Sumner’s Forgotten Man
The Forgotten Man, a popular essay by William Graham Sumner. The idea of which was used by Hazlitt and even by Amity Shlaes in her recent book on the Great Depression. Sumner’s work, penned in 1883, is all too relevant today:
In hard times, insolvent debtors are a large class. They constitute an interest and are able to attract public attention, so that social philosophers discuss their troubles and legislatures plan measures of relief. Insolvent debtors, however, are an insignificant body when compared with the victims of commonplace misfortune, or accident, who are isolated, scattered, ungrouped and ungeneralized, so are never made the object of discussion or relief. In seasons of ordinary prosperity, persons who become insolvent have to get out of their troubles as they can. They have no hope of relief from the legislature. The number of insolvents during a series of years of general prosperity, and their losses, greatly exceed the number and losses during a special period of distress.
Indeed these are the forgotten men, of as Sumner corrects, the man who is never thought of.
Who are the forgotten men of 2009?
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