Excerpt: The Fog That Cloaks Hypocrisy

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet. Posted December 13, 2005.

One often hears that someone represents a "real Horatio Alger Story." Horatio Alger was a master of the dime novel in the mid-19th century. He churned out dozens of almost identical storylines: a young, poverty-stricken churl is alone in the big, cold city. He works harder than the other shoe-shine or news boys and puts every cent away, while the other boys gamble and drink and waste their money on trivial goods. Along comes a wealthy businessman. He takes note of the young lad's ethic -- and the sparkle of intelligence in his crusty eye -- and takes him under his wing. Soon the boy is a wealthy man of responsibility and high station.

Embedded in Horatio Alger's work is the Protestant work ethic, the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps American creed. The mythology of upward mobility in America is central to modern conservative thinking, and much of it can be credited to Horatio Alger and his adoring fans. But who was he?

In this excerpt from "Fog Facts", author Larry Beinhart does some digging, and what he finds would come as a surprise to many a conservative Alger fan:

Horatio Alger (1834-1899) wrote about 130 short novels. Like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, which I read at the same age, they are all the same, yet all quite readable. Alger had a great gift for narrative. For some reason or other, I happened to pick one up as an adult. I was quite surprised at what I was reading. Then I read several more to see if that was an aberration. No, that part of my memory, at least, was correct; they are all exactly the same.

They feature a boy just at, or on the verge of, puberty, from the country or the slums. He comes to the center of the big city. He does work, but he doesn't work astonishingly hard, certainly not as compared to the majority of other working children in the days of legal child labor. He doesn't start his own business or invent a better mousetrap or find the Northwest Passage.

What really happens is he meets a rich older man who takes quite a fancy to him and sets him up with money and educates him and teaches him how to dress and conduct himself. There is, indeed, a "meet cute" in which the boy does something that draws that nice rich man's attention. It's usually something heroic, like stopping a team of galloping horses that's dragging a coach that is carrying the rich man's daughter.

This action is referred to in the books themselves and by people like those at the Horatio Alger Society as a sign of character. It is also a chance for the older man to notice how this boy stands out from the other boys. He has that forthright, noble-boy quality. Which is very, very attractive. Eager, earnest, shining. It's what draws priests to alter boys. In addition to the convenience, of course.

I do not understand how an adult can read Alger's stories and not realize that these were homosexual pedophile fantasies. Actually, it's a single fantasy repeated over and over again.

So I looked him up. And there it was. He had started out as a minister in Brewster, Massachusetts. He was having sex with boys in his congregation. Two of them told their parents. He admitted to a certain "practice." He resigned and moved to New York City. There he became a writer and began churning out these fantasies as dime novels.

We have two distinct ideas of what happened when he went to New York. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, a critic, antiquarian bookseller, and gay activist, has written: "Alger continued his 'practice' although thereafter most often against types of boys nobody cared about, thus avoiding further trouble with authorities. The newsboys Alger glamorized in his fiction were in reality homeless child laborers who spent their nights in alleys or slum-squats .... Their plight included sexual exploitation ranging from outright rape to 'willing' prostitution."

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »