[Ads-l] "Forgotten Man" Not in OED

[Shapiro, Fred]

The OED does not have an entry for the term "the forgotten man."  Wikipedia describes the term as follows  below.

Fred Shapiro



The forgotten man is a political concept in the United States<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States> centered around those whose interests have been neglected. The first main invocation of this concept came from William Graham Sumner<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Graham_Sumner> in an 1883 lecture in Brooklyn[1]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_man#cite_note-1> entitled The Forgotten Man (published posthumously in 1918)[2]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_man#cite_note-2> who articulated such a man to be one who has been compelled to pay for reformist programs. In 1932, President Franklin Roosevelt<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Roosevelt> appropriated the phrase in a speech, using it to refer to those at the bottom of the economic scale whom Roosevelt believed the state<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)> needed to help.[3]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_man#cite_note-3>
Sumner's forgotten man
Yale University<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University> professor William Graham Sumner<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Graham_Sumner> appears to be the first to use the phrase "the forgotten man", in his 1876 essay. His algebraic definition of the forgotten man was "C", who is coerced into helping the man at the economic bottom "X", by "A" and "B" who demand charity for "X".[4]<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_man#cite_note-4>
As soon as A observes something which seems to him 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 shall do for X, or, in better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X... What I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. he is the man who never is thought of.... I call him the forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays—but he always pays..."


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