Word: algerism
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SILAS SNOBDEN'S OFFICE BOY by HORATIO ALGER JR. 240 pages. Doubleday...
...thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul," etc.) embarrass. Still, hardly anybody can live on irony and neostoicism for long. Even against what seems to be common sense, it is essential to believe in the possibilities of individual endeavor. There, suddenly, stands Jonathan Livingston Seagull, an Horatio Alger in feathers...
...ears with copybook maxims about the devil finding work for idle hands and God helping those who help themselves. Successive waves of immigrants took those lessons to heart, and they aimed for what they thought was the ultimate success open to them -middle-class status. They almost deified Horatio Alger's fictional heroes, like Ragged Dick, who struggled up to the middle class by dint of hard work...
...much remains of that proud heritage. Today, in a time of the decline of organized churches, work has lost most of its religious significance. Horatio Alger is camp. Only a minority of workers remember the Depression. Welfare and unemployment benefits have reduced the absolute necessity of working, or at least made idleness less unpleasant...
...bitterness, that she has always been too busy working to "just sit back" and think of herself or her "ideas," but she does seem to have her own vision of America. Reports TIME Correspondent Bonnie Angelo: "Her view of life is that of Pollyanna going steady with Horatio Alger. With hard work and the old dependable virtues, there is nowhere you can't go. That's the way it was for her and Dick, and the America she sees agrees with...