Abstract

This chapter examines the work of William Graham Sumner, which is addressed to the conditions of the Gilded Age and is in many ways an apologia for its public ethic of competitive striving. Influenced by the contemporary evolutionary theories and classical political economy, he came to see individualism as the order of nature, reflected in the workings of an unregulated economic competition. Responding to the early attempts to systematically regulate the economy in the name and interests of the working class, he offers the essentially middle-class figure of the ‘Forgotten Man (or Woman)’ who embodies the individualism that Sumner values. He deploys his brand individualism polemically against increasing pressures for economic and social regulation in the Gilded Age and exemplifies a kind of individualism that remains influential today.