Darwin's Theories & 19th Century Business Practices

The impact of Darwin's evolutionary theories can hardly be overestimated with respect to the scientific community and society in general. As Hudson writes, "Within a decade after the Civil War practically every important American scientist had been converted to Darwin's theory of biological evolution, and Herbert Spencer's "social Darwinism" was equally influential. Indeed, as early as 1872, the Atlantic Monthly was able to report that within the scientific community 'natural selection, had quite won the day in Germany and England, and very nearly won it in America'" (Hudson, 1973, p. 263).

Darwin had posited in his evolutionary theorizing that the animal kingdom was guided and shaped by the force for survival, and that this force could be fairly described by the term "survival of the fittest." The theory of natural selection argued that there was a drive in animals which led the strongest to mate with the strongest. Nature served the survival of a species by guiding the strongest of that species to mate and issue offspring which would be stronger than the offspring of others of that species.

Nelson et al. write that, in Darwin's theory, "Of the offspring, those individuals that are best fitted to compete will survive. Because the selection of the indiv

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heavy-handed interference by government. Derived in large part from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, in which it was presented as an argument against the policies of eighteenth-century mercantilism, it was combined with the more modern doctrines of Darwinism to reinforce the contention that capitalism should be free of any constraints or controls" (Smith, 1988, p. 139). It was inevitable that there were protests against such Darwinian socioeconomic policies and practices, such as those protests lodged by the People's Party Convention in 1892, which proclaimed in its platform that the "land (was) concentrated in the hands of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organization . . . a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down . . . The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes of tramps and millionaires" (Smith, 1988, p. 466). At work in this process was the fundamental set of beliefs held by Americans with respect
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