![]() ![]() This linking of work and morality ultimately gave rise to another phenomenon: the reimagining of the wealth gap as a metaphysical reality, based on an eclectic mix of scientific and spiritual principles. As one representative sermon from the era, preached by the New York pastor Henry Ward Beecher, put it, “No man in this land suffers from poverty unless it be more than his fault – unless it be his sin.” footnote Those who could not or would not achieve riches in this dizzying new economy were now understood as being responsible for their own sad fate. ![]() Meanwhile, poverty came increasingly to be seen as the natural consequence of being a failed self-maker, a just punishment for a moral failing. Money came to be understood as the natural goal of the self-maker, rather than a fortuitous side benefit of a more broadly virtuous life. Stewart, and John Wanamaker – hawking luxury goods to the newly rich through increasingly popular department and dry-goods stores. Or else he might have made his fortune – as did Rowland H. Rockefeller (the billionaire oilman born to a New York lumberman). ![]() He might be a captain of industry like Andrew Carnegie (the steel magnate who was born in poverty in rural Scotland) or John D. He was, increasingly, a mogul or an entrepreneur. And, no less important, the fulfillment of that purpose would somehow be rewarded in this life with material success.īy the late nineteenth century, the self-made man would no longer be understood merely as a virtuous, frugal citizen but rather a successful capitalist entrepreneur, someone who had figured out how to harness money and bend it to his will. Human beings were supposed to self-make, fulfilling their fundamental purpose. This narrative … involved not just an implicit morality but a whole metaphysical worldview. The story of American self-making in the antebellum era had been the story of the American dream: work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and free yourself from the bondage of the outmoded (and European) world of custom, convention, and class. ![]()
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