Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

by Richard Hofstadter

In 1888 the railroad executive, Charles Elliott Perkins, asked:9 Have not great merchants, great manufacturers, great inventors, done more for the world than preachers and philanthropists?… Can there be any doubt that cheapening the cost of necessaries and conveniences of life is the most powerful agent of civilization and progress? Does not the fact that well-fed and well-warmed men make better citizens, other things being equal, than those who are cold and hungry, answer the question? Poverty is the cause of most of the crime and misery in the world—cheapening the cost of the necessaries and conveniences of life is lessening poverty, and there is no other way to lessen it, absolutely none. History and experience demonstrate that as wealth has accumulated and things have cheapened, men have improved … in their habits of thought, their sympathy for others, their ideas of justice as well as of mercy.… Material progress must come first and … upon it is founded all other progress.