The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse PDF
Preview The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse
THE FICTIONAL REPUBLIC This page intentionally left blank The Fictional Republic HORATIO ALGER AND AMERICAN POLITICAL DISCOURSE Carol Nackenoff New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1994 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nackenoff, Carol. The fictional republic : Horatio Alger and American political discourse / Carol Nackenoff. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-507923-X 1. Alger, Horatio, 1832-1899—Political and social views. 2. Politics and literature—United States—History—19th century. 3. Political fiction, American—History and criticism. I. Title. PS1029.A3Z73 1994 813'.4—dc20 93-18732 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Jim Greer and Alexander Nackenoff, who nurtured me through this process of production This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix 1 Allegory of the Republic: On Interpretation and Method 3 2 A Unitarian Project for Moral Guidance 12 3 Republican Rites of Passage: Character and the Battle for Youth 33 4 Guidebooks for Survival in an Industrializing Economy 53 5 Saved From the Factory 78 6 Technology, Organizations, Corporations, and Capitalists 93 7 Natural Aristocracy in a Democracy: Authority, Power, and Politics 110 8 Money, Price, and Value: Alger's Interventions in the Market 133 9 Levelling and Its Limits 162 10 Reading Alger: Searching for Alger's Audience in the Literary Marketplace 181 11 The Mass Fiction Writer As Producer and Consumer: Power, Powerlessness, and Gender 206 12 Culture Wars 227 13 The Fictional Republic: Alger's Appeal to the American Political Imagination 261 Notes 272 References 336 Name Index 354 Subject Index 357 This page intentionally left blank Preface I began collecting and reading Horatio Alger novels years ago as I became engrossed in a challenge offered by Louis Hartz's 'Fhe Liberal Tradition in America. Hartz argued that all America had been captured by the Horatio Alger, liberal Lockean dream; political thought became impervious to transformations of the economic and social order. With this wedding of Alger and Locke, "a new social outlook took shape, dynamic, restless, competitive... its impact ultimately became enormous."1 Like everyone else, I had heard the name " Alger"; it is part of the common vocabulary. But I wanted to become better acquainted with the author's formula. From this encounter developed a passion to write about Alger. Hartz argued that American political ideology had been forged around 1840 and remained static ever since, much to the impoverishment of political thought, since self-evident truths generate little debate. The ideology combined fear of the state with limitations on state power; a desire to protect minorities against a potential mob who would attack property; blindness to sources of social and economicpower apartfrom thestate; and a "harnessing" or channeling of the masses' ambitions into the race for acquisition of property with the notion that by playing by the rules of the capitalist game, they too could aspire to reap comparable rewards. The rules included self- help and individualism. This ideology legitimated unequal outcomes and made the farmer and the laborer believe all were of the same estate. In this consensus view of American politics, homogeneity of opinion reigns—or is enforced. Hartz believed that ideologies were the product of the relationship between social classes. In the absence of a feudal aristocracy against which the bourgeoisie could define itself, no self-conscious proletariat was likely to emerge. No dass was likely to forge a socialist ideology to challenge the dominant liberal ideology. This claim was American Exceptionalism par excellence. There were many defects in the Hartzian account and much fuel for scholarly debate. Claims of near-homogeneity of thought were unsatisfactory. There was no adequate explanation for the endurance of liberal Lockeanism in the twentieth century, to say nothing of the problem of explaining the Civil War. And even Hartz's understanding of Alger appears to have been shaped by a notorious hoax biography. The Scottish Enlightenment
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