{"id":30724,"date":"2020-12-25T09:27:04","date_gmt":"2020-12-25T14:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=30724"},"modified":"2020-12-25T09:27:04","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T14:27:04","slug":"in-defense-of-scrooge-whose-thrift-blessed-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=30724","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Scrooge, Whose Thrift Blessed the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poe's Law<\/a> is harsh but fair:<\/p>\n

\nIn Defense of Scrooge, Whose Thrift Blessed the World<\/a><\/b>
\nIn the 1840s, Dickens didn\u2019t see how businessmen like his hero were already lifting mankind from poverty.<\/i><\/p>\n

No Christmas story except the biblical account of Jesus\u2019 birth has been more often retold or more cherished than Charles Dickens\u2019s \u201cA Christmas Carol,\u201d published in 1843. The reclamation of Ebenezer Scrooge has brought joy and hope to hundreds of millions of people across three centuries. \u201cScrooge\u201d has become an eponym for stingy or miserly. We write in defense of this Ebenezer Scrooge, not the redeemed one.<\/p>\n

Scrooge is a distilled caricature of a businessman in the Victorian era: a rich, obsessive wealth hoarder. Working in \u201chis moldy old office,\u201d living in \u201chis dusty chambers\u201d in a building so old and dreary that \u201cnobody lived in it but Scrooge,\u201d he was \u201ca tight-fisted hand at the grindstone.\u201d He strove from dawn till dusk to \u201cunderstand his own business,\u201d and \u201cwith his banker\u2019s-book\u201d he trudged home in the dark \u201cto take his gruel\u201d alone by a dying fire.<\/p>\n

We meet Scrooge on Christmas Eve, when he is visited in his cold, dingy \u201ccounting-house\u201d by his nephew, who urges him to stop working: \u201cYou\u2019re rich enough.\u201d The young man begs his uncle to join him in making merry on Christmas Day. Concerned about finding himself \u201ca year older, but not an hour richer,\u201d Scrooge answers that he will keep Christmas in his own way, by working.<\/p>\n

It should be understood there is nothing unethical about Ebenezer Scrooge. In his view business \u201cis the even-handed dealing of the world,\u201d and \u201cthere is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty.\u201d His great failing, in the words of his former fianc\u00e9e, whom he gave up to marry his business, was that he had become a prisoner of \u201cthe master-passion, Gain.\u201d <\/p>\n

...<\/p>\n

Marley tells Scrooge that the three spirits will visit him this Christmas Eve to begin his salvation. Here we begin our defense of history\u2019s most notorious wealth accumulator. It does not appear that Dickens seriously considered the possibility that Scrooge and Marley\u2019s business contributed to the common welfare of mankind. Like Scrooge, Marley created and accumulated wealth, leaving it to Scrooge, who continued to invest and accumulate. When Dickens has Scrooge\u2019s nephew say his uncle\u2019s wealth \u201cis of no use to him\u201d because he doesn\u2019t spend it, it is made clear that Dickens never considered who Scrooge\u2019s wealth was <\/em>useful to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so on...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poe's Law is harsh but fair: In Defense of Scrooge, Whose Thrift Blessed the World In the 1840s, Dickens didn\u2019t see how businessmen like his hero were already lifting mankind from poverty. No Christmas story except the biblical account of Jesus\u2019 birth has been more often retold or more cherished than Charles Dickens\u2019s \u201cA Christmas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30725,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30724\/revisions\/30725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}