Alger was the son of a Unitarian minister & a Unitarian minister himself, He was kicked out of his post in the face of allegations of homosexuality & pederasty after it was discovered he was having sex with teenage males. Church officials claimed that he had committed the "most heinous crime, a crime of no less magnitude than the abominable and revolting crime of unnatural familiarity with boys." No, that is not the American virtue that I was thinking about, but because of those circumstances, Alger went on to write what many would call the definitive patriotic literature, rags-to-riches stories that gave the original shape to that goal for which we all strive: the American dream. I still hear the right wingers describe someone as a "real Horatio Alger Story." I wonder if they actually know this story.
Horatio Alger was the master of the dime novel in the mid-19th century. He churned out dozens of almost identical tales: a young, poverty-stricken boy is alone in the big, cold city. He works harder than the other shoe shine boys or newsboys & saves every penny, while the other boys gamble & drink & waste their money on trivial pursuits. The boy meets a wealthy older businessman, who recognizes the lad's ethic & pluck & the beam of intelligence in his sad eyes, & takes him under his wing. Soon the boy has money of his own, responsibility & better status in life.
Alger was pretty plucky himself. He started at Harvard at 16 & studied with Longfellow. By his late teens, he had written a number of books for children. After being dismissed from his church, he moved to NYC & over the next 33 years wrote more that 100 books. His hard work never brought him riches though. He associated himself with the street ruffians of the city. & took his meals &slept at the boys’ boarding houses. He gave his money earned from his stories to the young men that he admired & used as models for his tales.. Except for Ragged Dick, his books were not a success until after his death. His family then destroyed all of his personal papers.
Embedded in Horatio Alger's work is the strong Protestant work ethic, the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps American creed, & this mythology of upward mobility in America is central to modern conservative thinking, & much of it can be credited to Horatio Alger & his adoring fans. But who was he?
His popularity dwindled in the 1890s & so did his income. In 1896 he had a nervous breakdown that forced him to relocate permanently to his sister's home in Massachusetts. When he died in 1899, his passing was barely noticed by the newspapers. His literary work was bequeathed to his niece, to 2 boys he had casually adopted.
Since 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans has bestowed awards & scholarships on the deserving youth. in 1982 Alger's works inspired a musical comedy called Shine!. One modern scholar has described his work as a male Cinderella myth noting similarities with the classic fairy tale. The NY chapter of NAMBLA is named the Horatio Alger club.
Like the Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew series that I read as a boy, his books are all the same, yet all quite readable. Alger had a great gift for narrative. I happened to have bought one at a used book store as an adult because I was amused by the title- Ragged Dick. I suspected that it was a story about my previous weekend, & I was quite surprised at what I was reading.
Among his other colorful titles (which inspire my own):
What Boys Can Do on the Farm for the Camp
Charlie Codman's Cruise: A Story for Boys
Luck And Pluck; or, John Oakley's Inheritance
Rough and Ready; or, Life Among the New York Newsboys
Ben The Luggage Boy; or, Among the Wharves
Do and Dare; or A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune
Adrift in the City; or, Oliver Conrad's Plucky Fight
Joe the Hotel Boy, or Winning Out by Pluck
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