Robert C. Bannister

Social Darwinism: An American perennial

10.20.06 4480 words

At the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society in 1906, Lester Frank Ward, commenting on a paper on "social Darwinism," planned to recycle remarks he made at a session with the same title the previous July on the struggle among races and nations. Instead, he discovered to his chagrin that the session dealt with eugenics, the newly-fashionable science of improving the human "stock" through laws controlling marriage and reproduction. Ward confessed that he found himself "in a position not unlike that of the widow who kept her husband's door-plate, because, as she said, she might possibly marry another man whose name was also John Brown." [1]

Ward’s confusion was not surprising since the term "social Darwinism" was still relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. It first surfaced about 1880 in books and articles by French and Italian socialists and social scientists, for example, Émile Gautier, Le Darwinsme social (1880). In 1887 it appeared for perhaps the first time in English in the British journal Mind. By the mid-1890s it made its way across the Atlantic in notices of a book by an Italian professor, Achille Loria. Although the term became better known in the decade following Ward's gaffe, its use was confined mostly to the relatively few academics who read the professional journals. [2]

Historians were especially slow to adopt the term. Although there were more than fifty references to "social Darwinism" in major social science journals between 1890 and 1940, only one of these was in history. [3] The New York Times, writing for a more general audience, used the term social Darwinism only four times from the mid-19th century to 1940.

Things changed quickly following the publication of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought (1944). In this account, social Darwinism appeared in two phases: first, among defenders of free market capitalism, rugged individualism, and the success myth during the Gilded Age; and second, in defenses of imperialism, racism, eugenics, socialism, and a "New Liberalism" (a.k.a. progressivism) after 1896. The first phase was soon dubbed "conservative Darwinism" and the later strains "reform Darwinism. " By the 1950s, half a dozen studies embellished Hofstadter's account of what one historian now described as "a ruthless form of laissez faire that it has become fashionable to call 'social Darwinism'."[4] By the early 1960s textbooks were spreading the word to America's undergraduates.

Revisionism began in the late 1950s and peaked in the 1970s as historians argued that few American businessmen invoked Darwin or Spencer in defense of competition or personal success;[5] that Darwin himself was not a social Darwinist;[6] that most evidence of a Darwinized dog-eat-dog ethic came from reformers who charged that Darwinism was being misused in defense of capitalism; [7] and that Darwin had considerable influence on socialists and on peace advocates.[8] By the late 1970s, revisionism bred its own critics, ironically among British scholars who largely ignored the debate until then. Although differing in particulars, their argument boiled down to the assertion that Darwinism was so deeply implicated in the world of 19th century capitalism and imperialism, that the search for specific references to Darwin’s writing was irrelevant: Darwinism was social, or, in an alternate formulation, a generalized "word-view" [9]

Partly at issue was the definition of social Darwinism. To be Darwinian in a literal sense, a theory should consider the effect of social policies on reproductive rather than economic or social success, that is, on the ability of one individual or group to leave more offspring than another, not simply to make money or win wars. During the Gilded Age, social Darwinism in this narrow sense appeared in a relatively few articles discussing whether modern medicine, sanitation, and nutrition allowed the unfit to pass hereditary weaknesses on to their offspring. These typically called for more government controls along the lines of later eugenic proposals, not less as with advocates of laissez-faire. [10]

Hofstadter and his revisionist critics thus adopted a looser definition, identifying as a social Darwinist anyone who used the terms struggle for existence, natural selection, and survival of the fittest with reference to human society. The British counter-revisionists adopted a still-broader definition, finding social Darwinism in references to the social organism, to the power of heredity, and even to development — quite apart from any mention of Spencer or Darwin.

Despite their differences, historians on both sides agreed that explicitly Darwinian rhetoric was less common than the conventional view assumed. The present article, in contrast, argues that this assumption was premature. Word-searchable online resources demonstrate that social references to "struggle for existence," "natural selection," and "survival of the fittest" between 1870 and 1900 number in the thousands, even discounting duplicate citations and those dealing with nature not society. [11]

Nor does this story end in 1900. During the past half century, a similar debate has been going on with the difference that the term social Darwinism has gained a popularity it lacked a century ago. Again, Darwinism has been applied to a wide range of human activity. Again, there is a yawning disconnect between charges that Darwinism is being misused and evidence of this misuse. What’s going on? To answer this question this essay compares the debates in the two periods.

§2

During the Gilded Age, Darwinian/Spencerian phrases were applied to every aspect of human activity, not just business or politics. The phrase survival of the fittest was applied to issues as diverse as the construction of the best opera stage set, the most attractive head-dress for Spanish women, and the best techniques in yoga. [12] It appeared in fiction as well as non-fiction, in whimsy and in satire, and in more serious analysis. In a send-up of "scientific ethics," for example, a Chicago lawyer explained how Darwinism helped soothe his conscience as he bludgeoned his mother-in-law to death. "It was a case of Natural Selection, a Struggle for Existence, and the Survival of the Fittest, all aptly demonstrated in good shape. Nature prevailed."[13]

Not that these many references add up to a Spencer vogue. Rhetorical nods to survival of the fittest typically appeared only once or twice in often-lengthy articles. Phrases that would have at least displayed a rudimentary knowledge of Spencer’s philosophy — "homogeneity to heterogeneity," for example — can be counted on one hand.

Rather, these literary flourishes conveyed little more than the American faith that in every area of life things were getting better and better. "Struggle for existence," at the opposite extreme, described undue hardship or regrettable situations — the sufferings of pioneers or the pace of modern life (the "rat race," in later parlance). If critics read sinister meanings into such remarks, the evil was in their perception, not the intent.

Variations of this argument held that fitness sometimes meant the triumph of the best and the worst simultaneously, or that degraded environments did not favor the morally fit. As Yale’s William Graham Sumner put it: "rattlesnakes may survive where horses perish, or a highly cultivated white man may die where hottentots flourish."[14] In few if any of these statements was survival equated with moral superiority.

When survival of the fittest was applied to business and industry, fitness usually meant technological superiority or organizational efficiency. "Mechanics sift out what is good, and . . .reject the worthless," the Manufacturer and Builder wrote in one typical comment. "It is but a continual example of the truth of Darwin’s theory of the ‘survival of the fittest."[15]Advertisers with no knowledge of Spencer’s Synthetic Philosophy soon realized they had a surefire slogan. As early as 1878 a doctor from Buffalo touted his "family medicine" as an example of the survival of the fittest. [16] By the turn of the century such appeals commonly appeared in Harper’s Weekly and the Brooklyn Eagle, whether the object in question was whiskey, watches, or a "white sale." [17]

These statements provide a context for reassessing Andrew Carnegie’s assertion in his essay "Wealth" that industrial developments had produced an alarming split between rich and poor but also "the survival of the fittest all around"—an often-quoted example of "conservative Darwinism."[18] Carnegie, in fact, did not intend to justify predatory capitalism, but rather to note that increased efficiency and productivity carried a price. To address this situation he proposed increased inheritance taxes and philanthropy on a large scale—a blueprint for giving that has served American entrepreneurs from John D. Rockefeller to Bill Gates.

Where then is the evidence for a Darwinian defense of rapacious capitalism? In my study Social Darwinism: Science and Myth (1979), I argued that the bulk of the evidence did not come from defenders of capitalism but from its critics. Dozens of online sources underline this point. Although sometimes little more than political ploys, the charge that Darwinism supported brutal social policies was rooted in a complex of religious and social concerns. Religious opponents of evolution cited the dire consequences of a Darwinian view of society as reason to reject a theory they actually opposed on religious grounds. A satirical revision of the book of Genesis as rendered by Darwin and others, for example, concluded with a verse picturing the killing of "the weak and foolish" to secure "the survival of the fittest." A prominent preacher told his Brooklyn audience that evolution was infidelity, bad science, and "brutalizing in its tendencies."[19]

Hostility or even ambivalence toward Darwinism sometimes made strange bedfellows. In 1879 the aging, conservative Harvard professor of philosophy Francis Bowen and the young California reformer Henry George each attacked Malthus’s theory that poverty is inevitable unless there is some check on population. Since Darwinism was "Malthus all over," as George put it (quoting the anti-Darwinian scientist Louis Agassiz), facts that refuted one refuted the other. Bowen heartily agreed.[20]

The Malthusian connection also contributed to William Graham Sumner’s reputation as America’s leading conservative Darwinist. Writing in Scribner’s in October 1878, Sumner criticized socialists for confusing humanity’s "struggle for existence" against nature with the "competition of life," a social contest governed by whatever laws and norms that society imposed. They thus blamed the latter for ills that arose from the former. Although Sumner did not mention Malthus, the heart of his case was the ratio of population to resources, an idea he early read in Harriet Martineau’s Illustrations of Political Economy (1834).

At the time Sumner’s article appeared, and perhaps in response to it, a Canadian-born labor activist named Phillips Thompson published some verse—"dedicated to prof. W.G. Sumner of Yale" — describing a tramp robbing a "political economist" while quoting Spencer and Darwin on struggle and survival. Sumner saved the piece. The following year he read much the same in George’s Progress and Poverty, albeit directed at Malthus rather than himself.

At this time, Sumner had little or no knowledge of Darwinism and endorsed Spencer (whom he generally thought too "metaphysical") to the extent of assigning his Study in Sociology to a senior social science class. But these attacks on Malthusianism led him to respond in kind with an epigram that would soon cause him grief. "The law of the survival of the fittest was not made by man and cannot be abrogated by man," he insisted, first in an article in the Princeton Review and again in at least one speech reported in the New York Times. "We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest." Unaware that these would become the two most-quoted sentences from his voluminous writing, he dug himself in deeper over the next several years in attempts to justify this statement, before abandoning this phrasemaking entirely. By then the damage was done. Although Sumner’s What Social Classes Owe to Each (1884) made no mention of "fitness," Darwin or Spencer, one reviewer charged that Sumner would have the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest "work out their legitimate results. [21]

In the decade following Ward’s appearance at the Sociological Society meetings in 1906, the term "social Darwinism" provided a label for what until then had been unfocused charges based on an uneasy feeling that American society was becoming a Darwinian jungle and that some evil men liked it that way. Half a century later, this charge made its way to the pages of the New York Times.

§3

The growing popularity of the term social Darwinism since the 1960s can be traced in two online resources: the scholarly journals in humanities and social sciences in JSTOR; and the historical edition of the New York Times, with scholars outdoing the press by a considerable margin.

Dates	NYT	JSTOR
1860-1939	4	50
1940-59	15	402
1960-69	22	394
1970-79	28	646
1980-89	75	890
1990-2001	63	1091

Until the late 1960s the majority of references in the Times were to Hofstadter’s book or others directly influenced by it. One exception was a letter charging that American "economic federalism" – now labeled a form of social Darwinism — doomed civil rights legislation by stifling Black advancement. [22] Other exceptions were two pieces by the reviewer Thomas Lask who seems to be the only Times staffer to have added the term to his vocabulary before 1970.[23]

Several items looked to the future. One letter to the editor tied Barry Goldwater to the worst of 19th century social Darwinism, anticipating later attacks on the Reaganites. [24] Two others, one of them by Lask, tied social Darwinism to studies of aggression by Robert Ardrey and Conrad Lorenz, the first wave of sociobiology. In an ad for Lionel Tiger's Men in Groups (1969), Ardrey vented his frustration at being stereotyped in this way. "Social scientists whose education in biology was finished in their high school years will with ponderous authority speak of social Darwinism," he observed. [25]

As textbooks spread the word to students in the 1970s, the Times chronicled some amusing corruptions. A New Jersey student defined social Darwinism as a belief in the "survival of the fattest." Another rendered it as "survival of the fetus." At Yale, president Kingman Brewster told graduates that it gave him "some solace to think perhaps both rampant social Darwinism and rampant Marxian collectivism start with too mean, too narrow, a concept of human motivation."[26]

Once the idea caught on, the possibilities seemed endless. Describing a "swinging singles" party of some ten thousand in a Chicago hotel, one reporter noted a dark underside to the affair. "There is an ugly form of social Darwinism in the arguments the party organizers are tossing back and forth, the survival of the swingingest, of the least sensitive." Sports writer Red Smith cited a book by an ex-football player that characterized the sport as deriving from "a plutocratic, elitist authoritarian ideology that came from social Darwinism." Heavy-weight boxer Gene Tunney was described as "Self-educated, self-made, a believer in social Darwinism."[27]

During a debate over political redistricting in Manhattan, a Liberal Councilman, asked why the City Council moved so slowly on the issue, replied "survival" — it is clearly in the interests of elected official to run in districts they know best. "Is that social Darwinism," someone asked? "I don't know," the councilman replied. "It may be ‘political Darwinism'—it may be the survival of the least fit." As the term entered the mainstream, writers were faulted for not giving social Darwinism sufficient attention, as in a Times review of a new biography of Karl Marx.[28]

One reason for this increasing notoriety was the rise of sociobiology, notably in the work of Harvard's E.O. Wilson. Without precisely calling sociobiologists "social Darwinists," a Times reviewer mentioned the social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer in the same breath as the claim of Robert Ardrey and Desmond Morris that "the roots of human behavior lie in instinct."[29] Others were less delicate. In Use and Abuse of Biology (1976), anthropologist Marshall Sahlins wrote that "William Graham Sumner . . .reinvents Darwin as society and Edward O. Wilson reinvents Sumner as nature."[30] In a blistering letter to the New York Review of Books, a group of Boston doctors, professors, and school teachers labeled Wilson a social Darwinist, associating his work with the predatory capitalism of John D. Rockefeller, sterilization laws, and "the eugenic policies which led to the establishment of gas chambers in Nazi Germany." [31]

Wilson and others struggled to distance themselves from the term, much as Darwin and Spencer had done a century before. Discussing reasons why his program was not widely accepted, behaviorist B.F. Skinner, author of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, noted that he rejected survival as a value because it suggests competition with other cultures such as in social Darwinism . . . ." Wilson, angered to find himself in this company, charged that his critics had ignored his own clear warnings against the pitfalls of deducing an "ought" for society from an "is."[32]

Ironically, these denials rested on the popular notion that there once had been something that could rightly be called social Darwinism. For Skinner, the bad-old-days spawned theories of inter-cultural competition. "The last remnants of social Darwinism died with the advent of sociobiology. . . .,[33] he noted. As in earlier debates, the fault lay with an unnamed someone, sometime, somewhere.

By the early 1980s it was widely agreed that "a mean spirited-and potentially divisive Social Darwinism [is] now abroad in the land. . . ." Ronald Reagan was a tempting target even before he became president. A letter to the editor in the Times in 1976 referred to "the backward-looking social Darwinism" of Ford and Reagan." Once in office, Reagan became the Left's favorite social Darwinist, or "spontaneous social Darwinist" as one columnist wrote, tacitly acknowledging that the former movie actor was unlikely to know let alone to quote the Origin of Species.[34]

The Times was soon outdone by the New Republic which in 1982 featured an article titled "Social Darwinism, Reagan Style" by Robert Reich, later Clinton's Secretary of Labor. Although the article was a review of two technical works in economics, Reich combined it with discussion of a reissue of Spencer's Principles of Sociology— guilt by association. Spencer and his protégé William Graham Sumner were immensely popular at the turn of the century "particularly in America's heartland"— roughly the time and place of Reagan's birth. It was thus not surprising that their views "colored Ronald Reagan's own instinctive [n.b.] ideology." Underlining the point, a cover-drawing showed the President's three-stage emergence from simian ancestry. [35]

In the 1984 election the Democrats brought social Darwinism into national politics. Walter Mondale kicked off his campaign in February 1983 with the line that he believed "in social decency, not social Darwinism."[36] For readers not yet familiar with the term, the Times reporter explained that it described "a 19th century theory that government efforts to end poverty interfered with the natural improvement of the human species." [37] Mondale repeated the line on several occasions, as did Democratic stalwart Mario Cuomo.[38] In the keynote address to the Democratic convention in August (1984), Cuomo accused Reagan of splitting the country along class lines with "a kind of social Darwinism, survival of the fittest." The Democratic platform made it official: "A fundamental choice awaits America. . .between social decency and social Darwinism."[39] Although this rhetoric failed to defeat Ronald Reagan, Mario Cuomo and others kept it alive throughout the decade, notably in Cuomo's inaugural address as governor of New York in January 1987. [40]

As the term social Darwinism was democratized, the variations appeared endless. The decision of CBS to televise a meager dozen baseball games annually to a select market had the "scent of Social Darwinism—survival of the richest." [41] "This is for all you social Darwinists," announced the guitarist for the rock group Prong, introducing a song linking the misery of welfare to capitalism run amok. (Even the Times reporter was stunned: "Social Darwinism at a rock concert? Would Bruce Springsteen use that kind of language?") Out-of-control bikers in New York's Central park were "social Darwinism on wheels." [42] By the time the new Millennium dawned, social Darwinism had been linked to Little League ("the crucible of social Darwinism"); the nude "posture photos" taken at Yale and other elite colleges; and to shopping malls ("the mall at Short Hills was social Darwinism in action").[43]

The term was gradually tailored to fit to a new political agenda. Since the 1940s, most popular references to social Darwinism referred in one way or another to the excesses of free market capitalism and a grossly materialistic success ethic—the "conservative Darwinism" of the early academic studies. By the early 1980s the emphasis was shifting to race and gender. A reviewer of Bad Blood (1981), an account of a medical study in which Blacks with syphilis were left untreated in the interests of science, noted that this shameful chapter in America medicine was rooted in an earlier social Darwinism. Another book reviewer explained: "Social Darwinism, internationally subscribed to at the turn of the century, had become the springboard for 20th-century sexism and racism." A distinguished musicologist blamed a racist social Darwinism for [19th century] Boston's discomfort over Dvorak's celebration of Native Americans and African-Americans. [44]

Then and Now

Debates in the two eras show some striking similarities. Although the phrase social Darwinism moved from the university to the pages of the daily press, the charge continued to be fueled by academics, especially within sociology, a volatile discipline with perennial boundary problems. In the 1880s Lester Ward charged that Sumner was not a biologist, as all sociologists should be. In the interwar years a new generation of positivists and quantifiers used the phrase against the "arm chair theorizing" of pre-war social evolutionists. In the Structure of Social Action (1937), the sociologist Talcott Parsons used the term social Darwinism to discredit objectivists and quantifiers. In his remark about social scientists "whose education in biology was finished in their high school years," Robert Ardrey echoed Lester Ward’s criticism of Sumner.

In anthropology, proponents of the culture concept, many of them students of Franz Boas at Columbia, invoked the specter of social Darwinism in their argument for "nurture" over "nature" By the 1940s, the mantra of culture was becoming a new orthodoxy among anthropologists and eventually for Americans more generally. From there it was a short step to the historical literature described at the start of this essay. Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism, among other things, was a brief for a Boasian view of culture.

These academic battles echoed in the Times. Not only did academics contribute more than their fair share of references to social Darwinism, but other references crept in though the columns and reviews by journalists educated at elite colleges and universities, for example Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (Swarthmore), and Frank Rich (Harvard)—illustrating the academicization of American culture in the late 10th century.

No one in either period proclaimed him/herself a social Darwinist or suggested that Darwinian laws should guide social policy, either literally or by analogy. Although the term social Darwinism was now widely-used, it continued to describe someone no one wanted to be. A single exception that proves the rule was a tongue-in-cheek letter to the Times criticizing a columnist for "ignoring the tenets of social Darwinism" and "interfering with baseball's natural selection process" by saying that a prized free-agent player should not join the New York Yankees.[45]

Critics of social Darwinism continued to be short on examples, although with a slight difference. Lester Ward and his generation of reformers asserted that the defense of brutality and pernicious capitalism followed "logically" from specific works — or as Ward put it—was "the tenor and tendency of modern scientific thought."[46] A century later, concrete evidence of Darwinism was considered unnecessary. Certain policies were considered ipso facto social Darwinist, whether sociobiology, supply side economics, or any argument judged to favor the rich or privileged, or (as the political agenda shifted) was seen as racist or sexist.

Religion remained a factor, as it was when Gilded Age preachers cited the dire social consequences of Darwinism to discredit Darwin’s entire theory. In the 1920s, the image of an evil social Darwinism contributed to the Fundamentalist attack on Darwinian biology in the Scopes trial. Asked if he thought that the teaching of evolution could corrupt the young, prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, recalling that the defense lawyer Clarence Darrow had defended the notorious Leopold and Loeb for a senseless killing after reading Nietzsche, reminded the court that Nietzsche was " the only great authority who tried to carry this [doctrine of evolution] to its logical conclusion."[47]

At a time when polls are showing that an astounding 50% of Americans do not "believe in evolution" Creationists use the alleged tie between Darwinism and racism as a reason to ban the teaching of Darwinism. A recent example was a bill introduced by an African-American representative to the Louisiana State legislature damning Darwin by association with racism. Although the legislator denied any religious motives in making the proposal, she had close ties to the religious Right. Happily for the children of Louisiana, the legislature finally eliminated any reference to Darwin and passed a bill condemning only racism. [48]

The fall-out from the use of the label social Darwinism has not been all bad. It has served as a warning against excesses of individualism and social injustice and reinforced claims of community and the need for intelligent direction of social policy. Challenging inhumane policies justified in the name of science, the charge has also fostered a healthy skepticism toward bogus claims of expertise.

But the myth-making also has its down side. Reinforcing apocalyptic visions of a "natural" order run amok, it supported demands for draconian social controls during and after the progressive era, from Jim Crow legislation, eugenic sterilization, and immigration restriction to excessive economic controls. Although exposing the dark underside of some social policies, it substituted sloganeering for reasoned analysis and effectively stifled free speech. During the 1930s and 1940s—so one historian has maintained—it inhibited valuable work in genetics not to revive until the discovery of DNA in the 1950s. [49]As a weapon against the teaching of evolution today, it contributes to a national disgrace.

The issue in any case is not the pros and cons of policies espoused by so-called social Darwinists, but whether advocates of these policies appeal to Darwin in support of their cause. This survey has argued that the growing popularity of the term in the 1980s and 1990s had little or nothing to do with the actual use of Darwinism by modern champions of free market capitalism. Rather, it shows only that a great many Americans believe that some of their neighbors harbor nasty, reactionary convictions of one sort or other. In perpetuating this charge, the New York Times democratized a tradition that flourished initially in academic journals and reform writings a century earlier.

For better or worse the term "social Darwinism" is here to stay. But it is important to understand what is going on. When we talk about social Darwinism, we are not talking about a coherent theory or a "school" of thinkers but rather about what some people say about other people, a social fiction with roots deep in our history and culture..

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[1] Ward comment on D. Colin Wells, "Social Darwinism," American Journal of Sociology 12 (Mar. 1907): 695-716.

[2] Most of the primary sources for this article are available online from the following : Making of America series (Cornell and Michigan), the Brooklyn Eagle, JSTOR, Harper's Weekly, the Nation, the New York Times Historical, and Lexis-Nexis. A bibliography of secondary materials is available online at: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/rbannis1/SDbib/htm.

[3] Gilbert Giddings Benjamin, [rev. of Government and the Will of the People by Hans Delbruck, et al.], Mississippi Valley Historical Review 11 (Dec. 1924): 432-434.

[4] John Bartlett Brenner, "Laissez Faire and State Intervention," Tasks of Economic History 8 (1948): 65.

[5] Irvin Wyllie, "Social Darwinism and the Businessman," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103 (1959): 629-35.

[6] John C. Greene, "Darwin as a Social Evolutionist," Journal of the History of Biology 10 (1977): 1-27. Also Peter J. Bowler, Evolution (1984), and his many articles during the 1970s.

[7] Robert C. Bannister, Social Darwinism : Science and Myth (1979).

[8] Paul Crook Darwinism, War and History (1994); Mark Pittenger, American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870-1920 (1993).

[9] Robert M. Young, "Darwinism is Social," in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. David Kohn (Princeton, 1985), pp. 609-38. See online at http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/paper60.html. Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (London, 1991); Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860-1945 (Cambridge [England], New York, 1997).

[10] For example, Titus M. Coan, "Reforming the World," Galaxy 22 (August 1876): 160-69; P. Stearns , "The Relations of Insanity to Modern Civilization, " Scribner's Monthly, 17 (February 1879): 582-586; "The Unfit Surviving," New York Times, April 7, 1888; and Cyrus Edson, " Is Drunkenness Curable? " North American Review 153 (September 1891): 368-375.

[11] The sheer number of examples leads me to modify my earlier view that Darwinian/Spencerian rhetoric was relatively rare -- for example, my statements in the "Preface" to the 1988 paperback edition of Social Darwinism, p. xxv -- although not my conclusion that these do not add up to anything resembling the conventional view of "conservative Darwinism."

[12] Gustav Kobbe , "Behind The Scenes Of An Opera-House," Scribner's Magazine, 4(October, 1888):447; Henry T. Finck, "The Beauty Of Spanish Women," Scribner's Magazine, 7(January, 1890): 95; E. P. Evans ,"Crude Science in Aryan Cults," Atlantic Monthly, 54 (November 1884): 634.

[13] Henry T. Steele, "Scientific Ethics," New Englander and Yale Review, 43 (March 1884):147.

[14] William Graham Sumner, "The Survival of the Fittest," Index n.s., 4 (May 29, 1884): 567.

[15] "How to Succeed," Manufacturer and Builder , 22 (October 1890): 235-236. See also Thomas Curtis Clarke," The Building Of A Railway, "Scribner's 3(June, 1888): 660.

[16] "Natural selection," Harper's Weekly, May 25, 1878.

[17]; Harper's Weekly , Feb. 4, 1910; Brooklyn Eagle, Dec 2, 1901; ibid., Jan. 24, 1900.

[18] Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth," North American Review, 148 (June 1889): 653-665.

[19] New Scriptures,"Manufacturer and Builder 7 (October 1875): 229; "Hard Blows," Brooklyn Eagle, Nov 24, 1884, p. 4.

[20] Francis Bowen, "Malthusianism, Darwinism, and Pessimism," North American Review 129 (1879 ): 447-473; Henry George, Progress and Poverty (Schalkenbach Foundation, 1942 [1879] ), p.100.

[21] Alfred Jaretski, "Social Classes," Index n.s. (1885): 294-96. See also Lester Ward [review] Man, New York, Vol. IV, No. 9, March 1, 1884, first and fourth pages.

[22] B.K. Johnpoll, "Can Civil Rights Work?" New York Times , May 24, 1964, p. E10.

[23] Thomas Lask, "Blood on the Pavement," New York Times , July 22, 1968, p. 33. See also Lask, "Idealism Comes Under Fire," New York Times, July 22, 1971.

[24] Candidate's Philosophy," New York Times, July 21, 1964, p. 32.

[25] Display Ad 52 , New York Times , Jun 27, 1969, p. 35.

[26] "Metropolitan Diary," New York Times, Jun 21, 1978, p. C2; "Metropolitan Diary," New York Times, Sep 21, 1977, p. 54; James Reston, " The Class of 1976," New York Times, May 16, 1976, p. 157.

[27] George Russell, "A Full & Accurate Account Of the Largest, Highest and Longest Singles Party in the History of' Western Civilization," New York Times, Dec 16, 1973, p. 477; Red Smith "1971: A Year of Hits and Near-Hits," New York Times, Dec 19, 1971, p. S1; Jacques Leslie , "John Tunney, Kennedy's Friend In Muskie's Corner," New York Times, Dec 26, 1971, p. SM6.

[28] Charles Kaiser , " Goodman Charges Charter Plan Lags," New York Times, Nov 17, 1976, p. 29 ; Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Basic Biography of Karl Marx," NYT, Feb 4, 1974, p. 27.

[29] Boyce Rensberger, "The Basic Elements of the Arguments, Are Not New; The Politics in A Debate Over Sociobiology," New York Times, Nov 9, 1975, p. E16.

[30] Marshall Sahlins, The Use and Abuse of Biology (Ann Arbor Michigan, 1976), pp. 93-107.

[31] Elizabeth Allen, et al., "Against 'Sociobiology'," New York Review of Books, 22 (Nov. 13, 1975), 18, 43-44. For Wilson' s reply see Edward O. Wilson, "For Sociobiology," ibid., (December 11, 1975): 60-61.

[32] B. F. Skinner, "Freedom and Dignity Revisited," New York Times, Aug 11, 1972, p. 29; Edward O. Wilson, "For Sociobiology," pp. 60-61.

[33] Wilson, "Biology and the Social Sciences," Daedalus, 106 (1977): 139, n. 34.

[34] "Rockefeller v. Détente," New York Times, May 31, 1976, p. 10; Rosalind H. Williams, "Solidarism, an Answer To Reagan Darwinism," New York Times Jul 2, 1981, p. A19 (1 page). See also William Nordhaus, "Reagan's Dubious Tax Revolution," New York Times, Aug. 9, 1981, p. F3.

[35] The New Republic, September 20 & 27, 1982.

[36] Robert B. Reich, "Ideologies of Survival: The Return of Social Darwinism," New Republic (27 September, 1982), 32-37. See also Sidney Lens, "Blaming the Victims: 'Social Darwinism' is Still the Name of the Game," The Progressive, 44 (August, 1980), 27-28.

[37] Adam Clymer, Mondale begins his '84 campaign," New York Times, Feb 22, 1983, p. A1

[38] 'News Summary," Friday, June 10, 1983; Dudley Clendinen, "Mondale Proposes Plan to Respond to Critique of U.S. Schools," New York Times, May 10, 1983. p. A18; Bernard Weinraub , "Mondale Says He Broke 'Barrier' On Considering Women for Ticket," New York Times, Jul 1, 1984, p. 1; Hedrick Smith , " Mondale Enlists Hart and Jackson to Unify Forces," New York Times, Jul 22, 1984, p. A1; Paul Davidson , "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Federal Deficits?" New York Times, Aug 23, 1984. p. A30.

[39] "Excerpts From Platform the Democratic Convention Adopted." New York Times, Jul 19, 1984, p. A21.

[40] "Transcript of Cuomo's Inaugural Address for His Second Term," New York Times, Jan 2, 1987, p. B4. See also

[41] Curt Smith, " Fight Baseball's TV Fadeout," New York Times, Oct 1, 1989, p. S10 .

[42]Jon Pareles, "Ideology Thrives in Rock's Outer Orbits," New York Times, March 4, 1990. p. H32; Pamela Bol, "In Central Park, Hell on Wheels," New York Times, Mar 27, 1991, p. A23.

[43] Display Ad 268, New York Times, Apr 5, 1992, p. BR20; George L. Hersey, "A Secret Lies Hidden in Vassar and Yale Nude 'Posture Photos," New York Times, Jul 3, 1992. p. A24; Ron Rustn Bum, " The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal," New York Times , Jan 15, 1995, p. SM26; Debra Galant, "How I Went to Short Hills and Got Malled," New York Times, Jan 31, 1999, p. NJ1.

[44] H. Jack Geiger ,"An Experiment With Lives," New York Times, Jun 21, 1981, p. BR3; "Posters From the War Against Women," New York Times, Feb 1, 1987, p. BR13. See also William S. McFeely, "Carnivals to Shape Our Culture," New York Times, May 26, 1985, p. BR11.

[45] Neil Dworkin, "Let Cone Decide For Himself," New York Times, Oct 18, 1992, p. S11.

[46] Lester Frank Ward, "Mind as A Social Factor," Mind 9 (October, 1884): 563-73.

[47] Bannister, Social Darwinism, p. 243-44.

[48] See Joe Conley, "Is Darwinism Racist?: Creationists and the Louisiana Darwin-Racism Controversy," paper presented at "Darwin's Entangled Bank: The Cultural Legacy of Evolution," An Interdisciplinary Conference at Princeton University June 8, 2001; http://www.princeton.edu/~jconley/DarwinRacism.

[49] Kenneth M, Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society (1972).