Ragged Dick
Encyclopedia
Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks is a Bildungsroman
by Horatio Alger, Jr.
serialized
in Student and Schoolmate in 1867, and released as a full length novel in May 1868 by A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six volume Ragged Dick Series, and became Alger's all-time bestseller. The tale follows a poor boot black's rise to middle class respectability in 19th-century New York City. It had a favorable reception. Student and Schoolmate reported their readers were delighted with the first installment and Putnam's Magazine
thought boys would love the novel. One modern scholar considers the story a "puerile fantasy" about class assimilation. The plot and theme were repeated virtually in toto in Alger's subsequent novels and became the grist for parodists and satirists. Ragged Dick and Alger's Silas Snobden's Office Boy inspired the musical comedy Shine! in 1982.
. Ragged Dick is a fourteen-year-old bootblack, but is not a model boy – he smokes, drinks occasionally, and sleeps on the streets – but he is anxious "to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up 'spectable". He won't steal under any circumstances, and gentlemen impressed with this virtue (and his determination to succeed) offer their aid. Mr. Greyson, for example, invites him to church and Mr. Whitney gives him five dollars for performing a service. Dick uses the money to open a bank account and to rent his first apartment. He fattens his bank account by practicing frugality and is tutored by his roommate Fosdick in the three R's. When Dick rescues a drowning child, the grateful father rewards him with a new suit and a job in his mercantile firm. Dick has become a respectable member of the middle class at last, and henceforth will call himself Richard Hunter, Esq.
"but, more sensibly, rags to respectability". With a moral thrust entrenched in the Protestant ethic, Alger novels emphasized that honesty, especially of the fiscal sort, was not only the best policy but the morally right policy, and temperance and smoking were to be abjured. Alger knew he wasn't writing great literature, Bode explains, but he was providing boys with the sort of material they enjoyed reading: formulaic novels "whose aim was to teach young boys how to succeed by being good" and which featured "active and enterprising" boy heroes sustained by "an endearing sense of humor" even in the most trying of situations. Dialogue was "brisk" in the Alger novel and "when good disputed with evil, good always won." Generally, a "malicious young snob" and a "middle-aged rascal" schemed to hurt the hero's rise, and a "mysterious stranger" and a "wordly but warmhearted patron" were at hand to assure his success. Violence was kept at arm's length in the Alger novel, the tone remained "optimistic and positive", suspense was never "of the nail-biting sort", and the Alger universe was "basically benign". Bode points out that the problems of upward mobility in the Alger novel were never "insoluble", and, although luck was a major element in the Alger plot, it was never luck alone that brought the hero success but luck combined with "pluck".
Gary Scharnhorst detects six major themes in Alger's 100 plus boys' books, and decides that the major theme of Ragged Dick is the Rise to Respectability. Scharnhorst points out that Dick himself states he intends to change his way of life and "become 'spectable". Early in the book, Mr. Whitney "replaces Dick's suit with a neat one, signaling the beginning of the transformation from Ragged Dick into Richard Hunter, Esq." Scharnhorst follows Dick's progress through the tale to the moment when Dick is rewarded with a clerical position and notes that "The status of respectability, not a high salary, completes his transition from Ragged Dick to Richard Hunter." Scharnhorst writes "The recurrence in Alger's fiction of the theme of the Rise to Respectability underscores the inaccuracy of the widespread opinion that his heroes rise from rags to riches. Indeed, insofar as Alger's heroes prosper at all, they do so because they deserve prosperity, because they happily earn it with their virtue ... Alger's heroes always merit their good fortune – an idea which, like respectability, is associated only tangentially to wealth."
minister in Brewster, Massachusetts
for about a year and a half when a church committee charged him with pederasty
. He denied nothing, said that he had been imprudent, and quit, vowing never to accept another ministerial post. Church officials were satisfied and no further action was taken. Alger relocated to New York City where he cultivated a humanitarian's interest in the city's many vagrant children. A prolific author, he published to great success in Student and Schoolmate, a children's monthly magazine, and, when its publisher asked him to develop a serial about street boys, he responded with a tale about bootblacks called Ragged Dick.
New York City's boot blacks at the time Alger wrote in Ragged Dick were boys usually between the ages of ten and sixteen "with any number of bad habits, and little or no principle". They gambled, smoked cigar butts retrieved from the gutter, patronized the Bowery theaters and concert halls, slept on the streets or in the shelters supported by the charitable, and were "more proficient in profanity than the Water Street roughs". Alger told the Ladies Home Journal in 1890, "I had conversations with many street boys while writing "Ragged Dick" ... and derived from many of them sketches of character and incidents".
Alger adapted the conventions of the moral, sentimental, and adventure literature of the period to fashion the formula he would employ in writing not only Ragged Dick but the dozens of boys' books that followed it. "Alger did not invent his formula out of whole cloth," Alan Trachtenberg
explains, "[B]ut boiled down the conventions to make a more refined brew: a style accessible both to young and adult readers; clever dialogue and vivid descriptions; a cast of characters who presented a range of moral positions; a physical setting itself a part of the action."
Trachtenberg points out that Alger almost certainly consulted New York City guidebooks and incorporated their advice on crooks, cheats, and conmen into his manuscript, and explains that Alger's series books and characters bear similarities to the anecdotal nature of myths, legends, and folktales: "Stories of gods and of larger-than-life persons like Paul Bunyan
have an anecdotal quality similar to the sequence of encounters, adventures, confrontations, and coincidences that comprise the narratives of Ragged Dick and Tattered Tom and their kin among Alger's legion of boy heroes."
Although Ragged Dick has been described as a "puerile fantasy of the assimilation of the so-called dangerous classes to the bourgeois social order", Sacvan Bercovitch believes Alger created "a relatively realistic hero" in Dick – one who smokes, swears, plays pranks, and spends what money he has with abandon, yet one who displays an emotional depth foreign to Alger's subsequent heroes who increasingly exhibited "the slow accretion of civilized instincts and habits, including proper speech, cleanliness, and courtesy" and who lacked Dick's "sense of humor, sadness, and critical intelligence".
Trachtenberg observes that nothing prurient occurs in Ragged Dick but posits that "the few instances of boys touching each other tenderly or older men laying a light hand on the shoulder of boys, might arouse erotic wishes in readers prepared to entertain such fantasies." Such images, Trachtenberg believes, may imply "a positive view of homoeroticism
as an alternative way of life, of living by sympathy rather than aggression." Trachtenberg concludes "[I]n Ragged Dick we see Alger plotting domestic romance, complete with a surrogate marriage of two homeless boys, as the setting for his formulaic metamorphosis of an outcast street boy into a self-respecting citizen."
in Student and Schoolmate, beginning with January 1867 issue. Alger expanded the tale to novel length; it was published A. K. Loring of Boston on May 5, 1868. Thousands of copies sold out within weeks and the novel was republished in August 1868. It was the first in a six-volume Ragged Dick series. The book was Alger's bestseller and remained in print for forty years.
, and the Monthly Religious Magazine waxed encomiastic with "simply charming", "excellent", and "spirited and inspiring". According to Scharnhorst, Booth Tarkington
acknowledged the book as one of ten that made the "greatest impression on his life", and that in 1947 "the Grolier Club
of New York selected it as one of the hundred most influential American books published before 1900."
Putnam's Magazine
of July 7, 1868 wrote "Ragged Dick is a well-told story of street-life in New York, that will, we should judge, be well received by the boy-readers, for whom it is intended. The hero is a boot-black, who, by sharpness, industry, and honesty, makes his way in the world, and is, perhaps, somewhat more immaculate in character and manners that could naturally have been expected from his origin and training. We find in this, as in many books for boys, a certain monotony in the inculcation of the principle that honesty is the best policy, a proposition that, as far as mere temporal success is concerned, we believe to be only partially true. However, the book is very readable, and we should consider it a much more valuable addition to the Sunday-school library than the tales of Inebriates, and treatises on the nature of sin, that so often find place there."
Edwin P. Hoyt writes "Ragged Dick ... caught the American fancy ... [It] represented something virtually unknown to boys in the American countryside and totally unsung until [its publication]: the street waif who made his living in the jungles of brick and stone". Hoyt points out the Alger refined the many "stylistic tricks" he had been polishing for several years. The action displayed an authorial confidence, and the language captured the "coarse and ungrammatical" style of the metropolitan street boys. The book was a virtual guide to Manhattan in the year 1866, and "for that reason if for no other it approached the realm of literature". Hoyt points out that "[T]here had never been such a book ... one swindle after another is exposed to readers who had never heard of such things."
Scharnhorst indicates Alger's legacy resides not only in the several parodies and satires by William Dean Howells
, Stephen Crane
, F. Scott Fitzgerald
, Nathaniel West, John Seelye, Glendon Swarthout
, and William Gaddis
, but also in the Horatio Alger Awards and in the many young readers who embraced his moral and humanitarian philosophy and were disinclined to embrace robber baron
capitalism
. Scharnhorst writes "It would seem that Alger was either over-rated as an economic and political propangandist or – more probably – his books were simply not designed thematically to spread the gospel of orthodox capitalism and convert the readership of The Masses
.
. The show's librettist Richard Seff writes that the musical is an original based on Ragged Dick and Silas Snobden's Office Boy: "We've borrowed characters from both novels, youthened some, aged others, re-invented a few, created a few of our own. We stuck with Alger's pervasive theme: That in America one could begin with nothing, and with the right attitude, hard work, application and a little bit of luck, dream a dream and chart a course on which to achieve it."
Eugene Paul reviewed a production mounted by the New York Musical Theatre Festival
in 2010 and wrote that "Virtue ... is the message and the thrust of the show." In his plot summary, Paul wrote that Ragged Dick is working his way slowly up the ladder of respectability when an opportunity to improve his prospects is offered him in Snobden's haberdashery. He faces a setback though when his wicked stepfather Luke appears on the scene. Dick avoids him and pursues his goals. "But everything comes crashing down when the darling son of a noble banker who has befriended Dick is kidnapped by none other than his stepfather, Luke. Suspicion and hatred, none of which Dick deserves, force him out of his job ... If you want to know how Dick overcomes these tribulations -– but then, you already know, don’t you. There is always a happy ending in Horatio Alger’s stories."
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
by Horatio Alger, Jr.
Horatio Alger, Jr.
Horatio Alger, Jr. was a prolific 19th-century American author, best known for his many formulaic juvenile novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty...
serialized
Serialization
In computer science, in the context of data storage and transmission, serialization is the process of converting a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored and "resurrected" later in the same or another computer environment...
in Student and Schoolmate in 1867, and released as a full length novel in May 1868 by A. K. Loring. It was the first volume in the six volume Ragged Dick Series, and became Alger's all-time bestseller. The tale follows a poor boot black's rise to middle class respectability in 19th-century New York City. It had a favorable reception. Student and Schoolmate reported their readers were delighted with the first installment and Putnam's Magazine
Putnam's Magazine
Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art was a monthly periodical published by G. P. Putnam's Sons featuring American literature and articles on science, art, and politics...
thought boys would love the novel. One modern scholar considers the story a "puerile fantasy" about class assimilation. The plot and theme were repeated virtually in toto in Alger's subsequent novels and became the grist for parodists and satirists. Ragged Dick and Alger's Silas Snobden's Office Boy inspired the musical comedy Shine! in 1982.
Plot
The story is set in New York City before the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Ragged Dick is a fourteen-year-old bootblack, but is not a model boy – he smokes, drinks occasionally, and sleeps on the streets – but he is anxious "to turn over a new leaf, and try to grow up 'spectable". He won't steal under any circumstances, and gentlemen impressed with this virtue (and his determination to succeed) offer their aid. Mr. Greyson, for example, invites him to church and Mr. Whitney gives him five dollars for performing a service. Dick uses the money to open a bank account and to rent his first apartment. He fattens his bank account by practicing frugality and is tutored by his roommate Fosdick in the three R's. When Dick rescues a drowning child, the grateful father rewards him with a new suit and a job in his mercantile firm. Dick has become a respectable member of the middle class at last, and henceforth will call himself Richard Hunter, Esq.
Major themes
The Alger canon is described by Carl Bode of the University of Maryland as "bouncy little books for boys" that promote "the merits of honesty, hard work, and cheerfulness in adversity." Alger "emblematized those qualities" in his heroes, he writes, and his tales are not so much about rags to richesRags to riches
Rags to Riches refers to any situation in which a person rises from poverty to wealth, or sometimes from obscurity to fame. This is a common archetype in literature and popular culture ....
"but, more sensibly, rags to respectability". With a moral thrust entrenched in the Protestant ethic, Alger novels emphasized that honesty, especially of the fiscal sort, was not only the best policy but the morally right policy, and temperance and smoking were to be abjured. Alger knew he wasn't writing great literature, Bode explains, but he was providing boys with the sort of material they enjoyed reading: formulaic novels "whose aim was to teach young boys how to succeed by being good" and which featured "active and enterprising" boy heroes sustained by "an endearing sense of humor" even in the most trying of situations. Dialogue was "brisk" in the Alger novel and "when good disputed with evil, good always won." Generally, a "malicious young snob" and a "middle-aged rascal" schemed to hurt the hero's rise, and a "mysterious stranger" and a "wordly but warmhearted patron" were at hand to assure his success. Violence was kept at arm's length in the Alger novel, the tone remained "optimistic and positive", suspense was never "of the nail-biting sort", and the Alger universe was "basically benign". Bode points out that the problems of upward mobility in the Alger novel were never "insoluble", and, although luck was a major element in the Alger plot, it was never luck alone that brought the hero success but luck combined with "pluck".
Gary Scharnhorst detects six major themes in Alger's 100 plus boys' books, and decides that the major theme of Ragged Dick is the Rise to Respectability. Scharnhorst points out that Dick himself states he intends to change his way of life and "become 'spectable". Early in the book, Mr. Whitney "replaces Dick's suit with a neat one, signaling the beginning of the transformation from Ragged Dick into Richard Hunter, Esq." Scharnhorst follows Dick's progress through the tale to the moment when Dick is rewarded with a clerical position and notes that "The status of respectability, not a high salary, completes his transition from Ragged Dick to Richard Hunter." Scharnhorst writes "The recurrence in Alger's fiction of the theme of the Rise to Respectability underscores the inaccuracy of the widespread opinion that his heroes rise from rags to riches. Indeed, insofar as Alger's heroes prosper at all, they do so because they deserve prosperity, because they happily earn it with their virtue ... Alger's heroes always merit their good fortune – an idea which, like respectability, is associated only tangentially to wealth."
Development History
Alger had been serving as a UnitarianUnitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
minister in Brewster, Massachusetts
Brewster, Massachusetts
Brewster is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States, Barnstable County being coextensive with Cape Cod. The population of Brewster was 9,820 at the 2010 census.Brewster is twinned with the town of Budleigh Salterton in the United Kingdom....
for about a year and a half when a church committee charged him with pederasty
Pederasty
Pederasty or paederasty is an intimate relationship between an adult and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. The word pederasty derives from Greek "love of boys", a compound derived from "child, boy" and "lover".Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and...
. He denied nothing, said that he had been imprudent, and quit, vowing never to accept another ministerial post. Church officials were satisfied and no further action was taken. Alger relocated to New York City where he cultivated a humanitarian's interest in the city's many vagrant children. A prolific author, he published to great success in Student and Schoolmate, a children's monthly magazine, and, when its publisher asked him to develop a serial about street boys, he responded with a tale about bootblacks called Ragged Dick.
New York City's boot blacks at the time Alger wrote in Ragged Dick were boys usually between the ages of ten and sixteen "with any number of bad habits, and little or no principle". They gambled, smoked cigar butts retrieved from the gutter, patronized the Bowery theaters and concert halls, slept on the streets or in the shelters supported by the charitable, and were "more proficient in profanity than the Water Street roughs". Alger told the Ladies Home Journal in 1890, "I had conversations with many street boys while writing "Ragged Dick" ... and derived from many of them sketches of character and incidents".
Alger adapted the conventions of the moral, sentimental, and adventure literature of the period to fashion the formula he would employ in writing not only Ragged Dick but the dozens of boys' books that followed it. "Alger did not invent his formula out of whole cloth," Alan Trachtenberg
Alan Trachtenberg
Alan Trachtenberg is Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is the husband of Betty Trachtenberg, former Dean of Students at Yale University, and father to Zev Trachtenberg,...
explains, "[B]ut boiled down the conventions to make a more refined brew: a style accessible both to young and adult readers; clever dialogue and vivid descriptions; a cast of characters who presented a range of moral positions; a physical setting itself a part of the action."
Trachtenberg points out that Alger almost certainly consulted New York City guidebooks and incorporated their advice on crooks, cheats, and conmen into his manuscript, and explains that Alger's series books and characters bear similarities to the anecdotal nature of myths, legends, and folktales: "Stories of gods and of larger-than-life persons like Paul Bunyan
Paul Bunyan
Paul Bunyan is a lumberjack figure in North American folklore and tradition. One of the most famous and popular North American folklore heroes, he is usually described as a giant as well as a lumberjack of unusual skill, and is often accompanied in stories by his animal companion, Babe the Blue...
have an anecdotal quality similar to the sequence of encounters, adventures, confrontations, and coincidences that comprise the narratives of Ragged Dick and Tattered Tom and their kin among Alger's legion of boy heroes."
Although Ragged Dick has been described as a "puerile fantasy of the assimilation of the so-called dangerous classes to the bourgeois social order", Sacvan Bercovitch believes Alger created "a relatively realistic hero" in Dick – one who smokes, swears, plays pranks, and spends what money he has with abandon, yet one who displays an emotional depth foreign to Alger's subsequent heroes who increasingly exhibited "the slow accretion of civilized instincts and habits, including proper speech, cleanliness, and courtesy" and who lacked Dick's "sense of humor, sadness, and critical intelligence".
Allegation of Homoeroticism
Trachtenberg points out that Alger had tremendous sympathy for boys and discovered a calling for himself in the composition of boys' books: "He learned to consult the boy in himself," Trachtenberg writes, "[T]o transmute and recast himself—his genteel culture, his liberal patrician sympathy for underdogs, his shaky economic status as an author, and not least, his dangerous erotic attraction to boys—into his juvenile fiction." He believes it impossible to know whether Alger lived the life of a secret homosexual, "[b]ut there are hints that the male companionship he describes as a refuge from the streets—the cozy domestic arrangements between Dick and Fosdick, for example—may also be an erotic relationship."Trachtenberg observes that nothing prurient occurs in Ragged Dick but posits that "the few instances of boys touching each other tenderly or older men laying a light hand on the shoulder of boys, might arouse erotic wishes in readers prepared to entertain such fantasies." Such images, Trachtenberg believes, may imply "a positive view of homoeroticism
Homoeroticism
Homoeroticism refers to the erotic attraction between members of the same sex, either male–male or female–female , most especially as it is depicted or manifested in the visual arts and literature. It can also be found in performative forms; from theatre to the theatricality of uniformed movements...
as an alternative way of life, of living by sympathy rather than aggression." Trachtenberg concludes "[I]n Ragged Dick we see Alger plotting domestic romance, complete with a surrogate marriage of two homeless boys, as the setting for his formulaic metamorphosis of an outcast street boy into a self-respecting citizen."
Publication history
Ragged Dick was first published as a 12-part serialSerialization
In computer science, in the context of data storage and transmission, serialization is the process of converting a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored and "resurrected" later in the same or another computer environment...
in Student and Schoolmate, beginning with January 1867 issue. Alger expanded the tale to novel length; it was published A. K. Loring of Boston on May 5, 1868. Thousands of copies sold out within weeks and the novel was republished in August 1868. It was the first in a six-volume Ragged Dick series. The book was Alger's bestseller and remained in print for forty years.
Literary significance and reception
Student and Schoolmate reported in its February 1867 issue that the first installment of Ragged Dick "has created no little excitement among our numerous readers, as we supposed it would. Everybody is delighted." Scharnhorst observes that the Providence Evening Press, the Boston Transcript, the Christian RegisterChristian Register
The Christian Register was the leading American Unitarian weekly, published by the American Unitarian Association, Boston, until 1957 when "becoming less and less focused on Christianity" the title was changed to The Unitarian Register...
, and the Monthly Religious Magazine waxed encomiastic with "simply charming", "excellent", and "spirited and inspiring". According to Scharnhorst, Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams...
acknowledged the book as one of ten that made the "greatest impression on his life", and that in 1947 "the Grolier Club
Grolier Club
The Grolier Club is a private club and society of bibliophiles in New York City. Founded in January 1884, it is the oldest existing bibliophilic club in North America. The club is named after Jean Grolier de Servières, Viscount d'Aguisy, Treasurer General of France, whose library was famous; his...
of New York selected it as one of the hundred most influential American books published before 1900."
Putnam's Magazine
Putnam's Magazine
Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art was a monthly periodical published by G. P. Putnam's Sons featuring American literature and articles on science, art, and politics...
of July 7, 1868 wrote "Ragged Dick is a well-told story of street-life in New York, that will, we should judge, be well received by the boy-readers, for whom it is intended. The hero is a boot-black, who, by sharpness, industry, and honesty, makes his way in the world, and is, perhaps, somewhat more immaculate in character and manners that could naturally have been expected from his origin and training. We find in this, as in many books for boys, a certain monotony in the inculcation of the principle that honesty is the best policy, a proposition that, as far as mere temporal success is concerned, we believe to be only partially true. However, the book is very readable, and we should consider it a much more valuable addition to the Sunday-school library than the tales of Inebriates, and treatises on the nature of sin, that so often find place there."
Edwin P. Hoyt writes "Ragged Dick ... caught the American fancy ... [It] represented something virtually unknown to boys in the American countryside and totally unsung until [its publication]: the street waif who made his living in the jungles of brick and stone". Hoyt points out the Alger refined the many "stylistic tricks" he had been polishing for several years. The action displayed an authorial confidence, and the language captured the "coarse and ungrammatical" style of the metropolitan street boys. The book was a virtual guide to Manhattan in the year 1866, and "for that reason if for no other it approached the realm of literature". Hoyt points out that "[T]here had never been such a book ... one swindle after another is exposed to readers who had never heard of such things."
Scharnhorst indicates Alger's legacy resides not only in the several parodies and satires by William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
, Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane
Stephen Crane was an American novelist, short story writer, poet and journalist. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism...
, F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
, Nathaniel West, John Seelye, Glendon Swarthout
Glendon Swarthout
Glendon Fred Swarthout was an American writer.-Life:Glendon Swarthout was the only child of Fred and Lila Swarthout, a banker and a homemaker. Swarthout is a Dutch name from the area around Groningen, in the Netherlands, and his mother’s maiden name was Chubb, from English farmers of Yorkshire...
, and William Gaddis
William Gaddis
William Thomas Gaddis, Jr. was an American novelist. He wrote five novels, two of which won National Book Awards and one of which, The Recognitions , was chosen as one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005...
, but also in the Horatio Alger Awards and in the many young readers who embraced his moral and humanitarian philosophy and were disinclined to embrace robber baron
Robber baron
A robber baron or robber knight was an unscrupulous and despotic nobility of the medieval period in Europe, for example, Berlichingen. It has slightly different meanings in different countries. In modern US parlance, the term is also used to describe unscrupulous industrialists...
capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
. Scharnhorst writes "It would seem that Alger was either over-rated as an economic and political propangandist or – more probably – his books were simply not designed thematically to spread the gospel of orthodox capitalism and convert the readership of The Masses
The Masses
The Masses was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the U.S. from 1911 until 1917, when Federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was succeeded by The Liberator and then later The New Masses...
.
Adaptations
Ragged Dick and Alger's Silas Snobden's Office Boy inspired the 1982 musical comedy Shine!Shine! (musical)
Shine! is a musical based on characters and situations found in the works of Horatio Alger, particularly Ragged Dick and Silas Snobden's Office Boy, respectively Alger's first best-seller and the one first printed in book form eighty years after it was first serialized in Argosy...
. The show's librettist Richard Seff writes that the musical is an original based on Ragged Dick and Silas Snobden's Office Boy: "We've borrowed characters from both novels, youthened some, aged others, re-invented a few, created a few of our own. We stuck with Alger's pervasive theme: That in America one could begin with nothing, and with the right attitude, hard work, application and a little bit of luck, dream a dream and chart a course on which to achieve it."
New York Musical Theatre Festival
The New York Musical Theatre Festival is an annual three-week fall Festival which presents more than thirty new musicals at venues in New York City's midtown theater district...
in 2010 and wrote that "Virtue ... is the message and the thrust of the show." In his plot summary, Paul wrote that Ragged Dick is working his way slowly up the ladder of respectability when an opportunity to improve his prospects is offered him in Snobden's haberdashery. He faces a setback though when his wicked stepfather Luke appears on the scene. Dick avoids him and pursues his goals. "But everything comes crashing down when the darling son of a noble banker who has befriended Dick is kidnapped by none other than his stepfather, Luke. Suspicion and hatred, none of which Dick deserves, force him out of his job ... If you want to know how Dick overcomes these tribulations -– but then, you already know, don’t you. There is always a happy ending in Horatio Alger’s stories."