What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

William Graham Sumner grew up in Hartford Connecticut, He graduated from Yale university and after studying the ministry and becoming a priest he left to become a professor at Yale; teaching political and social science. William Graham Sumner was a popular teacher known for his provocative ideas and strong moral conviction.  


William Graham Sumner was a proponents of laissez-faire economics and social Darwinism, opposing all government efforts to regulate business or to combat social inequality.


His views derived from Darwin, who believed that the competition for survival among living things was the mechanism for increasing biological complexity and biological advance.

Competition and struggle were the proper vehicles for progress. 

We must not help the weak at the expense of the strong 

- William Graham Sumner.

Certain ills belong to the hardships of human life. They are natural. The fact that my neighbor has succeeded in this struggle better than I constitutes no grievance for me.

The distinction here are made between the ills which belong to the struggle for existence and those which are due to the faults of human institutions is of prime importance. 

... A man who is present as a consumer, yet does not contribute either by land, labor, or capital, to the work of society is

 A BURDEN

WHETHER THE PEOPLE WHO MEAN NO HARM, BUT ARE WEAK IN THE ESSENTIAL POWERS NECESSARY TO THE PERFORMANCE OF ONES DUTIES IN LIFE, OR THOSE WHO ARE MALICIOUS AND VICIOUS, DO THE MORE MISCHIEF, IS A QUESTION NOT EASY TO ANSWER. 

 The man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, to be of no account. The man who has done nothing to raise himself above poverty finds that the social doctors FLOCK about him, bringing the capital which they have collected from the other class, and promising him the aid of the state to give him what the other had to work for.

The truest and deepest pathos in this world is not that of suffering but that of brave struggling. The truest sympathy is not compassion, but a fellow- feeling with courage and fortitude in the midst of noble effort.