The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest . . . The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.
Darwinism, indeed, appears to have fostered the intellectual climate of the age in both the U.S. and in Britain, where in 1859 naturalist Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species and in 1871 The Descent of Man. The Origin of Species developed ideas about natural science and the animal kingdom that had been circulating for a number of years, but Darwin's giving formal plausibility to the theory of evolution jolted centuries-old tenets of biology. The Descent of Man added that same plausibility to the a theory of biological evolution of man. As Loewenberg explains, Darwinism posited two primary tenets, that all life "developed from preexisting life. . . . Plants and animals, despite resemblances to the parent stock, were inherently different. Given variation, those with differences favorable in a given set of circumstances survived, while those without them perished. In 1882, Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy and Social Statics transferred the scientific theory to society, arguing that applying principles of evolution to society would reveal the superior people in it are the ones who had conquered the struggle for life and benefit; their experience was evidence of survival of the fittest.
Spencer's view of society was just what Americans wanted to hear. It gave sanction to methods that businessmen had always used and that they did not want the government to interfere with. If the details of the theory were not followed by a great number of people, it was accepted by an group of people influential enough to "furnish the main themes of American life" from 1880 to 1900 and beyond. Wyl...