The Forgotten Man

I'm gonna teach you
How to sing it out
Come-a, come-a, come-a
Let me show you what it's all about
--Jackson Five

William Graham Sumner was a professor of sociology at Yale in the late 1800s. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Sumner refused to be sucked into socialistic fads coloring academic work emanating from European universities.

Instead, Sumner focused on social theory surrounding the nature of liberty and contemporary society. At first glance one might think that space to be crowded. Sadly, however, the vacuum created by the rush of many academics toward emerging theories of socialism left Sumner in a somewhat solitary theoretical position.

A gain for us, though, as it served to highlight Sumner's thought processes for all to consider.

In 1883, Sumner wrote a series of essays for Harper's Weekly on the subject of worker relations. He expanded two of his favorite essays from the series in an address given to audiences in New York and Connecticut that same year. The address as well as the essays are often famously referred to as "The Forgotten Man."

This is a remarkable essay for the time, and it rings true today.
One of the more thought provoking features is how Sumner introduces the Forgotten Man using some 'social justice algebra:'

"As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C should do for X or, in the better case, what A, B, and C should do for X. As for A and B, who get a law to make themselves do for X what they are willing to do for him, we have nothing to say except that they might better have done it without any law, but what I want to do is to look up C...I call him the Forgotten Man...He is the victim of the reformer, social speculator and philanthropist..."

The Forgotten Man wears scars from the truncheon swung by the Welfare State.