| The New York City of the mid-19th century was an awful place for many of its inhabitants. Areas such as Five Points (setting for the movie Gangs of New York ) were dangerous and filthy, filled with abandoned or neglected children. Many slept outside at night, and most wore assemblages of badly-fitting 'ragged' clothes. During the day they hawked matches, sold newspapers, shined shoes or picked pockets in order to eat. The authorities did little to alleviate the situation, and in a celebrated case, a street urchin found naked was represented by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Horatio Alger, the chronicler of this world to a public who may have preferred not to know that it existed, was not himself a New Yorker, having been brought up in middle-class comfort with a private school education followed by Harvard.
Though he had had some writing published, Ragged Dick or Street Life in New York With The Boot-Blacks was Horatio Alger's first bestseller, setting the template for scores of poor-boy-makes-good novels that had a massive influence on young Americans (Groucho Marx and Ernest Hemingway were among those said to have devoured his work).
The Ragged Dick Story
Set at a time when Central Park was still 'a rough tract of land', lined with workers huts, a boot-black known as Ragged Dick enters the story. His mother having died at three and his father gone to sea, Dick spends his days shining boots for businessmen, his evenings (if he has some spare coins) watching cheap plays at the Old Bowery theatre and his nights wrapped up in newspapers in doorways. If flush he will stay at the Newsboys Lodging House for 6 cents a night and buy a meal at a café.
After an unexpected windfall, Dick rents a squalid room which seems impossibly luxurious. In return for tutelage, he lets another boy, the once well cared-for and well-read Henry Fosdick, to share his room. This two-person self-improvement society is perfect for both. Dick gets an 'edoocation', and Fosdick a place out of the cold. Through they must live through a series of adventures, the boys find a way to strive and succeed.
The tale is a page-turner, and the reader delights in Dick's joy at such simple things as a new suit of clothes, opening a bank account and eating a piece of steak. As Alger makes clear, Dick, who by the end of the short book has become 'Dick Hunter Esq.' is very likeable. He has pluck and wit to balance his earnest strivings to be 'spectable' and despite first-hand experience of the best rogues and swindlers the city has to offer, is a perennial optimist.
Horatio Alger's lessons of success as learned by the young Dick include:
Make your own luck. Dick's big break comes when he is on a ferry crossing into Brooklyn with his friend Henry. Suddenly, they see a child fall over the side into the water. Dick wastes no time and jumps in, somehow managing to pull the child to safety. The panicked father, who could not swim, is amazed to have his child alive and promises Dick any reward. Later, the man offers Dick a job in a counting house, a job he had only dreamed of, at $10 a week, many times his current earnings. A great stroke of luck? Not really, for Dick's selflessness was the cause of this good fortune, and his diligence in self-education every night meant he could be hired without the slightest whiff of charity.
Luck happens to those who greatly increase the chances of its occurrence.
Whatever you do, do it with your utmost. Life seems to ask of us that, even if we don't like what we are doing, we have to do it well to move on to the next thing. Ragged Dick is only a boot-black, but he uses his 'profession' to save money, meet a higher class of people and generally better himself.
Become a reader. Dick meets the son of a wealthy man who he shows around the city for a day. Later, the boy's father tells Dick that 'in this country poverty is no bar to achievement' and tells of his own rise from printer apprentice to successful businessman. He notes that there was one thing he took away from the printing office ".which I value more than money." When Dick asks what this was, the man replies:
"A taste for reading and study. During my leisure hours I improved myself by study, and acquired a large part of the knowledge which I now possess. Indeed, it was one of my books that first put me on the track of the invention, which I afterwards made. So you see, my lad, that my studious habits paid me in money, as well as in another way."
Final word
Despite being rattling good yarns which really can inspire, the common view of Horatio Alger books is that they are quaint historical pieces with a simplistic message of striving and 'getting ahead'. Yet success can be simple if you have the basic elements of personal character and aspiration, with a bit of luck thrown in.
Many of the villains in his books are rich boys who never had to make any effort to improve their character. Alger's main point was that striving for success is not just to 'get a fortune' but could give us tenacity, discipline, frugality and optimism - qualities which cannot be bought.
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