Young Americans need “a stiffening of the vertebrae,” according to prominent businessman Elbert Hubbard. Hubbard laments their “foolish inattention” and “dowdy indifference,” only for him to perhaps find a silver lining within their soft existence: socialism will have no chance with the young, and it won’t because if our youth “won’t act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?” The future is bleak for America’s young people? Not so fast.
Hubbard was real, and he was a prominent businessman, but he wrote what he did in 1899. Let’s say up front that a downcast view of young people in the U.S. is arguably as old as the United States is.
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