“You’re Lazy, That’s What’s the Matter.”
Attitudes toward hard work in the Gilded Age 2.0
Maybe you noticed, we’re in something of a Gilded Age 2.0. If you’re not familiar, the Gilded Age is that intermission in history following the Civil War when the Carnegies and Rockefellers made their fat stacks. Don’t believe me? Look around. Count the number of folks you know working extra hours, or an extra job, just to stay inside the ever shrinking waistline of that lady formerly known as the middle class.
How often are these people described as lazy?
Or unmotivated?
Meanwhile, a tiny handful of entrepreneurs are doing very well. They’re eager to show us how they earned every cent, fair and square.
Listicles swoosh across our screens every day, telling us how to escape the 40-hour work week, and morph into paragons of success. As if one day every barista might launch her own successful startup.
Just like now, the 1870s was prime time for writers like Horatio Alger — a disgraced pastor who published a dozen or so young adult novels about wealth building. All of his books tell the same story, about a teen who manages to transform himself from vagabond to tycoon through hard work and grit, but also the kindness of wealthy gentlemen.
