordsI cannot believe that a strike for wages ever is expedient.
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Their wordsIf we have been all wrong for the last three hundred years in aiming at a fuller realization of individual liberty, as a condition of general and widely-diffused happiness, then we must turn back to paternalism, discipline, and authority; but to have a combination of liberty and dependence is impossible.
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Their wordsSociety needs first of all to be freed from these meddlers—that is, to be let alone.
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Their wordsThe type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked.
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Their wordsA drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things.
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Their wordsNow, we never can annihilate a penalty. We can only divert it from the head of the man who has incurred it to the heads of others who have not incurred it.
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Their wordsThe greatest job of all is a protective tariff. It includes the biggest log-rolling and the widest corruption of economic and political ideas.
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Their wordsIt is the Forgotten Man who is threatened by every extension of the paternal theory of government. It is he who must work and pay.
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Their wordsIt would be extreme folly to say that nothing of that sort ought to be done, but I fully believe that today the next pernicious thing to vice is charity in its broad and popular sense.
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Our reading
Their wordsRights do not pertain to results, but only to chances. They pertain to the conditions of the struggle for existence, not to any of the results of it; to the pursuit of happiness, not to the possession of happiness.
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Their wordsThe yearning after equality is the offspring of envy and covetousness, and there is no possible plan for satisfying that yearning which can do aught else than rob A to give to B; consequently all such plans nourish some of the meanest vices of human nature, waste capital, and overthrow civilization.
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Their wordsIn the prosecution of these chances we all owe to each other good-will, mutual respect, and mutual guarantees of liberty and security. Beyond this nothing can be affirmed as a duty of one group to another in a free state.
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