George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life

2002 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 239
Author(s):  
Robert Cassanello ◽  
Benjamin R. Justesen
Keyword(s):  
Race Of Life

Darwin and “The Natural History of Doctresses”: The Sex War Between Howells, Phelps, Jewett, and James

Prospects ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 81-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Bender
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
William Dean Howells ◽  
Anatomy And Physiology ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Race Of Life ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Fair Chance ◽  
Do So

Two years after charles darwin's The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex(1871) ignited a great debate about race, culture, and sexual difference, Dr. Edward H. Clarke drew the lines in what soon became a literary war in America over the supposed differences between the sexes. In his highly appreciative review of Clarke's Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for the Girls, William Dean Howells(?) wrote that “the subject is a very delicate one to handle,” not only because it involves certain embarrassing physiological details, such as “periodicity,” but because woman is the weaker vessel in many ways, and does not always care to be reminded of it. Yet the facts of anatomy and physiology are at the bottom of many differences in the capabilities and adaptations of the two sexes for the various offices of life. The female's muscles are weaker than the male's, and she must not be expected to do so much bodily work. The female's brain is five or six ounces lighter, on the average, than the male's, and she must not be expected to do so much “cerebration” as he can do. The special relation of the female to humanity that is to be, involves many disturbances, habitual and occasional, which handicap her, often very heavily, in the race of life.

Speculations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Human Actions ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
The Future ◽  
Sectional Conflict ◽  
Race Of Life

This chapter explains speculations that a civil war would be sparked by a sectional conflict between rival classes and economies. Radicals in both regions imagined an unavoidable battle between free labor and slavery. It shows how new technology and burgeoning capitalism affected American approaches to the future. The telegraph promoted faith in the reach and permanence of human actions. The railroad encouraged a go-ahead culture of enterprising visionaries who won the race of life by progressing ahead of ordinary men and fashioning the future. These changes increased the tempo of life, heightened fears of economic panics and political conspiracies, and emboldened speculators who hoped to capitalize on a showdown between free and slave labor.

Community Colleges and the American Social Order

1989 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Brint ◽  
Jerome Karabel
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wide Distribution ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
White Males ◽  
Royal Road ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
Race Of Life

From the earliest days of the Republic, Americans have possessed an abiding faith that theirs is a land of opportunity. For unlike the class-bound societies of Europe, America was seen as a place of limitless opportunities, a place where hard work and ability would receive their just reward. From Thomas Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy of talent” to Ronald Reagan’s “opportunity society,” the belief that America was—and should remain—a land where individuals of ambition and talent could rise as far as their capacities would take them has been central to the national identity. Abraham Lincoln expressed this deeply rooted national commitment to equality of opportunity succinctly when, in a special message to Congress shortly after the onset of the Civil War, he described as a “leading object of the government for whose existence we contend” to “afford all an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life.” Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the belief that the United States was a nation blessed with unique opportunities for individual advancement was widespread among Americans and Europeans alike. The cornerstone of this belief was a relatively wide distribution of property (generally limited, to be sure, to adult white males) and apparently abundant opportunities in commerce and agriculture to accumulate more. But with the rise of mammoth corporations and the closing of the frontier in the decades after the Civil War, the fate of the “selfmade man”—that heroic figure who, though of modest origins, triumphed in the competitive marketplace through sheer skill and determination—came to be questioned. In particular, the fundamental changes then occurring in the American economy—the growth of huge industrial enterprises, the concentration of property less workers in the nation’s cities, and the emergence of monopolies—made the image of the hardworking stockboy who rose to the top seem more and more like a relic of a vanished era. The unprecedented spate of success books that appeared between 1880 and 1885 (books bearing such titles as The Law of Success, The Art of Money Getting, The Royal Road to Wealth, and The Secret of Success in Life) provide eloquent, if indirect, testimony to the depth of the ideological crisis then facing the nation.

George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life (review)

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-105
Author(s):  
John H. Haley
Keyword(s):  
Life Review ◽  
Race Of Life

George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life

2002 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 982
Author(s):  
Linda O. McMurry ◽  
Benjamin R. Justesen
Keyword(s):  
Race Of Life
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