Social Darwinism In The Turn Of The 19th Century

In the turn of the 19th century, a psychologist Herbert Spencer branched off the thought of Darwinism and promoted the evolutionary thought of social Darwinism which differed from the original idea of survival of the fittest (Goodwin, 1995). Social Darwinists believe in the idea that humans, like plants and animals, struggle for the existence of natural selection results in “survival of the fittest.” Spencer claimed that, evolution must be unchecked because of its natural and inevitable forces that can be harmful when tampered with by humans. Social Darwinists create a huge gap between the rich and the poor and say that “if successful then fit” which differs from Darwinisms belief that “if fit then successful.” At this point in history under
Parallel to that idea was that positions for jobs and who received them was not close to fair. If you were born rich and inherited your parents wealth you were born with an immediate advantage among a lot of other people despite what positive attributes they might posses. Due to the lack of research on individual differences it was largely believed that a persons future was determined at birth with both flaws and advantages inherited. This lead to the belief held by social Darwinists that there was no point in helping the less competent because nature would deal with them itself. When America began to shift in to its time of the Progressive era, the decline of social Darwinism began to dwindle. During this point in time, business monopolies were bring attacked with the leader of the business just at risk of being called a robber as a hero (Goodwin, 1995). Labor unions spoke out and fought back with their dissatisfaction of how hard they worked and little they received. This lead to significant gains for this group of people and the federal government was forced to make regulations and guidelines that helped the average American and programs that helped the less fortunate or